Nice lookalike on the Mylonglunch website. This is payback time!

http://tinyurl.com/adfbzy

I attended Enhance Media's Online Recruitment – The Year Ahead conference in London yesterday. Here are some thoughts from a good day all round.

Although I couldn't hang around for the last 2 presentations (Bracknell Forest Council and Daxtra), the other presentations we're well put together and useful:

Youtube

Luisa Mauro's comments about how to take advantage of Youtube really struck a cord with me. Although we're already doing this for our clients, her ideas on HOW to structure video content (time, delivery etc) was helpful. It's just a shame that once a video has been delivered on Youtube, candidates cannot click on a URL to take them directly to a career site and have to rely on writing down the URL.

Workcircle

Although I see real value in what aggregators can offer, there was too much info about their company – I didn't really want a history lesson! I asked a question about whether or not they have plans to build a video platform into their offering to job boards. They said they didn't because the demand isn't there. I think they will find the demand IS there and by offering this platform to job boards with plans to have video on their own sites will add some real value.

Revenue Science (Behavioural Targeting)

If employers are not already embracing behavioural targeting, they should be. It's as simple as that!  This is a fantastic way of attracting passive jobseekers and you know what…it isn't that expensive either!

Enhance Media – Giles Guest (The year ahead)

This was the best presentation of the lot. A good insights into the future of the online (and offline) recruitment industry. Some interesting times ahead and I'm total agreement that knowledge-based sites (e.g. Wilmott.com for the Quantitative Finance Community) will be used a lot more in 09 to target a higher quality of candidate.

Facebook

Some of their traffic stats are scary and sorry to use a cliche, but it should be a no-brainer! It ain't expensive, it's targeted and from our experiences, it works well. However, there are flaws. You STILL can't target certain locations. For example, we recently ran a campaign to target Store Managers on the South Coast but could only target bout 50% of the locations we needed!

I didn't hang around for the last two presentations so I can't comment. Overall, it was a good day. Nice to see a few old faces etc and although it's a pretty tough market at the moment, there's still that real sense of “we're in this together” and by continuing in this way will only benefit our industry.

The biggest plus point for me was that as an agency, we're actually offering our clients all of the above and doing it correctly.

Rowan has another gig in the pipeline with his band, Papillon.

They will be headlining at one of Manchesters best live music venues, The Roadhouse on Friday 13th Feb.

He hopes to see you there!

Interesting to hear from a few of our media contacts on how slow certain sectors have been in the South in terms of ad spend, but how good it's been for the same sectors in the North. One sector in particular (Housing) has been business as usual for us and if anything, we've actually seen more client spend and lot more activity in this sector. In contrast, some of our clients based in the South have been…well, lets just say they've been a tad on the quiet side!

I'm not saying this is the norm for everyone but we've certainly noticed a difference lately.

On another note, our local area (Chorlton) is still seeing lots of new businesses cropping up all the time. I think there's been 2 restaurants, 2 bars, a deli and an eco-friendly gift shop. All good for the local economy and the only thing to take the gloss off is the new eyesore in the form of a Tesco local at the bottom of our road! All of this in the first month of the year is hardly economic slowdown!

You can now follow us on twitter. Our link is: www.twitter.com/jamesswift

If anyone hasn’t already seen it, the new Mylonglunch website is superb (www.mylonglunch.com).

A really great effort from Jamie and Matthew and our congratulations go out to you on a job well done!

We are the first and only specialist full-service online recruitment advertising agency outside of London. Pioneers from our very inception, we look upon digital advertising somewhat differently to others and it’s our transparency that really sets us apart. To our clients, online recruitment holds no mysteries and we advise them to make clear and confident decisions about their recruitment strategy.

We’re only just starting this blog so please come and visit on a regular basis as we will share our news and views on the online recruitment industry…