By James Staunton – Wriglesworth Consultancy

Executive pay has suddenly become a very public, very controversial issue.  We’ve come a long way since Peter Mandelson declared New Labour was intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich.  The Labour party, the Lib Dems – even the Tories – are getting stuck in.  The consensus seems to be that boardrooms need to get a handle on exec pay.

The question is what needs to happen.  Should workers decide pay levels?  Should the shareholders hold more sway than they do?  Should we scrap bonuses altogether – as Simon Jenkins advocates in The Guardian?  Or do we just need a more transparent system?

With executive pay still soaring, the politicians argue the market has been proven to be bust.

I can’t agree.

Pay may be very high.  Pay may be climbing.  But that doesn’t mean the market’s operating uncompetitively.  I think pay is still rising because remuneration has yet to climb to the market rate.

You need only look to the States to see what I mean.  John Browett, until recently the chief executive of Dixons Retail, who ran Currys and PC World, certainly did.  He has just been poached by Apple to run its global retail arm.

But I don’t think that’s the real threat.  There won’t be a massive exodus CEOs and top execs if pay levels fall, or if the opprobrium gets too bad because I don’t think many CEOs are that mobile.  It might get harder to woo executives in the first place certainly (who’d sign up to be CEO of RBS now?) but Mr Browett is the exception, not the rule.

If the level of executive pay is restricted, or if bonuses become harder to award, or the opprobrium attached to competitive pay-packets become too enormous, the real danger is that directors will move from UK quoted companies to private equity backed companies.  They will reward performance more effectively and therefore attract the best executives.  What’s more, they’ll pay them silently.  Because remuneration in private equity backed companies is less transparent than in UK listed companies.

According to research carried out by private equity search firm Directorbank and non-executive director head-hunter Hanson Green in a report Life in The Boardroom, the Chairmen of private equity backed companies are already paid 12% more than those in publicly listed companies.  It’s just the public can’t see that.

If I were Alistair Cox, CEO of Hays, and someone kicked up a storm over my bonus.  Or told me I could keep me 2011 salary (£630,000 since you ask) but I’d have to hand back my £634,000 bonus, I know I’d start looking at other options…

Back in November 2011, I wrote an article about the importance of publishing unique content on your website in view of Google’s ‘Panda’ update which was introduced to penalise duplicate and low quality content.
This week, Google announced another major updated called ‘Search, Plus Your World’ which aims to make search results more personalised. For example, if you search for a ‘wine bars in London’, you will see results from people in your social-sphere who might have written a review about a particular bar. The thinking behind this is that people place more trust in information from people they know as opposed to from the web in general. In fact, according to Nielson, 42% of people trust search results but 90% trust recommendations from friends. Naturally, Google will pull a lot of this information from its social media platform, so the circles in which you move on Google+ and, more importantly, the content you publish on there is going to play a significant role.
So, what does this mean for recruitment agencies?
Say, for example, your agency publishes an article called ‘10 Killer Interview Questions’. You share it amongst your ‘candidates’ circle. One of those candidates, let’s call her Emma, thinks it’s a great article and shares it amongst her ‘friends’ circle. Sophie (one of Emma’s friends) receives the article in her stream. She’s not looking for a job at the moment though so doesn’t bother reading it.
Three months later, Sophie decides she wants to look for a new job so searches on Google for ‘interview questions’. Due to the social connection which previously happened with Emma, your article will be given priority in Sophie’s search results. Sophie thinks ‘that article looks interesting’ and, hey presto, you have connected with a candidate who prior to the social sharing might never have happened upon your website.
Content wins again
As with the Panda update, content shinesonce again as the key influential factor. However, it’s not just about content that you want to share, the people in your circles must be inspired to share it too. It’s all about content that genuinely adds value to your readers ie. would Emma have shared the content amongst her friends circle if the article was about an award you had recently won? Probably not.

Michelle Hill
Marketing Manager
www.redrocketmedia.co.uk

I read on a daily basis that “2012 will be the year content explodes” and,naturally, I agree. Content marketing has been hotting-up throughout 2011, spurred massively by two significant updates to theGoogle algorithm:

1. 1.       Panda

This update was introduced to penalise websites which have duplicate or poor quality content and, as such, threw high quality, original content into the spotlight – see my previous post below for more on this.

1. 2.       Freshness Update

This update places greater emphasis on returning fresher web content for certain queries, such as recent events or hot topics.

