Shrinking market? Shrink the web…. (part 1)

It looks like it’s official -the UK is headed into recession. Sky News report here that official figures show the UK economy shrunk by 0.5% between July and September. I don’t think many people would argue these stats are not a decent reflection on how the economy has been over the last few months, and perhaps more worryingly, most feel that things are going to get worse before they get better. The impact certainly appears to be having an effect on the recruitment market. The amount of applications for vacancies has increased - hardly surprising given the increase in unemployment figures and the fairly consistent stories of redundancies….

Given the last time there was a slowdown, let alone a recession, was back in 2001/2002 the current conditions are uncharted territory for many in the recruitment industry. Not much fun, but hey you’re in good company - given how complex the economic environment is at the moment, the situation Mssrs Brown, Sarkozy, Bush et al find themselves in is just as uncharted waters - I’m no economist but from what I read this set of circumstances is unique (maybe the US Savings and Loans crisis is the closest comparison?) Take a bit of heart - if you’re a recruiter that’s not worked a slowdown or a recession, then its highly likely that your Managers and Directors have. If there was ever a good time to listen, its now…

Pretty clear we’re either in, or entering a job driven market, so client relationships, exclusive business and PSLs are going to be key. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that there is going to be pressure on margins given job volumes are lower. There’s a heck of a lot of variables out there at the moment. I’m looking forward to seeing the results of the next NORAS survey which is due next week. Last time round, they showed that jobseekers were visiting fewer job boards during their search - indication of maturing market, more discerning jobseeker etc. I’ll be intrigued to see if that trend continues… If it does, I don’t think it will in the medium term as people who need to find new roles will be working quite a bit harder to secure them.

From a recruiters’ perspective job flow could not be more crucial. In Ye Olde Days pre web, ad chasing was a great way to track the market and generate jobs. After all, press ads (especially ads placed directly by an employer, who generally didn’t have a searchable database or talent pool to fall back on) will never have a 100% fill rate. Paid for an ad? Ad didn’t pull? You’ll be needing to speak to a recruiter pdq. Its not quite so simple these days with the volume of job ads that are online. A UK search on Google for “jobs” shows 74 million page results. Any idea just how many jobs are on sites like monster, careerbuilder and jobsite? Trying to get a handle on the sheer mass out there is nigh on impossible. And that’s before we get anywhere near a conversation about just how many of these jobs are out of date/ duplicates or the amount of time that can be wasted trying to track down leads from sketchy internet ads (how many times have you seen “Inspector Clouseau” style antics trying to work out which company might be the “£80m turnover services business in Berkshire”) This sort of information overload is a long way from checking the FT, Sunday Times, local press and whatever trade press there is for your market. Those of you around then will remember secretaries cutting out ads from the papers and putting them to the ad chase folder to be distributed to the relevant consultant.

You may or may not have come across a firm called Innovantage. I trialled their Insight product some time ago - in short trying to make sense of the info overload described above. I liked what I saw - I could ask Insight to list all the vacancies in my discipline and in my region. In theory, great. At that stage however, it didn’t quite hit the mark from my perspective - for example, there were some disciplines that weren’t totally covered (including mine.) For me, the product wasn’t quite right but it was worth keeping an eye on.

I caught up with Matthew Dewstowe, the MD at Innovantage, recently and had a look at the latest version of Insight which is currently in beta. In short, they’ve come a heck of a long way since the trial I had in 2005…. I think they’re very, very close to bringing a sensible solution for recruiters to track the market and generate leads…. A few things stood out for me:

• Track an employers digital footprint - is Apple your client? Wouldn’t it be great to be able to see what jobs they have online, split between their careers site, direct ads on job boards and ads through agencies on their behalf. I wonder if many employers will use this sort of approach to track their competitors, or if recruiters will see the opportunity to integrate this sort of info into their key account management.
• Tracking all vacancies for a specific discipline. For example, if you’re recruiting into sales in the Thames Valley region, the system will search for all job ads and mail a list to you - split as required.. Want it split between direct ads and agency ads? That’s a couple of clicks away
• LinkedIn integration - the ubiquitous LI now gets into the Insight product, see how many people the firm that is advertising has on LI, and how far you are from being connected to them
• Database integration - the product can now be adapted to a number of the more popular recruitment databases (Adapt springs to mind.) I’ve not seen this up and running but I understand that a lot of the reports/ leads/ workflow etc can be tailored to suit a specific team or individual consultant. Basically this means as soon as there is a lead for that desk, it can show up in both the consultant’s inbox and appear as an entry on the database - making the whole system/ process much more manageable and trackable.

The last bullet point there I think is key - it makes measuring the ROI a lot easier, and as much I think this product is well worth looking into, its not going to get anywhere unless firms can see a significant return on their investment.

I’m sure you can guess I like the latest version of this product (a lot.) Having been in touch with them when they first started out, I’m delighted at the sort of inroads Innovantage have made in product development - this whole concept of shrinking the web (or a specific part of it) is great in principle but a heck of a lot harder to do. I think they might just get this part of it sorted….