Where am I?

Announcement from 4MAT, Thursday 26th July:

4MAT announce that Andrew Soane has joined the business as Client Development Director.

4MAT is a full-service marketing services agency that provides websites and digital marketing to recruitment consultancies and corporate employers.  Clients include Aspire Global Network, Capita, SThree and RWE npower

Andrew is a well-known industry figure, with over 20 years’ experience in the employer branding and recruitment marketing sector. He has held a number of account management, sales, general and strategic management roles, with agencies such as TMP, Bernard Hodes Group, Barkers, Penna and most recently SAS.

Andrew joins the executive team at 4MAT, and will be responsible for client development, service and strategy, and – working closely with James Saunders, Managing Director, Claire Davidson, Operations Director, Gareth Jenkins, Head of Development, and Philip Jones, Technical Director as well as the wider 4MAT team – for developing the business’ offering.

“Over the last 13 years, we’ve built a successful, profitable business in the digital recruitment arena,” says James Saunders, Managing Director. “We’re already the leading recruitment marketing provider to the recruitment sector, and now we’re developing our offering to the corporate sector. Andrew brings with him considerable knowledge and experience, and we’re excited about how he’ll complement the skills and expertise we already have”.

“Talent attraction is all about digital, social and mobile”, explains Andrew, “so this was a fabulous opportunity to join a business that specialises in those areas. 4MAT have an excellent track record in this space, and I’m looking forward to working with the team and their clients to develop and grow the business.”

Candidate experience? What candidate experience?

Everyone connected with recruitment seems to be talking about candidate experience these days.  Whether you’re in Resourcing or HR (and looking at the process that your candidates have to go through), a recruiter, or a recruitment services vendor, you will have talked about candidate experience at some stage recently, if not every day.

And if you don’t believe me, just go into Google and search for candidate experience, or better still, search for #CandidateExperience in Twitter, and see what comes up.

Mind you, why shouldn’t everyone be talking about it?  After all, we all seem to agree that providing a great candidate experience is one of the most important things that an employer can do, if it wants to enhance its employer reputation, build its talent pipeline, and hire great people. Most of us also agree that candidate experience has a huge impact on an organisation’s consumer or corporate brand.  (In a recent survey by application tracker StartWire, nearly two thirds of respondents said they’d think twice about buying your products or services, if they don’t hear from you after they submit their application).

So if we all agree that providing a great candidate experience is so important, it does beg an obvious question: why are we so bad at doing it ourselves?

OK, so that’s a bit of a generalisation, I know.  But it’s one based on my own experience, because I’ve recently been in the jobs market myself, looking for a new role. And I can tell you with absolute confidence, that whilst there were some great examples, overall, the candidate experience was very poor.

My personal bête noir was recruitment and search consultants who, having agreed on a how they would support you, would disappear.  But there were other equally frustrating and time-wasting experiences:

• Painful, long and complicated online application processes (seriously, have you ever applied to one of your own roles? You should do, and get your ATS Account Manager to do the same);
• Recruiters who don’t understand the role that they are recruiting for;
• Out-of-date job postings (when you click on a job listed on a job board or LinkedIn, you don’t expect to get to a page that explains that “this job is not live anymore”. Apart from anything else, you just look disorganised).
• Acknowledgments – or a lack of them.  How difficult can it be to set up a simple “thanks for your application, we’ll be in touch soon” automated response?  Don’t ruin it, mind, by explaining that “if you have not heard from us in X weeks, assume you have been unsuccessful”.  You might believe that that’s a reasonable and practical way of dealing with volume; I just found it insulting.

As I say, there were also some great examples of organisations and people providing a fantastic candidate experience: recruitment and executive search consultants, employers, and in some cases, former colleagues and acquaintances in my network, who I had contacted speculatively (they may not have been recruiting, but took the time to speak to me, give me suggestions, and helped me network).  Unsurprisingly, these are the organisations – and the people – that I’d like to work with (as an employee, employer, partner, client or supplier) in the future.

