I’ve decided to attempt to follow on from my blog last week that was concerning the complete unwillingness of recruitment lead firms to engage in social media. It somewhat divided opinion via the various resources (Blog, LinkedIn, Twitter) on whether I was right or wrong…oh, how I love to divide opinion!

There are of course the firm believers that are adamant that recurimetn as a service lead business will continue to survive in one form or another and there are recruitment 2.0 experts who feel that without social media the whole (recruitment) world will collapse and of course, those in the middle.

But, it did get me thinking. Maybe we need to all stop worrying about how we find the candidates/job seekers/future employees and instead focus on developing the most efficient, time effective, cost sensitive solution around, by creating a platform that allows in-house, online and agency to work in harmony.

If candidates come from referral (to an agency) does it matter to the employer? Does it matter that this person was targeted for the role over an active job seeker who registered on a CV database? Does it actually matter that by utilising Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn you find the right person for the role or should it solely be about the quality, suitability and individual fit of the person within the organisation.

So what comes first the method or the outcome?

Lets get some elements straight; Manchester United is a business, recent reports confirm that Manchester United’s turnover topped £285,000,000. The business has employees as any business does of which a small number are paid to play football. Lets not forget the Marketing, Sales, and Finance Directors that occupy the buildings or offices around Old Trafford that make it all happen. From the licence agreements, to sponsorship and even corporate deals it’s all there.

Anyone business owner or employee will know that your employees are your assets, they are the people that assist the business in making money, however, they also know that no employee should commit an act that would knowingly bring their employer into disrepute, or indeed to commit an act of gross misconduct.

Mr. Rooney’s actions over the past six months have indeed done that, form his prostitute liaisons through to publically slamming his employer, he has done more damage to his employer and indeed their sponsors than any good he has achieved whilst employed by Manchester United.

So, the question is ‘how did football become completely removed from the employer and employee relationship model?’

At the same time as perusing the news paper I also watched the qualifying session from South Korea. Wayne Rooney is indeed one of the UK’s top sports stars, but then so is Lewis Hamilton, and of course Jenson Button. In the latter two we have two professional, responsible young men who represent not only their team but every person that has assisted them to get to the dizzy heights of Formula One World Champion.Of course, there are cynics that dislike the modern advertising and corporate lead F1, but it is a sport in the same way that Manchester United is a business. Both Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button are employees, they are paid not only to win F1 races, but to act as ambassadors for their companies values, beliefs and to promote the brands that associate themselves with the stars.

So, two very wealthy sports, three very wealthy young men, and a mere 209 miles between the base in Manchester to HQ in Woking but a world apart.

No employee would be forgiven for committing the same sins that Wayne has partaken in this week. Not only has be brought his employer, his sponsors but he has also brought his industry down. People who know nothing of football and are not interested in the Saturday routine have an opinion, they now believe that football has overstepped the mark.

Isn’t it funny how his actions in almost any other industry would lead to the delivery of your P45 and an escort from the premises, but in football it rewards you with an £8million a year pay rise.

I just hope that the owners of the football teams begin to see that they are businesses and therefore the players are the employees, they are not bigger than the employment law (contracts aside), they should be treated as employees and not investments because it sets an amazing precedent; a precedent that an employee is greater than their employer and that is something that just isn’t the case. It is the employer than negotiates the contract that pays your wages, puts in the infrastructure and support that you need to succeed.

I just hope Mr. Rooney remembers that.

A simple walk through the streets of Leicester City Centre confirmed that for me on Sunday. Everywhere (and I mean everywhere) you look there are ‘To Let’ Signs with little bits of hurriedly faxed A4 sheets in the window that reads something like this:

“Mr A. Jones and Mr A. Smith have been appointed joint administrators”

We all know that small business is the backbone of our wonderful society, but it appears at least that it is not these firms that will ultimately bring us back from the potential abyss. On the following day, at a motorway service station whilst heading back south I couldn’t help but read the following:

“BP steps up response amid 135% profit surge” Lets not kid ourselves, any business would love to have a 135% profit surge given the recent times, but a 135% surge in profits to $5.6 Billion from $2.9 Billion is enough to make even Warren Buffet sink into his chair over his cornflakes this morning.

But what if these firms (and, of course our friends the banks) are the very ones to drag us out? Surely profit means investment and investment means jobs and jobs means recovery? So are the folks at Goldman’s, BP et al just acting as a tax collector? Are they going to use their income to revitalise the market?

