It's a medal place for Omniblog!

At the tail end of last year I posted this, about the UK Recruiting Blog awards organised by the lovely and wonderful Louise Triance of uk:recruiter. Louise emailed me yesterday to let me know that the votes were in and counted and that the winner had been named.

Much to my great surprise I didn't receive nil points. In fact to my even greater surprise I came second! It's even on her blog, so I've got proof I'm not fibbing!

Therefore I just wanted to say thanks so much to all those who voted for little old me, it really is appreciated. One of the difficulties with blogging (or one of the difficulties I find at any rate, maybe it doesn't bother anyone else) is that quite often you can feel like you're just jabbering away to yourself. This, even with my massive ego and general love of the sound of my own voice, can be a bit disconcerting. It's why I appreciate the emails I receive and the comments on the blog and it's why I'm probably more pleased than I should be with the result. It's good enough just to know that a few people read my ramblings, it's spectacularly fantastic to think that some people actually enjoy what I write!

So thanks to all who voted, to all who've ever commented, to all who email me and to all who've read one post or read 'em all - you guys rock! I love blogging because it's let me start lots of new, cool and interesting conversations with new, cool and interesting (and seriously smart) people who I'd have likely never had the pleasure of engaging with any other way.

Things might be changing a little round here in the not-too-distant, so I'll keep you updated about all of that (it's a bit of a secret at the mo, sorry). I just really hope though that I can keep doing this for a good long while.

Cheers everybody!

P.S. If you're interested in recruitment particularly, the blog that beat Omniblog into the silver medal spot was most deserving: Pete Gold writes consistently relevant stuff for the savvy recruitment professional, so if you get chance have a read.

Optimum nutrition and Omni

Chances are if you made New Years resolutions about your diet you've lapsed a couple of times by now at least. I never make NY resolutions to be honest (food related or otherwise) because I'm so spectacularly bad at keeping them (although this year I like the idea of having a NY theme, which you try and incorporate into your regular habits).

However the diet one is probably one of the most frustrating for people. Good nutrition is a minefield of information (and misinformation) that would be nigh on impossible to follow to the letter at any rate. Here at Omni people felt exactly the same before Christmas.

So, last year we arranged for a nutritionist to come into the office and give a talk on good nutrition to the entire office. The nutritionist, Alison Irving, also offered one-on-one follow up sessions to those with particular worries or questions.

The whole thing was a resounding success. I'll admit that I went in sceptical (after all, it seems pretty much everyday something new turns out to be 'bad' for you). I was very pleasantly surprised though. Alison was realistic about the whole thing and didn't preach any ultra diet nonsense. Rather she focused on a few practical, simple things that people could do (particularly people who work in an office most of the time), like drinking more water and snacking on the right type of things.

None of it was rocket science and that's the beauty really. Nobody needs to be blinded by science with these things, they just want some honest advice about what they can do to improve their diet and nutrition.

We liked it so much in fact, that we've started working with Alison, offering her service to current and prospective clients of ours. Alison will go into organisations and deliver her talk to groups of employees, followed, if required, by one-on-ones with people. The idea is that by providing good advice to their staff about optimum nutrition, companies can improve performance and productivity (for example by eliminating that lethargic, post lunch period that everybody seems to suffer from).

I'd also say that if this is something that you'd be interested at all, Alison has said to me that she'd be happy to extend her client list a bit further. If you'd like the chance to talk to or meet Alison, then just let me know in the comments or via email and I'll happily arrange that. She's based in the North West, but if you're not and would still like to have her talk to your team that's something we could arrange.

Post 101

I can't believe I missed my hundredth post, which was the last one I posted! Oops.

Well this is post 101 and I'm still happy I've reached triple figures, even though I missed the milestone!

I'll pay more attention when I'm getting towards the next big milestone... (I wonder, should that be 200, 250, 500? Maybe the next milestone is quadruple figures, that's when I'll really know I'm addicted to this blogging stuff!)

New UK job board

Louise announced the exciting news a couple of days ago that uk:recruiter have entered the job board market for the first time. You can find the details here.

I think this is a really good idea and the right direction for them to be going. Previously the site had only listed other job boards (it still does that by the way) but never tapped into the potential pool of loyal visitors directly. The site gets a lot of eyeballs and Louise's blog is popular and well-ranked on Google, so I'd thought for sometime that a job board of some kind was the logical next step.

They've gone the whole hog with it too. Rather than make a small niche board they've created what looks to be a broad and useful resource. Time will tell obviously, as a job board is only as strong as the recruiters and candidates who use it. I think it should have a good shot though.

I've not tried it out myself, just had a look around briefly, so if anyone has any practical experience with the site, or just first impressions, then do shout up.

Omni Finalists for onrec.com

Some good news for me to come back to from my couple of days off: Omni have been named finalists in the OnRec awards for 2008, for the category Best Use of Online Recruitment. Here's the details.

Well done everybody, you all rock! Fingers crossed for us in the finals in March!

Man flu takes hold

Well having avoided all the germs and nasties going round over Christmas I finally succumbed to something unpleasant today. I feel rotten, I'm bunged up and my head's in bits, but I'm sure despite all this it's probably only man flu.

Sunnier climes required I think, I wonder if Rob would consider moving the business to the Cayman Islands?

Wrap up warm everybody, and you'll hear from me again after my convalescence.

