LinkedIn - opportunity or threat?

My thoughts are these... LinkedIn will continue to dominate the recruitment side of social media. With their products and services constantly developing, they have provided an incredible platform for recruiters and jobseekers to search and interact. You only have to keep up to speed with their blog to see that daily ideas are coming out and being implemented http://blog.linkedin.com/. I would suggest that instead of a threat, LinkedIn offers a substantial opportunity to open up the recruitment industry.

There are some industry commentators who are suggesting that because there are more and more recruiters on LinkedIn then there will be less and less non-recruiter audience logging in. Personally I completely disagree with that, in every form of social media someone is selling something. You don’t see less users on Facebook because corporations are setting up fan pages. LinkedIn is all about career progression and knowledge generation. With smart work comes progression, with progression comes development and with those two, recruitment is intertwined.

LinkedIn is a networking site, people go to networking events to sell to other people, anybody that says they are just there to meet people is in the wrong job - even if what you are selling is just your expertise in a specific subject, to be able to assist other business people. When they call for advice you will up-sell your knowledge and so you should, given becoming an expert is time consuming work. I would be bold enough to say that LinkedIn users are there because at some point or another they want to be headhunted for a specific role. Recent research has shown that 83% of LinkedIn users would be interested in hearing about jobs - http://www.adlerconcepts.com/index.php/article-topics/current-articles/845-a-recruiter-competency-model-for-passive-candidates-part-2

Will LinkedIn start limiting users access on the site? Probably, but those savvy enough to work around any limitations will still be able to use the site productively. LinkedIn accounts should never be used as a sole database, there are so many other ways to find people in the market and thus limiting factors shouldn’t make too much difference. Use LinkedIn but don’t rely on LinkedIn.

My Conclusion: Opportunity. What do you think?

Facebook ups the ante yet again.

Over the last few days, if you were to take a general ‘feeling’ from your Facebook feed, you’d probably see a lot of people complaining about the new Facebook layout – changes to photos, top stories, the way the news feed works etc. These changes seemed a step towards retaining the title as number one social media outlet as Google+ became open to everyone to join, yet delve a little deeper and these changes just seemed to pave the way for a completely new overhaul of the user interface.

Announced yesterday at the f8 conference in San Francisco, the new look incorporates many different things such as Facebook Gestures (allowing you to use any verb rather than just like), the ability to watch TV, movies and listen to music all within Facebook and probably the most radical change of all, the new timeline feature.

Being experts in all things Digital & Creative, we were able to be privy to the new look Facebook a week before it is released worldwide. Below is a screenshot of what you can expect your profile to look like.

As well as a profile picture, you now have a ‘cover’ for your page which can be independent to your profile picture. On the right hand side, you have a timeline of your time on Facebook. It’s basically changed to an online scrapbook, allowing you to go through and look over older stories easier, also allowing you to edit the timeline and add momentous updates on certain dates, should you have happened to have forgotten to do it at the time.

All of these features lend to a big change in social media. Facebook isn’t doing this to attract more members, it already has 800 million, it isn’t to try and retain either, recently having a record one-day hit of 500 million users on at one time. They realise that the reason people use this is to keep in touch with people and see what is happening, they are going back to their roots and making it a fun experience like it was originally, when it was ‘cool’ and ‘exclusive’.

I personally think what they’ve done is very clever. From a recruitment and business perspective, I think it’s only a matter of time before companies find new ways to attract candidates using the new layout, it may even become easier if users ‘sticking time’ is becoming longer on pages so they have a more captive audience to advertise too. If Facebook Pages undergo a similar makeover then the possibilities increase further, it would stand apart from everything else.

Either way, their competitors have still got a lot of catching up to do.

For more updates from us, visit our Facebook Page here - http://www.facebook.com/haysdigitalcreative

Employers need to drive the education revolution

I attended the TEDxLondon conference 'Education Revolution' at the weekend. This ‘independently organised’ TED event, held at the Roundhouse in Camden, was a coming together of technologists, teachers, students, artists, campaigners, inventors, film-makers, musicians and cultural leaders.

Sir Ken Robinson introduced the event with his view that education needs to be personalised, rather than standardised, if society is to gain real benefits. Watch this video to find out more on this.

Some of the speakers were only tenuously connected to the theme of the day, but all were inspiring and it gave the audience plenty of discussion points and ideas to debate - how can schools make better use of technology to promote creativity, engagement and learning? What will be the impact on education strategy and policy?

