UK worst G8 country for youth unemployme

UK worst G8 country for youth unemployment, behind only Spain & Greece, says @WorkFoundation http://ow.ly/hfEnD

CEO admits media pressure forced Goldman

CEO admits media pressure forced Goldman Sachs to ditch bonus plan http://ow.ly/hbg4f #davos #talentmanagement #employerbrand

Encouraging news for #graduaterecruitmen

Encouraging news for #graduaterecruitment according to @AGRtweets salaries rose by 4% and vacancies will be up by 9% http://ow.ly/h7fy5

Good read http://ow.ly/h7fjj Smart emplo

Good read http://ow.ly/h7fjj Smart employers know they must articulate the “why” if they want their #employerbrand to work #talentattraction

Launch your recruitment app first, and you ignore the first rule of mobile marketing

There was an interesting article posted in the news section of HR Magazine’s website last week, about leading dental group Integrated Dental Holdings’ new recruitment iPhone app that has recently been launched.

Aside from the fact that I am not so sure if this really constitutes ‘news’, it’s good to see smaller organisations (and particularly those that operate in areas where there are acute talent shortages) embracing new technology and trying new things to attract and recruit talent, especially in the mobile space.

Naturally, always keen to see what other organisations are doing out there, I wanted to have a look at their app, along with their career site and other digital recruitment tools, to see how it all fits together.

And overall, I was pretty impressed with what they’re doing.

There’s a pretty good careersite which, using a laptop or desktop, it’s very easy to use and navigate your way around.  It’s complemented by the corporate Facebook page which has a jobs channel, a Twitter feed and a YouTube recruitment channel.  And if you search for ‘dental careers’ within Google, they score pretty well in both paid for and organic search.  So it all fits together pretty well.  Perhaps the only comment I would make is that, aside from the YouTube channel, some of the collateral feels a bit too focused on pure job listings, and it would benefit from having a broader mix of content to inform and engage candidates.

A frustrating user experience for mobile visitors to the website

That said, as I say, it all fits together pretty well.  Until you get to the mobile offering.

Because aside from the iPhone app, the website hasn’t for the most part been mobile optimised, and there isn’t an ‘m-site’ alternative.  So when I tried to access the site from my iPhone, it’s trying to show exactly the same thing on a small smartphone screen as a large laptop or desktop screen.  With the result that you only see about 10% of the screen at any given time, and you’re constantly having to scroll left and right, up and down, and back again, to piece it all together (can you get Repetitive Strain Injury from swiping like a banshee on your smartphone?)

It’s frustrating and time consuming, and invariably some users will give up and go elsewhere. Which is a pity, because if they pursued it, as I did, they might eventually find the button in the top right corner of the page pointing them towards ‘Job Search Mobile’ (a page which is mobile optimised, and where you can easily search and register for jobs).

Making your app ‘findable’ via the App Store

And then I went to Apple’s App Store to download the app itself, but after a fairly lengthy search, I couldn’t find it. Not a thing.  I wasn’t sure exactly what it was called or how it was tagged, so I searched for it using a variety of terms:  dentist jobs; dentist careers; dental job; dental career; idh careers; idh; integrated dental; integrated dental holdings; and finally, integrated dental holdings careers.

According to the article I read, the app has already been downloaded by 204 people.  All I can say is that they must have more patience than I did, because after 20 minutes I gave up.

The app bandwagon

That said, despite my not being able to find it, I’m not surprised that employers such as IDH are investing in smartphone apps.  After all, everyone’s talking about them these days.

According to Apple, there were 650,000 apps available at the end of May, and Android are not far behind with around 500,000 apps available.  Presumably we can expect Windows to start playing catch-up very soon.  And given that in March, Apple celebrated their 25 billionth download, it’s hardly surprising that everyone is jumping on the app bandwagon.  Including recruiters like IDH.

But marketeers, and recruiters for that matter, need to approach this a little more smartly.

63% have used mobile to search for jobs

And that means that if you’re going to start using the mobile web as a recruiting tool (and you should be: according to the largest ever survey of mobile recruiting trends in the UK, jointly carried out recently by Educate, Metashift and Reconverse, 63% have searched for a job on their mobile device and 48% have applied) the smartphone app should be the last thing you invest in, not the first.

Think about it.

A well thought-out and well-designed career app can provide job seekers and candidates with an informative and engaging experience.  Assuming they can find it.  The recruitment app can be hugely useful and is certainly worth considering.

But your audience needs to know about the app, and already have made the conscious decision to download it to their phone, before they can use it.  They’re unlikely to be searching the app store for particular employer or agency apps.  And so the career app is only really relevant for people who’ve decided they are interested in finding out more about a particular employer or from a particular agency.

Meanwhile, if you overlooked mobile web and m-sites when you put your mobile strategy together in favour of the mobile app, you’re ignoring a huge group of people out there.

14m recruitment related searches in UK on Google from mobile devices last month

According to Google AdWords, there were 97m searches in the UK last month that contained the words job, career, recruitment or employment.  Of these, a massive 14m came from mobile devices – or 14.5% of total search traffic.

And don’t assume that just because your non-mobile optimised website is ranked well by Google when you search using a desktop/laptop, it will perform equally well when you search from a mobile device, because it won’t.  If your site isn’t mobile enabled, it won’t be indexed and ranked properly by Google in a mobile search.

So to organisations such as IDH, who might have invested in their recruitment app before the mobile site and who would point to the number of users that have downloaded the app as evidence of its success, I would say look at the traffic you’re missing out on from mobile web.

204 people may have downloaded IDH’s recruitment app. On the other hand, there were 135,080 searches related to dental jobs and careers*last month according to Google AdWords, of which nearly 28,000 came from a mobile device.

