Welcome to our special 600th Issue in which we launch our 600 Interesting and Useful Things for Recruiters and look back over the last 12 years. Thank you to all our contributers and subscibers for all the years of support. We look forward to bringing you 600 further issues!
600 Interesting and Useful Things for Recruiters
So here it is - the start of our 600 Interesting and Useful Things for Recruiters. Here are the first two parts and we will share the rest of the list though Louise’s Blog throughout the rest of the year. Have fun reading them!
If you would like to contribute a list of ten things please email Louise for the available topics and in return you’ll get fame and glory (and full credit)!
Issue One - sent to around 20 people in January 1999
In the early days the newsletter was called the "Recruit Net Newsletter" and it came out once a fortnight. The site we looked at in the first issue was CVServe: (which doesn’t exist anymore). This was a recently launched CV Database and Job Board (in those days most sites were one or the other). There were apparently over 45,000 CVs registered in the database and agencies paid an annual fee of £1500 for access to the CV database and unlimited advertising on the vacancy part of the site. Vacancies advertised on CVServe were also placed in appropriate newsgroups (anyone remember them?!). If you placed one of your candidates with an organisation as a result of using this service a fee of £500 was payable to CVServe.
We also had the start of our current "favourites" even back in issue one and this week's was the Shell RoutePlanner. Sadly this service no longer exists on the Shell site - if you're looking for a good journey planner have a look at Bing Maps or AA Route Finder.
This was our Christmas issue and we were feeling generous. We did a raffle to give away some great Christmas gifts. These included a Powerboat ride (from www.jobs-at.com), a mountain of Jaffa Cakes (from www.broadbean.co.uk), Gucci wallets (from www.lsmgroup.com) and Champagne (from www.ruellajames.com).
The websites we looked at in this issue were Google's 2002 Year-End Zeitgeist and an assessment tool to assess your suitability to be Santa!
We also talked about our networking events. We ran our first one in May 2002 (at Harley's in Holborn) - it was fully booked within days of us announcing it. In 2003 we ran one nearly event month. Moving from the small Holborn venue to Tiger Tiger in Piccadilly circus; with 200+ recruiters at some events. Now, in 2011 we run four different types of networking events (you can find out all about them at www.recruitmentnetworking.co.uk).
If you were at the first networking event please let me know!
Another initiative we launched in 2002 was our discussion board. Topics on the site at the end of 2002 included "Candidates who let you down" and "US HR Recruiters in the UK?".
This newsletter is in the style that we maintained up until earlier this year and by this stage it was being sent once a week.
This issue had our perennial "favourites" - which were 3 map sites (including Mutlimap!) and included two articles. Darren Revell of Attract Spider (which no longer exists) had written an article on "A Searching Strategy" and Lander Associates wrote about "Winning the Ongoing War for Talent".
We'd also included the regular Hitwise Top 10 Recruitment Sites by this stage and this week's top three were Jobcentreplus.gov.uk, Jobsite.co.uk and Totaljobs.co.uk. No LinkedIn in the top 10, never mind almost always at number one, in those days.
After 299 issues we were still able to get 3 favourites websites each week (no mean feat collecting these I can tell you!). This week's included a Beta version of Microsoft office, the Just-Food website (good for FMCG recruiters) and the MoneySavingExpert site.
Our articles were one from Louise Fernandes on Employment and the Law and one from James Chapman reviewing an HR conference (he first wrote for the newsletter back in 2002).
Topics on the discussion board back in issue 300 "Credit Checking vs Bad Debt", “what do solo recruiters do about managing their business when going on holiday” and “Aggregator sites” (it was early days for jobs1.co.uk and ClickAJob).
By now we'd realised that we couldn't possibly run 3 "favourites" each week and we'd started a "If I've Learnt Three Things" feature. This issue included three things I'd learnt whilst doing the newsletter. They were
1) There is always something new to say and learn about recruitment 2) Whatever the current trends the core skills of recruitment remain invaluable 3) I always leave writing the newsletter to the last minute!
I'd have to still agree with all of them!
We had an article by Dan Doherty on why Marketing was still important for recruiters during a recession.
Issue 500 - Easter 2011
Shortly before issue 500 we had a complete redesign but the content style still remained similar with “weekly tips”, one or two articles and industry news. Many of the articles were written specifically for the newsletter by an army of loyal supporters. Other content included links to Louise’s blog posts and the discussion board (subjects back then were “starting up” and “split fees” – most certainly ones that have been on the forum on a regular basis over the years).
Moving to issue 600 things have changed again with the newsletter being a more aggregated format; sharing content from the best authors across the recruitment world as well as a Newsletter Editor working purely on building the best possible publication each week.
We are still enjoying putting it together and hope you are still enjoying reading it!
In the monthly Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) and KPMG Report on Jobs, the acceleration and growth of permanent vacancies increased for the first time in six months.
One of the biggest, and most underappreciated, upheavals that will affect companies over the next decade is the retirement of the current generation of senior executives. As these leaders prepare to hand over the baton to the next generation, it becomes ever more pertinent to ask: What will follow in their wake?
