This Week, In Recruiting - Issue No21

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Open Kitchen: Learnings from Launching A Job Board

So I launched 'Brainfood Jobs' last week in an attempt to address the overwhelming demand for recruiters and HR people. This is a quick update on how it is going, what the positives and negatives are, and what the steps I'm going to take going forward to improve it.

1. State of Brainfood Jobs Job Board

Honestly, I have no idea whether these numbers are any good or not - somebody who knows about job boards, feel free to jump in comments and share your thoughts? Two numbers which do stand out for me is the number of posters (effectively number of approved employers) and the number of applications (candidates who have exited Brainfood Jobs to interact directly with the employer who posted the ad).

Conclusion: Employers find it easy to post and candidates are finding the jobs relevant ?.

2. 'Featured Seems To Work

I underestimated the effectiveness of page rank on a job board. I had believed the main value of being 'Featured' would be my off-platform listing of the jobs in Recruiting Brainfood and on This Week, In Recruiting. However, looking at the number of impressions and click throughs, it's pretty clear that simply being at the top of the page on Brainfood Jobs is going to provide most of the value. If we consider that all jobs will stay on the board for 30 days, then these two which are currently featured will still have plenty of mileage to go before they expire.

Conclusion: Retain and explain the value of being Featured

3. 'Promoted' Doesn't Appeal

The most expensive option is clearly too expensive. No one drops $1500 on an online only checkout - for anything - so this option is going to need selling - a demo, an explanation, an example or case study. That's extra work (remember Coasian Constraints?) so I might withdraw it. I think the value is solid - the vision is that I am basically going to conduct a public (video livestream it) intake meeting with the HM / CEO to qualify the role. I think it might make good content but also give candidates the chance to get insight into the role, company and the manager they will be reporting to - but the packaging needs to improve.

Conclusion: Withdraw option. Maybe offer it as a non-job board service

4. Some Problems: Free Can (and will!) Go Wrong

There may be such a thing as 'too many jobs', especially as the filter options are not as obvious as they could be on the UI. 300+ jobs in one week in one big list, is usually too much for anything other than a full time job seeker to plough through.

Obviously this is a problem that will only increase with time as the job board gains traction. Additionally, there are some edge cases which are revealing of future issues: two instances of the same job posted by different people in the same organisation, a number of what look like incomplete listings (currently in queue, no clear way to notify the poster to improve the listing...) and perhaps one instance of an 'employer' using recruiting ads as a way to dominate on screen real estate (smart marketing tactic, but not great for job candidate UX).

I'm reminded of the early days of Gumtree and Craigslist, where a free-to-post service almost immediately descends into 'anything goes' as users with different motivations and varying levels of commitment join the majority of good faith users ??

Conclusion: keep an eye on it, too early to change yet

5. Some Solutions: Ideas at any rate

Just some early thinking on this. Reducing job duration on the free tier might encourage employers to try the Featured option, improving the ratio of 'higher quality' job posts vs the potentially problematic free posts. I can also increase friction for posters by having them answer questions (have not implemented this as I felt it would annoying). Or replace the free tier with a low cost basic option, as way of screening out bad actors and centralising the job posting decision making (i/e this should remove duplicates, unless lots of employees have access to the company credit card..)

What do you think? Check out the job board as a user and let me know how you think it could be improve - comment below, let me know.

Anyways, lets get out of the kitchen, into the lounge ??

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What's In The News?

Cornerstone OnDemand go private, in a $5.2BN deal with Clearlake Capital.

“We believe there is a significant opportunity to strategically position Cornerstone in the market as a leading platform and industry consolidator, and we look forward to partnering with the management team to drive value through both organic growth acceleration and inorganic transformation.” - Behdad Eghbali, co-founder and managing partner at Clearlake

Quote from Behdad Eghbali pretty much sounds like we can expect a buying spree from CSOD, as they go for all the marbles to be the core platform for future-shaped businesses. Bill Boorman has some interesting analysis on the topic on the Brainfood Online Community. Josh Bersin, whose reading of the white hot HR tech market is well worth following, gives his endorsement here

Hopin raise $450M Series D at a $7.5 BN valuation.

I'm not sure I recall another business which has raised so much, so quickly, in successive rounds than Hopin. As mentioned in Recruiting Brainfood yesterday, money is flooding into the companies who are solving the problems of tomorrow. What's the plan? Going to be more than just virtual events. Sifted with the report here, Hopin CEO Johnny Boufarhat blog post here

Instawork - the on-demand hourly worker platform, acquire referral platform, Drafted

We can expect an integration of tech+team into the Instawork platform, bittersweet news for those in the industry who got to love the standalone product. Look forward to seeing how Drafted CEO Vinayak Ranade, gets on in his future role with Instawork. Vinayak is a prominent contributor to the recruitment community, especially during the toughest times in the depths of pandemic lockdown last year. Hope that drive and passion continues to find opportunity in the bigger ship. Blog post here

If you are a recruitment service provider or technology business and have any news to share,?comment below,?this is your application to get into next week's addition of This Week, In Recruiting. Make sure to @ mention me so that I see it

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What's On Offer? (New Segment)

Proactive Talent are offering 10% discount on all coaching & advisory services.

Any organization looking for someone to come conduct a training on how to attract, hire and retain talent, reach out to Brittany King directly and indicate they heard about our offer from recruiting brainfood ([email protected]).

If you are a recruitment provider and want to be featured in next week's issue, make an offer to the community and?comment below?with the link and offer details. Don't forget to @ mention me so that I see it

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What's Going On?

