Engage: the Carve Blog on Social, Search, Talent

Alex posted this on his excellent blog ( http://onlinerecruiter.blogspot.com ) and asked if we'd be interested in publishing this via our network. Alex, the floor is yours..

The industry head of careers and classifieds at Google is quoted in this month's Recruiter magazine as saying:

"The Hays and the Adeccos of the world haven't got it right. Where are they online? They are feeding the jobs boards."

Lovely. I'm sure Hays and Adecco are delighted to have their online approach critiqued in such a constructive manner! In fairness to the chap from Google, it looks like he's been quoted at "recruitment society" event (? have you been to one of these?) as opposed to having an open pop at them... I suspect he may be surprised that his comments have made the press (not to mention this blog obviously.) Don't fancy being Google's Hays account manager today...

Anyway, do you think he's right? Do you think Hays and Adecco are behind their larger competitors? I'm not so sure they are.

My take is that there is just so much coming at the recruitment industry at the moment - everything from impending economic meltdown to disruptive technology - that it is very tricky for recruiters to know what to and what not to adopt in their online strategy. Trying to stay ahead of the curve on this isn't easy. Trying to do this for a huge business like Hays, Adecco or any of the other big recruiters is a heck of a job. Think about it - decide to run with one of the new routes to market, get buy in from various stakeholders in the business, sort process changes/ set up and then go for it. Back the right horse and you're a star. Make the wrong call and consider how much time (and therefore money) it would cost a big recruiter to adopt even a free service.

As much as there's now a huge amount of choices and an ever changing market, not getting the right approach online will cost any recruiter hugely over the short, medium and long term. It really is rock and a hard place for some of the larger firms. As well as having to make calls on social media approaches, business networking (I did promise not to mention Hays/ Mark Ions in this post...), getting their own website right and sorting out a sensible job board strategy, recruiters also have to deal with the disruptive approaches coming at them (very regularly now) Here's some examples:

www.bountyjobs.com - crux of this site is to allow the client to post the vacancy as well as what fee, recruiters then decide whether to work it or not. If they do its submit CVs. Want more detail on this? Click on www.cheezhead.com
www.beaker.com - I like this one.... Its a community site specifically for the life sciences sector. Its got the lots, career management, job ads, training/ development options and a LinkedIn style connect function. Where does the recruiter feature there? It may not come as a surprise that the CEO is an ex recruiter...
www.zubka.com - hugely disruptive referal bounty site. Now attracting more entrants to the market - www.yellojobs.com worth a look, the latest entrant in the US. Zubka is the daddy mind you - its been classed as "ebay for jobs" and in the UK is the closest thing to a "brand" in that market.

The list is almost endless... Flip yourself into the seat of the CEO of a listed recruitment firm.. Some big decisions ahead. No doubt many of the new sites/ offerings will launch in a blaze of glory only to fizzle out. Some of them are going to make it. As a recruiter if you miss the boat on this then you're really playing catch up.

What will really bring all of this to a head is the market slowdown. Most now acknowledge this is already upon us in the UK. Check out the comments on the Michael Page results on Yahoo Finance and the article in today's Times (links at the bottom of the post)In summary, MP's numbers are still very good (those of you who found this blog from my Xing or LinkedIn profile may accuse me of being a tad biased!) Few would argue that things are going to be tough in the UK over the next year or two.

During the last slowdown, we saw the Recruitment Process Outsourcing firms take a grip on the market. Love or loath RPOs? Think their day has come and gone? It doesn't really matter - the part of the market they are in is unlikely ever to go back to the straight agency market. This slowdown is likely to see another portion of the market go to the internet. How many businesses do you think are plotting how to cut agency spend at the moment?

Can the bigger firms have the same sort of agility as the smaller ones? Can they trial concepts? Anyone noticed what BLT are up to these days? Worth checking out www.carveconsulting.com/blog... Whether a big brand recruiter can or can't is almost irrelevant. They will need to adapt how they work to suit the increasing part the net is playing in jobsearches. Can they have a basic structure that is black and white in their online strategy and top this up with a "grey" area where they can trial new initiatives? I wonder.

Maybe the key word here is "adapt"

All of the disruptive media in the employment space is exciting stuff... All promise to be the catalyst for dramatic change... Consider one example. www.bountyjobs.com - on the face of it, this looks like it'd bring momumental change to the market. Job driven market, lots of candidates - from a client perspective its great: "Lots of recruiters want my business, I can use this site to drive the cost down." in principle this is really simple. In reality I'm not convinced. Why?
1. If recruiters need just agree to the terms on offer, can you imagine how many "hit and run" merchants will send CVs? Its not sounding like a positive experience for mr client
2. If the client is solely interested in driving cost down it stands to reason that a service oriented, quality recruiter would more than likely be thinking "thanks but not thanks" leaving lower quality firms to work the assignment. Again, as a client I would not be convinced that this the savings would outweigh either the inconvenience or the risk of not getting the best candidate for the job.

