Louise's UK Recruiter Blog

How blogging will get you more clients and candidates

Another great guest post today from Michelle Hill of Red Rocket Media on the subject of blogging:

With the imminent explosion of content marketing in the UK, the chances are, if you’ve not got one already, you are thinking of starting a company blog. Blog content marketing is the perfect way to reach new readers (potential clients and candidates) and connect with them on a more personal level as well as increasing traffic to your website and positioning your agency as the thought-leaders in the industry.

A quick blog history
Blogging first exploded onto the scene in the early 90s. The term ‘web log’ was coined in 1997 which later became ‘blog’ in 1999. During the early 2000s, blogs experienced exponential growth to 50 million in 2006 and over 150 million by the end of 2010! In recent years, with the birth of social media platforms, blogging fell out of the spot-light a little amidst reports that it was a dying marketing channel.  However, with the explosion of content marketing, it is very much at the forefront again.

Some facts
•    Companies that blog generate up to 67% more leads
•    Blogging companies enjoy up to 55% more traffic
•    Companies that blog generate 97% more inbound links

Contrary to what many people think, blogging is an extremely effective marketing tool but only if it’s done properly. We’re not talking about low quality rants or raves which don’t add any value to your audience, we’re talking professionally-written, educational pieces which your clients and candidates will read and share: content which thrives in social media environments and supports the underlying sales and marketing objectives of your recruitment agency. Oh yes, they really can be that powerful!
So how will blogging get you more clients and candidates?

•    SOCIAL MEDIA
Blog posts are perfect fuel for social media: they are widely shared and re-tweeted, each time taking your brand to clients and candidates who previously might not have known about you.

•    READERSHIP
A regularly-updated blog will be constantly indexed by Google, enhancing your organic search results and driving more traffic to your website.

•    ENGAGEMENT
Due to the ‘personal’ nature of blogging, it is very effective at opening up opportunities to engage in conversation with clients and candidates. Once that personal connection is made, trust begins to build and they are much more likely to consider you as a partner.

•    INFLUENCE
Thought-leading blog content positions your agency as an industry authority. It enables you to influence the decision making process of potential clients and candidates, leading them towards a logical conclusion to work with you over your competitors.

My Advice
If you’re thinking about starting a blog, stop thinking and start doing. The sooner you start publishing the right kind of content, the sooner your blog will start working for you.

My #TruLondon summary

Last week I spent a day at Bill Boorman’s #TruLondon recruitment unconference event (here is an explanation of an unconference if you are unfamiliar with the concept).   This event ran over two days and I understand Bill had close to 200 attendees.  With four sessions (called tracks) taking place every hour and such large numbers if was an absolute hive of activity and debate.  Perhaps with a little help from the sponsors, Jobsite, the event ran very smoothly. There was a really great feel to the day with lots of energy abounding.  The tracks I sat in on fostered great debate and one or two nuggets of real learning.

I enjoyed the Social Influence Blueprint track that Brian Wempen lead.  I’d never come across Brian before (you can read his pre-event interview here) and found him to be the perfect track leader; knowledgeable but capable of letting others speak.  There was one lady in the track who was struggling with taking the first step to get onto twitter and it made me release that being an early adopter and learning through mistakes in front of a very much smaller audience is the way to go!  It has also encouraged me to take another look at our twitter tutorial – so I’ll be working on that this week.

I also sat in on “The Pinterest Puzzle” (led by Max Heywood).  The track proved that a) recruiters will try to find a way to use/abuse any tool for recruiting purposes b) we like the sounds of our voices and c) you can waste a lot of time looking at new tools when you’ve not even got the basics right!

I didn’t make it along to the second day but I understand in Bill’s session on twitter sourcing there were some wide eyed and open mouthed audience members who just couldn’t believe what could be achieved using Twitter.  I also, unfortunately, missed Mike Bishop from Ricoh talking about saving £3 million in recruitment fees by improving upon their internal recruitment function.  More bad news for old school recruiters who can’t find their way in this changing recruitment space.
 
