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

Comments

[Katesiddiqui]

Hi Louise, I was there with 4MAT and we also had a great time! I didn't realise it was a new event, they create quite a good buzz around it. It was well organised and had a good mix of recruiters attending. After a lot of hard work from our team we're pleased with how the two days worked out! Thanks for your review and links to photos, we've got some photos on our Facebook Page too.

[Kim Pieschel - Textkernel]

Hi Louise,

Nice blog!
I was there with Textkernel (CV parsing / Search & Match software, HQ in Amsterdam) and this was our first UK show.
And according to your review also the best show that we could have attended!
It was definitely a good show for us. Lot of people coming by, watching our live demos and registering to win a weekend to Amsterdam.
I put a short review and a few photos on our website:
http://www.textkernel.nl/news.php?nav=04c6c0db1f7927b3f6a69343ddc33340&lang=en (sorry for the ugly link).

We rebooked for next year's event, so we will see you then!

Kim

ps was our flashy light pen also among your goodies?!

[BlueSkyPR]

Hi Louise

Good post! It was the first exhibition we had ever done but we certainly had a good two days. Footfall was good and having gone through the business cards over 80% were recruiters ( rather than suppliers) and they were decision makers. The seminars were a real plus for us as both of the ones we hosted were oversubscribed which really drove traffic to the stand. We have already set up meetings from some of the visitors so I am pretty confident we'll get a good ROI. My only gripe - as I have fed back to the organisers - was that the signage outside was shocking!

[Louise Triance]

Thanks for your comments. Sadly missing the flashy light pen!

[Paul Higgins]

Hey Louise,

We thought it was a great show, our stand was always packed and have signed up again for next year - great seminars, great stands and organised very well I thought. Was a fab 2 days catching up with old faces as well.

[Mark White - Linked Training]

Enjoyed the event albeit coming at it from a slightly different perspective as a supplier of LinkedIn training to recruitment agencies.

Lots going on which was great and well attended events which is equally key - good launch event and a really strong base to grow from next year. Well done to the team at BlueWater.