OnlineMediaThoughts

We won't be pitching in 2012

2012-01-13T07:07:00.000-08:00

Got chatting with some people last night #SoME2012 (grad awards) and heard some horror stories of money spent by agencies on pitches and the work which goes in without any payment or guarantee of return.
So i have decided that we wont pitch for ANY business in 2012. Here are my rules and reasoning in more detail.
1. Long lists of pitch suppliers is surely a sign that the client does not really know what they want and i dont want to pay for someone else's journey of discovery.
2. The creative beauty parade. Accounts being won by through the showing oodles of creative work is misguided at best. Creative is key but is an output of strategy and that comes from working closely with a client not in a restricted environment (which a pitch process has to be)
3. We (by "we" i mean "me") are tight. I love the fact that we are still (5 years in) extremely careful about how we spend our or our clients' money. And so the thought of spending time and money with no fixed return goes against what we are about.
4. I like the sound of it. It makes us sound like a quality company and a business with a bit of cachet if we are able to say - i am sorry but we don't do creative pitches/tenders of this nature.

Let me be clear - we will continue to offer people
1. A (mostly free) digital audit of their rec comms
2. Proposals as to how we can help them
3. We will come and meet you anywhere/anytime and discuss openly without any strings your needs and suggest solutions
4. Seminars and training to educate (be educated) and discuss what is going on in industry

But we just wont go down a long winded, long list - chemistry meet - short list - presentation - final 2 - visit to offices - special videos, party hats and fancy dress etc etc. *1

*1 this policy is subject to constant change dependent on business needs and if you ask us really nicely. But i am ~~probably~~
categorically going to stick to this in 2012

Review of 2011

2011-12-21T06:21:00.000-08:00

So here goes - all these things relate to business rather than life (we had a baby this year which i think just about probably trumps the good stuff below but lets not let reality interfere with an obsession of all things digital, recruitment and media)

1. Best thing about the year - we have grown revenues by 30%, permie staff by 30% (thats 3 people), profitability by approx 25% (creeping costs...). So there will be turkey on the table on Xmas day rather than KFC Bargain Bucket.

2. 2nd best thing - a lot of new clients (LIDL, TGIFridays, Ocado, London Business School, ASOS, netaporter, Anglian Home Improvements, Jamie Oliver Group etc)

3. Most disappointing thing. Mid year we lost a long standing client who we loved working with. I took it well and in no way sulked for a month and pretended that i was so over them and was in fact better off now and much happier now to everyone i spoke to. part of the sentence above is untrue....

4. Biggest surprise - we have sort of become a full service agency. We create and plan a lot of print adverts, we do brochures and EVP projects. Bringing Northgate Arinso into the fold gave us a much bigger skill set and our clients trusted us to deliver our service in new areas. I am pretty sure we justified that trust in spades

5. Nicest surprise - a client was going to go all RPO on us and therefore we would be delivering a much reduced service - then last month they said no we are not.

6. My biggest conversion - i got and now fully evangelise "mobile" and mobile readiness to everyone and anyone. Its where your users will be accessing your site and content - so give the customers what they want.

7. Biggest growth area in our biz - no shock - its social (for projects/and time) and PPC (for revenue and clients)

And finally - its been fun, tiring but fun. Its been my favourite year since launch in 2006 - the work has been varied, the clients have been largely great, suppliers and partners remarkably co-operative.

Not sure i wholly recommend for the sake of your sanity being a father to 4 young children and running a business in a very hands on way (i need to state at this point that i probably do about 20% max of the important parenting stuff).
But in 2011 - i got away with it.

Merry etc and Happy blah blah

Turning Point

2011-11-10T04:22:00.000-08:00

I may be insanely optimistic given the macro economic news (FTSE, Eurozone,low growth) but i see a really good year ahead next year for the UK recruitment economy.

Speaking from our own client base (biased towards retail/catering/hospitality/IT) - we are booking increased ad volume in contracts for vast majority of businesses who are up for contract review

we have sign off for (long awaited) new initiatives for Q4 2011/Q1 2012

seem to have some movement of personnel of clients - which has created a healthy new business pipeline

But.....still the news out there is so grim, maybe we are just lucky...

The Road to Mobile Damascus

2011-10-13T09:56:00.000-07:00

Its not a particular radical thing to say and Matt said it better than i could the other day but i have shifted firmly from the agnostic mobile recruitment camp (lets wait and see - there are so many bigger priorities than mobile - perfect products don't exist) to full on evangelist and convert.
What do i mean in terms of sorting your mobile rec strategy out though (and what don't i mean)
What do i mean?
1. How mobile friendly is your careers site? try it yourself - your users will be. If its crap - sort it as top priority (approx 20% of jobseeker traffic is mobile - various sources)
2. Can you apply easily online (almost certainly not) - you are not alone but put some pressure on your ATS supplier (or add it to spec of next ATS) - you can gain real tangible competitive advantage if you can get ahead here
3. How does your content/copy appear on the media you are using on a mobile device (it is likely if your content is flawed online - it is deeply flawed on a mobile device)
4. is an app right for you? this is a whole bigger topic but at least have the discussion
5. Have an eye on the future - it is clear which way this is going and how your users want to interact with you over next few years - have a plan and begin to explore/pilot/trial and learn.

What dont i mean?

1. Spend a fortune on a mobile ad campaign. It still does not quite work in terms of push marketing (in my view)
2. Don't be bleeding edge. You can be innovative without going too bold.

This is the end of the evangelist's sermon

Amen

Job Boards Real Threat - Aggregators

2011-09-23T05:46:00.000-07:00

we are all a bit bored by the "social media will sweep away job board" debate aren't we? (FWIW - my view is there has never been such an efficient way for a person to access and apply for jobs than job boards - so there is plenty of life in that model)

What i think is really quite interesting is what the role of aggregators will be in UK over next couple of years. Aggregators are a slightly dirty secret in all that most (all??) major job boards use them to get qualified job seeker traffic but don't like to talk about it.

Data quality can be poor - we get clients complaing about Indeed, Simply Hired etc and how there jobs got up there and can we get them down.
But.....

Due to their very nature (aggregating job content) they appear high in Google search results for all common searches. The sites have helped them build this leading SEO position.

So what's stopping them selling direct and bypassing the job boards as they do in USA. Answer - nothing and now they are doing so. So have the job boards created a monster which is now going to turn on them and destroy their marketplace and yields. Who knows??

The big brands of the jobsites (Monster, Total,Jobsite) would legitimately say they have spent millions building trusted brands and that will maintain their market leading position. But are these brands really that strong??? i mean....really???

So forget Facebook - if i were a media owner i would be looking in another direction for my next big competitor.

And a brief aside - in early days of OME - i had a meet arranged out of the blue by someone with SimplyHired and they came to our office - now my excuse was it was a busy day and i had to pick my daughters up from school - but i could only end up having 15 minutes with them and i had done zero prep. and had to leave them half way through the cup of coffee (having been shouted at by the mother of my children to get my arse out of office and get to the school).
one of the people i met was Gautam Godhwani who i subsequently discovered was $$$$billions. I think he saw me driving off in my mum's old car she had lent me after taking pity on me, times were tough in Year 1 and 2.
I wonder what he thought of one of the self proclaimed UK thought leaders in digital recruitment...

OME's Offsite Day

2011-09-13T03:25:00.000-07:00

Without trying to be too grand - the 5 board members of OME had a day out of the office and tried to right all the wrongs, deconstruct the company, show a path forward to glory and riches.
Now my view on these things is that if you end up with a bunch of overambitious commitments, it ends up being very demotivational as you set yourself up to fail. At same time, if you end up patting yourselves on the back and not striving to improve, you end up stagnating.
So we tried the middle ground.
Everyone ended up with 2 actions, everyone has a pet project they believe in. And best of all i made the notes of everyone's commitments.

So i can name and shame any one who falls short and subtly edit my own promises if they are looking unlikely to be delivered.

i think that's called win-win.

RiotBalls

2011-08-09T07:05:00.000-07:00

The current riots are terrible and depressing and i am sure very scary if you are in the middle of it. But here are some other things that have depresed me about this topic.
1. my twitter stream being a little too full of some people almost getting excited and spreading rumours of troops marching down whitehall, bank of england being stormed, london landmarks ablaze etc. Some social media rubernecking definitely occurring.
2.Academics/socialists impossing their middle class motivations for the riots (its about the cuts, social inequality, Hacking, MPs expenses) onto a bunch of scumbags who want a new telly and to act like the big men they are not.
3. People criticising police for doing too much, doing too little, over physical, not physical enough. we get the police force we deserve and the downside in living in a society with human rights, innocent till guilty and habeas corpus is that they have an impossible job right now. Its a society problem (not police) and unless society backs them to use the force we see and are shocked about from foreign locations - then live with their apparent impotence.

Anyway back to digital recruitment....

Scammed by Charity - Let Down by Agency - Same Effect

2011-08-02T05:44:00.000-07:00

I took my daughter to some play group thing last week and got a visit from 2 guys doing a charity collection (treeofhope)- now i don't normally give unprompted to charity collectors for two reasons
1. I carry a cynical attitude that it will all go in overheads or its a dodgy charity area that should be covered by state etc
2. I am basically quite tight! (charity begins at home...)
However - due to everyone else there chipping in £5 i did same. And felt good about myself.
and then i read the leaflet
- it was full of words like "children", "Sick", "care" "generosity". But i could not work out what the hell they actually did.
- and then the killer - "34% of money collected will go to charity". Jesus - so £3.33 of any fiver goes to collectors etc.

This experience has obviously stopped any future impulsive donations stone dead.

So - what has that got to do with the agency world - well, i come across clients all the time who bought an "SEO solution", "facebook campaign" "behavioral targetting campaign" a year or two ago and received nothing that we in the industry would recognise as such under those headings.

They spent £xxxx on a social media launch - and got a facebook page, a couple of articles posted on their site and posted on an unloved twitter feed. In essence - they felt ripped off like me above.

net effect - they dont want to invest again and run risk of being let down again and it prob delays by 1.5 - 2 years properly adopting really effective ways to recruit/engage/commuincate with their audience.

What i really like about the stuff i see out there from suppliers now (the one's i admire anyway!) is sensible objectives, realistic estimations of level of commitmemt needed internally and budgets that enable good work but not out of whack with other priorities in client.

result - happy client, quality results, more investment, open to new ideas.

I did meet a nice woman in the street at lunchtime though who seemed very nice and i think she must have worked for Oxfam as she had a branded bib on and a direct debit is so easy to set up....

OME's Hospital Club

2011-07-19T04:27:00.000-07:00

We launched and run a networking event - OME Hospital Club. It was the brainchild of Kork (OME Client Services Director) and Gill Davies a former client. Its a LinkedIn group that meets once a quarter in the Hospital Club - hence the name.

I was initially worried that it would not take off - that people would get wrong idea that we were trying to be a kind of smaller version of The Firm but it has really flown.(with very little input from me!)

The rules are very simple
- attendees are in house recruiters but its not that tightly "policed" - we are a friendly bunch
- networking not selling (even from us)
- a small amount of content - but no presentations
- you can come and say Hi for 10 mins or be kicked out of the bar last (i will name no names)
- we get a sponsor (Monster and Creativepool so far) to network and inform the group of their offer. Both sponsors have been really well received by attendees.

Feedback has been tremendous and the 3rd event in september will we hope be the best yet and i guess what i am saying is the best things for your business can sometimes start with a 30 second conversation that is followed through and executed brilliantly. Dont wait for a genius inspirational idea to come calling.

BeKnown - 1st Thoughts

2011-06-26T05:49:00.000-07:00

So Monster have stepped into the fray into the much discussed social network solution for jobs by launching BeKnown loads of info in link and Matt has given his initial thoughts here.

Essentially - its introducing a LinkedIn type product to the Facebook audience (gross oversimplification i know)

So what do i think?
- the perfect solution does not (nor should it ever) exist to corral the platforms of social media into a neat job ad/app box. And i am sure Monster doesn't think its a panacea either.
- it's a pretty cool solution. Very easy to distribute, network, "follow" relevant companies, jobs, people.
- unsurprisingy but pleasingly they have put as much thought into how organisations may use it as opposed to just candidates. This obviously will help its commercial take up.
- There are many companies who want to "do" social and this may be a very easy way to dip toe in water.
- I hope Monster put a lot of money behind marketing it - as if they do and they get some momentum - this could be a massive game changer - could being the operative word as ever who really knows.

As for the business model - i will have to come back to you on that one!

Digital First - possibly Digital Only - papers and agencies

2011-06-23T06:03:00.000-07:00

Guardian made an announcement yesterday on "Digital First Strategy" which is kind of just a way of saying we are going lay off a lot of journalists (and sales, production etc) but we do have a plan. This is a bit of slap in the face of the counter intuitives who are proclaiming print to make a comeback any time soon.

Choices facing the large newspaper groups are

- either to radically reduce their cost base (and i mean RADICALLY reduce)- Guardian employ 630 journalists - the Huffington Post employs about 80

- or become playthings of very rich vanity publishers.

The similar choices for the traditional rec ad agency businesses are

- Radically reduce their cost base (many seem to have been pursuing this via multi stages for last 2 years)
- Reposition your business - WMW are largely employee comms/brand, Work and TMP are very much brand strategists to some degree
- Or go out of business as your lunch is eaten by the new models that have sprung up while they have been paralysed staring at the gaping holes in their revenue line

That is unless Roman Abramovich fancies buying up a couple of businesses in recruitment advertising to put on his mantelpiece.