('Cough, cough' - in the style of Tiny Tim)

Social Objects or How to embrace the future of business

Pic credit: gapingvoid


I mentioned briefly in a post a couple of weeks ago about the concept of Social Objects, that Hugh turned me on to. He picked the term up from this chap, (who’s an anthropologist and founder of the online service Jaiku), but in true Hugh-style he took the ball and ran with it (all the way off the field, out through the car park and into the building across the street).

He’s posted about it repeatedly – see here, here and here for a taste.

He’s also got a lot of other people excited about the idea, not least Mark Earls (here and here for example), John Dodds (who turns sprouts into the social object here), Seth Godin (who references it in this interview here and Dennis Howlett (who points us to Sonia’s Biker Jim story to illustrate the social object-ness here).

Others have mentioned it too, the idea is simple, effective and interesting, so it’s plenty sticky enough to get some real ‘ink’ in the blogosphere. It’s of real interest to me too.

From a marketing perspective creating a product that’s a social object could be the Grail. What’s easier to ‘sell’ than something that people naturally want to interact around and talk about? Even the least savvy of marketers would have to go some to kill this golden goose if it fell in their lap.

The problem is how do you cotton on to the social object idea in your organisation and what if the product you’re making isn’t a social object (or you can’t see it’s utility as such)?

Hugh gives a few examples in his social objects for beginners post, and goes on to say that there could be literally thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) more examples. He’s right too.

Humans interact around all kinds of weird and wonderful things, from broad churches to the cranniest little nook or niche. Hugh suggests Star Wars and sexy phones, he could just as easily posit 17^th Century soil samples or single cell organisms. In one post on the subject he answers my question above too – anything can be a social object, even if you only produce ‘Brand X’.

Yes, wine is perhaps a more logical social object than the boxes that your factory produces. But that’s not to say your box can’t be one too. Here’s a quick story about something that may have passed me by, had I not been at the time thinking about the whole social object thing...

Just before Christmas one of the major sweet manufacturers in the UK produced a new plastic package to run alongside the traditional Christmas tins of chocolates that everyone seems to buy only predominantly at that time of year. The new, plastic tubs were lighter than the metal tins and funky looking. They could also be used to store food and leftovers in the freezer, once all the chocolates were gone. (This isn't something you could do with the metal tins and this neat, new trick was advertised on the package itself.)

When someone brought one of the new tubs into work and left it in the kitchen for people to help themselves, I was a little surprised to see that the new packaging was what got people talking most, not the chocolatey contents. This plastic box became (you guessed it) a social object, in our office at least.

Now I don’t suppose that the company intended it as such. I would imagine there were a variety of reasons they chose to experiment with a new type of packaging, some of which were likely primarily economic. The tins weren’t withdrawn or replaced and the plastic tubs may not have even sold that well (I tried looking on the groups site for information, but the new packaging doesn’t even get a mention, suggesting it’s not part of a coordinated strategy or anything).

In reality therefore, it wasn’t the best social object in the world, or at least not a particularly long lasting one. However, I believe it could have been; they might have missed a trick.

If I was responsible for designing packaging somewhere, turning it into a social object would be one of the first things I’d try to do. Packaging is utilitarian, generally plain, fairly standard. There’s plenty of reasons for this I bet, functionality being a primary one. You don’t want your packaging to look wonderfully interesting but fail to keep your free range chicken fresh for example. A cool new tub for sweets is great, but only if it does the same (or a better) job as the old one of keeping the sweets in. Cost likely comes into it too. However I’d say that cost should be less of a consideration – a little extra money on packaging could create the social object that everyone loves to interact around. This in turn leads to greater sales of your packaging as everyone wants a piece of you!

Innocent Drinks provide a great example of this in my opinion. Having recently managed to become the first company to offer their drinks in 100% recyclable bottles, they have created a social object. (Even better, their drinks themselves are definitely social objects – social objects within social objects; how cool!)

OK, with that point sufficiently highlighted (/laboured) I want to address the area of business that ostensibly this blog is about – recruitment.

Recruitment is a service, not a product as such. ‘Brand X’ in Hugh’s example may well be boring and fairly unremarkable, but at least it’s something that people take home from the supermarket with them. How does recruitment become a social object when there’s nothing for people to ‘take home’, plonk on the surface and then incidentally talk about over coffee at the kitchen table?

For me the point here is the (Seth inspired) remarkability factor. If your service is remarkable (i.e. people will remark on it) then it will get a heck of a lot of traction. Amongst some people (HR or recruitment managers for example) recruitment is definitely a social object that they’d talk about.

So HR Manager Jo, from company A, goes out for lunch with HR Director Peter, from company B, at a moderately priced restaurant in town. The lunch is a catch-up; they’ve been pals since a CIPD conference they both attended some years back and get together fairly regularly to chew the fat over HR legislation, incentive schemes and funny hiring and firing stories. Their companies are in a similar market, but not what you’d call natural competitors.

