Louise's UK Recruiter Blog

UK Recruiter Plus on Facebook – our case study

For a while I’ve thought we were a bit behind the times for not having a Facebook page.  However, I didn’t want to put something shoddy together myself, get only 3 connections and look even more rubbish than by not having one at all.

Then serendipity struck and I spoke with Steve Evans at NetNatives.  NetNatvies help recruitment firms to make proper use of social media and are sponsoring our Directors networking event on the 3rd February.  I had something of a brainwave and managed to persuade Steve that helping me create a Facebook page for us would also help to showcase their skills in creating similar pages for recruitment firms.

I thought it might be useful to share some of the things I’ve learnt during the process which would be relevant to recruiters looking to create their own Facebook page.

What we did

Firstly we decided to create the page for UK Recruiter Plus rather than UK Recruiter. The main reason for this is that we don’t sell anything to recruiters via UK Recruiter so it would be more difficult to ascertain value and benefits from the page.  UK Recruiter Plus is our subscription based training ground for recruiters and it’s a lot of easier to see how connections could impact revenue.

The first thing to do with projects like this is to set out your objectives.   In our case this was to create a means of attracting more clients to purchase UK Recruiter Plus

The Page

I love the Facebook page we’ve got.  It’s got information about UK Recruiter Plus, It’s got a clear call to action and a benefit for people to “like” it.

With Facebook pages the key is to get people to hit the “like” button.  Once they do that all your Facebook posts appear in their content stream and you can communicate with your audience.

Getting visitor and “likes”

So having got our lovely new Facebook page we needed to send some serious traffic over there and get some connections

The key things we did were:

a) I told everyone I knew on Facebook about the page and asked them to take a look
b) I wrote about it on Twitter and have been mentioning it every 3 or 4 days (with a slightly different angle each time).
c) NetNatives helped us run some adverts on Facebook. These were put in front of all the “recruiters” on Facebook (which is around 112,000 people). 
d) I posted a message to our LinkedIn group and put a status update on my own LinkedIn account
e) I’ve added the Facebook page to my signature file
f) I’m blogging about it!

Basically I’ve tried to get it into “conversation” at every opportunity!

Converting those “likes’” to customers

We’re giving everyone who likes the Facebook page access to 3 articles from UK Recruiters Plus.  I think this is key in getting them to like in the first place and then converting them to a customer.  Having an incentive to hit that button has got to be key in any Facebook campaign.

Once we have the connections I’m keeping in touch by posting useful information (about events, recruitment articles, etc) and also, once a month, we are giving away a free ticket to one of our networking events.  This is actually a benefit of membership to UK Recruiter Plus too.

The results (so far!)

We are less than 2 weeks in.  We have over 80 connections and at least 4 sales of UK Recruiter Plus I can directly attribute to the Facebook page.  UK Recruiter Plus is a low cost product (£40 + VAT), however, for a recruiter – placing just one candidate or getting just one vacancy would cover the cost (assuming you pay someone else to do it).  You can of course do it yourself. 

If you are a recruiter with a Facebook page you are especially proud of please leave a link in the comments.

Conference Review - the 9th Annual HR Directors Business Summit

Last week Dan Atkinson of Accite attended the HR Directors Business Summit on behalf  of UK Recruiter.  Here is his review:

The 9th Annual HR Directors Business Summit billed itself as the place 'where the leaders of HR meet to discuss the latest ideas and innovations in Human Resources'.

Being someone that's always been fortunate to enjoy something of an aerial view of the HR world (albeit with a bias to the recruitment side), it was great to get the chance to see what was being said, what was being thought and what was being offered from a speaker and delegate list that really did ooze quality.

The opening address was handled expertly by Lynda Gratton, Professor of Management Practise at London Business School.  Painting a world in which future generations would be roughly divided in to the haves and have nots of the economy her message was a stark one - communication has created a level economic playing field for everyone.  Success in the future is going to rest on education and merit. New ways of working will create new challenges and opportunities for people to collaborate and operate in ways that HR needs to understand and work with.  All very fascinating stuff, more of which can be found here  and here.