Overall I really enjoyed the event and would recommend it to recruiters.  To get the most of out it you need to be prepared to speak up as well as listen... but also know when to shut up!  It was a great networking opportunity too and I can’t even begin to list all the lovely people I managed to catch up with during the day (and lively drinks afterwards). 
 
So, well done Bill and I’ll see you at #trulondon6!

The value of practitioner only events

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for some time and today I’ve been spurred into action by something I see Katie McNabb (Talent Acquisition Change Lead at PepsiCo) has written about this week’s recruitment unconference (trulondon).

I go to quite a few recruitment conferences/seminars/training sessions, etc and I think there can be lots of value from an event in which recruitment practitioners mingle and learn from “suppliers” (by which I mean people who work for/at technology companies, job boards and/or offer consultancy).

However, I find that unless the ratio is right there is a lot of pointless pontificating. As per Andy Headworth’s comments on Katie’s post I think the ratio was right at the trulondon event. Like him I found some of the tracks to be almost utterly without merit but did think some very interesting learning points were coming out of others. In comparison I attended an event at the start of the year where I estimate over 60% of the audience were suppliers and that the event never really hit the mark for the recruitment attendees.

So, back to my point. I think there is great value in practitioner only events. We’ve actually been running some for nearly two years now in the form of our Directors Only learning and networking events; we get 60 Directors and 3 speakers (normally at least one is also a practitioner) and fill 3 hours with “learning sessions” (sometimes called presentations) and networking time. They’ve worked really well for us - here is a video montage from the most recent one. In fact we are introducing some Consultant Only events starting on 14th March.

Interestingly the major problem I have with these events is the, often very vocal, frustration, from “suppliers” that they can’t attend (well, not unless they sponsor). For all these events we’ve run we’ve had at least 95% positive feedback and whilst I love the idea of being all inclusive and allowing everyone to benefit from everything we do at the end of the day I think there is a really strong benefit to learning amongst your peers.

Monster Jobseeker Infographic

This lovely infographic looks at what people are searching for on Monster and shares some trends from what days are the most popular for searches to how many graduate positions are searched for every week.

Well work a peek for any recruitment professional.

Recruitment Software Survey and at #TruLondon

What do recruiters and candidates really want and need recruitment software to do in 2012?

Colleague Software is on a drive to listen to recruiters, consultants, and other suppliers in the industry in order to answer this question. 
Colleague will be at Bill Boorman’s #TruLondon Unconference leading the potentially very interesting track ‘Imagineering Recruitment Software’ where participants will lead the discussion – starting with a blank sheet of paper and ignoring preconceived technological limitations.

Colleague Software is also conducting ‘The Little Recruitment Software Survey 2012’ online – and offering a selection of ever changing recruitment goodies to randomly selected participants, including free tickets to our own Recruiter’s Practitioner Only Event in March.

Let me your thoughts on the future of recruitment software below

Recruitment Agency Expo – Review

Yesterday I spent the day at the Recruitment Agency Expo in Olympia.  This is a brand new event organised by Bluewater Events who are specialist exhibition organisers; and it showed!
 
They describe the event as “the UK’s first and only trade exhibition dedicated to the recruitment industry”.  I’m not sure what onrec would have to say about that as I’m pretty sure they have been running a trade exhibition alongside their annual conference for quite some years now!
 
Anyway, I have to say that the Recruitment Agency Expo was the best industry exhibition I’ve been to in over 10 years (anyone else remember the excellent annual exhibition that Interviewer magazine used to run in London?).   Bluewater had pulled together just short of 70 exhibitors and a jam packed seminar programme over the two days.  The organisation at the venue, Olympia, was perfect and their staff running the seminar’s were very efficient. 
 
All the exhibitors that I spoke to were happy; higher footfall on the first day – but that’s to be expected.  I only managed to sit in on a few seminar’s but understand that some were over subscribed by enthusiastic recruiters.
 
