As we begin the second decade of the NORA’s, it’s worth reflecting on just how much the UK online recruitment sector has changed, grown and matured since our very first awards were presented.  Back in 2001, we were seeing the initial bloom fall from the cheeks of many online businesses.  The Dotcom Bubble, as it was called had inflated so quickly, that new online ventures were being formed every day, and often gaining investment on the basis of a “fag-packet” business plan.  By 2001, no-one was investing, and many companies, like BOO.com, had folded after burning through immense amounts of investment.  The online businesses that survived, and exist to this day, are those which were built on sound business principals and, more importantly, actually worked for the consumer.

It is in this light then, that we should look at the online recruitment services which were shortlisted as Finalists for the inaugural NORA’s, and especially our Winners.  Let’s take a look:

National Online Recruitment Awards 2001

1. BEST GENERAL JOBSITE

GoJobsite
Monster
Planet Recruit
Top Jobs On The Net
Workthing

Due to the Jobsite.com domain being temporarily unavailable, Jobsite.co.uk had rebranded as GoJobsite.  That aside, only Jobsite and Monster remain in the same space as the market leaders they were in 2001. In doing so, they have been instrumental to the development of the sector in the UK, and continue to be so.

2. BEST SPECIALIST JOBSITE

Jobserve
Activate
Careers in Recruitment
GAAPweb
Just Engineers

Jobserve is in the history books as the world’s first job board.  Whilst broadening their scope to include all other industry sectors, many still perceive Jobserve as an IT specialist job board. 3 of the other finalists are now owned by major publishing groups, who were late to recognise the threat and opportunities of online recruitment.

3. BEST REGIONAL JOBSITE

Northwest Workplace
EasyCareer
JobsNorth
London Careers
S1jobs.com

Whilst S1 weren’t winners in the first NORA’s, they dominated this sector for many years, demonstrating just how vital regional focus is to online recruitment.

4. BEST NATIONAL RECRUITMENT AGENCY WEBSITE

Reed
Adecco
Haysworks.com
Manpower
Pertemps

Of these Finalists, only REED were shortlisted again in 2010. However, all of these organisations still carry huge clout in the UK recruitment industry.

5. BEST SMALL RECRUITMENT AGENCY WEBSITE (3 branches or less)

RGB Consultants
Executive Connections
Intrinsica
IT Human Resouces Plc
Synergy Resourcing

From the beginning it was clear that inventiveness and innovation would be driven by the smaller, ambitious recruitment agencies.  RGB continue to this day at www.rgb.co.uk .

6. BEST NATIONAL EMPLOYER’S WEBSITE (recruitment)

Carphone Warehouse
Asda
BAE Systems
Royal Navy
Sage

Frankly, these Finalists aside, the major employers of the UK often disappointed the NORA’s judging panel in the early part of the decade.  Happily, most are now very much up to speed, and fully exploiting social media to source their ongoing need for talent.  PS. The Army and Navy websites, as you might expect, have always led the way in successfully using the internet for recruitment.

7. BEST ONLINE RECRUITMENT SECTION BY A CONSUMER PUBLICATION

Sunday Times
Financial Times
Guardian Unlimited
The Independent
The Telegraph

You could say that the Finalists for this award always include the same “usual suspects”; and you’d be right.  However, whilst the names of the UK’s largest newspapers never changes much (aside from the NOTW), the competition between them has never been more fierce.  These newspapers now derive very little income from traditional paper-based recruitment classified advertising.

8. BEST ONLINE RECRUITMENT SECTION BY A TRADE PUBLICATION

Computer Weekly
Careers In Construction
Caterer and Hotelkeeper
Electronics Weekly
(The) GrocerJobs

Trade magazines were amongst the very first to “get it” that online recruitment was the future.  As monthly publications they very much needed to offer a real-time recruitment service to their clients and readers, and were ideally positioned to do so.  We often find the most stylish NORA entrants in this section.

9. BEST EMPLOYMENT ADVICE WEBSITE

Careers Portal
Career-Ahead
Career Guide
Inside Careers
Prospects

It did seem for a few years that specialist career advice sites were struggling to survive as independent businesses. Increasingly, the major job boards have invested time and resources into providing fantastic candidate-focussed services. However, in the past 3 years, we have seen the emergence of new and very innovative contenders for this award.

Additionally, since 2001, we have added awards for Best Newcomer, and for Best Innovation in Online Recruitment.  The relentless advance of social media channels has meant that new ideas, and new ways to implement them are coming thick and fast.  This year, we expect the use of SM channels, such as Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Youtube to be strong factors in the decision making of our judges.  Additionally, the ability to access recruitment services from a far wider range of devices will be vital too.

