With LinkedIn on the other hand, everything that I have read in the past year or two has been overwhelmingly positive and none more so than when talking about social networking and recruitment.

So I was taken aback recently when I asked a head hunter why he didn’t accept my invitation to join my network on LinkedIn. He said “it’s for your protection, everyone knows that I am a head hunter and when you and I connect,  everyone in your network (including your employer) gets an email update telling them we are now connected and everyone will assume that you are either a client or looking for a job”. He added that the other thing he found astounding was that people did not realise that LinkedIn was one of the biggest CV databases around and unlike Monster, Reed or Total Jobs, you don’t even have to buy a license to be able to see the people who are looking for a job; as they simply tick the looking for a new job box or interested in new career opportunities and are then visible to the entire world, including their employer.

I decided to do a bit of research and came across these articles in the Telegraph & Mail discussing the sacking over a LinkedIn profile which highlight to me the exact issue my friend had outlined.

The articles cover the case of John Flexman, 34, who posted his career history on networking site LinkedIn while employed as a graduate and development manager for gas company BG Group in Reading, who alleges he lost his job for saying he was interested in ‘career opportunities’ in an online CV.  As part of his profile, he also ticked a box to say he was interested in career opportunities.

However, after discovering Mr.Flexman’s profile his employer took exception to it, saying Mr Flexman had revealed confidential information and breached company policy.Mr Flexman is understood to have been ordered to remove the profile and was called to a disciplinary hearing for ‘inappropriate use of social media’.He was using the website to advance his career at a cost to the company: “In effect what you were saying was ‘what a terrible place this is but what a great job I’ve done’,” BG Group lawyer Ian Gatt QC, is reported saying :

“Mr Flexman said he should have put more thought into the content of his profile but that he had a right to post his CV publicly “.

“But did I do it to further my career? That’s absolute nonsense.”

On his return to work he was handed a list of disciplinary charges and told he could be sacked, Reading Employment Tribunal heard.The dispute led to Mr Flexman’s resignation in June.

Employment law experts have commented that it was unlawful to treat anybody differently because they were seeking employment and looking for a job is not a sackable offence. However, employers are entitled to expect loyalty from staff and if the employee knowingly published confidential information in his online CV, the dismissal may have been justified.

Most people still believe that LinkedIn is a networking site and that’s why the CV details are required in order to find and connect with like-minded people, but my friend the headhunter says that it is rubbish, it’s a recruitment site, that’s what everyone uses it for and that is probably the major source of income for LinkedIn.

The hearing is continuing,so we will have to wait to see how it all ends, but clearly more consideration needs to be given to what information you are prepared to put online in public “networking” or CV databases and more thought needs to be given to how someone else may interpret whatever you are putting online.

Has anyone come across anything like this? If you are able to share positive or negative experiences, would love to hear your story.

Also any thoughts on LinkedIn: Job boards or social networks?

Europe’s largest annual online recruitment conference returns to central London on 26th January 2012. We have an exclusive discount for MyPeopleBiz readers!

The 10th anniversary conference – “Online Recruitment 2012: The Year Ahead” will focus on  online recruitment strategy, candidate attraction, mobile, online law and global social media, You’ll hear from other industry leading speakers as well as network with 500 professionals at the industry’s largest event.

1.  Google are presenting on Google+ and mobile within recruitment.
2. ITV are talking about how they have successfully implemented a new careers website and social media strategy.
3. The FIRM are talking about 3,000 FIRM employer recruitment strategies.
4.  Boots are back talking about the market a year on and how they successfully used Facebook for social hiring.
5. There’s a social media recruitment legal and compliance masterclass which should be really interesting.
6. Monster are talking about how BeKnown could change the recruitment world forever via Facebook.
7. LinkedIn are discussing their vision of the future of online recruitment in 2012.
8. Plus Enhance Media – the conference organisers – giving insight from the world’s largest piece of online recruitment research.