Following Lynda's presentation, Chester Elton from Performance Recognition Consultancy O.C. Tanner spoke (along with a panel of industry specialists) about the importance of recognition in the workplace.  It proved a strong contrast to Gratton's  research and theory based presentation to go back to basics with the importance or recognising contributions through praise.  It could be interpreted as a modern day take on common sense, but as the old Yorkshire saying goes, ‘common sense ain’t that common’.  To learn more about what OC Tanner get up to take a look here .

After this, the several hundred delegates split off to attend various lectures and seminars and I'm afraid I can only comment on my own choices.  Lynne Weedall (Group HRD of Best Buy Europe) gave an excellent presentation on the modus operandi needed to execute change across an organisation.  The Tweetup and opportunities to debate Twitter provided by Jon Ingham of Strategic HCM and Charlie Duff of HRZone were a most welcomed opportunity for a bit of round table note comparing amongst some of us more early adopting members of the HR world.

In the afternoon Prof Paddy Miller got the delegates through their post-lunch slump with a presentation on HR innovation and people engagement.  The day ended with a panel discussion that pitted Vance Kearney (VPHR Emea of Oracle) against Lynne Weedall (Carphone Warehouse / Best Buy Europe) discussing their frequently  contrasting views on Employee Engagement.  Anyone familiar with the differing management styles of their respective, highly charismatic  CEO's will not be surprised to learn that this led to a very interesting debate.

Day 2 opened with a presentation from Jill McDonald  (CEO & President, McDonalds Northern Europe) and David Fairhurst (CPO, McDonalds Europe).  Focussing on the role of a Strategic HR Director in the 21st Century, the key themes were those of managing organisational complexity, speed of chance and employee engagement.  They addressed complex organisational models and practical real world experience with real world examples of the achievements the McDonalds Organisation, both a business and  as corporate citizens.  Going in to some depth about trust and organisations, Jill McDonald made a win-win case for being active in the community;  people trust what's closest to them.  If McDonalds are straight with their customers and involved in their communities then it’s going to benefit both the business and their customers. You can learn about David Fairhurst’s thoughts on HR follow here.

Other highlights on Day 2 for me included a presentation from Durham University Business School and the John Lewis Partnership on their research in to shaping their employer brand, and how to integrate this in to the founding principles of the Business.  There was also a terrific presentation by Matthew Hanwell, Director of Communities and Social Media at Nokia.  Contrasting the different approaches to the often over complicated world of Web 2.0, Matthew managed what was probably the most re-tweeted quote of the conference when he stated that 'Digital natives don't know they are underwater, whilst digital immigrants can remember being scared of getting their feet wet'.

All in all it was a fascinating two days, delivering a solid balance of theory and practise, ideas and inspiration.  If anything there was almost too much to take in.  Thankfully it was all being recorded by the organisers to offer as on-demand content to delegates that had paid for extra access.  Hopefully my press pass will allow me that privilege as well; otherwise I may just have to get my wallet out.

 

Why is SEO so Important for the Recruitment Industry?

Daniel Kidd (who I met on Twitter) is a SEO/Link Builder for Organic Development. 

He offered to write a bit of a SEO overview blog post for me. So here it is:

Have you ever wondered why Monster and Totaljobs (Jobs boards) rank so highly on Google?

Unemployment is over 2.5 million in Britain. Half of the British population are connected to the internet, so it’s no surprise that millions of people are using search engines to look for jobs. It’s vital that recruitment companies are using search engine optimisation (SEO).

Because jobs boards rank so highly, it costs recruitment companies a fortune to advertise on them. Using good SEO, it’s possible to outrank these sites, save money and find someone their dream job. Like killing 3 birds with 1 stone!

300000 Hits a Month

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Using the Google Keyword Tool, I have searched for the key phrase ‘Jobs in Manchester’. This image shows that in 1 month, there are over 300000 searches for this key phrase. When you search for something on Google, you’ll almost always click on the site ranked first. That’s 300000 hits a month!

