Well – here we are then.

1 year – 12 months – 365 days – 8760 hours – 525,948 minutes

Not exactly the easiest of economic environments within which to start a business it’s true, but at the same time we’re more “glass is half full” type of guys than “half empty” and we know that even within recruitment there are still opportunities if you have your offer bang on (together with a modicum of luck being in the right place at the right time and a seemingly limitless appetite for kissing lots of speculative frogs).

If you’d said 12 months ago this is where we’d be on our 1st birthday, business wise, we’d have been very happy with that – but of course the expectations and ambitions that drive you also morph as the year progresses, fueled by a healthy measure of impatience, so it’s only when we look back at this juncture and remind ourselves what we hoped for when we started, that we then allow ourselves a momentary pat on the back.

The first couple of months worked out nicely through projects where we partnered with ThirtyThree – the two biggest being refining the underpinning system that drives the many recruitment consultant sites (UK & global) that are all part of the SR Group, and then into a really interesting one for Virgin Group (careers portal here, my write up about it here). Both projects helped us learn more that would shape our own steps forward, proved our capability to deliver on time and on budget and also demonstrated how we set out add value every step of the way – but it also re-enforced our belief that being completely “off the shelf” just wasn’t good enough for modern business requirements, as no matter how “established” or “fixed” a potential client believes their process to be, like everything in life, there’s a need for it to continue evolving solutions efficiently and swiftly post-deployment.

So off the back of Virgin we knew it was time to set about investing our time and effort into our own product, for whilst being hired hands is fine, it’s not what we set out to do for always. And now, having launched HARBOUR® to Recruitment Ad Agency land and had some very interesting conversations over the last month we’re approaching our 2nd year with what we believe to be a kick arse system that everyone we’ve spoken with is very impressed with and agrees offers a new level of candidate and recruiter centricity that will really realise massive e-recruitment efficiencies for those who use it – a long way over and above the usual suspect ATS providers for sure. But most exciting of all is the fact that through those conversations, as well as having spoken with some media, our thinking has continued to evolve too and so we’re now finishing off a neat product offer that we hope will help us get that all important off the ground client profile, all based around HARBOUR® ATS’ unparalleled flexibility, configurability & speed to deploy.

We’re not delusional though, and in the current climate our strategy is about ensuring we hang on in there until the world comes back, building clients and reputation wherever we can. But one year in we now have the clearest idea of what we’re about and how we’re going to get where we want to go. The theory we had in our heads when we started out has held up very well so far, and to be honest so have we in practice too, so now it’s time to take it to the next level – what exciting times

I recently contributed the following to an ONREC magazine article (if/when I spot it online I’ll add the link here too):

How widespread / popular are recruiting blogs now?

As companies try and find an authentic voice for their employer brand (as well as be seen to be deploying web2.0 facilities) we’ll only see more of them. As for how popular they are – I think they’re popular with the business deploying one in the first instance because it makes them feel cool and “down with the new web” and then they realise how much work it is to keep one up, so the popularity (certainly amongst those targeted with producing content) wanes.

From a candidate’s perspective I think they’re popular as a reference point when they are considering an employment proposition, it will generally give you a good indication of at least how the business perceives itself – but there are very few, if any, examples of particularly engaging corporate Recruiting Blogs, blogs that you’d read up on all the time, so in that sense they still have a long way to go (or at least the people contributing to and managing them do).

Do you think recruiting blogs have much influence?(Any examples of companies that have done it well?)

They can have – both good & bad. One of the better blogs I’ve come across is the PwC blog, because if nothing else they’re really trying. I think they’re missing some pretty fundamental tricks with it, not least by not having a single page where you can read all recent comments & posts rather than hard categorising them, but those contributing clearly try their best to keep it up to date and personal, and those managing it I’m guessing work hard to keep them motivated and contributing (although a number of contributors haven’t for quite some time).

An employee blog isn’t about setting the world alight, but rather an efficient way of showing a human face – a genuine, authentic voice for the employer brand.

If you put yourself in the shoes of someone looking for a job – they will have preconceptions about Company X & Company Y, some good, some mixed, some maybe bad. The Corporate line that you’ll see trotted out on the careers site will in truth do little to influence this as everyone knows that the messaging is carefully crafted to sound alluring, but if there’s a blog that sounds honest (whether it be recruitment specific or not) and conveys real personality then all of sudden you have an insight into what that corporate personality really is, what it’s really like to work there. Just having an open blog is a statement in itself.

What are the possible benefits and risks for a company considering a recruiting blog?

You can really differentiate yourself from the competition. A blog should represent a voice that is more human, more believable and through that offers the best chance to enforce positive messages about your employment proposition and the opportunity to make people at the very least question any negative preconceptions they may have.

But blogging is not easy – for many individuals and for many corporate cultures. Blogging takes quite a bit of time, and after you’ve let lose all your “pent up” stories, how do you keep up the writing about day to day life? And for many businesses then there’s a real nervousness about letting people have their say, which waters down any commentary to the degree where it’s too dull to bother reading and too demotivating to have your thoughts picked apart to bother writing.

In the worst instances there’s the fear of whether what you’re saying is going to be career limiting – do you go down the ‘brown nose’ route and ruin your personal brand/integrity or say what you think and risk getting a stop put on your career progress? Fears that will lead to most people just refusing to contribute.

But in my opinion the worst risk of all in blogging is for the business that launches a blog and then lets it fall into disuse. Coming across a website that has a blog but no updates for the past 6weeks or more sends a louder message about that company’s corporate culture than not having one at all. And I’m afraid many many companies have been guilty of this (particularly in the graduate space where websites with blogs were the hot thing to have from about 2 years ago onwards) and it shows the company as the kind of place where they pick up an idea without thinking about how to execute and sustain it.

