Few observations from the recent Recruittech conference.

Doubt is good. Not surprisingly, there are many cynics as there are converts to the bold new world of online social engagement. In my book, doubters are in a good place – at least they are participating in the conversations and asking additional questions. Indeed, no one really have all the answers, what works for one organisation in one industry may not work for another. Advice from @RigesYounan – “Just try stuff” – best sums up the mindset of early adopters (the brave). The best time to start on social media was, perhaps, five years ago; the next best time is now.

Fundamentals never change. Despite the hullabaloo on new media and new ways of doing things, ‘relationship’ continues to be the mainstay of the recruitment profession. In fact, when everyone has so much information about everyone else, real relationships will be the deal breaker. Social media merely provide the tools to build new connections and enhance relationships. Once the dust settles, those left standing will be the ones who invested in ‘relationships’. ‘Let’s do coffee’ will never go stale.

Resourcing: Often relegated to the bottom of the hierarchy, Resourcers (aka Research Managers), will increasingly be the ‘go to’ people. Best equipped to find talent online because they themselves have rich digital footprints; we will be hearing more from them as the number of channels to monitor explodes. Follow the likes of @AndreaMitchell and @AylinAhmet, they are a new generation of savvy social resourcers with their hands firmly on job seekers’ pulse.

Career websites: The vast majority of career websites (say 95%) need fixing; no one in the industry really raised their hands until now. @Jobadder (Brett Iredale) seems unable to make mistakes. That his presentation is on career websites (not his job posting software or its foray into the ATS market) is yet another smart move. Without doubt, majority of the two million organisations in Australia do not have engaging career websites. Why job boards and ATS providers, who manages the supply pipeline of jobs, do not address this opportunity is a mystery. Ad agencies looking for new income streams need not look further. Be prepared to see a lot of attention on websites as organisations take up more responsibility for their candidate traffic.

Blogging is not dead. At its best it is an effective employment branding tool. At the very least it humanize an organisation, as @DavidTalamelli (Oracle) succinctly pointed out. If you are new to social media, blogging is imperative. If your target audience is more sophisticated, a real time interaction may be more useful. Still, if it is about drawing traffic to your career website, blogs need to be in your arsenal. It’s also the easiest to start, and with the right intentions the payoff is worth thousands in marketing dollars.

Outsiders. Sometimes, the best insights are offered by those outside of recruitment. We need objective feedback; the more critical the better. @SilkCharm (Laurel Papworth) and @trib (Stephen Collins) are outsiders who bring unique perspective to our industry. It would be interesting to have a panel made up of only outsiders (imagine getting a panel of artists to recommend how to attract talent). Banishing insularity can only be fruitful.

Job boards: @KellyMagowan highlighted the difference between niche and generalist. While some may argue that it amounts to ‘two bald men fighting over a comb”, the fact remains that job boards are the dominant channels to advertise and find jobs (More on generalist vs specialist in a later blog post. Meanwhile, have a look at the Long Tail concept, the controversies and the latest fascinating results from Nielsen).

Currently, job boards are doing well because unlike social media they do not discriminate users (on a job board a good or bad recruiter has almost equal chance). Social networks are unkind to those who just wanted to buy attention, and the vast majority of recruiters currently fall under this category. So will you attract talent if you advertise on job boards? Yes and no. Yes, if you are reaching out to the demographic (mostly active job searchers) job boards reaches. No, if you want to reach, well, those not reached by job boards. It is rather silly to blame job boards for not reaching talent that they are not meant to reach.

In the short-term, a clearer picture of what tool will be effective for a particular demographic group will emerge. If you are hiring part-time receptionists job boards are always more likely to provide a steady stream of applicants. If you are after a CIO, exploring the social web is likely to be a better option. You go to job boards to find talent they reach, just as you go to Twitter to engage Twitter users. The audience dictate the tools. The idea is to have both in your recruiting toolbox (and having more tools than your client is what sets the agency recruiter apart). It is never in the interest of an agency recruiter to ignore any possible source.

In the long run, job boards may need to address the fact their sites are places where people who don’t know one another go to. There is tremendous value in interaction. Job listings by themselves will cease to have less value. Context will be key. Rich content will be a differentiator. Many will bite the dust, but brand matters. The popular boards will be around for as long as they can deliver resumes at a price point lower than the alternatives.

