Posts Tagged ‘Recruitment’
Digital skills crisis: we need industry-level collaboration
February 22nd, 2008
As with nearly every organisation in the digital media sector, recruitment is an ongoing issue for Liberate Media. Actually, let me rephrase that, finding the right candidate is an ongoing issue.
We’ve tried adverts, using our network of contacts, various social recruitment techniques - Facebook, Twitter, blogging etc and now even recruitment agencies to find the best people. We’ve managed to overcome the issue and secure some strong candidates, but it hasn’t been easy or quick. So the problem remains, how do you find reliable candidates quickly? Is it even possible?
What if, we as an industry were to stop fighting over the best candidates and start sharing them? For example, if I come across a really strong candidate but one that isn’t suitable for a role we are looking at, I recommend this individual through the recruitment network to those agencies (PR/digital/or otherwise) who are after the relevant position. It’s a collaborative recruitment network, and benefits both the candidates and the recruiters.
This is still an idea in formation but I wanted to put it out there and see what people thought. But first a few points of confirmation:
- I don’t mean a network run by a recruitment agency
- I don’t mean a network/alliance of recruitment agencies
- I don’t mean a paid service
- I don’t mean a job site or an advertising platform
I mean an agreement between digital media companies to share and recommend candidates, across some sort of social media network. If they’re not relevant to you, but think they have the attributes to succeed - share and share alike.
So what do we think? Has it been done? Could it work? Let me know your thoughts and following feedback, I’ll do my best to drum up support and see where this could lead us.
Chinwag: Fishing in the digital media recruitment pond
January 30th, 2008
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.