The 1^st rule of mobile marketing: develop your mobile site first

I would certainly recommend that employers and recruiters think about and consider developing smartphone apps.  They clearly have a value, help to engage candidates, and can contribute to the candidate experience.  But attraction comes first. So, given the most employers and recruiters have finite budgets to invest in their attraction and recruitment tools, the mobile site should be your first priority.

* Search terms used: dentistry careers; dentistry jobs; dental careers; dental jobs; dentist careers; dentist jobs.

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.

What lessons can we learn from the G4S London 2012 furore?

After two or three days of hiding in the metaphorical cellar, while the political and media hurricane raged about them, G4S have finally come out with the kind of response that they should have done a few days ago.  That they chose to wait, hoping that it would blow away, is no surprise; I’m certain that is exactly what they were advised to do by their PR advisors.

Mind you, I’m sure the delay in their response, and their initial (underwhelming) announcements, have only added to the strength of feeling being voiced in the media, and across the social mediasphere.

For anyone watching BBC’s Breakfast News this morning, they might have been surprised by the tough time that the normally mild-mannered Charlie Stayt and Louise Minchin were giving G4S CEO Nick Buckles, who duly explained that G4S is “disappointed, embarrassed, and sorry”, which more or less echoes the company’s latest statement released late yesterday.

Yesterday’s statement (and Nick Buckles uneasy interview) go an awful lot further than the low key announcement the company made on Thursday, saying that it understood “the Government’s decision to bring in additional resources”, which clearly didn’t go anywhere like far enough.

Regardless of how successful (or otherwise) G4S’ media and crisis management strategy has been, as a recruitment, talent acquisition and employer branding professional, what I’m really interested in finding out is whether there are any lessons to be learnt from G4S’ failure to deliver.  (So, I suspect, is the board of G4S, given the £10m – £20m of contractual penalties they face on this contract, not to mention the likely impact on future potential contracts – Surrey and West Midlands Police forces  have already shelved plans to outsource a large portion of their middle and back office functions since the furore began last week).

Not being funny, but with unemployment topping 2.6m, including record levels of student and graduate unemployment, how difficult could it have been exactly to have recruited 10,000 people or thereabouts, to be part of the ‘greatest show on earth’?

Well, according to G4S, very.

Indeed, the company has described it as an “unprecedented and very complex security recruitment and deployment exercise”, during which it has “encountered significant difficulties in processing applicants in sufficient numbers through the necessary training, vetting and accreditation procedures”.

Except that G4S is the company that just 2 months ago, won the award for Best Global/International Recruitment Strategy at the 2012 Recruiter Awards for Excellence in HR. (No, I’m not kidding).  In its press release, G4S credited the win on its highly innovative and effective direct resourcing strategy that “has been achieved through the application of innovative technological recruiting solutions which match our business requirements”.

Oh dear.

Once the leadership team at G4S have finished wiping the egg off their faces, they will clearly turn their attention to finding out exactly what has gone wrong, along with the Commons Public Accounts Committee which has summoned G4S, two government departments and 2012 organiser LOCOG to answer questions in September.

When they do, I suspect they will find that all sorts of issues have contributed to the situation, including the decision by LOCOG to increase the number of required hires three fold, a year into the contract.  But above all else, I suspect they will find that it’s not been managed in a sufficiently robust and joined up way, and that the project has lacked clear pipeline management processes (in spite of those innovative technological recruiting solutions that G4S boasted about until so recently).

I hope that in due course, we can all learn and understand where it’s gone wrong.  That will be essential to the outsourcing and recruitment industry – in particular those organisations that work on large government contracts.

But in the meantime, I hope that we can all look forward to a fantastic, but above all safe, London 2012.

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.

Social networking misuse by employees: you do the maths

In a recent survey by international law firm Proskaur, 76% of the organisations questioned use social networking as a tool for their business.  Nothing surprising there.    Nor did it come as much of a shock that 29% still actively block their employees’ access to social networking sites.

(Mind you, with virtually every new mobile handset coming preloaded with a host of apps for LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc, you have to admire the blind optimism, if nothing else, of an employer that thinks it can still prevent its employees from wasting time on social networking sites during working hours, or writing anything defamatory, libellous, untrue, or just plain old fashioned nasty about them, simply by controlling access through their own network.  Why am I reminded of the story of the little Dutch boy who put his finger in the dyke to stem the flood waters?)

Getting back to the point, perhaps a more surprising finding from Proskaur’s survey is that 27% of organisations monitor their employees’ use of social networking sites?  (And following the furore over News International/NOTW’s telephone hacking,  I wonder how many employers will admit to workplace monitoring like this in next year’s survey?)

But the most surprising finding to have come out of the survey, surely, must be that 43% of employers have had to deal with employee misuse of social networks (with a third of those surveyed having taken disciplinary action as a result) whilst 45% of all businesses still do not have social networking policies in place.

To paraphrase countless Private Eye correspondents, “are these two results by any chance related”?

Yes, of course they are.

So if you haven’t got a clear social networking policy in place, one that makes it clear what you consider to be acceptable behaviour and reminds employees of their contractual obligations to you, and if you haven’t communicated that policy clearly to your workforce, it really is your own fault if things go wrong.  And no matter what you do to limit access or monitor your employees’ social networking activity, if you haven’t got that policy in place, nothing else will prevent the inevitable.

(So if you are one of the 45% that don’t have a policy, I would suggest you head on over to TechRepublic’s useful guide on what you should and shouldn’t include, and ask your legal department to start drafting your soon-to-be-launched policy).