We’ll be there (obviously) and MyPeopleBiz readers can get a 10% discount on tickets! To find out more about the conference click here and when booking use the promotion code MPB10 to secure your discount.

See you on the 26^th Jan!

Misconception 1: “We are a small company and we don’t recruit much!”

A very small company may only recruit 3 or 4 people a year, therefore is there any point in thinking too much about recruitment and its associated costs?

The answer is that perception is key.

Small companies do not want to be perceived as small companies, it’s not good for business image, for winning large scale contracts, or indeed for hiring talent. They want to be perceived as professional and cutting edge. A Recruitment Portal would provide the same high spec functionality as that of their bigger competitors. But it doesn’t stop there – small companies would also have the ability to attract talent more economically by utilising MyPeopleBiz buying power with candidate supply channels such as recruitment agents and job boards, rather than trying to negotiate something from a position of weakness. After all, it’s no good trying to sell to an agent the concept of reducing their fees if all they are going to be offered  is a couple of roles to fill a year. With MyPeopleBiz, a small company can benefit from our collective buying power, agree terms of business, set and fix the fee. Then there is the ability to hire direct utilising our platform consisting of thousands of job seekers. If you hire a couple of your new employees direct, you will have almost paid for your Recruitment Portal and from then on, everything is a cost saving.

Misconception 2: “We are an SME, we employ around 100 people and we are not really doing anything!”

It is true that there are companies out there planning to survive by doing nothing but this in practice is not what it seems. In reality the above statement is made because it feels the right thing to say or it feels like nothing is happening; but when you look at what the recruitment plan is, often most companies will say that they are growing by an average of 10% a year (10 new people) to support the growth of the business and in most cases there is also an attrition ration of 10% (another 10 new people). Put simply, “we are not doing anything and not recruiting” may well be what it feels like when you are immersed in the day to day, but there is a need to recruit 20 people and that is expensive and time consuming. Hence you do need a Recruitment Portal.

Misconception 3: “We use a spread sheet for tracking candidates – we DO NOT need an applicant tracking system or any other system!”

Organising recruitment is not rocket science. While using an excel spread sheet is not an ideal situation, it can be maintained and managed by an administrator. You can put up with emails containing CV’s coming in at you from every angle, you can put up with the odd agency dispute caused by duplicate applications and end up paying two agencies fees for the same candidate. Not using an ATS (Applicant Tracking System) might save you money up-front but it will cost you in the long run. Yes, all of the problems of under investment can be justified, even the over worked administrators who have to put up with the day to day issues can be dealt with, BUT what about the business? Are they being served? Are they getting the best support? Are you really saving any money by doing what you have always done and refusing to update? Here is an example that people don’t think about and it’s a typical scenario. A new role arises and a decision to post the role on some job boards at a cost of £1,000 (to get direct response and save money) is taken as well as calling all the agencies on the PSL and asking them to help you fill the role. An agency sends a candidate in, admin checks to see if that candidate is on the spread sheet and finds that indeed an application had been submitted 2 years ago. This is outside of the agency exclusivity arrangement and therefore the agency that has submitted the most recent application is logged and the candidate duly gets interviewed, gets the job and is hired resulting in a fee of £6,000 for the introduction. Including the money spent on the job boards, it has all cost £7,000. That’s all pretty efficient and it has all worked well.

Now consider how the same scenario would work with MyPeopleBiz.

A new role arises and you post the role on your career portal before deciding how you want to recruit it. You press the “Candidate Match” button and a candidate that had applied 2 years ago is a perfect match and had been bookmarked to your talent pool at the time you interviewed them. You press the contact candidate button and automatically attach the job spec requesting that, if they are interested, to send you an updated CV and apply via your career portal for the job. They duly get interviewed and hired for the job, resulting in a fee of a big fat £ZERO. There has been no admin hassle, all communications have taken place through your portal and are stored in one place. A vacancy history has been stored, the business has been well served, money has been saved and recruitment has been moved into another level. Now the focus can be on the quality of hire, time to hire, cost to hire, employer brand.

