jobs.ac.uk attend ‘Online Recruitment: Year Ahead’ conference

On 31st January, the jobs.ac.uk team once again had the pleasure of attending the annual ‘Online Recruitment: Year Ahead Conference’ organised and hosted by Enhance Media at the usual venue of Royal Geographic Society in London.

As one of Europe’s biggest (and longest running) online recruitment conferences, the event is always of good quality and a great opportunity to mingle with the 450 or so other HR professionals, recruitment suppliers and job boards.

Yet again, the conference attracted some big name speakers from the likes of Virgin Atlantic and LinkedIn to Nestle and Telefonica and whilst ironically specific “online recruitment” content was often sparse in some sessions, there were some thought-provoking ideas that came from the conference.
Some highlights:

Craig McGregor, Head of Commercial Services, ContentETC.com

• Recruiters need good copy to attract better candidates, discourage weaker candidates and reduce time and money wasted on unsuitable applications
• With the rise of smaller screens (e.g. tablets, mobile phones), there are even more distractions for jobseekers and increased competition
• Don’t forget that copy is a conversation between two people

Mervyn Dinnen Content & Community Manager, jobsite

Latest findings from independent review of UK recruitment found that:

• Jobseekers still favour job boards over other channels
• Knowledgeable staff and sector specialism was more important to recruiters than pricing
• Smartphone usage increased from 43% (Feb 09) to 74% (Sept 12)
• 40% of jobseekers use smartphones for jobseeking

Giles Guest, Director, Enhance Media

• “Joined up recruitment” is big challenge in 2013
• Recruiters have lots of fragmented recruitment strategies (social media, PPC, careers websites etc)
• Fragmentation is result of more attraction channels, emerging channels and complexity within recruitment
• As recruiters, we need a ‘joined up strategy’ which brings all of our strategies together and allows for a more uniform, efficient way of working and recruiting (e.g. making our content work hard across all channels)

Whilst the content wasn’t truly ground-breaking, there were some great stand out messages:

• The importance of the employer brand, both to improve day-to-day recruitment and sustain competitive advantage
• The increasing value of research and data to support decision making in an increasingly complex recruitment environment
• The need to focus on the basics, including copywriting and the whole candidate experience
• The challenge of creating an efficient and effective joined-up strategy to link together the different elements of your online recruitment

Overall, our team really enjoyed the day and came away brimming with ideas for jobs.ac.uk so we look forward to the conference next year in 2014!