Greetings!

Welcome to the June issue of the whatjobsite newsletter. This month we take look at Recruitment Advertising Agencies and how they might be helpful to you. We welcome a new sponsor to whatjobsite. We also give you the results of our May online poll. And, as usual, we've got a round up of exclusive offers from our job site partners.

We've also got a new layout to our newsletter this month. Let us know what you think. We'd love your feedback.

Editor

 Feature Article

Recruitment Advertising Agencies 

If you have just one or two straightforward jobs to advertise and you are confident in your ability to choose the right job board or media to advertise on, then you will have little need for a Recruitment Advertising Agency. However, if you have a more complex role, or you have multiple roles to hire, or you are in need of more extensive recruitment advertising expertise, then using a Recruitment Advertising Agency might very well make sense. The work of Recruitment Advertising Agencies covers a number of different areas of the recruitment advertising process.

Creating the job specification
Typically, and like all recruitment processes, Recruitment Advertising Agencies will start with the creation of a job specification. As we have indicated elsewhere (see our article 'First things first: write a job specification') pinning down the job specification is the single most important part of the entire recruitment process. It's very hard to hire for a job if you don't know what job your hiring for. The advertising agency will work with you in defining and creating an effective job specification.

Creating the ad copy and design
Once the job specification is defined, the Advertising Agency will set about creating your ad. Bear in mind that Recruitment Advertising Agencies may not limit themselves just to job boards (online media) for your recruitment solution; they may also look at newspapers, trade journals and magazines (offline media). Of course, all of these different media channels will require different advertising collateral. The great thing about Recruitment Advertising Agencies is that they have the expertise to create the copy/design collateral that works for all media. 

Selecting and booking the media
Of course, while we at whatjobsite will always yabber on about job sites and job boards, there are many more advertising options for recruiting: newspapers, trade journals, magazines, brochures, posters, flyers, direct mail etc. With such a wealth of choice it can be hard to make a decision on what is the right recruitment channel for you. The Advertising Agency has the expertise to be able to choose the right media for your recruitment campaign and, as we said above, has the expertise to create effective ads for that media.

Response Management
Some Recruitment Advertising Agencies also provide a Response Management Service. Typically, this means that the Agency will filter your candidate applications and forward you only the best ones. But Response Management can also encompass more extensive services such as looking after candidate invitation and rejection letters, manning dedicated lines for telephone screening, arranging interviews for and even conducting interviews with candidates.

Employer Branding
Employer Branding isn't just about your company logo. It's about what kind of company you are seen to be by the outside world. It's about how people view your company as a place to work; how your staff treat each other; how you work as a team. (see our article 'Recruitment Branding: an introduction') What Recruitment Advertising Agencies can help with is defining your recruitment brand and then using that brand in your recruitment advertising strategy so that you attract the best staff for your company. Identifying your recruitment brand is a complex area and we would recommend the services of a Recruitment Advertising Agency.

The Costs
There are a number of ways Recruitment Advertising Agencies charge for their services. Sometimes, for example, Agencies do not charge the client directly but instead make their money by taking a commission on the the advertising they book. For example, if your ad in Computer Times costs £750 the agency might get between 10% and 20% commission from the publisher for placing the ad.

However, even if the Agency does take commission for booking ads, it will probably charge you for the costs of ad media production. And for more value-added services like Response Management and Branding research most agencies will charge some kind of consultancy fee.

Online-only Recruitment Advertising Agencies
There are a growing number of Recruitment Advertising Agencies that only work with online media. Typically they allow you to advertise your job on a basket of job boards for a standard one-off fee. 

The advantage of these agencies are twofold. Firstly, it will usually cost a lot less to advertise on all these job boards with them than it would if you did it yourself. Secondly, you'll only have to upload your job once for all these different job sites. If you are advertising on a number of job boards, it can make a real difference. Online Recruitment Agencies might well be worth considering.

We hope this article has been of help to you. For more information on online recruitment and job board advertising visit the whatjobsite Recruitment Advice area. And check out our Supplier Directory for a listing of Recruitment Advertising Agencies.

 New Job Board Partner

New to whatjobsite: S1jobs

This month we'd like to welcome S1jobs to whatjobsite.

s1jobs is Scotland's no.1 recruitment site, by far. For employees it offers a complete career management service. For employers it combines Scotland's most effective recruitment advertising platform with its fastest growing candidate database, as well as a full suite of world-class vacancy and applicant management tools. Find out more by visiting the S1jobs whatjobsite profile.

 Whatjobsite May Poll Results

How many job boards to use?