Louise's UK Recruiter Blog

SeeMore at Recruitment Technology Showcase Event

We’ve got our Technology Showcase event in less than a week on the 24th May; for recruiters to investigate different recruitment software providers..

In the run up to the event I'm blogging about some of the providers taking part, and why they think you should attend the event.

Provider name: Monster
Product name: SeeMore

Why should people come and learn more about SeeMore?

Talent Management continues to be ranked as a #1 priority on company’s management agendas. The business drivers for their actions are simple:

•    Demographic shifts worldwide will lead to a shrinking workforce and competition will heat up for certain skills.
•    Economic growth will resume and having the best talent is critical.
•    Almost every organisation today operates in a more complex and competitive environment.

Therefore, in order to grow business, and help ensure organisations retain and attract the best talent the way we look at current talent sourcing and retention methods has to evolve. 

Monster is here to help companies find people with bespoke solutions from the Web to mobile to social; we apply the most advanced technology to help you successfully match the right people to the right job. Our Business has evolved to work with you to solve your big data issues and allow you to understand the talent pool you have already built and be able to apply that knowledge to source the very best candidates quickly and cost effectively.

At the event we will be discussing specifically SeeMore™ our new Cloud based semantic search solution.


If you want to find out more about SeeMore before the event visit: SeeMore

Keith Robinson talking Content at our technology event

Keith Robinson (Director of Ecom Digital) will be at our technology event on the 24th May.  He is an incredibly knowledgable (and modest) chap who has been in the recruitment industry for forever.  He will be talking about the Power of Content.  Watch the video to get an overview (and some really useful topline information) on what Keith will be covering.  It's also a great example of a video blog!

Social Media: Stay in Your Contacts' Peripheral Vision

At our last technology event Lisa Jones talked about recruitment technology, however, what everyone kept coming back to was social media.  So, this time, we’ve booked Lisa two slots to talk ONLY about social media and it’s impact on recruitment businesses.
 
This is something she has written for me in advance of the event....

Did you know that the average human when they focus their eyes only uses 3% of their available field of view?  This means that 97% of their field of view is peripheral - outside of their immediate field of view. 

From a business development and client relationship perspective, this is a real pain when you want to attract attention from busy people who are in your client base.  Using social media is a great way of tapping into your contacts' peripheral vision and keeping in their "mind's eye".

There's a term called "splatter vision" where you look toward the horizon without focussing - this allows you to have a greater handle on what's in front of you. Did you know that the FBI use this skill to spot baddies in crowded areas?

Well, funnily enough, your current and potential contacts do not use splatter vision day to day (unless of course you supply FBI agents - now that would be a USP!).   Your contacts are focussed on their own lives, jobs, emergencies, emails, phone calls, sandwiches, etc...  You are probably nowhere near there 3% focus.

What's the benefit of staying in their peripheral vision? You create a comfort factor; they know who you are, without really engaging, and will feel more comfortable when you contact them.  Better still, they begin to research you as a result of seeing you online.  I had a conference call recently to a client in the states, and one of the attendees remembered my LinkedIn polls - this really helped the call!

So how do you stay in your contacts' field of vision - and without ringing them and emailing them every 5 minutes? Social media is a great way of getting into your contacts' field of vision, without them having to adopt "splatter vision".

Also known as inbound marketing, this concept is all about creating content that gets you found and attracts attention.  There are hundreds of ways to do this using social media, and it is not as time consuming as you may think, and should NOT be restricted to your Marketing department's activities.

Status updates in LinkedIn is a great example. God forbid, I am not referring to recruiters bleeting on about jobs all day long. (I have blogged enough about being a consultant not a job board). A decent status update in any social media platform should give a feel for who you are, what you do, what you read, what events you go to, etc... ie. it should give me, the audience, a really good "feel" for what our relationship could be like.

Guest blogging in your clients' back gardens - what stuff do they read? Trust me, they are not on the edge of their seats waiting for Recruiter Weekly to drop on their doorstep, so think about your contacts and their sector and typical issues.

LinkedIn Polls, Facebook competitions, Twitter updates, Pinterest boards... never before have you had such a great opportunity to market your business.  So, use social media to keep in your contacts' peripheral vision - this will increase your social media profile views and web hits, help you get through more gatekeepers, secure more meetings and then you can get on the good stuff: dazzling your contacts face to face with your expertise.

