How do executive recruiters navigate the evolving sourcing landscape? Paul Jury (Head of Executive Recruitment) sheds light on Talent2’s experience.

Talent2 was founded as a high-touch executive recruitment business focused on middle- and senior-level permanent and contract appointments. It has an experienced team of recruitment consultants who are recognised as leaders in their specialist areas. While our brand proposition might not traditionally be associated with the use of job boards, we strongly believe they can be utilised to greatly compliment high-quality executive level recruitment assignments.

In challenging markets it is essential that recruiters examine all sourcing channels when filling the requirements of their clients. While a specialist executive level firm such as Talent2 utilises search (from both research and consultant networks) advertising is also a crucial part of what we do. Both broad and specialist job sites offer access to substantial numbers of candidates who are both actively and in some cases more passively looking for new opportunities. This access comes with an immediacy that is a useful complement to the more time intensive processes of research, network search and traditional print advertising.  For example, 69% of permanent roles worked on in the last year by Talent2 utilised job boards to build their shortlists.

As the fundamental shift from print advertising to job boards continues, most active candidates will use job boards during their job search. It therefore becomes imperative that advertisers, both corporate and recruiters make it as easy as possible for candidates to find their ideal job posting. The key is to stand out from the pack and whilst there are a variety of upgrade options to enhance the prominence of your ad and catch the job seekers eye, there are some basics which need to be followed. It is imperative that ad copy is well crafted to both tell and importantly sell the story. Motivated candidates want to be both excited and informed. Interestingly, the basic principles of the more traditional employment display advertisement still ring true.

On-line job seekers focus on salary levels, the location of the role and the job title. Where ever possible we advocate the inclusion of salary details, doing this will maximise the search experience and ultimately the matching process. It is easy to get lost in the ‘noise’ of a generalist job board, especially as most job seekers only have short grabs of time to search the sites (often only 20 minutes here and there). A safe guard for all parties, especially job seekers, is to ensure they have targeted job alerts updating them on the latest and greatest jobs that fit their search criteria. The effectiveness of job alerts is often underestimated. Seek in particular send millions of job alerts and this email process creates
enormous value.

In this current recovery phase where new jobs and job seekers are more evenly balanced, job boards are a cost effective way of sourcing candidates, as is the Early General News sections of the major newspapers with the later particularly well suited to mid and senior level executive appointments, albeit with a significantly different value proposition.The big challenge for job boards and newspapers will be the re-emergence of talent shortages in Australia. In the short to medium stages of the recovery there will be growth in advertising volumes as many corporations and recruiters do what they have always done and advertise their roles (we are already seeing this happen).

The experience from the later stages of the boom years in 2006 and 2007 was that the quantity of responses to ads began to decline and over time the quality of applications followed. We predict the next phase of candidate shortages will be even more competitive and those doing the hiring will not be able to first and foremost rely on job boards alone.

Talent shortages will once again place pressure on the effectiveness of both online and press advertising. It’s all about return on investment and as the employment market tightens the quality and quantity of applications will become variable. As the supply and demand change many hiring managers will increase their usage of head-hunters to search the market for executive level talent.

Many larger organisations have been adapting and are already a lot savvier about how they engage with future talent including employee referral systems, employee value propositions, their own searchable talent pools and effective marketing communications. Many of the larger corporations have established in-house careers centres or partnered with recruitment process
outsourcing firms, including Talent2, to provide these services. While they use job boards as part of the process they have developed other strategic sourcing channels.

So who and what job boards will win out in this competitive employment market place? SEEK will continue to be the market leader and dominate. Niche boards with content and/or strong communities of regular users should prosper i.e. an e-financials. All other sites that are predominately only a job board will fail unless they are able to reach out, connect and build
relevant communities who regularly come to their site to engage on all range of matters including job postings. There still remain clear opportunities for job boards to offer and market searchable databases that are effectively monetised and LinkMe is well placed. That said, we may already have a clear winner in the contest to build the best database as there
are now over 1 million Australians on LinkedIn. We can all network with like minded professionals including introductions and referrals to jobs. The job boards, recruiters and corporate who most effectively connect and/or source from the LinkedIn networks will have a competitive advantage.

