Awards and rewards
March 27, 2009 5:43 PM
With the economic doom and gloom still all around us it can be difficult to maintain staff morale and motivation but I think this is critically important to any businesses ability to cope with the downturn. Last week we picked up two Onrec Awards which gave a great boost to us all here. You can see some of our team picking up the Awards below.
The Onrec Awards are pretty much the Oscars for the online recruitment industry so it's great to get both awards that we were shortlisted for. We were the proud winners of the Innovative Offline Marketing Award by a Generalist Job Board for our brand campaign featuring Max Beesley and Best Technical Innovation by a Generalist Job Board for our video interview practice website BeMyInterviewer. A huge congratulations and thank you to everyone who worked on both projects, all your hard work has paid off and hopefully this will be the first of many award wins this year.
I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on maintaining staff engagement during a downturn, as some of the more usual techniques (away days, corporate events, bonuses and prize draws) require funds that are most likely in short supply at the moment. Do you work for a company that has come up with a great way of keeping the mood upbeat? Or are you a HR Manager or MD who has implemented some successful morale boosting and has a more productive workforce as a result? It would be great to know what people are doing in this area.
Redundancy Advice Centre
March 13, 2009 5:26 PM
Let's be honest - redundancy is an issue we've all worried about at some point. We recently polled 5,000 UK workers and found that 1 in 5 of us is currently concerned about being made redundant. Chances are that you or someone you know has already been affected by recent personnel cut-backs. I remember living through the fear of redundancy during my career as a software engineer in the late 80's when the flight industry took a sudden downturn and many of my colleagues were affected.
In my January blog, I mentioned how uncertain the market is at the moment and unfortunately, to keep a lot of businesses afloat, companies are resorting to redundancy in some areas. It's an unfortunate part of business - but necessary in tough times. The important thing to remember (which is hard when it actually happens to you), is to not let it get personal. Remember that it's the role that is no longer required - not you.
To help you get back on your feet and find a new job as quickly and painlessly as possible, we've pooled all the insight we've gained from more than 14 years in the recruitment sector to create a Redundancy Advice Centre. This provides all the essential information you need in one place, including CV guidelines and how best to sell yourself, interview tips, legal and careers advice. I hope you find this useful and would appreciate your comments on any additional advice you'd like to see on the Redundancy Advice Centre.
BeMyInterviewer blows out its birthday candles
February 12, 2009 12:06 PM
BeMyInterviewer, our video interview practice website, featuring great interviewers such as Duncan Bannatyne and Jacqueline Gold, celebrates its 1st birthday this month.
Time's flown by - it was a whole year ago that I sat in the interview chair under the spotlight ready to ask my interview questions and I'm glad to see that many business leaders have followed suit.
Since launch we've had some great interviewers join the site which now boasts an interview panel of 14 top UK employers; including O2, Virgin Atlantic, BSkyB, ITV and most recently Ernst & Young. It's great to have such a wide variety of interviewers from different industry sectors and they've all brought their unique interview styles to the panel. My favourite questions are the killer questions - they can be difficult to respond to, but they are just a tactic used by interviewers to understand how you think and react in a given situation; so we've dedicated a whole section of the site to them to test yourself against the panel's killer interview questions.
Duncan Bannatyne is the most popular interviewer so far with 54,000 jobseekers having taken a virtual grilling with him. Duncan's killer question, "I've interviewed 20 people for this job, why should I employ you?" is attempted to be answered by one person every 50 minutes - making it the site's most asked question.
We've had great feedback from both candidates and recruiters and had award success with high commendation from the 2008 PR Week Awards for Digital Innovation and finalist status at the 2008 AOP Awards. I'm also keeping my fingers crossed on March 25th to see if we win the 2009 Onrec Award for technical innovation.
We're looking forward to another exciting year with BeMyInterviewer and getting some more top UK companies joining the site. I'll keep you posted with any new developments.
January again
January 22, 2009 4:49 PM
Well here we are at the start of a new year again, everyone back to work and beavering away through this recession. What a different economic climate it really is though since the same time last year and serves to remind us just how quickly econometric trends can shift. I've been speaking to many people throughout the recruitment world in terms of their outlook going forward and unlike the last downturn where everyone had a confident answer, "12 months"..."18 months max", this time around business leaders just haven't got a clue and are not even prepared to make a comment...me included. It actually makes me laugh now when I stumble upon someone giving it the old "18 month" routine as I wonder what on earth they know that the rest of us don't!!
Things are certainly different this time around though due to the publicity the recession is receiving. We are seeing major brands falling to their knees, banks being bailed out and even government incentives to create jobs within the private sector. This unprecedented position we have found ourselves in is highly unpredictable and we are certainly going to have to sail our ships through more unchartered waters for some time to come.
What are we up to here? Well, the Jobsite TV campaign has literally been kicked into play starting with our Man United versus Chelsea half time advert last week. So far, our ads have been on between Celebrity Big Brother, Dancing on Ice, Coronation Street and hundreds of other interesting slots targeting our candidate demographic. Our TV campaign is backed up by a strong print and online presence as well, so do look out for our ads.
Just before Christmas we launched our new Productionbase.co.uk website with a brilliant new product which we call "ShowFolio". If you are in TV and Film production you may want to take advantage of a new multimedia CV format which allows you to blend your Text CV, Sound and Vision in a very cute little app.
Throughout all our sites (and we now run over 90 job boards), service quality and differentiation will be the main thrust of our focus throughout 2009. We have many projects in the pipeline (148 to be precise) and we look forward to launching these throughout the coming year so definitely watch this space.
In the hot seat again
November 19, 2008 10:25 AM
Having three young children means I'm used to not having a lie-in at the weekend, but this Saturday I was up even earlier than usual to get to BBC Television Centre in London for a TV interview on the 'Your Money' segment of BBC News.
Even though I've done one live interview for the BBC before, on Working Lunch, it was still really nerve-wracking and completely outside of my comfort zone. Put me in a board room of 20 MDs talking about Jobsite's business model and I'm fine, but talking in front of cameras is a different matter. I have ultimate respect for people that can make this look effortless. The 'green room', where you sit before you go on, reminds me of a dentist's waiting room as you're filled with trepidation about the unknown!
However, I really wanted to do this interview as it was about giving advice to people who had recently been made redundant, or perhaps face redundancy in the near future. This can be such an anxious time and I was keen to help reassure people by offering practical tips to help them find a new job.
I always think one of the most important things to remember is that it's not you that is being made redundant, but the job which is no longer available so try not to take it personally. The other key thing we discussed during the interview was the importance of being prepared in the current climate. If you've already been made redundant then it's generally all systems go on the jobhunting but if you haven't, it's probably still worth taking some tentative steps so that if the worst happens you're ahead of the game. This means updating your CV, registering online for Jobs-by-Email so that relevant vacancies come direct to your inbox and brushing up on your interview technique at BeMyInterviewer.
It's also worth having a good think about your skills and seeing which are transferable into other roles. Just because you've been an IT Project Manager for years doesn't mean that's the only job that you can do. I know lots of people who have found jobs that they enjoy more, and are better at through redundancy. So if you have recently lost your job try to stay positive and hopefully the same will be true for you.
