CONTENTS

• Weekly Tips (UK Recruiter Poll)
• Article One (Xobni for Dummies by Dan Atkinson)
• Opinion Piece (Bill Radin’s article “Retained Search be careful what you wish for” by Bill Boorman)
• Online Recruitment Update (Hitwise Top 10 Recruitment Sites - Louise's UK Recruiter Blog - Discussion Board Summary - Vacancies from UKRecruiterJobs)
• Don't Miss This (UK Recruiter Networking Event - PR: HotLizard’s client base continues to grow with a new partnership with Walker Dendle - PR: Enhance Media announced today the completion of its acquisition by Giles Guest - PR: Thinking Beyond Twitter for Recruitment - PR: Oxford Software are pleased to announce that Tempaid, the UK’s leading specialist temporary payroll and billing software, has been accredited with the highly regarded HMRC Payroll Standard.)
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• Feedback & Advertising Information

Visit http://www.ukrecruiterjobs.co.uk for the latest recruitment industry jobs.

Weekly Tips

UK Recruiter Poll -  This week we are asking....

Clients stealing candidates - how would you respond?   You can answer the poll here. We'll provide the results in a future newsletter.  

Why not submit your 3 favourite web sites. See the guidelines at http://www.ukrecruiter.co.uk/articles.htm

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Article One:  Xobni for Dummies by Dan Atkinson

What is it?
Xobni is a free add-on for Microsoft Outlook that dramatically changes how you work with your email

Where does the name come from?
Its inbox spelt backwards

What does it do (in no particular order)?
• It keeps a track of every email interaction you have
• It builds up a picture of the email conversations you have so you can go back and rapidly find information out
• It keeps a record of all the files sent between you and another contact
• It pulls contact information from your email correspondence so you can rapidly contact them (even with in-built Skype if you want)
• It contains some really cool analytic tools so that you can track email interactions by day, time to respond, frequency, average follow up time and more
• It aggregates mail sender information so that you can immediately see a snapshot of the email sender’s LinkedIn and Facebook profiles (security permitting). It also gives you information about their company from company information source Hoovers when available

My Facebook info appearing on someone’s Outlook? Should I be worried?
Depends how you secure your personal information – if you’ve not secured your Facebook news streams and picture settings then users may see more of you than you intended them to. Candidates should be particularly wary of this when emailing CVs out.

Do you work for them?
No, I just feel like taking credit for being one of the first people to find something great and sharing it as an early adopter.  But I'm the sort of person that only gets excited about something if its linked to something I've heard of In that case, Microsoft, Cisco and several others have all been muted as potential suitors but these guys are still private... for now.

Still not excited. Spell it out for me please
With this Outlook plugin you can find out all about people the second they email you without having to trudge around on the Web checking them or their company out. When someone calls you to discuss an email you can find it in seconds. If you want to know what the contact you’re meeting looks like Xobni will often have the answer. As a recruiter, when a client or candidate calls you can instantly bring up every email interaction you’ve had with them. What was sent, what was received, what time it happened…

Is it that important?
Put it this way, I’ve been using the internet since Yahoo was a hand crafted list of what’s new and what’s cool sites and Mosaic was the hip new browser. Here’s my statement. Xobni is as important a step in the management of email and the aggregation of social network information as Google was to the advancement of search engines.  Get it at www.xobni.com

Dan Atkinson is a Director of Accite Ltd, a research support services organisation with the sole aim of being synonymous with research for executive recruiters. He can be contacted on 01423 565 999 or email dan@accite.co.uk. Twitter: Accite

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Opinion Piece - Response to Bill Radin's Article "Retained Search be careful what you wish for" by Bill Boorman

Not wishing to be controversial however, I found Bill Radin’s article “Retained Search be careful what you wish for” in the last edition of the UK Recruiter to be somewhat dated. Over the last twelve months I have been working closely with a number of recruitment companies on introducing a retained service alongside their usual contingency offering with some significant successes. This has provided a source of guaranteed fee income which has helped carry them through difficult trading periods and I would recommend that all recruitment companies look to introduce this offering during these times.

The biggest myth in retained recruitment is that it is attractive only to clients recruiting at a senior or high salary level. We have found that the retained service works well at all levels from customer service to chief executive, and some of the most successful retained recruiters have worked at the lower end of the market. The service is quite an easy sell with the following benefits:

1. Average success rates for retained recruitment are 85% as opposed to an industry average success ration of 20%.
2. The client receives a guaranteed level of service via an SLA based on dedicated time solely to their assignment, recruitment methods and approaches 
3. We have changed the fee structure to make the overall cost of recruiting cheaper via retained against contingency costs and have extended the guarantee period offering greater value (much sought after in this market)

I would agree with Bill’s point that an open ended commitment of your time is a big risk which is why I advocate the use of a two way service level agreement with a fixed time line. This clearly lays out what the client is paying for and what their expectation should be in return for the first two payments.

The key here is understanding the fundamental difference between retained and contingency. Put simply, contingency is payment for results only whereas retained is payment for time and expertise. The reality is the more dedicated service inevitably brings greater results. 

The way in which we have been able to make this option more attractive to existing and new clients has been by introducing spread payments for up to five months by direct debit on a fixed date. This has been attractive to the clients for obvious reasons whilst being attractive to the recruitment companies as they have been able to guarantee revenues during turbulent times, so much so that several of my clients have been able to open their recruitment book on day one of the month at a breakeven situation.

