Online Recruitment - the bigger picture (Tim's blog)

Vote for me for UK Recruitment Blog of the year!

Talking of awards (my random awards are still open for more entries), my blog has made the final for UK Recruitment Blog of the year and this is the start of my X-Factor style campaign to rally votes.

So if you've enjoyed reading about everything from the value of the UK online recruitment market to what I've learned on holiday and my opinions on Twitter and Max Beesley then you can vote for me (or any of the other five nominated sites) here! Thanks for your support, it's been emotional.

Bye bye 119

There's been a lot of talk about the Guardian's new building, Kings Place. But in these exciting times, who spares a thought for the old building? I do. I spent many a happy year at 119 Farringdon Road, first in a sales role, then in the Ad Planning Department (with frequent visits to what was then called the 'New Media Lab' in Ray Street). By a strange quirk of fate I had a quick meeting at the Guardian yesterday and probably had one of the last cups of tea that the basement cafe ever served - emotional times. I managed to sneak a quick photo of what used to be a busy news room, now empty - save for a bloke pottering around at the back, just before the removal men came in and the wrecking ball starts rolling - farewell 119!

Tim's Random Awards

Everyone's doing awards at this time of year, so I thought I'd have a go as well. My awards are a bit like the National Online Recruitment Awards (in that the judging process is ambigous and slightly random), but are also unique because they are 'open source' awards (in that if you want to add to the awards you can be nominee, judge and jury by adding a category and an award yourself through the comments functionality). Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

Anyway, I can only think of five categories for now, here they are:

The first two are based on the amount of travelling I've done this year (nothing glamorous you understand, just domestic stuff)

Best Station: St Pancras - so good you think it can't be in the UK. Gives me hope that the Olympics might not be too bad.

Best Airport: London City - no holiday makers, no kids, great.

Flip of the Year: Flip Mino - thanks to Matt for pointing me in the right direction.

Flop of the Year: PocketSurfer2 - my worst purchase ever.

Actor of the Year: Max Beesley* - for his work portraying well qualified ABC1 professionals trying to further their careers in the JobSite TV ads and in Survivors.

Please add your own awards, I might even think of some more myself!

*Max's friends - please don't take offence, it's just a bit of fun!

Nice bit of marketing (part 2)

 

This came into the office a while ago and I've been meaning to blog about it ever since. It's audience information (which obviously excites me) from Career Structure in the form of architect's / draughtsman's plans - very clever! I thought it was really creative, stood out from the usual run of the mill job board marketing and was genuinely useful - I learned a lot, for example that 16% of applications generated by Career Structure in July 2008 were from civil engineers and 14% from site managers, that Career Structure has over 100,000 Unique Users (un-audited mind) and that roughly 20,000 candidates have registered their CVs with the site.

It's not perfect (I think one of the axis for the graphs has gone awry), but I liked it, I really hope it generated some business for Career Structure, this sort of creative communication of stats should be encouraged, I don't know who did it, but here's a virtual pat on the back from me!