While the best job boards will be pieces in the talent acquisition jigsaw puzzle it is LinkedIn that may well become the centre piece. Meanwhile, hiring managers will be forced to cover as many bases as possible, executive recruiters will do more searches, while job seekers work out just how quickly they want to embrace online networks rather than just job boards.

Paul Jury is inspired by the Talent2 vision to create success with organisations that acquire, manage and optimise their human capital.  As the Head of Executive Recruitment with oversight for A/NZ he thrives on the value of finding the right person for the right job. Interestingly, his first days in recruitment were as a talent scout for the Essendon FC – once he got the bug for finding talent he was hooked for life!

An abridged version of this essay appeared in the Job Board Report 2010.

To many observers, job boards are passé; relics of a bygone era. Carey Eaton, CIO of SEEK, Australia’s largest job board, thinks otherwise. Here’s his take on the current challenges and future opportunities for job boards.

During the last year job boards around the world have seen the toughest operating circumstances in the history of the job board industry. Yet despite these circumstances, job boards in many leading economies and emerging markets have continued to build a stronger position than ever and deliver increasing value to customers. Across all of SEEK’s market leading job websites in Australia and New Zealand, and significant stakes in leading job boards in China, Brazil, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia and other South East Asian earlier stage markets, the story of 2009 and 2010 is one of weathering difficult challenges while continuing to take advantage of the significant opportunities in the job board space.

Cyclical Impacts
2009 saw severe economic challenges as hiring intention plummeted in all international markets. Ad volumes decreased significantly and suddenly. Across nearly all international markets, ad volumes at the bottom of the cycle in mid-2009 were approximately half where they were the year before. In some sectors and economies the decline was as steep as a 70% reduction. Many companies slashed recruitment agency budgets, driving some recruitment agencies to the wall and massively reducing ad volumes from the sector. The downturn saw even more difficult operating environments for legacy businesses such as print employment advertising and employment advertising agencies.

In both the Australian and the U.S. market, the downturn saw an acceleration of the migration of traffic, job advertisements and revenue from print newspapers to the online medium. In the U.S. market, the online share as a percentage of overall employment advertising expenditure grew from a 50% share to a 70% share in 2009. In Australia, which tends to lag the U.S. market by two years, the share of overall employment advertising spend grew 25%.

Long term Newspoll data shows that while online media overtook print media as the preferred way jobseekers look for work in 2006, this trend has accelerated since then including during the downturn – online now commands a 73% share of jobseeker preference with print at 27%.

“aggregators in small markets, monetised referral businesses and resume database access models proved their unsustainable exposure to negative economic cycles.”

More importantly, there is strong evidence that the downturn drove market share shifts within the online sector, with many employment advertising customers rationalising their spend across several generalist and niche job boards to the market leading job board and occasional niche job boards. Many experimental business models in the online space that drew significant headlines towards the end of the boom in 2008 did not survive this rationalisation – aggregators in small markets, monetised referral businesses and resume database access models proved their unsustainable exposure to negative economic cycles.

Job Board Resilience
Throughout 2009, job board businesses around the world have demonstrated growing market share from jobseekers, advertisers and dollars, driven from both print and online, with many market leading job boards around the world emerging from the downturn stronger than ever demonstrating long term cyclical resilience.

Between March 2009 and March 2010, SEEK jobseeker traffic rose by 40%. More importantly, the frequency of visiting job boards grew exponentially – over the same period, the number of individual visits (sessions) on SEEK Australia grew by 221%. In Brazil, membership of market leader Catho.com.br grew by over 20% and similar growth patterns were observed in all Asian markets, with Zhaopin reaching record monthly visitor numbers of over 25 million.

Attention turns to social media
In an extension to the trend towards spend consolidation in the online sector the downturn was marked by increasing attention towards the potential opportunities presented by social media for employers, jobseekers, recruiters and job boards. As general adoption of social networks occurred around the world, social networks offered employers and recruiters the perceived attractive prospect of a cheap alternative to more expensive sourcing methods such as recruitment agencies or ad posting across multiple similar job boards.