Five Benefits of SEO
- Rank higher on search engines, therefore increasing traffic.
- Save money by not having to advertise on expensive jobs boards.
- Find work for more people, increasing your reputation as a recruiter.
- Gain an advantage over your competitors.
- Get paid to advertise other websites on yours.

Start Optimising Today

If you haven’t been using SEO, don’t worry. There are plenty of SEO Agencies (like Daniel's!) that can help you climb up the search engines. If you’d like to learn the basics, there are plenty of free articles, forums and ebooks designed to help you. This is a helpful article describing the basics of SEO.

With high unemployment and the power of the internet, SEO is a great opportunity for recruiters to maximise traffic. With more online recruiters emerging, and more jobs being advertised online, it’s essential that you don’t get left behind.

If you'd like to write a guest blog post for me just get in touch.

Job Boards all over the TV

You can’t help but have noticed all the job board advertising on the television since the start of the New Year. 

We’ve got Jobsite with the lovely Max Beesley (who I find more scary than sexy in these adverts) , The Ladders with their tennis pitch invasion (their US advert is a lot more sexy) and TotalJobs with talking electrical appliances.  

The adverts from TotalJobs were trialled in the North West (presumably as they are focusing on areas such as jobs in Manchester.  I understand the rest have been nationwide from the outset.

A stat I saw years ago (the details of which I would share if I could find it!) was that whenever any job board advertises on radio or TV ALL job boards benefit.  With 3 major players pushing job boards to the masses it’s no surprise that every job board Director I speak with is reporting a jolly good January!  Good for them, good for jobseekers and good for recruiters….I hope!

 

 

 

REC’s Recruitment Industry Trends Survey 2009/10

I’m always being asked about getting hold of industry stats – so I thought if I post about this here then it’ll help some people (and me!) find information when they next need it.

The Recruitment Industry Trends Survey is is an annual report report compiled by the REC’s Industry Research Unit.  You do have to pay for it and it’s £49 for members and £99 for non members.

If you don’t want to buy the report and just need a few facts/figures the major findings of the Recruitment Industry Turnover Survey covering the April 2009 to March 2010 were:

• A drop in overall industry turnover to £19.7 billion compared to 22.491 billion in 200/09. This represents a 12.4 per cent decrease in overall turnover.
• Temporary placements fell from 1,068 million to 879,302, a contraction of 17.7 per cent.
• Overall turnover for temporary/contract staff went down from £19.882 billion to £17.8 billion, a drop of 10.4 per cent.
• Permanent placements decreased from 582,803 to 436,822, a fall of 25 per cent.
• Total turnover for permanent staff also decreased from £2.609 billion to £1.9 billion, a drop of 27.6 per cent
• The largest number of temporary placements was once again in the Industrial and blue collar sector which after last year’s peak of 33 per cent of the market fell back this year to 21 per cent. This was followed by secretarial/clerical at 13 per cent and drivers at 12 per cent. Bringing up the rear was accounting/financial which dropped from 20 per cent last year to just two per cent.
• The largest sector for permanent placements was professional/managerial at 23 per cent, two points higher than last year followed by secretarial and clerical which has remained static at 14 per cent.
• Staff employment in the recruitment industry fell from 95,867 in 2008/09 to 80,528.

I'm hoping to blog a few stats from the RECs recent salary survey report  in the next week or so (once I remember where I put it!!)

SMART 2011 Conference - Review

Mervyn Dinnen was our reporter at the recent SMART conference.  Here is his review:

Last Thursday’s SMART2011 conference was certainly an absorbing event. Titled ‘Social Media in Business’ it set out to give a fairly wide overview of social media channels and opportunities relating to branding, business strategy and recruitment.

It was well structured, with keynote sessions and panel sessions aimed at all attendees, supplemented with a number of breakout sessions each falling under either the Tools & Techniques, Business Strategy and Talent Management categories. Lots of networking opportunities too.

