I saw a blog post by the MD of a major recruitment company discussing how it was the preserve of recruitment companies to find people jobs. The comment was, “People find people jobs, not job boards”.

I thought it worth while reposting my thoughts here because it is basically all we are all about as a company…

Agreed, people find people jobs, not job boards, but those “people” no longer have to be traditional recruiters, but the hiring managers and the applicants themselves.

The internet is about empowerment, you no longer rely on a travel agent to book your holiday, nor an estate agent to find your house, why should you solely rely on a 3rd party to find your job or hire your staff?

With the correct use of job boards, social media and a robust ATS, direct hiring managers can build and manage their own talent pools without a primary need for traditional introductions, whilst applicants can research and engage with companies directly.

Certainly, there will always be a need for highly skilled recruiters who build and “re-sell” their niche talent pool, particularly in the temp/contract sector. But the majority of recruitment today is managing large volume responses to job board advertising and effective CV database mining, coupled with the utilisation of relevant social media to create and manage talent pools.

Who are we? http://www.NetNatives.co.uk are a recruitment company, but we take a different approach to developments in technology (not just job boards & social media, but open and social web sourcing tools), enabling clients to directly engage with passive and active candidates (and vice versa) to build their own talent pools, not ours. We advertise, search (job boards and open web), contact and manage candidates applications for our clients – in one case hiring 10 people (average salary £25k) for a campaign that cost £575. All the time, feeding back responses to EVERY candidate and providing clients with effective management reports on which methods were successful, encouraging them develop their own strategies. Why do we do this? Well, why shouldn’t we?

I, naturally, hesitated posting this on a “traditional” recruitment company’s blog, but thought it important to highlight that recruitment IS about people, but, thankfully, it’s no longer just about recruitment consultants…

oh and I didn’t even discuss SEM/SEO strategies or effective social media advertising.

Twitter’s is never out of the news, whether with rallying cries against those damn Yankees criticising the NHS or the power of citizen journalism helping mobilise radical thought in Iran.

But I can’t help feeling its mighty PR machine has missed a trick by not ascribing Twitter’s influence over the gradual global recovery from recession.

Twitter has been perfectly placed during this period of slow trade and rising unemployment to be used as the effective business tool for the quick witted. Twitter’s reach and ability to bring together like minded people has provided a platform for business growth for those businesses willing to embrace it.

Though we are not in the same league as Dell, Net Natives can directly attribute £1000s of revenues generated by twitter to our business model. Real revenues for our online recruitment services, not “how to use twitter” or other idiots’ guide and abstract revenues.

And I still haven’t cracked it or think I am using it to its maximum potential. I still think before I tweet (cardinal sin, I know), don’t put out enough personal information; engage enough with my audience, or whatever else I am constantly instructed to do by another twitterers. But, so what…I (and my company) are having a go – getting involved and using the medium.

But, whilst I am an evangelist, I am an old fashioned sort of fella at heart. When I started work, the only means for communication was the phone and fax (why do people still insist on faxes!), so I still use the telephone call as my primary communication tool, where I can. But, we are now in the business of mixed mediums.

I use Twitter, but don’t rely on it. I don’t agree with comments that mandate sole faith in social media and proclaim the end of other mediums. This short term view will not help develop business, but will restrict growth and scope. In my business, online recruitment, the key is to maximise all avenues (be it recruitment advertising, SEO, SEM, social media, referrals – whatever, do it all but do them well).

I started with the question, “Can Twitter end the recession?” I suppose the answer is yes, but not on its own…

I am going to expand on some of these points later (especially the effective referral schemes and social media strategy), but wanted to get out there some simple recruitment tips and advice that we know help in the hiring process and will keep costs down.

These are some key points to a successful recruitment strategy;

1. Question yourself  – work out why you need to fill the role, what is the key purpose and what is the key outcome? Do you need to create a new hire or can you promote or manage internally?
2. Analysis of your recruitment spend– work out how much you have spent on recruitment, where you have spent it and which spend has been successful. Track your recruitment marketing spend.
3. Write an effective job description – this is different to the job advert, it is the list of key objectives and points of measurable success that will determine if that new hire has been successful. There are no such things as bad employees, only bad hires!
4. Get input – should you be the only person to write the job description or would it be more relevant to get input from other people – current team members, perhaps?
5. Centralise your recruitment – if you have a number of hiring managers all recruiting separately, you will be putting forward mixed messages and you certainly will have increased your recruitment costs.
6. Utilise your own talent pool – have you established an effective referral scheme? Look at ways in which your own talent will put forward your company as the best place to work. Work out how to get that message across effectively to your employees.
7. Use your network – ask your peers and clients if they know of anyone suitable. Promote the fact that you are hiring, people want to hear good news and will want to help.
8. Ask for referrals in final interviews – if someone is good and you are hiring for more than one role, ask them if they know of anyone. They will probably know people in their network.
9. Free advertising – There are a number of free job board advertising routes you can place your ads. If the role is relevant you could even advertise on the Jobcentre plus site.
10. Create a talent pool – track all people who you have hired or interviewed in the past and ask them if  they can be registered. Adhere to data protection with opting in tools, but keep in touch with relevant people with emails and contacts. Remember these aren’t just candidates these could be clients.
11. Create a social media strategy – – create LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook accounts and market your roles to your network. You’ll be amazed by the results. Done effectively, it will also improve your business leads as well.
12. Create a PPC (Pay Per Click) Google Adwords campaign to drive traffic to your site. Highlight the words you think people would search on and then buy those phrases for the Google campaign.
13. Respond quickly – if you are running an online advertised campaign, make sure you identify the good people quickly and respond quickly before they are hired by someone else.
14. Track all of your candidates – always keep them informed of the process. Remember, your candidates are your clients. You may want to consider inputting a candidate management system. If you hire more than 10 staff a year, this can be very useful and not as expensive as you may think.
15. Plan – establish a recruitment strategy, so you can work out when you could potentially be looking at your next hire.
16. Motivate – keep your staff motivated and informed of your business plans, keep your star players on the field.

