I noticed there is a conference being held in London's Cafe Royal this quarter, where some of the leading jobsites (fish4 group for example) are gathering to discuss online fraud that occurs on jobsites. See www.onrec.com for details.
This of course happens in developing markets also, but it is little talked about and we have some local examples that you should be wary of.
So what kind of online fraud would happen on a jobsite or in recruitment in general?
Well it's simply about exploiting a situation, usually to extract cash from someone.
I had an airline client who was using an agency in Kazakhstan to interview customer service staff before they would be offered and flown into the Middle East to start work. The staff turned up to work with their uniforms already; which was a first for the training department who usually issue them. Turns out the agent had provided them at a cost of $500 to each
candidate. Most corporate recruiters are used to agency fraud though and have learned how to deal with it.
A client in Kuwait was telling me last week how he learned that joinees were having to pay back a fee to the agents from their first two months wages.
He made all the staff sign a paper that they had been scammed, and for how much. He then made the agent fly into Kuwait with a bag of cash, and go down a line of staff to hand them back the amount they had paid each.
Online fraud is usually attempted on a big scale, and it happened recently to one of the most successful jobsites based out of Dubai.
An agency in Nigeria advertised a position for a GM based in Nigeria. Hundreds applied, and 400 were individually told that they had been selected (after a phone interview and several email communications). The 400 were then asked to transfer $1,500 (each) to the agency which would be used for visa purposes and reimbursed by the employer once they arrived into the country.
Now I don't know how many unfortunate jobseekers made the transfer; but that's a $600K fraud! And this is just one job opening, from one agency on one site this year. The implications for jobseekers and employers are frightening.
So, how do you prevent this sort of thing happening? Well only the established jobsites can really have the resources to have preventative measures in place. You should ask your jobsites what lengths they go to in validating that all the employers and agencies using their site are legitimate.
It matters to you because once a site gets a reputation for this happening, jobseekers will not trust the site. Imagine you see an ad for a 20-30 year old cabin crew role; and your first thought has to be to check out if it's safe to apply? Imagine being offered a job that ends up costing you $1,500.
Of course most people responsible in recruitment departments for paying for adverts/jobsites know now that they should only use SSL protected or 'secure' sites with decent online payment gateways in place. But finding out if the site has a good reputation amongst jobseekers is a much harder task and one that could have a large impact on eRecruitment right across Asia,
ME & Africa.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Next generation candidates - Jobseeker 2.0
There is a massive change in how jobseekers are going to be using the Internet to research and find their next few jobs, so I thought I'd share a few thoughts on how that is happening. It is natural that following "Web 2.0", should follow "Jobseeker 2.0" (note: 'Jobseeker 2.0' - you heard it here first ;)
The volume of content is amazing that is available on the Internet is enormous, and growing at a staggering rate. There were 20,000 blogs in 2002, and there are 58 million today. The growth rate is one per second worldwide, with the largest number of new blogs currently being created in Chinese I believe - so please don't disregard this as an American thing. This will affect how you hire in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, I promise you.
Candidates are going to start connecting more with people than companies. Web 1.0 was all about gaining access with a company (from a candidates perspective). Now 2.0 jobseekers are social animals and they will trust a companies employees who are writing on a blog far more than they would buy into the corporate spin. They are busy on the Net looking for new ways to find people, contacts, careers. The corporate spin is still VERY important and dedicated careers portals will continue to grow - however they will also have to learn how to cater to Candidate 2.0
That might mean having employees post to a blog on your careers site for example and include video diaries.
On a side not I was watching an episode of 'Sex and the City' last night, and heard a comment that every person in New York is believed to "always be looking for either a new apartment, and new partner or a new job". How true is that, and does it apply to other major capital centres I don't know; maybe Carrie Bradshaw could holiday in Dubai and carry out some research.
Web 2.0 is all about how easy it has become to publish diverse content, to the Internet. It was always fairly easy for a large firm to get a web design company to build and host a corporate website (web 1.0), but now you and I can write blogs, use social networking sites, upload videos to myspace or youtube.com, or broadcast interviews via pod casts. That has all really all taken place in a very short space of time, and I expect to see an awful lot more of it well through 2007 as more people gain confidence to try out their Internet skills.
However jobseekers are already there, well in the game.
2.0 jobseekers have realised that uploading your CV to Yahoo is no longer that clever, and they will seek out information and contacts for their next job/s this year using a wide variety of tools.
Credibility is being built today by individuals. Search for 'Microsoft blogs' on Google, there are hundreds of MS staff talking about a huge range of things from the work environment, to the pay, to their hobbies and exercise routines. It isn't all about blogs though, far from it. Jobseeker 2.0's are starting to use social networking sites such as linkedin.com, myspace, and recruiting sites are embracing this technology such as jobster and theladders.com to become more than just a website advertising jobs.