Small companies only exist because big companies are there? I know this first hand…without the market leaders to push innovation I wouldn’t have the chances I have today.

So we have to hope that the money made doesn’t simply get ploughed into the Chairman’s coffers and they begin to reinvest back into the very people that were offloaded in the first place. People in work are the key to all our problems – salaries equal tax and tax equals income. More people paying tax is better than a less people paying more.

Every quarter when the VAT bill is due you some how feel aggrieved, but there’s a man on your shoulder that whispers in your ear that says ‘Well, at least you’re making money, because if you weren’t you’d be given a rebate and VAT rebate = loss!)

So, to the recruitment debate once more. On the premise that firms are recruiting (which is confirmed by the last unemployment figures) it presents another question… where are they going to get the staff from?

For years it was a two horse race:

Advertise directly, and get inundated with responses from people all over the world or pay a recruitment agency to act as the gatekeeper. But surely, now of all times when cash is tight we should be discussing new, innovative methods and to this end, I’d love to invite you to join the debate by answering a small number of simple questions to help us gain the pulse of the market right now.

Here’s the link you need:  http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CFVBMGM

Thanks in advance, and here’s to 124 a litre!

I felt that now was a good time to try and get the real story behind the opinions and to try and compile facts, figures, and percentage points of what CLIENTS and CANDIDATES think of this enormous industry.

My wonderful friends at SurveyMonkey ensure that all data collected is stored and verifiable and allows a degree of accuracy. I am in no way looking to take on Monster or the REC, but I am very interested in people’s opinions (recruiters, HR people, job board owners, and job seekers).

Should anyone like to add more points that cannot be completed within the survey, please feel free to contact me on js@leadingemployersblog.com

I have tried to break down the survey into relevant components to make life easier for everyone, but if you’ve got an opinion put it in there!

So, here is the first survey – and we’re starting with the people who have the biggest say in what’s happening (in my opinion) the job seeker! So, don’t hold back all you job seekers, or recent no-more job seekers (well done, if you’ve just got a new role!) We want to know your thoughts, your feelings, your gripes, and if you feel like it name and shame the ones that should make us proud, and others that will want us to bow our heads in shame!

We’re not after you email addresses, unless of course you want to send it, so all responses will be totally anonymous! So, what you waiting for?!?!

Click here to take survey

Not being one to let something go, I’ve felt compelled to have another go at it, and to question the point of it?

Having spoken at length yesterday with @alexhens (A great person to follow for those who don’t on Twitter).

What it appears to be is that these firms aren’t actually recruitment firms at all, or is that what we’ve now become? Has recruitment gone full circle back to the old days and taken all of our ‘consultative’ skills with it? 2010 Recruitment is a very different place, but the question that needs to be asked is did we just convince ourselves what clients wanted? Did they want rebates, SLA, PSLs, Account managers, prepped CVs, interview feedback?

What if they just wanted CVs all along? Did we trick ourselves into thinking that what we were doing was the right thing? Were we dictating to our clients about what service they needed?

Since the arrival of the ‘web recruitment firms’ there seems to be a mass exodus of organisations that now consider ‘recruitment’ as ‘processing CVs’, but surely that isn’t recruitment? We’re not just a bunch of overpaid CV readers, are we? Recruitment is about people, their aspirations, their fears, their hopes, their ambitions, it’s not about 75 lines of text on a screen. What about the fact that they’ve been made redundant, and don’t know what to do? What about the fact that they’ve been at their current employer for 14 years and know that the only thing to do is to leave? Will they ‘fit’; will they get on with their line manager?

Recruitment isn’t about paper its about people.

But are the new breed building a sustainable business, is it a business that has a long term future or does James Caan already have an exit? Speaking to Alex yesterday, he raised a great point…there was a well known recruiter who was furious when Freecruitment decided to charge for their service, and he wasn’t alone in his frustration. He said that his business model would not support paying for adverts on Reed and that Reed were wrong to charge for his ability to find suitable candidates for his jobs (for which he made many thousands of pounds).

So, what if the heads of the big job boards that are currently selling their soul sit around the big table and decide that they no longer want their brands sold-out? Take for example www.theladders.co.uk, who state on their website that they will take one senior job off you for £349, but instead I can just wander over to www.easywebrecruitment.com and can put the same job on a whole host of websites all over the globe for about £500 (I couldn’t find the exact price). So as a proactive HR person which would you do? £150 to go on at least 5 of 6 premium websites? It has to be the latter.

