Recruitment Expo

Firstly I must congratulate the organisers of the Recruitment Expo at Olympia. It was first class and all the Suppliers I spoke to said they had been really busy with enquiries and demos.

So what has happened?

[1] Businesses have had a good January and looking at a good February depending on what gets closed today. Therefore people who have sitting on a bag of nails (disparate or desperate processes) for the last 3 years are now in panic mode.

[2] Suppliers into the recruitment sector have had to get better, Bullhorn, eploy, Mercury CRM, Cube19, ETZ and Ebsta have come from nowhere to challenge Bond Adapt, Microdec, Daxtra, InTime and Saber. These businesses along with Voyager and Actonomy have recreated themselves and now have strong products. There is a lot to chose from.

[3] Social media interaction, online videos, candidate portals and mobile apps have become most have items on the businesses candidate attraction strategies. LinkedIn has taken hold and the cost keep going up or the functionality keeps going down.

[4] Training and Consultancy on how to be Consultants has matured and there are now loads of people who can Coach, Mentor and Advise.

It's time to change. Well done Recruitment Expo for creating the event and allowing people to see

I was wrong about LinkedIn!

If you have followed my posts or my presentations in the past you will know my views on LinkedIn.

In case you haven't there are 4 principals for Recruitment Directors:-
- Make the most of it while you can afford it
- Ensure you have a Strategy on how it fits with your other databases (CRM, Ad Response and Job Boards)
- Budget for it becoming more and more expensive each year
- Track it and make sure you can live without it

I said these things on the basis that, I thought,  LI would never really get "the Recruitment industry" and therefore Recruitment Owners would always have the upper hand. - I was wrong!

LinkedIn are now hiring good "Recruitment People" across the Globe that know the recruitment market and the number of silly sales calls will reduce and you will start to meet people who know what it is all about.

Using LI to find out about LI, they appear to have over 4,000 (3177 on there last accounts) staff and over a 100 in the UK. They forecast circa $275m Sales and $60m of EBITDA (good margins if you can get it). Also that 55% of their revenue is now coming from Talent Solutions (ie Recruiters or Clients doing it them selves)

LI have a Market Cap of £12bn (8 times the size of Manpower or Michael Page International). They are on a P/E ratio of over 700 so the new Sales have to come from somewhere. It will be Recruitment or Talent Solutions.

So I now have only one Principal - Use LI now and smartly, find the candidates and the CV and the  relationship into your Database as soon as you can.

This is not an advert for Daxtra or ebsta but consider how you get the data into your systems as soon as you can.

Finally - Imagine being a Resourcer without LI!

Get more out of your Rec Cons using Game Theory!

Setting Activity targets each week and revenue targets each month and quarter have long been the recruitment managers role for their team. It has involved many spreadsheets, activity reports and waiting every Thursday morning for the Gross Margin Report on your temps and moving Start dates around on Perm deals.

We have long had league tables, personal bests and whiteboards showing deals and activity made visible in the office and products like Saber, Silverline and Cube19 serve us well in this area.

However we now have Gen Y'ers in the workforce and new Rec Cons expect more and will react better to new ways of the above. These Gen Y'ers are digital natives and have been brought up online. They are been accustomed to cutting edge technology & innovation at home, and expect the same quality of technology in the workplace. They have been playing video games on  consoles, mobile, socially, and more—since childhood, and have thus been immersed in the language and metaphors of gaming their entire lives. 


So in an effort to engage and motivate Gen Y, what are the characteristics of games that 
deserve a place to help you hit target?

They are looking for the following:-
- Real time feedback - don't wait a week to review their activity!
- Transparency -  make it really easy to get you stats and find out where they rank in the company
- Competition - to create competition in a scalable, automated way that can be used to drive results
- Collect Badges - to have something that shows they have achieved - monthly awards on the desk are good


Gamification is the application of these characteristics from games into things like Sales Work! in order to engage and motivate it takes all of the concepts illustrated above, and integrates them into being a successful recruitment consultant! 

Managers need to look at activities and processes and redesign the way that employees experience the work. 

To be absolutely clear, it is not about turning work into a game where compliance checks don’t turn into Angry Birds and business development calls don't turn FIFA 2013. It’s about framing work in the language and metaphors of gaming, with the goal of engaging and motivating your Gen Y sales teams and will it will be effective for all demographics   

Good luck and the Technology that does this will be a Killer App.

My Predictions for 2013

These predictions for 2013 are aimed at recruitment business owners or directors:-

1.       The Cloud will offer more opportunities but it will get harder to understand and to put together to benefit your business. Your staff will work from anywhere on any device and you will trust them to do it knowing you have the controls in place to do this.

2.       You will mobilise everything using aggregated mobile services that will send the data into  your existing systems to make timesheet capture, job applications and candidate availability easier to obtain using products like Keyapps.

3.       Linkedin will get more expensive than it is was in 2012 and the Jobboards will make a fightback.

4.       Traditional email marketing will come of age and your business will adopt this fully with products like Slverpop. 

5.       You will gain process improvements across different departments using Business Process Management tools paid for on a monthly basis

6.       You won’t have the time for IT issues, recruitment systems must do what they promise, first time and straight away