It may well be true that the NORA’s were created during a very difficult employment market, but out of that was born immense innovation in online recruitment practices.  The same could now be said, as a result of the 2008-2010 employment recession that has spurred innovation.  Whilst there will certainly not be plain sailing from this moment on, we now have an industry that has matured over two employment recessions, and all but usurped historic methods of recruitment advertising.  I fully expect the second decade of the NORA’s to be as exciting as the first.

Looking forward to being a judge for The National Online Recruitment Awards – Guest blog by Katharine Robinson

Earlier this year, I was honoured to be asked to join the judging panel for this year’s NORAs (National Online Recruitment Awards). The judging panelconsists of a selection of independent judges from across the recruitment industry, all experts in their respective fields but none having an affiliation with a particular online recruitment site – so it is a massive honour to join such an illustrious group.

The NORAs are now in their 11th year, and are set to be bigger than ever. Nominations opened a few weeks ago, and anyone can go along and nominate the recruitment related websites they think are currently doing the best to in help job seekers find a new role. Last year the NORAs received over 28,000 nominations, covering more than 500 individual recruitment sites.

The initial aim of the NORAs was to give those using the web to search for jobs confidence that they were using quality sites. This is just as important now as it was 11 years ago, as there are new players joining the online recruitment industry all the time, giving job seekers a sometimes confounding wealth of options for their job search.

Being a judge will be really interesting for me. It will oblige me to try out hundreds of recruiting sites, no doubt discovering some gems along the way. I will also be asked to put myself in the position of the job seeker, judging the nominated websites based on how easy they are to use, and ultimately how useful they seem. I already focus quite a bit on trying to put myself in the shoes of “ideal talent” in order to search for them online – how do they describe themselves, where do they go online? Being a judge for the NORAs will take this one step further and, I hope, ultimately make me better at my job.

By far the most exciting categories will be Best Innovation and Best Newcomer. With players like Monster’s new BeKnown Facebook app entering the market in the last couple of weeks, we are seeing big shifts in the online recruitment world.

If you are currently searching for a job or you have recently found one – what sites have you found most useful? Take a moment to nominate them for a NORA 

Everyone, recruiter and job seeker alike, is welcome at the Awards Event on Wednesday 2nd November too – so look out for more information on that!

Ed: Katharine Robinson (aka @TheSourceress on Twitter) uses the Internet to track down tough to find talent. In January this year she joined Capgemini Consulting as Sourcing Recruitment Manager in their in-house recruitment team. Katherine is a frequent public speaker on the social web, and how it augments the real, social and professional worlds.

In a move that reflects the ever evolving recruitment marketplace, HR Magazine is to be the Media Partner to the National Online Recruitment Awards, for their 10^th Anniversary year.  Siân Harrington, Editor, will also take a seat on the Judging Panel for 2010.

HR Magazine are firmly established as the definitive journal of record for the UK’s Human Resources sector, and as such have a breadth of readership which includes all major HR decision makers in Britain.  The award winning HR Publication of the Year, reaches even further still with its outstanding website; providing authoritative editorial news and insight on a continual basis.

Editor of HR Magazine, Siân Harrington said “We have seen the growing sophistication of our profession in its engagement in candidate attraction via online recruitment.  We are extremely pleased to be involved with the National Online Recruitment Awards, in their 10^th anniversary year.”

Founder of the NORAs, and Chairman of the Judging Panel, Stephen O’Donnell remarked, “We are particularly excited to have HR Magazine on board as Media Partner.  The early days of online recruitment were dominated by job boards and recruitment agencies, but the last couple of years have seen an accelerating take-up by increasing numbers of small and large employers alike.  The rise of social media in the past 18 months has added an extra dimension to strategies being utilised by progressive employers and especially their HR departments.”

Nominations for the NORAs are made directly by job seekers, and are open until 10^th September.  The awards ceremony itself will be held on 4^th November in Central London.

Guest blog, from Keith Robinson.

Many thanks to Stephen for letting me write this article and doing such a great job with NORAuk.  I am a huge fan of recognizing and rewarding excellence in any sector. Having been shortlisted last year with my new launch Careersiteadvisor, I know the thrill and anticipation when you are at the event… you cannot beat it and Stephen “Thanks for setting these, up and continuing to run the NORAUK”.   Stephen asked me to write something on/about On-Line Recruitment so a short ramble;

I saw my first job board in the U.S in 1996 on a visit to my advertising agency partner in Chicago, Shaker. I was blown away with what I saw and the opportunities I foresaw with such a platform – “the internet”, and with the quick and easy ability to search a large volume of jobs from across wide geographical regions.