Speakers were drawn from a wide variety of sectors and companies, with Adidas, The Economist, RBS Insurance, Google, YouTube and Mashable all represented, and discussions ranging from strategy and customer engagement to community building and measurement. There was also attention paid to the pitfalls, something that isn’t always covered at these events.

You couldn’t escape the fact that there are many companies who have started successfully integrating social media into branding, marketing, engagement and recruitment, and there were plenty of learning takeaways.

Charlie Ormond, Fresh Networks had the opening address and was quick to talk of social media being a set of tools to connect with customers. He definitely saw the most valuable long term use as connecting and talking to current customers, not to drive new customers. His ending warning that ‘Social Media isn’t about one night stands’ certainly resonated. He also introduced a client, Amelia Hodge, RBS Insurance to give a practical case study on how they had been able to use social media tools promote their motorcycle insurance business. Successfully developing a community, taking the conversation away from insurance and creating a unique motorbiking resource showed the need for creativity as well as engagement.

There was an effervescent presentation from Steve Fogarty of Adidas on how they have integrated social media into recruiting (only 16 dedicated recruiters for a global workforce of 40,000+!) creating relevant and authentic dialogue with talent networks around sport ‘It starts with the experience, how you treat them’. Dave Mason, CH2M Hill, also on talent acquisition, spoke of how his business had been able to use social media target and engage talent globally.

Matt Alder, Metashift then talked about employer branding, how the balance of power has shifted away from the broadcast message to what people in your network say, and the need for spontaneous and authentic storytelling.

Mark Johnson, The Economist, certainly impressed in describing how they had built a global community through creating intelligent and unique content, and regular debate. ‘Social Media doesn’t mean you have to dumb down’ was a key point.

Some interesting sessions also around content and measurement, using the social media channels for customer service – Customer Service -> Insight -> Advocacy, don’t live in a silo said Angus Fox, ezone – with some others focusing on the recruitment value chain and maintaining online brand.

The conference ended with a well attended networking drinks reception. Delegates that I spoke to all seemed very positive about the day and the insights and inspiration that they had gained.

If you'd like to know more about Mervyn check out his blog. 

For information on future events I’d suggest you follow @smart_2011 on twitter and join their LinkedIn Group. If you didn’t attend the event but are interested in being added to the mailing list/database email nikki.poole@incisivemedia.com and she’ll ensure they receive future mailings.

www.smart2011.com

Psychometrics – the pre-amble/ramble

I’ve decided to write a mini series of blog posts on psychometric assessment seeing as it’s something I know about (and a service I offer to recruiters).  However, in starting the series I realised I might need to give a bit of background so here it is….

Over 15 years ago I worked for an Executive Search company called Highfield.  At that point the average salary they placed at was probably c£50,000 and would have been in the consumer goods or business services sectors.  They also did some more junior levels on mass – recruiting via assessment centres.

The MD was ex Mars and long versed in the use of psychometric assessment as part of the recruitment process.  I presume he’d previously used SHL (who were at the time market leaders in the UK) as that was the company selected to work with.  The cost of getting trained by SHL was in the region of £4000 per person….. and I was the person.  So off I went on two separate week long residential courses to learn how to run psychometric and aptitude tests. 

Over the next five or so years I helped to develop and run many assessment centres and assessed the final interview stage candidates of many assignments.

 The consultants at Highfield never seemed concerned that giving psychometric feedback to a client would have a detrimental affect on their chances of placement.  Perhaps they were right to be confident in their ability to assess and match candidates – or perhaps (and it was the bullish 90s) they were a tiny bit cocky.    However, I do know (remembered from my training with SHL) that interview alone only gives a 10% chance of selecting the right person.  Adding in situational based assessments, aptitude tests (verbal, numerical, etc) and psychometrics each increase that chance of getting (and keeping) the right person. 

