Sirona Says

The one BIG mistake that every company is making with their candidate recruitment

 

There is so much written and spoken about social recruiting and social media for businesses, there is a danger of over complication of the essence of understanding what the whole experience should be.

There is a phrase I use a lot when talking to clients about recruitment, social recruiting or using social media in recruitment. It is a mistake every company makes and which (for me) is the no.1 thing they need (but often fail) to do:

Look back at yourself through the eyes of your candidates.

What does the candidate experience when they start interacting with your brand? It could be your career site, your website, your Twitter profile, your Facebook page, your LinkedIn profile or even just an email or phone call they receive from you.
Have you ever even considered what the experience is for a candidate for any of the above? When was the last time you even bothered to consider what the candidates see when interacting with your brand?

As we move more into the social recruiting sphere (and don't think you can avoid it for long), the transparent nature of social media becomes ever more obvious. With the ability for people to instantly share (on all of the social networks) information on companies - both good and bad - the need to consider what the candidates are experiencing is truly paramount.

If you are recruiting graduates or young people, then look at the content you are presenting from their perspective. If you are of a different generation, get one of your employees who fit that demographic to review it.
If you are recruiting more experienced people, and you don't fit that same skill profile, again get one of your employees with relevant experience to check the content, to see if what you have produced resonates with them. This sounds so simple doesn't it, but I know from experience that the majority of companies don't even consider what the candidates see!
There still seems to be an element of brand arrogance in the market when it comes to companies believing people want to work for 'their' brand, because they are who they are. >>Wake up and smell the coffee -  those days are quickly disappearing!!

Whether you are producing a new website, new career site, a new blog or even a new Facebook page, you absolutely (with no exceptions either) need to put the audience first. Think of who you are trying to reach out to. Then target the content accordingly to that audience.

You have such a small window to get the persons attention (maybe just 10 -15 seconds, according to some web experts), that you just have to get it right immediately.

So, remember, look back at yourself through the eyes of your candidates. Grab a coffee and go an do it today........ I think you will be a little shocked at what you see!

If you like reading this blog, then click on the orange RSS icon here and get the latest Sirona Says posts delivered to your RSS reader or your inbox the moment they come out.

Generation Y - Who, What, How

Today, I delivered a presentation to a room full of HR and Recruitment Directors from the Hotel industry, for the hosts, Caterer.com . The subject was generation Y in the workplace - their characteristics and how to engage them as employees. The hotel and leisure industry has a very high level of gen Y employees, and they are experiencing their fair share of recruitment and retention issues. There now seems to be a desire to address some of the issues - hence the presentation!

The presentation was well received, and as promised (to all the delegates) here are a copy of the slides this morning.

Generation Y Who, What, How

View more presentations from Andy Headworth.

And for all of you today that didn't know what a blog was......... you do now - you have just been reading one:)

If you like reading this blog, then click on the orange RSS icon here and get the latest Sirona Says posts delivered to your RSS reader or your inbox the moment they come out.

What many in the recruitment sector fail to realise - job seekers are their lifeblood!

People will pay for the value THEY perceive NOT what you tell them it is

Sounds like a bit of an obvious statement doesn't it? But just think about it for a moment. As a consumer (customer) do you buy the product you are interested in because you believe 100% in what the salesperson said to you? Are you mesmerized by the sales patter, and just have to have the product at any cost?
Unless you are either a shopaholic, an impulse buyer or you have an urgent need for it then the answer is probably no.

Why? One good reason is that the product isn't of enough value TO YOU, to make you part with your money. This is key - THE VALUE TO YOU, not the value that the sales person has assigned to it.

Right, I now want you to put yourself in the mind of a job seeker just for a moment.

You are looking for a new job and as part of the process, you will be applying for jobs - direct with companies, via job boards, social media channels and recruitment agencies.
All these channels are 'selling' their products - jobs - to you.

Question time: Which ones are of most value to you, in your goal of helping you find a job?