Reasons to be Cheerful

2011-06-21T08:56:00.000-07:00

Surely - it's time to call the private sector recruitment downturn over and has been over for quite some time. Everywhere i look there is activity or worst case talk of activity. Even our clients that are having their share prices whacked are still active in sourcing the best people to work in their businesses. And then we have organisations (including some of above)who want to really kick on and do very cool stuff indeed or worst case very necessary remedial work on their recruitment processes/attraction strategy.

From a personal perspective - OME's Reasons to be Cheerful include
- new staff Jamie Bailey and Sarah Casey - come on down!
- new clients - welcome aboard! LIDL, TGI Friday's, London Business School, NPL (part of Serco), Northgate Arinso and Go Ahead.
- new products - launching under JV a business called R4O - which is a natural product extension to what we do - more detail to follow.

So i officially hereby declare (with apologies to my friends in public sector)- this period of caution and nervousness over.

NB Expect the normal pessimistic, bordering on miserable author of this blog to return next week.

I agree with Nick.....

2011-06-02T04:37:00.000-07:00

What is going on out there! Up until recently - i could go onto various blogs and forums on any day and find something i could completely disagree with - i could think the author was clearly a fool and a charlatan and consequently tell them just that in a funny (well to me anyway) and incisive way. There was so much abject nonsense out there, that it was like shooting fish in barrel. I am also well aware that there would have been some (clearly "fools and charlatans") that thought OME were 100% wrong on many issues too.

Now i keep finding well thought out balanced views supported by evidence or logic, and predictions with suitable ifs and buts rather than this is DEFINITELY going to happen.

So
- Is this a sign that this industry is growing up? established digital channels, adoption of the new in a controlled and measured way, progressive clients and suppliers on the same page. No established habits but a light and healthy cynicism of the new entrants to market, that means financial investment will come later.

- Have we become too consensual and staid, maybe a new establishment is forming ( i could get all Animal Farm on you here)

The one thing i know is that disagreeing and arguing was much, much more fun. Debating the value of spending £50K on Second Life, winning awards for YouTube Videos that no user ever saw, Big campaigns that had no decent response mechanism and not a thought for the user experience, and for my own part i remember saying that Twitter would never catch on.

Aaaaah, those were the days......

Love me not so tender

2011-05-17T00:59:00.000-07:00

Got an invitation to tender on Friday that the organisation were very keen for us to pitch for, well that's quite nice i thought. Until i read it.

I won't go into pros and cons of long woolly tender docs that don't appear to be constructed in any way to find the best supplier or even the best priced supplier as many of them request costs for services that are at best low priority and worst pretty damn irrelevant. To be fair - i quite enjoy a well written tender process that goes out to a finite,identified group of relevant companies run by people who know broadly what they want to get out of the process.

The thing that got this one put into the eternal pending file was that it was a 3 year contract that was going to be pay by results. That is a fine principle and one we benefit from normally. However Year 1 of contract would be about setting the benchmarks/targets and therefore the supplier should not expect to make any margin from Year 1 (translation - supplier would take a considerable hit in Year 1). The client would then set the targets for Year 2 based on Year 1, and targets for Year 3 based on Year 2.

In brief - what is wrong with the above
1. The logic is that it would serve supplier well to perform poorly in Year 1 and get soft targets. Kafkaesque in its silliness.
2. The client sets the targets (not client and supplier) - again logically why not keep ramping up targets - supplier cannot do anything about it. Maybe i should try that on the biz dev team at OME.
3. I have an inbuilt principle not to do loads of work for someone and not get paid until about 18 months later (in fact fund their activity out of our pockets) - what if company/organisation gets bought or goes bust, the economy tanks, government cutbacks, stuff gets outsourced etc etc. I feel that my frantically waving a performance led contract is not going to get noticed by anyone at this point.

So thanks for the invitation but i am washing my hair that night.

The Return of OME's Top Tips

2011-05-12T01:16:00.000-07:00

when we were a tiddly business about 3 or 4 years ago, we did 2 documents as a bit of marketing one called "10 biggest mistakes organisations make in digital recruitment" and the next one "10 things organisations should do today in.....". It was bite size tactics and tips written in a classic "no bull" OME way. This had 2 effects.
1. It was really popular - led to us winning business, starting conversations, forming partnerships that endure today.
2. It was massively ripped off. The most notable being a media (Centaur owned) who sent out a customer email "10 biggest mistakes organisations make in digital recruitment" with zero changes in text. and another ad agency - who had the temerity to change about 4 words and claim it as their own.

Anyway - over lunch Kork and I thought we should re-visit it and refresh it for 2011. so here goes OME top tips.

Its not a strategy, its not comprehensive, its not bespoke. But you know what - most heads of recruitment would benefit from doing quite a few of these.

We lost a client...

2011-04-19T11:47:00.000-07:00

a week or so ago - won't bore people with the details - but in brief - they are reorganising, centralising mktg function, still working with us in specialist digital areas blah, blah, blah

But i have to face facts..... it stings.

They don't love OME any more, hang on they don't love me anymore. What is wrong with me, i tried so hard. I should have cared more or i should have not been so clingy. Maybe if i said i would change they would come back.

Sad as it sounds - i went through all of the above (for about a day while sulking) till my wife (and my fellow directors) told me to man up and concentrate on fact that the business is 60% up year on year and we have just taken 3 new clients on. (can you see how i ever so non subtly turned an apparently negative and and painfully honest piece about bad news into a puff piece about how well OME is doing - sorry - i cant help it)

But it did get me thinking is my teenage attitude to winning and losing in business a problem or is the fact i take it all so bloody personally part of the success. I am sticking to the latter for the very good reason that i very much doubt i will change much now.

Computer Weekly closes and a personal memory

2011-03-29T02:56:00.000-07:00

So if i wrote a piece every time a former giant B2B print title closes - this would be a weekly update, but i can't let this one pass without mention. I started my career on its arch rival Computing magazine (and eventually became publisher). Both titles ran 100+pages of job ads every week - ratecard £10K a page - Yield about £5K. Lovely money!!

But please allow me a little personal reminiscence as the memories flood back.

The most important meeting of my career thus far was when i was publisher of Computing and was with European MD of VNU its owner - i had to present a 5 year plan (5 years!!!! who does that anymore) for the title. And had prepared 56 slide(56 slides, i know...) masterpiece full of research, plans, spin offs. Unfortunately Slide 5 was the projected recruitment ad revenue for next 5 years which resembled a ski jump without the little lift at the end. We never got to the other 51 slides. As i showed him that £20 million of revenue was not and could not be made up (i was not responsible for online). To paraphrase the Labour manifesto of 1983 , it was the longest career suicide note in history. My stratospheric rise in company suddenly halted and i think i resigned about 4 months later without a job to go to and joined 33, and a few years later set up UK's first digital ad agency.

I am not sure if you had told me then that CW print would close within 10 years - not even i would have believed you but this industry transformation seems to be getting faster and faster. And the thing is - it is so difficult for those inside the establishment media to see it or more importantly to react to it, its such a potentially horrible scenario that it leads to inertia with brief bouts of panic thrown in. And i think that point still applies to many media owners out there now.

print rec ad market to return......

2011-03-23T07:57:00.000-07:00

Someone mentioned that they firmly believed that the print classified (jobs,cars,homes) would return due to dissatisfaction with quality and quantity of response etc.
And then someone said so on twitter (my former golf buddy @alconcalcia) too
My first thought was they were joking but apparently not.
now the solution to quantity and quality response problems are

Clear employer/job offering and compelling reason to apply
Good copy - keywords / seo etc
Plan and buy the Relevant and best media
'attractive' advertising
Simple response mechanism
And great process/screening/resp mgmt

Now by definition these are broad topics that will differ and the solutions need to fit each client, but give me the above or let me create the above and your responss problems will disappear.

Now to use response as a reason to go back in time 5 years is to like reacting to some repairs that need doing to your car by ditching it and getting a horse instead.

To be fair it would mean i made a hell of an entrance when i arrived at my next meeting.

Service vs Growth - or Service and Growth

2011-03-15T07:32:00.000-07:00

Speaking at a conference tomorrow (Caterer/recruitment/social media) and organised a networking event last thursday www.omexperts.co.uk/events (a good friend of the biz Gill Davies really organised it but we sponsored it.)Now the problem is we meet lots of great people - many of whom are lovely enough to want to discuss digital/PPC/Social and what they can do/should be doing better.

However - we are a service led business - we have to deliver on our promises. So how do you prioritise new business??

Answer - its just growing pains i guess and a good problem to have but we have made a very clear decision to split new biz and delivery. what we won't do is compromise on our service standards as it has been in our DNA since Day 1 and if i am being mercenary about it - clients recommending us to friends, peers etc has been by far and away our best source of growth.

A disconnect with the real world

2011-02-24T11:16:00.000-08:00

So in the real world
- rumours of a double dip recession
- inflation getting to be a nasty problem
- 'savage' cuts happening that will further drive down consumer confidence
- retailers saying feb figures look grim

In the OME world
- wildly busy
- most agencies and media i respect also say they are doing great
- retail clients expanding
- even had some not very interesting enquiries about taking a stake in our biz

Where is the truth? I have not got a clue but i prefer the latter scenario.

Tribal Resourcing sold to TMP (UK)

2011-02-09T05:06:00.000-08:00

So sale of Tribal to TMP is clearly quite interesting. This is my very quick take on it.
1. sold for £1 - puts it in same cost bracket as the Evening Standard sale in 2009. Statement of the obvious but there is clearly something wrong with underlying profitability of a company that is given away, is it crippled by high costbase? declining markets? losing too much money? duff product? or more likely a combo on some or all of the above.
2. 2010 - £37000 profit on £39m turnover - is a 0.1% return. Ouch...One presumes that most of this turnover was media billings and such like so those figures are pretty horrible given that 2011 is going to be uglier in their markets (government/health)
3. My non insider view is that they are caught in perfect storm of reliance on public sector and still largely print revenues which are in cyclical and terminal decline respectively.
4. TMP (UK) taking it on - possibly most interesting thing. Their mgmt (and investors) must believe that they can convert the client base to digital, sell more product and retain in long term relationships. And economies of sale are obvious too. But, and i say this no relish, one would presume the cost cutting would be quick and deep to get things moving in right direction. Their must be some brand equity in the Tribal name and i have no idea how they intend to run the brands.

Anyway - i am sure we will get some statements from both parties in next few days - which will clarify the situation.

SMART 2011 / RAD Awards

2011-01-24T04:24:00.000-08:00

Thursday was a long day - i attended and spoke at the Smart 2011 conference - where i put extra stress on myself by deciding i would cover a new topic and also go for a workshop interactive session rather than more standard pres. Now the sad thing about speaking is i dont get as much as value from the other sessions (too busy selfishly thinking about my slot) but i really found the approach of conf refreshing. It was a world away from the uber bullshit world of social that existed in Q1 2010 - maybe it was the speakers (#mattallder #andyheadworth #steve_fogarty) but it was really grounded stuff - real world, practical advice etc.
would loved to have networked more but had the Dinner Jacket on for the RAD Awards in evening. Now this is the biggest awards in our world but our industry has changed so much - i always feel that this is an "old" industry event - still has awards for best local press advert etc. To be fair to them - they have made huge strides to make categories more modern and digital but i still feel like a bit of an outsider in the room - explaining to people/other agencies who we are and what we do - which is a bit odd 4.5 years in.
The brilliant bit of night was that our clients had 3 nominations (Pizza Express and YO! Sushi) and Pizza Express/Pink Squid won for www.pizzaexpressyourself.co.uk) - so congrats to all involved.

Friday was a quieter day....

Conference Speaking - Smart 2011

2011-01-10T03:45:00.000-08:00

Speaking at the www.smart2011.com conference next week. And via a complex set of circumstances - i am covering a slightly different topic from my initial brief. My session title is "impact of social media on recruitment value chain". After my initial thought of blimey - i am going to actually do some proper work to organise all my thoughts/experience/analysis into something coherent (he hopes....) i am quite excited. Why?

- I am a bit bored with the "building blocks to a social media rec strategy" which i have been updating and delvering in 2011. Its good stuff but the Do's and Don'ts may be quite simple for what i think looks a more experienced audience.

- I actually think the topic is very interesting (see below for why)

In last 5 years i have spoken at quite a few conferences/seminars etc and the breakthrough for me was to stop trying to cover everything, don't think it has to be perfect, don't worry about people disgareeing with you and dont watch other speakers and panic that they are nicking all your good stuff! When i am in the audience all i want is not to get sold to (very dull) and to hear a few things that are interesting. I don't want comprehensive - i want to be stimulated or even better provoked.

So for me when i look at this conference - there are some great people like @mattalder @billboorman @andyheadworth who know their stuff and will give great overviews of industry trends and great tools and techniques. And they will do this better than me, So what do i bring???

Well (excuse the immodesty) OME work with some of the UK's biggest recruiters, who have grasped the digital nettle and now want to have same success with social. However like most organisations - budget for innovation is limited and the precious time of the recruitment team is extremely short. So our views have to be based on the practical nature of implementing social programmes and how to avoid wrong turns. All of our clients want/demand that we save time and money and increase quality. And what does "save money and increase quality" typically mean

- reduce reliance on rec cons

- reduce candidate attraction costs from direct sourcing

- find new channels for candidates

- have more relevant response/less irrelevant response

- beat the competition

and all those points above have SEISMIC impact on the Recruitment Value Chain!!

