Is this the new face of the recruitment blogoshpere!
As Recruitment Views finally moves into it’s Third year, I have seen a few recruitment blogs come and go, which isn’t surprising as writing continuously for 2 years hasn’t been the easiest thing to maintain at times.
In that time the “UK recruitment blogoshere” has grown from just a handful to an excellent range of bloggers, but it has been a while since a new kid on the block has come in to stir things up since Peter Gold and about time if you asked me.
So who is this new kid on the block, well apparently some tribal leader calling himself the Blunter Headhunter. I am not sure who he is except that he says he is a headhunter from London, wanting to vent some spleen and he certainly is.
So if you expect him to pussy foot around recruitment issues, then I would avoid it at all costs with comments like, and I am picking the least offensive here “The city is well and truly rogered” will not win many friends but then again I do not think that is what he is looking to do. So Blunder Headhunter welcome on board and I look forward to reading many more posts, as I am sure the rest of us will do too.
Recruitment Companies Make Top Employers
The other day I had James of Huxley Associates contact me the other day to see if I would mention their press release, with them being named as one of Britain’s ‘Top Employers’ for the third consecutive year. Although I am always happy to give a mention on Recruitment Views, I do like to add a couple of comments of my own, well it is my blog!
Having gone into more detail on the awards I was also pleased to see another recruitment company in the top 10 Hydrodgen, in fact they made number 1 and a few other also making the mark.
I have to say I am pleased to see companies within our industry winning awards such as this, to counter some of the bad publicity we get and in some cases deservedly. I wonder if there would be so many recruitment companies out their if all Recruitment companies acted the same way as Huxley!
Non the less, it goes to show if you manage well and look after your employees you still can succeed.
Oh, and James also wanted me to mention they are looking for staff too.
“That was the week that was”
I have to admit I did not want this week to come to a close without some kind of post, so I will hold off with the tiling for now!
Although I have not found the time to write this week, there has been plenty to talk about, so I thought I would put together a mix of things that have caught my interest.
The first was from the BBC yesterday, with what should win an award for the strangest job advert this year “Get Paid to go to the pub“, who says window shop recruitment adds don’t work! Mind you hows he going to cope with the international exposure, just a pity I am a bit far from Barton-on-Sea. What did make me laugh was “Women need not apply”, well I suppose in this case the rules could be bent!!
Next up I noticed Bill Vick has a new blog, called www.xtremerecruiting.tv, which is fine although after further scrutiny I noticed that his excellent previous version, interviews with the top big billers has been taken down and can only be bought via www.bigbiller.org. It is a great shame as it was hugely motivating and informative, any comments would be appreciated Bill.
Still the new version with his video interviews with gurus in the US recruitment market, is of interest. I certainly found the interview with Dough Beabout extremely perceptive and although US based I did find it relevant to the UK market.
Back to the UK with Matt, I just have to say I not only agree with him on the death of the CV, but I can see them killing of the likes of the Monster too, it may take some time but I cannot think of a better way to look for a new job or find a candidate, still you cannot help feel Jobster have lost their way after all the hype and Andy I had the same email and yes they are pants !!
Also to finish I had a notification of a new jobs portal for Students and Graduates, called Bejant I wish them the best of luck as they will find it tough.
So after all that you can go an make yourself a cup of coffee, so as not to forget. I certainly don’t feel so guilty after this article
linkedin plans for the UK
Well I have to apologise for the lack of posts recently, which is down to some much needed home DIY, so writing on Recruitment Views took a back seat I am afraid.
Although I have not finished the tiling of the bathroom and if I waited till till then, it could be a month before I write another post!!
So to get back into the swing of it I must mention that I had a short tele-meeting with the new Marketing Director for Linkedin Europe, or more importantly the UK a Shannon Clouston.
What made me contact them in the first place was a recent comment on UKrecruiter Forum by Victoria “Does anyone know why LinkedIn have stopped offering Pro accounts to staffing companies?” So with such an important comment, I thought I should look into it, as I found it hard to believe as recruiters would be a key contributor to their revenues.