Answer: the ones that have invested in understanding what you actually want.

Let me explain....

Many companies with career sites have little consideration of the candidate experience.The reason is that they have opted for 'listening' to the software vendors (of the online recruitment systems /ATS aka applicant tracking systems) candidate workflow and 'many years of experience' when implementing a new system.
The majority of these processes are way too long, complicated, have no candidate empathy, high drop-off rates and are, quite frankly, a horrible experience, which reflects badly on the employer brand.
Is it any wonder then, that some new players such as HarbourATS have successfully entered the marketplace, with a real focus on the candidate experience, not the unnecessary software add-ons they can sell to the unsuspecting client.

Message to companies with career sites: Think what the candidates actually want NOT what you think they need. When was the last time you actually sought any opinion at all on your online recruitment process?

Job Boards, have been around for a while now, and they provide an essential service to candidates (and clients alike) looking for a job. They will continue to do so even with the advent of social media job channels, but they also need to be thinking of the candidates and not their bottom line.
For a job board it is a fine line - they stay in business because they sell their service to clients wanting to advertise jobs. But they need candidates to keep arriving at the site to apply to the jobs - without this traffic, clients would stop advertising, and they would cease to exist.
So, with this in mind, do many actually give a sh*t about candidates? Some, like Jobsite, have invested heavily in understanding what the candidates want and expect from them - resulting in real social media functionality be added to their site earlier this year. Many other job boards just worry about the numbers, they don't care about the candidate experience, they just want to be able to brag their latest traffic stats to the clients they are selling to!

Message to job boards: consider the job seeker a little more with your processes, and focus on making it a simple, useful and enjoyable experience for them. While you need traffic (I do understand that), better to have a referral network of happy job seekers to compliment all your Google Adwords spending isnt' it?

Recruitment agencies are to be honest an enigma. For every good one that has a great candidate experience, and one that candidates come back to and happily refer their friends, there are three others that (unbelievably) don't give a crap about the candidates that make them their money!
The good ones take the time to build relationships, the bad ones have no time for any relationship - candidates are just like tins of beans on a shelf to them - use them when they want and discard them when they have finished with them.

Message to recruitment agencies: Just think for a second about the experience you give your candidates. is there any wonder why many of the candidates registered with you, have turned to social media websites to find a new job? Maybe it's because they don't value what you do?

Social Media channels are so new to the recruiting space, that they are really just finding their recruitment feet. One thing is already clear, though. Candidates are using them by the bucket load, and will continually choose to do so. And all the time other options are not giving them the value they want, they will stay in the social media land.

So, if you are a company that works in the world of recruitment - and there are literally thousands out there - take a minute to consider your currency  - the job seekers - and just ask yourself;  what is the value that job seekers ACTUALLY see in your product or service? If you don't know the answer, maybe now is the time to ask..... before it is too late!!

If you like reading this blog, then click on the orange RSS icon here and get the latest Sirona Says posts delivered to your RSS reader or your inbox the moment they come out.

The social recruiting battlegrounds in 2010

The last decade has, in my opinion, seen one of the biggest seed changes the recruitment industry has seen for many years. While I am referring to social media, I also combine that with the evolution (it took it's time but now has real momentum) that has  been online recruitment.

The primary change is that we're no longer just regarding them as recruitment experiements, they are now primary recruitment channels. Online recruitment systems (ATS's), job boards and social media sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and even Facebook have quickly become established candidate recruitment channels. And for me, this has led to the biggest change of all - increased candidate expectation!

The companies that have not yet embraced social recruiting, via the sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube (not forgetting blogs), will need to take a long hard look at themselves, as these platforms will become the recruiting battlegrounds of 2010.
Companies and recruiters that have been sitting at the head of the curve, have already created successful communities on specific platforms - like the already very successful Mya4e Community site, based on the Tribepad platform - and will they definitely yield recruitment success from these recruitment communities (the caveat being that whatever the platform, they need to be maintained and effectively managed to yield desired results).
Some companies and recruiters are already actively building effective communities, on the likes of LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Many companies towards the end of 2009, finally realised that they need to be in the social recruiting space, and have started to explore it further.

