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.
Posted by: Keith Robinson in technology, strategy, social networking, Recruitment, online recruitment, On-line job hunting, Netherlands, media, Keith Robinson, Holland, Global recruitment, global, future, erecruitment, blogs on
15 May 09
It's been some time since I last blogged as Alan and I decided that we needed to rebuild and re-brand the Beta of Recruitment Community Europe and at the same time build our Pan European members and marketing database.
This week I was fortunate enough to be a speaker at the Corporate Social Networking Conference in Amsterdam. It was also great to spend a couple of days at the conference with fellow speaker, Paul Harrison from Carve Consulting, a true thought leader in this space.
The event was put on by Thys Spragers and his team at KREM , one of Holland's leading consultancies in this space. With over 190 attendees in this current climate, it shows the interest in the topic and also reflected the quality of the speaker line up KERM had put together.
The morning saw two true visionaries in the social media space. The first speaker was Jeremiah Owyang , Senior Analyst at Forrester, blogger and commentator on the sector. Second was Urs Gasser , Executive Director Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard.
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!
