British companies spent approximately £26 billion on recruitment last year. A very large chunk of which was spent with Recruitment Agencies. In this blog post, we’re asking whether clients are still getting value from this, or whether we’re moving towards a tipping point.

It can’t be denied that traditional agencies are still making a good deal of money. Even in the current economic climate, they still seem to be bringing in big bucks. Case in point: last year it was estimated that the top ten UK agencies made a combined total of £1 billion. The major question here is whether they deliver the value to back up these huge fees.

The main reason that we believe that recruitment needs to change is quite simply that the environment around it has changed. Up until 2001 a major cost of recruitment was print advertising. This was a massively overpriced cash cow for the publishers – but there was no established alternative for agencies to acquire candidates for their clients. In turn, the agencies then had to pass on these costs directly to the client.

In the time since 2001, however, online job boards have risen greatly in effectiveness and scale. Their arrival meant that many more jobs were being advertised, but also that the reach of that advertising was much greater. Not only had it become dramatically easier to find candidates – it was also much cheaper.

These days, approximately 80% of candidates that are sourced by recruitment agencies come from online job boards. (Though this exact percentage varies a little by industry, the trend of the relationship between online and sourcing is inescapable). This means that the cost for agencies of finding candidates have plummeted – but we don’t believe that this has been reflected in agency fees.

As a result in the drop in costs, many agencies were able to reduce the efforts that they had previously spent in keeping their own databases up-to-date and clean. Agencies have gained from their savings in data handling and management. For an example of this, think about the outcry there was when online jobs board Reed.co.uk announced that they were going to begin charging for advertising jobs online. Until that point they had a policy of it being free, and many recruitment businesses relied solely on this to find candidates.

Another way in which the recruitment agency’s claim of a unique proposition has been further undermined is through the rise of the online CV database. When so much information about candidates is available direct to businesses, can agencies really sustain such high fees?

This leads us to the really fundamental question: in the new age of recruitment what value are traditional agencies able to add?

They might claim that their value lies in the following areas; They have access to a database of candidates – This is far less true than it used to be, and in fact online j...

As well as using online job communities such as ID Talent, there are a number of ways in which candidates can maximise their job hunt online. We wrote about this here on the blog a couple of weeks ago – the post was entitled How Candidates Can Stand Out in The Online Job Market. Today we’d like to continue this theme by focusing solely one one of the methods we mentioned in the earlier post; LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is a social networking site set up with professionals and businesses in mind. It let’s individuals showcase their skills and experience in a simple and easy to use format. As well as creating a personal profile on the site – users can also opt to connect with other users, join groups, answer questions and find professional events.

Below we’ve put together a few tips for candidates on maximising your LinkedIn use;

Make sure your profile is up to date – We can’t stress enough just how important this point is. You wouldn’t send an out of date CV to a prospective employer – so why put it on the internet for all the world to see?! Remember that this CV may be the first contact a recruiter or potential employer has with you, so do make sure that you’re selling yourself, your skills and your experiences as well as possible. Don’t be afraid to show a little personality and personal interests – but do ensure that you keep it fairly professional.

Upload a photo – Most LinkedIn users won’t take your profile seriously unless it has a photo attached to it. This shows that your a serious user, helps people to get to know you and reminds those you’re inviting to connect who you are.

Search for your contacts and connect with them – Search for old colleagues and friends and ask them to connect with you. This can be a great way to remind people about what you have to offer, as well as to find out about job vacancies through word of mouth. You can search for people manually, use the LinkedIn ’suggested’ contacts or use the tool to search for your email contacts. Remember, though, to only connect with people that you know – as this is what LinkedIn is about.

Join professional groups – Search the groups directory to find LinkedIn groups that are relevant to your and your profession. Once you’ve found a couple, be active within them and make as many new contacts as possible. Jobs are often passed on on a word-of-mouth basis – and this can be an excellent way to increase your network in this respect.

Make sure your profile is up to date – Did we mention this already? Yes? Well that’s just how important this point is!

Are you already using LinkedIn to maximise your job hunt? We’d love to hear your tips and success stories. Pop the...

Greybeards? Okay, you might not be too happy answering to that name, but we bring it up only because ’greybeard’ is a state of mind. At the moment we’re keen to encourage more senior job candidates to join us at idtalentdirect.com; because we want to ask for their help!

Over the past few months we’ve been busy changing our business to make it even more useful for candidates. So far we’ve handled more than 2,000 jobs for a range of clients – large, small and everything in between. In the New Year we’re planning to launch a new ID Talent website which will be designed to maximise and energise the ID Talent community.

And, well, this is where you ’greybeards’ come in!

We’re looking for job candidates who have bags of wisdom and experience to help us out. We’d love you to join up with us to make our job hunting community better and more useful for everyone involved. There are a number of ways in which you could do this;

Mentors

Would you be willing to take one or two people under your wing and help them to develop in your profession? If so – we’re looking for some quality mentors to take on the challenge. We’ll be putting together a pool of wise owls who are willing to give advice on a 1-2-1 basis to people just starting out. Let us know if you want to give something back and support the stars of the future!

