It is almost 2 full years now that I started doing the list of the trainings and presentations collectively called The Recruitment RoadShow. I had a chance to get to know a really large group of the recruitment consultants all around the country. Two years is a long time to be giving the same presentation. So the list of the topics has changed during the time. Some topics like the Recruitment Blogging have just expanded, and started dividing into the smaller more defined presentation topics as blogging evolved and it usage grows in the latest years.
Not only that the Recruitment Roadshow is changing, but I feel I am changing with it. Most of the change is the deeper understanding of the recruiters. It is understanding how different the recruiters and the recruitment processes they implement are. It affects the candidates as well, since their experience differs drastically from a recruiter to a recruiter.
What I have learned is that there is no perfect recruiter (that I somehow assumed before!). As in all other professions there are all kind of people with all kind of different skills in the recruitment industry. But it is not guaranteed that the recruiter I like you will like as well. This is because you might need a completely different service level than me. And the recruiter will most likely perform better working with one of us then the other. So our perception of the same recruiter will differ. And sometimes it differs drastically!
I also noticed the difference in a perception a group of recruiters will have of a received Recruitment RoadShow training. Some of them would like the hands on approach, and the newly acquired skills would be the exact match to what they have been looking for. Their new skills will help them do their job better and faster. And they would understand it and would rate the training session highly. But unfortunately if you deliver the same presentation to a large group at once, you are bound to have some people you will just not serve with what they need.
For example if you have an hour long training on how to utilise the social networking web sites in the recruitment process, and you have a person in a group that is just introvert or shy, or for any other reason has a block towards communication with the unknown people in the open forum (that is quite a strange situation and is just not for everyone), he will not take anything home from such a session.
As well as the social networking sites the blogging has a long list of issues in the corporate recruitment perspective. How do you control your corporate branding policy on private blogs by the staff that is published in real time? What is even worse the blog is open to anyone to contribute? So in other words any of your competitors or people who might not like you very much can post anything he wants on your corporate blog that is a part of your publish web site? Branding issues, liability issues,… the list is actually pretty endless. And in the same time at this stage we KNOW we HAVE TO do it?
I also have to thank all of you who have helped me to get the Recruitment Roadshow to where it is now. To everyone who asked a question that helped me to understand you better. Some 3 to 4 years ago we brought in the multiple job posting into the recruitment in Ireland, and automated the boring task of posting your jobs to the Irish jobs sites. The last two years of the Recruitment RoarShow made it quite clear that there is more to be done in the recruitment to improve the whole process. It is the strict and well defined usage policy of the social networking, blogging and publishing of the content online in general to help the recruiter market themselves and be found directly (as opposed via the jobs sites) by the more targeted candidates.
www.JobsBoard.ie is where the next recruitment platform for the Irish market will be published, and it will include all that you have suggested in the last two years during the Recruitment RoadShow sessions. When you start using it, please let me know did we get it right!?