JOBX and Recruitment Academy Plugging Leaky Bucket
February 14, 2008 by Geoff Jennings
JOBX and Recruitment Academy has announced today the launch of the first exclusive Recruitment Industry job and candidate board including an on-line networking forum. This industry-first will be called recruitMenow, a new division of Recruitment Academy. The site will provide a space in which recruiters looking for consultants can advertise jobs, and consultants can promote themselves to recruiting companies. Kinda like a directory for recruitment consultants.
But don’t go to the space expecting to find anything. This is what’s there:
“recruitMenow will launch mid March 2008 and both JOBX’s CEO Richard Maré and Recruitment Academy’s founder and Managing Director Michael Dimopoulos believe this new partnership will accelerate and dominate this space rapidly.”
Expect a plethora of these new sites. Companies are keen to take advantage of the culture of online networking, and so they should. It is cost-effective and indeed, very efficient means of reaching out.However, this appears to be a little undercooked. I can’t see how it will gain the support of recruitment agencies, who won’t be too keen on their staff advertising themselves on the site. Also, there are a few sticky privacy issues that may arise for the consultants. For example, and excuse my loud voice BUT WHO’S GOING TO ALLOW THEIR PSYCHOMETRIC DATA TO BE MADE PUBLIC WITHIN THE INDUSTRY IN WHICH THEY WORK? Ahem. That feels better.
Further, in its media release, recruitMenow makes the claim that its site will help to address the problem of attrition within the industry. Yep, read the line again if you don’t believe it. It’s what we all wanna hear, no? I know of hookers who are more loyal to their street corners than some recruitment consultants are to the businesses they work for. And stop me now if my logic is a bit off, but how in the heck will a recruitment consultant job board, a site whose very raison d’etre is to advertise new jobs for people and allow people to promote themselves for new jobs, diminish attrition rates?
I’ve got this little mathematical equation running through my head and I’d like to share it with you, ’cause sometimes, words are confusing. Maths explains some stuff better. It goes like this:Promote new jobs to recruitment consultants + recruitment consultants leave current employment to go to new job = INCREASE in attrition.
Mr Moe, he was my math teacher in year 8. I reckon he’d be real proud of me right now.
Once launched, salespeople in ‘sausage factory’ recruitment agencies will have a site to look at apart from face book during office hours…..
Call me cynical, but IMO job seekers will be very wary of any Recruitment Industry backed job boards. In case any reruiters are reading this and haven’t yet discovered it, job seekers don’t like recruiters!
It is the sad truth that Job Seekers do not like recruiters, from my experience in the industry trusted recruiters are an exception and not the rule. (I am a Director of a Recruitment company and hear this from my candidates.)
This is fine by me as every negative recruitment experience that a candidate has makes their experience with me a whole lot better.
I am hoping in time that I will be able to tell people at parties what I really do and not have to say that I play the piano in the local brothel in order to save face.
I first misread this announcement as the launch of recruitmeeow and was wondering what these guys were planning to do with their cats, but anyway.
I think the recruitment consultant who finds their next job by chatting on the industry forum as opposed to getting on the phone and selling themselves is probably not worth hiring.
The recruitment manager who spends their time cruising the recruitment forum looking for lost souls is probably not worth working for.
As for being the Facebook of the recruitment industry, I can think of a slightly better product.
Its called Facebook.
A default landing/splash screen would be nice.