We’vee been working on various promotional videos for our site using Animoto. This is our favourite at the moment:
Who do YOU think YOU are? on YouTube
We call it “Who Do YOU think YOU are?”. We’re trying to get across the message that everyone should promote their skills and not rely on job boards or agencies……..
Came across what seems like the perfect Christmas present for job seekers before the doom and gloom of 2009 hits us all:
The best career investment you’ll ever make!Calm those nerves! When you prepare for a job interview correctly (the VooDoo way), there is nothing to worry about! Simply follow the easy-to-use instructions with the Get That Job VooDoo Doll and you’re on your way to a stress-free job search.Picture this…your applications won’t disappear into that “black hole”. You’ll ace those personality and background checks. You’ll never be left dangling, waiting for a call or offer. You’ll send a cyber message to corporate recruiters — stop advertising jobs that don’t exist; return phone calls! Best of all, you’ll confidently negotiate the ideal salary and perks.Dolls are infused with healing energy and white light for good luck. Handmade in the USA of 100% cotton fabric and softly stuffed with polyester fiberfill. Charming straw-like hair and bright sequin eyes. Measure approximately 12 inches high. Complete with instructions and three white pins.
I particularly like the “infused with healing energy and white light for good luck” and the three white pins. I just might buy a few…… here’s the link…………..
So how can we fix this? How can we look at this beast of a recruitment industry and see beauty in it? Well first we need to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, “Who is this business for? Who is it supposed to benefit?”
The answer to those questions obviously depends on what your role is - a recruiter, an agency or a candidate.
For recruiters (read the old-fashioned meaning of companies that actually employ people) it’s fairly simple - we want the best people for the lowest cost.
For agencies - we want anybody for maximum profit.
For candidates - we want an interesting job that pays a lot of money.
Well ok, I’ve over-simplified things and people aren’t that stereotypical in real life but it states the basic positions of the parties involved in this uncomfortable triangle.
The Bad and The Ugly
I don’t think I’m on my own here when I say that from a candidate’s view I don’t see what value an agency adds to the recruitment process. They are simply an obstacle between the candidate and the recruiter, a third party that can shield the truth (both ways) between the other two parties. This can’t be healthy and isn’t the best way to do business.
It used to be that an agency would send me a bottle of champagne and a box of Belgian chocolates at Christmas, but sadly those days are now gone……. I don’t even get a Christmas card any more! So much for the brave new world where social networking is King!
The Good
I guess I shouldn’t gripe about the current system and its processes without having a better alternative up my sleeve.
Well I have got a better vision although to realize it will take time and you can bet there will be a lot of opposition from certain quarters……
Let’s all promote ourselves instead of using job boards.
If all recruiters and agencies could find you for free and see when you’re available or looking for work then we can do away with all this cloak and dagger stuff.
Personal promotion online and networking - it’s the way forward. Wave goodbye to job boards.
My top 8 topics of interest for the recruitment industry in 2009 and beyond are:
1. Personal Promotion (for want of a better phrase!). You own the data, you know what your skills are you know when you’re available. Who else is in a better position to know all this? Recruitment agencies - I think not!
2. Social Networking Sites - Can recruiters engage with candidates using social networking sites?
3. Video Branding - How can employers, agencies and individuals promote and develop their own brands?
4. Recruitment Blogs - How can recruiters utilise blogging within their career sites?
5. Personal Tagging - Forget scanning CVs or resumes, use data tags instead.
6. Aggregators - How aggregators are used in online recruiting (I have an instant aversion to aggregation - just smacks of poor quality output to me)!
7. Recruitment and Web 2.0 (+ Web 3.0)! - Nice words but is there any substance behind all this verbage? Do we really need to engage with Generation Y using these techniques?
8. Cloud Recruiting - The recruitment industry’s spin on cloud computing
I’m quite a fan of “Software as a Service” (SaaS). The idea of having access to everything from anywhere is pretty appealing to me and I’ll give you a practical example of what I mean:
A couple of months ago a friend had asked me to prepare a quiz for her birthday. Trying to plan things a little in advance for once, I wrote the quiz a week or so before the event and emailed it to her from my Gmail account asking her to get in touch if she had any problems with it. That’s where I went wrong!