A few things have changed since my days at Highfield. I no longer use SHL as my primary psychometric product provider (I use Saville now and will probably touch on why in a later post),  the majority of the clients I work with are now corporate’s rather than recruiters and the internet have provided an opportunity for any company to run “psychometric” testing for peanuts.  … But more on that at a future date!

So as I said at the start I’ve decided to write a few blog posts on psychometric assessment.

In order to give me a few ideas I’ve asked, on LinkedIn, for the reasons recruiters (inhouse as well as agency) don't use them as much as they could - feel free to add your comments. 

A bit of Advice from James Caan

James Caan has spoken at our last couple of Director only recruitment events (this awful photo is one I took on my phone at the first event).  He’s going to be at our next one on the 3rd February.  But if you can’t make it along – or want some advice RIGHT NOW then here one of the questions that he answered at our last event that I thought was probably useful to share:

What do you think agencies should do to grow relations with customers?

Sadly I am finding that more and more consultants in the industry are developing poorer and poorer communication skills.  This has been exacerbated by technology as it’s too easy for consultants to hide behind e-mails, brochures and CVs – they’ll do anything rather than actually go to see the client. Picking up the phone and arranging to visit your clients should be a given – but it’s not always the case unfortunately – it’s about getting back to basics. As a business one of the KPI’s you should be adopting is tracking to see how close your relationships with your clients are.  Go back and look at your client list - and see when the last time that client was visited!

And finally....

In my view, the recruitment market it hasn’t really changed in the last 25 years. If you are looking for a reason to fail you can find hundreds of them. If you want to succeed then you have to work harder than you have ever worked before, be far more proactive and above all be flexible.

HBRIDA are publishing all of the Q&As over the next few weeks so you ought to check out their blog too!

SMART 2011 Conference - Pre Event Thoughts

The latest addition to UK Recruiter's team of roving reports is Mervyn Dinnen and on 20th January he is attending the SMART conference on our behalf.  Here is his pre conference pre amble! .

On January 20th I’ll be going along to Incisive Media’s SMART 2011 conference. Entitled ‘Social Media for Business – The Risks vs The Opportunities’ this should be an enlightening and richly rewarding event featuring knowledgeable speakers sharing best practice and giving attendees the opportunity to discover how to best utilise social media for growing business.

The day will be structured to give maximum opportunity to share, learn and network, through a mixture of keynote and panel sessions, case studies and smaller workshops. I’m particularly looking forward to the breakout sessions, 30 minute concurrent groups covering Talent Management, Business Strategy and Tools & Techniques. For me, one of the differentiators with this conference, and something that I am keen to find out more about, are around the risks as well as the opportunities. Brand hijacking and legal compliance will be two key areas as well as a case study on what happens when social media strategy goes wrong.

Some great keynote speakers are lined up, and for me one of the highlights could well be the Social Media Sofa, a session featuring representatives from YouTube, Google and Mashable talking about how their channels can add value to businesses, and how they are using social media to increase revenue.

The breakout sessions contain something for everyone. I’m keen to hear Steve Fogarty from Adidas Group talk about implementing social media into recruitment strategy, Jeremy Fawcett from Yahoo talk about protecting you online brand, as well as the workshop on content creation with Peter Abraham of Econsultancy.com.

The final keynote panel includes Gurtaj Sandhu, Digital Director of The Times, and Mark Squires, Director of Social media at Nokia. Their insight on both staying current and anticipated future trends should ensure that the conference ends on an uplifting note.

You can find more out about Mervyn on his superb blog.  If you are going along why not drop him a note and maybe meet for a coffee.
 

Social Networks vs Job Boards

CV-Library have done some research to investigate how candidates like to find job vacancies.  Now, the first thing I’d say is that CV-Library are a job board.  They are conducting a survey of job seekers using their site.  They are going to find that these candidates use job boards.  However, that aside I think the research is interesting and has some validity.
 