The companies that are willing to embrace Web 2.0 will see a win-win with Jobseeker 2.0's. They will be able to connect with great potential hires, who have a good insight into the company and its people before they even apply. That accessibility is essential and ignoring it, or not understanding it, is a recruiting faux-pas for employers today.
The volume of content is amazing that is available on the Internet is enormous, and growing at a staggering rate. There were 20,000 blogs in 2002, and there are 58 million today. The growth rate is one per second worldwide, with the largest number of new blogs currently being created in Chinese I believe - so please don't disregard this as an American thing. This will affect how you hire in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, I promise you.
Candidates are going to start connecting more with people than companies. Web 1.0 was all about gaining access with a company (from a candidates perspective). Now 2.0 jobseekers are social animals and they will trust a companies employees who are writing on a blog far more than they would buy into the corporate spin. They are busy on the Net looking for new ways to find people, contacts, careers. The corporate spin is still VERY important and dedicated careers portals will continue to grow - however they will also have to learn how to cater to Candidate 2.0
That might mean having employees post to a blog on your careers site for example and include video diaries.
On a side not I was watching an episode of 'Sex and the City' last night, and heard a comment that every person in New York is believed to "always be looking for either a new apartment, and new partner or a new job". How true is that, and does it apply to other major capital centres I don't know; maybe Carrie Bradshaw could holiday in Dubai and carry out some research.
Web 2.0 is all about how easy it has become to publish diverse content, to the Internet. It was always fairly easy for a large firm to get a web design company to build and host a corporate website (web 1.0), but now you and I can write blogs, use social networking sites, upload videos to myspace or youtube.com, or broadcast interviews via pod casts. That has all really all taken place in a very short space of time, and I expect to see an awful lot more of it well through 2007 as more people gain confidence to try out their Internet skills.
However jobseekers are already there, well in the game.
2.0 jobseekers have realised that uploading your CV to Yahoo is no longer that clever, and they will seek out information and contacts for their next job/s this year using a wide variety of tools.
Credibility is being built today by individuals. Search for 'Microsoft blogs' on Google, there are hundreds of MS staff talking about a huge range of things from the work environment, to the pay, to their hobbies and exercise routines. It isn't all about blogs though, far from it. Jobseeker 2.0's are starting to use social networking sites such as linkedin.com, myspace, and recruiting sites are embracing this technology such as jobster and theladders.com to become more than just a website advertising jobs.
The companies that are willing to embrace Web 2.0 will see a win-win with Jobseeker 2.0's. They will be able to connect with great potential hires, who have a good insight into the company and its people before they even apply. That accessibility is essential and ignoring it, or not understanding it, is a recruiting faux-pas for employers today.
eRecruitment on Suppliers: Survival of the Fittest
Having had a great family Christmas break back to the UK, I have found no end of recruiting technology topics to blog about first in 07. That's partly from having cleared my head on holiday, but to be fair a client also inspired me when he asked this week about what 'risks' they should expect from recruitment firms by introducing a web recruitment software package.
Naturally I am involved in implementing a number of ATS packages into large corporates at any given time. A current project is into the largest retailer in the Middle East of the Sniperhire ATS Corporate Edition version 5.2.
So the Corporate HR Director asks a great question on this conference call and we get into a four way discussion about what kind of push back to expect from trusted recruitment firms, and how do intend to handle that. Now any company introducing eRecruitment technology wll face resistance to change from within, more from HR and Line Managers than from Recruitment staff; but recruitment suppliers can be a world unto themselves. Fortunately now the majority of established recruitment firms have had to start using one product or another for their largest customers.
Suppliers are critical when hiring markets are tough, and in developing markets they are always tough so nobody wants to upest their recruitment suppliers unduly.
One of the first things to mention here is that agencies around the world are now depending heavily on the web themselves to source candidates, which they then interview, repackage and send over email to the client and charge $?,000's for. So if the suppliers can themselves use the Net to find candidates, it shouldn't be a big ask to ask them to submit the same CV's to you (their clients) over the Net also. The only loser in that equation is the email tool, not the supplier.
The next thing we discussed is that as corporate employers introduce and manage their PSL (preferred suppliers list) of recruitment firms, they need to be able to understand (read: Report) on the performance of those supplied services to be able to decide which firms to reward best (read: give more work to). So really the corporate employers facing this challenge
should consider their communications plans carefully for the PSL members, and openly encourage that they support the corporate efforts to manage their recruitment supply chain better and streamline their operations by using eRec technology.
I read an article on workforce.com today and the MD of Stallion Security in South Africa was talking about hwo hard it is to find decent recruitment suppliers. That is one of the great reasons that corporate employers force their agencies onto ATS systems because they can then work out which firms are worth working closely with, and which ones to cut relations with.