The only thing missing was the employer's view, and with education the starting point for everyone’s journey into employment, it’s possibly the most important. Other than the individual and society as a whole, it is employers who really gain the intrinsic value of a well educated population. If businesses are to thrive, they need the right people, with the right skills, to run them.

How do we teach and train the workforce of tomorrow? How do we forecast the skills they’ll need to be productive and employable? Many of the jobs of the future don’t yet exist, so how can we support the next generation if we don’t yet know what they’ll need?

Likewise, should we also be predicting which jobs will not exist in the future, to steer children away from training for them? Think about the many jobs that existed 15 years ago, but have been automated or replaced by technology? Think about how many industries have been fundamentally changed by the digital revolution.

Yet how can we encourage students to learn on software and hardware which may be obsolete by the time they enter the world of work?

How do technology teachers teach, when their students already know more than they do?

Almost more important than knowing specific, limited skills, young people need to be equipped with the right attitude and thought processes to be able to learn and adapt in a constantly evolving world.

The rapid pace of change in technology is something that needs to be embraced by society as it prepares for the future. Education strategy needs to be central to this and shaped in partnership with businesses and employers.

Will QR codes bring back offline advertising?

A thought…

QR codes strength is the fact they take people who are currently offline, online. If you see a QR code, scan it with your smartphone or webcam you will be taken to where that code wants to take you.

Having been in recruitment industry for several years, I’ve seen the shift from offline media to online media, with the progression meaning that online is the main form of advertising (cost vs application, potential for return on investment etc). It will be interesting to see if QR codes reinvigorate offline media.

For example, direct mailing (postcards to candidates) is a little dated in my opinion. They offer the opportunity for referral, yes, but what sort of application rate would you expect from them? In the past the postcards would include a reference number of a job and/or a link to a website where the job sits. The effort of taking the postcard, logging on, entering the website details and inputting the ref number is time consuming and will, through basic human nature, filter people out of the process. Now I’m not saying QR codes will get everybody to apply as some will not have smartphones, or may have smartphones and not use them to their maximum, however it will open the market wider.

Now here’s an idea – you have a client who is setting up a shared service centre in which you will need to recruit double or treble figure employees. Online will spread your market massively (after all 70% of applications are made online), you will have a dedicated website, you will use job boards and of course the ubiquitous social media. How about a billboard? I would never have even considered billboard advertising for recruitment as I would not believe the return on investment would be suitable, however, put a QR code on the billboard and you could generate a massive response by utilising space at bus stops, tube stations etc. Even television can be used for the largest of organisations, for instance The Army already do. Granted, jobsites are currently advertising online but this is generic, traffic generating advertising. If this can be concentrated on specific job categories it makes it relevant to the individual opportunities available.

What QR codes allow is access for recruitment advertising into the generic media market, opening up channels and increasing further our capacity to attract the best in market.

I’m personally excited about the prospect of this as it develops. We are of course working at the forefront of the market in this regard and more info to follow.

Typography!

Typography can often be overlooked in a websites design. In some cases it can make the design, so it is definitely an essential factor to consider the font, size and colour for your design.

Cast your mind back 15 years when it was impressive to see blocks of Times New Roman text load in a bright blue box. How things have changed, that old fluorescent information no longer has the same buzz it once did. And why should it? We are spoiled with visual delights including textures, fades, images, videos and more! However none of this means much without text - and it has also seen a visual resurgence! Over the last year or so pretty typographics have become a big trend amongst the net. We have CSS3 to thank for this with text-shadow, column, blur, transition, transform (etc. etc.) elements.

The problem that web designers face is that there isn't a lot of history with typography in web design. There are endless amounts of books and resources for print designers but when you compare print to the web, we are only toddlers! I have not been trained in typography unlike a graphic designer would have, yet there is a huge need for it in webdesign. Thankfully, as we know, the internet is a wonderful place where people are constantly experimenting and producing new resources and inspiration for us!

Some striking examples of typography:

Ditch your standard Arial/Verdana headers and customise them with font-face kits available from sites such as http://www.fontsquirrel.com/ . Bench and Cocosa are two examples where we have used custom font-face kits:

http://www.hays.co.uk/jobs/cocosa/
http://www.hays.co.uk/jobs/bench/

Check out these useful sites to help you get started with pretty typographics!
http://typekit.com/
http://ilovetypography.com/
http://www.typetester.org/
http://typographica.org/

Also please view and take very seriously http://bancomicsans.com/main/