cynic, heal thyself

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

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!

Succumbed to Twitter

So it comes to us all that you can only sit on the edge of the playground looking on for so long when actually you really want to join the game. I can close my ears to the evangelists like Paul http://twitter.com/CarveConsulting and http://twitter.com/mattalder Matt for so long but when i see a fellow miserable heretic like Alastair http://twitter.com/alcartwright joining in, then i know the time has come to Tweet away.

Come and join us - you know you want to...
https://twitter.com/domsumners

My measured analysis of the ad agency revenue model

With also some of my unmeasured analysis of the ad agency revenue model

http://www2.peoplemanagement.co.uk/pm/articles/the-next-top-model.htm?name=recruitmentmarketing&type=section

Its a classic but still annoying

Did some work for a small client - demonstrating what we do, how we would do it and the results they would receive. I then spy this morning that they have taken all our advice and decided to try and do it themselves to avoid paying our "very reasonable" fees. Its pathetic really and i am not going to let it damage my general optimistic view of people's intentions, but i hope they really enjoy the saving of a few hundred quid by tucking us up. Anyway, lets move on....

Digital Recruitment Seminars - pain or pleasure...

I have spoken at and organised and attended a lot of seminars on topic of digital recruitment and to be honest i have never been wholly happy with the content of what was delivered, normally for following reasons

• quality of speakers (apart from me that is!)
• Case studies which are merely excuses for a company to tell us how great they are - and as you sit there you wonder "did it really happen like that?... probably not"
• Content that tells me nothing new (that could be more my fault than the conference i know)
• too long - i have realised that my concentration span is never going to get past its current status of about 42 seconds. So the longest i can physically spend in a hot dungeon of a conf room is 2 hours max

I dont mean to be too critical as they are bloody hard to get right.

Anyway - we have a chance to change all that or die trying as we are launching, alongside the Telegraph, a series of digital seminars for HR managers / Recruiters in September/October that will be concise, witty, info packed and beautifully formed. Will update with more info in next week or so.

HCareers in the UK down but not out....

After five years in the UK market, www.Hcareers.co.uk, the global hospitality niche recruitment site has decided to merge all operations to their North American HQ. A good source tells me that the last six months have financially been some of the healthiest Hcareers have ever experienced here, however the “cut throat” UK market has made profitably operating in the UK tough, therefore they will now be operating the UK site from North America .

Questions

1. is it possible to service customer accounts from offshore (8 hours behind) via helpdesk?
2. is UK market so different that lack of local knowledge will be a massive hindrance?
3. is it possible to sell to customers in an incredibly competitive market a not massively well established site from offshore?
4. is "merging operations" just a euphemism for running the site down to closure at the end of customer contracts? (bit like Northern Rock!)

Answers

1. probably - most sites do not receive a huge amount of incoming queries and as long as you are efficient - its possible
2. not really - difference schmifference - the UK is not so unique - same principles still apply
3. virtually impossible
4. almost certainly