"It took us a long time to find the right agencies," Zullberg says. "Most of them just want to pump out CVs to you and don’t want to work with companies that use behavioral assessments or other complex tools for evaluating candidates."
There are other benefits for recruitment suppliers in using ATS technology to submit their CV into also, for example they can receive instant feedback once the client has reviewed or made a decision on a candidate, they can get alerts when interviews are scheduled or offers are issued.
Suppliers can also be informed when they are proposing a candidate that the client already has in their database, rather than waste time only to find out that the candidate was considered by the client previously. That transparency and collaborate approach can help the supplier work smarter and save themselves time, and therefore make their fees faster.
The biggest fear that recruitment suppliers have when it comes to their clients forcing them to use the ATS platform, is that it will lead to them being given less briefs, and make less money; but that simply isn't valid. If a recruitment supplier is skilled in sourcing and providing the best CV's, and they can evaluate them better/faster than the employer, then they will continue to win business.
Certainly the employers introducing recruiting technology do become better themselves at sourcing and managing candidates, so to some extent they will be reduce their supplier dependency - but the fittest will survive. Are clients under pressure to watch costs, absolutely, but that's only right and also only because they're spending more than ever on talent.
Bottom line is that it is well worth the risk for all parties, and if a supplier cannot supply a service at a higher level than the client can themselves, then yes they will lose business, but good suppliers will remain.
Happy new year and happy recruiting by the way, hope you have a great one.
Naturally I am involved in implementing a number of ATS packages into large corporates at any given time. A current project is into the largest retailer in the Middle East of the Sniperhire ATS Corporate Edition version 5.2.
So the Corporate HR Director asks a great question on this conference call and we get into a four way discussion about what kind of push back to expect from trusted recruitment firms, and how do intend to handle that. Now any company introducing eRecruitment technology wll face resistance to change from within, more from HR and Line Managers than from Recruitment staff; but recruitment suppliers can be a world unto themselves. Fortunately now the majority of established recruitment firms have had to start using one product or another for their largest customers.
Suppliers are critical when hiring markets are tough, and in developing markets they are always tough so nobody wants to upest their recruitment suppliers unduly.
One of the first things to mention here is that agencies around the world are now depending heavily on the web themselves to source candidates, which they then interview, repackage and send over email to the client and charge $?,000's for. So if the suppliers can themselves use the Net to find candidates, it shouldn't be a big ask to ask them to submit the same CV's to you (their clients) over the Net also. The only loser in that equation is the email tool, not the supplier.
The next thing we discussed is that as corporate employers introduce and manage their PSL (preferred suppliers list) of recruitment firms, they need to be able to understand (read: Report) on the performance of those supplied services to be able to decide which firms to reward best (read: give more work to). So really the corporate employers facing this challenge
should consider their communications plans carefully for the PSL members, and openly encourage that they support the corporate efforts to manage their recruitment supply chain better and streamline their operations by using eRec technology.
I read an article on workforce.com today and the MD of Stallion Security in South Africa was talking about hwo hard it is to find decent recruitment suppliers. That is one of the great reasons that corporate employers force their agencies onto ATS systems because they can then work out which firms are worth working closely with, and which ones to cut relations with.
"It took us a long time to find the right agencies," Zullberg says. "Most of them just want to pump out CVs to you and don’t want to work with companies that use behavioral assessments or other complex tools for evaluating candidates."
There are other benefits for recruitment suppliers in using ATS technology to submit their CV into also, for example they can receive instant feedback once the client has reviewed or made a decision on a candidate, they can get alerts when interviews are scheduled or offers are issued.
Suppliers can also be informed when they are proposing a candidate that the client already has in their database, rather than waste time only to find out that the candidate was considered by the client previously. That transparency and collaborate approach can help the supplier work smarter and save themselves time, and therefore make their fees faster.
The biggest fear that recruitment suppliers have when it comes to their clients forcing them to use the ATS platform, is that it will lead to them being given less briefs, and make less money; but that simply isn't valid. If a recruitment supplier is skilled in sourcing and providing the best CV's, and they can evaluate them better/faster than the employer, then they will continue to win business.
Certainly the employers introducing recruiting technology do become better themselves at sourcing and managing candidates, so to some extent they will be reduce their supplier dependency - but the fittest will survive. Are clients under pressure to watch costs, absolutely, but that's only right and also only because they're spending more than ever on talent.
Bottom line is that it is well worth the risk for all parties, and if a supplier cannot supply a service at a higher level than the client can themselves, then yes they will lose business, but good suppliers will remain.
Happy new year and happy recruiting by the way, hope you have a great one.
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