And as for me, I’m delighted to say that my search for a new role was successful. I’m joining a fabulous organisation (a company with real expertise, a fantastic track record, and of course, an excellent candidate experience) in a new and exciting role next week. When I’ll be sure to start talking to clients, about the candidate experience they provide.

Is Bob Diamond’s resignation the 1st step for a battered industry to rebuild its employer brand?

So Bob Diamond has finally decided to step down, amid all the furore following Barclay’s record fine for trying to manipulate the Libor rates.  I can’t say I’m altogether surprised: his resignation was inevitable, given the level of media interest, public outcry and, perhaps most damagingly, condemnation from senior politicians. But part of me is disappointed.

That the actions of a few traders in trying to manipulate the inter-bank lending rate were wrong, is clearly undeniable.  And that it took place on Bob Diamond’s watch, and that there were no control mechanisms in place to identify and prevent this kind of activity, is also not at issue.  And for the record, I share the disappointment and shock felt by many over this whole episode.

But let’s look at the facts.  The fine imposed by US and UK regulators last week, related to the activities of 14 traders, between 2005 and 2009. Most of those traders have already left Barclays, which co-operated fully with the regulators’ investigation. Barclays also announced it would “rigorously” review the conduct of all those involved, and take appropriate disciplinary action, including bonus claw-backs. (Admittedly that announcement only came last week, but nonetheless, it did come).

So I’m not saying something didn’t go very badly wrong at Barclays, and possibly at other banks, because clearly it did. But Barclays (and the industry as a whole) recognises the severity of the situation, and is taking action.  (RBS confirmed it had already sacked 4 of its traders over their alleged involvement in the scandal last year).

What interests me is how Barclays in particular, and the banking and securities industry as a whole, goes about rebuilding its reputation, in both the corporate and employer space.

Granted, it’s going to be a huge challenge. Since 2008 and the global financial crisis, the reputation of the sector has taken something of a beating. Clearly the media should be allowed to investigate and ask questions when our banking and securities industry behaves with anything other than the highest standard of ethics.  But surely that should be proportionate?  Does anyone else get the impression that media companies and politicians have been lining up to put the boot in?  (Why am I thinking about one of my Mum’s favourite rebukes, “people in glass houses …”?)

After all, it’s not like businesses in the banking and securities sector are the only ones to demonstrate poor judgement and lack of rigour, is it?  In the last 24 hours, it has been announced that GlaxoSmithKline has been fined a record £1.9bn by US authorities – nearly 7 times the fine imposed on Barclays last week – for promoting 2 of its drugs for unapproved uses, for making unsupported safety claims about another drug, and for failing to provide data to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Will the story follow Barclays, from the business pages to the front pages?  And will it have such a profound impact on GSK’s employer reputation?

According to PwC’s 2011 Millennials at Work report (a survey of 4,000 graduates worldwide), 9% of graduates already won’t consider working in the banking and capital markets sector. To what extent that number grows, when the impact of the latest scandal works its way through, remains to be seen.  But given that 59% in the same survey said they were looking for an employer with CSR values that matched their own, it would be reasonable to assume that Barclays’ application numbers may be down next year, and they will slip down the Times list of Top 100 Graduate Employers from their current 14^th spot.

And of course, reputation doesn’t just impact graduate recruitment, it also affects professional and experienced hires. The last time Barclays appeared in the Sunday Times/Best Companies to Work for lists in 2006, they made it to 6^th spot.  (Interestingly, Barclays was one of 6 banking and financial services companies to make the top 20 in 2006; in 2012’s list, there were only 3).

It would be a mistake to assume that, just because the sector is contracting as a result of the Eurozone crisis (with an estimated 90,000 job cuts announced worldwide this year by the world’s 50 largest banks), that Barclays (and the wider banking sector) has time on its side.