There is much talk of how recruiters (inhouse as well as agency) need to be embracing social media to attract candidates; both passive and active candidates.  When you go to a conference there is a lot of talk about creating facebook groups, creating a talent pool on Twitter, getting all job vacancies on YouTube etc.  I am also (far to often) hearing “are job boards dying?”. 
 
Well, and this doesn’t surprise me, according to the research from CV-Library it appears that candidates do not perceive social networks as a highly viable means of applying for vacancies.  The survey indicates job sites remain the top choice for candidates when applying for job vacancies; 53% of candidates prefer to search and apply for a vacancy directly through recognised job sites, followed by a job board service such as 'Jobs-by-Email' (25%), straight to recruitment agencies (12%), mobile phone apps (9%) and social networking trailing behind with 1% of the votes.
 
Don’t get me wrong – I know that people find jobs via social media.  I absolutely believe it has a place in recruitment (and regularly share tips on how to use Twitter/Facebook, etc for recruiting).  However, I’m just not surprised that many job seekers feel more confident using a job board to look for jobs. 
 
The lesson – don’t ditch the job boards just yet!

2010 Recruitment Market Survey report

Back in October we helped i-Business Resources (i-BR) conduct a survey of UK recruitment agency professionals.  The survey covered attitudes on the current state of the recruitment market, the main challenges faced today by recruiters, and the views on the importance of IT solutions in facing these challenges.

If you’d like to see a full copy of the report you can download it for free (2010 Recruitment Market Survey report) but I thought I’d share a bit of the summary.

Agency market recovery and buoyancy

Overall, 53% of Recruitment Agency recruiters feel the UK recruitment market is more buoyant than this time last year. However, the recruitment market still appears to be in an unstable and unpredictable position when looking at differences in sectors and regions.

The South East / London / Midlands are the least buoyant areas in the UK. In these areas nearly equal numbers of recruiters reported a less buoyant market as those reporting a more buoyant market.

The further from the Midlands/South East/London you go the greater the recovery being reported. In Scotland and N. Ireland for instance over 70% felt the market was more buoyant than last year.
Overall, Perm business is seen as the area of greatest recovery over the last year. Temporary business is less buoyant but (with the exception of Care and Education sectors) overall Temp business is still more buoyant than last year.

Market Confidence

Agencies are expecting a long period of uncertainty in a difficult market and economic climate.
In the short-term, 58% of recruiters felt the market will remain the same in the next 6 months, 22% felt the market would get worse, and 20% felt we would see an upturn.

This Short-term confidence seems to be justified when looking at the plans of Employers. 88% of Employers felt their recruitment levels in the next 6 months would remain the same, or increase, in both Perm and Temp/Contract areas.

Over the longer-term however, most Agency staff felt that a full recovery to pre Credit-Crunch levels is at least 18 months away. 38% felt that a full recovery would take at least 2 years, with some of believing this would be much longer, if it would ever recover to the levels previously seen.

Today's challenges for Agencies

In addition to the uncertainty in the economy Agency recruiters also highlighted the following as challenges they are faced with:

• Eroding margins. Due to Master Vendors, Employers demanding low fees, and agencies themselves under-cutting each other to win business.

• The ability for employers to do their own recruitment. Fears over employers using Job Boards and Social Media to perform their own recruitment were raised, as were the equalisation impact of the Agency Workers Regulations.

• Poor perception of agencies by clients. It can be difficult to persuade some employers to use agencies due to their perception of agency service.
 
Within this strategic background the key areas of operational concern for recruiters were as follows:

1. Finding good Candidates was rated as the biggest challenge facing recruitment consultants. 56% of people rated this as their 1st or 2nd priority.

2. Finding new Clients was rated overall as the second biggest challenge, with 52% of people rating this as their 1st or 2nd priority.

3. Reducing costs and being more flexible to exploit new market opportunities were rated approximately the same on an overall rating scale.

4. Overall, the least important issue for agencies was improving service with only 16% rating this as their 1st or 2nd priority.

The report also looks at the use of technology by agencies (you can check that out in the full report).  The bit I’d like to share is the areas that the highest percentage of recruiters thought they needed to improve in.

