Welcome to issue 228 of the ukrecruiter newsletter. Don't
forget that we welcome suggestions for our "My Favourites"
features.
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Article
One: Recruitment Consultancy Web Site Review -
Lorien by 4mat.com
Company Name: Lorien
Website Address: http://www.lorien.co.uk
Site description
A professional looking site which specialises in IT recruitment with further recruitment in engineering and the public sector.
Creative design
The site is clutter free and uses neutral colours which give a very professional first impression to the user; although this detracts from the ‘ease of use’. The design used by the top four headers link to smart pages which all maintain the same style. The bottom headers produce pages with different styles; these are cluttered and do not look as professional. There are a few graphics but they are blurred and uninspiring.
Ease of use
At first glance the home page does not clearly define that it is a recruitment agency and where you should be looking if you are job seeking or recruiting. Once this is established each page clearly states what information is available and provides links to prevent scrolling through text. There are no difficulties in submitting a vacancy, applying for a job or finding contact information.
Relevant content
The top four headings clearly provides information about all aspects of IT recruitment for candidate and client: providing information from networking jobs in London to the benefits of Lorien managing your IT recruitment needs. There is a comprehensive guide for contractors and specialised recruitment for engineering and the public sector. The link which provides information on training and management solutions will only benefit a small percentage of users. The print link is of no relevance.
Candidate functionality
The candidate can chose from a range of job searching options: common search box, clicking on the list of categories, selecting the latest jobs and receiving online job information. The job results are quick to download and are presented clearly with key information highlighted. If no jobs are found in the selected region, related results from over the UK are shown. There is additional advice for contractors and areas including interview techniques and CV writing.
Client functionality
Information is laid out clearly allowing the user to select the type of employee they want: temporary, permanent, executive. Additional services are provided for access to online candidate shortlists and a managed recruitment service. The benefits, training of candidates and other relevant information are easily accessed. In addition there are main links that provide specialised information for the public service and engineering sectors. Reports from clients like IBM and Barclays give added credential to Lorien’s recruitment process.
Online marketing
General search queries for IT recruitment agency displayed good search results for Lorien. The engineering and public service recruitment online marketing needs improving so that it displays search results for general queries.
Summary
The home page looks very professional but does not provide first glance knowledge of what the Lorien is providing. Both candidate and client can easily access all information they need. Changing the design of the training and research pages to the style used throughout the site and eliminating the print page would retain the professional image. By tweaking the IT specific online marketing and developing the other recruitment sectors to display search results the company profile and number of potential customers would improve.
James Saunders is a Director of 4mat.com, the UK's leading provider of recruitment web sites. You can reach him or the 4mat team at
james.saunders@4mat.com
or see their products at www.4mat.com
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Article
Two: Is Recruitment Finally Slowing Down? Results of
Recruitment Confidence Index Survey
Overall UK recruitment appears to be remaining buoyant with recruitment activity set to continue increasing over the next six months according to respondents of the Recruitment Confidence Index
(RCI) from Cranfield School of Management and The Daily Telegraph. However this increase is beginning to slow with only 41 percent of the 1249 responding organisations expecting overall recruitment activity to increase (compared to 48 percent last quarter), and 17 percent expecting it to decrease (compared to 12 percent last quarter). Just under a third of these organisations (31 percent) expect recruitment activity for managerial and professional staff to increase compared to only 7 percent who expect it to decrease.
The proportion of organisations expecting employment levels to increase has also dropped slightly with 42 percent expecting an increase in the number of employees compared to 48 percent last quarter. The proportion of respondents expecting a drop in employment levels has risen slightly from 11 percent to 16 percent. Therefore, there are signs that recruitment activity is beginning to stabilise with a high proportion of respondents expecting both recruitment activity and employment levels to remain the same over the next six months. Could this be the beginning of the end of the boom that the recruitment industry has seen over recent years? Certainly we have seen a number of private sector organisations such as ASDA announcing job cuts recently, following the news of proposed public sector cuts within the civil service last year.
Difficulties in recruitment have also dropped but remain high particularly in engineering (60 percent), production (51 percent), sales (46 percent) and computing/IT (42 percent). The labour market therefore appears still tight with recruitment difficulties common in a number of areas. It would seem likely that, until recruitment activity slows considerably, skills shortages will be increasingly apparent within the UK and therefore recruitment for some roles will remain problematic.
In addition, around half of the organisations surveyed, are planning to increase their expenditure on recruitment over the next six months, compared to less than 10% who are planning to decrease this expenditure. Therefore, despite the slight slowing of the growth in recruitment activity this quarter, the recruitment industry can still remain confident of the future, at least in the short-term.
If you would like a version of this article with associated charts email
louise@ukrecruiter.co.uk. For more information regarding the
RCI, please contact emma.parry@cranfield.ac.uk
or go to www.rcisurvey.co.uk.
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Statistics
Hitwise top 10 Recruitment
Sites, week ending 20th August 2005
The most visited UK recruitment sites last week, starting with the
most popular, were www.jobcentreplus.gov.uk,
www.totaljobs.com, www.jobsite.co.uk,
www.reed.co.uk, www.jobs.nhs.uk,
www.monster.co.uk, jobs.guardian.co.uk,
www.jobserve.co.uk, www.jobsgopublic.com
and www.s1jobs.com. For more information about
Hitwise, visit http://www.hitwise.co.uk
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Regards
Louise Triance
UK Recruiter http://www.ukrecruiter.co.uk - 01635 254881 (UK)
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