I recently spoke at the Online Recruitment Conference 2010 held in London. The presentation focused on the future of job boards, taking a look back at the history of recruitment technology that brought us the job boards in the first place. I look at some of the drivers of change and point out things that indicate change is happening right now. The change I’m thinking about is the emergence of social recruiting. I finish with some predictions for 2010...
5. Agenda Are job boards about to die? The history of recruitment technology Drivers of Change Indicators of Change Social Recruiting 2010 Predictions Summary & Close
26. Predictions 1 Challenging year ahead with some acute difficulties in the public sector Candidate sourcing strategies will continue to broaden Social Recruiting will grow Cloud computing will be a factor in technology strategies Mobile Phone Applications will have an important place
27. Predictions 2 Job Boards will innovate or see declining share In the broadest sense of the word, "Search" will be a key factor Finding the model that enables interaction with emerging technologies will be important to the health of core recruitment platforms Newspaper advertising model likely to fundamentally change
Good afternoon. My name is Steve Newson. This is me, and how to get hold of me – I’m fairly easy to find on Google and on the big three social networks – one of the advantages of not being a Smith or Jones...
I’m the Operations Director at Capita Resourcing & Development. You can find us on the web... at capita.co.uk
A few words about Capita and scale... In the past 12 months... With around 750 staff we generated a net Operating Profit of £14m We placed 26 Chief Execs & Managing DirectorsAcross the public sector we placed over 1000 Interims into senior rolesWe trained 48,000 delegates at face-to-face events & around 75,000 via e-learningWe traded with countries as diverse as Kosovo, Albania, Armenia and the Sudan Working with Job Centre Plus we carried out over 20,000 candidate assessments resulting in over 4500 appointments We placed over 500 Social Workers across 93 local authorities We ran in excess of 250recruitment Campaigns, processing 71,000 candidates placing over 5,000 people.We placed in excess of 1200 professionally qualified engineers We were appointed to recruit & train 36,000 staff for the 2011 Census AND... we have successfully recruited almost 2000 new staff to Capita, hired 1900 contractors and 3500 temps..
Thisis what I want to talk with you about today. I’m going to look to the future of job boards, taking a look back at the history of recruitment technology that brought us the job boards in the first place. I’m going to examine some of the drivers of change and point out things that indicate change is happening right now. The change I’m thinking about is the emergence of social recruiting. I’m going to make some predictions for 2010 and then sum up and close.
Given the number of job boards in the room today this probably strikes you as a provocative slide, but the discussion point I’m trying to make is that the business model of mainstream job boards needs to change... or they will begin to lose market share
That said, there is a need to be wary of the hype. At Capita Resourcing, for example, we work a lot in the technology and IT space where you often find the early adopters of new approaches; BUT new approaches do not always become mainstream behaviour
In a very short space of time recruitment technology has gone from Index Cards to CV Databases to Job Boards
So what is driving change. Nothing complicated, it’s about cost and quality.
Find me a business leader today who is not interested in controlling and reducing costs
And we did notice something called the credit crunch, didn’t we?It’s worth pointing out the emergence of recruitment agencies attempting zero (or at least low) cost recruitment strategies – the entry barrier to the recruitment market gets ever lower doesn’t it - and I note recent research published by iProfile indicates some agencies dusting off and investing in their CV databases
In terms of quality, I’m thinking about meeting client requirements and client expectations. I’m thinking of the answer to the question... “What is Capita’s value add?” We’re specifically being challenged to say what more we’re doing than simply passing client vacancies out to job boards.
In the final analysis you have to go where your candidates go, so you have to follow the crowd. Digital natives won’t necessarily come to job boards just because their predecessors did. BUT (and here’s another hype warning) the next big thing in social media won’t work if you’re talent pool doesn’t go there to hang out...
So are there any signs that things are changing? Well, nothing stays the same... Ever. Let’s put some numbers to that...
According to The Nielsen Company, global consumers spent more than five and half hours on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter in December 2009, an 82% increase from the same time last year when users were spending just over three hours per month on social networking sites. In addition, the overall traffic to social networking sites has grown over the last three years (45% from Dec 2007 to Dec 2009). Just look at that unique audience number, it’s 300 million plus... Lots of countries have smaller populationsRESEARCH:http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/global/led-by-facebook-twitter-global-time-spent-on-social-media-sites-up-82-year-over-year/
Change is inevitable. Actually the existing history of recruitment technology is a good example of changing behaviours brought about by new technology and new business models
Our own research indicates that for IT roles where salary is greater than £35K more than 65% of candidates were already on LinkedIn
Without further ado, the 2009 Word of the Year is: unfriend.RESEARCH:unfriend – verb – To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.As in, “I decided to unfriend my roommate on Facebook after we had a fight.”“It has both currency and potential longevity,” notes Christine Lindberg, Senior Lexicographer for Oxford’s US dictionary program. “In the online social networking context, its meaning is understood, so its adoption as a modern verb form makes this an interesting choice for Word of the Year. Most “un-” prefixed words are adjectives (unacceptable, unpleasant), and there are certainly some familiar “un-” verbs (uncap, unpack), but “unfriend” is different from the norm. It assumes a verb sense of “friend” that is really not used (at least not since maybe the 17th century!). Unfriend has real lex-appeal.”
What is the big deal about social media you might ask. The big deal is the unprecedented access to more people than ever previously possible... and for free!!!
There’s some technical chatter about whether people are actually getting into Social Recruiting or just doing Social Sourcing.I'm defining Social Recruiting as... finding, engaging, communicating and building relationships using social media versus Social Sourcing which is limited to the finding and perhaps initial engagement of potential candidatesCapita are currently more active in social sourcing than a complete strategic approach to social media...BUT... we can feel the pressure of clients asking how we're going to engage with target audience communication preferences
So, is Social Recruiting the “silver bullet”... No, it’s not!! We have already mentioned that Social Recruiting doesn't work if a high percentage of your target talent pool doesn't use social media.The basics of recruitment are not changed by the emergence of social media. Social media is just a third way to do what recruiters have done in person or over the phone for decades. Nevertheless recruiters leveraging the additional channels that social media provides are more likely to have the best results
I promised to give you some predictions for 2010...