Louise's UK Recruiter Blog

The Financial Directors Forum 2010

Recruitment International do put on some good events.  Their next week is the "Financial Directors Forum" and as the name suggests it's got a "clear focus on the strategic role and the issues dealt with by the finance professionals in your business".

It takes place on Wednesday 5th May 2010 at the BDO Conference Centre - London.  It's a half day programme with seven speakers covering managing cashflow, the risks and rewards of RPO, the economy and market prospects, M&A, outsourcing and offshoring and "technology".

The Forum is relevant to all types of recruitment businesses: from those with plc status to the entrepreneurial owner managed independents. Temporary or permanent, local, national or global the benefits of attending will encompass all.

You can find out more and sign up via the Recruitment International website.

 

Social Media in Recruitment Conference followup

Last week I was at Mike Taylor's second annual Social Media in Recruitment Conference.

It was a superbly organised event with over 200 delegates and a number of really good speakers. 
 
Overall the feel of the day was very upbeat.  Mike had a good mix of delegates (agency recruiters, in-house and suppliers) and a spread of presentations.  The agenda covered facebook, google, communities, twitter, LinkedIn, legal aspects and a couple of case studies from delegates who'd attended last year.
 
As usual with these events whilst I've pulled out a few points from the presentations (which I plan to post up here over the next week or so), you really have to go along yourself to benefit!  However, my main takeaway was that:

a) you need a strategy.  What do you want to achieve, what time and resources do you have to invest, etc
b) you need to fully engage in whatever channel(s) you chose - don't just shout about how good you are or what vacancies you have, make it a two way street
c) you should try to track your ROI.  It's difficult to truly track this but do your best. Creating a Facebook fan page with 6,000 fans or having 2,000 followers on Twitter is not a good measure, in itself, of your success with social media.
 
The Twittersteam for the event hashtag (#smir) was busy before, during and after the event.  My tip would be, if you are or want to use Twitter, to check out the stream and follow everyone who has been posting to it. These are all people who are a) in the industry and b) interested in social media.
 
Finally, and this is NOT me blowing my own trumpet the panel session was recordedand you can see what I, Matt Alder and Bill Boorman had to say (there is also another video showing delegate feedback during the event).

PS, nearly forgot to mention the food - marvellous Danish and probably the best conference buffet I've ever had!  Well done Mike.

PPS, photocourtesy of @saraheadworth

PPPS, Peter Gold is running a workshop with ways to implement what was talked about at the conference - details here

Using NORAS for jobboard research

The NORAS 2010 results have been out for a few weeks now.  You've probably come across the NORAS before, but if not they are "the largest piece of online recruitment research in the world and helps identify where to find the most relevant candidates online."
 
This year the survey includes research taken from 95,000 candidates spread across 62 job boards.
 
It's the largest number of job board's they've ever had in the research and does cover a large number of the most well known sites.  However, you do need to bear in mind it doesn't cover ALL the main job boards.
 
Anyway, having got all that out the way, it's still data well worth a look at.  Once you've registered (free) you can search by industry, job function, salary and region to find out which is the best job board on which to advertise your vacancy. 
 
I did a search for where to advertise a Financial Accountant role in the South East region.  The results showed me that totallyfinancial was first (7% of users matching my criteria), ICAEW Jobs second (4.9%) and GAAPweb third (4.3%).  Whilst I'm not expert in recruiting financial accountants this looks like it's on the right track.
 
However, when I searched for a Marketing role in FMCG at £45k the results were a little poor; GrocerJobs and Top Consultant.  Now, I would have actually thought of GrocerJobs myself... but the results told me that only 0.3% of the jobseekers on GrocerJobs match my criteria.  Eeeek not so keen now!
 
Anyway, I guess that some sectors aren't well served by any job board, and you do have to take into account that not all job boards have taken part in the NORAS.
 
Even in light of that I'd suggest the site is worth a visit when looking for somewhere to post a role you've not worked on before. 
 
Also, you should really check out the results booklets when they go online as these have always been pretty interesting reading in previous years. 

What Recruiters Want... from networking events

We did a survey last week asking for some input for our next networking event.

We asked: "which of the following would you like at future networking events?"

In first place was: General networking time
In second place was: Formal presentations from experts
In third place was: Speed networking session

So, as a result, the networking on 10th June is going to include the general networking time as normal plus three fairly brief presentations from experts as well as a speed networking session.   

Interestingly, after being in first place for a while "Free drink on arrival" ended up as "of no importance"!  However, panic not - that traditional element of our networking events shall remain!

We also asked how people felt about having to pay to attend and the majority were either happy to pay or didn't consider it as part of their decision making.  Only 9% said they wouldn't attend on the basis of that.    The reason we charge is to help us cover our costs and also to decrease the percentage of people who just don't turn up on the night!

Finally we asked about the way we limited the number of suppliers to recruiters (to about 40% suppliers and 60% recruiters) at our last event.  60% of respondents said they thought it was a good idea and only 3% said it was a bad idea.

Hopefully we're doing our best to organise the type of networking events that everyone gets benefit from.  If you want to come along to the next one you can register now!

Advice for Jobseekers

I've just come across the funky "media hub" site from the Careers Advice service.
 
Nothing like I remember careers advice at school (apparently I should have looked to a career in teaching nursery children if you are interested) this is bright colours, videos and engaging content.
 
Obviously it's aimed at jobseekers not recruiters.  However, it's worth a look as somewhere to point jobseekers you can't directly help.  For example it contains an article, and video, on the Top 10 CV Blunders as well as advice for mum's looking to return to work.
 