I see how they are shaping the market; I just wonder for how much longer they’ll be around and if it’s just another recruitment fad? So, what are traditional recruitment firms going to do now? Become proactive? Change their stance? Or hold tight?

2010 and beyond could be very interesting for recruitment in the UK!

So, I’ve been away for quite a while, been super busy on a whole host of different products. Its been on my mind for some time to put the perverbial pen to paper, so here we are. And for now, I am going to start with a question.

I’ve been working with a number of Leading Employers recently and a number of different topics have been discussed; namely the recruitment market, its current state and an increasing number are beginning to discuss the issue of online recruitment firms and their place in the market.

But, the question is – are they recruitment companies at all? I have grown up in a generation of old school recruitment. A horrible office with a window with jobs in it, and if the council would allow an ‘A’ board outside. Possible applcants would wander in to enquire about said jobs, and then the process began. We interviewed, coached, advised, dealt with offers, handled counter offers…need I say we actually ‘consulted’.

What appears to be happening now is the big media Co’s – Trinity Mirror, Associated, Monster, Reed – the back bone of the UK Online job market seem to be selling out somewhere to the new breed.

Lead by everyone’s favourite (ex-recruitment) dragon, James Caan Webrecruit seems to have an interesting hold on the market. Reports have shown that turnover has now bashed through the £2,000,000 market and from an office in the South West that’s no mean feat. But what exactly is Webrecruit?

Is it an agency? Sure they advertise jobs, and they throw out the rubbish, non-compliant CVs, they short list and then hand over the bank of CVs to their client. So do they no longer have any involvement, vested interest? What makes that more interesting is their ‘no hire, no fee’ offer proudly shown on their website.

So maybe their a media buyer? They buy up loads of ad slots on all of the big job boards and simply allocate their slots to their paying clients as and when required. Surely any trained monkey can read a CV that matches the requirement of ‘Must be fluent French’ “Tick, that ones in the ‘yes’ file”, but surely its more than that?

So, why use WebRecruit (lets ignore the Dragon for now…), there are literally hundreds of these little beauties swimming around – from the £150 bargain basement to the higher ends at close to £650/£700. Surely if their business is to advertise on ‘The Network’ and select CVs that ‘match’ then what is the skill and why would I pay 4 times as much for the same service on the same sites as the other cheaper one?

So, I come back to my question!

Are they indeed Recruitment Agencies (as defined by the Employment Agencies Act) or are they glorified Ad sales people who are earning money for what always used to be a free service?

he likes of Tesco and Boots are much bigger than Totaljobs and Monster but more importantly, to the job seeker, the employer is where they want to get to – not the job board.  Employers are already inundated with applications; many of which are not going to get hired.  Add to this that employers can advertise on sites such as Indeed, Simplyhired, Workhound, Jobrapido and many more for free; which do drive traffic.  Then add in Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin and that’s a lot of free traffic.  And Monster, TJ et al want money for maybe nothing better!

Now, there are a few counter points to consider.  What if you are not as big as Tesco?  Well, you still have all of the free options as a minimum.  You can also consider direct CPC search options on Google, Indeed, Facebook and Linkedin which will be a lot more flexible than using a job board.  So whilst you may not get the job boards to pay you, you should at least start with all of the free options first.

So, going forward the big challenge is to know EXACTLY where your hires are coming from.  Maybe all the free sites will deliver loads of applications but no hires.  Although maybe they will deliver all the hires and the job boards don’t.  And if the job boards don’t deliver any hires, even more reason for Tesco to ask Monster to pay them.  If you want to sell your bottled water in a Tesco store, you have to pay for a position on the shelf BEFORE you even sell anything.  Likewise, job boards will have to pay Tesco to get their brand on their job board which in turn will drive more candidates to the job board which will of course have some benefit for other advertisers.  So TJ get some direct value from having Tesco on board. Tesco get some cash and maybe some hires as well; and if they do maybe they give some money back to the job board?

In the past, I was able to track from post-to-hire for certain clients using job boards and whilst some job boards did deliver; the majority did not.  So we could make some clear decisions based on fact.  Problem now, is that with all of the sites that don’t get a feed from the ATS (the list above is a good starter), or just come direct, the tracking is limited in data/accuracy.  Of course once we have all of this data together in one place, imagine how that will change the game.