If you want to chat more with Lisa come along to our event on the 24th May.

iMeet at Recruitment Technology Showcase Event

We’ve got our Technology Showcase event in just 10 days on the 24th May for recruiters to investigate different recruitment software providers. I blogged about it recently.

In the run up to the event I'm blogging about some of the providers taking part, and why they think you should attend the event.

Provider name: PGi
Product name: iMeet

Why should people come and learn more about iMeet?

iMeet … Face to Face interviewing, right from your desktop

Human Resources touches every aspect of every business. Successful HR teams wield enormous influence over corporate strategy, technology decisions and employee culture through recruiting, training, counselling and so much more — all with increasingly tight budgets and limited resources.

HR teams need technology that streamlines processes and extends their reach without sacrificing the personal element that is vital to effective HR communications. Our team will show you how to use iMeet to drive initiatives, personalize communications and forge new employee relationships.

Why iMeet for HR?
•    Affordable web-based video conferencing enables HR teams to put a face with a name for corporate communications, recruiting and industry networking.
•    Anyone can join from anywhere: headquarters, regional offices, on the road or working from home.
•    Simple and effective for internal and external use: training, interviewing, onboarding, vendor management and more.
•    Easy as making a phone call. No downloads for anyone.
•    Host up to 15 people in a group interview.
•    Share job descriptions, resumes and company documents.
•    Lower hiring costs and increase efficiencies.
 
iMeet is simple, robust and affordable – it  puts the human back into Human Resources!

If you want to find out more about iMeet before the event visit www.imeet.com

Technology Experts at Showcase Event

The skills that recruiters need to secure clients and make placements are not the same as those typically required to implement IT systems. Obviously some recruitment firms will have inhouse technical departments, but for those that don’t we have invited along some impartial technology experts along to our Technology Showcase Event (24th May) to help you find your way through the minefield of terminology and technical confusion that can sometimes arise.

Obviously all our sponsoring organisations specialise in the recruitment space, but if you need a little extra help feel free to pick the brains of.....


Alan Whitford (Alan works with recruiters to ensure that their technology and processes align to deliver the right candidates and the right clients in a timely and cost-effective manner. He has over 15 years experience in developing, implementing and tuning recruitment technologies)


Hung Lee (Hung is an industry insider and recruitment professional with 10 years experience in the Technology and New Media sectors)

Lisa Jones and Wayne Barclay (Lisa and Wayne work with Global and UK recruiters to give advice, deliver training and develop strategy on web, technology and social media. Their experience comes from being directors of recruitment firms and consulting on best practice business processes and lead generative activities using tech.)



For more information about the event pop over to our sign up page

 

 

Managing Candidate Relationships Workshop – roundup

We recently ran our second consultant only workshop event entitled “Managing Candidate Relationships”. This was part of a brand new series of events organised by us and Jobsite with support and contribution from the Institute of Recruitment Professionals. 

It was targeted at recruitment consultants who manage candidate relationships as part of their day to day activity and was delivered as a practical training workshop by Denise Walker (who is one of the REC's top instructors) and Emma McDonnell (of EVM Consulting) – meaning the attendees got both best practice advice and real life examples. As with the last event we had aimed for 30 attendees but ended up with 40; nicely filling the room.  After feedback from the first event we slotted in extra workshop sessions (see photo below of attendees in group discussions) and the event covered understanding people, the registration interview, building positive perceptions, counter offer management and return on investment. At the end we set the attendees to work talking about things they do well and could do better. These included:

• Deeper probing at interview.
• Better empathy and listening skills.
• More thorough counter offer management.
• Giving candidate's "job hunt advice" sheets.
• Consistent communication.
• Including clients in counter offer situations.

Again, we had the event filmed by Jobsite and that will be on our YouTube channel as soon as it’s ready.  Post event feedback from the attendees was great with 100% saying they enjoyed the event.

We are hoping to run more workshop events after the summer.  In the meantime our next event is the Technology Showcase afternoon – find out more and sign up if you are a recruiter wanting to know how and where to invest in the best technology!

April Directors Only Event Summary

This year we are running four Directors Only Learning events. 