So what's the summary then?

3 key points for recruiters considering their online approach:

- Adaptabilty
- Flexibility
- Integration

Keep those three on the agenda... Simple hey, but can big firms act like smaller ones...?

As La Costner mused in Field of Dreams, "If you build it they will come". Not long-dead baseball players in this case (did anyone in the UK understand that story by the way? Something about a guy who threw a game and didn't wear any shoes? Or something?) but rather a salutory lesson in blog relations: keep talking, keep it authentic - and the audience will follow. Our musings rewarded with a place on Guy Kawasaki's Alltop Career directory.

Some great blog up there that we'd not come across before - definitely worth a browse.

On a related, nice link on there to Guy's Visual CV. We ran the story about Heidrick & Struggles investing some time back, so interesting to see it in action. More on VisualCV later in the week..

A question we've been asked a few times in the last few days: can I change website / URL without losing natural our search ranking?

Changing your URL

Picture this: you registed a URL a few years ago and threw your company brochureware up there when you didn't figure that the web was ever going to be that important. Now your forgetable / hyphen-rich URL is not looking so clever. What are the implications of changing it so late in the game?

Domain age is an important factor in the Google algorithm, so new domains can suffer versus older established domains There is also problems if links point to your old URL ( which then redirects to the new URL) when the link value is dimished. To check run a Google advanced search showing which pages link to the URL you provide - follow this search string format

When updating your links, don't forget the big value is not just in having a link itself, but having an optimised link via anchor text. For example, see how Carve is linked at the bottom of the page on Food Job Blog; that’s one of the reasons Carve is page 1 on Google for for “Social Media Marketing”.

Changing your website design / platform

The CarveConsulting.com domain is in fact really kicking a*** at the time of writing, as we're currently also ranked Google Position 1 for "PR for HR" and "Employment Marketing". But, as anyone who speaks to us regularly will know, we've actually been meaning to get round to changing the site for the last 12 months. (We're preaching openess / transparency / authenticity - yet carveconsulting.com content is basically out of date, unadulterated Business BS). But are we going to lose these vital rankings in the process of switching to a new design and platform? We'll let you know...

The web has, ahem, 'misspoken': I, Paul Harrison, am running for president of the United States. Watch the story on Channel 3 News

This is a great example of a video viral / buzz marketing campaign from http://www.culture-buzz.com/ - good work fellas..

We recently helped BLT organise their first ever Virtual Careers event for Management Consultants. Hosted by Top-Consultant, the event featured BLT and a number of leading employers, including Accenture.

The event was hosted on the iCongo Live platform. As you can see below, it looks good, and you could add some quite cool features (we recorded a quick podcast with Don to greet people who arrived on the stand.)

But the only question that matters of course is whether it delivered for exhibitors and candidates?

Our own experience was that it was all a bit "cold", the technology a little clunkly, and - at least on the stands I visited - I had to proactively click and contact someone to get any engagement, rather than being 'greeted' as I arrived. Plus conversations were s-l-o-w (possibly as a result of large numbers of attendees?)

But this is purely an anecdotal appraisal of the event's strengths / weaknesses , and we'd be interested to hear from Top-Consultant , Don from BLT / other exhibitors, and perhaps any candidates who took part?

A very interesting initiative that we've just been made aware of (via http://twitter.com/downingstreet) has been launched to under the title: 'Show us a better Way'.

The website carries the following mandate:

Tell us what you'd build with public information and we could help fund your idea!

Here's an excerpt from the first post:

Ever been frustrated that you can't find out something that ought to be easy to find? Ever been baffled by league tables or 'performance indicators'? Do you think that better use of public information could improve health, education, justice or society at large?

The UK Government wants to hear your ideas for new products that could improve the way public information is communicated. The Power of Information Taskforce is running a competition on the Government's behalf, and we have a £20,000 prize fund to develop the best ideas to the next level. You can see the type of thing we are are looking for here.

To show they are serious, the Government is making available gigabytes of new or previously invisible public information especially for people to use in this competition. Rest assured, this competition does not include personal information about people.

So, central government plugs into power of peering, being open, and sharing. Clearly someone in Whitehall is reading Wikinomics - which has got to be good news for all of us.

Look forward to following this with interest. And two cheers for someone over there whose idea this was (three cheers on final outcome). Ending the introduction / call to action thus is absolutely spot on:

"We're confident that you'll have more and better ideas than we ever will. "

Quick update on Jamie Leornard's speed-dating style event "My Working Lunch" , the graduate edition of which I openeded a couple of weeks ago.

This really is a neat idea that really seems to work - wonder if you could extend the concept (..to clients direct? / ATS providers?...)