1. Social Media – 29% of people felt that their use of Social Media was already good or excellent, and 33% wish to improve their use of Social Media. This illustrates a growing adoption of Social Media as a useful recruitment tool.

2. Email Marketing – This area has grown considerably in terms of importance to recruiters in the last 12 months. 41% of recruiters now recognise a need to improve in their strategic use of email marketing. This perhaps shows a growing recognition that email marketing can be a useful part of an agencies overall marketing strategy to attract clients and candidates and build brand.

Finally I thought I’d share something from the Employers View of Agencies section. 

The services received from Agencies was rated overall as ‘Adequate’ by employers. 42% rated the services as ‘Good’, but 14% rated the service as ‘Very Poor’.

The main benefits for using Agencies were the time-savings that were provided to employers (e.g. from not needing to sift through CV’s themselves), and how quickly Agencies can turn around recruitment compared to the employer if they were to do this all themselves.

The top 3 frustrations when using Agencies were:

1. The quality of service provided
2. Poor screening of Candidates (against employer culture, references etc).
3. Candidates not matching the level of requirements for positions.

Certainly interesting when we see that agencies don’t feel the need to improve the quality of their service to employers!

Full copy of the report here

REC Chief Examiner role

I had an email from John Cunningham (the REC’s Head of Qualifications) just before Christmas talking about how, following a major review of its qualifications’ portfolio, the REC is seeking Chief Examiners.

I thought this sounded like quite an interesting job so I’ve just had a chat with one of their existing Chief Examiners about his role.  Tony Taylor is the Chief Examiner for the REC's current entry level qualification, the Certificate in Recruitment Practice.  He is very enthusiastic about the work that he does with the REC and the benefits being a Chief Examiner brings to his business.

The actual work involved is centered around the four examinations per year. A Chief examiner is responsible for a specific unit (or units) of the qualification and has to produce the syllabus for each.  They then have to ensure that the training materials match what’s covered in the syllabus. The role involves writing the exam papers for your unit (this is probably the most time consuming bit according to Tony) and then later down the line actually marking the exam papers.

Once you’ve entered any industry it’s so easy to become static and to fall behind the times.  By being involved in a role like this you have to keep up to date with legislative changes and modern practices and technologies. This has got to benefit your own business and staff.

So the key points… you are going to need a good grounding in recruitment and have the ability to impart your knowledge and experience to other people (you don't actually need to be a trainer to apply for the role).  You’ll also need to be able to find some “free” time to get involved in the exam process and be able to make it to the REC’s offices 4x a year; this may be easier if you are the MD of your own recruitment business - but isn't going to be impossible for someone working for a larger business where you aren't the boss.

If this appeals then check out the rest of the information on the REC site.  You only have until the 19th Jan to apply!

iProfile’s Return on Investment Calculator

First up – because it does contain such a blatant “advert” I want to point out that iProfile aren’t advertising with us (although they ought to be) and they haven’t paid me to write this!

They recently sent me a press release talking about Measuring Return on Investment (ROI). 

ROI is something that recruiters talk about all the time.  It can be complicated to measure (ROI from a new software upgrade) or easy (ROI from one job board post) but I bet that not many recruiters measure it at all! 

iProfile have developed a calculator which evaluates the amount of placements you should make based on the size of your candidate database (using your existing stats).

The actual reason for them creating the ROI calculator is to show you the monetary profit iProfile can help your business develop if you were to use their system.  If you are interested you can read more on their site obviously but at the most basic level the way it works is that iProfile clients find that on average for every 1 new CV their contribute to the network, they receive another 5 updated iProfiles from other iProfile recruitment companies.

Aside from the promotional element of the calculator I think it’s a good demonstration of the sort of figures recruiters ought to be tracking and an useful overview of what your results might be if you hit your figures.

Directors Only Networking Event – 3rd February

It’s just three weeks until our next Directors Networking event!