You now have a professional, cutting edge Recruitment Portal, accessible from your website providing you with the same high spec functionality as that of your bigger competitors.

Misconception 4: “We want a direct only recruitment strategy!”

The CEO of a fast growing company decided about a year ago that they had enough of agencies and that from now on HR would be banned from using them. The resources would be directed to bringing everything in-house and managing a self-sufficient “Direct only” recruitment strategy. The Company recruits an average of 20 people per month throughout the UK. The HR team has had to grow from 2 people to 12 people to be able to manage and resource the strategy; which consists of social media, job boards, CV databases and internal head-hunters. Because of the cost of people employed, there is no budget for an ATS and the whole thing is managed on a spread sheet.

The average hire is on a base of £25k with OTE of around £40k and previously the recruitment agencies were supplying candidates at 10% on a PSL resulting in an average fee of £2,500 per hire. So under the previous agency strategy, recruiting 240 people would have cost £600,000.

Now with HR team salaries averaging £30k for 12 people £360,000 plus NI £46,800 plus factoring in desks, laptops and all other employment associated costs, which is difficult to guess but we will use the service office model and allocate a cost per desk of £300 per employee per month costing £43,200. There are 12 job boards used ranging from Reed, Monster, to specialist sales & marketing boards plus LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and a number of CV databases that are subscribed to annually in order to acquire candidate names, identities and contact details at a cost of £90,000. Total cost of the direct strategy is £540,00 A saving of £60,000, but a huge increase in risk.

We suggested a Recruitment Portal with a multichannel recruitment strategy.

The portal including the career site, ATS, communications suite, interview management system,  2 user licenses , all jobs being “socialised” to the social networks by MyPeopleBiz, all jobs appearing on job board aggregators at a cost £14,690.  We would purchase job board credits at our reduced rates amounting to £72,000

Results show that:

• 50 % of the recruits (120) will be “no-fee” candidates generated by people coming directly to the company’s Recruitment Portal, social networks and job boards.
• Referrals will account for another 20% of recruits and utilising our unique referral schemes, these will cost £147,000.
• Finally, the use of recruitment agencies for the remaining most difficult to fill jobs (72) will result in £180,000.

The total cost of a professional system and multichannel approach cost £383,690 representing a saving of £216,310.

Even if you take the view that the office space doesn’t cost you and the laptops are free, etc; you may be able to lose £43,200 of costs, bringing the direct strategy down to £496,800. You could take the view that you may need two extra administrators to the Recruitment Portal approach with an additional cost of £60,000, meaning that you increase the MyPeopleBiz costs to £425,690, but compared to going completely “direct strategy” route,  it’s still a saving £53,110 in year one.

Has the business been served? Are they getting the right or best support? Are you really saving any money by not having an applicant tracking system? The Holy Grail of direct only is not always what it may seem.

Misconception 5: “We do not have time for all of this, besides we like our agencies and want to continue to use them!”

I am never too sure what this statement means, but I guess it is saying that the team is far too busy to look at the recruitment service it provides to the business and whether that service is providing value and the quality required. I assume that it is also saying that managing a spread sheet or paper application process is time consuming and mind numbingly boring, which I understand. I guess it’s also saying that we don’t have either the time or the inclination to go outside of the agency candidate supply channel because it “fills me with dread”, which again I understand. Finally, having built up valuable relationships with certain agents, I completely understand why you would wish to maintain those relationships.

So let’s deal with some of these myths starting in reverse order.

Implementing a Recruitment Portal does not change your relationship with a recruiter. It simply means when they submit an application, it automatically goes into your tracking system rather than to your administrator to input into a spread sheet. You can use the same PSL if you so wish, you can continue to pay the same fee levels if you wish, although using our buying power you can also reduce those fee levels, fix them and agree your terms online. But you can continue to talk to your agents in exactly the same way as you always have.

