We recently ran a campaign with Jobsite and Reed to recruit a Sales Executive for Rx Systems. They are the UK's fastest growing company in the retail pharmacy software solutions market. The total spend for this campaign was just over £1K. Both sites delivered a phenomenal response and the successful candidate has already started in the position. Not a bad cost per hire and here's what the recruiting manager has to say:

Dear James,

I’d like to thank you at Beyond interactive for supporting us in our recent recruitment campaign. I was delighted with the courteous and professional approach of your team and I will be recommending your services to the other department heads here at Rx Systems.

Thanks again,

Stephen Hards
Sales Manager
Rx Systems

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Following on from a recent blog on the Mylonglunch website regarding stats and over-reliance on e.g. search engines, here are a few thoughts on why these stats should not be used to paint the real picture of how successful a potential recruitment campaign could be:

It's all good and well being #1 on google for e.g. IT jobs, but that doesn't mean the site is right for a campaign – far from it! The focus needs to be much more specific to what you're looking to achieve. If e.g. a £50K Developer from Reading is looking for a new job, do you think he/she will google “IT jobs” to start their job search? Unlikely!

The skilled media planners of this world should already know the capabilities of the sites in question and should therefore use the information available to them from each site intelligently. Good job board sales people won't just spin the Google (or Hitwise) stats, they will look at the brief properly and (hopefully) come back with a solution that's not only believable, but is accurate to the brief in question.

Also, testimonials are not a good indicator either. All sites have shed-loads of testimonials they can throw at you and what's right for client X may not be right for client Y anyway.

Even then, if site X has more Developers in Reading than site Y, is still doesn't mean that site X is right for a campaign.

I could go on….

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Having just spent half an hour arguing with a recruitment consultant about how to write online copy, here are a few thoughts:

Do they know what works and what doesn't?
Do they know that an ad should always centre around a 'what's in it for them' audience proposition and not what an organisation does?
Do they realise that online readers scan jobs before reading on?
Do they know about frontloading sentences?
Do they know they have only two seconds to trap a reader's attention?
Do they know that less is more?
Do they know that research tells us that unnecessary words such as 'hence' turn a reader off?
Do they know that using up the vast majority of a wordcount on talking about how great a business is has been proved counterproductive and a waste of space?
Do they know that the best advertising copy is conversational?
Do they know that, just like having a conversation with someone, if you keep on talking about yourself, they won't listen?

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A recent report from Colin Sinclair, the chairman of the Manchester Investment Development Agency (MIDAS) states that Manchester will soon become what Barcelona is to Madrid or Milan is with Rome…Here’s a few thoughts:

The perception that the good jobs only exist in London has changed. Manchester is now regarded as one of Europe’s top 10 investment locations (ft DI 2008) with some really exciting projects such as Spinningfieids and Beetham Tower giving the city a new skyline and huge investment. This has given global firms such as Siemens, Google, Cisco and IBM the opportunity to move into the region and tap into a huge talent pool.

Research suggests that well over 50% of the 115,000 graduates in Manchester stay in the region after graduation (ONS/ME 2008) and according the Guardian, Manchester is the most sought after destination for international students.

The transformation of Manchester from post-industrial decline to a shining cosmopolitan city is down to a lot of things; the central position at the heart of the UK, some great entrepreneurial spirit and some really good universities producing bucket loads of talent.

Long may it continue!

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From a small agency point of view, we regularly go up against the big agencies and on a few occasions, we've just missed out because we dont have a big creative team etc, nor do we have the resources to heavily invest in pitches. Hence, client Y going with a bigger agency.

For our last pitch, however (to an education client in the North West), we took the bold approach of investing a lot of time and money into getting the creative message right. We ended up winning the business last week and from the feedback from client Y, it was not only because they were they really excited about the online stuff, but we took it to the next level and delivered a variety of creative concepts. This allowed us to not only to demonstrate what they should be doing from a digital persepctive, but exactly what it would look like!

Now I'm pretty sure they don't think we sit in flashy offices (anyone that's been here will vouch for that), but hats off to this client for treating every pitch on merit and not on e.g. the size of the agency and it's client base. If we didn't win client Y, we would have been dissapointed of course, but it just goes to show that a little investment is well worth if it the reward is great enough.

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

http://tinyurl.com/adfbzy

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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.

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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!

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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!

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

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