I was sent this press release from the IOR on Monday (I’m sure you’ll have seen it already so I won’t include the whole thing)
IOR ‘big fish’ deal for SME recruitment agencies swimming against tide
SMALL and medium-sized recruitment agencies can now “swim with the big boys” – thanks to a ground-breaking deal brokered by the Institute of Recruiters-IOR.
The fastest growing membership body for recruiters has struck the value-for-money agreement with two of the UK’s biggest job boards – reed.co.uk and Jobsite.
The project’s partners from across Britain have pooled their collective resources to create a plan that brings hugely discounted advertising rates for the IOR’s growing membership of recruiters and HR professionals. Simplicity has provided financial services and played a key part in the initiative.
And the not-for-profit IOR is confident this initiative will “change the landscape” for the industry.
Azmat sent me a separate email saying he feels this is a “game changer” and actually very kindly gave me a personal quote
It’s very difficult to manage cash flow in a small agency, and you need to do a good job for your client to stay in business. So when faced with the dilemma of where to place adverts – which often need to be premium adverts (in order to get a good response) – it’s a tough choice when these adverts cost so much on the different job boards. What we are now doing is opening up these job boards at much more accessible rates to IOR agency members. These rates will make a huge difference and everybody wins. When you see agencies struggle or go out of business its often down to the same issue that hurts businesses in all sectors, cash flow. And this deal does 2 things, 1) It gives you high quality advertising at lower rates, making you more likely to find the right person for your client and 2) It allows you to do this in places where cost was previously a barrier. So the candidate never benefits, the client does not, the job board does not and nor does the recruiter. The market is changing and this deal can help the recruitment ecosystem that is being attacked from all angles. This is good news for recruiters, very good news.
So, what I’m wondering is this
a) Would YOU join the IOR (£249 a year) just for the benefit of this discount?
and
b) why haven’t the REC or APSCo done this already (TEAM do!)…..
Game-changer? Really? Well, it’s nothing new. As you say, TEAM have done this for years, and I did it with my Cloud Nine Recruitment Group, in fact it was a primary purpose of that collective we created. Open communication on my part with the Job boards led to good understanding and a logical outcome.
It’s a good idea – but it’s not a gamechanger.
I remain indifferent about the IOR, for as long as they continue to package things that other people have already done, and position them as their great new idea.
Gamechanger. NO. Purposeful and Useful. YES.
I applaud them for doing it, just be honest – that it was somebody else’s idea.
Steve’s right. I think the IOR definitely need some help in how they market themselves.
“Ground-breaking”, “gamechanging”, “change the landscape” of the industry……we’re talking about a consolidated advertising deal for a couple of generalist job boards. Group advertising deals have happened plenty of times before as Steve has mentioned and have done for years. The use of the kind of rhetoric seen above is wildly misplaced.
I suppose there’s something of the `so what` about it. A massive organisation like IOR can only structure something, as Jack says, with a couple of generalist boards. My tiny Cloud Nine Group with 25-30 UK-wide members negotiated such a deal with Jobsite, Monster, Reed, Total Jobs and CV Library – then created an arrangement with Idibu for multi-posting – plus a couple of specialist boards.
If we want an organisation to represent our industry and work really hard for the small guys, which I hope IOR will do, then they need to work harder to create better and more sound options that turn heads. At the moment, my poxy little defunct network still provided a better deal than these guys have achieved.
I’m desperately trying NOT to be negative about the IOR – I’ve been there, done that, t-shirt, etc, etc – but this is another example of misplaced PR.
Steve. Massive organisation? Turnover of 57k last year? Bloke calling himself Director General of it? Absolutely, categorically hilarious. Move along, nothing to see here.
Amd as for his mate James Caan tweeting that a bog standard advertising deal is ground breaking…….almost as insightful as his “LinkedIn” piece in the Standard.
How about we look at industry heroes? Smeaton, Znowski & Flynn, Flaherty, Leyshon, Chhetry & Connelly, McClory, Clements, Wilcox, Lloyd, Parsons, Whomes…….maybe you can do a piece on people that have actually achieved something we can all aspire to rather than give complete amateurs a mouthpiece. Happy to debate this in public.