Over a couple of glasses of sparkling water (/house white, depending on the industry) they get to talking about recent hires:

Jo tells a story about a recent nightmare vacancy “I couldn’t find a good project manager for love nor money. Everyone I saw from the agency just didn’t know the industry well enough, I need someone who can hit the ground running and at the minute they’re like hens teeth”

“Funny” Peter says, “I was just hiring for a project manager a couple of weeks back. I needed someone with a little experience so it wasn’t too hard to find – we offered on Monday. We saw plenty of people with more experience than we needed though…”

“Oh really” says Jo, intrigued/desperate

“Yeah, they were great. I got them all through (insert recruitment agency name here). We had to explain what we wanted in a bit of detail, but once we got them a good job spec it was smooth sailing”.

“Really?” says Jo, “I had a cold call from them last week, but didn’t follow it up as I wasn’t sure about the sales person”

“Me too, but once you get past the sales stuff, they’re actually pretty decent. They might still have some of the guys they sent me too, there were some real crackers in there”

In my experience, if an agency cold calls me I’ll almost never give them business based on that alone. Why would I? I have a tonne of agencies that I know plenty about to work with, why risk working with someone else? Even if they call and tell me they’ve just registered three great project managers and I’m recruiting for project managers, it’s unlikely they’ll get a positive response.

Maybe I’m missing a trick by not working with them, but if so I’d bet I’m not the only one. A cold call is a terrible way to try and win business (although the many reasons I hate them are for a different blog post entirely) and even if someone promises me a solution to my 'big problem' it’s unlikely to make me work with them. A conversation about your agency over lunch with a friend or trusted colleague though, will change all of that in an instant. As in Hugh’s example, once your agency becomes a social object it gains credibility and traction, the 2 things that will make me take a second look.

There’s no tricks or shortcuts unfortunately though, it’s just good old fashioned hard work. I respect my colleagues and peers because they’re good at what they do, so I know they won’t recommend me a dud agency.

You can’t ‘trick’ my colleagues or game the system with free schwag, meals out, trips to the football and the like. Plenty of agencies give that stuff out, but no one I know says “That agencies great! Sure they send me lousy CVs, no one ever turns up for interview and the lead consultant won’t stop looking at my chest…but they sent me this cool calendar with funny pictures and a box of Krispy Kremes!”

Talent and skill and expertise will take you a long way. Professionalism, dependability and generosity will never stop being good business. Free stuff is fun and I’m not saying it should be dropped (if you’re clever you can make your schwag a social object…) but results and attitude are what matter. Turn the performance of your recruitment company into a social object and you’ll turn a lot more people on to your service.

Hugh calls social objects the future of marketing. I think he’s right and I think he could even go further too. I think social objects are the future of business in a sense.

If you’re in business then you’re trying to sell something. If you’re trying to sell something you’re trying to change people’s behaviour. Any programme trying change people’s behaviour is a marketing programme (I’ve been saying this for a while and was delighted to see Paul Hebert agreeing with me on this today). The future of marketing is social objects, ergo the future of business is social objects.

OK, these are my thoughts on what is clearly a complex topic, and to be honest I could write a heck of a lot more on it (I may do in the future but won’t in this post you’ll be pleased to hear).

I think though, that anybody in the recruitment field who reads the social objects spiel from Hugh, but passes it off as something they couldn’t/shouldn’t get involved in is missing a trick. In fact I think in the future if you don’t try and turn your service (i.e. your performance) into a social object it’s tantamount to nothing more than sheer laziness. The rewards for joining in here are real and abundant.

Why wouldn’t you want to get onboard ahead of the curve?

(Like this post and want to read more? All the cool kids are subscribing to my feed, so they don't have to keep coming back and checking the site like a total square! Plus, if you subscribe, then you'll automatically become more attractive to the opposite sex, more decisive, have success in your career and win the lottery. In fact even better, you'll actually become a social object yourself*. So what are you waiting for?)

*All benefits are not guaranteed. Nor are they typical, likely or even, in actual fact, possible. But subscribe anyways, because you never know...

Big Post ahead...

Quick announcement - there's a post coming tomorrow, and it's a big one! It's going to be about social objects...

(Intrigued? Why not subscribe and then you won't have to check back tomorrow and you definitely won't miss it!)

How to write effective online ad copy

So if you're a regular reader of this blog you'll know that my posts are a real mix of things. Most common are shorter posts either about something that's just popped into my head, or linking to something great that I've read somewhere (like this one, or this one). Other times I'll go on a bit more about something that really interests me (like this). And finally the other type of post is the completely unrelated rant (the best example of which is this one, which I'm secretly quite proud of in rant terms). I'm going to start doing something new though, and what better time to start than the present? In a nutshell all I'm going to be doing is putting up a few (hopefully) 'useful' posts, particularly related to recruitment. These posts will be a bit longer than my normal sort, and will generally be formatted as 'How to...' They won't be up all the time and I'll make sure to keep my shorter, pithier posts coming too. I know some people who read the blog probably won't be interested in them at all so if that's you I'd appreciate your indulgence, just skip the long ones and stick to the links and quips. If you hate it though and it really annoys you then do let me know! To those who've expressed an interest in posts like this, I hope this is what you were after. Any questions, comments, rants, praise etc all equally welcome, here on the blog or emailed to me - james dot parr at omnirms dot com (of course replace 'dot' with '.' and 'at' with '@', minus parentheses). So, without further ado, here is the first of my 'How to...' posts:

How to…

…Write effective online ad copy

Although there is no exact science to writing online ad copy there are some things you can do to get your ad noticed and read. This document hopefully outlines some of the basics and should give your ad a bit of a head start.