The traditional model is billed in three parts however, tough times call for creative thinking and we should be looking at everything we do, and then doing it better. Customers and applicants are now demanding a much more dedicated service where the emphasis is on quality of delivery rather than speed. This is the ideal vehicle to deliver what the market is demanding!

You can find more details on this and other good news subjects at the Good News Group (Recruiters) on Linked In.

I would be happy to discuss retained recruitment and its benefits to anyone interested as this forms a central part of the “Tin Hat Strategy” white paper which I have recently published. For more details please contact me bill@billboorman.co.uk 

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Online Recruitment Update

Hitwise top 10 Recruitment Sites, week ending 
The most visited UK recruitment sites last week, starting with the most popular, were www.jobcentreplus.gov.uk, www.jobs.nhs.uk, www.reed.co.uk, www.linkedin.com, www.totaljobs.co.uk, www.jobsite.co.uk, www.tes.co.uk, www.monster.co.uk, www.jobrapido.co.uk & jobs.guardian.co.uk. For more information about Hitwise, visit http://www.hitwise.co.uk

Louise's UK Recruiter blog
Since the last newsletter Louise has posted the following: 
- UK Recruiter Networking Event 18th June, London
- Candidate Overload?  Well it is the best job in the world
- Recruitment Tweeters
You can read Louise's UK Recruiter blog at http://ukrecruiter.typepad.com  You can keep up to date with other recruitment blogs from the UK via the UK Recruiter blog watch page at http://www.ukrecruiter.co.uk/blogs.htm.  

Discussion Board Summary
Don't forget to visit The Discussion Board. Current topics on the site include:
- Small Claims Court - Proof of introduction
- Winning more business and the recession
You do not need to be registered to post or view messages on the discussion board.  Visit the site, ask questions and share your knowledge.  

This section is sponsored by http://www.1Job.co.uk; "the leading UK job search engine"

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This guide will take you through the whole journey from being a complete novice and creating your basic Twitter profile through to methods of search, sourcing candidates, what to ‘Tweet’ and a host of information on how to utilise many other facilities.

To purchase the Twitter and our existing LinkedIn guides for only £4.99 each please visit the UK Recruiter Site.
 

Don't Miss This 

UK Recruiter - Recruitment Networking Event, 18th June, London
UK Recruiter announces its next Recruiter's Network evening. It will be taking place from 6pm on Thursday the 18th June, in central London. As usual we are taking bookings on a first come first served basis and it's free for recruiters to attend the event. Our sponsors for this event are VAT PAY, 1Job.co.uk, 1ntelligence Software and RIDA. They will be providing the first drink on the evening. We look forward to seeing you there, so please reserve your place by following the directions via this link http://recnet.eventbrite.com. If you need any further information email contact2@ukrecruiter.co.uk

HotLizard’s client base continues to grow with a new partnership with Walker Dendle
Kingston based recruitment agency Walker Dendle have decided to update their two websites as part of a new business development strategy and have appointed HotLizard as partners in the redesign and development. Walker Dendle were looking for a web partner who had the experience and technology to provide a robust platform to support their business investment and encourage company growth. Their two new websites, which will specialise in financial recruitment and technical recruitment, are to be launched later in 2009 and will feature functionality for candidates such as jobs by email and RSS as well as HotLizard’s enhanced Search Engine Optimisation.  For any questions about this Press Release please contact: Nicola Frazer-Reid at HotLizard Ltd on 01635 527900, nicola.frazer-reid@hotlizard.net

Enhance Media announced today the completion of its acquisition by Giles Guest.
Guest initially purchased Enhance Media in June 2008 and since then has worked with the company’s founders, Tim Elkington and Alastair Cartwright, on a number of high profile projects including an enormously successful annual online recruitment conference, growth of a link building and SEO business and the largest NORAS survey to date.  With the full acquisition completed on 31st March 2009 the company announced the departure of the two previous Directors. Commenting, former director Alastair Cartwright said “We’re proud of the market leading position we reached with Enhance and think that the sale and investment will enable the company to move forward and achieve many of its strategic, long term goals.“  For more information on the future of Enhance Media or NORAS, please contact Giles Guest on 01483 719020 or email giles.guest@enhancemedia.co.uk.

Thinking Beyond Twitter for Recruitment
With Twitter rapidly morphing into a mainstream, mass media, celebrity sensation, a new micro-blogging platform with a professional twist has launched. TribeHQ is the world's first purpose-built "micro-jobbing" / 'social recruiting' platform for people within the same occupational tribe (eg IT professionals, nurses, teachers, engineers, recruiters). Tribe members form alliances, share ideas and knowledge, and get close to the current issues and tribal buzz in their profession, both locally and globally. Members can converse directly with employers and ask questions about their work culture and job vacancies prior to applying.  For more information, please contact Paul Jacobs, Co-founder, TribeHQ on +64 274-892-662 or paul@tribehq.com www.tribehq.com

Oxford Software's Tempaid gets HMRC Payroll Standard accredidation.
Oxford Software are pleased to announce that Tempaid, the UK’s leading specialist temporary payroll and billing software, has been accredited with the highly regarded Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs Payroll Standard. Tempaid was subjected to a series of rigourous tests and was found to comply with all the legislative requirements that HMRC demand. Tempaid is the only recruitment specific payroll software to achieve this prestigious status.  Contact Oxford Software on 0845 1300 332 for more information.

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