Candidates > Clients > Agencies

I love travelling time in the morning, it clears the mind and some of my best ideas come before 8am on a train/plane or automobile!

Interesting in the FT this morning, where in an article about media agencies the Head of Marketing for Kraft said "Now...clients are ahead of agencies - and the consumer is ahead of all of us" which got me thinking about the use of Social recruiting and other online sourcing options.

Largely thanks to Peter Gold the client is being educated to use these sources (Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Xing, Ning, Google adwords) better than recruitment agencies. Right now I believe Candidates are using these well (as part of life!) and Clients are using these (because they are under pressure to cut recruitment costs) and Agencies are struggling with pockets of poor knowledge therefore the equation Candidates > Clients > Agencies.

Agencies are in the wrong place, we are meant to be in the middle.

We all need to get ourselves sorted and work out how to build the use of Social networks and Direct ads into our standard recruitment processes. How many people could live without Linkedin? I watched a client search the jobs on Linkedin, then search Linkedin for candidates and headhunt them for the Job that he had just found, then spec the candidate into that job! All very good work but all off system and with no activity tracked (so his manager should be saying what were you doing during that 2 hour process).

A cheery discussion for a Friday afternoon

Linkedin job applications

Earlier this year at a recruitment conference, I asked the European MD of Linkedin if they were trying to become a fully functioning recruitment database.

Todays blog from Linkedin shows how to integrate applications from Linkedin into the client's own applicant tracking system or their website which is a positive sign, I think!

Implementing Bullhorn in the UK

I am currently project managing a Bullhorn implementation for one of our clients, an early adopter of Bullhorn in the UK. Part of the commercials was that we blog the project so others can see it as it develops, both good or bad.

Bullhorn were selected from a shortlist of 7 suppliers, beating eploy in a very close thing. It was the built in email and electronic timesheets that won the client over in the end.

The project began in August and is scheduled to go live in late October. The timetable includes time for Bullhorn to get its platform ready for the UK with dates, currency, post code searching and Broadbean being added. This project will include the integration of Bullhorn with Saber Analytics using web services as part of the go live too.

The Kamanchi team are in Boston this week, so look out for weekly updates and feel free to comment on this with questions