The basics

Simple, concise ads work best online. With so many jobs advertised in such a short space it is easy for candidates to skim over a whole page full and completely miss yours. There is also a suggestion that people make up their mind on whether they want to continue reading what they are looking at on a webpage within seven seconds, so getting them to read on immediately is vital. There are therefore a few things that you can do to give your job the best chance of being considered.

• Always include the salary, work location and a suitable job title at the top of the ad. Where possible put an actual figure for salary rather than ‘£Excellent’. If they get a car too or a guaranteed bonus, mention that. Candidates will read the ads with all that information before they do one that excludes some of it.

• With the job title, avoid being too creative. Remember that titles are searchable on boards so they need to be clear, intuitive and understandable. If you want a sales manager don’t ask for a ‘Business Development Co-ordinator’.

• The first paragraph is the most vital. Most people put company information in the first paragraph. However you can make better use of this paragraph. The first few lines should outline exactly what you want from your ideal applicant. So if you want a Japanese speaker with Project Management experience, put it in the first paragraph. That way candidates will waste less of your time applying for something they’re not suitable for.

• After that initial paragraph you can then go on to talk about the company (obviously using the company name directly is better where possible), the role and duties and anymore information about what attributes are required.

• In terms of layout it is about targeting the right audience. If your ad is full of technical attributes and jargon and aimed at IT people then a bulleted list might be best. If however you’re writing an ad for a marketing professional they’ll respond better to a well-written couple of paragraphs.

• Length-wise, although you may have lots of information to get across (particularly in IT ads) something concise that the reader doesn’t have to plough through is always better. A good indicator is Jobserve’s character limit. 1500 characters should be enough to get everything you want into an ad. Longer ads would again be best targeted at the more creative markets where they are more likely to read than skim.

• A good sign-off is a nice touch. However there is no need to outline how to apply or include contact details. This will be covered by the job board in the final ad and would also increase the likelihood of inappropriate candidates (and agencies) just firing over an email or picking up the phone without thinking about the job and their suitability.

• Advert management is also crucial. If you’re getting plenty of appropriate candidates in and need more, then refresh the ad. If nothing or nothing suitable is coming through, then don’t. Instead think about how you could change the ad to generate a better response or better outline what it is that you’re looking for.

The tone of your ad

It is important to get your delivery right with online advertising. Although it is not worth agonising over which prose style you adopt or the usage of ‘who’ and ‘whom’ it is worth bearing in mind that people respond to how you say something more than to what you actually say. Therefore making sure your style is appropriate for your audience should be a consideration.

IT ads are naturally going to be different to marketing ads. Similarly something suitable for a banker is probably not appropriate for a HR manager. Therefore make sure you know who you’re writing for and what kind of audience your client would like to target. Most people are conservative in their nature when it comes to advertising. However recruitment advertising is necessarily different to advertising a ‘brand’. Therefore try not to adopt as traditional a tone in your ads as you see on corporate websites, for example.

Additionally it is important to be aware of any parameters set by your marketing department (if you have one). Marketing people are generally good at selling to potential customers not potential employees. Therefore they will want to see something far more in line with the ‘brand’ they are used to selling. Don’t be afraid to challenge decisions to a degree or to see how many of your ideas you can keep in an ad that has to be reviewed by marketing.

The content of your ad

You should use questions in your ad where possible to make the reader think about the details of the role and their suitability for it. So rather than saying “My client needs a candidate who is a strong negotiator with a good work ethic” a more effective ad would say “Are you a skilled negotiator? Do you strive to be the best in everything that you do?” By asking questions you are engaging the reader and making your ad stand out. This is a simple but underused technique and can be applied to virtually any requirement you can think of (“Do you work well in teams?”, “Are you a talented Java developer?”, “Friendly bright and personable?”)

Also try to make use of strong adjectives (much as you would in a CV) when describing the job and the ideal candidate. Even with the recent guidance regarding age discrimination it is still possible to put together a good ad using phrases like talented, gifted, determined, motivated, professional and so on. Words to avoid are those with age connotations like enthusiastic, vibrant, mature, experienced and so on.

Getting your ad read

There are some things that you can do to make your ad more attractive. Although it’s not always necessary to spend a lot of time on an ad (a helpdesk role doesn’t require masses of thought to get the relevant info in and encourage people to apply) for some ads it is worth putting in that little bit of extra effort in a couple of areas to make your copy stand out from the 20 or 30 others in the search results.

Opening and closing lines are important. The temptation is to lay on some of the more clichéd (/cheesy!) lines and it’s not always the end of the world to give in to temptation! Again, remember your audience. High level managers (particularly in sales, advertising and so on) expect the kind of line that would make others cringe. “If you’re the best then come work for the best” is a line that would put a few people off, but it’s typical big business fare and therefore not out of place in certain online ads. If that sort of delivery seems inappropriate (or just out of character) you can say the same sort of thing but stick to something more straightforward – “This is a great opportunity for the ideal candidate to work for one of the top organisations in the industry”.

If you’re recruiting grads or juniors then something more fun, friendly and light-hearted could be appropriate. A good tag-line also goes down well in ads that need a more exciting tone. Something simple like “Grads wanted!” is effective enough although if you can think of something more creative so much the better. (For the recent graduate campaign Omni ran for Allied Irish Bank we came up with “Want a career in Business you can Bank on?” AIB liked it so much they now use it as the tagline for all of their recruitment advertising across the board.)

