Ready to say goodbye to 2008?

OK, so its a week or so early, but as 2009 is nearly upon us, I was having a think back at what really has been an incredible year. Here’s how I’ll look back…

1. The economy
You’ve got to start here. Uncharted territory? Well we’ve had recessions (and depressions) before but if anyone can think of a time when we’ve had runs on banks, bailouts, interest rates at 2% and the BBC’s economics correspondent becoming more than a bit of a celebrity (take a bow Robert Peston, and quick - write a book!) The widescale evaporation of business confidence has already had a huge impact on recruitment, resulting in -

2. The return of profits warnings and cuts in headcount at recruitment firms.
I think everyone in the industry knows where we stand on this.

3. LinkedIn was everywhere
LI was valued at the magical £1billion in April, with the latest round of VC money invested. As opposed to being held back by the current economy, I would argue that LI’s position with the consumer base was strengthened. Worried about losing your job? You’ll be needing your friends/ colleagues around you then.. Time to update that profile then.

4. Competing with established online brands got very, very expensive

Two examples here:

Did you notice XING advertising in Metro and on the Tube earlier this year? Not content with shelling out significant sums for traditional media, XING have also decided to compete with LI on the applications side. How? Easy -they paid $7.5 million for SocialMedian, a social news site headed up by Jason Goldberg, former CEO of Jobster. 12 months entry to exit for Jason on this, despite the market sentiment.

Jobsite’s £15million campaign - that’s a lot of money. Will it be worth it? Would they have pumped that level of cash into the business if they could have seen a few months into the future? Who knows. Regardless, Jobsite want to shift monster from their perch…. Clearly not being one to give up on a fight, monster will be unveiling their new site early next year… Digital Recruiting have had a peek already.

5. Twitter
It was a heck of a year for Twitter… culminating in them turning down an offer from Facebook no less.
Twitter seems to have achieved the impossible - it is many things to many different (early adopting!) people. Some use it to learn, others to build profile, some businesses even use it as a customer service platform. No matter what you use it for (if you do!) I think few would argue its an addictive little thing. I’ll fess up that I log into it most days… Any twitterers reading can follow me here

6. People got excited about mobile internet
This has happened before… Could this be yet another false start for mobile web? Sure user figures are on the up but (with the exception of a few premium handsets) do you think mobile web usage is user friendly enough to be a daily activity for anyone other than the early adopters?

7. Big recruiters “get” the net?
Have you seen how high Hays rank for a stack of key words these days? That’s some going - and if you add this to the their Candidate Attraction Solutions business it looks like they’ve come a heck of a long way since Google were alleged to have told them they were crap. I tip my cap to Hays on this.

8. DMGT want the world…
Not content with investing heavily in Jobsite, DMGT also purchased Broadbean. No official number on this, but a rather large figure is doing the gossip rounds…
DMGT now have access to rather a lot of info about the online recruitment market. I’ll be interested to see what they do with it all!

OK, so there you go. Some thoughts on 2008. What will you remember about this year?