Being far too busy to provide the right service to the business is an issue and we can help you to change that by providing you with a professional, cutting edge Recruitment Portal. This can be accessed from your web site, providing the same high spec functionality as that of your bigger competitors with a complete ATS, communications  suite and interview management.

You will have the ability to attract talent more economically without the hassle of having to do it yourself, by utilising our platform which consists of thousands of job seekers from social networks and job boards. If you hire a couple of your new employees direct, you will have almost paid for your Portal. From then on, everything is a cost saving and you will have more time to support the business in other ways such as development, appraisals etc.

Contact us for further information info@mypeoplebiz.com.

At a time when recruitment and economic recovery both seem to be intrinsically linked and both appear to struggle to show any positives, it is interesting to note that 75% of organisations are experiencing recruitment difficulties, and 58% are facing issues with staff retention.

If ever there was a time when you would have thought staff movement would decrease then surely this is it, but we will leave retention issues for another time and focus on the question of what’s preventing improvement in recruitment.

What’s going on?

Although there is some uncertainty, depending on which figures you read, as to whether unemployment has increased or decreased, one thing is for sure; recruitment is getting more stressful! And is it any wonder.

The recent CIPD annual report said that the current influx of applicants per job was significantly on the increase with 66% of Employers saying they cannot find enough quality candidates even though they are getting more response.

The issue of volume is further compounded by another recent finding by the Association of Graduate Recruiters who reported that there is an average of 83 graduate applicants for each vacancy! So, frustrations with administrative hassle are not just understandable, but are reaching extreme stress levels. Is there anything that Employers can do combat this overflow problem?

We think so, but worryingly, the CIPD report indicates a “Rabbit in the headlights approach”.

Many organisations acknowledge the problems, but when it comes to solving them, they either continue to repeat and implement strategies that have not worked in the hope that somehow it may this time around; or they just change the strategy but lose any impact on implementation.

Approximately 50% of survey participants have yet to implement formal resourcing strategies and another 31% of participant’s claimed to actually lose suitable candidates due to their unsuitable and lengthy recruitment process. WOW!

It’s like having a big headache and waking up every morning knowing that you’re going to have that same headache again but you just don’t ever have time to stop and take a “Nurofen”. After a while the pain becomes numbing: you just can’t be bothered to deal with it, so it must be with the 50% of employers who have an issue but can’t alleviate the stress. A quick look at reports over a 5 year period shows that the recruitment stress points are almost exactly the same year on year. So there’s some inertia for sure, but we have decided that something has to be done. We are on a mission to make it easy and inexpensive to reach for that Nurofen and get organised in order to not just alleviate the headache; but to prevent it happening again!

We have been busy successfully building great recruitment portals since 2009 for Employers and we’re determined to get that “50%” of stressed out organisations to formalise and improve their recruitment by making it an easy decision – a no brainer!

We have recently introduced RecruitLite an applicant tracking, interview scheduling, communications and agency management system that is easy to use and FREE. Why? Because once you have “cured the headache” your life improves and you will want to keep it improving, so you will want to upgrade to RecruitPro a recruitment portal that is highly sophisticated and will help to reduce your recruitment budget by 30%. That’s where we start making some money but continue to save you money!

We have been talking to some of our clients about what they like in their portals and what improvements will make their life easier. This is an important part of what differentiates us from the rest of the crowd, its old fashioned and called SERVICE. The results have been very encouraging:

Julie Nesbit, at the Private Equity Foundation recently created a recruitment Portal for the Charity and she said

The platform has provided great ease of functionality so that I am able to respond and recruit efficiently with minimal fuss.

