Review of 2007 Predictions

January 4, 2008 / by domsumners

Before i get crystal ball out for 2008 - lets go for a bit of accountability and see how accurate or not last year's  were and whether or not its worth taking this years thoughts seriously (supply your own comment here....)

So here goes

  • online media up 30% - print down 20% - no prizes for this but we are seeing some print markets enter terminal decline

    • Overall not bad - undercooked online growth (approx +34%) and overcooked press decline (no accurate figure to hand but would be lower drop than this) - the stellar performance of the UK recruitment economy definitely helped prop up print.

  • SEM to continue to out grow the online market

    • Absolutely correct - although as ever as we tell every customer - get your job board strategy sorted first as a well run job board campaign will achieve a much lower CPA (cost per application/action) rate than Google etc. Hang on - i am going off topic.

  • Any continued consolidation of site ownership will be matched by new launches by independents, trad media owners and foreign job boards.

    • Absolutely correct. The decisions of Execappointments and JustEngineers etc to cash in (and why not!) was far outweighed by major launches from TOTALJOBS and EMAP amongst others. And i can testify that we at OME Towers continue to receive a huge amount of calls from new sites in every niche imaginable and a few unimaginable niches too. 

  • At least three major job boards doing TV advertising to drive traffic and build brand

    • Nope - Monster and that's it. The other majors have a more focused strategy for traffic building but it is undeniable the brand building impact of a big TV campaign - so this did surprise me given the successful most boards had. Fish will be hitting our screens in Q1 2008 and we still wait for Careerbuilder to bring their big U.S cheque book over.

  • At least three competitive launches against OME - i confidently say that this is a good thing as it will grow market and convince clients they need specialists in this discipline.

    • Depends on your definition but no - not really. And very very happy that this persists please.

  • Social networking will not be properly utilised this year although we will all spend a lot of time talking about it

    • One billion percent correct - although utilisation has begin to improve. We will spend a lot of time talking about this in 2008 too i expect.

  • Concerted industry effort to break old media buying habits and Cost per hire becomes the metric that UK Plcs use for selecting recruitment methods

    • Mmmm - i was clearly in a wishful thinking state of mind 12 months ago. To be fair we have seen progress in this area but its a long long road.
  • Internal HR processes get more tallied to candidate attraction initiatives

    • see answer above

    So overall - could be worse. Next week - we will see 2008 Predictions and a couple of them will be mildly controversial - its juts more interesting that way isn't it?

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