Outsource Digital

Friday, March 28, 2014

Graduate Recruitment Consultant

Chrysalis is a well established, boutique recruitment consultancy. With a HQ in Central Manchester and a satellite office in Covent Garden, we focus on delivery across digital marketing for global Media Agencies and Online Brands. We are split into 2 distinct areas – one is the account management of expanding enterprises or multinationals while the other is delivering against one-off specialist roles. We are a small team currently, focussed on providing an outstanding service to clients and candidates alike which means our Consultants bill big figures and reap the financial rewards of providing a first class solution.

Role:

You will be working on our London team – based out of Manchester but with travel to London every 2 weeks. Joining a very successful and established desk, you will inherit a great deal of residual business plus be responsible for developing further business opportunities. This role is approx 70% Delivery and Account Management with 30% new business generation. Ideally we are looking for someone with the potential to become a full-time Account Manager within 12 months, to handle existing accounts while potentially building a team to deliver for those accounts. You will be working within Digital Marketing, handling the recruitment needs of SME’s and global Digital Agencies.

As a Recruitment Consultant you will have full responsibility for:

Developing new business opportunities for the team
Qualifying jobs
Filling jobs (either personally or with a Resource Consultant)
Relationship management
Developing business within client teams we are yet to forge relationships with
In time, the building of a team to support the level of business being generated
Regular, on-site client contact

Requirements:

You will be able to interface with clients in a professional and appropriate manner
Either you have worked in Digital Marketing Recruitment or you will have a keen interest in it
ideally some sales or telesales experience
an interest and active participation in social media/ networking
a need to work in a target driven environment
first rate communication skills

Salary:
Basic – based on experience (expected OTE: £40,000 in year 1)

Call 0161 833 3874 or email info@chrysalisrecruitment.com for more information

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Why wearable tech needs to become fashionable tech

The next frontier for consumer electronics could well be the market of wearable technology. Giants such as Google, Sony and Samsung are relentlessly pursuing a future of interaction, where time-honoured accessories such as glasses and watches are upgraded into hyper-connected devices in the increasingly pervasive ‘internet of things'. Apple are shuffling their feet and smiling coyly, but their promises of big things to come are likely to involve the wearable market.

As smartphones reach an inevitable plateau in mature markets and the average consumer is reluctant to pay over £500 for a marginally better camera and shinier shiny bits, there is a clear need to create a new mass market of appeal within technology. Which means wearable technology as it seeks the love of the masses will find itself hearing the same question again and again:

… But does it look good?

Google's current support for prescription glasses comes solely from in-house designs
(credit: TNW)

Up until now the answer would have been uncertain, if you’re kind, and tinged with negativity, but now Google has grabbed the reins and brought in Ray-Ban and Oakley (owned by Italian brand Luxottica) to dramatically upgrade the look of its Glass units.

Google have also announced Android Wear, a stable platform, an API which the whole network of differently-branded products can be built upon, allowing potentially a variety of design flourishes and differing directions. Rather than buying into a technophile dream of a connected-world, through imperfect experimental devices (like early Glass explorers, perhaps), they’re buying the same thing they always have: a really nice looking watch.

The recently announced moto 360, powered by Android Wear
(credit: Techradar)

The near future could present a much more augmented experience than just glasses and watches though, already Google has created internet-connected contact lenses that measure glucose levels for diabetics. In fact the mystery, importance and sheer sci-fi appeal, of where Google is going next is worth its CEO, Larry Page, giving a talk on the topic to TED. The impact of wearable technology is hard to estimate, but if it did reach widespread adoption all of the established structure of the World Wide Web, advertising and even personal health could need to be re-written.

More than ever the world will be at your fingertips or hovering a few centimeters from your eyeball. A whole world of new opportunities, tasks made easier and information increasingly personalised and delivered at exactly the right moment. It's an exciting prospect.

So it comes back to the shallow but fundamental question we may each find ourselves asking, not just as a boardroom consideration at Google, but the final thought before we put our own hands into our wallets and purses: but does it look good enough to wear?

Monday, March 24, 2014

Now Hiring: Junior Recruitment Consultant

Role:
You will be working on our London team – based out of Manchester but with travel to London every 2 weeks. Joining a very successful and established desk, you will inherit a great deal of residual business plus be responsible for developing further business opportunities. This role is approx 70% Delivery and Account Management with 30% new business generation. Ideally we are looking for someone with the potential to become a full-time Account Manager within 12 months, to handle existing accounts while potentially building a team to deliver for those accounts. You will be working within Digital Marketing, handling the recruitment needs of SME’s and global Digital Agencies.