Last week saw the second in our calendar, with around 60 Directors in attendance.  The subject was “Getting your own house in order for business success” and we had our very own Helen Reynolds (see below chatting with Paul) talking about the use of staff questionnaires followed by Caroline Crampton Thomas of the NatWest Mentor Team.  Caroline talked about issues such as how to manage internal conflict, employment Law procedures and best practice along with some common legal misconceptions.  After those sessions we introduction a new feature to our events which was a “group learning experience”.  Basically attendees split into small groups and moved their chairs around to discuss some ways to motivate staff without the use of financial reward.  Luckily we had Roy Ripper on hand to manage the lively session.  We then moved into a networking break (with amazing RBS cakes - see photo evidence!).  Our final session of the day was run by  Paul Sansbury who is Managing Director MRL Ventures.  His candid presentation went down extremely well with the audience.

In our networking break we ran the usual “speed networking” as a way for even the most nervous networkers to make fresh contacts. It’s also a great opportunity to chat with sponsors (at this event we had Broadbean, Fish4, Juice TDP, Bullhorn Reach and NowWeComply).  We are also lucky to have Cast Recruitment Video supporting us throughout 2012 with their film crew (you can see content from the last event on our YouTube Channel).

Feedback has been great with 100% on post event questionnaire respondents answering yes to “did you enjoy the event”

If you want to know more about the speakers or wish to pre-register for our next Directors event (on 5th July) please drop me a note.  We also have a Recruitment Technology event on 24th May (which it’s free to come along to).

Bond Adapt at Recruitment Technology Showcase Event

We’ve got a Technology Showcase event on the 24th May for recruiters to investigate different recruitment software providers. I blogged about it recently.

In the run up to the event I'm blogging about some of the providers taking part, and why they think you should attend the event.

Provider name: Bond International Software
Product name: Bond Adapt

Why should people come and learn more about Bond Adapt?

As developers of cutting edge, innovative recruitment technology, we are committed to sharing our industry experience and helping recruiters to transform their business performance in order to stay ahead of the competition. With nearly 40 years of industry experience and a yearly R&D spend of £4m+, our staffing technology currently provides over 100,000 global users with all the very latest functionality to maximise their insight and increase their productivity.

At the event, we will be offering demonstrations of our specialist portfolio of recruitment software applications, which are currently used by some of the largest global recruiters and available as a Software-as-a-Service or as an on-site deployment. Newly developed features to aid recruiters’ day-to-day activities will be highlighted alongside Bond Adapt’s wide integration with back office functions, social networking sites and third party systems, such as Daxtra’s Search Station 2 and Drag&Tag.

Bond’s investment in dedicated mobile applications is revolutionising work practices for the busy recruiter on the move. Furthermore an intuitive, web browser interface has been designed to optimise recruiting and sales output. It is 100% configurable, fully scalable and offers multilingual capabilities, proving multi-character sets.

If you want to find out more about Bond before the event contact: James Payne, Head of Business Development via James.payne@bond.co.uk or 01903 707070

Visit www.bondadapt.com or join the oOnline buzz: @BondIntUK

MyResourcer at Recruitment Technology Showcase Event

We’ve got a Technology Showcase event on the 24th May for recruiters to investigate different recruitment software providers.  I blogged about it recently.

In the run up to the event I'm blogging about some of the providers taking part, and why they think you should attend the event.

Provider name: MyResourcer

Why should people come and learn more about MyResourcer?

MyResourcer is an award-winning vacancy lead generation system. In the current climate where 18% of jobseekers apply for more than 20 jobs, MyResourcer helps build agency loyalty by finding more vacancies that can be offered to existing candidates.

Come to UK Recruiter’s event to find out why Ann Swain, CEO, APSCo says "The MyResourcer innovative product ...is actively helping the recruitment industry generate more business by improving the process of lead generation”

MyResourcer monitors over half a million direct employer career pages, job boards and clients and prospects’ on a recruiter’s database, then sends alerts when they are updated with new vacancies.

We will be doing live demos using MyResourcer at the event, join hundreds of our other global users and be impressed by what you see.
 
If you want to find out more about MyResourcer before the event contact: Bradley Placks at bradley@myresourcer.com or 020 7078 7990.  Visit www.myresourcer.com

EBSTA at Recruitment Technology Showcase Event

As you may know we’ve got a Technology Showcase event on the 24th May for recruiters to investigate different recruitment software providers.  I blogged about it recently.

Over the next few weeks up to the event I'm going to talk about some of the providers taking part, and why they think you should attend the event.