We’ve also been helping improve recruitment response from career sites, as well as helping to deal with the volume of administration generated by a multitude of mediums used to advertise vacancies. With social networks acting as “new age” job boards, as well as traditional job boards AND agencies, CV’s are flowing from all directions, and getting lost along the way! Bearing these factors in mind, it makes implementing appropriate time and effort strategies for candidates difficult. The feedback we have had is that you cannot achieve better results, without continuous improvement.

Stress free recruitment does exist, but you have to be prepared to invest some time into setting up the procedures and also creating the right platform.

It’s all about communication

HR and internal recruiters remain under a phenomenal amount of stress when it comes to tackling the load of CV’s and covering letters they receive, but, organising recruitment and instituting better communication will relieve those pressures. What they need is advanced, user friendly technology to ensure improved admin. At MyPeopleBiz our clients are our priority so we ensure they receive such a service; catered to their needs. To fulfil their specific recruitment necessities we’ve set up a team to listen to and capture feedback, then implement those requests for customisation. As Ollia Alexis at Teenage Cancer Trust said “MyPeopleBiz not only listen but they make relevant changes.”

We not only listen, but more importantly we have a team of experienced recruiters who can often point out the failures in the recruitment processes, after all, it’s not just the way you attract applicants, but WHAT you do with them once you have their attention. For both employer and candidate alike, it’s vital that organisations maintain contact with as many, if not all of their applicants; updating them on progress of applications and offering quick personalised responses. Employers too will benefit from this system as they will find it easier to track their own applicants and lighten any added admin burdens: as well as simultaneously promote employer brand.

Why taking that next step will guarantee success!

Understanding how frustrating and demoralising admin can be, is the first step in helping you to solve this issue. As noted by Ollia Alexis in her review:

I have found the amount of paper work I had to deal with before has decreased significantly now that all the information is in one place.

We offer something different as noted by Jason Jolly, HR adviser for Mercedes Benz:

I have been in recruitment for 8 years; and have been approached by a number of companies saying that what they have is new and innovative. MyPeopleBiz is the first time I’ve actually seen it and it’s proving very successful for the company.

Help us to take the stress out of recruitment for those “50%”.

We would be really interested to hear of your recruitment stress points, so keep updated on our posts and keep in touch!

If asked anything, whether about a band, shop, company, name or place, what is the first thing you do? Google it. Even your grandma Googles it now. It officially became a verb in the Oxford English Dictionary 4 years ago. It is undeniable that information a Google search brings back can dramatically affect your opinion.

But have you thought about what happens when someone googles you? Most people probably haven’t tried (do it now, see what happens, I’ll wait!). Chances are about 6 people you share your name with pop out of their respective social networking profiles, probably one or two of the results is yours. 123people.co.uk may well be there too, this is a site designed for searching out people and will bring together any profile you have on Facebook, MySpace, etc as well as any mentions of your name in the news (even if it’s not actually you), indeed that scathing review you left on Amazon 3 years ago, and the wish list you made when you where 15… OK so that’s me but none the less, many people don’t think too much about the reputation trail there leaving online. This rings especially true when I tell you that recent research shows that 79% of surveyed hiring managers and job recruiters review online information about job applicants AND 70% had rejected candidates based on what they had found.

So is privacy dead? Not quite but, whether you’re a Facebook addict, Tweetaholic or both there are a few things you need to keep in mind whilst updating your status or tagging those photos from last night.

Whilst being everywhere on the internet maximizes your chances of being seen (which could help you get a job), you need to think about your Personal Brand, in 2010 your CV is much more than a piece of paper!

A few hints and tips…

Keep it simple – Do you really need to be everywhere on the net, having profiles on just one or two social networking sites will make it far easier to keep track of your image.

In the with the new, out with the old – Still got that MySpace profile that you haven’t used in years? Delete it, You never can be sure what will crop up on somebody’s search for you.

Check your settings – Most social network’s default settings are designed to make you as open as possible, think about what parts of your profile you want to be seen and by who.

