No – this isn’t a summary of a mad last weekend, but rather a top line on what we’ve been up to since moving office. And it’s also very much the reason as to why we’ve been so quiet on here. So once again I find myself apologising for neglecting my blogging duties – bit of a broken record that now isn’t it. Sorry <must do better Hens!> :-/

If you’d asked me 4 years ago where I might have hoped to be today (having not long ago entered our 4th year of trading (that’s right – YEAR 4!!!!)) then in all seriousness I would have settled for  ”still trading”. And that still holds. I don’t want to ever take anything for granted – least of all our clients! But as I await the official reckoning from the accountant from the last financial year I’m pretty gob smacked as to where we’re at right now. And God knows there’s plenty still to do – but let me just touch on, in terms of clients and our work, what we’ve been up to since last I blogged. In a world that seems polluted with over-promotionists and big hype sales teams I hope this speaks more of what we’re about than any self glorifying promotional BS piece.

BMI Healthcare - the UKs largest independent healthcare employer (I know – I had no idea either).

FiveRivers – leading independent Social Enterprise.

G4S – you’ve probably heard of these guys as they’re literally everywhere as one of the world’s largest employers. We helped them with their graduate recruitment  in Kenya.

GAIN – the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition – an organisation doing some incredible work in the world.

Majestic Wine – a favourite brand in our house I can tell you! (nice to be back too – we worked with them 1st c.7 years ago )

National Trust - a brilliant training scheme from one of the UKs biggest charities.

Newport City Council – obviously I don’t have favourites (highly unprofessional ), but if I did then I’d wax on about how I love the spot-on creative concept married to simpleness of execution that generated highly effective results for this campaign site.

Orione Care - it’s not all about big names – am very proud to offer highly efficient entry level solutions that clients genuinely love.

Yell - still early days and the system is bedding in after a rather speedy  build -> deploy, but a nice and clean execution with the focus on back-end efficiency to really help the resourcing team.

We were also very proud that a site we built (www.ThinkPowerSector.co.uk) got through to the shortlist for best website at the CIPD’s Recruitment Awards recently.

So as you can see – we really have been busy bunnies of late – and over the next few weeks I’m pleased to say there’ll be no let up with some great enhancements to existing clients and some new ones in the wings too, all whilst we’re also working behind the scene’s on one or two particularly large projects that will be hitting the streets much later in the year.

Once again I will try my hardest to not be such a stranger on here – but if you do want to know more about what we do or what it looks like or why clients such as Heinz, Comic Relief, Weight Watchers, Safestore and LSG have been happy with us as their ATS partner well into their second year (and I can assure you it’s not because we tie them into 3 year horror contracts) then don’t hesitate to get in touch: Alex@3DMarComms.com

Towards the end of last year we set about recruiting to expand our development capability (which has, thankfully and with some great results & delighted clients, been working flat out for some time). I can confirm what I’ve read other people reporting to be true, in that irrespective of the swelling ranks of the unemployed, when you’re looking for talent you’ve still got to search damned hard (although ironically in this instance it turned out we actually hired one of the very first applicants).

I have to say as well though,  the quality of many of the applications was appalling. I wonder if anyone could create an index for the %age of job seekers who deserve to stay where they are/without a job on the basis of number of random applications outside of skill set they make (many have a clear inability to read a simple job description), terrible overall presentation (be that CV or answering questions in legible English) and overall seeming apathy towards life?!  :-/

So firstly let’s welcome Brett on board. A few weeks in and he’s clearly a nice guy who, I think, has settled in well (certainly there’s plenty to keep him occupied) and quickly become part of the team, but most importantly he clearly “LOVES code” – which is what you want in a developer in our opinion. We all spend more than enough time doing our day to day, so having a passion for what you do makes such a difference to both your life and the end result, so here’s to many years of keeping his passion stoked and delivering great facilities and service for our clients.

Secondly – I thought I’d just share with you some of the recruitment MI, because that is, after all, what we built HARBOUR ATS to do, and because it’s good to share .

The media channels used were: our website; twitter; google docs; PHP forums; Gumtree; CWjobs; Planet Recruit (& Hot Group network); Jobserve.We paid for CW Jobs, Planet Recruit and tried the new Pay Per Application model with Jobserve (limiting it to 10).

The specifics were that this was a Junior Developer role in North Essex (although we were pretty flexible about remote working).

The applications came from:

• 3dmarcomms.com – 3
• Jobserve – 6
• Gumtree – 9
• Planetrecruit (et al) – 12
• CWjobs – 35

The campaign MI headlines are:

• Worth testing: Planet Recruit – 1; 3DMarComms.com – 2; Jobserve – 3; Gumtree – 5; CWjobs – 15
• Telephone interview: Jobserve – 1; Gumtree – 1; 3DMarComms – 2; CWjobs – 2
• Talent Banked: CWjobs – 2; 3DMarcomms – 3
• Hire: Gumtree (specific cost = £0)

My personal feedback:

I thought that Planet Recruit was, to be blunt, absolute bobbins. The team there were very nice and tried hard (with a lot of additional collateral), but for this role I was very disappointed with such a poor response (particularly in quality – but also in volume, which may, considering the quality, have been a blessing I guess). My conclusion is that Planet Recruit (& network) has a very poor for Junior PHP Developer reach, particularly in the East of England.