There is a lot to take in here and I would welcome any comments as to what works, what doesn’t and if anyone else has any other ideas to contribute…

The constant theme in these posts is that recruitment advertising is not going to come back as it was before, what is needed now is to look at alternative ways to increase revenues from a decreasing space.

I hope I have added food for thought with previous posts about lateral revenues, outsource and out-placement opportunities, and headhunt services.

In my first post I touched on online recruitment fairs. I want to return to this in more detail as an excellent opportunity to extend the job board brand and add more recruitment services.

In the past 7 years there has been exponential growth in two areas of the media space, recruitment advertising and events. Yet for the most part these two areas have been largely distinct. Mostly because, as a job board owner, you would not want to alienate your major client base, the recruitment consutancies and agencies. However, now that they have left you, why not look at ways to capitalise on this opportunity for targeted direct employers.

Virtual Recruitment Fair software, which simply plugs into your current software and CMS is already out there and keeps on improving. Some publishers have trialled their own version, Trinity Mirror is running something at the moment (the service, I think, misses several tricks and has terrible user experiences, but at least they are trying to increase yield and their service). Adicio were at the Onrec Conference and they demonstrated that they are pretty much leading the way with their plug in virtual fair platforms.

But why stop at virtual? What more can be offered? Job boards are increasingly the brand that job seekers and direct clients are turning to in this climate rather than the recruitment consultancies. Am I missing something, but why isn’t there a job board that is currently delivering compelling recruitment fairs that engages the job seekers and employers online but also delivers a powerful face to face experience, with all the additional opportunities that can bring? An event that adds value to your audience and extends the brand. Particularily when most job board owners are media companies that also own event businesses!

Jobserve is trying something similar with jobservelive.com.

Personally, I would have had more niche events, that were sector and geographically specific, with a less confusing mix of attendees and exhibitors. And would also have joined up the virtual with the face to face more effectively, through micro site creation and relevant job listings and application processes on and offline to track the success. But it is still an attempt to look at online recruitment creatively.

And there are many other ways in which job boards could create effective on and offline events which add value and increase revenues. There are various options, but it’s mostly common sense, boiling down to the relevance, resonance and return on investment for all involved.

And why does it just need to be a recruitment fair, what other face to face experiences could be considered? What other ways can you extend your brand and services?

As always these are just some thoughts and ideas, if you would like me to expand on these points, feel free to get in touch. I am always interested and appreciative of feedback and comments.

I have had a couple of requests to build a forum for this discussion, so have put something together called very grandly Recruitment Futurology on LinkedIn. Feel free to join up, it is a place for Job Board stakeholders, online recruitment specialists and HR professionals to share ideas on new ways job boards and online recruitment can be effective in the new economy.

Posted 12th February 2009

Recruitment sales has had it pretty easy – there I said it. I am not saying it has been all rosy (I should know, I launched a “not very successful” job board for a legal publisher a few years ago), but the sector has benefited from year on year growth since its inception.

We all know now how this has all changed and changed dramatically.

But why are most job boards still targeting their teams on just call numbers? Yes, it is a “numbers game”, but will 100 sales calls a day work in this environment when it is easy for the client to say “we are not recruiting”?

The last blog, I looked at creating lateral advertising opportunities, I want to look at some potential ideas for managing, targeting and rewarding online recruitment sales teams to succeed in this market. As before, these are just ideas, with no agenda, merely putting thoughts out there for feedback.

• When anyone makes any call, find out as much information as possible – who else are they using who signs off the budget, what roles/sector are difficult to hire, when is the next review, etc. focus the information for the next call.
• Sell to your strength, know your key markets which roles are hard to fill against your portfolio. Don’t just point to massive application rates. call with a case study.
• Sell that case study effectively to the competitors of your clients.
• Why just sell ad space sell recruitment services – what are the cyclical timings for recruitment services (grad campaigns, summer placements, major project works)
• What rewards and incentives are you setting your sales guys? Can you be flexible in offering days in lieu, mornings off for most client wins or any other stat that you want to focus on?
• If you have a print brand, are you doing enough to effectively cross sell campaigns across both platforms
• Again cross platform sales across various niches?
• Get campaigns working, review amend track. Account management should mean manage the accounts.
• Can you offer clients reward/loyalty points for annual contracts?
• Can you offer brand affiliation spots across the site?
• Hunter/Farmers – should your key sales people be doing the numbers or would be more effective to create some dedicated telesales teams, with the strategic clients and deals focused by the “big guns”

Finally if there are no jobs, with that client that only means no jobs now – keep in touch with updated newsletters, relevant industry trends, add value.

The list goes on and on and most people are doing this and more, all I am saying, early in the morning (well it was when I begun this), is that there ways and means of focusing your sales and helping to focus the mind of the clients (agents or direct), by doing more than just selling ad space – I’m afraid that those days are gone for now.