Re-appraising Facebook for our clients

2010-11-25T05:14:00.000-08:00

My relationship with FB as a corporate recruiting tool is a complex one (and all stuff below is a gross over simplification but its a blog post so why not)

1. We use it increasingly for PPC campaigns - very efficient/highly targeted for a certain demographic
2. We have set up with caution - Company Pages. the caution is an area i have covered many times previously. But all the classic caveats - fitting corp culture, unregulated content, a place for social interaction not biz etc
3. Therefore - our general advice is tread with care - and invest first in LI and Twitter and industry related networks/forums/blogs

But......

i know one should not be too dogmatic and permanent in any view in digital (i have been and will continue to be wrong on many issues) but i can't help that what became a 2009 view - has almost became a mantra and that is bad.

I keep up to date and know what is going on (particularly in US) and am aware that many companies use FB as their go to place for landing pages for marketing campaigns and indeed permanent sites for talking about product/with their customers etc. However it was only when i was in US a couple of weeks ago that i saw juts how much US corporate big brand marketing is centred around and through FB. If they are happy to engage then why not UK recruitment brands??

So once again - in this hugely exciting ever changing industry - its time to dump my preconceptions/assumptions in the bin and think again - i would not want it any other way.............................

i think

OME NEWS

2010-11-19T04:30:00.000-08:00

Mildly exciting times for OME - so here goes with recent developments

1. New recruit starts next week - an account manager called Lissa Cardwell - we really need to add some extra account management to support the growing client list (all the current ones seem to be staying for 2011 too - he says touching wood). Is it good or bad to be out on media and client lunches and bashes in 1st 2 weeks in a company? Lets hope she comes back after Xmas
2. New clients include Lebara Mobile, Druines, TGI Fridays, BrowHaus
3. Hugely exciting stuff going on at Carphone Warehouse which i cant talk about at mo
4. On a personal level - i seem to be spending 80% of my time rolling out LinkedIn groups, Social Media pilots, candidate process mapping - media, careers site, ATS, reporting. I sort of miss doing a more trad digital media plan. I still do quite a lot of buying but that's because its the most fun bit of my job so don't want to let it go.
5. The year will end up being about +45% on 2009 - would love to make it 50% up so still some time....
6. We have bought a new agency mgmt system (Concept), engaged a new firm of accountants and just ordered new PCs for everyone - spending money hurts but these are "good" costs and will help us grow over next 2 years.

So all positive - which is great as Sumners child No4 arrives in March!

Times Paywall Update

2010-11-02T05:27:00.000-07:00

Update on stats from Times here, essentially they have 105,000 paying customers and may generate about £5.5million from that number, a lot of progress needs to be made to make it a success and you can read those figs as very grim but as in previous post lets see if they can get some growth into those numbers. At moment they are hurting financially from decision - and the ramifications are potentially long term/permanent but the potential prize is huge too.

In Praise of the Times Paywall...

2010-10-28T05:29:00.000-07:00

So a heading i was not expecting to write but i saw an interesting tweet from a very clever media observer analyst who i used to work (Peter Kirwan)with Latest Nielsen stats of the decline in the Times readership since paywall went up. Now a few caveats before i give some praise - the stats are not very robust, essentially estimates in many cases, we have no idea how many free trials, promotional access etc are included in numbers and have no real comprehension of revenue therefore derived. And critically as a significant recruitment advertiser on times/sundaytimes online - we have seen response absolutely hammered and have therefore moved spend towards competitors. The recruitment part of this was not so much mismanaged as not even taken into consideration and NI probably are still not that bothered by this.

Anyway....this was supposed to be blog to praise, so here goes

1. I thought the figs would be much much worse. only 43% decline to front page views, total of 362,000 uniques per month. My ~~gut~~ detailed analysis told me that nobody would register, let alone pay for content that was pretty much freely available elsewhere (BBC, Guardian, Telegraph).
2. If a decent proportion of this number were paying even £1 or £2 a week - it makes it revenue positive i would think compared to ad revenue - CPM rates are showing no sign of inflation at present and CTRs remain low.
3. I firmly believe that users cannot expect this stuff for free in future - i love free content, and consume it and never pay for anything but the business model of providing a high quality product, investing heavily and giving it away free, relying on ad revenue does not have any commercial future. So lets applaud attempt at a different business model rather than slam it for impertinence.
4. Anecdotally - i now buy the print Times semi regularly (2-3 times a week) as i cannot access the content elsewhere. I am now an officially ex Guardian/Telegraph reader, as i can view their content via Ipad, laptop, desktop which is me pretty much covered.

So in summary - it will be fascinating to see more robust stats and to see what will happen and what competitors will also do but i can assure you that if they do make a success of it - everyone will be very quickly changing their tune and you will see paywalls flying up everywhere (should insert pun on wall building here but cant bring myself to crow bar it in!)

A Lesson in Parking Your Prejudices

2010-10-13T07:40:00.000-07:00

I should be blogging about fish4 take over by Trinity but i can't think of anything much interesting to say. I truly hope that they manage to resurrect a painfully neglected brand but think that it will be a very tough job.

Instead - i wanted to highlight something else - as a SME business owner - i have come to accept almost as truth that the public sector is unmotivated, inefficient, lazy and much too big. I know that's not really the case but with the cuts coming - it has become almost a mantra that jobs, services, departments need to be closed for the greater good and it will be strong medicine but etc etc...
So private sector good - public sector bad - all day every day at moment.
And then you have personal experience which turns the abstract into the concrete.
My mother is quite old and not very well at all and she has been going from hospital to home and back again for last few years - my brother and I (Top Tip - if you want to be well looked after in your old age - have daughters not useless sons) reached a point when we had to make a decision about what to do on permanent basis yesterday.
The meet up was organised by Kelly Hierons who is an SDS for Essex CC(essentially looking after the social care element) and attended by Melissa who was looking after the health element of the equation for the Health Authority, the two of us, my mum and her best friend. All i can say is - Melissa and Kelly were brilliant - they were so focused on getting things right for my mother and were endlessly patient, caring, helpful and efficient. They were clearly hugely motivated by the desire to help people in very distressing circumstances in what must be a hugely difficult job. Needless to say - i felt i would have lasted about 2 days trying to do a job like that.

Anyway - the welfare state, NHS, Education system are such easy things to criticise them until you really need them when suddenly you become extremely grateful this apparatus exists - and i will try to remember that in the future when moaning about taxes, council tax etc.

And now for some good news - OME Sep 2010

2010-10-04T08:22:00.000-07:00

Sep 2010 was OME's best ever month in terms of billings (we are up about 45% year on year so far in 2010) - not sure if this is of much interest or relevance to anyone else - but its my blog so if you cant be a bit full of yourself on your own blog then when can you?
Interestingly - though social media and PPC show greatest growth (mainly fee led) - our spend on jobboards is showing a large increase.
This is why we have to remember in this industry (digital recruitment) not to get too ahead of the curve - the value is in many cases - doing the established, trusted digital executions well - while low cost piloting the more cool interesting things. Take your clients with you - show them what digital can do for them - and don't burn a lot of their money on stuff where you will be learning as much as them.
I probably say that too many times and i am beginning to bore even myself.

Lessons of Digital Recruitment History

2010-09-24T03:50:00.000-07:00

Nice simple blog post - it does not need much space but has benefit of being 100% true.
It is this - every single objection i hear about social recruiting/social media recruiting
- not proven
- overhyped
- does not work
- only works for tech/geeks/young people
- no case studies
- USA different to Europe
- dont trust the metrics
- can't make any money from it (this is a supplier issue)

Are exactly word for word the objections - people made about job boards and PPC by print publishers or conservative clients.

and we all know how that one turned out.

OME's Social Media Recruitment Advice in as few words as possible

2010-09-06T02:17:00.000-07:00

OK - going to try and summarise as concisely as possible - our current advice to recruiters (Sep 2010) on this topic. Please be aware that this by definition is huge oversimplification and generalisation but i wanted to see if i could do it.

Answer question - why are you doing it?
Do it - engage - don't come up with reason to delay - do something now
Its more about time than money
Don't outsource too much to people like us - much needs to come from within
But let an expert guide you, kick you off, assist where there are gaps
Appoint internal social media champion/s and give them external/internal support
Measure but accept measurement tools are not perfect
Don't try and do everything. Possible priority list may be LinkedIn, Twitter and micro/niche blogs, specialist forums etc.
Launch, engage, measure, enhance, review.....

Final Notes

we have stopped including Facebook ads in this area, targeted cheap effective advertising fits in snugly next to all other forms of SEM and depending on your recruiting needs - if you are not taking advantage of this source - you are missing out.
there is the massive issue of content strategy which i have studiously ignored above - it is very bespoke to each organisation - and requires more space than this list can provide
please place any fat proposal asking for £50-70K for social media strategy roll out in the bin - you will be very disappointed

Sales Presentations - my recent bad experiences

2010-08-31T03:12:00.000-07:00

Have received a few of these recently which it is fair to say - did not go well. I will try and group the major failings to avoid highlighting any individuals but i am always amazed that these errors still occur in 2010.
1. Sales person talking too much. Admittedly i have a short attention span but this is sooooo dull. It is not about showing off how much you know and sticking crowbarred benefits on everything. Its 2 way dialogue, exchanging info etc.
2. No real objective to meeting. equally dull as it just meanders along to no point. Is objective to close deal, get brief, update on new product. One meeting just petered out where we had all just drifted off and were all probably thinking out what we would be having for dinner.
3. Disagreeing with everything the client said. This was a one off and went spectacularly badly. The sales person just disagreed with everything client and consequently i said. Now putting aside the rights and wrongs of points made. When we have been told you are wrong for about the 4th time - your back gets up and you stop listening.
4. Going on too long. I think you should try and get 3 to 4 points across tops and ensure they are understood and then don't overstay your welcome. I think the impact gets lost otherwise.

I need to say at this point that clearly all the meetings i do are snappy, relevant and beautifully delivered......

How to Price OME's Social Media Work?

2010-08-05T04:52:00.000-07:00

Recruitment and social media - a thorny subject - occupying a lot of OME time (not all of the team but growing for all of us). Not the place for a debate about whole topic here - let's make following assumptions for this piece

1. social media is very important now - even more so in future

2. most content should come from within an organisation - not be sourced from external supplier

3. it is NOT a short term response fix - its a long/medium term engagemenmt strategy (some exceptions to this rule)

So the OME approach can be roughly described as (not necessarily in right order)

* Agree Objective

* setting programmes up

* beginning to engage

* decide on policy for Big 3 Social Media (FB LI and Twitter)

* identify niche sites/forums/blogs

* agree ownership internally

* agree what is outsourced

* set up measurement metrics/objectives

* execute policy

* Monitor review and enhance

But we struggle to structure our rates for this correctly i think - the amount of work we do does not in any way correlate with fees. So what do we do?

1. Charge a very big day rate or proj mgmt fees? - make hay while the demand is huge

2. Treat as loss leader? Do such a brill job that we will be engaged for ever more

3. Hide fees in inflated media or content costs? Not the OME way but stuff i see in proposals

4. Bespoke every proposal - based on indvidual client profile - size of opportunity etc. Again not really us - as it means you are sizing up client on what they can afford - not what they need although quite a typical market approach i am sure.

I think our approach has drifted towards Option 2 and it makes sense as it does mirror how we have grown our business - show what we can do - then people are happy to pay higher rates due to value received. But it also means we are underselling ourselves and potentially giving away the quality work for not a lot.

So in summary - probably stay largely in Option 2 - but the rates are going up!

Future for Job Boards - possibly...

2010-07-16T02:12:00.000-07:00

This post is prompted by a really interesting (to me!) debate started on Matt Alder's blog here about whether Job Boards will die off in same way as print classified advertising is. My thoughts on this are as follows
1. All media need to innovate and improve their product - better search, better user experience etc. If products don't do this - they will be thrashed by the competitors forget about any seismic marketplace changes.
2. Job Boards do 2 main things - connect employers/recruiters to candidates (and vice versa) and provide a searchable CV database.
3. The CV database model is fragile i think - via LinkedIn and other methods of online profiling (which social may/is developing at at a pace. Job Boards don't add any value in its CV database (there are good and bad search tools i know) and this product has been ruthlessly exploited by rec cons and not touched by direct clients. Like a plague of locusts - the rec cons having stripped a database of its ripe fruit will move on to the next host (LinkedIn. industry forums etc) .
4. But the core ad model is a beautifully efficient way of connecting recruiters to candidates. In 10 seconds from mobile device or PC - a user can get the top 10 most relevant current jobs delivered to their screen. He/she can respond via email in about 30 seconds and be back on Facebook. I am not ignoring the approx 5 issues about process above (bad search, too easy to apply, lack of quality in jobs, lack of quality in applications. But as a method of getting consumer to provider - it is staggeringly efficient. and efficiency and speed work online.
5. Now the thing that (many) job boards have never cracked is the browser, the passive candidate (the semi mythical quality candidate who you can access via beautiful high impact branding placed where that user consumes media). I fundamentally believe this is the huge gargantuan opportunity that a lot of our social media work can begin to deliver on. And being as the job boards have been rubbish at this historically not sure they will miss out too much.

The above is oversimplistic and all your advertising, engagement and employer brand impacts on each other but if you want to recruit and you put up great web/search friendly content in the right place with a super efficient response mechanism -the job boards (and PPC) will continue to deliver for you in coming years.