Guest Bloggers

Do you have a strong view about your profession or the recruitment industry? We’d like to hear it! We’re looking for guest bloggers to publish articles on this blog. Articles only need to be 300+ words, so don’t worry if journalism isn’t your strong point! Whether it’s on a regular basis or just as a one off; we want you to help us to make this blog an obvious place to come for news, insights and information about your sector. If you’ve got something to get of your chest, get in touch!

The Tribal Council Advisory Team

We would like the more senior members of our online community to encourage others to get more involved. We need you ’greybeards’ to to help us with our product development and with leadership within the 45,000 members of our talent pool.

Members of The Tribal Council would be asked to come along for a meeting a couple of times a year to give us feedback on how we’re doing. We want members to take the lead in telling us where we’re getting it wrong (as well as where we’re getting it right!). In return, tribal council members will be given a high profile within our community to help you to either get a job or find people to work for you. As if that wasn’t enough.... we’ll also buy you a decent lunch and a proper dinner once or twice a year!

Our primary aim is to serve the ID Talent Direct network as well as we possibly can. I...

At ID Talent we’re dedicated to providing a great platform for online recruitment. We recognise that with 60% of candidates now keeping their job hunt exclusively online, it’s more important to stand out than ever before. For candidates who really want to distinguish themselves from the masses – we’ve put together some key tips on how to get noticed.

Join Twitter. Join Twitter and make sure that you’re using it to it’s full advantage. Do some research and find the movers and shakers in your industry. Once you’ve found them, work to engage and connect with them. Make sure that you remember that Twitter is about joining the conversation, making valuable connections and creating opportunities for yourself – NOT just out and out selling.

Maximise your LinkedIn profile. Take a good hard look at your LinkedIn profile and think about what it says about you. Many candidates forget that your LinkedIn profile needs as much work as the CV that you send out in job applications – as it is often the first thing that potential employers will find when they hunt for you online. Make sure that you’re giving your skills and experience the exposure they deserve. To really get yourself out there, join groups relating to your industry and work to engage other members.

Get involved in your recruitment website. Remember that the online world is about networking. Be as involved as possible with the online recruitment platform that you’re using to ensure that you’re the first to know about suitable vacancies. For example, candidates that are signed up with ID Talent could opt to follow us on Twitter  and Facebook  in order to receive real time notifications of new vacancies.

Start a blog. Blogging can be a great way to showcase your industry expertise and grow your personal brand. Set up a blog (platforms such as wordpress.com and blogger.com are easy to use and free) and update it with regular articles on news and developments in your industry. You’ll be surprised at how quickly this will push your name up in search engine rankings and at how much respect this could earn you from others in your industry. If you really fancy yourself as a blogger then give us a shout; we’re collecting together a small but exclusive blogging community to add to this blog in the coming weeks and months.

Think outside the box. Increasingly people are turning to extreme ways to market themselves to employers online. Earlier this year The Guardian reported a story about graduate called Alec Brownstein  who bought Google Adwords in the names of six top executives in his field. When these executives Googled themselves, they were faced with a personal message from Alec. Through this method he got four top interviews and two job offers.

Good luck with your online job hunt. To get started with ID Talent, find us at&n...

Today on the blog we’re asking whether there is a real drive for recruiting companies to recruit with direct, more cost-effective methods – or whether they’re happy to use traditional channels.

The way we see it, companies have three key drivers when it comes to recruitment;

One – Finding the right people.

Two – Finding them quickly and efficiently.

Three – Finding them at an acceptable cost.

These drivers do tend to be applied in this order (with number one being the most important), but of course there are big differences between companies.

Moving a little bit further, we believe that there are three barriers that get in the way of this process.

The first is ease. It’s easier for companies to use the people or the channels that they’ve always used.

The second is fear. Many companies are fearful of creating and booking campaigns that make use of new media. This can be because they are unsure of the terminology or even the right advertising media platform to use.

The third is time. Most hiring managers are very time poor and worry that online advertising, though more cost-effective, will need a much bigger time investment. The worry of increased applicant numbers often drives them back into the arms of recruitment agencies – who will handle more of the process but for a much bigger fee.

However, recessions often drive a re-assessment of these processes. The end of the last downturn in 2002 saw the job board begin to rise in popularity, and the previous downturn spelt success for Recruitment Process Outsourcing. This time round, economic questions are being asked and new approaches, like ours, are beginning to rise.

Within big businesses, it tends to take a very strong lead from the top in order to drive a review of recruitment costs. When businesses do take the initiative to do this; the benefits can be huge. Recruitment agency costs are typically 15% or more of the salary of the candidates recruited. In the professional sectors, this equates to many hundreds of thousands of pounds; a huge expense which greatly affects profit. Recently, the consumer goods company Diageo announced that they had reduced their agency spend by 70% - a saving that will have equated to millions of pounds.

Let us give you a few more statistics, this time from clients who have made huge savings through our recruitment process: This year we have saved a major infrastructure client a minimum of £300,000. For GTA, we filled thirty vacancies over a four month period for a total cost of £10,000. Dow Jones used us to fill twelve roles. The £115,000 they saved went...