Know who’s following you – You need to think about who you’re allowing into your network, how well do you really know that guy you met at the bus stop last week? Are you willing to have your colleagues or boss seeing what you got up to at the weekend? Either let them in and change your activity accordingly or decide to keep them out.

Be consistent – If you’re trying to build a ‘Personal Brand’ it needs to be consistent, changing your picture and what your tweeting about daily will reduce the chances of you being recognized and make you appear scatty and unsure of yourself.

You’re going to have a profile online whether you’ve made it yourself or not, so make sure your in control of it, get it to work for you rather than against you.

KFC has done rather well in recent times, along with its fast-food chain buddies such as Subway and McDonalds; where recession hit eaters have been turning to cheaper options. As result the restaurant is expanding it’s 22,000 strong workforce, bringing about its heralded new online recruitment system. So efficient it has saved them “16.2 years of time”, how this slightly bizarre figure has been worked out is unclear but it is a salient point about how the sphere of online recruitment is evolving.

Since the advent of the internet as a THE tool for job hunting, a number of changes of have taken place both for recruiters and job seekers. Job seekers have easy access to millions of jobs, regardless of location and experience, and recruiters see a massive increase of candidates in their talent pool.

There has been a dramatic increase in the number candidates for roles, which is great for getting the right person for the job but also a dramatic increase in the amount of hours spent sifting through these applications, particularly for competitive sales or media jobs.

KFC’s acclimation of their very own online only recruitment system, has allowed them to use their career site to save time with an inbuilt candidate tracking system. But how many companies really have the money or ability to drive the numbers of applicants wanted to their very own recruitment site. Even big brands like KFC might find it tough to attract a good range of candidates post-recession.

Whilst the internet can bring a huge talent pool of direct applicants to a company, you don’t get the same reach of applicants you get when you bring a range of roles with a range of candidate appeal together, only this way can you be sure you can find the right person to hire.

The future requires a complete recruitment solution, a system that can be implemented for any size of business, bringing together all aspects of recruitment, job-seeker traffic, tools to regulate agencies and the ability track and administer the process easily and efficiently, in a way that doesn’t exclude any sort of company big or small.

How do you feel about directy applying through a companies site?

A Recent presentation on TED.com has created quite a stir, and you can see why. Dan Pink is challenging the base logic that western society has built itself on.  Capitalism, the entire business world, has largely been constructed on a reward and punishment structure; do good and you are rewarded, do badly and you are punished:  this pushes business and society to grow: To quote the logic from famous Daft Punk lyrics “work it harder, make it better, do it faster, makes us stronger”.

Rewards,  financial incentives, performance related pay are a staple to the way business is done in this country. But, are times changing; is this the creative economy now?

Research has shown that in the 20^th century performance rewards or punishments worked well because often tasks where mechanical, and the science shows that the bigger the reward the better the performance. However, new research shows that creative tasks requiring “cognitive skill” are not only not affected by rewards, they were actually hindered.

This is why many of the most successful companies in the 21^st century are doing things in a different way; Google, the biggest successor of recent history has what’s called “20% time” where all employees are told to spend 20% of their time working on anything they want, bringing about some of Google’s most successful products; Google News and Gmail.

These new ideas have got a mixed reception, Bruce on  Paul Kedrosky’s blog wrote “Sorry. This is just wrong. “Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration”, isolated academic experiments not withstanding. Yes, we occasionally need to take a break and think “outside the box”. Having said that, the elitist assumption that some of us should spend most of our time incentivized is, I believe, a classic prescription for inefficiency and dramatic decline in productivity or even creativity.”