You can see the short film, with references to this blogs title, here

We've been working recently with web developers 9web and leading Food Recruitment firm Focus Management on the launch of FoodJobBlog, to go to destination for food industry news, analysis, and ( of course ) food careers news.

It's at a very early stages at the moment, but we'll try and use this as an "open" case study of how we build blog relations / social media marketing campaigns (including SEO for blogs, link building, community development, nurturing internal bloggers and so on ), and also the challenges of getting companies to think - and act - transparently.

But in the interim, great work Paul / Ian on the blog look n' feel (the blog is based on the MovableType platrom ), and Stephen and the team at Focus for their vision. Now the hard work begins...

We've been approached by a major social network to help them launch music via social buzz / viral / blog / community marketing. Do you have demonstrable experience in these areas - ideally with an A&R / music background? Carve helps organisations engage their audiences online - through search, social, community networks and reputation management. We're an "open source" consulting form, and work with a network of brilliant people based anywhere on the planet. So, f you're interested in this project, or drop me a line - music@carveconsulting.com

On a related, great story in the Guardian today:

Smells like teen spirit

Who better to do the PR for your band than your devoted fans? Dave Simpson goes out in Manchester with a 'street team' - the latest tactic for whipping up a word-of-mouth pop sensation.

Inside Manchester's cosy Night & Day club, a huddle of young lads discuss their musical exploits. "We met this band that supported Jack Johnson," says Liam Sutcliffe, a 21-year old Mancunian with a fashionably Dohertyesque haircut, describing how Matt Costa's band "took us out in Rusholme and bought us all a curry". His mate Shaun Topham, also 21, tops that by describing how they've seen Razorlight and Kaiser Chiefs in tiny pubs. "And we got eight free tickets to see Richard Ashcroft!" he beams. "If you're into music it's great."

Read the full story here

Look forward to hearing from you..

As the BBC reports, LinkedIn have raised £27 million from investors - valuing the 5 year old business at a billion dollars. Not bad going.

Trick here is going to be what exactly LI are going to use the funds for. Clearly they're in a great position already with first mover advantage in the online business networking space. What I find notable about LinkedIn is that they are one of the few businesses that have been signficantly ahead of the game and have gone on to benefit from consumer behaviour catching up with them! Wonder if they had any idea just how much of a shift there was going to be in online user characteristics. Web 2.0 certainly wasn't even a twinkle in a marketers eye when LI launched. Think about it. We've all got a profile these days. Wind the clock back two years.. How many people a) had a profile b) had a sensible approach to using it for commercial benefit and finally c) of all the people with profiles, how often did they check it?

I've been impressed with what I've seen from LI recently. Have you all spotted the company profile feature? Type in a company name - just before the list of people on LI that are working at that firm you'll see a link to the profile. If you haven't clicked this already I really urge you to do so. What you'll see is effectively real time market intelligence. Recruitment/ search professionals are all over LI for obvious reasons. Type in a big brand recruiter and you'll see:

* Background/ overview of the company operations
* How many employees they have on LinkedIn
* Where these people are based
* Breakdown in demographics - male/ female ration, which Universities their people are from, median age
* New hires
* Recent promotions
* Where employees are most connected to
* Share price performance chart

One final feature, which I love, is that the company profile shows you where most employees worked before they joined, and the most common destinations when people move on. Think about how hard you'd have to work pre web to get that sort of info. Today its a click away!

Using Michael Page as an example, you can see :
- The most common University is Nottingham
- 12% of all their registered LI profiles are for Managers, 4% for Director
- 58% Male, median age 28
- Hays, Derwent Executive, Talent2, PWC and Accenture are common post MP employers
- PWC is a the most popular employer before joining MP.

All the info there is straight from LinkedIn. Try it out.

As a recruiter, either internal or agency, this info is gold dust. If you flip this onto one of you clients, how powerful is it to know where the most common hire profiles are, where they studied, where they're likely to be working. Talk about working smart!

This is a great use of the net for recruiters. Oh and its free.

I still dont believe UK recruiters are making the most of LI as a tool to build their individual profile, company brand or even source candidates and target clients. There are people out there doing a good job at it but I believe they're in the minority. Look at the US. Anyone heard of Shally Steckerl? bet you have. Looks like he's built a sizeable business off the back off his LI profile and sourcing strategies. We've got some catching up to do in the UK (again, sorry to refer to the MP profile again - but they have more registered LI users in NY than in London? That can't be right?)

I'm hoping that LI use some of their cash injection to develop some new features. If you can beat the company profile, I'll be impressed. The rest of the cash? The LI site allows individuals and businesses to build profile. I'd like to see LI spend some money on raising awareness on just what can be achieved with their site. Curveball? Will we see the business networking sites follow the same path as job boards? IE start generalist then go specialist, then add geographical focus? Will we see LI start to offer gated communities and compete with the likes of Visual CV?

I wonder....

Alex Strang / www.linkedin.com/in/astrang