» uk-netmarketing: roundup: 10-03-2000

Where have all the good employees gone?
UK-Netmarketing Weekly Round-up - March 10, 2000

What a week. Lastminute.com has to increase their IPO price in response to demand. There’s no clearer evidence of the boom than in the job pages of this fine publication. Finding good people though, appears to be harder than it might seem.

Al Fox asked for other subscribers’ recruitment experiences, "We wish to accelerate our recruitment drive and were wondering if anyone had any notable experiences in recruitment advertising of late."

Nikki Pilkington was first back, suggesting, "Try www.gisajob.com - it's free! If you want to make a bigger splash there are paid options - but whenever I want new staff I use their free service and fill the vacancy within a week or so!" Chetan Damani also had some suggestions, "The Guardian seems to work well for designers, we received about 100 applicants for a Web design job, that we advertised for one of our clients. NMA gave a good response for Account Managers/Business development roles. Computing/Computer Weekly are really good for the tech people, and Jobserve.com is also good for tech people."

Stewart Dean added, "UKNM-jobs...has had a mild success. There is a biiiig shortage of good people at the moment (and too many bad people). We're planning some more direct methods to find the big brains out there." Ben Scott-Robinson outlined a more dramatic approach, "We've taken to tertiary colleges and gazzumping agencies..." Chetan Damani went one better, emailing, "Another good [tried] and tested way to get people quick, is to buy a company as used by USweb and others"

Hiring permanent staff isn’t the only solution to the problem. Ian Fenn pointed out, "I think a lot of good people actually freelance, but a lot of companies are inflexible, wanting full-time staffers." Dan Winchester added, "Agreed! Good money...Choose your own hours...New challenges. Churn rate is so high in [new media], many people are freelancing in all but name anyway..."

Perhaps the problem lies with the employers trying to recruitment highly experienced generalists who simply don’t exist. Stewart Dean shared his experience, "The thing I found…is often companies have no idea what the job roles really is for the people they're hiring. The whole producer/project manager/account manager/office manager/creative director thing leads to much tension in many new media companies from my experience. Some have got it pegged - and some have realised many of these roles, taken from an advertising/design agency model, don't work for new media. Maybe this is an age-old problem but I see jobs in UKNM which just appear to be 'help us - we're doing web stuff' with a very very vague 'do everything' type description. For small companies I understand jack of all trades are needed - but that thinking doesn't scale in my view."

Could the scarcity of quality candidates be causing employers to jump at people who are ‘all mouth and no trousers’? Glenn Collins seemed to share this view, "we're in the middle of a big recruitment drive and its astonishing how there seems to be little relation between someone’s salary and how good they are. People will pay huge bucks just because a candidate can talk the talk." However, he suggested some steps to improve the situation, "We have recently introduced a formal training scheme for junior joiners with great effect and will continue to do so. I would like to say it's because we want to give something back to the industry, but the commercial truth is it simply works and gives us quality staff who are not afraid of a bit of hard work where needed. If someone’s enthusiastic about new media and is bright then that's probably the best two qualifications they can have."

Chris Garrett added, "What I tend to look for is enthusiasm, then experience, followed by what clients they have worked with. Qualifications are not high on my list. Having said that, I have heard that Unis have started running new media specific courses, anybody any experience of these? Any good?"

Billy Hasirci responded, "What I found, in a recent hunt for a designer, is that students seem to be being taught by the fall out from the CD-ROM generation...When I asked them what they wanted career wise, I got the answer: ‘I'm gonna take a couple of years out to concentrate on my concept work’. The reason that students don't understand new media is their lecturers don't understand new media. And why should they, that's our job. The only solution is for the industry to get closer to the students. Ask to lecture at universities, invite placements, set projects."

He continued, "This gold rush we are experiencing is going to attract chancer 'Jack of all trades'. By inviting placements you are guaranteeing (hopefully) a level of knowledge in that discipline (even if it is not tuned to new media). You can learn HTML in a week but that does not make you a designer, you need that core skill. I am a firm believer in work placements (it was how I started out). Money doesn't seem to be the driving force for most designers I have spoken to (no honestly), it's the learning experience. Spending a few months on a work placement, gave me a drive and a focus for my final year.... Oh and I also got a job on the back of it."

Ian Tester agreed on the need for vocational training, he emailed "Placements are an excellent thing, and really help your business. We've got a scheme here...where we pay a salary similar to other blue chips, and the guys and girls rotate between departments to gain a good overview of the business. We in turn get a lot of very smart people who in a few years are pretty perfect - they've worked in every department, so they understand the technology *and* the business."

Of course if none of this works, you could use the latest Silicon Valley ruse to lure new staff to your company. As Briony Pope pointed out joining a company or finding them recruits could net you a Z3 or even a Ferrari!

The noise from the collective PR departments of the ISPs (and others) ‘going free’ was deafening. Members of the list met the news with a certain degree of scepticism.

Lee Rickler emailed, "Firstly how much is this free service gonna cost? Around £30 to join then between £10 and £20 a year. Right ... so it's not free then? Meanwhile AV's servers constantly crash and a statement will be released stating that they ‘didn't realise the full demand that such an amazing offer would attract’". Lee went on to highlight a couple of issues, "When is labelling something as free then charging for it not illegal How come that AV are saying that this is the first time fully free access has been available in this country when AOL did something on the same scale just recently, let alone X-stream and all the others."

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