Provider name: EBSTA (formally Drag&Tag)

Why should people come and learn more about EBSTA?

If your company has a CRM and finds that adding data to it and keeping it up-to-date is a chore. The problem with CRMs is that they just don’t fit into our day-to-day jobs. If we need to sell stuff or place candidates in new roles, our time is spent sending emails, attending meetings and visiting websites. Who has the time to trawl through a poorly maintained database before making that urgent call?

EBSTA seamlessly integrates the CRM into your day-to-day job, allowing you to use and update all that valuable data without interruption. Whether you’re sending the emails or surfing the internet, EBSTA’s discreet side panel keeps you in the loop whilst allowing you to update information with the click of a mouse.  Since it’s launch 18 months ago EBSTA has been bought by over 40 recruitment companies and changed the working lives of more than 3,500 recruiters. Companies across the UK and US are finally getting a return on their database and CRM investments.

If you want to find out more about EBSTA before the event:
Contact: Guy Rubin at guyrubin@ebsta.com or 07932 949 932
Twitter: @ebstahq
Facebook: facebook.com/ebstaHQ
www.ebsta.com

The Main Problem Recruiters Have With Candidate Management?

.... it appears to be clients!

In the run up to our Candidate Management Workshop on 2nd May we have created a LinkedIn poll asking the above question.  The options we gave were:
 

Too many candidates to properly handle
Lack of client feedback to give them
Candidates who lie
Candidates who have no intention of moving
Job assignments that are already filled.

So far, with over 50% of the votes, it’s a lack of client feedback that is the problem.
 
Would love your input into the survey and your comments here on the findings!
 

Candidate Relationship Surveys

In the run up to our candidate management workshop on 2nd May we are running a few LinkedIn Poll's about the relationship between recruiters and their candidates.  The first one asks "What is the main problem area you have with candidate management?".  I  will blog about the findings and also use the results during the event on 2nd May.  Please take the time to complete the 1 minute survey for us!

Technology Experts Q&A session

At our recruitment technology event on the 24th May Alan Whitford (major technology strategist) will be hosting a  couple of small group sessions to discuss “The Future of Recruitment”.  Big subject I know!  Alan, with help from some of our technology companies presenting on the day, will be talking about such subjects as how you can ensure your technology choice today does not inhibit your future unknown plans,
technology trends hitting the recruitment market and some of the fundamental mistakes of today affecting the future of recruitment.

Alan’s panel experts will include Peter Linas from Bullhorn, David Henry from Monster, Paul Higgins from KeyApps, Guy Rubin from ebsta (formally Drag&Tag) and Ciara Lucy from iMeet.  All of these companies have new and innovative products in the market.  However, the q&a session will involve no pitching whatsoever; it’ll just be open debate with input from you, the audience.
 
If you want to come along to the technology event on the 24th you need to register in advance (the event is free but we do take a deposit).  We’ll have speed pitching sessions from CRMS, presentations from technology providers, social media learning sessions and lots of time to network and chat with our sponsors.

Microdec at Recruitment Technology Showcase Event

As you may know we’ve got an event on the 24th May for recruiters to investigate different recruitment software providers.  I blogged about it recently.

Over the next few weeks up to the event I'm going to talk about some of the providers taking part, and why they think you should attend the event.

Provider name: Microdec
Product Name: Profile RPM

Why should people come and learn more about Profile RPM?

The event is a great opportunity to see a large number of suppliers in a controlled environment and each session gives you just enough to understand the background of the company and the product it supplies.  For any company that is looking to invest in recruitment software, this is a 'must go' event.

If you want to find out more about Profile RPM before the event:
Email: sales@microdec-profile.com
Web: www.microdec-profile.com

Social Media in Recruitment Conference - 19th April

Last year Mike Taylor ran his third Social Media in Recruitment Conference.   It was a really well attended event with lots of interesting speakers.
 