Training: To this point, recruitment firms succeeded in large part because of their ability to mass produce a winning formula. Train enough recruiters to meet KPIs and you have a successful business. How does one teach social media skills (Can it be)? What role will training play? Demand for up-skilling will increase but the learning curve will be steep. Influence in the new environment is gained by long periods of giving first. The gap between those who get it and those who don’t will be wide, mainly because the new recruitment realm is more about mindsets than it is about tools and processes. Follow @RossClennett, he’s constantly charting new paths (stirring the pot occasionally), blending new-world thinking with old-world sensibilities.

Changing behaviour: Tools get all the attention, but changing job seekers behaviour is equally important. @CareerMums (Kate Sykes) monitors the ever evolving workplace with a particular focus on job flexibility. @mspecht (Michael Specht) lent a sharp eye to the problems faced by organisations populated by connected workers. I argued Job seekers will increasingly call the shot. Given the changing landscape, writing a job ad and not knowing where to promote it will be a recurring dilemma for most advertisers. Attention will be really hard to get. Shouting louder will not be useful. The real opportunity is building your own tribe/community and winning the permission to talk to them.

Web 2.0 : Without doubt, every recruiter’s vocabulary must include web 2.0 tools (rss, widgets etc). Many of the technologies are simple enough for a layman to understand and use (see McKinsey report on how companies are benefiting from web 2.0 ). Keep track of @Thomasshaw’s activities, he’s constantly investigating web 2.0’s relevance to recruitment.

Money money money: Breaking bread with fellow presenters confirm the life of an entrepreneur (a wannabe in my case) is seldom normal. It appears most of us make do with erratic income streams; encounter occasional ridicule and self-doubt, but plodded on regardless. It seems there is little outside money invested in our industry. Imagine what the likes of @RigesYounan and @bluetrain (Clayton Wehner) could achieve if they have capital to play with. Anyone got some spare bucks?

Recruitment firms: Lots of interesting discussions with recruitment firms. If you are a recruiter, relevance is a matter of staying one step ahead of clients. It’s a simple mantra – do something that your clients cannot do well themselves. The problem is employers are able to do a lot more on their own, which is why exploring new ways of doing things is important. Accepting the new status quo is a good start.

People: Not enough time, but met lots of good people. The @GradConnection boys are everywhere. If enthusiasm alone defines success, their day will arrive soon. I’d give Michael Burns a call, he knows a lot more than he is revealing about the nuts and bolts of how our industry works (and where its heading). Mark Tayar is not your typical ATS marketer, he’s into building a community.

Conferences: Recuittech seems destined to spread to more locations. Strange, in a way, that a conference predominantly about digital connections requires meeting up physically. Our yearning for face-to-face interaction (and beer will spawn more gatherings, albeit smaller in sizes. HR Club is a sign of things to come. Count me in for the next one.

Pictures: Few pics from the conference. Presentations: Available on Slideshare (tag recruittech).

What’s next? Ok, lots to digest, but here’s a timely advise from Seth.

Tags: Brett Iredale, Clayton Wehner, Kate Sykes, Laurel Papworth, Michael Specht, Riges Younan, Ross Clennett, Stephen Collins, Thomas Shaw

By positioning themselves as gatekeepers to job boards, job posting software (JPS) providers are cementing their position as critical players in the acquisition of talent.  JPS lessens the administrative drudgery of posting jobs, saves time, increases the ability to distribute jobs to a wide network and provides metrics to measure and manage job posting activities.

I caught up with Brett Iredale, MD of Job Adder, to discuss a range of issues including  the value proposition of JPS, measuring the worth of job boards, social media and the company’s progress.

 
DT. JobAdder is a uniquely Australian take on the job posting space, can you tell us a bit about your history and how JobAdder came about?
BI: My background is in IT consulting and sales. In 2001 I started an IT recruitment agency and soon after started developing job boards as a way to attract hard to find candidates. The job board business soon took on a life of its own so we stopped recruiting in order to focus exclusively on job boards. JobAdder came about as a result of frustrations and road blocks experienced as job board owners. In particular we faced 2 major hurdles.

(1) Recruiters would buy a membership and then not list their job ads because of the extra effort required. This was very frustrating. So we realized early on that we needed to get integrated with the leading recruitment and job posting systems in order to get content.

(2) This proved to be very difficult because the system providers at the time could not be bothered integrating new job boards. The final straw was when the then MD of Adlogic told me to come back when I had “a worthwhile client base” and then they might consider integrating us. That was an important day in our history. The next day we had a spec drawn up and started cutting code for JobAdder a few days later.

DT. What is the ROI on using job posting solutions? Some providers offer their solutions for free. Why must companies or recruiters use JobAdder?
BI: The benefits and returns of using a job posting solution are numerous. The most obvious one is time and money saved through dramatically reducing the time it takes to post job ads. A typical annual saving for a medium recruitment agency is $50,000 – $100,000+ in labour alone.

