Jamie Leonard is a stalwart of our industry, having worked at Monster, Fish4 and Ladders he really understands the world of job boards. Today, Jamie runs a cool business called Reconverse, the model is beautifully simple; he finds great speakers, gets 15 senior HR and Recruiting people to attend for a day (no cost) and then he gets 10/15 vendors into the room and they get 15 minutes to speed pitch.
Those attending meet 15 vendors in one go, huge time saving, they get a great lunch, a top speaker and time to network – it’s awesome!
We were looking for someone to moderate the user panel at The Job Board Summit 2015 – Europe and who better than someone who every month hears the challenges that In-House Recruiters face? Jamie kindly also agreed to give an insightful interview for all of our readers as well.
You run 20+ In-House Recruiter Events a year. What are the five things that are keeping In-House Recruiters awake at night?
* Being left with legacy technology that doesn’t meet the requirements of modern day recruitment.
* Finding recruiters with the right skill set and that can cope with the inevitable trend towards proactive recruitment as opposed to post and prey.
* The fear that other people are doing things you’re not, when the reality is that most of the market are doing the same things. Social media seems to the biggest concern (which is shouldn’t be).
* Sourcing any candidates that can’t be found on LinkedIn. The market has become too reliant on one platform and talent leaders are starting to understand why they need to be able to find people elsewhere.
What are the three big tech trends in recruiting?
* Mobile is the biggest and most obvious recruitment trend going on and will be for a while. We are hearing numbers thrown around that close to 50% of all job searches now happen on a mobile device and employers are starting to take note.
* As the market moves from response handling to genuine sourcing, the need for a robust CRM system comes to the forefront, however there aren’t many options for in-house recruiters. Most ATS systems will have a CRM module but most are terrible. Companies like Invenias are really leading the charge, as most are built for recruitment companies and do not play well with other systems or workflows.
* Reporting is becoming a huge deal right now so people start to take data more seriously, with some in-house teams now having dedicated Information Managers. This means the need for better tools to capture, interrogate and visualise the data are needed.
In-House v Recruitment Consultancies: What are the key mind-set differences?
i.e. Candidate Relationship Management
In general the key mind-set difference is long term vs short term. Yes, there are good agencies out there and yes there are bad in-house recruiters out there, but for the most part an external recruiter will look for the short term win rather than the longer term strategy of the employer. However, talent leaders need to be better at communicating the wider business strategy and the impact recruitment has on them if they wish to advance that long term thinking. With that said, in-house recruiters can learn a lot from external recruiters, including kicking back to the line managers, saying no when it’s not right, selling the job to the candidate and embracing changes in technology, to name a few.
Finally as an ex-job boarder, what’s your take on the state of the job board industry?
This isn’t going to be popular but if I was going to start a business in this industry today, a generalist job board would be right down the bottom of the list. Indeed are eating up the job post market and LinkedIn are eating up the CV market. The Indeed situation is slightly hilarious as it was the job boards that paid for their growth and now the job boards are the ones so reliant on the Indeed traffic, when they pull the plug, and they will, the job boards are going to find themselves in a pretty difficult place.
Niche job boards will have their place but they need to be more community focused and offer their users more than just job postings. I think we’ll see the rise of the uber-niche job board, driven by content for created for very specific vocations.
Job boards as a whole will need to offer service solution driven services. We are seeing a number of players offering a shortlisting service, as an example, with someone like The SmartList really leading the charge on that front. By offering something the recruiters can’t get from Indeed or LinkedIn they give themselves a fighting chance of staying relevant.
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