Do you think recruiting blogs are here to stay? How do you see them developing in the future?

I think there’ll be more of them as companies grow up to realise what the new web reality is all about, namely that there are conversations going on about them whether they like it or not, so do they want to get involved and direct, influence or contribute to those conversations or just hope they can still exist within a walled garden? The problem with the latter being that it becomes ever harder to get people into your garden when they have no idea what it’s really like.

Blogging is a great way to engage candidates, employees and customers – or at the very least show them your human face. Blogging ensures that your site is kept current, even if the rest of the ‘static’ content lags a little. Blogs are loved by search engines and so can see good returns in terms of SEO. Blogs reflect a level of employer brand integrity that you simply can’t generate in any other way on the corporate careers site.

But blogging is no quick fix, not some simple but sexy web2.0 bolt on to your corporate career site, nor should it be treated as a cheap way to manage a companies PR. It needs buy in from the senior management and investment of time and belief – belief in your brand, belief in your employees: belief in your true Employer Brand.

If you’re a twitterer or read blogs of people who are you’ll almost certainly have come across posts where people try and explain why they’re on it, what they get from it, how they interact with it and suggestions as to how you might benefit similarly. Of course the beauty of any “established” or emerging social media platform is that “whatever works for you is great – if it doesn’t, then that’s fine too”.

But one thing I find odd is the number of people who look to remove people who haven’t tweeted in a while (there are of course tools to see who from those you’re “following” haven’t tweeted in a while so you can conduct your cull with ease) – because I’m quite the opposite.

I’d describe myself as quite a picky “follower” in that whilst others seem to try and build as big a following as possible through following as many as possible (not sure if it’s ego fueled or what – certainly I can’t keep abreast of nearly 200 people), I generally, on coming across a new person (more often than not after they’ve followed me – more often than not just clearly just to get the follow back), I look at their profile and previous tweets to see if it looks like they have interesting things to say or a relevancy to my interests. If they are too busy or feel they’ve not got anything they want to tweet about then that’s fine – I don’t think that makes them any less worthy of my attention should they come back online at some later point. In my experience it often makes the comments they make when coming back on-tweet more considered &/or interesting

What I do stop following people for though is when they just flood you with “tweets” – because for me Web2.0, of which Twitter is very much a now established part of the stable, is about facilitating conversation & engagement. It is not about being another broadcast medium – the mechanism of shouting your message(s) hoping something sticks.

I completely concede the beauty of the medium is that each person can find what works for them, but at the same time I think that some people are missing the very reason for the medium aren’t they? I mean just because technology enables streaming of “relevant content” you’ve come across to be fired off like a gattling gun across the day turns any personal thought or connection at best to a background noise and at worst to something I’ll miss altogether as I screen you out or turn you off. And stopping that shouting to reply to the odd tweet doesn’t make it a conversation. I’m not sure about delusions of grandeur, but I think an increasing number of twitterers have ‘delusions of publisher’.

Now I’m almost certainly not target audience for many of these people and if I was then I’d possibly see things differently (or understand) – but I reckon there are only a select bunch who have enough personality or insight to continue what is largely a one way conversation over a two way medium (ala Wossy, Stephen Fry or Russell Brand), for the rest I’m afraid it seems to me to be one side of the room shouting at the other side. It will of course work itself out – as these things do in nature and at lightening speed on t’internet. I’m after personality in the tweets I follow, so if you’re shouting other people’s news you can keep your inflated following figures with one less amongst that number – if you’re saying anything particularly original or worth listening to then maybe someone in our shared network will be compelled to re-tweet what you’re saying and I’ll pick it up then. Maybe.

It’s been a long time coming, certainly from this side of the fence, but HARBOUR is finally at a stage where it’s time to “go shout about it from the roof tops” – and then hope that the economy hasn’t altogether vanished whilst we were busy building!

We built HARBOUR, and in particular the Applicant Tracking System module, from what we believe to be our unique position (amongst ATS builders that have gone before) of appreciating the bigger Employer Branding/Candidate Engagement piece. Of course it’s very important that the processing of candidates is efficient, but we felt that when we’ve come across ATS’ in the past that was about the only consideration they give. No real consideration of the wider recruitment activity other than the odd half baked token gesture here and there. So add that together with some significant Web2.0 leaps in terms of high integrity MI (Management Information), unprecedented recruitment SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) & new levels of UI consideration (User Interface – both candidate & recruiter) and we feel what we’ve got here is ATS 2.0 if you will.

Anyway – because of the strong Employer Branding & MI elements that underpin the thinking behind HARBOUR we thought we’d start by running it past some of the leading lights in the Employer Branding and Communications field. We kicked this off in a very nice hotel in central London (thoroughly recommend Mal Maison Chaterhouse Square) on Wednesday 29th April.

I’ve posted an abridged version of the presentation on SlideShare (embedded below)- although without the commentary I’m never really sure how much sense such presnetations displayed this way make :

I generally find it hard to tell how well a presentation really goes down (added to which this has to have been one of the hardest presentations I’ve ever given as it was a room of my peers as well as 2 previous employers – very Dragons’ Den-esque), but I felt that it was broadly very well received – and certainly some of the highly positive follow ups we’ve already had with a couple of the attending agencies align with that gut feel.

But there’s plenty more agencies to get around. Quite a number of people we invited were unable to make the day but have expressed a real interest in the proposition and so it’s on the road I go for the next week or two to spread the good word of HARBOUR. And with one new business meeting already in the diary in partnership with an agency that attended the presentation I’m hoping it’s going to be a busy transition from spring into summer (never a bad thing for a relatively new business like ours, especially in the current climate). I’ll of course do my best to keep you updated along the way.