The consensus view is that targeted social media brands are here to stay and may play a
complementary role to other sourcing channels in select market segments, particularly hard-to source roles, well targeted communities such as new media or sectors where the practice of
searching for and headhunting candidates is already the norm.

“ Trends in consumer adoption of both social networks are likely to drive a renewed focus by job boards on their resume databases.”

That said, it seems unlikely that the Social Media model as-is in 2010 will become the primary model for the employment marketplace, in that job boards continue to better meet the majority of jobseeker and advertiser needs. For the majority of advertisers in the majority of sectors who need to quickly fill a vacancy with interested, available candidates, job boards are a far more effective tool, delivering better volumes, quality, ease of transaction, instant and wide reach. An advertiser is always going to need to ‘signal’ to the workforce that they’re hiring and they’ll want to do this to the largest audience at a point in time, which job boards provide.

Consistent research suggests that jobseekers wish to control the job hunting process and access the entire market of opportunities: job boards remain the better option to meet these core needs. It is unlikely that more people will trust their friends, former colleagues and recruitment consultants with choices about the future of their working lives more than they trust themselves.

Jobseeker engagement with job boards continues to grow rapidly. In March 2010 job applications and traffic on SEEK and most other international job boards were at an unprecedented all time high. While traffic to social media websites has grown at unprecedented rates, the growth has been driven by factors far beyond employment. While both are growing, the data clearly shows there is no migration of jobseeker traffic from job boards to any other source of job information, including social networks. In several surveys by Hays and groups like Nielsen (see chart below) future intentions firmly indicate the relative importance of online employment classified sites compared to other channel choices.

Several important questions around the social model also remain unanswered. There has been much debate around such concerns as ROI measurement and the productivity cost involved in using social media for recruitment or job hunting. More important questions are the sustainability of the utility of social networks as a sourcing platform as the employment rate grows and as talent becomes scarcer again. Social networks are taking active steps to balance increasingly large volumes of socially-active recruiters and product marketers with maintaining the attractiveness and value of groups and online communities. The social etiquette of mass online headhunting is yet to be written.

Trends in consumer adoption of both social networks are likely to drive a renewed focus by job
boards on their resume databases. It has been hard to point to sustained success in the resume database space anywhere in the world over the past ten years, partly because much of the thinking has been about resume databases as a competing source of candidates to advertising. Social networks will accelerate the debate about the role of resume databases in job board product portfolios. It is likely that new innovations and directions for resume databases will occur. Job boards nevertheless will have to decide between integrating, complementing or ignoring resume content on social networks. It is likely that a model where online resume content as a complement to job ad content will provide a route to more compelling online employment marketplaces and strengthen the job boards’ position as the primary destination for job seekers and recruiters.

Future prospects
As the cycle returns, strong prospects for job boards remain. The key opportunity for job board markets globally remains the sheer size of the remaining market.

“Mobile devices represent the new horizon of opportunity of universally held, constantly-on market access capability with instant communication built in. Mobile devices also represent the piece that completes the puzzle realising the transactional value of resume content online – whether socially connected or not.”

The percentage of people in the world accessing the internet in 2008 stood at only 20% according to ComScore but continues to grow at very fast rates. As the global population adopts the internet en masse, the ability to participate in labour markets will increase. 2009 marked the first year when all countries on earth could point to an active job board market with the late entry of Palestine, Somalia, Afghanistan, Mozambique and Congo, many of whose job board markets skipped the internet on PC’s and migrated directly to the mobile phone by SMS. For most African countries – 53 of them and a population of over a billion people – job board marketplaces are growing more rapidly by email, SMS and mobile phone access than they are on PC based internet websites with growth rates in the thousands of percent. Mobility remains an as yet unfulfilled opportunity for job boards in more mature markets, and mobile based job boards or applications are already playing significant role in employment marketplaces countries like Japan and South Korea where some job boards cite a greater proportion of traffic from mobile phones than PCs.