Again, bear in mind your client’s tastes. A manager we work with looking for a senior buyer recently turned down the taglines “Buy Buy, Baby” and “Buy low, rise high” but was more comfortable with “Are you buying what we’re selling?”. His comment that they couldn’t get away with ‘something that someone like Coca-Cola would use’ is telling; it is still probably good advice to suggest that you try and push the boundaries as far as is reasonable but watch out for offending the more traditional thinkers out there.

Ask for help

Perhaps the most important point is that there is no ‘perfect’ ad. Different ads work for different reasons and some people just won’t even read your copy no matter what you do. Therefore it’s crucial to make use of as much knowledge as you can when writing your ad. If you know someone (colleague, friend etc) has had a similar role and recruited with some success for it, ask for tips. Re-use ads that work well for you to, changing just the most specific details. Ask for advice on phraseology, steal good ideas for taglines, openers and so on and use your synonym generator on Word to avoid repetition. Cheat, blag, steal and mimic; in the best advertising tradition you don’t need to be an expert to write effective copy, you just need to convince enough people you are.

If you enjoyed this post and want to read more like it, why not subscribe to my feed? It's easy to do and will keep you regularly updated, meaning you don't have to keep checking back to see if I've updated the site.
Didn't like it? Well there'll be lots of other things coming up I promise, and some of them are bound to be good! So why not subscribe and save yourself the effort of having to come back everyday to check for the next good thing? Great idea eh? Don't thank me though. Making your life easier is thanks enough.

Helicopter Parents and a new blog

Photo credit: Michael Elins, Newsweek May 22, 2006

(Whole lotta linking going on today...)

OK, I just read a really funny article which I found through a fantastic blog that I'd checked a couple of times but never got round to reading properly and adding to my Google Reader. Links to both:

The article, which has given me a whole new insight into just how pushy parents can get. The term 'Helicopter Parents' has it's own Wikipedia entry even. Scary.

The blog, Fortify Your Oasis by Rowan Manahan, which looks like a real cracker and well worth a subscription and some regular attention.

Hope you enjoy both!

Interview with Seth

Really quick one - if you've got a few minutes go and have a read of an interview with Seth Godin. It's a really good interview (the interviewer gets a lot out of him) and covers blogging, entrepreneurship, books, marketing, the iPhone and more.

Well worth a read.

Twitter, Twitter, Twittering on

I’ve posted about it before and discussed the topic with Louise over at uk:recruiter so apologies if you were bored of it back then and definitely don’t want to read another post on it! If that’s the case just skip to the next post and we’ll say no more about it (although in the words of Hilary Clinton this week, that hurts my feelings).

If however you’re interested at all I’d just like to ask you to have a glance (a longish glance maybe) at Twitter. I won’t try and sell any benefits or anything else here, it’d be better just to have a look and see what you think. Once you’ve done that come straight back because I’ve got someone to point you to…

OK, back? Right, the chap I want to point you to is Dennis Howlett, who I’ve blogged about a couple of times before. He’s written an article for zdnet.com about Twitter (and other related services) and gives a really solid round up of the situation and offerings currently. Have a read of the article here.

BTW, I even get a mention having twittered (should that be tweeted?) something to him in response to his query – just something to bear in mind if you ever want link-love from me! ;)

Happiness in the UK

Alex Kjerulf has announced what is a real coup for his 'happiness at work' agenda today, having released details of his latest partnership. Alex has joined forces with HP in an effort to increase the happiness of UK businesses. As Alex says:

The idea is that HP’s mobile products (laptops and mobile phones) allow us to work more flexibly - and flexibility, ie. having more choice over when and where to work, makes us happier at work.

The main elements of the campaign are:

• A campaign website with tips on how to make yourself and your workplace happy
• Appearances in UK media by yours truly
• A staff satisfaction survey
• A contest for small UK-based companies

I think this is absolutely fantastic news. As any regular readers will know I'm a huge fan of Alex and he's even mentioned me on his blog before, which is one way to guarantee me as a friend for life! This partnership shows that he is going from strength to strength. He's done a fantastic job of building his brand and deserves all the accolades and business opportunities that can come his way because he's working bloody hard for them.

If you were at all interested in happiness at work, but not sure where to start, you've now got no excuses! Enter the competition, get yourself a customised happiness survey and generally get with the Chief Happiness Officer's programme!

Social Networking making people money

Upon reading this article your reaction may well be something along the lines of "Well duuurrrr!" And yes, the very fact that you're reading a blog like this probably indicates that you are no Luddite and are in fact well aware of the potential of social networking for more than just flirting and trading insults.

But I'm pointing this article out anyway for 2 reasons.

First, it's really easy to get into all this social networking stuff and start to believe that everybody loves blogging and twitter and Facebook and so on, but in reality most people don't. Of those who are on Facebook or MySpace, the majority don't care about Scoble getting banned or how Twitter will eventually monetise it's offering. So when an article about social networking helping younger people make money hits the front page of msn.co.uk it's a big deal.

Second, the article should make you think about something damn important. Here's the most pertinent quote for you:

"This networked generation are using these sites to explore new levels of creativity and develop new ways of doing business online," the report says.