NB with proviso that someone somewhere is coming up with something so brilliant that any long term prediction can make fools of us all!

Times/SundayTimes and Rec Advertising

2010-07-05T13:43:00.000-07:00

OK - the paywall went up this week which means we now have to pay to access the editorial content here. Now i am slightly conflicted in that i want to support innovation and new business models (OME, in its way, has completely re-written what a successful rec ad agency might look like) but.....
Our job is to plan and buy the best media for our clients and the redesign and re-launch of their sites have the following issues.
1. If you have to register (lets forget paying for time being) - many people won't bother - speaking personally i wouldn't bother unless there is information data and content that is not available elsewhere. Does the times site have this? i really don't know. Therefore traffic is and will be down - this is fact not conjecture. Therefore response is and will be down - fact not conjecture.
2. At same time - the times and Sunday Times have split sites. Now for last 10 years - users have been going to timesonline to access jobs and adverts for senior executives. Now - no rec con can advertise on Timesonline and no job above £40K salary. So the user goes to where the relevant jobs have been for 10 years - searches and gets zero ads returned. Result - the user goes elsewhere...
3. The damage here would be lessened if there was proper signposting of where users (indeed recruiters) should go next - instead its a maze and requires a lot of dead ends and clicks to try and find what you need. Not a shock to anyone but the digital user is a lazy person who wants instant gratification not to have to think about where should i go next?
4. If you are gong to make this sort of change - you had better have a big marketing budget to persuade people - i have yet to see this.

So all this is without looking further at damage of a paywall - my overall thought is - i love the Times/SundayTimes as a media. i really like the people we deal with but this appears to have been done without putting the recruitment advertiser or candidate anywhere near their thoughts. And the really silly thing is - i reckon you can solve some of the issues above in a day but will they do so before real damage is done??

Marker Post to end of B2B Print Media

2010-06-17T23:43:00.000-07:00

It did not warrant much comment and i only noticed it this morning but Personnel Today's print edition is no more -it was a rock solid big margin product for most of its 22 years existence and now its gone. Not much of a prediction but next 6-9 months will see it joined by a host of other B2B print products. Much sympathy if people have lost jobs but an inevitability.
I also see that Trinity Mirror's(national and regional newspaper publisher and owner of some "interesting" digital acquisitions) Sly Bailey has announced 25% reduction in journalist jobs, 41% plunge in profits. I would not wish to be personal but this is from a person who said decline in print classified revenue was cyclical and would return - still good to see that at the same time she has awarded herself a performance related pay rise of £676,000. Nice work if you can get it.

Motivation and the Business Owner

2010-06-02T04:26:00.000-07:00

A rare moment of self analysis and honesty - we set up OME 4 years ago and we are doing very well at the moment but....
1. My own personal motivation is not quite what it has been - it just does not feel very exciting at the moment
2. We weathered storm of 2009 and did fine and have come out of it very healthily - so also lack the best motivator of them all - sheer terror that you will lose everything and the shame of failure (always found this to be my chief driver!)
3. We have a team in place who can do all the things i do but actually are better at doing what they promise to do - so don't feel the whole thing would fall down without me. In fact can absolutely say the whole thing wont fall down without me
4. Plenty of medium/long term things i should be doing but due to factors above - cant quite get round to doing them - this is chiefly around topic of business strategy and potential investment

Now apologies for navel gazing - and i know i will snap out of it soon and this is not exactly a major problem but as Arsene Wenger once said (probably) " who motivates the motivators"

Unintended Revenue Streams

2010-05-14T04:57:00.000-07:00

I was reviewing 2010 figures this week and we seemed to have made done a lot of work in LinkedIn Consultancy this year so far. I am of course aware that we are out there helping our clients use the power of Linkedin but had not comprehended how much of a rev stream it had become. and you know what - i am actually a little uncomfortable with some of the work we have doen/are doing. I am not getting all precious about it - its just that our most popular service in this area is helping recruiters upload their profiles effectively, populate it well and show them how to network, join/set up forums and search for users.
Now the fact is much of this is freely available ( even we do downloadable 1 pagers on it) and ultimately - some of the work becomes sitting with someone while they upload their CV - which i am not sure ever appeared in the OME business plan.
Anyway i will shut up now and find some other new and welcome revenue streams

seminars and debates

2010-04-30T02:48:00.000-07:00

Ran the latest breakfast briefings this week and its amazing how far they/we/industry has come in last 2 years since we started these. As ever - i stated the fact that we love job boards - great ROI - good execution will get excellent results but the reality is there is very little interesting to present on the topic at moment (so covered it in 30 seconds). I maybe also try and keep it fresh for myself too and dont like presenting the same old stuff. Its more of a compliment i think to the sector - everyone gets it now.

I also retired a slide that i originally ripped off tim and alastair ex of Enhance which maps IAB/PwC market value of digital vs national press/trade press/business pres. The West has been won - digital is dominant - its now about how best to exploit a complex ever changing sector.

Feedback and dialogue were at a really high level during and partic after event - and it was a pleasure to run.

Tenuous link to last night leaders'debate - but we try not to patronise and talk to audience like a 10 year old as the politicians are advised. I am not going to get involved in political views (did have a bit of a twitter exchange last night though) but the biggest thing it reconfirmed to me is that there is no absolute truth - just individual perspective. I watched it and was fairly convinced by who came out well and who did really badly. I find the opposite reported on TV and newspapers. Are they right or me? did i just convince myself as i wanted a certain output that this view was the most compelling argument.

April 2010 - Nobody has a clue

2010-04-13T23:52:00.000-07:00

Met with two ex colleagues this week and both have started (or about to start) new ventures -
Ex boss 1 - was in a corporate "trad" publisher charged with maintaining some print revenues and cutting costs and turning round some distressed web sites.
Ex employee 2 - is in a 2nd year start up which had such a complex (game changing) offering that i still don't really get it after it being explained to me twice.
Now normally i would form a very quick view on the prospects of these ventures but i had the humbling realisation that we are again at such a massive turning (tipping!!) point in our industry, economy, society that i have no idea which of these or both or neither has greater chance of success.
Think i should keep my eyes on the OME shop - and let others fight their own battles

Running a Rec Ad Biz - Part 2

2010-03-15T09:46:00.000-07:00

I wrote the last post when buzzing one morning - this one is at 5pm on a slowish Monday - i wonder if this will affect my tone
Its my attempt to summarise how we do it here at OME (as we near 4th anniversary) and is as near a personal statement (can't bear to insert the word mission in here) as i am ever likely to come up with
- pay your bills - i once worked for a company who paid everyone late or not at all if they could help it. It was horrible when you make a creative wait 90 days for his money or having to persuade media to take your booking as you promised "cheque was in post" etc. We wanted to have a good rep and good media and supplier relationships from Day 1 - i think we achieved that
- if someone seems like a bullshit artist - they absolutely are going to be a bullshit artist. This applies to suppliers (and clients!) but most particularly any staff or business development outsourcing you want to do. You and your senior team are the best people to sell and market your business
- If you can avoid it - don't do tenders (this is may not be good advice). They may be written by people who don't understand the questions they are asking - who if they are looking at costs and commission - are asking completely the wrong questions in a digital recruitment world. So why put yourself through it. Having said that - i just did a well written tender last week that we were invited on (small shortlist etc) and managed not to win that either - so it may just be us!
- Be good to people and stay in touch if they are out of work etc. Two reasons - 1. they will appreciate what you have done and may help you in future and 2. BECAUSE ITS THE RIGHT THING TO DO!
- and finally - keep your confidence up - many people will question your business model, you as individuals, your name/logo/offices etc. People are bitchy - its just life. Don't second guess yourself - and if your confidence is down - just fake it - it will be OK

Launching and Running an Ad Business - Part 1

2010-03-09T04:04:00.000-08:00

As we steam towards OME's 4th anniversary (May 2010) i thought i would jot down my thoughts on the lessons i have learned along the way.
NB this mail is written in warm glow of a good first quarter and a certainty that we have survived the recession and are in a position to flourish so more positive than i sometimes feel. But we have made and continue to make plenty of mistakes - so this is not - "how clever am I" - its more "have a look at some of the pitfalls and also things that went well"

1. Pick your Partner/key personnel carefully

Most people go into business with a partner for lots of different reason but primarily as it can be pretty lonely, scary and occasionally miserable when you start out. I admire those who go completely alone - but know that i could not possibly have done it. It is a form of marriage and the same fault lines will appear as in any close personal relationship. The same things you initially liked about them - may well be the things that make you want to smash their face in after a few years (its an analogy - not a real example...i think). I should take this opportunity to thank my business partner Mr Sean Paterson - who is better than me at most things but quieter about it. We have sort of complimentary skills which is cool but essentially i trust him completely which is good as he looks after the money (that decision took about 5 seconds)

2. Get your idea and execute it violently

Inspiration probably won't come - you won't come up with such an amazing idea that will have people flocking to your door.(if you do come up with something new - it will be copied by 5 people very very quickly). So just work out what your product/service is - check that some people may want to buy it - and then just do it. talk any one and everyone through what you do - once you have done that - find more people or same people again and repeat the sales pitch. Try to never stop doing this.

3. Be brilliant at what you do (or at least try very hard to be)

Your best source of business will be recommendation - so don't be a bullshit artist who does all the above in point 2 and then fails to deliver. It will kill you stone dead. People bought into us in first 2 years as they believed as a small business we would work hard for them and they believed in us as individuals that we knew our stuff and would apply our expertise to help them. I believe we repaid that in spades.

4. Core Business or Diversification

I fundamentally believe that you need to be focused on your core business - but my advice is to be flexible about the definition of that core business. I would say in Years 1 and 2 - we were digital media agency and now we are a digital recruitment business. Not a quantum leap - merely a natural evolution.

5. Focus on stuff that clients will actually pay for

this is very much linked to digital recruitment media world - there have always been fascinating developments in the last 4 years and it has always been possible to have 2.5 hour conversations with clients and suppliers about them but ultimately most of the proposals which resulted were never and would never get signed off. Social engagement stuff in 2008 did not get signed off, Myspace + Secondlife proposals never got off the flip chart.
If your business model depends on the cutting edge make sure your pricing model reflects the time put in. Or concentrate your efforts on things that can and will deliver quantifiable results/business.

6. Take time off - don't work too many weekends - be nice to your family

Launching and running a biz is incredibly important but its also not as important as life. You probably went alone to free yourself from being in the grip of the corporate world - shite bosses etc - and hopefully earning better ££. Don't just recreate that corp world in your own business and if the work is taking all your free time too - you are either doing it wrong or pricing it wrong. Go and do something else.

Anyway - Part 2 to follow soon - would love to have any comments on any of this

Events/TRU/Seminars

2010-02-16T01:48:00.000-08:00

Sadly i am not going to make it to theRecruitment Unconference this week which will heavily focus on social media and recruitment and latest trends and predictions for what is happening in digital recruitment world. I am sure it will be a great event (many of the top people in our industry are contributing) and i wish them best of luck. I have a very good excuse in that i am getting married on Friday but it has got me thinking about events and what i bust a gut to attend as opposed to attend if i can.
My "rules" are as follows
1. "Its about clients, stupid" - our business is funded by clients - i attend events where i can meet new and old ones and hopefully make some connections that can turn into future business. Many events are supplier led where i am the client - which though nice to be popular - don't offer me valuable new contacts as our supplier relationships are generally very strong already.
2. "preaching to the choir" - connected to above. I am part of the vanguard of the recruitment digital community and it is populated by charming funny interesting people however though i find it enjoyable mapping the future of our industry at a seminar or over a beer - it does not necessarily pay the bills. and i find myself disappearing up my own backside as i extol my latest thoughts on any and everything.
3. I love OME events. Funnily enough as we organise our own breakfast seminars (2010 programme coming soon - new media partner recruited) - i occasionally have an insanely petty jealousy about other people's events and quality of info provided. I am aware this says certain things about me - most of which are not positive. It has a parallel to my eldest daughter wanting her birthday party to be best - only she (at 8) is a little more mature than me in her attitude.
4. "What about now" - some of these events (by their nature) get too caught up in the future and therefore little practical application now - or next 2 years. In digital - "the next 2 years" is an awfully long time. Our success as a business has been based around PRACTICAL application of digital techniques - combining innovation with effectiveness and probably erring on latter. Most senior HR people want to be at forefront of the latest effective techniques - virtually all don't want to be the first to do it though.

Anyway - this is not a negative slant on attending events (i think) - whenever i do attend - i meet great people and always pick up a few morsels of food for thought. It just explains why i have attended a lot less in the last year.
PS can someone send me the notes from the sessions?

Jan 2010 - an OME picture

2010-02-05T04:48:00.001-08:00

OK - some messages from the frontline - lets turn this around by starting with the

Lowlights

We lost a client through a procurement process (pettiness prevents me from naming them). I can bitch that the competitors offered free artwork and design, that i suspect it was a bit of a stitch up based on previous relationship etc but it still stings. And i think they will soon realise what they are missing or in other words... we will never hear from them ever again.
OME website still not done (all our fault) i could claim business with client accounts but still not good enough
I seem to have a had more petty spats with media suppliers than is desirable - i feel this sort of conflict could be easily avoided if suppliers just simply agreed to what i want them to do immediately without comment. I did actually apologise twice in January which is twice more than i can remember in 2009.