Some recruitment agencies are already ahead of the field when it comes to creating content which adds value to candidates and clients. A couple of examples are Randstad CPE who regularly post industry news to their website http://www.randstadcpe.com/news/ and Red Commerce who have an active blog section on theirs http://www.redcommerce.com/blog/. Both are great examples of using commercially neutral content to educate and form trusting relationships with clients and candidates.

So, what is my advice for recruitment agencies wanting to stay ahead of the content game in2012?

TIP 1: WRITE CONTENT THAT ADDS REAL VALUE

Put your clients and candidates right at the heart of your content. Step into their shoes, understand what interests them or keeps them awake at night and provide well-written, credible content which will empower them to make their decisions. It could take the form of topic/industry-related news, blogs, how-to guides, white papers, videos, infographicsetc . Whatever form it takes, every time you publish some content, ask yourself:

• Does it add value to my clients and candidates?
• Is it interesting?
• Will they want to share it?
• Does it enhance my content portfolio?

If the answer to any of these is no, stop… revise and ask again. Oh and remember, before you publish, to make sure it’s optimised for the search engines, although, asGoogle itself stresses, never write for the search engines first, always write for your readers first.

TIP 2: INCREASE SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT

Focus on increasing engagement with clients and candidates and welcome them into your brand. Yes it’s great to have lots of fans and followers but don’t fixate on those numbers. Focus more on the number of re-tweets, shares and comments that your content sparks and interact with those conversations. Instead of saying ‘we want to reach 500 followers’, instead identify 10 or 20 companies that you’d like to have quality conversations with. Then, use your content to start conversations with them.

Get involved with other people’s content too. If you read a good article, write a comment at the bottom about why you thought it was good or offer additional points of value. This is a great way to develop relationships with authors and also increases awareness of your brand, which brings me on to tip 3…

TIP 3: FOCUS ON YOUR BRAND

Your brand is going to play a big role in 2012. The Panda update certainly emphasized how important a strong, credible brand is when it comes to your organic search rankings. Increasing awareness of your brand online and getting people talking (and writing) about it will not only enhance your authority with the search engines but can also establish your brand as a credible, industry authority.So how do you achieve this? By publishing great content (refer to tip 1), which people will engage with (refer to tip 2).
I hope 2012 is a good year for you all!

Michelle Hill
Marketing Manager
www.redrocketmedia.co.uk

The term Panda has been bandied around a lot these past few months and any recruitment agency with an online presence should take time to understand the impact this will have on their marketing.

‘Panda’ is the name given to Google’s search engine update, the objective of which is to penalise websites which obtain their content from ‘scraping’ other websites ie. copying content from other websites as opposed to creating their own unique content.  It came about due to the increasing number of companies (often referred to as content farms) which were publishing significant amounts of low quality content solely todrive traffic to their websites and increase online advertising revenues.

I’m sure you know plenty of examples off the top of your head; job boards whose spiders literally scour the internet for jobs and then post them on their own websites.  Normally you only find out about them when a candidate applies for one of your roles and you think ‘we don’t usually advertise on there do we?’ but hey at the end of the day they’ve provided you with a candidate you didn’t previously have so actually you don’t really mind that they’veused your content.

Why would you? After all, these websites are constantly ranking on page one of Google due to the frequency and amount of fresh content being loaded. Any recruitment agency struggling to rank on page one for job hunting terms (and that would be most of them) very soon realises that you simply can’t beat the job boards in the rankings, they have it all wrapped up!  So your only choice is to advertise on them and let the content scrapers freelyuse your content on their own websites.

A change is gonna come

However, the introduction of Panda spells bad news for the content scrapers. Google doesn’t like duplicate content and its new algorithm now penalises websites which scrape content from other websites by demoting them in the organic search rankings. On the flip side, the algorithm rewards websites with original content by ranking them higher up in the search results.

Whilst the algorithm is negatively affecting the content scrapers, it is naturally also going to have an impact on the recruitment agencies themselves who for so long have piggy backed on these job boards to take advantage of their page one rankings.  Whilst the original content on the recruitment agencies’ websites is untouched by the algorithm (providing of course that it is original content!), they are faced once again with the challenge of fighting for their own position on page one, that old head ache!

The importance of unique content has once again been thrust into the lime light. In an ideal world, every job description you publish should be bespoke to your agency so that when the Google algorithm goes off on its merry search to decide which agencies to return in its results, it doesn’t find duplicate content on another websites.

So how can you ensure that you don’t get hit by the Panda algorithm?

Unique

Always ensure that your job descriptions are unique; never copy and paste from other sources, including the job descriptions supplied by your clients. Most of your competitors will do this so writing bespoke job descriptions will set you aside from the majority.

