Exploring the future of digital recruitment

A morning seminar held at the Charlotte Street Hotel on Tuesday 27^th April provided the opportunity for senior members of the Madgex team to share some of the research initiatives they've been pursuing as leading innovators in the field of job-board software.  Welcoming the attendees, MD Simon Conroy briefly outlined the company's philosophy of experimenting with different technologies, taking prototypes to clients and partners, and then building in response to the feedback.

User experience lead Harry Brignull began by looking at the quality of user experience provided by different devices in the fast-expanding mobile sector, and introduced two new iPhone apps designed to enhance this.  The notification app is expected to go into production in the second half of this year, while a mobile web interface (providing a mobile-optimised version of sites) should be available for Madgex's core platform clients by July.

Global sales director Tom Ricca-McCarthy looked at some of the latest trends to emerge - notably the rise of small, cheap, niche apps and the huge growth in social media usage.  This led on to consideration of what a desktop jobs app might look like - a branded tool that "sits quietly in the background checking for jobs" and alerts users when relevant ones arrive.  Tom also stressed that the number of digital channels isn't going to decrease, and that Madgex is committed to providing similar levels of quality and user interface for all its products, including end-to-end reporting across all digital channels.

Commercial director Dan Meadows focused on data capture and analysis as a means of benchmarking job-board performance.  While client-specific data is obviously kept separate and private, information can still be anonymised and averaged to provide useful results despite key differences between audiences, sectors, job volumes, quality of postings and so on.  One key finding to emerge is that targeted email campaigns can have a big impact on both site visits and application levels, and in view of this it seems surprising that, at present, relatively few of Madgex's extensive portfolio of job-boards use this facility.  Switching to the "apply journey", Dan noted that exit rates tended to be higher when applicants were redirected to other sites rather than applying directly online.  He also cited statistics demonstrating the positive impact of job ad upsells (e.g. featured or keyword-sponsored jobs, client logos, etc.) on application rates.

Madgex also uses all this data to optimise its own v.3 platform (which, in any case, comes with a continuous enhancement programme).  Future enhancements are likely to include an improved ‘jobs by email' link and better accommodation of multiple site entrance-points (given that, on average, only 39% of visitors enter a site via its homepage).  Madgex is currently in the process of developing a core set of KPIs for measuring job-board performance, and regards this benchmarking capability as one of its core services.

The morning's final session, delivered by creative director Glenn Jones, underlined the frenetic pace of technological change and the consequent impact on business models of all kinds.  His principal theme was the integration of social media functionality into clients' own sites.  But with major social networking sites developing third-party APIs that allow the exchange of data out of site of the user, he added the key caveat "If you think something is free, you have just not understood the exchange of value that's taken place."

With the industry already seeing the first signs of professional network social integration, Madgex for its part is experimenting with a new product designed to synchronise CV data between different sites.  This has already been extensively user-tested, and clients interested in the concept of blending professional social networking expertise with traditional job-boards are invited to participate in its ongoing development.