Welcome and Thanks for Attending.....

We spoke at a great event for in-house talent this week (alongside sponsors Reed.co.uk) and while getting our content together I realised what i like to see when i attend these sorts of thing as a delegate and therefore to make sure what we talk about and how we talk about it - fits that bill

1. Most obviously - none of us want to attend for content/info/research and be sold to for 45+ minutes. We are all grown-ups and clearly the organisers are generally doing it for business reasons but make the selling bit either very short or very much implicit.

2. Not all that keen on wonderful case studies where everything goes right, results amazing, budgets plentiful as in our experience that's not how the real world works. We all learn more from the difficult bits than the easy bits - yes? I have never yet had someone say to me I don't think you are a great partner/supplier as the example you showed us clearly did not go perfectly.

3. This may be my personal weakness and slight ADHD - but keep an individual session to maybe absolute maximum 40 mins - as my brain cant cope after that.

4. The organisation of event is really important - have a nice venue, welcome the attendees, have people on hand to chat, try and start (and definitely finish) on time.


And as a speaker - I always want to seek honest feedback so that I can improve in future but only on one condition that the feedback is "you were really good and everyone thought so".

What is going on?

It feels like we have existed in economic uncertainty for so long now (Brexit, weak pound, some sectors performing poorly) that it's just become the New Normal. And I think a healthy attitude when running any sort of business is to ignore the macro and concentrate on your own performance. At the end of the day there is absolutely sod all we can do to affect the UK/European/Global economy so what is the point in worrying about it.

The above is a long winded way of introducing the fact that Q1 2018 was a very strong month for candidate attraction activity (media, social, content) certainly for OME but also I think for the market generally and so the bigger economic factors aren't affecting things negatively (at this point - I probably should insert the word YET). Predictably aggregator and social spend is up year on year but less predictably according to some - the job board spend is strong too. I gave up on predictions a few years ago due to a terrible record at predicting correctly - but I feel comfortable that we can all agree on the statement that - Things are changing, talk, listen (clients, suppliers, partners) and be nimble and flexible to react to these changes - and repeat.

Finally - we have an event next week - come along and find out more about what's going on out there

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/candidate-attraction-april-2018-tickets-43548451591