Now imagine access to that data is only a matter of months away!

I’ll be adding the rest of the debate very soon!

@GLHoffman had reposted a blog entry that I’d missed when published by Seth Godin. (For those who don’t know him, he’s one of these people that if he doesn’t know it, it really isn’t worth knowing…) and he’d written an article exclusively for “What would Dad say”

For ease I’ve copied and pasted this below, and it really is an interesting insight to how some people think, feel and act when it comes to NOT finding a job!

DON’T TRY TO GET A JOB

Don’t you dare.

There are a few reasons for this. The first is that the act of trying to get a job corrupts you. It pushes you to be average, to fit in and to do what you’re told.

The second is that this act moves the responsibility from you to that guy who didn’t hire you. It’s his fault. As soon as you start spending your day trying to please the guy, you’ve blown it.

The third is that the economy is terrible and the best jobs you’re going to get are lousy.

So, what should you do?

Today, right now, while the opportunity costs (look it up on Wikipedia) are the lowest they will ever be, go start something.

Start a business. A tiny one.

Train people in social media. Run an eBay selling business. Sell coffee from a truck every morning at the train station. Run spring break tours by bus for other college students. Start a newsstand on campus. Run a birthday cake delivery service. Train executives in public speaking. Start a dog poop shoveling business.

Start something. Run it. Be responsible.

1. You’ll probably make more money
2. You’ll certainly learn more
3. If you’re good at it, people will offer you a job
and
4. If you’re not, then why on earth would someone actually hire you? Go get good at it.

Have fun. No whining. This is your moment, go make a difference.

You can thank me later.

So, with that thought, please think before you jump!

Maybe you don’t need another job, maybe you need to take stock and create your own future!

The past 12 to 18 months have seen a steady stream of headlines barracking company bosses about their lack of feeling regarding the people on the front line – the employees. The high street employer, Jessops (the Camera shop) has recently announced that due to a debt restructuring agreement with HSBC and whilst this is really bad news for anyone that has an ounce of equity within the business it guarantees the safety and security of up to 2000 jobs.

I think, however, it is important to ask the question – how did a company get in that position in the first place? A business that amasses £35 Million worth of debts is clearly not in a great place, and whilst the jobs are safe for the short term can a firm really put its employees before the need to satisfy investors who are driven almost exclusively by Returns on Investment? A company that loses money and loses market share and who’s market moves away from them really is going to struggle to keep people employed for years to come?

Jessops sadly seems to fall in to the same category as Woolworths and Zavvi, they missed the boat with a change in their market – in Woolworths case they were trounced by the Supermarkets and Jessops missed the opportunity with the invention of the digital camera (and associated printing) and the rise of the do-it-all mobile phone generation.

Jessops has become a shop for the die hard and sadly whilst good news for the short term, I am pretty sure that this high street store will go the same way as others mentioned.

But well done for looking after the 2000 staff you’ve saved, and I for one hope you’re still around in Quarter 2 next year!

Firstly to any followers I am sorry that I haven’t been around a great deal, however, I am now back and with even more opinions on what is right and wrong in the world of jobs, employment and at the moment the role the job hunter plays.

In the UK, our biggest selling ragtop; The Sun (ironic, I know…) has developed a website dedicated to the countries ‘leading’ employers (hence why I’ve picked up on it…).

There is an ongoing battle here in the UK to work out exactly how many people are unemployed; the official statistics say one thing, the opposition party say another and in reality it could be millions more people than we actually think.

So, imagine my surprise when checking the football scores today when I saw the following article: http://tinyurl.com/myazxo

Part of me has fury; if this is the attitude of the current ‘unemployed’ or even a small percentage of said millions then we’re in serious trouble.

So, I want to ask the following questions?

If you shop in Sainsbury’s, and you like Sainsbury’s, and it was your dream job to work in Sainsbury’s, why didn’t you go to Sainsbury’s and ask them for a job? – A job they were clearly recruiting because a national recruitment manager put it on the sun.co.uk website.

I really think we need to start to empower and educate the job seekers, there is clearly no good having hundreds or thousands of vacancies in leading employers if people aren’t prepared to get off their backside and walk to their local shop!

The ability to use ones initiative, to be proactive and to do more than sit down at a PC and send (to quote another Sun.co.uk/jobs user) ‘so many applications I’ve lost count’

Now I am glad I have that off my chest!