My only real gripe was the networking area.  I had expected a lovely comfy coffee lounge where informal networking and little Twitter sessions could take place.  The reality was that it was squished in between an expensive coffee outlet and some stands.  I know the guys sponsoring the area, PC Recruiter, had to move out of the main area to the front in order to be seen. Gareth Jones had kindly offered to run some Twitter training sessions – but these were barely publicised at all.  With everything else so well organised it was shame that this cramped area let them down.
 
I arrived home, after a lovely mini networking session at a local pub, with bags full of goodies.  I got a Cherry Tree (seriously!) from docmail, stress relievers, a very nice diary from jmk group, lots of sweeties (especially liked the pic n mix from KeyApps and the jelly beans from Broadbean) and a big bundle of business cards to work through!
 
I shall post links to other blogs and photos (here are Broadbean’s) as I spot them.
 
If you were at the event as an exhibitor or attendee I’d love to hear your feedback

February Directors Only Event Summary

Last week saw our first Recruitment Directors Only event of 2012, and what a great start to the year it was!

Over 60 Directors were in attendance and our speakers were superb. The subject was “Selling or Sustaining - the differences of trading for an exit or trading for a lifestyle” and we had Steve Solomon from NatWest talking around some the banking aspects of business types and growth, then Sarah Mitchell from HBRIDA talking about the planning and investment side. After a very lively networking break Adrian Kinnersley of Twenty Recruitment and Gail Sampson of Knockbuckle, very candidly, shared their own plans and experiences.

We have persuaded RBS to host all our events this year and as usual they were great with brilliant registration management (saves me holding a clip board) and lovely cakes!

In our networking break we ran the usual “structured networking” (yes, it’s speed networking but no one seems to like that word anymore!). I can always see a few people try and sneak out of the room during this session, however, it’s a really valuable way for even the most nervous networkers to make fresh contacts. It’s also a great opportunity to chat with sponsors. We only pick a small group of sponsors and they are never pushy (at this event we had Broadbean, Fish4, Juice TDP, Bond Adapt Software and Optimease).

We are lucky to have Cast Recruitment Video supporting us throughout 2012 with their film crew and as soon as we get the first montage footage back I’ll share it here and on our YouTube Channel.

Feedback has been great and I’m going to be self indulgent and share one particular comment (made by Julie Skinner of JJ Associates); “Excellent organisation as ever. The variety of people involved in lifestyle or exit business models and each at different stages of development provides a fabulous platform for benchmarking your own business as well as huge inspiration regarding future development.”

If you want to know more about the speakers or wish to pre-register for our next event (on 26th April) please drop me a note.

Review of Enhance Media Online Recruitment Conference 2012

At the end of January Enhance Media held their 10th Annual conference; Online Recruitment 2012, The Year Ahead.

As with previous years the conference was incredibly well organised, lovely venue, slick registration (and with over 400 registered delegates you need to get that right) and teas/coffees and pastries on arrival. Also, their now traditional hard back bound delegate book with information on speakers and space for notes was very professional looking.

The line up of speaker organisations looked great; Boots, LinkedIn, Google, Lawspeed, Monster, The FIRM and ITV. 

Before I go any further I want to make it clear that whilst it was brilliant of Enhance to give me a press pass I am not their target audience.  The event was targetted at agency and inhouse recruiters, interestingly, even knowing this there were a lot of "suppliers" in the audience - obviously wanting to keep up to date with what their clients are learning.  The content in the presentations from Boots and ITV was very strongly targetted at the inhouse recruiter and the presentation from Monster was a pitch as to why the BeKnown product is worth investigating by recruiters - from the feedback I got on the day the inhouse recruiters found the ITV presentation especially useful and those within the graduate arena loved the update from Lisa at Boots (she spoke last year).  BeKnown is always going to attract interest too!