Only 15 years ago recruitment media was “print”; strong national, regional and trade newspapers dominated, and often had no or little competition. In reality they had local monopolies and charged accordingly.

To place a recruitment advertisement in two local newspapers Nott’s Evening Post and the Derby Evening Telegraph could cost £60 for a single column centimeter (hugely expensive), and yet your potential candidate lived in that broad geographical area.

The “job board” had the ability to go across newspaper boundaries, and to me the opportunities to “break monopolies”, deliver new and exciting channels to “passive” candidates were limitless.

My next enlightenment came a year latter when again in the U.S I saw a company careers site, wow awesome, and given at this time I worked for a Recruitment Advertising Agency again for me what opportunities, branding, jobs, interactivity, etc etc….. but as usual I got carried away with the “limitless technology capabilities” and forgot that less that 15% of UK home had internet, and those that did were on dial-up and a heavy page took hours to download.

BUT interest had been stimulated and now it was a matter of time…. Waiting for the consumer to catch up with the technology, and the infrastructure build out to lead the consumer.

By 1998/1999 we had our first print causality, Freelance Informer, a Reed Business owned trade magazine for IT Contractors which folded due to the migration of that audience to Robbie Cowling’s Jobserve.

In 2000 I joined Totaljobs.Com and my love of on-line recruitment just grew, understanding what “job seekers’ wanted (Real Jobs with Real Companies), how a poor “candidate experience” impacted on a company’s P&L. So much so, that in 2001 we decided to take the advice of an awesome strategist at Totaljobs, Andrew Findlater and share our findings.

We created the Totaljobs Seminar Program and over 3 years ran 70 plus roadshows across the UK and helped “educate” over 700 industry professional on the benefits of On-Line Recruitment, many of today’s “In-House Recruiters” attended and we shared our passion for a move towards more in-house recruiting.

Alan Whitford our regular Chairman shared is passion for the “time and cost” to hire matrices, and we even talked about “cybersleuthing” i.e. on-line sourcing. Yes, in 2001 we had Roy Everett (spiderman) talking on the subject.. we saw a bright future for recruitment, and it was on-line.

Today we are there, but it has been much slower than I ever expected. On-line has, or is just about to overtake print media, and a recession or two doesn’t help.

We now have social media, on-line referrals, ATS… a whole multi – billion pound/dollar industry has been built to support “On-Line” recruitment.

But finally I have some regrets, and I will share them.

- We have commoditized a key part of our industry – the job advertisement, and boy what a poor candidate experience most job postings give.

- We have seen great creativity, great copy writing, and great typography disappear.

- We have made it more difficult for a job seeker to find a job – search does not work, the future has to be matching.

- We have made it too easy for job seekers to apply for a job, and for a recruiter to delete a CV. My term is “the promiscuous digit”.

BUT job boards are not dead, more will launch and other versions of boards will evolve.

The future is bright, the future is On-line Recruitment… whatever that might look like.

Every year, for the past ten years, I get swamped with enquiries from recruitment agencies, job boards and employers, asking how to enter a website into the National Online Recruitment Awards.  “Where do I register, how do I apply, how much does it cost?” etc.  Well, let me answer all those questions, and show you how we’ve made it even simpler.

The essential foundation of the NORAs is built upon nominations, and not votes.  We ask candidates to nominate the recruitment websites they like best, in each of our 12 award categories.  This means that webmasters don’t have to register or apply, as all nominations have been made directly through our awards website, www.NORAuk.com. Each year, in addition, we have produced graphics for websites to display, in order to encourage their own visitors to nominate their site, and give reasons why.  This has always proven to be very popular, but of course some sites don’t want to divert busy candidates from their job searching activities.

In response to this, we have now developed a unique “One-Click” nomination process. By registering on our site (http://www.norauk.com/nomination-material), you can then select a suitable “Nominate this site” graphic, and then copy the unique HTML code to insert on your website.  This then displays the chosen graphic where inserted, and enables a candidate to nominate the site with a single click.  Additionally, candidates are also given the opportunity to give direct, but anonymous, feedback, before continuing their pursuit of that ideal job.

In 2009 we received almost 25,000 nominations, for 657 separate recruitment websites.  The greater the engagement we can encourage from individual job seekers, the greater depth of feedback we have to work with in selecting the Finalists for the awards.  By considering in detail this candidate response, and assessing job sites from a candidate’s perspective, our panel of industry experts can arrive at a rich shortlist of sites that represents the very best internet recruitment services in the UK.

In less than 2 weeks, we have already had 50 websites register for “1-Click NORA Nomination”. More sites, more nominations, and greater candidate involvement will further reinforce the credibility of the National Online Recruitment Awards as it enters its second decade.

