Whilst there’s been speculation for a while I think we were all hoping for a last minute resolve and so the news that it’s official is still extremely disappointing. It’s a bitter blow for all of the fans and the people behind the scenes at PFC who have worked so hard at keeping the club operating successfully. Our main thoughts at this time are with them and with the local community, who are so closely entwined with the football club.

It’s this loyal and passionate community support that attracted us to become main club sponsor of Pompey and it will be this that helps the club re-build. We recently took some American visitors to watch the Pompey vs. Stoke match and they were blown away by the genuine spirit of fans and club staff willing the team to victory. One of them, Steve Boese, wrote a blog post afterwards as he was so amazed by the atmosphere he witnessed. The last sentence of his blog I think perfectly sums up current sentiment: ‘While the immediate future looks a bit harsh, I have every confidence based on the people we met, and the support and passion we witnessed that the club will make it through.’

We remain united with the fans in supporting the team and helping them return to their glory days. PUP.

Spinnaker Tower

The conferences allow us to share our learnings with each other & invite guest speakers along to help us stay at the cutting edge of recruitment, so that we can continue to offer the best service to both our clients & candidates.

Previous conferences have been held in Sarajevo and Bratislava, but this time it was our turn to host it in Portsmouth. We’ve always been shown fantastic hospitality by the other hosts, so it was great to get a turn in organising the proceedings and return the favour. The bar had been set pretty high as at the last conference in Sarajevo, we were taken on a fascinating cultural tour of the city.

The presentations during the two days of this most recent meeting focused on trends in recruitment & the direction that the industry is moving in. We heard from expert speakers such as Onrec’s David Hurst on global trends, Matt Alder on how social media can be used in recruitment and Mick Rigby from Yodel on how developments in mobile technology will impact on the industry.  One of the interesting snippets from Mick’s presentation was that 74% of people never switch their mobile off - afraid I’m guilty of that one! On day 2, some of the team from Jobsite talked through what we’ve been up to. It was great to share information and learn how our European partners are operating and the opportunities available to all of us.

It wasn’t all work and no play though. We started the conference with a breakfast briefing and historic guide up the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth’s Gunwharf Quays. You get some fantastic views over the South Coast and we were lucky enough to see a perfectly timed entrance by one of Her Majesty’s naval fleet.

On the Tuesday evening we took everyone to the Pompey vs. Sunderland match at Fratton Park for one of the tensest matches of the season (well the last 6 minutes of it anyway!). In the true spirit of international relations, the delegates were introduced to some of the local football chants (try explaining what some of the words mean!)

Thank you to all the speakers who presented at the conference and for the great company of our delegates, we will be getting the video up soon. I’m already looking forward to April’s conference in Győr.

Image by Tim Pearce, Los Gatos

With today being the first day back at work for many we know there are a lot of people out there who have set themselves the New Year’s Resolution of finding a new job in 2010. This is why our adverts are going back onto TV from today to reassure those people who want a new job that there are plenty of opportunities out there for them.

There are few things worse than hating your job and waking up everyday dreading having to go there. I consider myself very lucky to be in a job I enjoy but it shouldn’t really be the case. Whilst many would admit that they work to pay the bills, wouldn’t it be better if you could do this without having a miserable time. Recent stories may have scared a lot of people into thinking there are no jobs out there but this isn’t the case and that’s one of the main messages that our adverts try to get across. It’s useful to remember that January is one of the busiest times of the year for recruiters looking for people like you to fill their many vacancies.

Others may be put off looking for a new job as they think job hunting is time consuming and difficult but this isn’t the case either and is another myth we’re trying to dispel in our ads. When you think about spending an average of 40 hours a week in a job that you hate or isn’t right for you, is it not worth spending just 10 minutes setting up a Jobs-by-Email alert on Jobsite?

Whether you’re happy where you are or are looking for a new job, I hope 2010 is a great year for you.

P.S. If you’re a Coronation Street fan you’ll see our advert during the middle break tonight. I’ll be watching (alongside the tin of Quality Street!)

Interestingly, the research we run quarterly with brand tracking agency HPI shows an increase in the number of active job seekers in November 2009, who appear to be growing in confidence regarding finding a new job. This is mirrored by an increase in vacancies, which is likely to be playing a key role in the increased candidate confidence. The younger generation seem most optimistic about 2010 although this could be due to them having little experience of going through a recession or perhaps having fewer responsibilities than the older demographics.