Highlights

Phenomenal month for revenue - 100%+ year on year.
This was based on the beautiful combo of more from existing clients and new clients kicking in (welcome Cote Restaurants, PGC, Decision Resources and a major new retailer - Sean always wants to keep things secret!)
Bethan Tresize our new account manager (started October) is brilliant - she is organised and intelligent and has got into the OME ways remarkably quickly
Working on new products/projects - making some small revenue from Twitter, some great, cool careers site work, and bizarrely a burgeoning print media business
The whole busy vibe of the office, our clients and media - meant that i have not enjoyed my work as much in ages (point 1 may have influenced my happiness levels)

so on basis of 5 highs versus 3 lows - high points win easily

In and Out of Love with Twitter

2010-01-25T05:41:00.001-08:00

2009 saw me as an absolute Twitter evangelist - really enjoying the interaction, connectivity and wealth of useful and useless but interesting info that was out there. The last few months have seen a change in my professional and personal views (i don't pretend here to be giving an industry view - its just my personal feelings and how i use it.)

Professional - why i love it

1. I have a network of people who are not friends(a few are) but people i know and the info we share can be really useful and impossible to get without scouring sites and conducting arduous email conversations.
2. I think its going to be the big thing in recruitment communications - i just know it will (is) work really well - and create a genuine conversation between employer/recruiter without the pitfalls of a site like Facebook
3. We are seeing really nice experimentation - trial and error - low cost pilots. That shows nobody has got it 100% right yet but there will be a good set of data to make some improvements next quarter
4. It really does cost almost nothing - but does require application and thought - the best sort of combination. These digital new things that cost a lot and deliver little are very passe in 2010.

Personal - why i don't love it
1. The chatter has become rather tiresome - the "journey into work" problems interest very few
2. Clearly everyone i follow has a more interesting life than me - their saturday night consists of theatre/abseiling/art galleries/truffle hunting - mine consists of being too tired to switch over from All Star Mr and Mrs
3. Their relationships are great too and their children perfect....(just like mine, he says quickly)

In summary - the personal stuff is all a little self publicist oriented (and yes i know this as i am self publicist extraordinaire)

But the professional side is going to be fascinating and brilliant

Anyway - have to go as need to book my table at The Ivy on saturday night with Brangelina, Michael Jackson and Elvis.

In Praise of MonsoonCareers

2010-01-11T05:33:00.000-08:00

I really like how Monsoon Accessorize are running their Twitter recruitment account (let me declare an interest - we work with them on some media stuff - but not this). It feels exactly what a company should be doing at the moment (given budget restrictions)
- posts jobs - but not just bare text
- it has a tone of voice which reflects company and rec team
- it is up to date and busy
- its not trying to blast in and get 1000 irrelevant users - it seems they are happy to organically grow it and let it take (a directed) life of its own

anyway - enough of being positive - i will find something to criticise now

In Briefs

2009-11-30T08:35:00.000-08:00

1. Louise is running UK rec blog of the year again (i was shortlisted last year) so vote here. When i look at the blogs - i thought that Digital Recruiting should have won last year but this year (the DigRec Collective have lost a bit of blogging motivation) i think that Peter Gold's blog is the one i find most interesting and relevant stuff on.
2. Had a very important re-tender last week which went successfully. Although - we were up against an individual and an organisation that i massively respect so my natural pessimism was partly preparing me for the worst. It has made me think that we have to a) keep innovating and progressing and b) keep the very high customer service/satisfaction levels in order to retain our competitive advantage. I think its fair to say the competition is coming - the bad news for them is that we will make sure we have moved it on again next year.
3. Have decided to have a massive blow out for company xmas do - everyone has worked so hard this year in difficult circumstances - we are going to Arbutus for lunch on Dec 10th and then onwards and upwards from there. There will be talk of going to a club and being out till 3 am - although i expect i will be a broken man and in a cab by 10.30.
4. Our most satisfied customer at moment is MinistryofWaxing - who have been quoted in Mail and interviewed on radio today related to Simon Cowell waxing story. The media found their details via our rather super SEM campaign. Have booked myself in for a pre-wedding treatment - probably not the Boyzilian though.
5. Presenting award tomorrow at IPAC awards - its a gentle re-entry into what was a large revenue stream of ours - where we advised media owners on their digital classified products (mainly launches such as key103jobs, supplychainonline etc). Its at Vinopolis - so have a feeling it might get messy - but then its December tomorrow isn't it....

Making Money out of Digital Recruitment

2009-11-18T04:52:00.000-08:00

Its been a month of meetings, proposals and tendering. If i looked at the money in as opposed to effort out - it probably does not tally but we have added 2 new clients (welcome PGC and Dixons) and it feels better out there even if feelings don't pay the bills. Overall we are still up year on year so the team deserve a very nice blow out for the Xmas bash this year. But 4-5 more good weeks to go before any let up.
Anyway - in this process of meetings i have been able to see many other proposals from other agencies both traditional recruitment and digital specialists (non recruitment) and some interesting ways of making money seem to get slipped in to the deals. Most common listed below.
1. Campaign Management - these costs generally are far too high - either the agency is getting a bad deal from a 3rd party or they are trying to make the margin here. Reporting is incredibly important and a key part of any campaign we run but the costs need to be proportionate - i don't think there is any justification for 20% of media bills for this service - discuss....
2. Appalling media buying - again 2 possible reasons a)cant negotiate with media or more likely b) marking it up massively. Now in the interests of full disclosure - when we have achieved huge discount on certain deals i am sure on certain occasions we have kept part of it (with agreement from client) but its silly when you are trying to charge a big Monster 12 month deal out at 10% discount for instance.
3. Production charges. You absolutely need to charge a rate for work you do - but its silly to charge occasionally v high prices for 30 seconds work.

Interestingly - what i don't tend to see is proper charging out for the expertise involved in planning buying managing a digital campaign - that is the real value but the industry still seems shy to price accordingly.

OME News

2009-10-21T03:58:00.000-07:00

So we are expanding!

As of Monday our newest member of staff Bethan Trezise joined. She is ex Golley Slater and will be a great asset to the team - by accident rather than design we had become rather male oriented so i also hope she may bring a more civilised air to the office too!

We have added new clients in form of Ping Pong, Cote Restaurants (i can't work out how you put a circumflex over the o) and DSGi too in last month so this post catches me in a happy mood.

Also delivered a breakfast seminar on social media and recruitment (is there any other seminar topic at moment) to 5o retail HR managers recently which seems to have gone down really well and has generated some very exciting enquiries)

But the last 10 weeks of year are absolutely crucial in us having a good year compared to just an OK one. So one more big push for us all (we have pitches/re-tenders/large proposals aplenty - not all necessarily good things to be doing) and we can put this "interesting" year to bed.

Dodgy Online Stats Part 73

2009-10-02T05:51:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, they revised the statistic to 4% down year on year - a miscalculation apparently...

Dodgy Online Stats Part 72

2009-10-01T02:49:00.000-07:00

Everyone in our industry has rightly been getting very excited about recent IAB/PwC market stats . The most exciting top line figure being Internet has overtaken TV as biggest single ad sector.
However less trumpeted but possibly more remarkable is the following
"Online classified advertising grew by 10.6% year on year to £385m" - this figure relates to H1 2009 (vs H1 2008)
I just don't believe that stat.
Lets assume online classifieds consist of listings (banners/MPUs etc are counted as display) for
Jobs, cars, homes, travel
Which of these sectors was up year on year in 2009?
Most media owner MDs i speak to say that they are down +20% year on year (and i think that is a decent performance - there is much worse out there)

I think we need some clarification from IAB/PwC as it would be a hell of a performance to out perform the UK economy in such a startling way

State of the OME Nation - Sep 2009

2009-09-24T03:15:00.000-07:00

Just had biggest gap in my blogging career of 1 month - due to
- nothing much to say
- writing tweets is quicker and easier
- first decent foreign holiday in too long a time

But back in the chair now and just an update on us - the market and places in between

First the good stuff
1. May June July 2009 - was OME's best ever quarter in our 3 years of trading. That is more a testament to the hard work of our staff - the good performance of our clients and client acquisition (and retention) than any macro economic factors.
2. It is clear that any upturn will be in digital rather than non digital recruitment. The ROI argument has been largely won.
3. We are expanding - added one person to team (details to follow) with one more to follow in Jan i think now - lets be cautious...
4. Some dormant clients are re-emerging blinking from the dark recesses of recruitment freezes and lay offs and wanting to get some jobs out there and wanting to at least talk about social/bus networks etc
5. Really pleased with how we seem to be positioned in the market as results oriented - innovative - practical - no bull shit - great customer service ( i realise that this may be rather biased but it seems to be true)

The not so good stuff

1. What a hard year - it really has been running like a nutter in order to stand still - only on holiday did i realise how bone tired i was. Its good for the soul and nothing wrong with hard work but ideally it would be great if that work paid off in similar amounts of revenue and profit
2. The last 5-6 weeks have been quiet - perhaps a punishment for thinking we were doing so well and soon i would be lighting my cigars with £20 notes. The truth is as we all know deep down its going to be a long hard slog back to UK Plc prosperity.
3. I still know a number of people out of work and i really feel for them in current market - it is not easy getting back in to our business sector at moment - and i imagine a down ward pressure of remuneration has accompanied this.

Finally - 3 houses on my road have sold in last month - so housing market is back or i should close the curtains when performing naked yoga at night

Social Media - Recruitment - Sep 2009

2009-08-21T01:13:00.000-07:00

Speaking at a Business Forum in next few weeks and have landed topic of social media and recruitment.
Now here is the issue - we have case studies, we have read 1000s of words on topic, attended many seminars and advised numerous organisations (some even got good advice). The audience is a mix of experienced recruiters, with wildly varying levels of experience in digital and social/business networks. Time slot - 20 mins (+ questions).
So, i sit here pondering - where to start/end? - what to include? - what to to exclude? - keep it to UK or look at US too? while keeping it engaging and pitched at right level.
Clearly as i am lazy - my starting point will be a couple of other presentations i have done on topic that can be updated and then i have a fantastic recent piece of research that i can source/make reference to/ rip off (delete as appropriate)

I often think that the true skill in advising companies on emerging technologies/media is not to know everything and show how clever and expert you are but in translating it into bite size chunks of interesting and useful info that they can go away and use or at least tell their boss and impress him/her.

So in terms of structure - i tend to always revert to "Golden Rules" Top Tips" "Dos and Don'ts" and finish with "Do the following 5 things tomorrow" - its worked ok so far...

Come and Work with OME

2009-08-04T08:56:00.000-07:00

We are going to recruit at 2 different levels - this is the more junior post

Account Manager

Central London

Competitive salary

“Making Online Recruitment Work”

OnlineMediaExperts(OME) was the UK's first advertising agency specialising exclusively in online recruitment. In our three years of existence, we have helped our clients plan, optimize, and develop their online candidate sourcing activity. We have remained at the cutting edge of digital innovation while priding ourselves on “cutting the crap” and delivering solutions and services to our clients that really work not are merely clever or new! This approach has helped us to blossom and grow as a business in 2009 – hence our need to grow the team.
We look after some of the UK’s biggest digital recruitment accounts such as Carphone Warehouse, Odgers Berndtson, Game Stores Group, TheTrainline, Doosan Babcock and Verizon. We are now looking to expand the team by looking for an ambitious Account Manager with a background in recruitment advertising (in media or agency) and an enthusiasm for digital to help us manage our expanding client base.
You need
· To be diligent and have a great customer service ethic
· To be able to communicate the complexity of the digital world that makes your client understand while not boring them to death
· to be open minded to new solutions/products with a healthy cynicism that means you want some evidence that it may actually work for our clients money
If you are interested, please email your CV to our MD at dominic@omexperts.co.uk or call him in confidence on 07973 865 637

To recruit or not to recruit

2009-07-27T02:20:00.000-07:00

that is the question for OME right now. And probably a little microcosm of what is going to be a long slow recovery for UK rec economy.
Our head count maxed out in June 2008 and we trimmed back by 2 over the next quarter (sounds a bit cold as these were real life good people) - we then had periods of high activity but also a couple of months when the phones did not ring and we wondered how bad was it going to get...
So we now have had a solid 5 months of growth - an increase in margin on that revenue and some very stressed people including the MD. Also my major concern that when things are busy the new business generation goes v quiet and we concentrate on looking after our current customers (which is 100% how it should be).
So we should recruit at account manager level - yes? freeing up Directors to grow the business.

But...do we want to increase our fixed cost base? do we want to put ourselves in a position that we have to look at numbers again -as the market is very delicate?

I think 1 thing - my fellow directors think something different - i am sure we will make the right decision - as long as we all ending up agreeing with me.

Penna/Barkers - bad times but what next

2009-07-04T02:17:00.000-07:00

There is no point in try to summarise this story here - the Ri5 press releases and comments section gives the full picture but i really believe that it has long term seismic repercussions for the way the client/media/agency relationship works in the future. So my views and associated comments below

1. Its proof that the bad guys are not just the bankers/MPs etc. The actions of the Barkers board have to be highly questionable - the act of giving people redundancy payments and paying up notice when you had absolutely zero intention of fulfilling these promises takes some doing. I would like to think most of us would have struggled with those actions if we were ever in a similar position. Still they appear to have kept jobs/pay offs so that's OK then. Oh - and everyone has lost their pensions. Don't think its right to attach significant blame to Penna here but lets hope they can help.