Quality

Write high quality content without spelling mistakes or formatting issues.  ThePanda update includes technology that helps Google identify “quality” content, not just duplicate.  It uses artificial intelligence that is capable of learning what good quality content is versus low quality and it rewards the former with enhanced organic search results.It does this by determining a site’s trustworthiness, speed, overall design and various others measures of quality.You will,of course, also attract higher quality candidates.

Website Review

Google also says that visitor behaviour will be taken into account ie. if a visitor leaves quite quickly after arriving on your website, this could be a sign that the website isn’t adding any value to them.  By taking time to review your site, its design, structure and content, you will enhance your credibility with the search engines.

Think Bigger

Don’t limit your content to job descriptions. Think bigger and publish other unique content on your website such as industry news or blogs.  Not only will this position you as an expert in the industry but you will also increase your authority with the search engines who in turn will favour you in their search results.

All in all, the Panda algorithm isn’t a bad thing for recruitment agencies. For candidates searching for jobs online, it’s simply stripping away all the ‘noise’ and low quality websites which don’t necessarily add any value to them.   This presents a great opportunity for those recruitment agencies who are working hard to get their content strategies right as they are the ones which will come out on top.

Author:
Michelle Hill
Marketing Manager
www.redrocketmedia.co.uk

Unemployment in the United Kingdom hit a seventeen-year high recently, with “the youth” (as my grandmother would call them) hit the hardest.  Youth unemployment shot up to 721,000 — excluding full time students — representing 20% of 16-24 year olds.

That means our rate of youth unemployment is higher even than that of France.

This puts the government under serious pressure to curb unemployment.  But what can the employment minister, Chris Grayling, do?

Well, the government has not fully outlined its plan yet, but Grayling does have some ideas up his sleeve.  He has announced a plan to offer training, work experience, and a guaranteed interview to tens of thousands of unemployed people under-25 during the next two years.  He said the plan will match young people who are out-of-work with jobs in their local area at construction sites, hotels, supermarkets and shops.  According to Grayling, this will give young unemployed people the upper hand when employers are looking for vacancies to fill.

But as far as I can see, this is just tinkering around the edges.  If the government is serious about the issue, it needs to tackle three things.

The first is school.  In the developed world, the economic downturn has hit the employment prospects of low-qualified people harder than their more qualified counterparts.  The OECD says 84% if university graduates are in work, compared to 74% of those who did not go to university but studied beyond the minimum-school-leaving age and 56% of those who did neither.  Naturally, the British figures lag behind those of Sweden or Germany.  The government needs to tackle education, education, education.

Second, we need to cut red tape.  Not in a foggy way.  In a very real, slightly brutal way.  I say brutal because one man’s red tape is another man’s sensible employment protection.  If we’re being specific, we need to lift the burden on business of increased maternity rights, compulsory pensions, and the temporary workers’ directive.  And suddenly, when you look at it like that, cutting red-tape doesn’t seem so straight-forward.

But I think the last factor is the most controversial.  It’s the minimum wage.  Over the last two years, the minimum wage has risen by a 4.8%, much more than the 3.4% increase in average earnings.  As the Chairman of the Unquoted Companies Group, Roger Pedder, points out, it leads thousands of people to be excluded from the labour market.  Their services are priced too high.

James Staunton is Head of Recruitment PR at The Wriglesworth Consultancy

David Cameron wanted to recruit the United States’ most successful police officer, Bill Bratton, as the next commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. 

Smart move. 

Bratton is credited with cutting crime in New York by 27 per cent in his first two years in charge.  He’s the man responsible for reducing crime in Los Angeles after the riots in 1992.  And not only does Bratton have an excellent pedigree, he also indicated to No. 10 that he would accept the job if it was offered to him. 

But senior police officers blocked the appointment. 

“I’m not sure I want to learn about gangs from an area of America that has 400 of them,” Sir Hugh Orde, a leading candidate for the Met job, sniffed to The Independent on Sunday.

The rozzers didn’t like the idea of an outsider – an American, heaven forbid – working for the Met.  They wouldn’t let him to apply for the role.  Apparently, all the applicants had to be British.  The Met could not accept that in the long run, he could have been a great boon to the force (sorry, “service”).  After the riots in August, he seems like just the sort of chap we need in charge.

We all know the importance of cultural fit when it comes to finding the right candidate for the right role.  But in this instance, Cameron should have shown some strong leadership and rode roughshod over the wishes of the force.  This was the right man for the job.

If hired, Bratton could have brought new ideas and new strategies to London, as he had done in New York and Los Angeles. 

