Posted by: Gareth Jones in totaljobs.com, strategy, socialmedia, social recruiting, social networking, social media recruiting, social media in recruitment, recruitment technology, recruitment solutions, Recruitment, recruiting, online recruitment, on-line recruitment, On-line job hunting, monster, jobboard, job sites, job search, job boards, Job board, future, erecruitment, Engagement, Candidates, #trulondon on
28 Feb 11
I have been thinking a lot about job boards recently, as both a customer and a jobseeker. In these socially enabled times, it strikes me that the job board user experience should be something like this:
Jobs are displayed in easy on the eye tag clouds, instead of ordered lists we know are manipulated by the recruitment organisations who post them. Jobs are highlighted to me by other job seekers and I can rank them by most viewed, highest rated or user defined tags. It’s a visual experience, not a data driven one.
I can tag each job myself, just like I can currently tag the rest of my social life – my pictures, my bookmarks and so on – knowing that all my fellow jobseekers are doing the same. This rich user tagging is doing a way better job of delivering me relevant jobs than the job board search facility can.
What's more, I can connect with my social friends on the site, directly, along with other job seekers whom I don't know. Yet. The feature that flags the profiles of people who are also looking for a job in my specialism or area takes care of that.
It introduces me to others in the community who also happen to be looking for a job in the same area as me. We can swap notes, compare opportunities, give advice and extend our job-seeking network. And of course, make some life long friends along the way.
So my second blog entry was going to be about Google Wave (don't worry folks - it's already written and you'll get it soon enough!) but I read a great post last week on Twitter and decided to change tack.
@grahamsalisbury wrote:
"I am beginning to regard online job boards with the same degree of suspicion that I normally reserve for Wikipedia"
I couldn't help but smile! I've been in the same job for nearly five years now, working as a recruiter, and I'd kind of forgotten what it was like to be a job seeker until recently. I shan't bore you with the gory details, but basically my employer has had to cut my hours due to the recession and so I've had to look for additional employment to supplement my income and keep Mr J in PlayStation 3 games (I know, I know...!) Anyway, the employment issue is resolved (temporarily at least) and I was lucky enough to not be looking too long, but this was my first time as a job seeker in some time and it was really quite humbling!
Last time I was job hunting, local papers were still reasonably en vogue and, while job boards were very much in the picture, there seemed to be just the one or two big names that were worth a visit. But how things have changed now! Now my local papers are all affiliated with (different) jobs boards, there are niche boards popping up all over the place and (maybe it's just me, but) there seem to be even more ‘big name' boards too! Now I've no problem really with the number of job boards in existence; as a recruiter I've advertised on plenty in the past (with mixed results!), but what I did find particularly annoying was the way the same jobs were duplicated over and over on all of them.
Some employers were guilty, but it was mostly the agencies with the multiple postings. And you can bet your bottom dollar half those posting were out of date too. Job hunting is a drain at the best of times, but I felt as though whole evenings were just vanishing into a black hole!
Other than spending half my life trawling the internet for vaguely relevant and still current job vacancies, my biggest quandary was which jobs to apply for. The current market means that most of the jobs I liked the look of didn't pay the kind of salary I was used to getting (and in my part of the world, salaries aren't really that great anyway). You work hard to get to where you are and no-one wants to take a step backwards, but at what point do you put your pride aside and say that some income is better than no income? I've always said (rather arrogantly) that there's no reason for me to ever be unemployed - there is always the counter at McDonalds or the checkout at Tesco. But that's really not true any more; even these entry level jobs have people queuing to apply because some income is better than no income. And there you have it! Who would employ me; a somewhat overqualified candidate with no recent retail experience, over someone who's been made redundant from Thresher or Woolworths who is far more relevant?! But how do you decide what's worth the effort? Do you apply for anything and everything and hope that something sticks, or do you do what you'd normally do (if jobs weren't so fiercely fought over) and stay targeted and focussed, even though there are less relevant positions to apply for? It's so difficult to decide. It's easy to judge people who apply for jobs they're totally over qualified for, but the reality is that many people are not in a situation where they can support themselves and their families with no income.
Though I didn't apply for that many positions in the end, I got not one reply saying thanks but no thanks. These were applications directly to employers rather than through agencies and the funny thing was that this neither surprised nor bothered me. And that made me feel a bit sad. When did such disrespectful behaviour start becoming so universally acceptable?!