This is why it matters. Not everyone gets social networking yet. Many people will never 'get it' in fact. But their numbers (and power and influence) are dwindling. 18-24 year olds are where it's at (and I say this as a practically decrepit 26 year old). We're back to the old GenY conversation obviously. Creativity is their bread and butter and creativity is the new currency of business. Get creative or get out of the way.

Why not talk to the 18-24 year olds you know and ask them how they interact with social networks? You could learn a heck of a lot. At worst they may just inspire you. At best maybe they can teach you how to make money out of them?

Catch up and links

So because this blog is primarily a 'corporate' blog (kinda, sorta, in that I do it on work time, I try and talk about work related stuff and if I were to leave I'd likely have to leave it behind) I made a conscious decision to keep reasonably quiet over the holiday period. I figured if I chattered on over Christmas and New Year when the office wouldn't open, it would be more like this blog being all about me, which isn't the plan.

What I didn't count on was 2 things. First, how much I'd miss posting. And second how much great stuff I'd miss sharing with everyone over the holiday period. Now that I'm back at work and all caught up with things (only took me a couple of days!) I'm going to start blogging regularly again. However it would be a crying shame if I didn't share some of the great stuff that was out there over the last couple of weeks. So below are links to some of the best and brightest posts that dropped into my Google Reader since December 24th.

Jeff Jarvis moots flying as a social experience. If I worked for an airline, or knew someone who did, I'd be doing all I could to convince the people who control the purse strings to do whatever it takes to hire Jeff as a consultant. He could revolutionise that business, no exaggerations.

Hugh breaks down the Social Object concept in his inimitable style. So well written and such a good post it makes me want to find him and eat his brain. (N.B. I'll be endeavouring to write a bit on social objects myself in the coming days/weeks, but I'll never explain it as well as this, so it's worth reading now or you won't know what I'm going on about.)

Tim Ferris explains how he managed to escape the crappy weather and holiday-time misery to live it up in Argentina over Christmas. If only he'd written this post before Christmas, I'd have happily followed suit!

Seth tells you how to problem solve. Simple, short and sweet as only Seth can make it.

Robert Scoble gets his Facebook account disabled! If you don't know Scoble then that probably doesn't mean much to you but trust me on this, it's a big deal!

Church of the Customer Blog always find interesting stories for me. This one is no exception. It describes what must be up there as possibly the most ridiculous corporate rule ever. Ever, ever in fact.

Alex tells us how to deal with anger at work. It's vitally important to keep anger under control at work, Alex spells out exactly why.

Penelope Trunk has picked up on the Gen Y issue again and very cleverly links it in with yesterdays voting for the next Prez of the United States in Iowa. I've talked about Gen Y a couple of times now and doubtless will do again. It's a sea change in the workforce I tell y'all, and it matters to everyone.

That's it for now people, I'm sure you'll enjoy a few of those at the least. I'll be back with some original content after the weekend, so see you then!


If you fancy hearing what I've got to say when I say it, but get sick of coming back and checking the site regularly (often to find I haven't put anything new up because I'm such an unreliable sod) then I recommend you subscribe to my feed. It's easy enough to do. If you don't get what feeds are though, then the good old BBC does possibly the best job of explaining.

Understand the whole subscription deal?

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Vote for Best UK Recruitment Blog of 2007

My friend and yours, Louise over at uk:recruiter, has had a jolly good idea and set up a vote for the Best UK Recruitment Blog of 2007. The voting list can be found here.

Yours truly is on the list, but I can say I won't be voting for myself. In fact it'd be remiss of me not to suggest that you vote for Louise herself, as her blog has been one of the highlights of the blogging scene for me in 2007.

There's lots of good blogs on there, and doubtless a great many more who just aren't on the list yet. When I started reading blogs (over 2 years ago now) there were very few I could find with any sort of recruitment bent. The growth in numbers represents both the staggering speed with which blogging and 'Web 2.0' is changing the way we do business and the ability of recruitment professionals to buck the outdated trends of their fore bearers and embrace the times.

I've had a great 2007 and hope everyone reading this has too. Here's to an even better 2008!

Apologies! (And Merry Christmas!)

I'm really sorry everybody, I meant to write a post after the Christmas party but before the Christmas break but never got round to it; how rubbish of me!

So apologies for the unexpected and overly long break and (better late than never):

Merry Christmas!!

I hope everybody had a good one, I'll be back with more content in the New Year!

Party time!

So we've got our Christmas party on Saturday. I know there's a variety of stories in the papers at this time of year about offices banning parties for fear of causing offence to non-Christians, others ranting about political correctness gone mad and so on but to be honest I'm of the opinion that the party we have every year doesn't do any harm (except to people's livers). I am aware of the offence such a tradition could cause though, and the inequities and inequalities in most workplaces regarding religious holidays and the like. I still think it would be a shame to lose our December-time shindig though, as it's so good for morale, getting to know colleagues, relaxing after a hard year etc. It's not that we don't socialise any other time (we do with regularity) but I'd say that the Christmas party is the one social event that everyone comes to.

I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this though, all comments welcome or email me on james at omnirms dot com if that suits better (just trying to avoid the spam bots harvesting my email there; if you do email just remember to change 'at' to '@' and 'dot' to the traditional full stop mark, like this '.')