Building your online community - whether it be via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or a blog - will be absolutely crucial to success in social recruiting. Recruiting is all about relationships - with clients and candidates alike - and using social media tools are fantastic ways to initiate and develop relationships with them. So, by building your own communities (on individual or multiple social channels) with interesting, compelling and relevent content, companies and recruiters will both start to create a social recruiting brand that they will certainly need in the years ahead.

Battlegrounds inevitably have casualties scattered around them. So, if candidate expectation (around using social media in recruiting), continues to increase the way it has in 2009, then be prepared for the consequences, because, if as a company or a recruiter, you choose to ignore social recruiting as a channel for 2010, then you will be watching your competitors take control of the recruiting battleground for good!

If you like reading this blog, then click on the orange RSS icon here and get the latest Sirona Says posts delivered to your RSS reader or your inbox the moment they come out.

Innovation or Madness? New Recruitment company, Playfair and Noble, pay 50% of their fee to the successful candidate!

Do you ever get emails from companies looking to 'sell you' their company? Probably like you, I get a fair amount arriving in my inbox each week. So you could probably say that I am a little sceptical (too long in the recruitment world, I am afraid!!)

So it was a really pleasant surprise to see a recruitment platform (from non-recruitment people I might add) that is daring to be different and placing its big kahuna's right there on the middle of the recruitment table to be chewed at!! (Metaphorically of course!)

Now before you think I am over dramatising this a little, let me tell why it is so different - This company actually pays the successful candidate  50% of the fee they get paid from their clients!!  And before any of you recruiters say it won't work (like I did before I spoke to them), they have done their maths, and they believe it will.

Now that I have your attention let me tell you the company - Playfair and Noble - and with a name like that, and the offering they are proposing, it won't surprise you to guess that ethics are a HUGE part of what they stand for.
Basically they have a real issue with recruitment agencies.

A great new Twitter tool for job seekers - TwitterJobSearch

I came across this a couple of days ago, and it seems to have taken the Twittersphere by storm with its interest and simplicity!
It is a web site called TwitterJobSearch and it is a fantastcially simple, yet brilliant, website for searching all the jobs placed on Twitter by companies and recruitment agencies alike.
The screen shot above shows how simple it is - you search for job title or location etc, hit search and bingo all the jobs that meet the criteria materialise, instantly.
What I like is that the integrity of the individual tweets are maintained, so you can go off and follow those companies or agencies that seem to be posting jobs on Twitter that suit your needs.

TwitterJobSearch is clever in that it draws in every vacancy posted on Twitter, and the new web-based service analyses and restructures the data, extending each job’s reach and visibility to everyone online. Developed by Workhound, the UK’s leading job search engine, TwitterJobSearch will be joined by a whole suite of smart, semantic search services for recruitment in other social media channels over the coming months.

(Although they may have some fun with Facebook!!)

Also, there is an RSS feed created for any search you might want to do, which is very useful if you want to track certain job titles, locations etc. This will immediately become an important tool for anyone looking for a new job!

I know it is very new, but already I think it is just brilliant - well the simple ideas always are aren't they?

Are Job Seekers wasting their time with Recruitment Agencies?

Every day now there are seemingly endless amounts of people ending up in the queues at the Job Centres. Even today, the Government are trying to help the middle classes who have found themselves out of work in this recession, with special initiatives to help them find work.

So, as someone who has spent their career in the recruitment sector, I find myself asking questions of the industry and whether there should be some evolution in the way that job seekers are advised to find a job. 

I have recently questioned if it is right, to pay a career consultant to help find a job, which prompted some interesting discussion.

Today, I want to focus on recruitment agencies - are they a waste of time for job seekers?

