As we celebrate our 800th issue of the newsletter this week I thought I’d look back on how I’ve (and now Alex) have spent the last 18 years
Issue One – sent to around 20 people in January 1999
In the early days the newsletter was called the “Recruit Net Newsletter” and it came out once a fortnight. The site we looked at in the first issue was CVServe: (which doesn’t exist anymore). This was a recently launched CV Database and Job Board (in those days most sites were one or the other). There were apparently over 45,000 CVs registered in the database and agencies paid an annual fee of £1500 for access to the CV database and unlimited advertising on the vacancy part of the site. Vacancies advertised on CVServe were also placed in appropriate newsgroups (anyone remember them?!). If you placed one of your candidates with an organisation as a result of using this service a fee of £500 was payable to CVServe.
We also had the start of our long time “favourites” section even back in issue one and this week’s was the Shell RoutePlanner. Sadly this service no longer exists on the Shell site – if you’re looking for a good journey planner these days you just need Google!
Issue 100 – December 2002
This was our Christmas issue and we were feeling generous. We did a raffle to give away some great Christmas gifts. These included a Powerboat ride (from www.jobs-at.com), a mountain of Jaffa Cakes (from www.broadbean.co.uk), Gucci wallets (from www.lsmgroup.com) and Champagne (from www.ruellajames.com).
The websites we looked at in this issue were Google’s 2002 Year-End Zeitgeist and an assessment tool to assess your suitability to be Santa!
We also talked about our networking events. We ran our first one in May 2002 (at Harley’s in Holborn) – it was fully booked within days of us announcing it. In 2003 we ran one nearly event month. Moving from the small Holborn venue to Tiger Tiger in Piccadilly circus; with 200+ recruiters at some events. Now, in 2011 we run four different types of networking events (you can find out all about them at www.recruitmentnetworking.co.uk).
Another initiative we launched in 2002 was our discussion board which ran for many years. Topics on the site at the end of 2002 included “Candidates who let you down” …
Issue 200 – Early 2005
This newsletter is in the style that we maintained for 200 issues and by this stage it was being sent once a week.
This issue had our perennial “favourites” – which were 3 map sites (including Mutlimap!) and included two articles. Darren Revell of Attract Spider (which no longer exists) had written an article on “A Searching Strategy” and Lander Associates wrote about “Winning the Ongoing War for Talent”.
We’d also included the regular Hitwise Top 10 Recruitment Sites by this stage and this week’s top three were Jobcentreplus.gov.uk, Jobsite.co.uk and Totaljobs.co.uk. No LinkedIn in the top 10, never mind almost always at number one, in those days.
Issue 300 – Early 2007
After 299 issues we were still able to get 3 favourites websites each week (no mean feat collecting these I can tell you!). This week’s included a Beta version of Microsoft office, the Just-Food website (good for FMCG recruiters) and the MoneySavingExpert site.
Our articles were one from Louise Fernandes on Employment and the Law and one from James Chapman reviewing an HR conference (he first wrote for the newsletter back in 2002).
Topics on the discussion board back in issue 300 “Credit Checking vs Bad Debt”, “what do solo recruiters do about managing their business when going on holiday” and “Aggregator sites” (it was early days for jobs1.co.uk and ClickAJob).
Issue 400 – Easter 2009
By now we’d realised that we couldn’t possibly run 3 “favourites” each week and we’d started a “If I’ve Learnt Three Things” feature. This issue included three things I’d learnt whilst doing the newsletter. They were
1) There is always something new to say and learn about recruitment
2) Whatever the current trends the core skills of recruitment remain invaluable
3) I always leave writing the newsletter to the last minute!
I’d have to still agree with all of them!
Issue 500 – Easter 2011
Shortly before issue 500 we had a complete redesign but the content style still remained similar with “weekly tips”, one or two articles and industry news. Many of the articles were written specifically for the newsletter by an army of loyal supporters. Other content included links to Louise’s blog posts and the discussion board (subjects back then were “starting up” and “split fees” – most certainly ones that have been on the forum on a regular basis over the years).
Issue 600 – May 2013
In January 2013 (issue 582 if you want to be precise) Alex joined the team as Newsletter Editor, saving Louise from certain nervous breakdown and by issue 600 we had changed editorial style with the newsletter being a more aggregated format; sharing content from the best authors across the recruitment world as well as Alex worked on building the best possible publication each week.
For issue 600 one of us had a TOTALLY CRAZY idea that we’d get 60 articles of “10 things” to put together a ” 600 Interesting and Useful Things for Recruiters” series. 10 tips for speccing out candidates was the most popular post in this series (still getting regular traffic 4 years on!)
Issue 700 – June 2015
With subscribers at a record high we were sending out a newsletter packed with up to nine articles from across the recruitment world each week. The lead story this week was “6 Harsh truths that will make you a better recruiter” and my own “What’s the ONE secret to successful recruiting?” article made an appearance!
And this week we hit issue 800. Alex still works hard to find the best content and shares a variety of articles, events and infographics relevant to agency and in house recruiters not only in the UK but across the recruiting world. We are still enjoying putting it together and hope you are still enjoying reading it!