It goes without saying that 2009 has been tough for pretty much everyone, particularly the recruitment industry, but this year was also one of the busiest in Jobsite’s history. We worked on widespread activity such as Jobs-by-Twitter, our Johnston Press partnership, launch of our news centre Insider and our behavioural targeting service. These projects and partnerships were all new ways for us to attract candidates, increase vacancy numbers and applications and make job hunting and recruitment quicker and easier.

The economic climate also presented us with opportunities to work on topical projects, such as the Redundancy Advice area we created to help jobseekers affected by redundancy, and JobAid, which we launched in November, to provide free vacancy advertising for charities or organisations looking to fill voluntary positions. This helps them to reduce their operating costs and focus more of their resources on the important work that they do.

Whilst budgets were tight we continued our brand campaign in 2009 with the second burst of our TV advertising in January, our adverts showing during Take That’s tour in June and becoming the main sponsor of Premier League football team Portsmouth FC in July. People might have thought this activity was strange during the recession but we’re very much focused on long term strategy and research shows that brands who continue advertising in a downturn are better placed to grow as the economy improves.

So what lies ahead for 2010?’ I hear you ask. Well, based on the trends we’re seeing from HPI it seems likely that both job seeking and recruitment will continue to slowly increase. In line with this we’ll be focused on attracting new candidates from all regions and sectors with our adverts returning to TV in January.  We’ll also be making changes to Jobsite and looking at site re-designs, new products and services, international expansion and new partnerships across the wider Jobsite group, to help ensure job hunting remains quick and easy for both existing candidates and new job seekers. So, whilst I don’t have a crystal ball I think 2010 will certainly see more positives than this year and am excited at the prospects that lie ahead. An early Happy New Year to you all.

As usual, this time of year becomes a bit of a panic in the shops – realising I haven’t got all (or any) of the Christmas presents I need yet!

Well, at Jobsite we are making our own festive preparations too; but rather than buying presents, we are buying TV advertising space. Yes, January sees the return of our TV adverts starring Max Beesley, kicking off on 4th January 2010 in a nationwide campaign across terrestrial and satellite channels.

This is good news for recruiters using Jobsite, as we are capitalising on the busiest time of year for job hunting. For job hunters, our campaign will attract even more new job vacancies to Jobsite.

Our previous TV activity was overwhelmingly successful and our return to TV in January will build on this. It also has the advantage of running alongside our Portsmouth FC sponsorship, making it our strongest activity to date for reaching job seekers.

So, best of luck with your festive preparations; with all this TV planning I have a feeling I’ll have to leave my Christmas shopping until the 24th!

We held it at Jewel in Piccadilly Circus and invited the top performing recruitment agencies based on candidate feedback.

I’d just come from the quarterly DMGT board meeting, so after the seriousness of all that I was looking forward to the evening ahead (and the free bar!)

For those who don’t know, the RecruitRank Awards are the only industry awards based purely on feedback from jobseekers and not the traditional peer judging panel, so it’s a major event in the Jobsite calendar and I’d been looking forward to it for a while.

It’s been a tough year for everyone in the recruitment industry, so it was great to see that so many recruitment agencies are still placing a high importance on providing outstanding customer service.

Well done to all of the winners, particularly iTS European, who got Best Recruiter Overall for the 3rd year in a row, pretty impressive. It’s quite an informal event, so it was great to catch up with those returning agencies, who were up for awards again this year, and I also met lots of new faces.

Thanks to the marketing team for organising the whole thing, and the hangover kits in the goody bags were a particular welcome touch that I think everyone benefited from on Thursday morning!

Photos to follow soon.

It actually refers to some great stuff we’ve been doing lately with various groups in the local community. As a Hampshire based company we’ve always been proactive about getting involved where we can. For example, we provided the lifeboat to the Portsmouth & Southsea Voluntary Lifeguards, sponsored the Havant cricket team, the Chichester under 8s rugby team and the Havant Lip-reading service to help local people to learn how to manage their hearing loss, plus we work with local schools to provide practical career advice.

The recent activity we’ve been getting involved in is through our sponsorship of Portsmouth FC, which has been fantastic in helping us identify community projects that we can help with. In the last few weeks we’ve partnered with the Portsmouth Supporters’ Club – Main Branch, which is made up of over 1500 dedicated Portsmouth fans. We’ve provided them with some funding to help with their newsletters, website etc. Their Chairman is landlord of the Newcome Arms pub in Fratton, so it would have been rude not to share a pint with some of the members!

