I took a day out of the office to learn about what the recruitment market has in store at the Online Recruitment Conference 2010, an event run by Enhance Media. What struck me throughout the day was what a disparate marketplace this is, especially for the proverbial ’employer looking for good candidates’. Despite some heady claims and promises from suppliers, for employers, the process still remains a somewhat torturous journey into the land of online advertising, social networks/media and job boards.
The online recruitment market continues to grow at a rapid rate, with 17% growth in 2008 – despite the downturn and continued fall in traditional media. With over 5,000 job boards for the eager job seeker (and let’s face it, there are plenty of those around!) to choose from and 14.3 million job seekers on the web – up from 8 million in 2004 – online is an area that needs your attention but something that needs you to be tech savvy.
The emphasis for the day was on mainly on the technology that underpins the sector, with leading players like Madgex, LinkedIn, Monster and Google, presenting their ideas for the future. Madgex is a market leader in providing job board and CV resume technology to the publishing market whose view on the future is one of social engagement between employers and candidates. This is made achievable by the use of the Madgex technology in an environment where CV synching between sites is ‘push button’ stuff.
It’s appealing. The customer/candidate is king – long live the candidate. You can’t argue with what Madgex have done in the recruitment market and as a recruiter you’ve probably used a Madgex site, and while I admire the essential vision, I can’t help but think… if only recruitment really was so simple.
Another key theme was the rise of social media, which is set, according to trend analysis/research produced by LinkedIn, to continue to expand rapidly. According to LinkedIn 68% of corporate HR professionals surveyed are already using social networks to find and source candidates. With LinkedIn, the individual is building a brand, they’re actively selling themselves in an open market and as such, it’s not a bad way of screening someone. It’s also a vast network, with over 57 million individuals worldwide. So searching for a key candidate via open networks like LinkedIn – headhunting in essence – provides immediacy and targeting.
As an employer and a publisher, I’m an online advocate in every sense and embrace emerging technologies as key to our future success. I came away from the event with Giles Guest’s from Enhance Media summation on the changing face of the recruitment market ringing in my ears: "We need to spend more time at the front end of the recruitment cycle – planning, writing, considering job adverts and specs – and subsequently we’ll spend less time in the back end – filtering, screening, interviewing."
In other words, let’s not get baffled by the technology, focus on the outcome and use your skills to attain it. Less quantity, better quality should be the ‘holy grail’ of recruitment.
Tom Dunkerley is managing director of SiftMedia.