His experience, not his passport, should have governed the decision.

Over the coming few weeks, universities across the country will send yet another class of graduates off into the world.

These grads have been ill served by their elders.  They enter a bad job market, the hangover from almost 15 years of excessive borrowing.

They inherit a ruinous budget deficit and monstrous national debt that we are all having to pay back at the very time we need it most. 

More importantly, their lives have been perversely structured.  This year’s graduates are members of the most supervised generation in our history.  Throughout their childhoods and even during their time at uni, they have been monitored, tutored, coached, and honed to an unprecedented degree.

But on their graduation, they will enter a world that is unprecedentedly wide open and unstructured.  Most of them will not quickly get married, buy a home and have kids, as previous generations did.  Instead, they will confront amazingly diverse job markets, social landscapes, and lifestyle niches.  Most will spend a decade wandering from job to job and clique to clique, searching for a role.  Many will end up in recruitment.  When I left Exeter, I started off at PricewaterhouseCoopers, became a City analyst, and moved into reputation management before I found my niche in PR here at Wriglesworth.  That took a good 10 years.

No one would design a system of extreme supervision to prepare people for a decade of extreme openness.  But this is exactly what has emerged in modern Britain. 

University students are increasingly raised in an environment that demands one set of skills, and they are then cast out into a different environment requiring an entirely different set of skills, which they have to work out on their own.

On top of that, they are sent off into the world with an entirely inappropriate philosophy ringing in their ears.  Graduates are told to: follow your passion, chart your own course, march to the beat of your own drummer, follow your dreams, find yourself.  This is the litany of expressive individualism, which is still the dominant note in our culture.

It’s a misleading mantra.  Graduates are sent out into the world amid rapturous talk of limitless possibilities but this talk is of no help to the central business of adulthood — finding serious things to tie yourself down to.  The successful young adult is beginning to make sacred commitments — to a partner, a community and a calling — yet mostly hears about freedom and autonomy.

Finally, they are told to be independent-minded and to express their inner spirit.  But, of course, doing your job well often means suppressing yourself.  Your job probably involves working as part of a team, following the rules of the office, going down a regimented checklist.

It’s for these esoteric reasons that a university education strikes me as increasingly irrelevant although more prosaic factors point that way, too.

If you combine the fees, the loans, and the opportunity costs of not being in work for three years, the total cost of attending university adds up to somewhere in the region of £90,000. 

These abstract and practical factors have not gone unnoticed by the nation’s workforce – even the professions who might be expected to back higher education to the hilt.  Legal recruiter Laurence Simons, marketing recruiter EMR, and financial recruiter Mark Sattin (all part of the FiveTen Group) have recently polled candidates to see whether, given the total costs (both direct and indirect) they would attend university if they were leaving school today.  Only 50% of the lawyers, 40% of the accountants and 39% of marketers said ‘yes’ they definitely would.  You can read more about the research in the CityAM article here.

If British universities wish to remain relevant to school leavers, they will need to refocus their efforts and provide graduates with the skills they will need to navigate an increasingly diverse future.

James Staunton is Head of Recruitment PR at The Wriglesworth Consultancy

It’s time to get things started, it’s time to light the lights….With just two days to go to the second annual Recruitment Consultant Industry Awards, the nerves and the excitement is all starting to kick in. Now, I have had to write a presentation for this, have I got the tone right? Will I bore the pants off the audience? Well frankly yes and no. I am, after all, speaking to a room full to brimming with 350 experts, there is very little I could say to them that they don’t already know – aah, they don’t really know what it is like for the editors do they? They assume we are all in the pub or being dined at some fancy-schmancy West End eatery – they are right to some extent, and a wonderful industry it is for hospitality – but the day to day, the meat and bones, bread and butter. They don’t know about that do they. There is much humour in the journalism and publishing industry, with contributors getting particularly arsey when things don’t go their way, ‘handbags at dawn’ CEOs, shameful solipsism from PRs who have missed the deadline etc etc. But, well, some of them may be in the room, so what to talk about. My father’s best friend gave me some sage advice when I was a shy teenager – “as long as you are interesting and interested you will win over all souls” well I think he said “all souls”! There is such a diversity within the recruitment industry, old timers through to generation Zv2 or whatever the latest one is, so middle ground needs to be achieved, a mixture of high-brow factoids and base humour. Can you swear? Yeah – this is the recruitment industry that could often make Vinnie Jones blush after all. So for all those coming on Thursday, here is a request – you do the interested bit, and I will try and provide the interesting – middle gound achieved.