A day before the quiz I was at the airport waiting to catch a flight to Barcelona to see my brother. I got a text message just as the flight was called……..”Hi. Hope you’re ok. Have you managed 2 sort out the quiz for 2moro?”
My heart sank for a second as I realised that she hadn’t received the email. I had let her down. If only I’d called her after I’d sent the email I wouldn’t be in this predicament!
I figured out that all was not lost as I strapped my seatbelt on. Of course! My email (and all its attachments) were in the cloud somewhere. All I had to do was get access to the Internet, logon to my Gmail account and I could sort it out.
If this had happened five years ago I couldn’t have fixed it but with SaaS email it was easy. Long live SaaS and Gmail!
If economies do falter further or go into free fall there are a two basic outcomes; unemployment will increase as companies tighten their belts or collapse and talented people in secure jobs will want to stay put.
At the same time, firms will be left with no choice but to do more with less and become inventive and creative (with little budget) to keep good people.
What’s left of 2008 and for at least the whole of 2009 will be a time for reflection for a lot of people.
Did we simply get too greedy?
Are we who and where we want to be?
Did we really sign up for this?
We’ll all take stock of where we are to one degree or another. Some people will take time off and disappear to foreign fields or their gardens. Others will try to enhance their skills by self-studying. A few brave souls will consider finally committing to that big idea, that dream that they’ve been putting off for too long.
We’ve all longed for simpler, more fulfilling lives for years – maybe, just maybe 2009 is that year?
Believe it or not, this is a true story that happened recently to my business partner, Ian.
Ian was working at a client site and as usual had started work early. While busily typing on his keyboard he spotted a small rodent scurying across the office floor. Being the diligent person that he is, Ian reported the “incident” to security. The business day continued with no further interruptions.
After leaving the office for the day, Ian caught the train to travel back up North. He managed to struggle to a table where three women were already sitting.
Unzipping his laptop bag on a table, what should appear but a small brown mouse. Thinking smartly, the mouse leapt into one of the women’s laps before making its bid for freedom down the carriage aisle.
Understandably there was a lot of commotion from the three women at Ian’s table. The train guard arrived on the scene asking what all the fuss was about. One of the women accused Ian of letting his mouse loose on the train.
Ian replied:
“Yes, that’d be right. Myself and Stuart Little always take the train on a Thursday. In fact his car’s waiting for him at the station.”
You really couldn’t make this up!
Here at KK we’re big fans of the Animoto website (www.animoto.com). We wanted to make quick, snappy promotional videos for our site that we could put on YouTube and also add to our site.
The Animoto service makes the production of this kind of video extremely easy. All you need to do is upload some images, put them in the order you want them displayed, add some text, choose a soundtrack and then send it all to the Animoto guys where is is rendered. After a few minutes the video is ready to play with various effects that have been added automatically.
There are then options to remix the video, post to YouTube or produce a higher quality video.
Take a look at some of our efforts at the following links:
Enjoy….
Following the not too painful birth of the knokknok business and website we take a long collective deep breath and wondered “What now?”. We weren’t so naive as to expect thousands of people to flock to our new baby and knew we needed to promote and advertise our site.
Without having a massive budget for TV advertising, or a wealth of creative talent we still believed that if we put certain “plans” in place we could generate more traffic.
So what should we try?
Here’s a short-list:
1. Write articles about the recruitment business and publish them on the web. These needed to have a clear view point and if possible have some controversy to spark some debate.
2. You’re reading it…..yes a blogful of our thoughts on the recruitment industry, employers, agencies as well as our KK business and vaguely amusing things that happen to us on a day to day business.
3. Promotional videos which we could re-use, post on our website, post on YouTube …..
4. Anything else that doesn’t cost much but reaches lots of people.
All this in the vague hope of zooming up the search engine rankings……. more detail to follow.
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