Bob A said: “A few years ago, I had a boss who asked what motivated me. When I couldn’t answer either Money, Power, or Title, she seemed to be quite perplexed; looked at me like I had 3 heads… But this little talk really gets to the heart of it. I’m not “motivated” to do a great job because of the promise of future wealth, nor the ability to gain more direct reports or influence over C-level executives… What it comes down to is that I want to have a sense of pride in what I do and believe that my efforts are advancing my organization. And in terms of judging the quality of my work, nobody is a harsher critic than I am. I found this talk fascinating and want to share it with colleagues, and HR, but wouldn’t be surprised if they looked at it and decided I was totally whacked…”

A linked in conversation on what motivates you in your work? Further displays the variance in opinion over this matter:

Marc Edwards Network Analyst at Washoe County School District commented on been asked what motivates you at work?

<——($$$$$$$$$Money$$$$$$$$$$$ …and the opportunity to find creative solutions to complex problems.

Did I mention money?

Whereas,

Dave Kuhl Owner at Kuhl Lifestyle said:

“Personal enjoyment and fulfillment. What good is money if you don’t have the time or the inclination to enjoy it?”

 What do you think? What motivates you in your job?  In life? Would a different attitude to rewards at a company entice you to apply there? Would you really work any better or harder?

Despite only a slight increase (from 50 – 58%) in the implementation of a more formalized resourcing strategy in HR departments,  the report highlights how this figure was expected to be higher, as surveys show that 76% of employers ranked “attracting and recruiting key staff to the organization” as one of their top three resourcing objectives.

Such a small number of companies formalizing their HR strategies could be due in part to the current economic uncertainty. Widespread recruitment freezes are making implementation of a formal resourcing strategy much less of a priority. Without large amounts of recruitment HR departments have a little room to ‘wing-it’ case by case, or do not want to introduce a system which may not be right when the economy picks up again.

However, other reports show that despite the woes of the credit crunch there are other signs that recruiters are looking for new ways to implement formal strategies.

In a recent article on workforce.com Ed Frauenheim said that “despite the downturn, investments are being made in HR software vendors that could lead to new capabilities when the economy eventually recovers.” Recruitment software is selling well, comparative to how the market is affecting sales of just about anything else. “Spending in the first quarter of this year was up 10 to 15 percent from the fourth quarter of 2008” said Josh Bersin, head of research firm Bersin & Associates. HR departments definitely seem to think this a good way to bring their recruitment up scratch, 21^st century style.

These programs are far from cheap, and the truth is that economic recovery will be slow, and companies are looking to reduce costs as things begin to pick up.

HR columnist Gillian Hibberd brings us a cheaper suggestion for moving things into the 21^st century, social networking sites. Feared by many companies as the ultimate time-waster for their employees Hibbered warns that organizations are going to fall “out of touch” and she champions some of the “opportunities that social networking provides”. Nowadays, “what we have to grasp is a matter of urgency … we have a new generation of workers who are web 2.0- and now expect these technologies to be part of their everyday lives  – work included”. The social networking beacon is flashing; research shows 8 in 10 HR professionals belong to these sites, and certainly for a bit more than catching up with old friends. Many said they were using it to make recommendations for suppliers and partners and to share guidance and advice from peers.

Resourcing through social networking sites seem like the obvious answer, referred to by some as the “holy grail” of recruitment. However, despite the buzz about social networks many bosses are skeptical. Maybe rightly so. How many HR consultants can say they would really know how to do this properly? is this really a strategy that can be formalized?

Perhaps this why some organisations are failing to boost the attraction and retention of key talent through the benefits of Web 2.0, according to the CIPD 2008 Recruitment, Retention and Turnover survey only 20% had adopted web 2.0 technologies to attract or recruit employers, Yet, of the 100 CIPD respondent members, over half (56%) believe that social networking sites are useful for engaging potential job seekers and welcome its ability to shed light on how they are perceived in the marketplace (52%). The majority (62%) are concerned, however, that damaging comments about their organization might be posted.

