The FEMA Awards are on again. This year there is a People’s Choice category to select the Best Employer of Choice. In a slight twist a team from Fairfax created videos to showcase the workplace of all the finalists. Public votings ends on 31st August. Vote here

Is your recruitment ad worth sharing around?

Below is a graduate recruitment video from Dare, a marketing agency based in the UK. Besides being a big fan of infographics, I think Dare’s story telling and presentation of company info is entertaining and useful. In fact, I think it is worth sharing around.

We live in an age of sharing. Social media thrives on sharing. But, it’s usually the good stuff that always gets passed around. Do you noticed that job ads that get retweeted the most are the ones which are either funny, clever or out of the ordinary.  Read more...

When a job board falls sick, who do you call? The Job Board Doctor, of course. We touched base with Jeff Dickey-Chasins (aka The Job Board Doctor) to discuss the challenges faced by job boards.  Read more...

SEEK Limited revenue grew by 35%, registering a net profit of $89.5 million, a 62% increase from FY 2009. 

SEEK Employment’s (the job board business)  revenue grew by 1% from 170.9 in FY09 to  172.8 million in FY10, which is a small percentage, but it’s an impressive performance considering it is generated in the midst of the GFC. Revenue from SEEK Training grew significantly. SEEK Learning, in particular, performed very well with revenue increasing by 45%. Again the GFC has probably a hand in this, with many choosing to retrain and invest in education during the downturn. Overseas investment are also starting to pay dividends too.  Read more...

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.  Read more...

The 2010 Job Board Report is ready for download here. Here are four observations from the report:

The Competitive Landscape
The wrath of the downturn spared no one; industry revenue dipped by 21%.  However, the industry grew in numbers even in the midst of falling revenue. We recorded 270 jobs boards, an increase of 14% from last year, and many more are still in the woodwork (we counted around 50). Convinced that the print industry has no long-term future, job boards are buoyed by the fact that spending on print media still amounts to an estimated $400-600 million every year.  Read more...

Frost & Sullivan released new data on the Australian Online Classifieds market.  I asked Phil Harpur, Senior Research Manager, five questions.

Q. Revenue in the Australian employment classifieds market dropped by 21% in 2009.  Why is the drop so drastic?
A maturing market strongly linked to macro-economic factors.  Of the major online classifieds segments, employment has proved most vulnerable to economic conditions, with the volume of adverts directly linked to employers’ willingness to hire staff. Employment was by far the worst hit segment by the GFC.  Read more...

The Australian Public Service Commission (APS) released stage one of a report which evaluated recruitment advertising activities across different agencies.

Some interesting results:  Read more...

• Data collection – Of the 104 FMA agencies only 45 FMA agencies collected source-of-hire data (Only those who collected data were included in the evaluation). Not surprisingly data collection problems exist  – “Response to the evaluation survey suggests that those agencies that utilise an e-recruitment system were able to provide detailed survey responses more efficiently than those agencies that had to manually check through paper files. There was also anecdotal evidence that an e-recruitment system, however, does not ensure accuracy of applicant information. An agency advised that applicants appeared to be selecting the first item on a drop-down list of advertisement sources”

Part of the reason why the vast majority of recruitment advertising delivered low result is because the demographic data required to plan proper targeting strategies seldom exist. Say, if one doesn’t know the makeup or the supply and demand dynamics of the PHP community it will be difficult to plan and pull off a successful recruitment campaign.   Read more...

Some of the most successful recruiters that I’ve encountered have very little to do with social media.  Read more...