My only criticism - just not enough content; only six articles added in the past two months.  If they can get more material on here I think it'd be a resource well worth letting your candidates know about.

The HR Directors International Summit in Prague

The HRD 2010 takes place on the 20th and 21st April in Prague. Seen by many as the ultimate gathering of International and pan-European HR professionals it will bring together "thought leaders", academics, HR practitioners and leading HR service providers as well, obviously, as a load of HR Directors. The summit has the usual conference presentations, panel discussions and case studies as well as workshops by top industry professionals.

We are an event media partner and as such can offer anyone who wants to register a 20% discount. To book as a delegate call 0203 397 0528, email bookings@hrdevent.com Or go to registration website. You have to quote "UKRecruiter 1 HRD2010" to get the 20% discount.
 
The summit also keeps up with new technology and offers an "online delegate" option. So if you are unable to attend the summit or want your colleagues to access the key presentations you can purchase the on line package.  It's not actually live access to the conference but all sessions are recorded for you to be able to review (as often as you want) at any time after the event.

We're probably not far off having a true "online delegate" option for events but I think that in HR/recruitment circles the HR Directors Summit is ahead of the times here.

If you are planning to go along and want to share some of your findings after the event just drop me a note.

 

 

DVDs for Recruitment Sourcing Techniques

I have a couple of really great DVDs for sourcers (more commonly called researchers in the UK).  They are Social Media Sourcing 101 and Boolean Strings for the Web.  I've had them for about two months and have meant to blog about them for ages.  However, two things have stopped me a) my DVD drive doesn't seem to work on my PC and b) I'm not a sourcer. 

However, I've finally got around to watching them on the laptop in the office and even without being a sourcer I can tell you they are really good training materials.

They have been put together by Irina Shamaeva of Brain Gain Recruiting.  Irina is based in the US (and yes, they are a bit Americanised but don't let that worry you) and has been a recruiter herself for a very long time.

The Boolean DVDs (which is available via her website)  includes a couple of webinars and some articles on the subject.  Basically the idea is that once you've viewed the DVD you'll be able to construct superb search strings to help find those difficult to source candidates.

The Social Media Sourcing DVD is again a webinar with "bonus" material.  The webinars covers how to search for candidates on all the social media sites (LinkedIN, facebook, etc plus how to make contact with them and/or "advertise" jobs to them.

Irinia has also done a Twitter sourcing DVD - but I've not seen this one. The two DVDs I've seen are just over $100 each.  They are probably as valuable as spending a day on a training course, as the material is very focussed, with the added benefit of being able to revisit the material as and when you need to.

What I'd also say is that I met Irina at the recruitment unconference she was speaking at.  If you do get the chance to see her in action (she may come over for a future unconference event) it's worth making the effort to do so.

Onrec Awards Winners - 2010

Last week onrec held their 6th annual online recruitment awards. There were over 100 nominations for the various awards and the event was attended by over 200 people.  They've got a nice selection of photos you can view (and buy!) on their website. 

The winners were:

Online Marketing Award

NICHE
CWJobs.co.uk

GENERALIST
Redgoldfish Jobs

SUPPLIER
s.com

Offline Marketing Award

Niche
IEEE

Generalist
Jobsite.co.uk

Best Use of Online Recruitment by a Recruitment Agency
Hays

Best Corporate Use of Online Recruitment
John Lewis

Onrec Education Award 2010
Enhance Media

Best Technical Innovation

NICHE
eteach

GENERALIST
Monster.co.uk

SUPPLIER
o2 Rewards

Best Corporate Graduate Site
BAE Systems

The Best Public Sector Recruitment Site
The London Borough of Barnet

Candiate Service Award 
Jobsite

Niche Job Board Award
Rate My Placement

Newcomer of the Year Award
STV Jobs

Personality of the Year 2010
Lee Biggins, CV Library

NB, sorry there aren't links for all the winners - but they weren't published on the onrec site and I wasn't 100% of the urls of some of them.  Happy to fill the blanks if you email me or leave a comment!

Tru London – Sourcing Day

At the end of February I went along to one day of the TRULondon unconference.  However, I couldn't make it to the sourcing event organised for the day before.  Luckily I was able to ask Heather Travis (who runs her own business and is involved with the Executive Research Association) if she'd attend and share some of the content.

This is what she said:

Anyone who is involved in executive research, whether it be a researcher or a consultant, should attend the Tru London Sourcing Day next year. 

The event was a fascinating insight into extensive searching via the web, it was hosted by Bill Boorman and presented by 4 extremely experience sourcing experts;

Jim Stroud – www.JimStroud.com– twitter.com/jimstroud– he produces a magazine and website called The Searchologist. 

Marie Journey – http://mariejourney.com/– email marie@mariejourney.com

Katharine Robinson – who has just won The SourceCon Grandmaster Sourcing Challenge which was held in the US – twitter.com/TheSourceress– she also runs a UK Sourcers Network http://uksourcers.ning.com  

Irina Shamaeva – who was a challenge winner and entered the final of The SourceCon Grandmaster Sourcing Challenge.  Her blog is http://booleanstrings.wordpress.com/

The presentations were sharing exclusive cv sourcing and lead generation strategies for recruiters.

Some useful facts that I learnt on the day:

Google Wonder Wheel – put in a search on google and then when the results come up go into show options and drop to Wonder Wheel – this builds up search around your core search results and is brilliant.

On Google use the search term Site:linkedin.com and then add key words to search the Linkedin in site.

On Google “email ** company name.com” – will bring up any email address for this business – you can put in .co.uk or .org

Kngine– a search engine which answer questions delivering definitions and documentation.