Recruiters can't stop talking about Reed.co.uk

I've been watching the Reed.co.uk drama unfold on our discussion board for a nearly a week now - and still the comments keep on coming (58 posts and counting). 

Dom blogged about it first last week (and rather kindly referred to our discussion board as "excellent") and then yesterday Paul Harrison posted his thoughts at the Digital Recruiting blog.

Ian Bryce at Reed sent me an official press release about the changes to the site.  It's quite long so I won't share the whole thing - but they key points for those who are interested are:

"reed.co.uk,  the UK’s biggest job site, today launched a brand new CV Search service. The service forms part of a suite of new  online recruitment products and will enable recruiters to  access the CVs of over 1 million active  jobseekers.  CV Search will be offered as an upgrade to  reed.co.uk’s existing free online recruitment service,  Freecruitment. It will sit alongside new products, including a  market first ‘Guaranteed Response’ job posting service.

Vacancies upgraded to  receive Guaranteed Response will gain added prominence on  reed.co.uk and will be instantly emailed to the twenty best  matching candidates. If recruiters haven’t received at least  five applications within a week, they’ll be entitled to make  up the difference with free CV downloads."

So the bottom line is that they are making their CV Database available to recruiters (not sure why recruiters would complain about that - although they seem to be) and that they are going to charge agencies who advertise more than 500 jobs a year. 

On the discussion board there are quite a few postings about price.  The official rate card (taken off their website) is:

CV Packages
10 CV Download Credits Only £15 per CV £150
50 CV Download Credits Only £9 per CV £450
100 CV Download Credits Only £6 per CV £600

Guaranteed Response Packages
1 Guaranteed Response Job Only £50 per job £50
10 Guaranteed Response Jobs Only £40 per job £400
100 Guaranteed Response Jobs Only £30 per job £3,000

Combined Packages
10 CV Downloads and 10 Guaranteed Response Jobs £500
50 CV Downloads and 10 Guaranteed Response Jobs £800
100 CV Downloads and 100 Guaranteed Response Jobs £3,500

I've been surprised by the anger at Reed's move to a pay to advertise model?  When you are getting paid between 12% and 35% of basic salary to place a candidate why would you begrudge paying £50 to advertise the job?  Prior to the internet (unless you were searching your database or conducting a search assignment) you'd have had to advertise the in the press.  They don't do freebies in the Sunday Times  Appointment Section (£10k for a 13 x 5 anyone?). 

So, it's turned out that Reed are running a job board - just like many others.  It just happens they gave it away for free for the first five years. 

Comments

[Stephen O'Donnell]

I have watched the Reed site grow inexorably for the past 5 years. They always committed to continuing Freecruitment as both a free service to other agencies, and as a method of generating registrations of fresh candidates for Reed's own recruiters.

The Reed site has, in my view, been in danger of losing credibility simply because it has too many vacancies. This sounds odd, but it means that candidates are viewing multiple ads for the same job, by various agencies who can advertise all they like for free. A small, even nominal charge, would moderate this.

So Reed are keeping their promise to continue Freecruitment, but are demoting the Freecruitment ads behind the paid ads, and are monetising the database of CV's? I think this is a good business move, and will improve the site's credibility tremendously.