We’re also providing the kit to the league-winning Portsmouth under 12s ladies’ team. They did fantastically well last season, winning all of the 12 games they played and scoring a staggering 114 goals with only 7 scored against them. Having watched them train and spoken with their coach I was so impressed with how much times and effort they put in so it’s great that we’ve been able to support them by providing them with new kit.

Over the next few months we’re also going to be working with Portsmouth University and helping the Pompey FC Study Centre, who do loads of amazing educational projects with local school children. I’ll make sure I upload some pictures of these projects as they happen.

Pompey’s new chairman Sulaiman Al Fahim holds up the new Pompey shirt.

Despite being more of an F1 fan than a football supporter, this new deal is one of the most important sponsorship decisions that we’ve ever made at Jobsite. It’s great for our candidate reach and great for our clients.

First impressions
I must admit that when we were first approached, I thought the only real benefit of sponsoring a club would be having your logo on the shirts but I was bowled over by the scope of the package. As main club sponsor we get extensive branding – at the stadium, across the Pompey website, on programmes, on tickets, across official club merchandise. You name it and Jobsite will appear on it! There is also so much more, for example corporate hospitality for our clients, use of the club facilities, becoming Pompey’s official recruitment partner, advertising, events and the opportunity to work with other Pompey affiliated brands.

Nationwide
I also had initial concerns about the reach this would give us but with football being one of the UK’s most loved sports there is daily coverage across the web, newspapers and TV, which Jobsite can benefit from. This gets us onto the BBC too, which TV advertising can’t achieve. We’ll also get increased exposure in key regions across the UK when Pompey play away games e.g. Manchester, London, Liverpool, Birmingham etc. I never thought I’d see Jobsite gracing the pitch at Old Trafford!

Success
We’re very excited to have signed this deal and it’s made even sweeter by the fact that Pompey are our local club. I’m now counting down the days until the season starts and hoping they can win the FA Cup again.

If you’d like to know more you can read the full details of this sponsorship, including comment from Portsmouth Football Club.

I’ve been on Twitter for the last 3 months or so and have really got into the micro-blogging. It enabled me to find out we’d had a double win at this year’s Onrec Awards as the Jobsite team tweeted live from the awards, which I wasn’t able to attend. I’ve also been at conferences and been part of the crowd twittering on about the latest news from the event live as the action happens.

For those of you who don’t know that much about Twitter, it’s a social networking site offering a real-time short messaging service. Once registered, you can ‘follow’ people and topics of interest to you, e.g. breaking news or updates from friends or colleagues. It’s also great from an industry perspective and I’m following, and being followed, by various people from the recruitment world which is really useful in keeping up-to-date with all the goings on. The recent events with Michael Jackson and even Iran were being swept fast across the world via the Twitter service.

As a Twitter advocate, I’m really excited by our latest launch which is a Jobs-by-Twitter service. I’ve seen other job services out there but felt they weren’t targeted enough, often ‘spamming’ you with irrelevant jobs. We wanted to create a personalised service to give our followers the best possible experience. Our Jobs-by-Twitter service, ‘Jobsitejobs’, sends you tweets containing only jobs that match what you’ve asked for as you set the criteria including location and salary. We also only send our followers jobs as private tweets via the direct message function on Twitter so that none of their followers can see that they’re job hunting – very clever.

It’s had good feedback so far from the Twitter community, and we’d love to know what you think, so ‘follow’ us at http://twitter.com/Jobsitejobs and in terms of gadgets, no household should be without a Philips Prestigo!!

The Onrec Awards are pretty much the Oscars for the online recruitment industry so it’s great to get both awards that we were shortlisted for. We were the proud winners of the Innovative Offline Marketing Award by a Generalist Job Board for our brand campaign featuring Max Beesley and Best Technical Innovation by a Generalist Job Board for our video interview practice website BeMyInterviewer.

A huge congratulations and thank you to everyone who worked on both projects, all your hard work has paid off and hopefully this will be the first of many award wins this year.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on maintaining staff engagement during a downturn, as some of the more usual techniques (away days, corporate events, bonuses and prize draws) require funds that are most likely in short supply at the moment.

Do you work for a company that has come up with a great way of keeping the mood upbeat? Or are you a HR Manager or MD who has implemented some successful morale boosting and has a more productive workforce as a result? It would be great to know what people are doing in this area.