At the end of last week I had a very brief chat with Emma at Sky about what is going on within the Sky recruitment team.
Sky as a business is actually doing well in the current market. They are finding that where people are making cut backs on things like going to the cinema they are instead treating themselves to Sky. Apparently it’s less for the full monthly sky package than taking a family of 5 to the cinema.
As a result their quarterly growth has been the highest for five years. Looking ahead however, it is clear that the economic environment will continue to be challenging so there is no room for complacency. Their CEO is taking the stance of not “resting on their laurels” and the recruitment team are doing the same. Whilst budgets have not been cut they are looking very closely at reporting and MI stats and seeing where they can improve efficiency and streamline costs wherever possible.
One key area is within job board usage. They analyse their stats on a monthly basis. They have seen some serious concessions given by the job board market so far, including one of the top five job boards giving them a free trial until the end of the year. Additionally some of the smaller jobs are giving away free buttons and banners (I guess having a Sky banner on the home page of your site is good PR for the job boards).
In terms of agency usage not much has changed. Because they have PSLs in place with all the agencies they deal with they are not looking to negotiate fees (although I suspect some corporates are having to take that step currently). However, what Emma did mention, which was surprising, is that they are not getting any more sales calls from agencies than normal.
Finally, she mentioned that within graduate recruitment the interesting thing has been a huge increase in the number of grads applying for finance roles. She thinks this is because they are steering away from City banking roles and looking for other avenues. When talking with grads they have seen a difference in terms of what is attracting them to roles. Currently they have a higher interest in assessing company and job stability rather than the traditional interest in salary, benefits, corporate social responsibility and career opportunities.
Would be interested in comments from other corporate recruiters on how this stacks up against what they are seeing/doing.
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