Anyway, our party is going to be in Manchester city centre. The place is called Manchester235 and we've got a traditional turkey dinner in one of the restaurants, followed by drinks, dancing and gambling in the casino and bars. Should be great, thoroughly looking forward to it (although, less looking forward to having to buy a new suit, as I tore the one I was going to wear so have to brave the Saturday shopping traffic!)

About Omni (Squidoo)

I get quite a few people asking me to tell them more about Omni and what we do, particularly the Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) part, pretty regularly. Rather than bleat on about it repeatedly therefore, I decided it would be a good idea to have a place (other than the website) that I could direct people to. With that in mind I created a Squidoo Lens for Omni.

Squidoo is a great site set up by (amongst others) Seth Godin. It allows people to create a 'lens' (essentially a micro website) on any topic they fancy. There are lenses about pretty much everything, including (but definitely not limited to) art, religion, Humphrey Bogart and Manga.

Building a lens is easy (although creating the content is obviously as tough as creating content for anything is - for help with that see this lens). The 'technical' side of things takes less than half an hour though.

Here's the Omni lens. It answers as many questions as I could think of about Omni and hopefully should prove useful for people. If there's anything that you think should be in there but isn't, then just let me know!

New Omni client: May Gurney!

Well things have been wrapped up even more promptly than I expected them to be, so as hinted at yesterday, I'm pleased to announce the signing of a brand new Omni client!

The lucky people at May Gurney, one of the UKs most successful construction services companies, will soon get to talk to our wonderful account management team everyday! This is a fantastic client win for us and will in fact likely be the biggest on our books, in terms of numbers of hires etc.

This was also a really quick one in terms of sales life cycle, thanks to a combination of hard work from the sales team (Luci and Howard especially) and real organisation and diligence from the guys over at May Gurney (Sarah particularly helped things run as smoothly as possible). We're pleased that we managed to convince them we were the right organisation to partner with (there were a couple of others in the running) and really excited about starting working with them.

This is hopefully just one of many new clients I'll have the pleasure of announcing here over the coming months; 2008 looks like being easily our busiest year yet. Every new one we sign up is special too, as it goes some way to helping us achieve our ambition of improving recruitment for the whole world! (No harm in thinking big!)

So hi again to May Gurney, and here's to a fruitful and fun relationship for all concerned!

Exciting client news...

I'm pleased to say that I should have a great, client-related announcement to make soon. As I've mentioned before, we've been busy on the new client side recently and although I won't count any chickens etc right now, we're confident that we'll be saying hello to someone officially very soon.

Watch this space!

Creativity, Copyright and Presentations

I want to point you to something today that aptly illustrates 2 things that I can frequently be found ranting about: the woeful state of our arcane copyright laws and the prevalence of terrible presentations. Whilst both are worthy of a standalone post of their own, that will be for another day. Here, I'm relying on Larry Lessig to effectively combine the 2.

This video is of a recent TED talk by Lessig on the effect that copyright laws are having on creativity. Lessig asserts that creativity is being stifled and that we are moving from a 'read-write' culture (i.e. creative) to a 'read-only' culture (where people simply 'consume'). I think he's spot on with this and the law is falling way behind the times. If it fails to catch up soon we are essentially criminalising the majority of people born after 1980 (Gen Y) who are IT and web savvy and keen to express themselves via social media, blogs, user generated content (UGC) and the like. Lessig's comparison with the common-sense approach taken to repeal outdated property laws in relation to land is effective and apt.

That brings me nicely to the second part of my rant; that you just don't see a lot of good presentations. I must have seen 40+ presentations from potential suppliers and many more at conferences, university etc. Yet I could count the number of good presentations I've seen on one hand (in fact only 2 stand out of real note - Noam Chomsky when I was at university and a talk by Jeff Pfeffer on Evidence Based Management at a Chicago based HR and IT conference). Even my colleagues are inclined to give bad presentations (despite my frequent desperate pleas to change things) because it's just the way things are done. My argument that your typical PowerPoint, death by bullets presentation is boring and ineffective is met by the counter-argument that everybody does it that way, so it must work.

Yet in this world of terrible presentations, poor presenters and horrific slideware, there is hope. Not many people embody that hope as well as Larry Lessig. Watch his talk; I promise it'll be time well spent. He is passionate, articulate and funny. He has great slides (his style of slideware is in fact famous, and there's a presentation method named after him, The "Lessig Method"). He commands the room and steers the audience to his way of thinking, whilst as a viewer you take a tonne of information away with you, surely the ultimate goal of any presentation.

I promise I'll put up some separate posts on presentation and copyright more generally, when I get round to writing them! Also, here is probably a good time to point out that despite the lack of widget on the subject, anything you read here is under this Creative Commons License. That means you can copy it, print it out, link to it etc with appropriate attribution. Basically you can't take it and charge for it, or alter it. For more information about Creative Commons check out the site.

Quote of the Day

The most important thing a leader does is set the example. In many ways that's the only thing a leader does.

Wally - on it, as ever.

Motivating Generation Y...

(Pic credit: gapingvoid.com)

Generation Y, or Gen Y, are the youngsters in the workforce. It’s a bit of an Americanism (often the worst kind of business-speak anachronism) but it’s becoming common parlance, and therefore worthy of some attention.

So to break it down, here are some definitions to start with if you're not familiar with the term. First up we have the Baby Boomers, then Generation X and now Generation Y.