I was pleased to get a quick respones from Shannon, who confirmed that this was not the case and is far from it. He has recently joined Linkedin to help grow the European arm with their new London office, opened just 3 months ago. He also said if any other consultancies had any questions or issues then please feel free to contact him direct.
What Shannon was keen to mention, is that they will be looking to grow with future collaborations, such as their relationship with Business Week, a new package for corporate clients, a face lift and more investment, all of which can only help recruiters achieve more.
Oh and just in case you didn’t notice either, they have their own blog which I suggest you subscribe to, to get all their updates.
John Cleese Training Videos
Just a over a week ago I did a review on Recruitment Juice and their training videos, as I was doing so I couldn’t help but remember the ones
John Cleese did back in the early 80’s and if you are as old as me, you will remember them too. After searching Youtube, I did manage to find an old promotional video but unfortunately at best it was a poor reminder.
After a little research I did manage to find the company, which took over where John had left it, called Video Arts. They have an excellent range of training subjects including Managing People, Selling Skills, Diversity and Equal Opportunities to name just a few. The videos are supported by some high profile UK actors including Ricky Gervais, Dawn French, Hugh Laurie, Paul Merton and many more.
From their range of over 200 videos one in particular stood out, as it was related to our industry and was entitled Behavioural Interviewing, a short clip of which you can see below.
Interestingly the video cost £1,299.00 for a 25 minute DVD presentation, and therefore shows you how much of a good deal you get with Recruitment Juice.
Oh and if your interested I did finally manage to find a video of John Cleese, called “The Hidden Mind”, which covered the subject of creativity. For some reason it was supposedly only a 3 minute preview, but it ran for the whole 45 minutes. Wether I was just lucky I have no idea, but here is the link if you are looking for ideas on how to make your recruitment company stand out from the crowd.
PS I think its the same system Google uses!
Why do so many recruiters fail?
Having just read Gavin Ingham’s article “If selling is so simple why can’t everyone do it?” An interesting question and worth taking time out to read.
It certainly made me think about all the trainees that have dropped out of recruitment for one reason or another. Added to this a good friend of mine Sarah Bennett, an excellent trainer of consultants was asked to do some training on New Business, the shock was so great for a couple of newbies they resigned!
It never ceases to amaze me that graduates still come into recruitment not realising it is a sales job, they are under the impression that it is a HR role, when in truth it couldn’t be further away.
So if you are looking to recruit another consultant and this time you want to keep them read Gavins article, it isn’t a coincidence that Roy Ripper of Recruitment Juice calls his first DVD “Its all about attitude” and in the same breath Gavin say:
“So if selling is so simple why can’t everyone do it?
Because selling is about attitude.”
On top of this I loved this quote also from Gavin, particularly with all the Recruitment Consultant vacancies asking for Graduates, kind of summed it up for me.
“Selling provides virtually unrivalled opportunities for anyone who is prepared to commit themselves. Your degree won’t help you. Your qualifications and exams won’t help you. Your CV won’t help you. The only person who can help you is you. And that’s too much of a leveller for most people.”
Recruitment Juice Training Video Review
After all the hype with the superb promotion videos for Recruitment Juice, I couldn’t wait to get hold of my copy to see if it lived up to all expectations, as I wanted to do a review here on Recruitment Views. So finally at the weekend I was able to sit down and watch the full set of DVDs without interruption from the family. The set is made up of 6 DVDs all on a theme of “The Juicy Bits of New business!!” Now as a self proclaimed expert on New Business, I had pen to hand to take it apart layer by layer.
Firstly the series is broken down into seven parts and is made up of about 2 hours of video, plus a very interesting document called “the Perceptions of the Recruitment Industry”, a must read survey if you want to be one step ahead of the competition.
The 7 sections were titled as below:
- Its All About Attitude
- Prepare & Plan For Success
- Opening Calls With Impact
- Questioning & Communicating with Confidence
- Eliminate Objections & Close Intelligently
- Strategies For Creating New Leads
- Juicy Tips
In the end I couldn’t critise any of the training videos, as I came away feeling that Roy had managed to cover every aspect of new business as well as anyone could. For me what made the training videos stand out so well was not only Roy’s opinion on recruitment but the combination of the other 5 experts. Ben Doltis from the SJB Group, Kayode Dauda From Harrison Search, Lloyd Moore from Creative Recruitment, Angela Ashwell from Ashwell Forbes, Richard Bloom from Purple Consultancy and Helen Curry from the Spencer Group. In the end it felt like they were talking about their experiences and how they succeeded when it came to new business, as if they were giving away their trade secrets to me.