As with our events in 2010 (which were sell outs!) the objective of this exclusive event is to allow you to discuss the latest issues facing you and your business amongst industry experts and peers.

The event runs on Thursday 3rd February from 3pm to 6pm at the Barclays Building in central London. 

For this event our speakers are Colin Downing (Group Marketing Director) of Randstad, Tracey Dunn (MD) of BlueSky PR and the team from James Caan's investment business, Hamilton Bradshaw.  They will be sharing ideas and advice on the subject of "How to Build your Brand".  James Caan will also be on hand during the Q&A session.

As well as informal networking time we will have breakout sessions with our sponsors.  Networking is an important element of the event so bring your business cards!

We’ve got some great sponsors again for this event.  We’ll be partnering with HBRIDA during all of 2011 for the events but we’ve also got Bullhorn, Fish4, Liquid Friday, Net Natives and Broadbean sponsoring.

This is a networking event JUST for directors of recruitment companies (or inhouse) so unfortunately supplier organisations are not able to register to attend.

If you want to come along to the event you will need to email louise@ukrecruiter.co.uk to get access to the sign up page (just send me a note with the subjects "Directors Event"). I want to mention that we do charge a small fee of £20 to attend the event but as well as the opportunity to meet other recruiters and learn from our other speakers you will get afternoon tea.

If you’re unable to make the 3rd February or if hold some other role within the recruitment industry you might like to attend our recruiters networking evening on the 17th February.  All within the recruitment industry are welcome to attend.  You can find out more or sign up now. 

Market Report on European Job Sites

Listen up…. if you do any recruitment across Europe and if you use (or are considering using) any job boards – this is the report for you!   It’s the 6th edition of the "International Market Report on European Job Sites" and it’s an in-depth analysis of the international job board market.  It includesg 46 profiles of the most important job boards of 23 European, media data and prices for job posting, information on marketing activities, strategic positioning, latest innovations and commercial partnerships for the job boards and articles scanning global e-recruitment trends and major developments in the international job board market.  It also has profiles and pricing of CV-databases.

It’s produced by Aktor (who are an HR communication agency specialising in e-recruitment on an international basis). 

There is a cost (as you might expect for something of this detail) and it’s 250€ (+VAT).  If you want more information drop corinna.litera@aktor.fr a note.  Sadly we can’t get you a discount (and I’m not on commission!) but do feel free to mention you heard about it here.

Online Recruitment Conference: The Year Ahead – Pre Event Thoughts

On the 27th January I shall be heading into London for Enhance Media’s “Online Recruitment Conference: The Year Ahead”.  This conference is now in its ninth year and it’s probably my fifth year of attending.

It’s the largest online recruitment conference in Europe with over 400 delegates last year.  I really enjoyed the event last year so am very much looking forward to attending again in a few weeks time.

The speakers lined up for the event are a mix of big names, heavy hitters and some individuals who are very familiar names.  However, they aren’t the usual suspects at a online recruitment conference.  The headline speaker is the Head of Recruitment for the Olympics 2012 who is going to talk about the planning and delivery of “Britain’s largest ever peace time recruitment operation”.  Now I can see why Enhance Media have asked Paul to speak (and I think they’ve done well for getting him) but I’m interested to see what insights he can share that an actual recruiter can put into operation!

You can view information on all the speakers on the site, although the agenda hasn’t yet been published.

Speakers that I’m especially interested in at this stage include John Salt of TotalJobs talking about the “future model of job boards”,  Adam Gilmore of Microsoft talking about “the future of recruitment in online talent pools” and of course Giles sharing results from their online recruitment research.

The “Innovation Platform” also sounds interesting; with three companies who all believe they have the online recruitment game changer. 

I will be tweeting from the event using @UKRecruiter and @louisetriance so please keep an eye out and I will be writing a review of the conference for here after.

If you are attending the event as well please feel free to comment on which areas are of most interest to you.  If you’ve not yet signed up you can still buy Tickets at £398 + VAT per person.