He is running his next event on 19th April at the Congress Centre in London.  He has another great line up of speakers:

• Welcome & Introduction - Conference Chairman and Organiser
  Mike Taylor – Managing Director – Web Based Recruitment

• Social Media – Past, Present and Future
  Keynote Speaker: Steven Ehrlich – Global VP, Client Development, aia worldwide

• Integrating Social Media into your Careers Website Strategy
  Adam Templeman – Resourcing Manager – RWE npower

• How Social Media can make your company stand out from the crowd and become irresistible!
  Katrina Collier - Founder & Director of Winning Impression

• How to put Social Media campaigns together covering different countries, languages and cultures
  Julia Levy - International Recruitment Advertising & Social Media & Employer Branding at Terra Firma Associates

• How job seekers use Social Media when job hunting and what they expect to see from employers
  Vasco Castro - Head of Research and Consulting – Potentialpark

• From Zero to Hero - How Success Appointments successfully introduced Social Media into their business after the April 2011 Conference
  Stephen Selby - Managing Director of Success Appointments Plc

• Social Media is also Mobile - What you need to do to make sure your jobs and information are “mobile friendly”
  James Dalton - Managing Director - Fonemedia
  
  
• Tools, Tips & Techniques to help you manage your daily Social Media activities
  Gareth Jones – Chief Inmate of BrubakerHR

 He'll be topping off the day with a networking and drinks reception.
 
If you fancy attending you can get a 10% discount by entering the code ukrecruiter-10.  Hope to see you there.

What do you want to get out of the Recruitment Technology Showcase Event?

I’ve been chatting with Lisa Jones, who is one of our onsite experts for the May technology event, and she was saying what she’s hoping to get out of the day. 
 
She was at last September’s event where we had lots of CRMs in one space vying for attention.  It was a pretty full on afternoon to be honest!  Lisa loves these kinds of events; all that tech in one room, and people who want to talk about it too!  However, if you just come along on the 24th May with no plan whatsoever you might go home more befuddled than you came. The afternoon will showcase lots of great stuff, but you should ideally attend with an objective, and one that is more refined than “I want some new kit”!  These are Lisa’s tips for what she is looking for and how you can get the best out of the day:
 
1.  Technology that really gets me giddy – what gets you giddy?  Do you know what you get turned on by?  Jot it down and make sure that you get what you need from the day
2.  Technology that’s going to help my recruitment clients with their business processes.  Do you know what yours is?  The tech you will see on the day is going to potentially blow your mind, but how will it fit into your day to day business?
3.  Technology that’s going to add to my business process.  I’m not a fan of replacing tech with stuff that simply emulates the status quo… what else can I get from the change?  How will my business be better?
4.  Innovation – we probably all have some form of system that logs calls and correspondence, runs reports etc… but what is it about the tech at this event that is innovative.  Bear in mind at what’s innovative to the suppliers may not be to you and vice versa…
 
My add on top tip is to keep an open mind. We’ve got 20 technology companies at the event.  I’m pretty sure you’ve got some pre-formed opinions on some of them.  Please try and cast them to one side and view as many offerings from as many providers as possible. 
 
It’s a free event so why not bring a colleague and split up the providers so you can each see half – that way you’ll still have time for a cuppa and some networking as well as the workshop sessions we have planned.  Then you can have a chat about your findings over a quick drink in the pub afterwards.
 
 

Managing Client Relationships Workshop – roundup

We recently ran our first consultant only workshop event entitled “Managing Client Relationships”. This was part of a brand new series of events organised by us and Jobsite with support and contribution from the Institute of Recruitment Professionals. 

It was targeted at recruitment consultants who manage client relationships as part of their day to day activity and was delivered as a practical training workshop by Denise Walker (who is one of the REC's top instructors) and Emma McDonnell (of EVM Consulting) – meaning the attendees got both best practice advice and real life examples. We had aimed for 30 attendees but I kept getting people asking to be squeezed in and we ended up with 39 which did rather fill the room we had!  Over the course of two and a half hours Denise and Emma touched on topics such as getting clients on board in the first place, early day relationship building, account development, enhancing sales through the recruitment process and self-management.  There was time for a workshop session where we ensured the tables were evenly matched and set them to work talking about things they do well and could do better.

I thought it went really well and we did film a nice little montage which I’m waiting to come back from production. However, the proof is always in the feedback and that was excellent event if I do say so myself!  100% positive with 96% saying they thought they’d get business benefit from their learning's. I won’t go on, but if you are keen to hear our praises being sung then you can see a couple of recommendations on our LinkedIn profile.

Our next workshop session is on 2nd May and is focussing on Candidate Management.  If you are an active recruiter then please come along.

