We attended the Onrec Awards last week at The Grange Hotel, St Pauls. The event was a real celebration of the wide-ranging Online Recruitment Industry. Credit and acknowledgement was given to successes, talent and innovation. The event was extremely inspiring and it was great to see such a variety of companies and prominent figures in one place. The categories were divided into Niche, Generalist, Supplier and Corporate. We picked up the International award for The Best Corporate Use of Online Recruitment for our work with Ericsson. We were extremely honoured and proud to win, especially in such a competitive category.
There was more to the awards than just winning. As Buzz Aldrin once said nobody cares about the bronze or silver medals. It’s about doing a good job and being recognised. There’s more to take away than just a gold medal. But the medal is always a nice bonus.
We learnt a lot at the Onrec Awards and there were some definite points to take away. The real standout from the night was the number of different types of businesses represented across corporates, recruitment marketing agencies, recruiting agencies, job boards (generalist and niche), as well as a range of software providers. It felt like everyone was being recognised for their hard work and successes.
This indicates two things to me:
- The recruitment market is buoyant – demand for attracting quality talent is high and the supply is short, making competition healthily fierce or fiercely healthy depending on where you sit. Long gone are the days where the right person for the role is waiting patiently in the foreground. Talented people are in short supply and it is the job of the recruiter to make sure every person they find is just that. But equally there’s an element of making the role appealing to the talent that you want to fill it. You can’t get the best people without selling them the best role.
- The landscape for attracting talent is becoming more and more fragmented. Instead of helping companies and experts to find each other, there is a force preventing them from meeting. The emphasis needs to shift from looking for talent to appealing to these talented people in the first place. People get tired of receiving persistent messages from recruiters about unsuitable roles time and time again, so making a job appealing to start with and catching the right people’s eye is the key to securing the right candidate. With this there has to be an element of give from a company perspective.
These things both demonstrate a need for an agency who can help you navigate the plethora of options out there for attracting talent and who can invest your money wisely, for value and for ROI; you need a talent attraction partner that recognises the importance of understanding the market through insight; and you need a partner who really gets the importance of getting your employer brand right and constructing a compelling EVP (Employee Value Proposition) every time.
Fortunately this is an area we specialise in. Get in touch to find out how we can help you here.
