The Recruitment Industry's Ultimate Resource

So what does the recession mean for your online strategy?
Alex Strang – Managing Partner RIDA Ltd

 and while there are many in the industry who have worked through this, there is a high percentage of businesses out there for whom this type of market is uncharted territory. A look back at the results of many of today’s larger players shows that while these businesses were by no means unscathed during the last recession, many of those that enjoy enviable positions in today’s market picked up huge slices of market share in the early stages of the recovery. Businesses with infrastructure and reputation intact were best placed to maximise on the promised land of the recovery. Those that had a rebuilding job on their hands on either front started on the back foot.

For everyone – whether you’re a business owner, a senior manager or a new consultant – the prevailing set of market conditions is very different to where we were 12 months ago. I would highlight however that as much as one or two in the media (maybe even economists with newly acquired celebrity status?) would have you believe its the end of the world, there is still money out there to be made – the market may have changed, but it is still out there.

A great example of how this change is how differently many businesses look at the online marketing side of their businesses. A year ago, and all anyone was interested in was candidate acquisition. How quickly? How much per candidate? How many job boards do I need? When was the last time we updated our website? Armed with sizeable budgets and a limitless amount of routes to market, how recruiters worked the online market was a great example of the oft quoted “War for Talent.”
Today, the world is a very different place.
In many markets, it has never been easier to acquire a candidate. In fact, in some markets we have already returned to the days of candidate “oversupply.” In this sort of market, why bother with any type of internet marketing?

Sure there are opportunities to save money relative to last year’s spend – a quick look at monster’s share price will show you that, if the number of calls, emails and letters you’ve received from your collection of job board reps hasn’t told you that already. Recruitment Consultancy margins are under pressure at the moment, it is no different for job boards so yes, that provides recruiters with an opportunity to get more for less.
Cost cutting and getting value for money is an important part of business in a recession. There’s no argument from RIDA on that – however our belief is that there are more than one or two opportunities for recruiters to adapt their online strategy to the recession.

Remember 12 months ago? With the seemingly limitless ways to spend time and money attracting candidates? The boot is well and truly on the other foot now. Take a look at the market from a job seeker’s perspective. Make a point of sitting in on a registration and ask your newly acquired candidate just what it is like to on the market right now – and how much of their search revolves around the internet. While no one in the recruitment industry needs to be told just how important the internet is, it is worth considering just what the experience is like for job seeker. Spend some time online, all the way from a Google search using keywords for your sector/ location through to going through the application process on a job board. The same level of information overload recruiters faced a year ago when considering how best to get that all important CV onto their database now faces an ever growing number of job seekers.
With the amount of “noise” in the online employment space, it can be a very frustrating experience for a jobseeker, many of whom may not be quite as well versed in how best to use the internet as those in the recruitment industry.

In the current climate, with candidate flow being the least of concerns for many businesses, it may be tempting to pull any and all spend from online.
We would beg to differ – we think there are opportunities out there driven by market conditions. Its a different market, and just it requires adapting the day to day at each desk it also requires adapting online. Here’s some food for thought:

Traffic to your own website
There’s never been a better time to get more traffic on your own site. No doubt this is happening already – purely and simply because there are more people out there working harder to get access to fewer jobs.
This represents a great opportunity to cut dependency on job boards. Couple a little focus (and minimal spend!) on increasing visitor rates with data capture and very quickly you’ll end up with a pool of candidates that you can market not just job ads to – you can also start to deliver different types of content to them too. Such as...

Online CRM
The term “CRM” hardly seems touchy feely... However if you stop to consider that many applications made online don’t even receive an automated response, let alone an email or phone call from a human being then it becomes clear that there is clear scope to use this as a way to protect the reputation of your firm. Something as simple as including job search tips, market overviews are a light years away from the silence that many job seekers get post application.
Get this working for your online applicants, then its more than worthwhile to consider a programme for your archive candidates on your database. Build this up, and that dependency on job boards will be in terminal decline. Job boards will continue to have a place in the mix, however shifting the mix from job boards to self sourced is a big win. Lower costs – and crucially, a far higher chance of generating an exclusive candidate.

 
Market Intelligence
There’s not a shortage of technology vendors out there with a plethora of solutions for recruitment businesses. Who would have thought a decade ago that terms like “parsing” would be used within the context of a business as simple as recruitment?

Right now, everyone is watching their cost base – regardless of whether you’re the largest or smallest firm. Spending money on “nice to haves” just doesn’t wash.
Before we’ll make a recommendation on anything, we want to be sure that for any investment there is a tangible and significant return. At the moment, that means getting more jobs on... Remember the old days of ad chasing? Not that easy online I’m afraid, unless of course your using semantic search techniques, trawling the internet for direct job ads and having them delivered to your inbox every morning. We all know the impact of one extra job per consultant. Using the internet to do this effectively is a competitive advantage.
Competitive advantage – our favourite words.

For details of HB RIDA Digital packages, contact enquiries@hbrida.com