Recruitment Technology Showcase Event - May 2012

We've just signed up our final sponsor for our Recruitment Technology and Software Showcase Event on 24th May. 

It's an event just for recruiters - those looking for a new CRM system and/or to check out new innovative technologies.

It takes place on Thursday, 24th May from 1pm until 6pm (with drinks afterwards) in central London.

Technology in recruitment is constantly evolving making it difficult to keep up with offerings which may really add value to your business. This event run by us, under our "Recruiters Network" hat has been designed specifically with this issue in mind.  Recruitment and resourcing professionals will be able to gain insight into a range of technology offerings from ten different CRM suppliers AND ten very different innovative technology suppliers.  In addition to this there will be also two workshop sessions running in the afternoon; one on social media usage and the other on the evolution of recruitment.

Over the course of the afternoon we'll showcase offerings from BeKnown, MyResourcer, NowWeComply, Bullhorn Reach, Cube19, Drag&Tag, Cast Recruitment Videos, Broadbean, KeyApps and iMeet.

Our showcasing CRM organisations are Monster, Bullhorn, Cirrus Nova, Microdec, 2LS, Talisman, TriSys, Bond Adapt and Arithon

What you'll get out of the afternoon:

- View short demonstrations (speed-pitching) from a selection of our ten CRM providers.
- View short (limited to 15 minutes) showcase presentations from ten innovative technology providers
Both of these demos/pitches are just long enough for you to get a good idea of the relevance to your business but importantly short enough to hold your attention!
- Network with other attendees and talk with the suppliers, in an informal environment.
- Learn from and debate in our workshops (social media and the evolution of recruitment)
- A thorough update on the recruitment software market in one afternoon
- No other suppliers trying to sell to you (as all attendees will be recruitment professionals)

To find out more and understand how investment in technology will increase the number of placements you make, please visit http://recnet24may.eventbrite.co.uk

If you can't make the daytime we've got an evening social you are welcome at (this is open to anyone within the recruitment industry).  We'll be publishing a link to this closer to the time.

This is set to be a great event so hopefully I will see you there.

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.

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.

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.

Recruitment Webinars

Shane McCusker of Intelligence Software has re-started his series of fortnightly webinars on a wide range of recruitment subjects. Last year he ran about 20 webinars (most of which are available on his website).  For those events he generally had a live audience of up to a few hundred people and some of the recordings have had over 2000 views.

The webinars are completely free to take part in and are all about sharing information and best practice. In the last series he regularly invited other presenters to take part (including quite a lot of Bill Boorman expertise – well let’s be honest he has a lot to share!).

In this week’s 30 minute webinar Shane is going to be talking about finding candidates and vacancies on the internet; looking at some simple sourcing techniques and a few free tools to help. The idea is that recruiters take part in the webinar and are immediately able to make use of the ideas to make more placements. In the coming months he’ll be talking about other social channels, the future of the industry, clever technology and a getting more guest presenters to talk about their recruitment expertise.   The webinar runs twice so you can choose which time slot suits you best.  If you want to take part just register below:

• Thursday 2nd Feb at (9:00am GMT which is 11:00am CAT)
• Thursday 2nd Feb at (11:00am GMT which is 1:00pm CAT)

Don’t forget you can check out previous webinars on his site

Directors Only Event – 9th February

It’s just over a month until until our first Directors Only Networking event of 2012!

The event runs on Thursday 9th February from 3pm to 6pm at the RBS building in central London.

For this event our subject is "Selling or Sustaining - the differences of trading for an exit or trading for a lifestyle". It's ideal for those Directors looking to move their business to the next level, anyone thinking of creating a new business from scratch, or wanting to help enable an MBO or sale of their existing recruitment organisation.  We'll help you understand how to make a lifestyle business work for you, put in place the plans necessary to exit your existing business or establish a brand new recruitment business with the end goal of a sale in mind.

We've got superb speakers in the form of Helen Reynolds (Managing Director, HBRIDA), Adrian Kinnersley (Managing Director of Twenty Recruitment) and Gail Sampson (Managing Director of Knockbuckle Associates).  RBS will be on hand all afternoon if you have any questions.

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.  As per last year we’ll be partnering with HBRIDA during all of 2012 for the Directors only events and at this one we have Broadbean, Fish4, Juice TDP and Bond Adapt Software as sponsors.

You can find out more and sign up at our networking page. 