Unfortunately I don't have the answers to these problems, but I did want to share my experiences. It's a tough market out there and, as recruiters, it's easy for us to get caught up in our work and forget that we're dealing with real people: They have feelings, families and responsibilities just like us, and they are trying to doing their best. We can all show a little more compassion. Put yourself in the jobseekers shoes for a few minutes and ask yourself how you'd feel.
Posted by: Alan Whitford in totaljobs.com, Recruitment, On-line job hunting, LinkedIn, Job board, Global recruitment, future, Facebook, erecruitment, Alan Whitford, Advertising on
01 Oct 09
Attending a breakfast seminar today in London, hosted by Totaljobs , featuring Totaljobs marketing research and International Labour market research by the Intelligence Group for The Network
Paul Smith, Group Marketing Director of Totaljobs Group , led off the presentations, after the introductions by John Salt. We will write about the Intelligence Group presentation (which is very impressive) later.
General economic challenges have impacted the job market
- Decline in jobs
- Increase in jobseeker activity
- Google - recruitment query searches up 55% year on year
Advertising spend drops from £1.2 billion to £600 million
- Offline decline 50%
- Online decrease 30%
Paul projects a modest increase end 2011, early 2012 and online recruitment ad spend will pass offline in 2012
Posted by: Alan Whitford in Recruitment, online recruitment, On-line job hunting, media, marketing, job sites, job boards, Job board, Global recruitment, global, erecruitment, Advertising on
16 Sep 09
The Network , which brings together career sites from 119 countries and generates traffic of more than 45 million unique monthly visitors, held its annual conferenence in Bulgaria this month. The conference, hosted by partner Jobs.bg, was covered in Bulgarian publication, Human Capital, including videos of presentations from the managers of the leading job sites in France, Russia, Germany, Poland and Britain such as Totaljobs.com , StepStone and A denclassifieds .
Leading international career sites reported a decline in the published positions between 35 and 40 percent as a result of the global economic crisis. The good news is that some Western countries noticed a slight increase in the published positions last month.
The coverage and presentations can be viewd on the Human Capital site in native Bulgarian or the tranlsated version.
I was traveling back from Holland Friday evening and picked up my free newspaper (and yes I still read print!!) . The article on page 4 by Brian Groom suggested that " Britain's job market may be able to bounce back faster than in the past".
This positive piece of news came from Nigel Meager , director of the Institute for Employment Studies , He said " I think the labour market is in better shape now than in either of the previous recessions. For any given fall in economic activity we are likely to be able to survive it better that we were in previous recessions and we are likely to bounce back slightly more quickly."
Wishful thinking? Well both the CIPD and the Sunday Times also feel that we may be coming out of the worst, so who knows.
What I do know is that my friends in Europe are begining to feel the heat. In Holland the volume of job posting are down 40%; in Belgium activity is almost at a standstill and in France it is a similar story.
We will send a note to all our friends across Europe getting their first hand experience of what is happening in local recruitment markets across Europe.
I've been recruiting non-Dutch speakers for jobs in The Netherlands since May '08. As of February 2nd, our new site is live which will offer job seekers and recruiters some new and neat functionalities.
Most important: we can now offer a job board model, but on a no cure no pay basis. So what does this mean? Candidates can register and define their profile, containing a broad set of match criteria. Anonymous candidate profiles are published publicly, so anyone can search through profiles and see if someone's in there matching their requirements. If interested, company (or agency) recruiters can register and see more detailed candidate info. If they want to get in touch, they notify me and I'll release contact details. Apart from that they can also post jobs themselves.
This enables me to let both recruiters and job seekers register on their own, and be matched automatically or find each other through search (agents), just like at most other job boards. The fact that I have to release the contact details, combined with a smart backoffice to follow ongoing applications, makes it possible to offer this model on a no cure no pay basis. The fee after a succesful match/application is 2% of the annual salary.
Next to this, customers can still choose a more traditional agency model.I will then conduct a thorough pre-screening of candidates before introducing them to clients (pro)actively. Since I'm assisted by the automatic matching facilities and tools like online video interviewing, I can go through the first stages of pre-screening much quicker. This saves time and therefore money. My clients can therefore enjoy a lower placement fee then those commonly used by more traditional agencies.
I would like to hear what you think about the concept, and the site www.careersinholland.com. Any input is greatly valued. Thanks!