Mobile devices represent the new horizon of opportunity of universally held, constantly-on market access capability with instant communication built in. Mobile devices also represent the piece that completes the puzzle realising the transactional value of resume content online – whether socially connected or not. The combination of convenient and time-sensitive market access, the ability to seamlessly transact with resume or job content and the ubiquity of access remain a compelling proposition for new chapters in online recruitment marketplace products.

As such, the job board market is likely to see new developments in mobile optimised websites, job hunting and recruiting applications, and new forms of alerting product that capture the value mobile represents. Other developments in semantic search, social content, mobility, behavioural targeting, device development, ubiquity computing and as yet unseen technical advances all present possible opportunities and new challenges for job boards, jobseekers, employers and recruiters in the years ahead.

While 2009 will be remembered as a year of challenges, uncertainty and difficulty for many in the online employment sector, the long term opportunities remain significant and ever-evolving.

Carey Eaton, CIO, SEEK is responsible for SEEK’s IT activities . Carey commenced his career at SEEK as Product Director in 2007. Prior to joining SEEK, Carey’s career included senior roles at News Limited’s CareerOne and managing the regional internet strategy (covering China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and Australia) for Michael Page International.

An abridged version of this essay appeared in the Job Board Report 2010.

In line with yesterday’s post, Clifford Rosenberg sheds light on the progress of Linkedin in Australia.

The Australian recruitment industry has been rapidly evolving given the dynamic changes in the economic and social environment. In the early days of the Internet, we saw a shift from traditional recruitment mediums, and a rise in adoption of online channels such as job boards. Now we are witnessing another significant shift with the emergence of social media and online professional networks like LinkedIn.

Professionals are connecting and actively networking online with others across the globe to promote their personal brand and build their career profile. With over 75 million members globally, LinkedIn has seen double digit growth in Australian membership over the last 12 months with well over 1.3 million professionals now connected on LinkedIn in Australia and NZ.

The professional community is increasingly living in a hyper-connected world. Technology is providing a platform where professionals are interacting and conducting conversations about jobs, careers and collaborating to share their ideas and knowledge. Recruiters are making the shift from a static to a dynamic engagement strategy. They are increasingly recognising the need to be pro-active about connecting with those professionals who have the right skills for the job and engage in these conversations. Recruiters are also discovering that the best candidates are often ‘passive’ and may not necessarily be checking job boards or speaking with recruiters. These passive candidates are on professional networks such as LinkedIn.

A field study conducted in the US by the Harvard Business School in 2009 confirmed that recruiting through social media channels is on the rise. Among LinkedIn Hiring Solutions clients, the survey found that within the first year 10% of the hires were sourced via LinkedIn.

Recruitment has always had a strong element of ‘networking’, whether it is identifying and connecting with candidates, building relationships, or seeking referrals and recommendations. Social media is now providing a platform to assist recruiters to connect with the best candidates, conduct conversations in real time, and make it a two-way communication process.

Social recruiting also provides truth and transparency not otherwise available to recruiters. Candidates themselves are posting and updating their own information. This real-time online record posted by professionals provides recruiters with better insights into a person’s talents, interests, career history, achievements and experience than a static resume.

Furthermore, recruiters have visibility of recommendations made, and connections that they may have in common with the candidate. The other key benefit of using social media channels is that you can ‘fish where the fish are.’ Recruiters can take a highly targeted approach and reach candidates with specialised skills by targeting specific groups where such professionals interact. Social media also allows employers to position their company brand among professionals and build a talent pipeline.

Social media and more importantly, professional networks such as LinkedIn, are here to stay and recruiters need to embrace this trend to remain competitive, and build long term relationships with their candidates.

Clifford Rosenberg is the Managing Director for LinkedIn in Australia and New Zealand. In this role, Cliff’s long term focus is to grow LinkedIn’s diverse business model comprised of user subscriptions, advertising sales and enterprise software licensing for the Australia and New Zealand market.  Near-term this will include a focus on user engagement, strategic partnerships, marketing and general operations.

Note: This opinion piece is taken from the Job Board Report

Starting in 1989, Ross Clennett, APRCSA, worked for 15 years as a recruiter in London, Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne. He has been a regular writer about recruitment and the Australian recruitment scene since 2001. He runs Australia’s only online training and professional development membership site for recruitment company owners and managers.

