Article
Two: Job Board Review: Recruitment Careers by Russell Murch
This month sees me talking with John Bult of Recruitment Careers
(www.recruitmentcareers.co.uk)
Q: What was the inspiration behind the site?
There is a pattern here. Originally we were managers within the pharmaceutical industry and received poor service from recruitment companies. We decided to set up an agency ourselves in pharmaceuticals.
After 4 years we became frustrated with the performance of jobs boards and felt there were some common flaws in all jobs boards, so we decided to set up our own in pharmaceuticals. It was so successful after 4 months we decided to build a portfolio; we launched recruitmentcareers.co.uk based upon the same principles, and now have up to 20 sectors in our sites.
Q: What identifies recruitmentcareers from other job sites?
I wouldn't want to give all our secrets away :but one key thing is that the site prevents agencies from 'drowning' the site with vacancies, (ie many duplicates placed to scoop larger shares of traffic). Many jobs boards allow an unlimited vacancy option which can cause a string of problems and results in sites carrying many thousands of jobs, one advert posted then becomes a drop in the ocean. Our site is structured such that each job is a genuine stand alone job, and the total numbers on the site will be hundreds not thousands giving individual adverts a much better chance of impact.
Q: The site was launching in Jan 06, how much of a success has it been to date?
Very successful. The amount of traffic and numbers of applicants continues to rise, and due to the way it's marketed, it's highly targeted traffic rather than raw numbers. We are signing new clients consistently and those who have signed up continue to report good results in terms of placements made.
Q: Are there any geographic/sector boundaries?
At present, the site is focused within the UK although there's no reason we couldn't take it abroad in time.
Q: What do you feel could be added to the site to make it even better?
Nothing really, we've tried to keep it simple for both clients and candidates...so far seems so good We keep talking to the users of the site. Ultimately if the customers give us some ideas to improve it we're all ears!
RM summary:
My first impressions of this job site were that it had an excessive use of rounded corners and green with some of the surrounding boxes putting it off balance and making it a little difficult to know where to look first.
The use of the Google ads on the base of the home page is a little off putting for me as it has pangs of somebody attempting an Search Engine Optimisation campaign without too much thought being put in.
Anyhow those were my first impressions, once I began to look at the site from a candidates angle, all that was put to one side as I quickly realised there was good deal of effort put into making this a job site that is focused on job seekers and giving them as much detail and advice as is possible. I particularly like the job application where it is possible to contact the employer directly without having to go through a covert operation to apply.
I like the directory and links section, which is very informative and focused for the main part.
From a recruiter prospective, it is great to be able to see the advertising costs before signing up with the auto keyword submission for finding candidates matching your chosen criteria.
Overall I would say the site has good focus on its intended audience with some great functionality for recruiters and candidates.
Russell Murch is a director of RPM Solutions (UK) Limited. RPM Solutions offer an extensive range of web services from design packages to full web site builds and management all year round. For more information
visit http://www.rpm-solutions.co.uk/
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