I didn’t take to the Jobserve experience at all really. The lack of ability to integrate directly into an ATS (something I’ve long rallied against as a real barrier to use on this site) proved an issue here where out of 10 applications I paid for (on the PPA model) 4 then couldn’t be arsed to complete a simple application form I directed them to (although of course I’m sure some bright spark at Jobserve will try and sell this as a useful “motivational fit” sift :-s). However when you’re on a Pay Per Application basis, that kind of lazy candidate reflects very badly on the site. The lack of human involvement I also found made it a poor overall posting experience & actually as it all worked out rather expensive for only 3 OK applicants (despite the filters set in the Jobserve facility) who were even worth inviting to partake in our online test. On this experience (and if I can make the time I’ll blog some more on this for sure ) – Pay/Cost Per Application isn’t a model I’ll be looking to use again (or at least certainly not on the Jobserve site).

I have to admit to always having like CWJobs as a site – but perhaps the thing I liked best about it was the fact that it generally delivered for my clients in the past. And I wasn’t let down this time either. Good service that delivered good volume and decent quality of applicants. Thanks guys.

And what can you say about Gumtree? Well for me it just emphasised what’s so difficult about the crowded web, proving that you have to do your damndest to think like a candidate in a very noisy market place – in this instance thinking local to “get our man”.

I also, of course, had quite a lot of interest from recruitment consultants trying to sell me their “stella” candidates. There’s probably a blog post there too in regards to how important it is to get the attention to detail right first time every time, particularly when you’re trying to open a door that’s pretty firmly closed anyway. All I can say is there are a lot of Recruitment Consultants out there who will rightfully (and hopefully) go out of business if their terrible attempts to win my business accurately demonstrates their overall integrity, ability & professionalism. However, it’s always good to find the exception that proves the rule – and I was so impressed with Kirsty Brewer’s quirky, personal & through that ultimately stand-out approach (she’s from Senitor (although god knows their website needs some serious overhaul!!)) – that I’ve made sure I’ve kept her details just in case.

Anyway – that’s more than enough reminiscing about how we stepped into this year. It’s back to the grind stone, but all very much feeling glad that we have a grindstone to return to and that it’s thankfully seeing some serious action already this year

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.

So Amazon are just about to launch their second generation kindle e-book reader – and as someone who’s an avid e-reader (you’ll often catch him squinting at a PDA where he’s downloaded the latest Terry Goodkind) my partner in crime here, Tony, immediately fired through the news of it’s impending release.

You can see the old (left) and new version (right) here:

The old & the new Amazon e-Reader - Kindle

It seems those that like new things are going to be lapping it up whatever – one comment seemed to sum it up: “Still ugly. Still Expensive. Still want one”.

But what we can’t work out is why they’re keeping with the full keyboard. It just makes it too big – doesn’t it? And let’s face it – we all know it doesn’t have the capability of a netbook, so you’re not working on it – and if the developers don’t have the ability to create a complete iPhone-esque touch screen interface at this time (we all now that’s where this will go though) then surely they could create a simpler interface that could cope with all you’ll be doing on this version of the Kindle without eating up space? Others are managing to get a better balance e.g. Sony Reader (although there are many things that differentiate the Reader and the Kindle – not least Kindle’s wifi ability and a vastly greater library to chose from).

It’s still exciting to see the future evolving before our eyes (as we touched on in regards to ePaper in an earlier post this year), but I wonder if sometimes product designers lose sight of what they’re actually producing at this release time and detrimentally affect this generation of the product because of that – in this case (in our opinion/experience) an eReader where the keyboard just seems a little in the way and uneccessary.

Still – clearly Tony’s pushing to try and get one through on expenses whatever!

Just before Christmas rather than the usual cards we sent out some flat foam Christmas trees accompanied with a little festive decoration kit (glitter pens, cord & some sticky backed decoration cutouts) to some of the people we’ve worked with or otherwise had addresses for. A 3D greeting from 3D MarComms (see what we did there ) We’ve been meaning to bung something up about this since then – but we didn’t get many images back of completed trees so it kinda slipped our minds.

But we think it’s only fair that we acknowledge the effort of those that did send us shots back – and actually when you look into it then the response percentage was actually not too bad for Direct Mail (found this forum response illustrating what DM response rate norms are). Guess we just didn’t manage our own expectations re response

What we sent out

The raw pip my tree kit

The flyer that accompanied the kit

What we had back

We had 3 back (c.9% return rate) and so here they are in reverse order:

3rd place (purely because as judge and jury we felt that abusive language, no matter how clever, creative and highly amusing, can’t be allowed to be rewarded) goes to… well we’re not going to say who (in case it drags their online personal brand down – but you’ll know their work if you know them). Feel free to guess below if you like.

2nd place: Amanda Rubython (ThirtyThree). Good effort, but unfortunately proof (if any was needed) that Blackberry’s take rubbish photos (or else that the Alcohol induced shaking kicked in early this Christmas)

Amanda Rubython - pimped tree

And 1st place goes to those eager beavers at www.wikijob.co.uk. What we liked in particular is the attention paid to the image composition (nice tree footer guys!). A well deserved first to what we hope will be a winning team and site for 2009 & beyond too.

A wicked entry from WikiJobs - worthy champions

Prizes

So what do they win? Well clearly a plug on this blog (woo-hoo), but I’ll make sure we send a little something in post so they can toast their year starting success.