1) Believing the claims that technology vendors make and undertaking few, if any, background checks of these claims with other recruiters who are actively using the vendor’s product

2) Charging into an online community and participating without first observing the community etiquette

3) Using social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook without a strategy and then stopping after 2 weeks declaring ‘it doesn’t work’

4) Thinking that technology that enables them to ‘find more candidates’ is automatically going to solve their ‘candidate shortage’ problems

5) Using a social media network or technology product and only learning 10%-15% of what there is to know about using that network or product

6) Not being aware of what information is listed under their own name when a simple Google search is conducted using that name

7) That all candidates and clients use technology and the Internet the way they do

8 ) If it’s free it must be crap

9) If it’s expensive it must be good

10) Thinking that it’s all a fad and nothing’s really changed from the way recruitment was in 1993

Smart recruiters understand that using social media networks and technology effectively enhances their overall productivity, enabling them to accomplish more each day, leading to more jobs generated, more placements made, more invoices sent and more income earned.

Successfully assisting more clients find better employees and more candidates find better jobs and in the process, enjoying your work more and making more money – what could be better?

For more information or to subscribe to Ross’ weekly newsletter, Insight, please visit www.rossclennett.com

Adam Shay, Managing Director of  The Face answered our query – how relevant are advertising agencies in a rapidly evolving recruitment landscape?.

When I first read this question from Destination Talent I took immediate umbrage to the fact my craft of 15 odd years was seemingly under threat, that its value was being questioned! By the time I’d calmed down and re-read the question I could see its validity (excuse me for seeming dramatic but running an ad agency during a recession is tough, running an ad agency focused on recruitment, during a recession is well, challenging.)

Given the significantly reduced number of column centimetres taken up by recruitment ads in all major Australian press titles and the recent failure of one of the biggest agencies (and recruitment brands) in Australia, I can see why people may be questioning the value of what it is we do. In fact, in the aftermath of TMP’s demise, I saw many an article and tweet expressing condolences for those working in the recruitment advertising industry.

So, in a market of online migration, social media, increased levels of networking and a drive towards referrals where do agencies like The Face add value, and has our role changed? The answer to the latter is a resounding no – the issue is one of appearance. The role of a (good) employer marketing agency is to help our clients attract and retain great talent by distilling what’s great about working for them then delivering the message to the right audience (internal and external) in a creative and compelling manner. The problem of appearances lies in the fact that many agency Directors (myself included) were blinded by one dimensional revenue streams during the good times. We were hitting budgets by doing the basics right, getting ads in the papers and online for a good price and a consistent manner. Those who didn’t make the decision to evolve their offering 3 years ago were destined to fail.

At The Face it wasn’t just about extending our service offering (which we rightly did); it was also about reasserting to ourselves what our position was. We decided two years ago that we needed to stand for something and have a steadfast focus on it. We trademarked the term, ‘Ideas Move People’ and to this day it drives everything we do. At our heart we’re a creative business filled with creative people. Ideas are our currency. We don’t see a brief as simply a job requisition, we see it as an opportunity to build the right perception in the mind of a candidate or employee, a perception that we believe has a greater long term effect on career decisions.

The HR industry has a raft of suppliers offering increasingly conflicting services. Like many of those suppliers, recruitment advertising/employer marketing agencies need to reassert what they stand for and focus on building value in the minds of their clients. There will always be a need for agencies to place ads but it probably won’t sustain an industry. The role of a good ad agency is changing, but only in the sense that we need to become less reliant on placing ads and more focused on building employer brands and adding value to our clients’ recruitment and retention needs. When you choose an ad agency you’re buying into creative thinking and good creative thinking will always add value.

Adam Shay is Managing Director of The Face.

Adam has a particular interest in the role internal and external communications play in employee and candidate engagement. He has worked on multiple projects defining and communicating the vision and values and employer brand of multiple businesses in Australia and abroad.  Recently, The Face launched a new brand called Euro RSCG Engage. Engage is focused solely on helping organisations engage and retain their own talent by ensuring they are communicated to in an effective and engaging manner.