Intermingled with all this knowledge was a series of sketches, which emphasised the good and bad habits of recruitment consultants when it came to new business, transmitted in a style of the TV series “The Office”. Basically the sketches were set in an imaginary recruitment consultancy named Sunshine Recruitment. The two main characters were Wayne, who is the “I’ve been there done it all before” personality, with a wonderful cringe factor and the lovely Charlotte, who is the new recruit learning how to do the job, while making all the mistakes as we all did when we first started.
So I suppose the question is wether it’s worth the £699 or £649 if you use my promotional code RECVIEWS, which Roy kindly wanted to pass on to my readers. Well the answer I suppose will depend on you, because having watched the video I can guarantee you will feel that you will have had value for money, as the series had been put together so professionally, with insights from top performers, superb tips and tricks, humour and above all your consultants will perform to a higher standard and produce more revenue, which is what it is all about at the end of the day, rather than making more calls than anyone else.
In the end I felt Roy made sure nothing was missed and even an old campaigner like myself came away enthused. But for me if I was to pick one thing that had an impact or should I say summed up the training, it was the phrase “Remember you are judged by the questions you ask rather than the products you sell”, I couldn’t have said it any better.
So if you want to find out more then please visit www.recruitmentjuice.com
It must be Valentines Day!
After the launch today of www.oraljobs.com.au we get Jobsite launching be my Interviewer, a site exclusively made to help candidates prepare for an interview, rather than describe a job.
I have to say Jobsite’s offering is excellent, because it offers the prospective Job Hunter a few clues on how to succeed in an interview, although after watching a few of these successful CEO’s one couldn’t help feel one would end up being more confused with their different styles. It certainly shows how easy it is to slip up, with an innocuous questions like “How was your Journey?” put by Ruth Badger.
In truth it gives a superb insight into the minds of these successful managers and will not only help the Job Hunter but also the recruitment consultants and their clients.
So hats of to Jobsite for producing such a well thought out interview aid, but hey shouldn’t we consultants be doing the briefings anyway!
Hmm and Jacqueline Gold, that reminds me I should go out and buy something for Conchi (My Wife) if I dare of course.
A Worlds First….Apparently
By accident I came across this World 1st, a specialist web portal that delivers jobs in a fully audio and visual multimedia environment, well that’s how they have put it.
Although there are other sites using video, I have to admit this is unique, in that they are using Avatars to present jobs. One thing is for sure this site will be talked about and will undoubtedly bring in more candidates and clients for Personnel Concept Group, which is what its all about at the end of the day.
I will not go into too much detail as I think the fun will be in the looking around, rather than me talking about it.
So pop over to www.oraljobs.com.au and see what they are shouting about…Not sure if I would have used the word oral though!
Putting Consultant back into Recruitment
I just wanted to bring some attention to an excellent article over on the ideal people blog in regards to Linkedin and the worlds most influential headhunters.
Although Ideal People used it to self promote and rightly so, I did want to add a few of my own thoughts.
If I had found the time to put together my predictions for 2008 like a few of my peers, Linkedin would have been top of the list in its growing influence on the recruitment market place.
When I think of the criticisms aimed at our industry from clients and candidates and in many cases they have a point, I cannot help feel that Linkedin can re address this. There is no reason for anyone to say that "x consultant knows nothing about my industry" because their background and track record is all there to be seen, as Ideal People clearly outlined.
Linkedin could single handedly put the word "Consultant" back into Recruitment Consultant, and we could then be judged again on our ability to do the job we are asked to do and not be judged on the ability to send the fastest cv.
I cannot help think that Linkedin could be the most influential product for our industry, in its ability to expose the cowboys, something the REC couldn’t do!
So as recruitment consultants we need to continually show our credentials with our Linkedin profile to candidates and clients, if we are to improve the standards within Recruitment and stand out from the crowd.
-
-
Subscribe
