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Hire Strategies Discovery System Breakfast Seminar - July 7th London

We are running a free employer only breakfast seminar on July 7th at One Aldwych in London for employers who are either:

• Still recruiting and want to do it more cost effectively.
• Planning ahead and are looking at their future direct resourcing strategy.

Very few people need convincing on the merits of direct resourcing but actually putting the right things in place at the right time and for the right cost is not as easy as people would hope.  Having done this now on a number of occasions we have now systemised our process which allows us to quickly identify where an individual employer will get the quickest return but also have a 3 year plan to work towards.

If this sounds of interest more details are on our website at www.hirestrategies.co.uk/discover.

How will the Kindle DX change job advertising?

I remember when Peoplebank positioned their ability to display online job adverts that looked like a print advert as a real USP (which it was at the time).  Was if of any value?  Some liked it but as online has moved on fewer (but not all) people expect an online job advert to look/behave like a print advert.

But if the Kindle DX is going to change this then maybe the advertising agencies need to beef up their creative skills once again.

Recruitment ghettos

I started recruiting before the mobile phone which my children find hard to believe i.e. there was life before the mobile!

Back then recruiting was relatively simple. 

Very few employers did that much direct recruitment, the economy was better than it is today (there were a few blips of course) and although we had to sell, the vacancies came in and press adverts were the only option.

And then the Internet came along and it all got that little bit harder.

Job boards or job networks

Jobsite are advertising on TV, Monster are 'investing' $130m to relaunch their sites.  Will this be enough for either of them?  Have Monster gone off on a wild job chase or are they on the right track?

According to Hitwise traffic for January 2009 across some of the 'job sites' was as follows:

1. JobCentre Plus: 9.76%.
2. Linkedin: 4.02%.
3. NHS Careers: 3.83%.
4. Reed: 3.58%.
5. Totaljobs: 2.82%.
6. Jobsite UK: 2.72%.
7. Monster: 3.06%.
8. Guardian Jobs: 1.93%.
9. TES Jobs: 1.77%.

So, a few comments around the above.

• Government 5. Private Sector 1.  No extra time.
• TJ and Monster down on previous year.
• Linkedin more than doubled on previous year.

Based on the growth for Linkedin maybe Monster are actually on the right track but if they execute their plans in their normal way they'll just walk on by without stopping and miss out.  Plenty of other comments can be taken from the above but if I was a job board I'd be thinking hard about where next.

Bad landing page?

Google are pushing Adwords for recruitment quite hard these days which I am in support of.  But, one of the biggest errors I still see from job boards to (a few) corporates are bad landing pages.

Social recruiting | Job searching

The evolution of the job board to social network is the tip of the iceberg.  It's not about which is the best option or easiest to use; it's about content or data, getting into the mindset of the person that dictates what kind of data and experience is most relevant.

This is where search will go. 

Matching data with your activities be they verbal discussions, e-mail, txt, blog posts, videos you watch etc.  Google will use computer power to anticipate your next move and present what is relevant.  If for example you talk about changing jobs with a few friends this will be 'heard' by the big machine and provide you with links.  Maybe to recruiting videos on YouTube or a company blog in the relevant sector.  If you are more specific 'I'm sick of working here'  then it could be some jobs as your are 'active' in your desire to get a new job.

So the point is, it's about making sure employers/recruiters have as much data in circulation as they can.  Jobs, blog posts, tweets, news etc.  If it's not there it won't be found; and you've got to be in it to win it!

Fish4jobs - reasons NOT use them!

I read an article/case study this last week about how Fish4 had used a SEO agency to improve their 'vital pathway' to their customers. 

And their crowning glory was:

Ranking in position 1 out of 81.7 million results in the Google rankings for the keyword 'jobs'.

Do they really?  And so what if they do!