Despite the cuts, there are acute skills shortages in the sector (notably in areas such as M&A, technology, financial information exchange, and risk management); and the market is continuing to grow in China (where the China Securities Regulatory Commission reported that the number of investment banking employees would need to grow from its current level of 330,000 to 1m by 2020 to meet demand) as well as Brazil, India and the Middle East.

If banks like Barclays are going to compete for the very best graduate and professional talent now and in the future, they are going to have to take a leaf out of BP’s book.  BP faced what must be one of the worst reputation crises in corporate history, and have emerged from that period, ranked 28^th in the engineering list of the World’s Most Attractive Employers by Universum.

BP have succeeded where the banking sector has so far failed (the Deepwater Horizon accident took place a year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers) with a clear and simple strategy: fix the problem; act with humility; invest in the employer brand; and bring the employee experience to life – via its people in a relevant, local setting (see BP’s Our Stories for a fabulous example of this in action).

So as difficult as this week has undoubtedly been for Barclays employees, perhaps Bob Diamond’s resignation is the first step that Barclays needs to take, in order to rebuild its corporate and employer reputation.  And if Barclays can take that path, the sector as a whole can surely do the same.

“Jobsite invents Twitter based recruitment”. Allegedly.

OK, strictly speaking the article that appeared in the Evening Standard on Tuesday 23rd June didn’t actually say that Jobsite invented Twitter based recruitment. But it might as well have done.

The headline actually read “Recruitment by Twitter as job search goes online”. That was in the print version. The digital version was slightly more reserved “Twitter launches job recruitment service”. I guess it would have had to have been a bit more reticent. Online readers are more likely to know that job search had gone online.

But either way, the content in both articles was the same.

It’s a new service that has been launched by Jobsite. It’s been a huge success. And my favourite bit. Gary Robinson of Jobsite (sorry Gary) explaining that after Facebook, “this seemed a logical next step” and that he “has no doubt it will soon be commonplace to find a job through Twitter”.

Blimey, talk about crystal balls.

To be fair, the article does say that Jobsite “is one of several firms offering recruitment via Twitter”. Which is true enough. It’s one of several hundred (thousand?) firms doing it. But then, it doesn’t mention any other by name, just Jobsite.

Perhaps more cynical readers might assume that this omission could in some way be related to the fact that both Jobsite and the Evening Standard are owned by DMGT. But I couldn’t possibly comment.

I’m at pains to point out that I think Jobsite is a great site. And it absolutely has a role to play. But let’s not pretend that they’re breaking any new ground here – in this instance, they’re treading a pretty well worn path. One hopes that media planners, resourcing professionals and HR teams aren’t taken in by this kind of nonsense, but if they are, my agency (and indeed every other credible, digital recruitment specialist or recruitment advertising agency) would be happy to help them unpick fact from fiction.

Cause for celebration?

So guardianjobs.co.uk has broken the 2 million users-a-month barrier for the first time, and according to the press release it has sent out: “the continuing rise in traffic is attributed to the quality of jobs carried across a wide range of sectors and a strong pool of both passive and active job-seekers”.

Hmm.  I suspect it might be more about the active job seekers than anything else. 

After all, as even the calmest and least sensational of commentators agree, the UK unemployment rate is about to smash through the 2 million barrier – it if hasn’t already done so (http://tinyurl.com/bxd8e6). 

In other words, there are more people out there looking for jobs than ever before (or at least, more than at any other time since the birth of digital recruiting).  Is it just possible that more than anything else, it’s the high number of job seekers out there that is fuelling guardianjobs.co.uk’s traffic numbers?

The Guardian might argue that those job seekers come to guardianjobs.co.uk because they know they’ll find that high “quality of jobs carried across a wide range of sectors”.  But the truth is, a quick glance at most job sites’ ABCe (www.abce.org.uk)  audit – assuming they are independently audited- will show a big jump in numbers.  For example, TotalJobs saw the number of their monthly users increase between Dec 08 and Jan 09 by a massive 90%. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticising guardianjobs.co.uk – in fact I think it’s a strong site in many areas and in some cases would always appear on the schedule.  But let’s not get carried away with some increases in audience and traffic numbers at the moment because right now, that is par for the course.

