Wednesday 3 December 2008

2008 - what a year!

I have never experienced a more "interesting" year (both good and bad) in my business career as this year. I will try and get some more formal comments on what i think have been the key trends this year and what i think will happen next year over next couple of weeks - hope to have a bit of time as it is definitely getting a wee bit quieter out there.
Overall - it feels like 2008 was the year that online became a core (probably "the core") element of a companies recruiting and employee engagement strategy. The level of complexity and sophistication in our client discussions has moved on more this year than the previous 2 years combined. That shows itself in spend and breadth of techniques adopted (SEM, Business networks, social networks etc) but most importantly - quantifiable tangible and documented results which show the great improvement in ROI - effective online recruitment/engagement gets companies.
Anecdotally - most of us who have been doing this a long time agree that these days you don't have to sell the concept anymore - it really is about the right product and brilliant execution. In that sense - The West has been Won.
However - when a great big hulking macro economic trend comes into play - recruitment can simply stop and no amount of cleverness and expertise can always get round that objection.
I am in the camp, however, that though fist half 2009 will be v tough - those efficient value led companies (like OME!!) will benefit hugely as the downturn lessens.

1 comment:

Jamie said...

For me the 2 most interesting areas of my business life has been the twists of launching a business (hell, we started as a last minute space board, closed that, become a successful live event business and will end the year as the first social network for recruitment media.)

The second is the emergence of some of the smaller recruitment media. There’s this wave of “box fresh” ideas like Wikijob, RateMyPlacement and Brave New Talent that are really shaking things up and it’s just exciting to watch.

2009 will be tough because we are not at the bottom of this beast yet but I agree Dom, companies that come through it will be stronger for it.