I was at the onrec conference in London yesterday. I managed to catch quite a few of the presentations (I plan to write about them in a later post) and chat with a lot of the exhibitors.
As usual it was great to see some old friends (including Dan, Ricky and Tarah from Broadbean, Lee from CV-Library, David Morgan from Jobmate and Matthew Dewstowe from Innovantage) as well as meet up with people I’ve only ever talked to on the phone or by email (including Lisette Howard from HireScores and Rebecca Cole from CanaryWharfJobs). I also made some great new contacts (who I won’t attempt to name drop in case I miss someone off!).
As part of my ongoing research into recruitment industry branding (for branding read “freebies”) I picked up a few examples. I think that Careerbuilder and Hotonline had the best offerings. Careerbuilder were giving away jellybelly beans in a lovely silver case AND cute orange stick on clocks (although neither of these were linked in any obvious way to their brand). However, Hotonline had a great freebie and a good tie in. They had linking magnetic toys which fitted in with their literature which carried the strap line “get connected”. My only complaint is that, according to my son, I didn’t bring enough little magnetic bits home!
Also on offer were the lovely sport beans from Broadbean (in a horrifying blue colour), memory sticks from Daxtra and LocalRecruit, post it notes, pens and mousemats from Monster (although no cuddly monster toys this time unfortunately), breath mints and pens from eFinancialCareers and post it notes, pens and a handy phone holder from Remedy HCMS.
I had a slightly amusing moment on the jobcentreplus stand. I asked who their marketing contact is and was told she couldn’t give me a name and to send an email via the “contact us” button the site (honestly, I wasn’t trying to sell them advertising). Then, she couldn’t actually show me where to click the button as her mouse wasn’t working! When someone is exhibiting at a conference you expect them to show an interest in engaging with you and normally they are keen as mustard to hand over business cards!
All in all I had a good day. I will formulate my thoughts on the conference and post relevant and interesting summaries here as soon as possible.
Hi Louise, nice blog, I wend along yesterday and had a very useful day, good to see https://ukrecruiter.co.uk there too !
Patrick
It was a good show, lots of interesting new things, I also got a phone holder from remedy and started using their recruitment software at http://www.chameleoni.com today, seems pretty good!