Online Recruitment - the bigger picture (Tim's blog)

PocketSurfer2 boo

Quick update - I've bought a PocketSurfer2, it's not that great, it's certainly not the future of the mobile internet. The screen is the biggest problem, it's a bit like using the internet on a very small screen through a net curtain. I probably should have waited for a new 'net book' - low cost laptops for a couple of hundred quid that are set to be the big thing this summer and are built for using the internet and not much else. Anyway, I'll be on a bit of a blog break for a couple of weeks, with the PocketSurfer2 for company, if it improves I'll let you know.

It's ok to lie on your CV, you'll still get the top job.

This has probably been done to death by now, but I can't help adding my 2 pence worth. Lee McQueen shouldn't have won the apprentice, he lied on his CV and giving someone the job after that's uncovered in the interview process is plain wrong and (without wishing to sound overly pompous) sends out totally the wrong message to people entering the recruitment process and could make all of our lives harder.

I know it's only a game show, but it is set up as a recruitment / interview process and as such should take that seriously. Lee has all sorts of faults - he can't spell (but then we all make mistakes sometimes), he can't shave, I think he bullied at least two of the female contestants and he winked (twice) at the end of an interview. Winking can be forgiven, but surely lying on a CV can't be (especially in light of the fact he actually worked in the recruitment industry)? He should have been thrown out of the process there and then and the contest opened to the more honest contestants. Please refer to my CV where you'll read details of how I invented the internet and my successful time as England manager when I took us to the quarter finals of the world cup.

NORAS 2008 Pool champions are...

...jobs.telegraph.co.uk - congratulatins to them - you can read the full story on the Enhance Media blog. Photos to follow next week.

They call it 'the biggest prize in online recruitment'...

...yes, tonight is the 2nd annual NORAS pool competition at the Sports Cafe in London. Can Secs in the City defend their 2007 title? All will be revealed tomorrow.

PocketSurfer2 too

I really, really want one of these. I know it's wrong, but I still want one.

On the upside they're as little as £149 online and 20 hours internet use is included every month for the first year, so there's no contract, no bills etc. The device uses an inbuilt SIM and the Orange GPRS network to deliver web pages as they look on a PC / laptop etc. This means that you can go online wherever you can get an Orange signal, you don't need to be in a WiFi zone etc. The clever bit is that it also uses some kind of compression technology to speed up delivery (that also involved caching pages on the company's servers in Canada). You can also use it abroad for £15 per hour / 25p a minute.

On the downside it's another thing to carry around and essentially only does one thing - view the web - you can't upload photos, download attachments etc. You also can't watch video online. There's also an argument to say that with more and more free WiFi springing up that soon it doesn't matter where you are, you'll still be able to go online. Also the mouse is controlled by cursor buttons (like the Nokia N95) which apparently can be a bit fiddly.

Having said all that, I still want one, it would have been the ideal solution to my holiday dilemma over Easter, you can take the internet with you, but don't have to cart your precious laptop around etc. I'll let you know if I buy one, hopefully it will be more successful than my solar powered mobile phone charger - which is frankly rubbish!

What I did on Tuesday*

On Tuesday I went to see ABCe in Berkhamstead. I turned up with the intention of talking about plans for NORAS 2009 and the current definitions of ABCe's new response metrics, but almost walked away dressed as a knight of the round table.

In an extraordinary twist of fate ABC (the Audit Bureau of Circulation) share the same address in Berkamstead with ABC Costume hire, you go upstairs for an audit, but into the basement for costume hire. There are lots of signs on the auditors' doors saying that if you're here to return fancy dress then please go downstairs, but despite that, the guys at ABCe say that about once a week they get someone coming in dressed in a gorilla suit, complaining that they can't undo the zip etc - fantastic! I wonder if all audits should be carried out whilst wearing fancy dress or if www.abc-costumes.co.uk needs an audit?

In the evening I spoke at a Haymarket Brand Media event looking at online recruitment at the Adam Street Club off the Strand. Although the room in the venue had the slight feel of an 'open mike' slot at a comedy club, I think that Guy from the IAB (who was also speaking) and I managed to deliver some real value - I tried to pull together elements from RIO, NORAS and How 'e' are you into one presentation for the first time, which seemed to work.

I managed to talk to Philip Smith after the event about social media, Twitter etc. He said that he'd heard a theory that people would only ever use 4 social media sites (if I remember correctly) - 1 for work, 1 for their demographic, 1 that represented a particular interest (football etc) and 1 that happened to be the fad of the moment. I can see a parellel in the use of social media and job boards. NORAS has tracked that the number of different job boards that people use declines over time as the market matures (from 7.0 in 2004 to 4.8 in 2008), maybe social media will be the same and as people get more familiar with the sites that work for them they'll start to screen out the less rewarding networking sites? Seems sensible.

*If I used Twitter I could have obviously updated you about Tuesday as it happened - 'I'm getting on the train, I'm getting off the train, I'm eating lunch, I'm doing my job etc' ;-)

Video killed the internet (star)

As Buggles so accurately predicted in 1979, video can cause problems for existing media channels and what was true for the radio star back then is true for the internet now.

This is best explained in this great Guardian article and also here. It seems that the infrastructure that we use to go online (copper wires in most cases) just wasn't built for the levels of data transfer that downloading videos / watching TV online requires. The trend for this type of online content has caused the bandwidth used online to grow exponentially over the last couple of years and as the Guardian reports in 2007 YouTube apparently took up as much bandwidth as the whole internet did in 2000.

The obvious risk of this is that the internet grinds to a halt and that however quick your broadband connection is supposed to be you will only ever achieve dial up speeds, making doing all the stuff we're used to doing online impossible. This could obviously also have a massive impact on government and business as well as individuals. The solution is to replace copper wires with fibre optic cables, but as BT say this could be up to 20 years away in the UK.

I wonder if we'll come to regard bandwidth in the way that we think about energy / green issues now? Don't use any unnecessary bandwidth, do you really need to watch that video again? Does the trend for mobile internet dongles help, after all surely data delivered to these connections is delivered through the air in a kind of magical way, rather than down a copper wire? There are some more articles here and here - I didn't go through the first one in 100% detail, but it uses the word 'Petabytes' which I hadn't heard before and sounds cool.

PS - Apologies for not blogging much recently, I've been shockingly busy, I always think the irony of business blogging is that you probably have most to say when you have the least time to say it.

PPS - Typepad has changed, the good news is that links now open in new windows, the bad news is that it seems strange and clunky, I imagine we'll all get used to it?

If Facebook was real life

This wouldn't be an online recruitment blog if it didn't have an embedded video in it, so here it is, thanks to Mathew for sending this to me.

Great online jokes of our time - number 19

Did you hear the one about MultiMap? Apparently their business is at a crossroads.

Still, they're doing better than StreetMap, I heard that they lack direction.

I'm available for weddings, bar mitzvahs etc. Could be ideal if you want a presentation that combines the latest UK online recruitment stats with a range of awful internet / online recruitment jokes.

Viva El Fulham!

Forgive me this non-recruitment post, but yesterday was an emotional day. I've got Sky Sports, but don't have Setanta, so chose to listen to Fulham away at Portsmouth on Radio Five Live Sports Extra in a garden decorated with black and white balloons and streamers. I'm sure anyone who's been through a similar experience will agree that there's nothing quite as tense as listening to such an important game on the radio. A magnificent result. I put it down mostly to the fact that I was wearing my lucky Barry Hayles T-shirt from Cult Zeros, oh and well done to Danny Murphy, Roy Hodgson and everyone at Fulham. Now, back to work.