Ps, there is also a Facebook group for our events (with photos) and a list of all 2012 events on our website.

Online recruitment 2012: The Year Ahead Conference - 26th January

This is the the 10th anniversary of the Enhance Media "year ahead" conference; it takes place on 26th January in central London.

This year's event focuses on "online recruitment strategy, candidate attraction, mobile, online law and global social media".  I've been at least five times in the past nine years and always enjoyed the event. 

The content includes: 
1. Google presenting on Google+ and mobile within recruitment.
2. ITV talking about how they have successfully implemented a new careers website and social media strategy.
3. The FIRM talking about 3,000 FIRM employer recruitment strategies.
4. Boots talking about the market a year on (they spoke last year) and how they successfully used Facebook for social hiring.
5. A social media recruitment legal and compliance masterclass.
6. Monster talking about how BeKnown could change the recruitment world forever via Facebook.
7. LinkedIn discussing their vision of the future of online recruitment in 2012.
8. Plus Enhance Media giving insight from the world’s largest piece of online recruitment research (I always love how excited Giles Guest, MD of Enhance, gets when talking about stats!).

I will be tweeting from the event using @UKRecruiter and @louisetriance (& the hashtag #EMConf) 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 and if you use the code UKREC10 you can get a 10% discount. 

Executive Research Association Webinar – “Back to Basics”

Heather Travis of The ERA has written a brief guest post about their recent annual webinar; held recently on the topic of “Back to Basics”.

The Agenda was: -

•    Overview of the misuse and over reliance on technology.
•    The difference between passive and proactive candidates.
•    The lost art of building relationships over the phone.
•    The top five reasons why the phone beats the internet every time.
•    How the world’s top recruiters are combining the usage of technology and traditional recruiting.

The webinar was split over a 2 day period, with c25 dialling in per day, the feedback we had was extremely positive and our survey has shown that 90% of attendees would be happy to attend ERA webinars in the future. Webinars are an easy solution for an Association who has members spread across Europe, there is no travel involved with attendees able to sit in the comfort of their office surroundings with minimal technical experience required.

A high proportion of attendees found it confirmed their existing views that there is no substitute for the telephone; it was thought provoking in the sense of a gentle reminder of how not to forget the basics in the research profession.

“Five Top Tips”
•    There is a growing level of call reluctance and the telephone is as relevant today as ever, there is no substitute for it.
•    Do not rely solely on LinkedIn, the passive talent/candidates will be missed.
•    Be aware of the “internet savvy candidates”.
•    By having a telephone conversation you can gain insight and emotional intelligence not just information.
•    The most common communication strategies (in no particular order) are; social networking sites, text messages, blogs, emails, twitter, micro sites, voicemail, job boards and career webinars.

For further information about becoming a member, future events or finding a suitable researcher for any search requirements visit www.theera.org or find The ERA on Twitter or phone 01442 828846

Jobsite RecruitRank Awards 2011 Finalists Announced

This is a bit of a long post but I figure if you've worked hard enough to get on the finalists list for an award you deserve a mention!

Jobsite have announced the finalists for their annual RecruitRank Awards.  The ceremony takes place on Tuesday 15th November. The awards "recognise best practice and quality customer service in recruitment agencies..  they are the only awards in the industry where finalists and winners are chosen by feedback from candidates and not a panel of industry judges."  

The finalists are listed in alphabetical order in each category.

Best Candidate Communications: High volume Jobsite user
Blue Octopus Recruitment Limited
CG Consultants
Helpmego.to Limited
Huxley Associates
Leap29 Ltd
Manpower
networx
Pareto Law PLC
Protocol National
Volt Europe Limited
 
Best Understanding of Candidate Needs: High volume Jobsite user
Blue Octopus Recruitment Limited
Elan Defence
Evolution Recruitment Solutions
Hays Specialist Recruitment
Huxley Associates
Leap29 Ltd
Manpower
networx
Omega Resource Group PLC
Protocol National
 
Best Industry Knowledge: High volume Jobsite user
Blue Octopus Recruitment Limited
Evolution Recruitment Solutions
Hays Specialist Recruitment
Huxley Associates
Leap29 Ltd
Manpower
networx
Omega Resource Group PLC
Protocol National
Volt Europe Limited
 
