Louise's UK Recruiter Blog

The Agency Central Employment Index

With an online presence since 1999, Agency Central was built with the recruitment agency model in mind – allowing Employers & Candidates to find Recruitment Agencies under the detailed roles an agency is able to recruit for; selecting an agency based on skill specialisation or geographic location.  Interestingly, in a market where the use of agencies is apparently declining, their figures show that the company has seen a 34% like for like increase in unique visitors when comparing 2007 to the last 12 months, with 4.51 m visitors between October 2008 and October 2009.
Figures for September 2009 show a 24% upturn in Employer Requirements when compared with February 2009.  The findings are produced via Agency Central's new Employment Index, which effectively “takes the pulse” of the job market by gathering data from a range of employment sources.

This index is based on statistics, (specifically relating to the Recruitment Agency Marketplace), compiled from the companies using the website and tracks the employment market activity across a variety of variables.  The index shows a steady improvement in employers’ usage of Recruitment Agencies since February 2009. 

Agency Central plan to make these figures available on a monthly basis via the UK Recruiter community.

For more information about Agency Central or this data contact stuart@agencycentral.co.uk

Networking - 5th November

We are just a few weeks away from our next networking event so thought I ought to do a quick update.  This event combines our standard networking with the newly introduced speed networking session that was so popular last time - as well as hosting the National Online Recruitment Awards run by alljobsuk. 
 
Our sponsors for the event are TheLadders who specialise in vacancies in the £50,000 + salary range.  They'll be there on the night helping us man the door!
 
If you've not registered to attend yet you need to do so before the end of play on the 2nd November. If you don't register then we can't guarantee entry on the night (and we'll be charging a fee for you to get in).  You can find out more about the event and our sponsors on the registration page.

Recruiting Unconference

Bill Boorman is organising a "Recruiting Unconference" on the 19th November in London.  The idea of an unconference is that whilst there are presenters there are no presentations, no formal agendas and absolutely no PowerPoint presentations. 
 
There are "tracks" and these include sessions from Matt Alder on social media, Alastair Cartwright and Alex Strang on recruiting technology, Andy Headworth on blogging, Katharine Robinson on sourcing and Mike Taylor and Lisa Scales on video technology.
 
I would write more but two of the conference speakers have written blog posts already; Matt Alder and Andy Headworth
 
If you want to attend Bill is offering UK Recruiter readers a £25 discount if you use the code Bill01 when you book. 
 
PS, It's the recruitment tweetup (organised by Matt Alder and Jamie Leonard) on the evening of the 19th and you can register for that here.
 

Finalists for National Online Recruitment Awards 2009

Stephen O'Donnell yesterday announced the finalists for this year’s National Online Recruitment awards (NORAs).  Now in their ninth year, the NORAs are seen as the standard by which recruitment websites are measured.  The awards are initially nominated by job seekers themselves.  This year they received almost 25,000 nominations for 654 separate websites. 

The finalists were assessed by a selection panel of industry experts, from a candidate’s point of view, to arrive at the shortlist of sites across 12 categories.  These categories recognise all manner of recruitment websites, including not only dedicated job boards, but also recruitment firms, publications, advice websites and employers themselves.  There are also awards for Best Newcomer, and Best Innovation in Online Recruitment.

The next stage is that the finalists are to be judged by a separate panel of judges, and the winners will be revealed at the awards event, in London, on Thursday the 5th of November.

This is the the awards event that we are running and will include the much enjoyed speed networking and usual free drinks!  If you'd like to attend the networking and awards you can register now.