UK Recruitment Blog of the Year – Winner 2010

So the final scores are in! 
 
This year's blog awards are a joint effort of organisation and judging. In previous years I've run these awards to showcase the best recruitment focussed blogs in the UK.  Last year I created a shortlist (actually I think there were about 20 sites which must make it a longlist) and then people voted for the one they thought was the best.  However, this year we have just looked at actual practicing recruiters and as I mention above we've "judged" rather than take votes.  The judging panel consisted of me, Andy Headworth and Peter Gold (Peter and Andy have been highly ranked in our blog awards over the past three years).
 
In case you missed it, the criteria for nomination was:
i) the blogger has to be an active recruiter
ii) the blogger has to have posted something on their blog in the past 3 weeks
iii) The blog has been around for at least six months

In-house as well as agency bloggers were welcome.

We had 26 nominations – only 11 of which met criteria. 

The criteria we used to judge included…..

– Quality of writing (is it interesting/engaging, no typos, do posts finish with a call to action, etc)
– Volume of posts
– Blog design (descriptive blog name, picture of blogger to engage readers, easy navigation, clear explanation of purpose, etc)
– Post content (do they include text, images and video)
– About the Blogger Page (links to Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, contact, details, enough "about me" information)
– Sign-up options

Peter (who helped put the criteria together) has said that he will write a blog post further down the line on why all of these go towards making a successful blog.

So, onto the winners….we've decided to share the top five Recruitment Blogs as well as our overall winner

The winner of Recruitment Blog of 2010 is…..  The Recruiters Little Black Book 

The other superb blogs that made the top five are:

ScrivRec written by Ed Scrivener 
T Recs written by Mervyn Dinnen
Mr Resourceful written by Nick Tomlinson
The Human Face of Recruitment written by Martin Dangerfield 

The Recruiters Little Black Book is written by Lee Cooper.  According to his "about us" page: Lee is an "Executive Recruiter who specialises in transforming lives through sourcing the business critical boardroom talent that enables people and organisations to realise their ambitions."  
 
Over the next few week's I shall be featuring each of these sites in our "Pick of the Blogs" feature. 
 
Andy has asked me to add his comments on the awards here:
 
When Louise asked me to help her judge the 2010 Recruitment Blog awards, I looked forward to reading through and studying all the nominated blogs. I was hoping to see some quality UK recruitment blogs that I wasn't previously aware of.

Blogs are  very subjective, and subsequently what looks good for one person will not for the next. Personally, overall I was left feeling a little disappointed with many of the blogs I reviewed. Not because of the blog content itself, but because the 'owners' had not taken the time to actually look at everything else on their blog.

What I mean are things like, layout, contact details, bio's (a crime not to have one!), social media contact details (as well as normal ones), RSS feeds, the addition of images or video or generally considering what the readers may want.

The UK recruitment blogging space is still in the early stages (surprisingly), but it was great to see so many already writing blogs.

So onto the winner. Well done to Lee Cooper as he was our unanimous winner. He writes good relevant content (maybe a bit more often would be great) and has a well organised and easy to navigate blog. Keep up the good work Lee!

There were some notable blogs that we didn't include, because they were multi-authored, and maybe next year we should have a separate category for those.

As an aside, if any of the nominees want a quick critique of their blog and some constructive feedback, then I would be happy to oblige (as I am sure Peter would as well).  You can email us at andy.headworth@sironaconsulting.com and petergold@hirestrategies.co.uk.

 

Big thanks again to Peter and Andy (both whom any aspiring blogger could learn a lot from) and massive congratulations to Lee, and to our other finalists. If you are cross your blog didn't get a look in feel free to comment here and you could end up in "pick of the blogs" or as next year's UK Recruitment Blog of the Year!