Best Recruiter: High volume Jobsite user
Blue Octopus Recruitment Limited
Hays Specialist Recruitment
Helpmego.to Limited
Huxley Associates
Leap29 Ltd
Manpower
networx
Omega Resource Group PLC
Protocol National
Volt Europe Limited
 
Most Improved Recruiter: High volume Jobsite user
Edwards and Pearce Ltd
Evolution Recruitment Solutions
Flex Recruitment Plus Ltd
Hays Specialist Recruitment
Huxley Associates
JAM Recruitment
Mackenzie Stuart Ltd
Orion Electrotech Ltd
Pertemps
Pure Online Recruitment
 
Best Candidate Communications: Low volume Jobsite user
Advanced Resource Managers (Engineering)
At Peak Resourcing
Big Red Recruitment Midlands
Cast UK Ltd
Coburg Banks
Euro-Projects Recruitment Limited
Expion search & selection
Jenrick Engineering
Kensington Consulting
Quantica Search & Selection Ltd
 
Best Understanding of Candidate Needs: Low volume Jobsite user
Advanced Resource Managers (Engineering)
Big Red Recruitment Midlands
Coburg Banks
Euro-Projects Recruitment Limited
Expion search & selection
GPW Search and Selection
Jenrick Engineering
Kensington Consulting
Probe Technical Recruitment
Total Recruitment Group (Scotland)
 
Best Industry Knowledge: Low volume Jobsite user
Advanced Resource Managers (Engineering)
Alderwood Education
Big Red Recruitment Midlands
Coburg Banks
eRecruit Solutions Ltd
Euro-Projects Recruitment Limited
Expion search & selection
Jenrick Engineering
Kensington Consulting
Total Recruitment Group (Scotland)
 
Best Recruiter: Low volume Jobsite user
Advanced Resource Managers (Engineering)
At Peak Resourcing
Big Red Recruitment Midlands
Cast UK Ltd
Coburg Banks
Euro-Projects Recruitment Limited
Expion search & selection
Jenrick Engineering
Kensington Consulting
Recruitment Revolution.Com Limited
 
Most Improved Recruiter: Low volume Jobsite user
Cubiq Recruitment Ltd
Evergreen Recruitment Specialists Ltd
Fresh Recruitment (Wales) Ltd
Hays Resource Management (Mitie)
KMK Recruitment Ltd
MaxAd
Ortolan Group PLC
Probe Technical Recruitment
Robert Half
Trusted Talent
 
The RecruitRank Awards are in their 6th year and will be held on 15th November 2011 at swanky central London venue, Grace.

End of Year Recruitment Conference – Roundup

Last Wednesday saw our very first conference event.  Thanks to the amazing support of our speakers, sponsors and community it went really well.
 
No one likes an early start so we kicked off at 10.30am straight into the presentations.  Throughout the majority of the day we ran two streams with different presentations in our two main theatres.  However, rather than get together a bunch of industry experts (nothing wrong with that of course) I thought I’d only have speakers who run their own events.  There were a few reasons for that; firstly some people get bored of seeing the same “experts” at lots of events over the course of the year (bit of a catch 22 there as it’s the “experts” that everyone wants to hear from!), secondly there are loads of really good events already being organised in the recruitment space and I definitely didn’t want to duplicate anything already going on and thirdly I believe that anyone who organises events is an expert in their own right.  Thankfully, in the main, I was proved right there!
 
We had over 120 attendees, plenty of networking and loads of debate in the sessions.  We were lucky enough to have Cast RPO with us on the day who filmed a number of the sessions.  Once all our speakers have given the go ahead I’ll be posting them on our YouTube Channel.  If you pop over there today you’ll just see me looking awkward and self conscious on film!
 
So, if you didn’t make it along to the event you’ll be able to see some footage from some of our speakers including Ann Swain (who was the most highly rated speaker from our attendee feedback), Matt Alder, Steve Ward and Gareth Jones.  You can also check out the photos on our FaceBook page (that’ll be a good place to view upcoming events as we announce them).
 
I’m currently working on the schedule for 2012 so if you want to suggest a speaker/subject or venue please do.
 
Finally, I just want to share a couple of quotes from the feedback forms if you’ll indulge me;  “This was my first visit to a UK Recruiter event and I loved it, it was so great to meet other people in the profession and the speakers were excellent. I will definitely be attending then next one!” and “It was a really great day out. Great people attended and some fantastic content from the speakers."