It was a real shame that Wade Burgess of LinkedIn couldn't make it in person to the event.  His presentation, pre recorded, was a bit of a sales pitch if I'm honest but he did share some good tips:

• Connect with people that you know and/or do business
• Your interactions on LI (ie, within groups) showcase you to potential clients/candidates
• With over 14 million students on LI it can start to become a search ground for fresh grads
• Revisit your profile and company products and services tabs to ensure they represent you correctly
• Read the "LI today" insights that are suggested to you (this is a good feature which does regularly highlight interesting content to me)
• Then we had a brief presentation from Andy Hill of Invensys who is a LinkedIn (paid for products) user.  They've reduced agency hiring to 10% and their direct hiring through LI is now 15%.

Just before lunch we had Giles of Enhance and his presentation was probably the best of the day.  The level of research that Enhance do is really impressive.  he was quoting stats such as:

• When testing Twitter calls to action they found that "apply now" had far more responses than "apply now..." or "join us" or "learn more"
• Ensure you use a URL shortner on Twitter.  The Google one give stats on number of clicks (as does bit.ly)
• From a SEO perspective choosing your keywords correctly is massively important, as you'd expect.  However, whilst "media jobs" has many more searches than "media career opportunities" candidates of above average experience are more likely to use the second term. 
• Individuals who use a location in a search string are more likely to be an "active" candidate; the more specific they are the more active they are.
• 38% of candidates said that the most important aspect of a careers site is a good search option
• He also shared most important of the 9 basic feature of job advert; 54% wanted good information about career progression, 36% want to see the job spec first and 38% found "salary competitive" off-putting (can't blame them there!)

Giles could have gone on for another hour and I'd have been happy.  Mind you lunch was ready and it's always a corker at the Royal Geographical Society (I had noodles and salmon), even if there is NEVER enough seating.  Sitting perched on the top of the stairs with Emma MIrrington and Simon Lewis wasn't very glamourous!

After lunch we had the Social Media Legal Masterclass with Adrian Marlowe of Lawspeed.  He told us:

• You own all the content and information you post on Facebook.... although Facebook have unlimited use of it if they wish
• You own all the information on your LinkedIn profile... although LI have unlimited usage rights
• He quoted the Hays v Ions (2008) case where the recruiter had to give over his LI contacts on leaving Hays.... has there really not been a legal case since then?
• He suggested that if you are corporate or recruitment firm you could insist that employees put the company name in their twitter ID
• He also said you should have a strict IT/Internet/SM media policy and proper contracts in place!

Rather than try and explain David from Monster’s presentation about BeKnown I suggest you watch their little video.  One point that isn’t in the video is that when you add your profile to your Facebook company page you can also add an RSS feed of your jobs – wherever they are, from example from an ATS.  You don’t have to be a Monster customer to make use of this.

Finally, later in the afternoon we had Gary Franklin who is a co-founder (with Emma Mirrington) of The Forum of Inhouse Recruitment Managers.  Gary shared some superb stats which I've previously blogged about. I wont repeat them now - but do check out the blog post.

When I started to write my review I realised that it might benefit from some input from a real recruiter!  So with this is mind I spoke with Katherine Rutherford of Direct Recruitment who attended the conference with her colleague.  They hadn’t been to an Enhance Media event before and, as agency recruiters, had been attracted by the diversity of the speaker line up.  Katherine especially enjoyed the Legal presentation, the BeKnown demonstration and the case study talking about the inhouse recruitment team at ITV.

So, for an agency recruiter it was useful to understand more of the legal implications of using social media (Adrian also reminded the audience that due to data protection you should advise candidates if you are going to background search them via them web).  Katherine, not having come across the BeKnown product before, found David’s presentation very engaging and enjoyed the presentation of the product (although she did admit she wasn’t entirely sure it was THE future of online recruitment).  I think the area that I’d been concerned about from an agency recruiter perspective was the case studies.