I leave with these quotes;

“We surely have to find ways of harnessing the benefits that these technologies bring while also mitigating there risks” – Gillian Hibberd

And as Frank at MPB often says as things move in the world of web 2.0

“In the end it’s all about balance”; whether the candidates are from the ever growing social networks or the more traditional angles: “It’s all about … getting the best from both worlds”

Since June 2009 to date, over 220 agencies have registered and are supplying candidates on a flat fee basis to employers, forming a diverse range of industries such as form Nestle, Sony, Camelot, Sab Miller, Next, Gerson Lehman Group, Jessops, McArthur Glen, Aspect, DSG International, Selfridges, Inter Resolve, Universal, Britvic, Royal London Insurance, OC&C, HMV, Premier Farnell, etc. We currently receive an approximate average of 50% candidate flow from Agencies. The remaining 50% are made up of 20% direct applicants and 30% are coming from our referral network.

The mypeoplebiz referral network is made up of 2000 users actively recommending friends and contacts to vacancies on the site and earning substantial rewards. What’s great is that our research shows this is likely to keep on growing!

Ofcom’s research into social networking show that 4 in 10 adults in the UK use social networking sites at an average of 5.3 hours per week. Bebo states the average time spent per visit is estimated at lengthy 40minutes. Ofcom further reports that UK adults are spending more time on social networking than our EU neighbors.

The other interesting statistic shows that one of the biggest group on the social networks is 35-49 year olds who constituted 25% of users in 2008, and according to the latest facebook stats on iStartegyLab the 35-54 year olds age group are the fastest growing age group of the site, growing by 276.4% in only 6 months. This is the category that we expect to use mypeoplebiz, either to look for a job or refer a friend for a cash bonus, reflecting that this is usually the age-group where people are most economically productive. This suggests that the number of applicants we get through the social networks is only going to grow bearing in mind the huge expansion of sites like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin over the past few years.

The findings reflect the opinion that a recruitment portal at this stage of the market’s development/sophistication has to offer a “rounded” service to clients and cannot simply offer clients a “direct only” solution for their recruitment. Some recruitment industry commentators have even gone so far as to say that the social networks are the key to achieving the Holy Grail of recruitment and delivering “direct only” candidates in the future.  However, Frank Verala mypeoplebiz CEO commented, “Recruitment is often more complicated than people realize: Referral schemes and direct applications through the social networks are our specialty, and we are doing as much as anyone else to utilize social networks, but, companies have to get the bigger picture and that is about achieving a balance in your approach and benefiting dramatically from reduced administration as well as having a complete view of all recruitment activities.”

“In the end it’s all about balance”; whether the candidates are from the ever growing social networks or the more traditional angles: “It’s all about providing a system that works for employers in helping them to recruit through getting the best from both worlds”.

Earlier in the year London recruitment looked bleak as the Centre for Economics and Business (CEBR) reported the capital would fare particularly badly due to its reliance on financial and business services.

However, a report out this week suggests after 16 months of consecutive decline “the number of people placed in permanent jobs has risen for the second consecutive month” according to Bernard Brown, head of business services at KPMG in the Wall Street Journal.

The monthly Report on Jobs, produced by Markit Economics for KPMG and the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) provides an index system which measures recruitment of permanent staff placements in the UK. A score of below 50 describes a decline, whereas August and September of 2009 have seen a rating over 50 showing an increase with measurements of 50.6 and 51.3 respectively.

It appears as though London recruitment as well as the UK as a whole has seen the base of the economic lows and things may be starting to pick up.

It has been recently reported that jobs centric to recruitment in London such as financial staff were rising for the first time in 18 months and demand for executives and professionals were also rising for the first time in 15 months.

The KPMG/REC survey of 400 recruitment consultants also showed the availability of permanent candidates rose further in September, suggesting that demand for staff is stabilizing.

Yet, London recruitment firms have reported that the labor market is still “very fragile”. Brown of KPMG suggested there are areas of optimism, but warned of a “twin-track economy” in which we see a recovery in the private sector but “large scale job losses in the public sector become ever more likely as the government finally tackles the huge budget deficit.”