Mike McClelland, is Founder and Managing Director of Advorto (a leading provider of recruitment management solutions in Europe). Prior to founding Advorto, Mike was with Accenture, Logica and Microsoft, where he led consulting projects with several Blue Chip clients, helping them to utilise technology to deliver tangible business results. Mike is an entrepreneur and involved in several technology start-ups. He is the main contributor to the Recruitment 2.0 blog which covers issues, insights and inspiration related to recruiting in the web 2.0 age.
How long have you been blogging?
It’s been a couple months since we launched our public blog, Recruitment 2.0, though we’ve all been blogging internally for a while. We use internal blogs to keep track of comments on the market and generally as a bloated way of sharing interesting web links.
Why did you start?
Two reasons. We wanted to share some of our knowledge, trivia and general market activity with our customers, potential customers and partners. The second is that with a bit of luck this will help our search engine rankings!
What do you do, work related, when you aren't blogging?
I started my own web consulting business in 1998, which eventually turned into Advorto, an on-demand, recruitment management solution business, with customers like Abbey, Network Rail and Blockbuster. Whilst I have a great management team, I get involved in every part of the business (see micro-management) – including the nitty-gritty of product design & development work as well some sales & marketing.
Do you think blogging has helped your business?
It certainly helps you to clarify your thoughts on certain topics if you plan to blog about them. It’s a little too early to tell if my Marketing Director was right about SEO - but at this point I don’t mind as it’s quite good fun.
What do you feel is the biggest challenge about writing a blog?
There are two: the time it takes to write the posts and appealing to a wide audience. I never have enough time (who does?) though I do sneak in most of my post writing on the tube. As for appealing to a wide audience, the blog covers a range of recruitment and technology issues that corporate recruiters should find interesting.
What's another blog that you read and why do you recommend it?
I like Peter Gold’s blog, it’s probably one of the closest blogs that cover ATS technologies, and the Human Capitalist blog always seems to be in the know. I also like “The Blunter Headhunter” - nice and fiery! Oh, to have an anonymous blog.
What do you want your reader's to know about you?
I’m a techie at heart and an early adopter. I love checking out new technologies, and figuring out better ways to make use them for us and our clients. On the tech side I just love the Web 2.0 revolution – we’re going to change some traditional markets upside down with technology – maybe recruitment will be one of them?
If you knew someone was thinking about starting a recruitment related blog, what advice would you want to give them?
Take a good look at the current recruitment blogs out there (there are plenty) and ask yourself where you can add value, make a difference. Write about what you know, keep it relevant and pay close attention to the seven deadly blogging sins. Also, don’t get hung up on the technical side of the blog – just use a well recognised tool like TypePad – it has all the features and compatibility you’ll ever need – without the hassles.
Is there a question you wished I asked you?
What do you think will trigger the next revolution in the recruitment industry?
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