Founders Focus - Ep9 - Jon Stross & Daniel Chait, Co-founders, Greenhouse, Aug 10, 9am ET / 2pm BST

Excited to be speaking with these two gents this week - Jon Stross and Daniel Chait have built one of the most impressive HR technology businesses in recent years, with Greenhouse now firmly positioned as one of the emerging leaders in the hyper competitive recruitment technology space. Who are the people behind the product? With Founders Focus, we're getting up close and personal with the founders of Greenhouse. Register here

Falling Into Hybrid: Creating Attractive and Productive Workplace, August 10, 12pm ET / 5pm BST

Are we falling into the Hybrid way of working, without really being intentional about it? We can do better; I'm with Avia Messer, HR Manager at Powtoon and Avra Bossov, Employee Engagement Administrator at STR. Join the debate if you want to talk how to do hybrid (and PS - you know I'm a skeptic). Register here

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep121 - The First 100 Days: What Should A New Recruiter Do?, August 13, 2pm BST

What do you - as a recruiter starting a new job - need to do in your first 100 days? With recruiters in such massive demand, there are going to be a lot of us who will be changing jobs in the next 12 months, so this session of Brainfood Live is set up for you. We are with Christine Ng, Head of Talent & Media (Quantum Motion), Andreea Lungulescu, Lead Talent Acquisition Partner (Wayfair). Akbar Karenga, Head of Talent (Storybok), Anasastia Pshegodskaya, Senior Recruitment Manager (Remote.com) and Steve Levy, Technology Sourcer (Amazon) - experienced recruiters who have each started a new job in recent months. Register here

Virtual Global HR Conference & Expo, 8-9 September, 9am to 6pm, GMT+2

Two day conference hosted by our buddies HR Works, on the latest trends and best practices in sourcing, talent attraction, onboarding, succession planning, rewards, employee wellness, employee relations and organisational change strategies. Tickets: R1850 | $132 - 15% discount* when you use the promocode: HRWG2021EFC15. Grab your tickets here

*only 20 discounted tickets available

If you have an event, webinar or podcast going on next week and want it featured on next week's newsletter,?comment below?with the link and event details. Don't forget to @ mention me so that I see it

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Who's Hiring?

Featured Jobs ??

Talent Acquisition Manager, We Are Move, Remote EU

Talent Acquisition Manager, Personio, Munich, Germany

Over 300+ jobs now posted by 120+ direct employers including the likes of Hellofresh, Gitlab, IBM, Ericcson, Cleo AI, Stripe, MongoDB, Remote.com, Stuart, Adyen, Kelly Services, AMS, Bloomberg, bol.com and many more.

Check out the job live posts here

If you want your job posted on the Brainfood Job Board, click on the link above. Selected the 'Listed' or 'Promoted' tiers if you additionally want promotion in next week's issue

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Who's Moving?

Leila Mortet moves up and across to become Organizational Effectiveness & Talent Intelligence Partner at Phillips DA, one of leading employers to take talent intelligence seriously.

Berend Buitink?moves up to Manager Recruitment Innovation & Operations at bol.com, after starting earlier this year as Talent Acquisition Manager. Berend now hiring for his team on the Brainfood Job Board.

Laura O'Callaghan moves up the International Product Recruiting Lead at Facebook, taking additional locations of Singapore and Tel Aviv to go along with responsibilities for Dublin and London.

Todd Davies to joins the expanding ServiceNow TA team as Executive Talent Sourcing Researcher, after nearly two years as Sourcing Advisor in Salesforce, Jim Conti moves to Hyde Park Venture Parters after nearly 4 years as VP of Talent at dscount, Julia Rutkowska moves to Miro as Tech Recruiter, after nearly 3 years at Momentive-AI (formerly SurveyMonkey), Denise Hasircioglu moves in-house, joining GetYourGuide after 3 years with Michael Page and finally Sophie Bullock, who I had the pleasure of getting to know whilst doing some collab with former employer Elements, joins ITech Media as Talent Acquisition Operations Manager.

Congratulations all!

If you have made a senior exec appointment to your business,?and feel the wider community needs to know about it,?comment below?with the details and see it featured in next weeks issue.?Don't forget to @ mention me in it so that I see it

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What Are You Doing?

Stephen O'Donnell opens up the NORA's for nominations. National Online Recruitment Awards or NORA's has been one of the signature events for recruitment technology providers in the UK. Do you know of a service or product that deserves industry recognition? Nominate them here

Katharine Robinson has a launched a cool project to help recruiters build confidence in posting on LinkedIn. If you want to improve how your online presence on this platform, #MeetYourRecruiter should be something you should check out - 9th-13th August.

Keith MacKenzie, Content Strategy Manager at Workable, is looking for Talent Acquisition & HR professionals to share their story. 3 million + website visitors if your story gets selected - great exposure if you have something to share. Check out qualifying criteria and apply here.

Shannon Pollard, who runs Marketing at Flexa are teaming up with Team Tailor hosting a webinar called “Are job platforms a thing of the past?". They are looking for speakers with thoughts on the matter - might this be you? Get in touch with Shannon here if you want to get involved!

If you are doing something new that you want the community to know more about,?comment below?with what it is and share a link to where you want people to go. Don't forget to @ mention me in it so that I see it

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End Notes

Ok that's it for this week.

Kind of busy week for me with the FF interview with Greenhouse tomorrow, as well a panel appearance with HiBob and Workable, not to mention some significant requirements to prepare the stage for RecFest in September. I'm going to be looking for speakers on the Brainfood Stage for this (300 seater), so if you have a topic you want to talk about, let me know, in comment below.

Cheers

Hung

Hung Lee is the curator of?Recruiting Brainfood, and now This Week In Recruiting. Subscribe to both if you are into recruiting or HR or just interested in world of work.