Fixed Fee Recruitment RPO providers - shouldn't they actually be called recruiting FARM's?

 

As part of a large recruitment audit I am currently working on, I have had cause to look at the fixed fee recruitment providers, such as Webrecruit, Networx, Net-Recruit, Websearch and EasyWebRecruitment.

The first thing to try and do was to understand what they are actually called and what they do. They are not really full RPO (recruitment process outsourcing) companies, although they have the capacity to be. They are not true recruitment agencies, but again they do some of the process.
They all charge a fixed fee for a recruitment management service, whether that be job board advertising, CV database searches or response management.

So, I have created a description for them that I feel is both appropriate and effective as a description of what they do - recruiting FARM's.
F - Fixed fee
A - Advertising jobs
R - Resourcing vacancies
M - Management of the process

I actually think that it describes what they do very well.

What do you think? Does it suit their service? Can you come up with a better one?

Should Companies use more or less recruitment agencies in a recession?

As we all know, the world has fallen apart, no one is hiring and the recruitment market is in total freefall, never to be seen again!  Well that is what the media would have us believe anyway!!

But the truth is really not as bad as it sounds. Companies ARE STILL recruiting and skill shortages are still very much in existence in certain sectors - education, engineering and science to name three.

So, we are in agreement, recruitment is still going on. There is one change however, and that is recruitment budgets have been effected - either reduced or totally frozen. That means organisations have had to look at their recruitment a little closer than they probably have over recent times.

But does having a reduced recruitment budget mean you reduce or increase the number of recruitment suppliers?

There are arguments to both sides of this equation (but only if you have some budget left, I guess!)

Using more agencies

These are some of the reasons I have had from companies this year, that I have spoken to who have justified this approach to me:

• It is success only recruitment, so by increasing the number of agencies, there is a better chance of finding the right people I need at no extra cost.
• The agencies are 'desperate' for business and they have offered 'really low' rates.
• Given up on the preferred supply list because so many good CV's were coming in speculatively from other agencies.
• They perceive the job market is so tight in certain areas, they 'need' to talk to anyone that can supply a 'suitable' CV!!  I get angry when someone says this to me - they obviously have no idea of recruitment!!
• Why have a supplier list? They believe it is a buyers market and they are in control!
  

Using less agencies

Here are some of the good responses from clients, on why they are going to use less agencies - these are exactly the things I like to hear - albeit less often at the moment:

• Reducing supplier lists, to only work with the few agencies that have consistently delivered results, because they understand the clients values and don't waste time with poor matching.
• They have negotiated lower rates, but they have also reigned in the supplier list. So the agencies get a better chance on the roles, but at a slightly lower margin.
• Value for money - actually working closer and giving the agencies more information to save any time wasting later in the process.
• Working with a small number of agencies that deliver value-add. They add value in giving advice, helping the interview process, advising on selection etc.
• Why would they want to waste time having to take all the calls, and fielding all the CV's that will undoubtedly arrive in the inbox? They are getting loads more calls already!
• The little budget that remains needs to be used correctly, avoiding any recruiting mistakes, so the trusted agencies who have delivered are the ones to work with.

These are obviously just some examples from my experience in 2009, during these tough times. I would really like to hear some of your feedback from your clients, as to how they justify using more or less recruitment agencies in this recession. Please let me know in the comments below.

Can you tell me why companies ARE NOT using web 2.0 to attract and recruit new staff?

 

Today I read an article that was shocking from a recruitment perspective. The content shouldn't surprise me, as I am getting used to seeing it first hand with companies that I consult with, but even so, it was a really big disappointment!

So what am I talking about? The sentence is a simple one.......

In a recent CIPD survey, "more than 80% of companies don't use web 2.0 methods of technology on the web, to attract or recruit new employees."

Why not?

Can you tell me why companies are not using web 2.0 methods to recruit staff?

I would love to hear what you think, so please comment away!