2. The media have taken a bath - i have had figures quoted to me of £1million + from 2 media owners and many £100,000s with at least 10 others. The small media owners who have relied on this money coming in will be absolutely devastated - lets hope there is not a knock on effect. History tells us that there will be nothing left in the pot from the administrators when taxman/banks have had their money.

3. So why give agencies media commission? This is a little counter productive for OME (as we make income from this) but i am really not sure what the media get from offering agencies this discount. The reasons historically were
- Guarantee that you are going to be paid (NPA recognition and most agencies have insurance if clients go bust) - that guarantee is not looking too good after last week.
- Agencies are a channel sell - gives media the ability to sell to many clients via one point. OK - Stop Press - having worked on both media and agency side - i can confirm that most agencies cannot sell there way out a wet paper bag. Sure they could sell a Sunday Times advert for the last 20 years (but not now) but they have been useless at selling online or indeed any innovative launch - so i really do not believe the channel sell argument (unless you are must use/habit bought media).

4. The old agency model is dead. Media commissions wont ever again fund big teams of managers without revenue responsibility - everything an agency does and adds value to a client needs to be charged for and billed. The old model was horrible as it hid all the charges for the brilliant creative work/account mgmt/planning and buying and gave these away as free or nearly free as the cash could be made by over the table and under the table media deals.

The new model can work - sorry to blow our own trumpet but we are up year on year - our billing is completely transparent and i am proud that in some areas we are stupidly cheap and in some expensive to use (depending on how much work is involved).

But best to end this by sending best wishes to the ex Barkers staff and the media owners affected.

Jobsite's Twitter App

2009-06-19T02:36:00.000-07:00

Praise to the marketing team at Jobsite (with some technical support!) for their entry onto the Twitter platform http://twitter.com/Jobsitejobs - Why do i think its good?

Its clever
Its logical
It is not pretending to be something - its not. Its just fast neat realtime way of delivering jobs - like a souped up jobs by email
Its innovative
they appear to have got it done pretty quickly and will no doubt learn how to improve and enhance it in future

Clearly the job matching technology to the your Twitter profile is flawed and is not going to deliver perfect (indeed anywhere near perfect) jobs but its a start - and i think its a pretty darn good start!

International Media Planning and Buying

2009-06-15T04:50:00.000-07:00

This part of our business has grown every year since launch and its one of those rare things that is actually much easier than clients think (we even tell them this!) - Why is this the case? (Warning - i am about to make some wild generalisations but basic principle does apply)
1. UK digital marketplace is about 10 times more complex than virtually any other territory we book in. More sites more sectors - no other country has about 15 sites claiming to be the nation's leading IT Job board for instance
2. In other territories the general boards (Monster/Stepstone/Seek/Careerbuilder etc) are much more dominant over the vertical players than the UK
3. With all tracking and tagging done correctly - you have confidence that the campaign is set up and is running as it should be consistently across all territories (in olden times - there was always a fear of whether adverts ever appeared)
4. Time differences are no longer much of a problem - as people work more flexibly and can email acknowledge react at times above and beyond 930-530 local time.

Anyway an example of one of those things in life that is getting easier not harder

Things I am not going to do this week

2009-05-26T05:26:00.000-07:00

1. Set up a paid for event as a social networking recruitment expert - i think its fair to say NOBODY is a social networking recruitment expert
2. Launch a product for charging candidates to access jobs that are freely available elsewhere
3. Get depressed that everyone on Twitter seems to lead a more interesting life than me full of holidays, 30 mile bike rides and blissful family days out while i fall asleep in front of Britain's Got Talent having realised i need to purchase some new "naughty steps"
4. support a bunch of foreigners when i should be supporting OUR bunch of foreigners tomorrow night - i will be a once a year Man U supporter
5. finish the copy for OME website redesign (again...)
6. Pay too much for 2 contract renewals we have - the times are hard and prices for our clients will need to reflect that. May go down to the wire....

OME Digital Seminars

2009-05-11T07:53:00.000-07:00

Recently completed the latest in our event series sponsored by the Telegraph - this time the theme was 7 Pillars of Successful Digital Recruiting - but with a particular focus on business networks. Guest speaker was Simon Kelly UK Sales Director of LinkedIn. Masses of interesting comments pre, during and post event but just going to highlight a few here
1. It was a mixed room of recruitment companies and direct recruiters (prob 60-40 in favour of direct) - and LinkedIn are pitching their commercial effort squarely at direct market which led to interesting Qs from the floor from the recruiters. It was almost like recruiters were a "necessary evil" (my phrase) for LinkedIn - but the direct model was the Holy Grail - probably a reflection on the US ownership.
2. Simon expressed some concern about how this message was going to go down but my view was surely we can all see that if LinkedIn allowed unfettered access to profiles to all rec cons it would be the surest way to kill their growth stone dead as the back lash to receiving loads of unwanted contact via LinkedIn would cause quality candidates to remove their profiles. To be fair most of the rec con attendees understood that fully.
3. Nobody was prepared to state it too loudly but there was an unmistakable air of slight optimism in the air - certainly compared to unremitting gloom of some January events i attended.
4. Yet more confirmation that these days it is all about a direct sourcing model for companies - reducing cost per hire etc. When OME launched 3 years ago - it was all about migration from print to online - it feels a bit quaint saying that sort of stuff in 2009
5. Telegraph is a great place to host the event - the delegates are all massively impressed with how modern a set up they have here and the paper, online, TV, Mobile products all work together.
6. Definite pick up in the amount of delegates doing some Search Engine Marketing activity - it has become part of the established tool set now for companies - however as we always say it is not just about doing it - its about doing it brilliantly!

How Twitter has affected me

2009-04-27T06:03:00.000-07:00

1. Proved to me once again that i can occasionally be 100% wrong about the adoption of new products in this marketplace, i slagged it off before succumbing in June 2008. I now love it.

2. Has provided me with yet another distraction from doing "proper" work. And with Twitter i can pretend its work - sort of.

3. Has made me blog less - despite how it seems on my blog sometimes - writing a decent interesting blog post takes time and effort. A tweet requires neither. I would like to think the quality of blog posts has improved.

4. Has shown me again the difference between business and social networks - i like having lots of connections on Linkedin - i restrict it hugely on Twitter - i use the following rules
Nobody
who tweets too much
who exclusively uses it to promote business in a dull way
who uses it constantly to say how busy they are
Very few
celebrities (occasional temporary exception)
people i don't know in some connected way

It may not be how others use it but it works for me

5. Has made me question again the role of job boards ( i think central to the candidate attraction piece but others disagree) - i am not sure about job aggregation via Twitter but have a strong view but i want to know a lot lot more over coming months.

6. Has driven me to create an approach where clients can get benefit from Twitter while investing little more than time and effort or our time and effort for fee. I like saying to people that we think this is the right way to use it now but this is likely to move so fast and in odd directions that in 3 months time this may all change!

Public Sector Time Bomb

2009-04-15T01:25:00.000-07:00

doing some market analysis at moment - and following Barack Obama being more positive about stuff thought i should drag everybody down (particularly the battered print industry).
As we know Public Sector vacancies have been relatively robust at present and this has consequently meant that their share of the total market has grown from 20%(2007) to 40% (2009).
Now whatever government is in power - vacancies have to collapse as spending is cut in next few years to restore some semblance of sanity to government finances.
Sadly this will impact most hard on local papers as it is one area that has not taken a huge dive for them in last 2 years and online migration has not happened as quickly in other areas.

Lets all hope that the private sector's green shoots turn into full blooming economic recovery to mask the public sector recruitment dive.

Search Engine Marketing Bull

2009-04-14T08:26:00.000-07:00

More often than you think we are engaged to go in and sort someone else's mess involving a digital recruitment initiative/pilot/launch etc and one has to be very careful not to get stuck in a mindset of other companies are rubbish and we are great. There is some outstanding work done both internally and by other suppliers in this market and occasionally we have to say to clients we would love to work with "actually your current supplier is doing the right stuff in the right way at the right rates - so stick with them".
However - we got called in for some remedial SEM work by a big corporate that had been done by one of the leading players (they would say THE leading player in the industry) and it was an absolute piece of Mickey Mouse work that really stunned me with how it could have been set up that way - tracked in that fashion etc.
The problems this causes are a complete lack of confidence in SEM (and consequently business/social network pilots) and lack of faith in all companies in this sector.
I felt myself coming over all PeterGold and ranting about those who claim to be "experts" when they are no such thing.
Now i know that this SEM company are extremely competent (if expensive) so what happened? probably boring old factors like a bad account manager, too busy, being oversold to customer, too big a spend in first couple of months and then always playing catch up while dealing with an unhappy client relationship. I am sure there may have been some customer issues too but i guess we will find out more over next few months but the key thing is to keep the spend down while those lessons are learned - well that's our approach and we are sticking to it.

How to monetise OME's expertise?

2009-03-27T08:16:00.000-07:00

We have had a an excellent March - welcomed some new clients - seen a couple of phoenixes rise from the flames which is all positive.
The only thing furrowing my brow of late is i have spent a huge amount of time in long meetings recently discussing
1. social/business networks and
2. process improvements
3. what they should/could do right now in both areas.

Now some of that comes out as spend and proj mgmt fees but a lot is just a knowledge transfer that i am sure will reap rewards long term but hey - generally i prefer rewards to come in short and medium term.
We do have consultancy projects (largely for media owners) but possibly we should have a client consultancy arm and price it up accordingly. Are we giving the farm away? should we tease clients a little more? My current view is NO - as i think people buy into our approach and trust and relationships are built up - but its an area i am going to have to keep an eye on.

UrbanMole

2009-03-18T08:29:00.000-07:00

Had a really enjoyable meeting with Andrew from UrbanMole who ran me through the site and what their plans were. I loved the concept as they have a clear target market and a compelling reason for that target market to use the site (rather than one of the other social/business network sites out there). I love the TripAdvisor type peer review and referral elements. Now its all about the execution - and so the really hard work begins....

Tim and Alastair - we wish you well

2009-03-18T07:59:00.001-07:00

I believe the two founders of Enhance Tim Elkington and Alastair Cartwright have moved on to pastures new and i just want to take a moment to acknowledge their contribution to the development of online recruitment in the UK. They founded the business in 2001 when it was deemed highly dubious as to whether an agency/research co/consultancy could make decent money in our marketplace. Well they certainly did as well as educating and helping clients along the path to digital recruitment nirvana!
I am sure Enhance will blossom given the great foundations they laid and am equally confident that surely both can't be waving goodbye to online recruiting forever or can they...

ITV selling off Friendsreunited

2009-03-05T05:02:00.000-08:00

Just adding some rather random thoughts to this story (ITV pay £150-175m for something that is now worth £2.50)

It is so rare to find an acquisition that goes right isn't it? (a round of applause for DMGT's purchase of Jobsite though!). The typical story tends to be large corporate has strategy vacuum but feels the need to do something. Consultants are employed and feel the need to recommend something. Both of these end up with "lets go out and acquire something"
Now just possibly this acquisition's main purpose is for the page 1-3 story in FT of the announcement that indicates that company is getting all web - e-commerce - international - moving up supply chain (delete as appropriate)
After Day 1 - the company then have to think "what the hell are we going to do with this"
In FriendsReunited - it was lets stick a job board on it - and dating - and classifieds. That must have taken about 5 mins to come up with!
Execution in all areas - pretty appalling - and short term view taken so parts are closed down
Almost from Day 1 - the site is completely engulfed by better technology - proper Web 2.0 and presumably a complete lack of inspiration to pick up the challenge from ITV
In all likelihood - all the board who bought it (and consultants who advised buying it) have moved on and it can be safely binned
They have announced that would be prepared to sell it for £50m - any takers? - no - didn't think so - it would be like buying 34 year old crocked footballer who was once a star player - so ITV better hope Newcastle or West Ham are in the market. I cant imagine what the true value would be - but not a great deal for a product in terminal decline that does not have an established revenue stream.
I saw this quote in one of the pieces "Last year ITV claimed Friends Reunited had doubled its monthly unique users to 5.5m after switching from subscriptions to an ad-funded model" - 5.5m monthly uniques - really?? - it may be true but does anyone know anyone who has been on this site for the last 3 years?

State of the OME Nation - Q1 2009

2009-02-23T06:13:00.000-08:00

I wrote this piece back in October about state of the market/economy and OME. And i thought having just had a week off to reflect on things - i should update and revise.

Overall it is clear now we are in the grip of a severe downturn in which no business - even a dynamic category busting business like ours - is immune. We are currently running spend and profitability figures which are pretty flat (+4% year on year) which in a normal business would be cause for champagne but given our huge growth historically is not quite as exciting. I am not looking at any market stats in this piece but these are the significant changes i have witnessed in last 4 months from my comments then

Some of our day to day contacts have changed in both client and supplier communities. This is due to 1 reason - redundancy. When a client needs to reduce costs/headcount - they do not need as many recruitment managers - hence these individuals are cut at quite an early stage. Media owners all need to cut their cost base - hence headcount reduction. We are clearly trying to help where we can - keep our eyes open for any opportunities that may help people we became close to over the time of our working relationships.

The gap between proposal and sign off gets longer - and some proposals sit out there - never being turned down but beginning to yellow at the edges. Caution and postponement become the name of the game - and i understand that perfectly.

The argument about successful adoption of new techniques to reduce cost per hire etc has been won - however if there is no recruitment occurring - the decision to go online does not necessarily elicit any short term activity

Some of our retail clients really inspire me by their determination to sell their way through these problems and carry on recruiting and expanding - yes they are more cautious but they see a big opportunity to grab m/s in this period. We try and have by and large been successful at OME in following this mantra.