Nominations will remain open until Friday 10^th September, and the Winners will be revealed at the NORA’s 10^th Anniversary Event, on the 4^th November.

Stephen O’Donnell, Chair of the NORAs

Today we launch the nominations process for the 10^th annual National Online Recruitment Awards.  This historic anniversary for the definitive online recruitment industry awards confirms not only the longevity of the candidate-nominated awards, but also the prestige and acclaim accorded to the achievement of our Finalists and Winners.  Having a full decade under our belt, in such a young industry, means that we have a history that accurately maps the development of the sector, and how the industry has utilised internet technology to meet the individual needs of job seekers.

Nominations from candidates will remain open until 10^th September.  At that point, our selection panel of industry experts will assess all nominees, and produce a shortlist of Finalists for each of the 12 award categories.  It should be pointed out, that all sites are assessed from a candidate’s perspective, and that no site pays a charge to be considered for the awards.

Finalists will be announced on 28^th September, and our awards ceremony will be held in Central London on the 4^th November.

Stephen O’Donnell, Chairman of the NORAs

Are you loving E4’s new hit American import, Glee?

However you feel about the show (and I quite like it – in a totally manly way, of course), business-wise, they’ve got it sussed. All songs are available straightaway on iTunes and the E4 website for sale. I can see them charting, even though they’re saccharin covers (I love them though).

Very soon, much of TV will go this way. Immediate purchase of items advertised will be commonplace. Sky TV/Broadband and Virginmedia customers will soon have shopping accounts, where you simply click your remote to add items advertised to your shopping list. I think Sky already have to capability to set a reminder for a TV show while it’s being advertised on screen – “Click the red button to set record for this program”.  This is the future of TV advertising revenue. Profile mapping will also ensure that customised adverts are delivered to you, according to your watching preferences, in the same way Google already does, and Amazon recommends products based on your shopping and browsing history. Amazon, for example, keep track of your browsing, and know how many times you’ve looked at that crappy Adam Sandler DVD, but haven’t purchased it. They’ll keep suggesting, until you buy.

It’s not everywhere yet, but increasingly we’re seeing that a very large proportion of products sold online can be paid for by Paypal.  A rival to that service is Google Checkout.  The time will come soon, when any product viewed online, will have a hovering “Purchase this item via Paypal/Google Checkout” floating above every image.

So how will this affect the recruitment sector?  When I was young, my dad used to tell me “Son, if you are the best at what you do, then you won’t ever have to look for work; work will coming looking for you”.  Imagine every mention of an employer online, when hovered over, offered the option to “View all vacancies available with this employer”?  It won’t be easy, but we have already seen that most things are technically possible online.  All it takes is the will to implement, and the public appetite for such developments.

Every week, since August 2000, the volume of vacancies advertised on Britain’s most popular job boards has been monitored by AlljobsUK.com. We now have data for these websites for the past 480 weeks. Because we monitor a range of of websites, we are able to more accurately reflect the state of the UK online recruitment sector. Whilst the Monster recruitment index will tell you the experience of only one job board, we are able to track the ebb and flow of the market as a whole. The effects of the current recession are all the more dramatic, when seen in visual form.

As you can see in the chart below, the index was still around our datum point of 1,000 in January 2001. It actually dropped in 2002, and again in 2003, as a result of the “DotCom Bubble” bursting, and then rose steadily, as business confidence grew. Confidence in online recruiting also grew rapidly, until late 2007, when the Northern Rock crisis shook the commercial world. They say that a rising tide lifts all boats, but the dramatically falling tide of 2008 exposed traditional newspaper recruitment advertising, and all its inefficiencies. So whilst the overall volume of advertised vacancies has plummeted, the newspaper share of the market has been decimated. We can see here the seasonal shifts which occur each year, and how vacancy volumes compare year-on-year. The most remarkable year is clearly 2008, when the index seems to fall off a cliff. 2009, whilst steadily bumping along the bottom, has at least halted the decline. Modest falls and rises throughout the year have been seized upon as signs of either recovery or further gloom. It is true that since August we have seen slight growth, but far less than is usual for this time of year, and now the Christmas dip has started a little early. We always see the New Year as the very lowest point of the year, when the fewest vacancies are advertised, and this year should be no exception.

In the year ahead, we are expecting public sector recruitment to take the brunt of the current crisis. Whilst it is the private sector that makes most use of online recruitment, we expect the AlljobsUK.com Online Recruitment Index to remain flat for at least the first half of 2010.
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Websites monitored in the AlljobsUK.com Online Recruitment Index: CV-Library, Fish4jobs, Jobserve, The IT Job Board, Jobsite, Jobsearch, Monster, Reed, Totaljobs, Just Engineers.