I found the Boots presentation to be very niche (focussing on graduate recruitment) and wondered how many agency recruiters would really benefit from it.  However, Katherine had found this interesting if not directly applicable to her own situation.  For her business the interest was in seeing how inhouse recruiters are beefing up their teams and how they, as an agency, can fit into this new model.  With that in mind the presentation from ITV (in which they shared their cost savings of £8k cost per head down to £1k cost per head and the fact that they are trialling new Linkedin Technology as it comes out) and the stats presented by Gary Franklin of the FIRM were very interesting to her.

So, overall my agency recruiter enjoyed the event and felt that it had given an indication of what could happen in The Year Ahead.

Mobile recruitment – always in your pocket

Alex Charraudeau, who is a Web Consultant at 4mat has produced this article (with a tiny and excusable bit of advert!) for us on mobile recuritment and QR codes. 

The mobile has always played a crucial role in recruitment.  How many clandestine phone calls have candidates received in stairwells or dashing out of their office when trying to arrange interviews or negotiate new starting salaries?  Recruiters have relied on their candidates always being available either by email, mobile or text message.

These days it isn’t just recruiters relying on mobiles.  It is candidates relying on recruiters to be accessible via mobile.  This goes beyond just having a telephone number.  With over 45% of internet users having used a mobile to access the internet there is a real requirement for recruitment organisation to have a presence that is easy to access via a mobile.

Over 75% of job seekers will start their job search in Google.  14% of people use their phones as their only access to the internet.  44% of all mobiles sold can access the internet.

So what does this mean to recruiters? 

Firstly it shows that if a candidate is looking for a new job you need to rank in the search engines for terms that relate to their skills or industry.  And you need to rank above your competitors.  If they are trying to find you from their mobile then you need to offer them a website that is built for a mobile journey or they will find someone else who has.

Three huge problems with desk-top websites on mobiles:

1.       A traditional website will take a long time to load on a mobile phone.  Image your candidate is on the train headed home from work.  Their mobile phone signal is fluctuating and occasionally cuts out.  If your website can’t load really quickly then you have lost their interest.

2.       If they eventually manage to load your website they will need to scroll up and down, left and right whilst having to zoom in to read the content.  This is really frustrating and will make them want to leave your site. 

3.       The most important thing with a recruitment website is the fact that it can turn a visitor into a CV or an enquiry.  Functionality that works well on a desk top won’t work well on a mobile.  Applying, shortlisting and saving jobs for applications later on can be difficult and take a while to complete which defeats the object of having them there in the first place.

How you can use QR codes in Recruitment

A QR code (abbreviated from Quick Response Code) is like a bar code that when photographed on a mobile device (using a QR reader) allows the user to access a web address, pick up a phone number or display text /images on your device.  According to Mashable QR codes have had an increased up take of 1200% in the last 6 months.

Recruiters are using QR codes in newspapers, on public transport and at trade fairs.  They can link users to their website, their mobile recruitment website, to specific job details or to a company’s contact details.  “Object hyperlinking” or “hard linking” as it is called breaks down the barriers between the real world and the digital world.

QR codes can be used really effectively to drive users to specific landing pages on your website, and if you have a website specifically built for mobile devices then the user journey should be really good.  If your website is flexible enough to set up specific campaign landing pages and each job is on its own individual URL the opportunities with QR codes are endless.

Recently Jobserve has launched QR codes alongside each of their job vacancies.  “By scanning the barcode candidates can quickly store the job for quick and easy recall later – far quicker than it would be to email the link.  Many mobile phones will also enable navigation straight to the job from the QR code” says Les Powell, General Manager Product & Service Delivery.

What do you need to do?

Candidates and clients are looking at your website via their mobile.  They expect to see a stripped back and easy to access platform with all the relevant information and functionality.  If you can offer these people the right user experience you are more likely to get them to do something on your website.  Getting more applications and client enquires is going to make you more money.

Ignore mobile users at your peril.

