Chinwag: Fishing in the digital media recruitment pond
January 30th, 2008 by Lloyd Gofton
Or should i say puddle…
Some of the Liberate Media team went down to Chinwag last night to get to grips with the digital media skills emergency and it seems the problem maybe worse than we had first suspected.
Sam Michel, Chinwag’s Founder and MD, kicked off the evening by sharing the results of the Chinwag skills survey, with some rather alarming stats such as ‘97% of digital media organisations find it difficult or impossible to attract digital people’…Ouch, and i’m afraid the outlook didn’t get much brighter.
There were many good points raised on the evening both from the panel and the floor as to why this is occuring, so i’ve summarised my top three below:
- The digital industry cannibalises itself, especially in our recruitment. We don’t look to other industries to recruit and we don’t think of transferable skills. This means an ever shrinking pool of talent is being sucked dry by an ever increasing roster of potential employers. Simple demand and supply.
- There is a lack of training and education for those wanting to get into the industry. Academic media courses are, in the main, run by those without specialist digital knowledge, so the graduates that are coming out simply aren’t up to the job. And even if the courses are up to scratch the industry changes so fast that within the three years taken to complete a course, the teachings are out of date.
- There is no body, force or will to face these issues head-on and promote the industry to other sectors, or - God forbid, make it seem an interesting and worthwhile place to aspire to be. Last night there were calls for a digital media recruitment body, calls for the IAB to step in and calls for help from just about everyone - even the recruitment agencies.
Add this to the issues of no time to recruit and according to Matt Alder, head of digital at Barkers, only 10% of digital jobs actually being advertised, and you can soon see why we’re in this mess.
For me, the problem is routed in the issue that the digital media industry doesn’t look, recruit or even engage outside of the industry, which is shocking - yet obvious when you think about it. We are insular beyond belief; other industries promote themselves and flutter their eye lashes at potential employees without a second thought, so why should we expect our industry to continue growing without some investment in people.
Why shouldn’t we look at transferable skills? Some already do and at Liberate we’ve already looked outside of the industry to recruit, and the results have been both eye-opening and rewarding. Having a new perspective on the industry is very powerful.
The time for procrastination and blame has passed. In times of crisis only action will turn the problem around, and we’re going to have to make some serious changes to open ourselves up to the type of candidates we want. In Liberate’s cases that’s - senior and experienced digital communicators, just in case you were wondering!
We’ve already got a plan in place and you’ll be seeing the fruits of our labour both on our site and reported via our blog. We are going to be embracing digital marketing to assist our recruitment targets and doing what we do best, which is communicating and driving results.
Watch this space.
Tags: chinwag, Digital media, liberate media, Recruitment
January 31st, 2008 at 9:13 am
Great summary Lloyd. I agree with you wholeheartedly about the time for blame being over.
There’s lots that individual companies can do, and it’s high time the ‘industry’ as a whole started positioning itself as an attractive environment to work in. After all, for those of us in it, we know how fantastic it can be.
Are Liberate doing any workplacements? We’d love to hear about them at Chinwag, if you are.
January 31st, 2008 at 9:56 am
Thanks Sam, good to hear from you.
We’re not really set up for work placements, but we’re certainly looking at transferable skills and other sectors for potential hires. We’ve already had one very successful switchover and we have an open mind when it comes to recruitment.
We’d love to get involved in the debate further, especially in relation to raising awareness around the issue of digital skills. I would be happy to pick up the conversation with you if useful?