The other day I was contacted by a researcher, who wanted my opinions on Blogging, on behalf of a leading recruitment magazine, the questions were as follows:

1. Why do I Blog

2. What do I get out of it

3. And did I think there was a future for more companies to include Blogs in their websites.

My initial reaction was off the cuff; as a result I thought I would take time out to put my thoughts to paper/blogroll!!

So why do I Blog, I stumbled here a little as I am sure he would have loved me to say for the love of it, to pass on some knowledge to other recruitment consultants etc, but I would have been a hypocrite although in essences it is true although it wasn’t the initial motivation, that was to earn a second income!

The funny thing is, having started with a free Blog on www.blogger.com I slowly became hooked and as a result it was the passion for my love of the job that has motivated me. This desire to help other recruitment consultants in a less formal style, while having a bit of fun at the same time has been an eye-opener. Once I realised people were actually reading what I wrote, I decided to take this more seriously, even though my writing skills are not necessarily the best. As a result I decided to take my own domain www.recruitment-views.com and treat this Blogging as a serious endeavor.

Having now concentrated on regular entries the second question was answered what do I get out of Blogging? The most obvious was to have been offered the UK Sales Managers role at Arithon, not completely as a result of the Blog but a major influence. Also the a couple of thousand visits per month, and growing is motivation enough with a number of registered readers means I have a responsibility to ensure it is updated on a regular basis with good quality contact. A huge benefit that I didn’t expect was the community feel from other Bloggers, some of whom are on my Blog roll. In addition having read other Blogs and reading the various forums within the recruitment industry I have become more aware of the diversity and the new technology available in our market giving me a wider perspective.

So the big question “do I think more recruitment companies will use Blogs as part of their marketing mix” a difficult one to answer as it takes a lot of time to continually give your Blog the work it requires, a Blog that hasn’t been updated for months is worse than having no Blog at all.

So why should a recruitment company have a corporate Blog, on reflection you really need to read it from a candidate or clients point of view because a Blog puts across a less formal representation of a company and can be a truer insight on the workings of an organisation. Probably one of the most famous is http://scobleizer.wordpress.com which has become the face of Microsoft rather than the corporate image.

Because a Blog is like a diary it actually turns your site into almost a living identity and the knock on benefit and for that matter the commercial reason for having a Blog, Google and the search engines love Blogs, and as a result will score you higher in search engines, which of course will reflect in more candidates and clients, but don’t forget the recruitment consultant who is looking for a change your Blog will give you the opportunity to show the other non corporate side of your agency.

Looking further and how this will develop it is almost scary with so many people having a web presence, companies are now taking advantage of this by giving more tools to help clients and agencies find prospective candidates.

A recent addition to this arsenal for recruiters is linkedin is an interesting example where individuals can be grouped together, based on who they know so when it comes to vacancies it is all about who knows who. Zoominfo is an amazing piece of software where it will search the Internet for people contacts and experience, by taking info from the net or article you published or even your Blog, it then takes this info and presents it into a contact list in a useable and manageable format.

One of the things that I am beginning to hear more and more about is passive candidates and how to attract them, what is interesting is a company called Jobster offer as part of their package a system where they can attract passive candidates, where client job offerings appear on relevant Blogs or websites attracting relevant candidates who may not necessarily be looking i.e. Recruitment Consultant vacancies on a recruitment Blog!!

The most scary aspect of this is with many of us having personal Blogs listed on Blogger and Myspace consultants and companies can now find more intermit information on prospective candidates, so don’t be surprised if candidates fail at the last hurdle because of their Blog!!

Tags: recruitment, recruitment blogs, passive candidates

Powered by Qumana