As a Recruitment Consultant you will have full responsibility for:

Developing new business opportunities for the team
Qualifying jobs
Filling jobs (either personally or with a Resource Consultant)
Relationship management
Developing business within client teams we are yet to forge relationships with
In time, the building of a team to support the level of business being generated
Regular, on-site client contact

Requirements:

You will have worked in an Agency as a Recruitment Consultant for 6 months minimum
You will have already proven to be a successful biller through good client and candidate management
You will be able to interface with clients in a professional and appropriate manner
Either you have worked in Digital Marketing Recruitment or you will have a keen interest in it
You may be a Recruitment Consultant looking to gradually move into a Account Management role

Salary:
Basic – based on experience (expected OTE: £40,000 in year 1)

Call 0161 833 3874 or email info@chrysalisrecruitment.com for more information

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Counter Offers; Why They Happen.

What is a counter offer and why do they happen?

· A counter offer is a situation in which you resign and you are offered more money/ another role/ another job title/ a promotion.

· They happen because it’s cheaper to offer financial incentives to an employee rather than hire someone new. On average, it costs approx £7,000 to refill a role (recruitment costs, cost of time put into interviewing, etc).

Three reasons you could be made a counter offer

· When a person leaves, it can disrupt and destabilise the team and it can affect the team morale, so the employer may be panicked into making a counter offer.

· Often someone leaving prompts someone else to leave, which creates an extra £7,000 of problem for the company.

· A good employee leaving can have an impact on the company’s relationships with their clients if the employee had a direct involvement with them.

Don't walk back into an office you don't feel at home in.

Questions you should ask yourself before taking a counter offer….

· Often it is a knee-jerk reaction to a situation of panic. We should want to gain progression due to it being deserved, not because we have forced the issue. Is this what you deserve and is this really what you want?

· Where has this change in role suddenly come from? If it didn’t exist before does it really exist now, or is it just a token gesture to make you stay?

· Statistics show that the initial pay-rise offered to “keep” you often results in a salary plateaux for the following 18 months on average, financially is staying the right option in the long term?

· If you were the one who showed a willingness to leave the company, will you be first out of the door if the company hits troubled times and need to make cuts?

How to resign

· Make your mind up, be certain and resolute, and stick to your decision.

· Write a resignation letter, keep it as positive as possible and avoid going into a tirade against your employer.

· Prepare a polite, informative but concise explanation of your pending departure. The more rehearsed this is, the better it will be received.

· Thank the manager for the opportunity in the first place, don’t forget this is the first they’re hearing of your decision to leave and don’t take their reaction personally.

· Do not engage with talk of possible role changes, avoid being led into a counter offer.

· Ask for a leaving date to be confirmed within the day so you are able to prepare for your next role.

Friday, March 14, 2014

Video ads hit Facebook, Zuckerberg calls Obama and Instagram signs its first ad deal

With a sense of inevitability Facebook has finally announced that premium video adverts are coming to the platform for a ‘select’ band of advertisers. Users will be presented with a 15 second clip, on mute, that can be scrolled past to ignore or enlarged to add sound. In a web environment that is dominated by high-intensity ads with increasingly intrusive tactics Facebook’s proposals seem relatively unobtrusive and likely won’t have you losing too much time between all the heart-wrenching viral videos and pictures of cats. Interestingly the ads will be bought and measured in the way TV ads are, rather than adopting a new basis for the platform.

Here come the videos!

(credit: cnet)

Meanwhile Facebook head honcho Mark Zuckerburg is making phone calls to the most powerful man on the planet, American president Barack Obama. Zuckerberg argued the American government should be presenting the internet as one of its greatest assets, rather than existing as its greatest threat. As he explained “I've been so confused and frustrated by the repeated reports of the behavior of the US government. When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we're protecting you against criminals, not our own government. The US government should be the champion for the internet, not a threat. They need to be much more transparent about what they're doing, or otherwise people will believe the worst. I've called President Obama to express my frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future. Unfortunately, it seems like it will take a very long time for true full reform.”

Wrapping up the story for all things big under the Facebook banner, is that its 715 million dollar purchase, Instagram has signed its first ad deal. Starting as they mean to go on Instagram have agreed a contract with the not inconsiderable might of Omnicon. The recent $100 million deal has already attracted some positive discussion, with Forbes offering these four reasons for the ad deal being a promising one. Instagram has, perhaps wisely, chosen the Twitter route of having ad content fit in just as a regular tweet would in a stream that remains largely coherent.

All these events against the backdrop of a booming stock and a muted deviation from their “move fast and break stuff” mantra makes for blue skies over the land of Facebook. It seems as Facebook is maturing, it’s growing its advertising options sympathetically for both the users and the agencies.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Labour plans "jobs guarantee" for the whole of their next term, if they win the election.

With an election looming and youth employment still on the rise Labour has taken the bold move of guaranteeing a job for all 18-24 year olds who’ve spent a year on Jobseekers Allowance and anyone over that age who’s spent two years on JSA.