Other major benefits are opportunity costs. If a consultant has an extra few hours a week as a result of faster job posting then that is time that can be spent making placements. As all recruitment managers know, time spent writing job ads is time that can’t be spent conducting interviews and making placements. JobAdder also has a host of management tools that allow businesses to more effectively manage things like ad spend, job board effectiveness, ad writing effectiveness, best times and days for job posting for their industries and so on.

DT. There are close to 150 job boards in Australia, is this far too many, or do you think variety is something to be welcomed. Where do you see the industry heading?
BI: I think there is room for plenty more yet. We know from speaking with recruiters and job seekers that there is still a need for highly specialised niche online communities. For example the medical recruitment sector still find it incredibly hard to find good people online.

DT. JobAdder is a web-based solution for both employers and professional recruiters. Does the way the two groups use job boards, and therefore JobAdder, differs widely?
BI: They do differ in terms of the pains they are solving but the way they use JobAdder is quite consistent. For example a corporate advertiser may be attracted to JobAdder because they can access more job boards and have a centralised online resume database. Recruiters with high volumes are generally looking to save time and money and to access better management reporting.

Q. What’s your stand on the generalist vs niche boards debate? Is there a best-practice method to choose which job boards to advertise in? Does JobAdder help clients in making decisions?
BI: Choosing job boards is very business-specific. There are no hard and fast rules about it. Our advice is generally to try the ones you think might work and to closely measure results. Nothing speaks louder than tangible evidence.

Yes JobAdder does assist advertisers choose job boards but our advice is generally the same as above. E.g. “here are the ones we recommend trying”. JobAdder then measures results applicant by applicant and allows them to slice and dice the information various ways so that they can effectively compare apples to apples.

Q. JobAdder handles around 180,000 jobs a month. What does the numbers reveal. Can you share some insights on the behavior of job seekers or advertisers? What are the biggest mistakes your clients make when dealing with job boards?
BI: The biggest area for improvement with most advertisers is that most still can’t tell you scientifically how their job boards are performing. They are still making decisions on consultant straw polls and gut feel.

Online advertising is often a recruiter’s largest non salary expense so clearly they should be able to accurately understand the effectiveness of this spend. JobAdder solves this problem and many of our clients report that this alone is more than sufficient ROI to justify implementing JobAdder.

We also spend a lot of time help advertisers understand how to write better job ads so that they get the full 30 days of value from their job ad rather than having to re post it every week or 2.

DT. We have come a long way from say ten years ago, today a job board can be built or bought off the shelf, and in a matter of minutes jobs can be distributed to hundreds of job boards. What do you see recruitment technology heading, is JobAdder investing in anything new?
BI: Yes we definitely invest heavily in new technology – our own. The biggest problem with many recruitment systems is that they don’t keep up with technology – they just keep patching up old software. Eventually you end up with patches on patches on patches. We like to pull everything apart and put it all back together again every 12 months so that we can continually improve the architecture of the system and take full advantage of new technology where appropriate.

You are right about job board technology getting less expensive, but as I have always maintained, you get what you pay for. If you pay a few thousand dollars for a piece of job board technology then expect it to be junk.

DT. Lately, social media and networking tools like LinkedIn are the talk of town. You are a keen blogger too, what are your thoughts on social media in general, and has it in anyway affected JobAdder operations or long-term strategy?
BI: Social media is exciting and it will be an important part of everyday life over the next few years. It can also be a big time waster so we are careful to closely evaluate such emerging technologies, understand their potential impact and usages in online recruitment, and quickly move on from anything that does not add clear and present value. To date that is most of them.

Our long term strategy is to continue to build recruitment solutions that add value, that do what they say on the box and that people love to use. Social media will play a part in this but at the end of the day it will just be a part of the overall solution.

DT. Looking ahead, what are the main challenges or priorities for JobAdder? Is tackling overseas markets in the plan?
BI: Overseas markets are a possibility but for now we have plenty to do in our own market. I have worked with too many software companies that have attempted to go overseas before owning their own market. We won’t be going overseas until we have achieved a lot more of our domestic goals.

The economic conditions are exciting for us as recruiters and corporate advertisers look for ways to save money and increase efficiency. January 09 was our biggest month since launching so we are confident we are on the right track.

Our other main challenges remain the same as they have for the last 2 years. Growing a business out of cash flow is something that needs careful management. We are very proud of this achievement and will continue to grow within our means for the foreseeable future.

Tags: Brett Iredale, Job Adder, Job board, Q&A