I am extremely thankful for the government work we have got involved with in mid last year. It is both great in terms of quality of client and interest of projects and also i know my taxes are not going to be wasted for too much longer long term by huge adverts every week in nationals and locals.

However, Sean (my co-founder) and I used to have this 100% strike rate of meeting to some degree of spend/activity - for last few months all meetings are more speculative and tentative again understandably and i think our previous urgent almost impatient approach would be the wrong tack for the next few months. I made sure everyone at OME from Jan 2 knew the score and what was expected of them in terms of service and hard work etc but that should never come across as being over aggressive in any of our relationships with suppliers (and clients)

Every media and agency one talks to - when asked the inevitable question "hows business?" repeat the same answer - "it is tough out there but we are doing OK and out-performing market" - presumably not everyone is telling truth but then would you - if the answer was "absolutely shockingly - at this rate we will all be down the dole office including me"

Finally - i think in October i did not really know anyone who was out of work - i now know of at least 8-10 senior-ish people who are - and none of whom tell me there is much out there at all in terms of exciting opportunities.

Anyway hopefully this was not too glum - as one advantage of being a bit older is i have been through it before and it passes and it can pass quite quickly - and ultimately there will be big big winners from this period of change - just make sure you are in the winners camp!

A Gentle Dig at Certain Media Sales People

2009-02-11T06:41:00.001-08:00

OK – a bit if a context first – we at OME love our media relationships – and most people we deal with are absolutely great. Let me also be clear i personally don’t mind beng phoned loads, being chased for biz hard or being expected to justify our media planning. I am also aware that i may just be a grumpy old man or worse... But here is my -

5 Things i Dont Like in My Media Relationships

1. Overfamiliarity. I just don’t feel comfortable with the chit chat until we have discussed some work/potential work and got to know each other a little better. Classic example being asked “how was my weekend?” by people I don’t know at all. As i have 3 young children – the answer is probably very little that will sound good to you when i tell you.
Oh and PS. don’t say Happy New year to me on Jan 31
2. Rudeness – i don’t like it in colleagues, clients or myself. But it always shocks me when a rep is rude to me or one of the team and it happens more than you would think. Now it may be that you are having a bad day or under pressure or we have annoyed you in some way. But i can guarantee you 2 things – 1. It won’t help you get any more ads out of us and 2. Your mum would not like it if she heard you – its just bad manners
3. Dealing with a “chocolate teapot” - no, Jamie – that’s not rude- I mean it in the context of “you are about as much use as a ...” Its absolute fair and reasonable to take timeout in a negotiation or have to discuss very significant things with someone senior. But don’t refer every single little thing to your manager otherwise just put your manager on our account as it cuts out the middleman and speeds everything up.
4. Bad service/Bad selling – there are brilliant sales people and brilliant account managers out there – dealing with agencies mean you have to be reasonable at both. Entry level good service is doing what you say you would do. That is hitting deadlines, checking work, listening to the brief. My key gripe on this is it makes us look shit if you don’t do it... Speaking for OME, good service significantly impacts some of our media decisions. Personally speaking – i also am not a big fan of the “nice” account manager who never sells to us. We like to know about your product enhancements, your expansion etc – and yes – we will mention these things to our clients where relevant.
5. Dealing with an “Olympic Flame” – so called as he/she never goes out. If we have spoken to you for a year – booked some ads – shared an occasional laugh. Then come and see us – we will even buy you a cup of coffee and a bun if you ask nicely.

Now being as I spent most of my career working for a media owner – I could start a list of what bugs people about agencies – but that’s for others to chip in!

Am i immune to loss of data stories

2009-01-28T04:40:00.001-08:00

is it me or is the recent Monster story - a story that appears about 3 or 4 times a year in different formats (Government about 3 times last year and i am sure Monster have been the subject before.) I had to get immersed in it as we are knee deep in a couple of campaigns (1 for government) with Monster and i need to make sure i communicate 100% accurately with clients about it but otherwise i could nbot bring myself to engage with it. Possibly a problem!

Print Classified Advertising Downturn Cyclical...

2009-01-21T05:12:00.000-08:00

lets hope that as of today and the behemoth of classified advertising the Evening Standard being sold for a quid that we don't hear the cyclical argument ever again.

My Favourite Prediction

2009-01-07T03:43:00.000-08:00

in our industry is one i have been quoting for years but had not actually double checked its veracity till just now "I see little commercial potential for the Internet for at least ten years.” by a certain William Gates III in 1994.
It makes me feel better when i state things like i think Twitter is a load of old tosh and such like.
Ultimately a sign of how actually important our predictions are - was his response when called on this after Microsoft started putting $$$millions in to the web was "I was wrong, so what..."

2009 - Unleash Hell

2009-01-05T01:33:00.000-08:00

Back in the chair - and actually rather excited about year ahead. No predictions/resolutions or such like but it will be a bloody tough year in which we will have to show demonstrable tangible value, will have to make every effort to publicise these facts (thats selling!), maintain brilliant client and supplier relationships and control costs. easy!
I really think the direct sourcing /cost per hire message is getting through and that we are at a tipping point - but macro economic factors can obliterate the tip short/medium term so hang on as its going to be a bumpy ride.

Christmas Time, Mistletoe and Wine

2008-12-22T02:20:00.001-08:00

You cant beat a bit of Cliff

After nearly 3 years of OME - i have learnt the pitfalls of not switching off and taking a break (ever...) - so just quick note to say i will not be blogging , twittering, posting on forums and indeed doing any proper work now until January - i hope everyone has a lovely Xmas.
Cheers
Dom

Thanks Mum

2008-12-17T05:30:00.000-08:00

Clearly her sophisticated online ballot box stuffing has secured her youngest (and best) son's nomination for this Best 2008 Recruitment Blog Awards. Please feel free to vote for me or indeed anyone else if you are so minded.

Entrepreneurs and Start Ups

2008-12-16T06:07:00.000-08:00

Saw the excellent people from BraveNewTalent to hear more about their new venture. Without going into specifics of their offering which is a kind of cross between Linkedin and Facebook for the Grad market - i have come to realise that start ups matter less in terms of the quality of the idea - it is all about the people, their passion and execution. After all the idea and product can quickly be modified if there are flaws - but the core of a company and its offering are the people behind it.

Monster Re-Launch

2008-12-10T08:57:00.001-08:00

This post is an admission that i am not going to get round to blogging in full on Monster's relaunch - a presentation of which i attended on Monday. But briefly - its a big step on road to interactivity. adding value to the job board offering, making users much easier to target with relevant content. So well done to them for investing and improving in today's climate and trying to change the competitive field from marketing to technology/search/content.

The long term benefits of this will become clearer over time but the initial and clearest short term benefit will come from changing the very clunky back office to something that will much more user (client=user) friendly. Monster's back office is a pain and the data entry and ad optimisation team here really hate it and i am sure this view must be echoed across all clients. and impact negatively on data quality and ad response.
interestingly i scanned the room i was in (largely ad agency people in audience) and thought probably only about 10% of this room have ever been in Monster's back office and so have no idea of the significance of this part of the relaunch - but our clients will probably get more out of this than the sexier stuff in the pres.

Easy Media Planning and Buying

2008-12-09T02:47:00.000-08:00

Going through 2 separate media reviews at moment - trying to get all closed up and agreed before next week and i must say with both it is a pleasure - why?

We are doing the review based not on media owner stats, not on clicks and not on applications but on hires! ie cost per hire by job by media and all cross referencable (is that a word?)
We are not looking at this stuff in isolation - its clearly a retrospective metric that has a lot of variables in it - need to base stuff on what is likely to be results and/or needs next year too
Both clients agree that though budgets are tight - we need to continue to push things a little further in exploring new routes so have allocated a budget accordingly

Now it would be easy to pretend that everyone is at this point but that is not the case - most of the work that enabled this to happen occurred in 2007 - and there is an awful lot of unglamorous grunt work involved in proper tagging and tracking both from client side and us - but the benefits are enormous - primarily the ability to show the reduction in cost per hire, the efficiency of the process and the real time visibility of the numbers.

Hang on - i think i have to shroud what we do in complex web talk otherwise anyone will think they can do it - and we cant have that can we!

2008 - what a year!

2008-12-03T04:38:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-11-21T01:46:00.000-08:00

Been having some interesting conversations with the team at Linkedin in last few weeks and getting some corporate contracts arranged for our larger clients. I have to declare an interest here - I absolutely LOVE this product.
The growth in users is phenomenal (1 million more every 15-16 days globally) - the profile of the users amazing (avg UK salary £62,000 which used to be higher than global avg but is now lower - following sterling dropping like a stone) and usability simple.
We have undoubtedly seen improved results in some targeted campaigns we are running in last 6 months - but i cannot profess to know where Linkedin will end up in the recruiting/employer brand piece - will it be a market dominant place for senior executive networking/communicating/advertising or a big fat senior CV database. Gross oversimplification i know but both are sort of possible.
Next 2 years will be fascinating.

Debate on Social Networks - Facebook - Metrics etc

2008-11-13T04:37:00.000-08:00

I have waded in to an interesting debate here on Digital Recruiting blog - some well argued stuff. I cant help thinking we are all right in our own ways but thats not a very interesting thing to say - so in fact i am 100% right and they are all misguided!!

Impact Of Jobsite TV Campaign

2008-11-07T05:37:00.001-08:00

Had the first feedback as to impact on the Jobsite splurge on TV advertising (and other media)

Application levels have increased 27%.(October vs September)

New registrations (Jobsite.co.uk only) have increased 48% (Oct vs Sep).

Searchable CVs are up to 679,000 - with new CVs up over 100% (Oct vs Sep)

It is important to note when discussing media stats that i actually trust these numbers - i can't quite work out whether i expected the figures to be even higher - it was a very big impact campaign.

TV advertising tends to be brand building led rather than direct response but this does show you that the connection can be made between TV ad and searches/registrations (or did they just up the SEM spend accordingly at same time!)
I think the benefits will accrue over a long long period of time and that Jobsite previously probably the lowest profile of the general job boards amongst UK populace will no longer occupy that slot and that this definitely will result in improved long term traffic stats.

State of the OME "Nation"

2008-11-04T23:00:00.000-08:00

OK - so here is the broad economic news from a young, growing but still relatively small player in the UK recruitment advertising marketplace - has recession grabbed us, are we sailing serenely onwards - can you read anything in to our performance to indicate wider trends - see below

We are doing OK in terms of monthly revenues and still growing. July 2008 was our biggest ever month - followed by October 2008. (we launched in May 2006)
90% of our clients are still actively recruiting - with a couple of organisations that have a freeze or as near as damnit. Fortunately for us we did not have much exposure to Finance/Financial Services
This recruitment activity tends to be normal stuff rather than big projects - huge store opening programmes etc.
New business has driven our year rather than our existing clients' growth. We have had a great year in this respect - i think worth looking at why for a second

We are a young dynamic business - we bloody should be successful in new business - its not a very exciting (or rewarding) place to be if not
We have focused very hard at it as we are concerned about the wider picture and we have invested heavily in staff this year - so we need to make sure they have some work to do!
But i think fascinatingly - OME/online recruitment represents a cost saving approach to recruitment. yes we are innovative and quality should be high - but ultimately we save clients money and reduce cost per hire. This downturn is undoubtedly driving people online although it may not feel like it for a bit. The most positive thing about this year - is i am utterly convinced about this point. Anecdotally - 50% of the new client meetings we attend tends to feature a version of the HR mgmt telling us how much was spent on recruitment last year (including all rec con/agency fees) - and the mission is simple - helps us dramatically reduce this figure.

Most of our billings are based around core products of Job Board Media, SEM, Campaign Mgmt, Consultancy fees (including Technical). The more esoteric cutting edge stuff has sat out there unsigned off - and i kind of agree with those decisions if budgets are limited.

So not sure it tells anyone quite what is going on out there - but for us its OK - but would like it a bit better please!

Innovation vs Effectiveness

2008-10-18T13:59:00.000-07:00

This is the theme of about 80% of the meetings and projects we have conducted in last 3 months.(and the last 3 months has seen much more of an emphasis on effectiveness rather than innovation). And the skill with us is how to communicate effectively to a client that a social networking programme is a really cool thing to do but how about getting their job board strategy, SEM programme, response management and careers site sorted as a first priority. And if i have a frustration, it is some of the nonsense that we in the industry talk about when we are dealing with clients seeking to reduce their cost per hire and improve recruitment and staff retention strategies.

Talking about Second Life and Twitter to clients makes us look knowledgable and clever but does not help most clients one iota (particularly at present).

And Yes - the best online campaigns and techniques can be both innovative and effective.

Broadbean acquired by owners of Jobsite

2008-10-17T06:10:00.000-07:00

quite an interesting one this - if only for the fact that any company is acquiring anything at moment
what does the acquisition mean?

not quite sure what AND's motivations are - Conkers is also owned by them. I guess its going up the supply chain/value chain - like a brewery buying pubs or possibly a fleet of beer delivery lorries to stretch the analogy perhaps a little too far. Still its a little different from their acquisition history of strong vertical job boards.
One does not have to question Broadbean's motivation - and well done to those involved
AND have an excellent history of buying companies (Jobsite, Jobs Group, InRetail etc) and allowing the management to grow and develop their business without unhelpful intervention. So Dan's open letter (see above) should be taken at face value i think.
Will the other major jobboard owners have a problem with this acquisition (their supply lines being owned by a competitor) - and come off the Broadbean feeds. Can't see that happening in a million years - the client is king and Broadbean's client volumes are pretty substantial to forming a job boards marketplace. But lets see.
I would be fascinated to know how they valued this business - there is an argument that the product and the whole job posting technology industry is a commodity that could be replaced in the future - but to be fair it is priced so reasonably that there is no great desire from clients to seek any alternative solution.