The scheme would guarantee the receiver six months work, at minimum wage, paid for by the taxpayer and the job must be accepted or the claimant would stop receiving their benefits. It’s expected that 80% of the jobs involved would be in the private sector and training would be compulsory.

"Life on benefits will simply not be an option" said Miliband

(credit: BBC)

Labour leader Ed Miliband claimed the scheme would mean that “life on benefits will simply not be an option” and that "those who can work will be required to take up the jobs on offer or lose their benefits".

Politically the idea is not exactly unanimously supported, with the Conservatives raising questions about how the £5.5bn scheme will be paid for. Labour maintains the program could be supported by changing tax rules on pensions for high earners and a bank bonus tax. The Tories however are keen to point out that the profits of a bank bonus tax have already been allocated in Labour’s pre-election promises, while top figures in banking are warning that if you announce a bonus tax too early the bankers will be easily able to avoid it. This is all a repeat of a 2009-10 bank bonus tax that the Labour Chancellor of the time said would be best to remain a “one off thing”.

Prominent thinktanks have been quick to criticise the plan, for its complexity and the likelihood of it managing to be securely funded. Treasury minister David Gauke added his expertise to the mix saying "This is a more expensive policy than Labour are prepared to acknowledge" he continued "and I am afriad the consequence would be more borrowing."

At this point the scheme seems to lack security and will likely need many modifications before really making a difference in the lives of 18-24 year olds but if you’re one of the 56,000 the scheme could benefit it might just be a ray of hope. Either way it’s the first part of a power struggle towards election that could bring about huge changes in employment structure across the country in the wake of the 2015 election.

Friday, March 07, 2014

Real Time Marketing for 2014: The Oscars, Urban Airship and more from Pharrell Williams’ hat.

While Ellen DeGeneres was busy breaking Twitter with the singlemost retweeted picture in history, as a fortunate bi-product of Samsung product placement, most major brands were only partially engaging with an audience that found itself at a fever-pitch. Real time marketing is a hot topic for 2014 and while it remains inexorably linked to a biscuit, thanks to Oreo’s memorable Superbowl offering, that’s proof that it’s not quite blossomed out to its full potential.

Oreo's genre defining offering.

Arby’s, the American food outlet, stole an early lead in the field for 2014 with its Grammys stealing comments on musician-of-the-moment Pharrell Williams’ unusual hat and its uncanny likeness to their logo. The brand moved on to cement their relationship by then purchasing the hat when it was sold for charity by Pharrell and even managed to insert themselves into the Oscars buzz thanks to Williams’ nomination for the Despicable Me 2 soundtrack.

With the spectacular space setting for Gravity generating a lot of the excitement around the visuals in cinema in the build up to the Oscars, NASA was presented with a comfortable opportunity to let its content do the talking. Sharing remarkable vistas of the cosmos, NASA was able to present one of the most coherent and inspiring brand experiences of the night.

NASA sharing its images of space under the #realgravity hashtag.

NASA’s ability to share from their library of images and still create interest was an attribute sadly lacked by some of the stock-image posts from brands that fell flat. At least though they were on topic; as some brands had pre-bought social space, or in this case “#jennifer lawrence”, with no intention of mentioning the American Hustle star. Which is strange in itself, as their audience was mentioning just that.

At this stage in its development the practice of Real Time Marketing will see its fair share of missteps and also landmarks, so the need for inspiring leaders becomes crucial. At the moment most real time marketing efforts garner less than 100 shares and most marketers surveyed would describe themselves as ill-equipped or unsupported.

However with the likes of Urban Airship this period of uncertainty and nervousness may be set to end, as the Wall Street Journal explains:

Today at Mobile World Congress, Urban Airship unveiled its next-generation solution combining high-performance push messaging with real-time mobile marketing automation, dynamic audience segmentation and iBeacon targeting. Available this quarter, the solution offers an evolutionary step forward in the ability of marketers and product teams to drive more real-time, relevant and responsive mobile experiences that delight customers and keep them loyal.

For the first time in the industry, every swipe on a push message, tap on a landing page, or proximity to an iBeacon can build richer mobile audience segments for better targeting and deeper personalization over time. For example, a shopper might walk into a children's clothing department triggering an iBeacon message with seasonal specials, and also become part of a children's clothing audience segment for a back-to-school campaign later that year.

Real Time Marketing certainly makes itself an outstanding argument as one of the richest frontiers for exploration for brands looking to engage with the first generation raised on Tumblr’s cross-media scavenging and unstoppable torrent of memes. With major players already staking their interest and year that’s ripe with events, including an especially exciting Brazil-based World Cup, by this time next year there could be more in the hall of fame than a solitary Oreo.