4MAT have designed several mobile websites for clients including a mobile website for leading charity recruitment agency TPP and Fircroft who place candidates international in oil and gas jobs.  For more information visit our Mobile Recruitment page on our website or contact us.

For a recent study into mobile recruitment website trends and usage please read our white paper.

9th February Directors Event – get your hair done!

We are really excited to be working with Cast Recruitment Video for all our Directors Events this year.

For us it’s a chance to share content from the events with a wider audience and to also showcase those events to potential attendees, speakers and sponsors.

I thought it would be interesting to put a quick blog post together to mention this is what we are doing and I asked Chris of Cast for a bit of input.  He shared a lot more than I expected and I’m going to pass it all on!

“I have been marketing, selling and producing recruitment videos for just over a year and it can be an uphill struggle convincing recruiters that it is even worth investigating.

So when UK recruiter approached me to film their 2011 recruitment event in London I jumped at the chance. I felt it was a great opportunity for our video team to engage with a concentrated group of recruitment professionals in an environment where people were open and willing to learn.

Events like these are vital to businesses like ours, but they are also vital to the recruitment industry as a whole.  Recruitment events give recruiters the chance to take time out of their normal busy schedule, throw away their tie and get to grips with emerging trends in an informal environment.  Furthermore filming the event has given UK Recruiter a more visual presence on the web, something I know they are keen to explore.”

Every conference on “social” that I’ve been to has reminded me how crucial video is to the mix.  We were well behind the times with our lack of material in that area.  ... back to Chris:

“I am embarrassed to say that until last year I had never been to a recruitment conference. I have run recruitment and RPO companies over a 14 year period, but whenever invited to an event I had always chosen not to attend. I had wrongly assumed that these events were not for me, they were for large corporations who attended as a PR exercise. I now realize that this was a wrong assumption and was mainly due to my lack of knowledge. For this reason I wanted to develop video content for UK Recruiter that gave their readers a true insight into their events. I ended up producing a selection of bite sized videos to share across social media platforms, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. The Videos contained footage of speakers and delegates discussing diverse subjects such as, employer branding, recruitment mega trends, recruitment growth markets & why recruiters should use Twitter.

We have received lots of positive feedback from the videos, notably lots of non attendees requesting more information about the events and the speakers. I am delighted to be involved with UK Recruiter and look forward to the next event in London on 9th February.”

So, nice bit of background on Chris and Cast and he really does sum up our thoughts on the benefits.
If you are coming to the event please consider giving your thoughts “to camera” so that we can use you in a sound bite.  Also, make sure you have a chat with Chris about how you can more broadly use video in your business.  I’m not doing an advertising pitch for him – that’s not part of the package!  However, I’ve seen what these guys do and do believe that video should be an important part of the recruitment mix.

Tracking your LinkedIn Network

Here are two lovely little tools for recruiters which Simon Lewis suggested I check out and blog about.  Once you've built your large and relevant LinkedIn network (which of course includes clients, previous clients, candidates, possible candidates, etc) you'll want to know when one of them changes jobs and becomes a potential new client or influencer. OR when an “obstacle decision-maker” quits!

Firstly check out Job Change Notifier.  It's exceptionally straight forward and does exactly what it says.  You go to the website and log in with your LinkedIn details, enter the email address you want notifications sent to and then choose which LinkedIn connections you'd like to track (I selected all of mine).

They monitor the people you choose and email you when any of them change jobs. Handily your tracking's are 100% anonymous.

The other tool you can use for this part is of the Bullhorn reach toolkit; Radar

Again it's simple to use.  You go Bullhorn Reach, choose the Radar product and create a free account.  You link your LinkedIn account (and Facebook if you wish) and immediately you can view "movements" in your network.  With Radar you aren't just shown job title changes but also people who have added lots of new recommendations and/or made profile updates.   You do have to visit the Bullhorn site to see what's happened since you last logged on - but it is displayed all one one easy to read page.

I think these are great tools which recruiters should ALL be using!