We’ve just completed the second in our three-part Recruitment Advertising Workshops series. The event today was in Birmingham at the Orange Studios.
This was an excellent venue with great facilities. The staff were very helpful and professional and we’d certainly recommend the place.
I’ll probably write a more detailed blog post on these recruitment workshops but my initial thoughts are:
Your recruitment issues are the same as my recruitment issues
What’s great about getting people together who work in the same industry is that they start to reveal what their jobs are really like.
As the day progresses and people begin to relax, they realise that they’re amongst friends. Once this happens, they start to open up about the issues and challenges that they’re facing in their jobs.
What’s fascinating is to see the looks on the faces of others as someone is sharing their frustrations. There are lots of nodding heads, shared glances with colleagues and wry smiles.
Just about everyone talks of:
- Having too much work to do
- Too few resources
- Constant change
- The growing complexity of recruitment law
It’s clear that whatever stresses you face in your job, the very same issues are shared by every other recruiter in Higher Education or your industry.
That probably doesn’t make you feel much better does it 🙁
However, people are incredibly generous. During our workshops, many people are willing to offer great advice and share ideas on how they have overcome this or that challenge.
When this happens, someone else in the room often has a ‘Eureka!’ moment when they realise they’re being offered a solution to one of their work-related problems.
This is, of course, the value of attending these type of events and networking with your peers.
Few organisations track recruitment advertising
Several of the organisations represented today do track the effectiveness of their recruitment advertising.
Unfortunately, very few are monitoring everything that they could be. For example, more organisations should be tracking:
- Number, source and quality of candidates
- Whether candidates appointed turn out to be any good
- And how long people appointed stay in their new jobs
Recruitment professionals need to get out more
Delegates to our workshops come to learn, to network and, it seems, to get out of the office! Many recruiters told us that our workshops are, ‘a bit of a jolly!’
This is both highly amusing and highly satisfying.
When you’re office bound, it’s healthy to get out and about, see a new place and meet new people. Especially when those people not from your organisation.
And if a jobs.ac.uk recruitment advertising workshop serves this function, then that’s great!
HR and recruitment people are lovely
Our recruitment customers are great!
I’m not saying this because I’m being sentimental. Nor am I trying to ingratiate myself with our customers. This is not my style nor of anyone at jobs.ac.uk.
Rather, what strikes me is that our customers really are a nice bunch of caring professionals.
They are often under a lot of pressure without much support. They’re usually ‘piggy in the middle’ between demanding and impatient recruiting departments and the equally demanding and impatient jobseekers.
Don’t forget what recruiters do
I think that few senior people in organisations truly value or understand staff recruitment and retention. Yet at the same time, they’re the ones announcing this strategy or that grand plan.
But if you can’t attract the best people, then your ambitious plans for the future are little more than hot air.
That would never do would it?
Strategic plans are never just hot air…are they?
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