In summary - Broadbean is a great business - nicely profitable, low overheads, loyal customer base, limited competition but not quite sure how it fits into AND/Jobsite's product set. But that's not the worse problem to have.

Everyone "Gets" Online Recruitment

2008-10-14T14:18:00.000-07:00

I have just finished running a hugely well attended seminar programme in conjunction with Telegraph and Google and it has confirmed my thoughts that a wind of change has swept through this industry in 2008. The level of knowledge and adoption of successful online recruiting techniques has changed massively this year amongst clients and it is incredibly exciting and enjoyable to be having a different sort of conversation.
Believe me i have no problem whatsoever with starting with basic job posting on job boards and in many ways its the lifeblood of OME and a well constructed optimised job posting is a thing of rare beauty (just me in the whole world who thinks that isn't it.??....) - But with our longer established clients we tend to run much more integrated candidate attraction campaigns and our new clients tend to start at a more advanced level.
So i left the seminar venue absolutely buzzing - read the business press on the way to another meeting - and a "pass the revolver, I'm going into the library" feeling enveloped me. Oh well - capitalism was fun while it lasted.

Bitching About Awards

2008-10-03T05:36:00.000-07:00

Quite enjoying the debate on UK recruiter discussion board about the integrity of the NORA awards - basically saying its all a fix etc etc. I have attended many awards functions and even organised a few. These are my fundamental truths about these events

They are in no way a reflection of the best work done in (fill in category) and in fact the winning piece of work/company was crap because of xxx. That is unless you win - in which case they are just recognition for the brilliant work done by the team involved and another sign of your market leading position.
If you suspect they are a fix - and that if you advertise in the organisers products and even better sponsor an award that you hugely improve your chances - you are probably correct.
If you suspect that there is something fishy about the fact that every year amazingly the awards seem to be handed out in a way that most of the big players in industry (see advertisers/sponsors point above) - seem to win at least one each and don't get too offended - your suspicions are probably correct
If you suspect that the extremely long "short" lists for nominations may be connected to a desire to sell as many tables as possible to those companies dreaming of glory - you would definitely be correct.
Do people say these same things even if they work in online recruitment, TV, double glazing or poetry - yes they do.

And finally - if you are nominated and you find yourself sitting at a table nearer the loos than the stage (meaning a 10 minute journey to stage)- then you can probably save your speech for next year.

Impact on Press to Online Migration of a Downturn

2008-09-26T05:05:00.000-07:00

Not a snappy heading is it? but here are a couple of slides that show the impact on the most mature online recruitment market (I.T.) - and maybe there are some lessons to be learnt for general market innext few years. The commentary is that as IT sites like Jobserve, Jobsite grew in late 90s - the press market grew simultaneously riding the IT boom.

Cue 2000-2001 post dot com crash, post Y2K, post establishment of Euro and 9/11. We saw slowing in growth in online and a complete car crash in press advertising. And when the market picked up again.... advertisers had looked at ROI, cost per response, were leaner with their ad budgets and we saw "hockey stick" growth in online and nothing at all in press. This will not be of great cheer to executives like Sly Bailey who claimed recently that downturn was cyclical - by the way how in 2008 can a CEO of a big publicly listed media company say that and not be laughed off stage by city analysts.

Why did JobJourney Fail?

2008-09-15T00:37:00.000-07:00

OK - need to say the following things before giving my opinion

i have utmost respect for Totaljobs management and the way they have launched successful verticals/niche sites (retailchoice CWjobs etc)while continuing to grow the core product
The people i knew who were involved in it were also top drawer
its easy to sit on the sidelines and comment - doing it is much tougher

I also have no inside knowledge of the actual figures but take a wild leap of logic and assume it was not making a profit and presumably was showing very little sign that it would produce the requisite margin for the company going forward.

So my view is

1. Never liked the JobJourneyNorthWest geographical position. If its a local site then it needs to be local and most recruitment is city/county based. The region stretched from Cheshire to Cumbria and was up against strong Manchester, Liverpool, Preston competition. A North West job board had the feel of something invented from London. (to me anyway)

2. Connected to the point above - but Manchester has just about become the most competitive territory in online this year and this amount of competition affects yields and client retention rate as people go from one trail to another to another.

3. What does a network of local sites add up to? Answer: A big national site like.......TotalJobs. And what tends to happen in many companies is that someone from the outside (or inside) looks at the numbers and thinks - Blimey we are having to put this amount of resource and effort in to make not a lot of money - what would be the result of diverting all (or some of) this resource to our successful highly profitable national Job Board? Coincidentally there are now TotalJobs sales staff in all key regions which i guess made the situation even more striking.

4. its the economy stupid - lets not be naive - its tough out there - and launching a site is twice as hard in these delicate economic conditions. Patience and long term investment can be thin on the ground in harsher economic times.

5. RBI sell off - i believe that as the company is made ready for sell off that they have conducted a purge of products that do not minimum contribution levels. Not sure about this point - it made be a convenient excuse as if a product showed enough profit potential - it would add value to any acquisition.

Anyway - it did not work out - no shame in that and i applaud their efforts.

Good Luck to all involved in the future.

JobJourney No More

2008-09-08T08:33:00.000-07:00

Sad news that jobjourney has been closed by RBI in both North West and Scotland. I will analyse this further but feel that is inappropriate today as my first thoughts are for the hard working people who - though i am sure RBI will make every effort to re-allocate - may end up out of work.
Best wishes to all concerned.

Big Up to Jobsite

2008-09-05T02:26:00.000-07:00

Jobsite launched their £15m TV ad campaign yesterday in swanky Charlotte St Hotel - as my colleagues were sipping champagne and hearing the glossy presentation i was reading Chicken Licken and Hansel and Gretel to my own rather demanding audience. Its easy to carp about the effectiveness of a big TV ad campaign and whether £15 million as a budget was arrived at by multiplying everything by 2.5 and adding the first number you thought of at the end but its a great sign to the UK that online recruitment is a complete solution to people irrespective of age, class, colour or creed and i think helps us all when we are out their evangelising to the HR community. Need to mention the fact that Monster have been doing TV too but this step is really significant and may see others get their marketing cheque books out again.
As an aside - the ads star Max Beesly who speaking personally annoys me intensely - but women and people from the north (and probably everyone other than me) may disagree.

Lipstick on a Pig

2008-09-02T06:23:00.000-07:00

Its not happened in ages but its an online recruitment classic. We got given the go ahead on a small project for a client. And out of their inventory of current job requirements we got given two absolute uber niche specialist roles to go online with that have been unfilled for 6 months), rather than their main more normal generic jobs which make up the bulk of their needs. Its where straight talking has to come in - as otherwise you end up in a few weeks after lots of hard work with disappointment and disillusionment and the potenetial to stall online migration as senior decision makers still "not sure" it works.
Digital recruitment is brilliant - but as the saying goes there is no point putting lipstick on a pig or indeed buffing a turd.

Brand Republic Blog

2008-08-29T06:01:00.000-07:00

So BrandRepublic approached me about doing a blog on their site which you can find here.http://community.brandrepublic.com/blogs/morw/default.aspx. As most of the Brand audience do proper advertising and look down their noses at us in Jobs - i will clearly have to brush on my Web 2.0 terminology - and where as i normally talk about metrics like cost per click, cost per hire, response per advert and drop off rates on career sites. I now shall have to litter my posts with the long tail, webinars, avatars, Linden dollars and the impact of the I-Phone.
Or maybe not.

Translating Guardian Press Release on Rate Increases

2008-08-06T07:08:00.000-07:00

I just received this Press Release

"From August 18 2008, the recruitment and courses print advertising rates for Guardian Jobs will be increasing in line with salary inflation. In real terms this means most of our print rates are staying the same. Some of our online advertising rates are also changing but we are offering you more value than ever:"

A couple of comments
- the rates are going up 3.5% - they are not staying the same. To use the phrase "in real terms" reminds me of a trade union negotiating a deal for its workers
- That bit is probably inserted as the author is struggling with the audacity/cheek of putting ones press rates up - when the print market is disintegrating - or soon will be - in its core markets
- "some of our online rates are also changing..." i am going to make a huge leap of logic and presume they mean by changing - they actually wanted to use the not often heard word "increasing". They may have covered themselves by reducing a keyword banner on Cornwall Jobs or something equally popular.

I love the Guardian and the people we deal with and have no problem necessarily with them increasing rates - but plainspeaking please....

Innovation vs Effectiveness - or have we disappeared up our...

2008-08-06T02:54:00.000-07:00

OK - back to a familiar topic. And its the differential between

1. us in the "industry"- who get a bit bored by discussing and improving basic functionality on company's careers sites and find job postings on Job boards to be frankly dull. What we really want to talk about is Social Media, Geo-Targetting, Mobile Messaging and whatever the latest fad is.

2. and the "real people" out there - HR/Recruiters. Who are under pressure to improve efficiency, reduce cost per hire, improve employer brand etc

So we saw an unnamed client (large UK PLC) last week - who had taken meetings with a couple of other rec ad agencies, online specialists. And their head had been filled with lots of talk of Facebook, SMS, Twitter (NB 1st time a client has mentioned this in meeting - so interesting) and yet and yet....

In order their priorities should be

1. Their careers site search does not work in any logical way and must lose candidates who are unfortunate enough to go in it at front end - it is a block on recruitment not an aid.

2. they were on Job boards (not Google though) but in certain cases the wrong ones and in all cases with very poor copy and with the wrong and ineffective inventory. This can be fixed incredibly quickly and with immediate excellent results.

3. A mini audit of the web - finds there are a bunch of dead links for this company out there - old logos pointing to old micro sites and other destinations

I asked their permission if i could blog about this anonymously as it so annoyed me that others who do know their stuff had focussed on the sexy not the serious, the fluff not the core, the sizzle not the steak (enough analogies Dom....)

we are very keen to criticise the laggards in the rec ad industry but spending clients budgets on areas that do not deliver the tangible demonstrable ROI results can in fact cause more damage. I sometimes think think that we recommend this sort of innovative stuff to make us the suppliers feel cool not for the benefit of the customer.

What is going on with recruitment economy

2008-08-04T03:47:00.000-07:00

i have to admit i no longer have a clue quite what is going on - in the macro world - we are confronted with a media bombardment of bad news and scare stories - share price depression and poor financials from banks, media groups etc. and yet...in micro world

i dont know anyone personally who has been laid off due to economic factors
OME has just had by far its best month ever (July 2008)
Virtually all organisations are still recruiting in some form

So for the present i am going to continue to buy my Starbucks every morning and leave the jar ot Mellow Birds at the back of cupboard for when times are really tough....

Hard Times for Media Companies in the City

2008-07-17T01:00:00.000-07:00

OK not picking on Trinity Mirror but examine following facts.

they own

5 national newspapers - including Daily Mirror, Daily Record
15o regional newspapers including traditional cash cows such as WesternMail, Liverpool Echo and Birmingham Post
200 local press websites
And their acquired online portfolio - including Hot Group/Workthing bought for £55m, Email4property, Gaapweb, SecsintheCity, TotallyLegal/TotallyFinancial amd 33% stakeholders in fish4.

And their market capitalisation yesterday was £134m

ouch....

Google Bio

2008-07-13T12:41:00.000-07:00

Its not new but i picked up an old book on creation and growth of Google - just amazing and inspiring http://www.amazon.com/Google-Story-Hottest-Business-Technology/dp/0553383663/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215977768&sr=8-1 - the most brilliant thing about it - was that it was very late in the growth of the company that they even considered how are we actually going to make this a profitable company - amazingly everyone (microsoft, yahoo etc) thought there was no money on free search!!!

They created a great product first and then the dollars came later, multo multo dollars

cynic, heal thyself

2008-07-13T12:24:00.000-07:00

Having a chat about online recruitment in the car on saturday (as you do...) - and i have finally worked out why i am such a curmudgeon about many innovations in online media - and it is essentially that i am personally not into the gadgets and the fads - so i tend to think exclusively in the realms of how this may work practically and even then how it can be used for clients to recruit and brand themselves. Which is a pretty non creative, non blue sky thinking (dare i say dull) appraoch to life. But its been the same personally with mobile phones, PDAs, Laptops etc. I am personnally just not that excited about the iPhone.
So professionally while i think it enables me to see a products application and translate that into the business world and not to fritter a clients precious budget - it does mean i have to force myslef to be persuaded of the possibilities and to open my mind. (at least once a year anyway)

Print Revenue Decline

2008-07-11T00:28:00.000-07:00

I was planning to write a long post on the awful results being posted bythe publishing groups Trinity Mirror, Johnson Press et al. Print revenues being hammered - stupid statements from exceedingly well paid chief execs stating thats the problems are about the economy and its cyclical. But come on - the debate has been over for a long time now hasn't it (and yes i know i am talking here to a very small group of recruitment cognoscenti).
Print is great - i love newspapers - but they will not run any recruitment ads within 5-10 years. End of.

Just a personal note - i have been wanting to use the word cognoscenti in an article for ages. lovely!