Born in 1981 myself (I’m 26 in a couple of weeks, 17th December if you want to send a present…) I’m in Gen Y, just! I should therefore be fully up to speed with my own generation and emotionally intelligent enough to understand my elders too, if the definitions are to be believed. There’s been a lot written on the subject and whilst some of it is accurate (common sense you might even say) some is as out of kilter as you can get, not totally surprising given that all 3 terms are seriously sweeping generalisations. I read an article today though that came to me from Reuters, via Wally Bock. It lit a bit of a creative fire in me, so I decided I’d tackle the subject myself briefly.

First up, the Reuters article.

From that we glean some useful tips. Younger workers want positive engagement. They need praise, recognition and “patting on the head”. Older workers couldn’t care less about that apparently; the boomers want “clear direction” instead. Apparently they’re “past” looking for praise.

Anecdotally this may well have some backing too. Ask around your office and see what people think (particularly any emotionally intelligent managers responsible for boomers, X-ers and Y-ers).

Yet it is clearly a simplification. Rather than just requiring ‘praise’ per se, I would argue that Gen Y are the group most likely to want to do meaningful work that adds value (sweeping generalisation and simplification in itself I know, but bear with me!) This need for ‘meaning’ can’t be fulfilled in all roles; not everyone can have a job that gives them that warm fuzzy feeling that an assuaged social conscience can. So the praise and recognition can act as a replacement for this.

Additionally, Gen Y is the teamwork generation. Y-ers are more likely than boomers or X-ers to embrace collaborative working and the possibilities that the hive mind offers. This team ethos is predicated on praise and recognition, a team can’t survive and succeed if everyone is busy working away for their own benefit and never stopping to say well done to others in the group.

So whilst the article may broadly be reporting an accurate picture of the generations, I can't help but feel it's missing a trick by not looking at why Y-ers want praise (the article seems simply to point out the trend and suggest that boomer or X-er managers should be exploiting it). My biggest problem with the article though, is the following line:

Generation Y are portrayed as self-centered and demanding in the workplace -- and it's all true

This isn’t the case to my mind. In reality Gen Y believe in endless possibilities and are inherently optimistic. This optimism could be perceived as selfish (trying to change the status quo, seemingly for their own benefit) but in actual fact it’s massively egalitarian. Gen Y wants to change the status quo for sure, but they have a bigger picture in their sights; Gen Y truly wants to change the world! There’s a guest post on Penelope’s blog that expresses this confusion a lot better than I can, so have a read of that.

As a Gen Y-er I’m naturally inclined to defend my peers, so apologies for the natural bias there. But I truly believe that the new trends in business for collaboration, transparency, trust, happiness at work, creativity, innovation, social responsibility and so on are going to define the coming years. These trends are most associated with Gen Y, but there’s plenty of X-ers and boomers who buy into them too. So in true Gen Y style, I’m keen to work with these people to make these modern methods the norm.

The Reuters article raises an interesting point, but misses the crux of things for me. Rather than pointing out differences for the sake of it why doesn't it instead highlight how the gaps in each generations skill set could be negated by co-operation. Surely the ideal team is driven by relentless Y-ers, grounded by realistic X-ers and guided by experienced (open-minded) boomers?

As the cartoon above (by the imperious X-er Hugh) attests, change isn't what you should be afraid of.

3 Recruitment Tips

Today I want to put my 3 best recruitment tips out there for people. These are the simple ones; there's a tonne of other stuff you could do. However if you start with these 3 you'll be on the right track.

1. Focus on 'direct' recruitment. That is, rather than relying on recruitment agencies and search and selection companies (headhunters) to provide you with potential candidates, find them yourself. You can do this by giving the job to someone in HR (make it their main role though), or by engaging an RPO like Omni, AMS, RPO Solutions etc. There should be adverts on the major job boards (like Monster, Jobserve etc) that you put out there, branded with your logo and driving candidates to your site and your info, not an agency.

2. Improve your recruitment selection process. Even if it's good, it can be great. Make sure that screening is done properly (again, either by an appropriate HR or recruiting partner, or by an RPO) and that CVs are reviewed efficiently. Then make sure you have a clearly defined process including telephone screening, any testing and face-to-face interviews. You should not have more than a 3 stage process, maximum. That would be 1- telephone screen 2- testing 3- face-to-face interview. If you can get your testing process online you can add a second face-to-face stage. Otherwise you just annoy candidates.

[Note: it should go without saying that your selection process should fall into line with all relevant employment legislation and HR mandates on things like discrimination etc]

3. Build your Employer Brand. This is very different from your corporate brand. Your corporate brand (i.e. the one you sell to customers) might be of tradition and authority. But your offices might be fun, creative and vibrant places. If you sell to potential employees that you're traditional, authoritarian, grey, when in actual fact you're cool, innovative and bright red, then you're missing a trick (and probably a heck of a lot of potential superstars).

This is a really brief post of something that is a much bigger story. If you're interested in improving your recruitment process across the board (and no it won't require you spending hundreds of thousands on 'consultancy' and revamps and the like) then I'd love to hear from you. I'll either be able to help myself, which will brighten up my day no end, or I'll be able to point you towards someone who can. This may be a colleague here at Omni, but it may just as likely be a 'competitor' or other brand; I get a kick out of helping however I do it.