In any case, if we assume that guardianjobs.co.uk’s press release “big-ing up” the numbers was the result of a slightly over enthusiastic sales effort, let’s look at what resourcing professionals and advertisers really are interested in when they are formulating attraction strategies for their recruitment needs.

Are we interested in traffic and audience numbers? To a point. But it’s not the be all and end all.  Once upon a time those numbers might be a useful indicator of potential success (or otherwise) of a campaign, but these days, there are so many active job seekers out there (as we’ve discussed), that it’s a little less relevant.  People are more desperate so there’ll be more applicants.  But in that middle-to-senior management space that the Guardian and its sister job site occupy, employers want quality – not quantity. 

The stuff that would really make us sit up and take notice is data on likely success – numbers of applications in similar roles, numbers of shortlisted candidates, and offers made, for example.  In fact, the same kind of information that resourcers and advertisers have been asking for, for years.  Except now, thanks to more joined-up technology, we do have the ability to capture, manage and share this information.  The question is, are we (by which I mean media and site operators, advertisers and resourcing professionals) ready to really take advantage, by working in a more open and collaborative way?

 

It turns out size is everything

OK, this one may be sour grapes.  It’s definitely borne out of sheer frustration.  But why, oh why do we still hear “we really like you, but we just want to go with a smaller agency” as a reason why we’ve lost the pitch?  (Smaller, niche agencies presumably get the polar opposite from time to time: “we just want to go with a bigger agency”).

Now I know that sometimes HR and resourcing teams are just too nice; they don’t want to have to tell you that you were too expensive, the creative work was rubbish, the strategy had more holes than swiss cheese, or even that “we thought the MD was an idiot”.  But let’s just put that thought to one side for the moment, can we?

Take today.  My company has been doing some fantastic stuff in terms of new business (including a number of blue chip wins we’ll be announcing very shortly), but we’ve also pitched to a medium sized manufacturing business with a global export business, based in the West Midlands, a month or so ago.  Let’s call them Company X. 

We’ve been talking to Company X for months.  We know them.  They know us.  From the first metaphorical shy, nervous smiles across the dancefloor, to the breathless, desperate throws of that first night together, to the pleasant routine of the comfortable, lived-in relationship.  We know everything about each other. 

So why did they wait, until we’d gone to the effort and expense of pitching for their business, before telling us (today) that actually, with hindsight, umm, you know, they really liked our pitch but well, the thing is, they realised they’d be better off with a smaller agency?  But we’d really like to keep in touch, you know, just in case.

Please.

I completely understand that some organisations would feel more comfortable working with a smaller partner.  But couldn’t they have told us before we were ready to commit?  It’s not like we were pretending to be anything we’re not, was it?

So you have to wonder, maybe getting jilted by Company X had nothing to do with our size.  As I say, we never tried to hide our size and were completely open at the credentials stage months ago.  So maybe we really were too expensive, or they didn’t like the creative work, or the strategy, or even the MD?

In which case (and this is a plea to any HR or resourcing professionals who happen to stumble upon this blog), please give us honest feedback.  You’re not going to appoint us?  OK, we can take it.  We’re big boys and girls.  No-one expects to win every pitch (like I say, we’ve won a number of blue chip accounts already this year – our strike rate for January is 3 out 4).  But every organisation (including my own) that pitches for your business will invest a huge amount (of time and money) into getting their pitch ready, and that represents a considerable commitment to you.  The least you can do, is to give us honest and clear feedback – so we can properly understand where it went wrong and what we need to do next time, however hard that may seem (nothing wrong in aiming for 4 out 4, is there?).  So if you thought we were too expensive, or you didn’t like the creative work or the strategy, or even if you thought the MD was an idiot, please tell us.  We can take it.

On second thoughts, maybe size is everything?!