OK let’s see a show of hands. Who out there received an “approach” from Hudson this week?
No? Not you?
Well either you aren’t a recruiter currently operating in New Zealand or Australia, or you haven’t adequately described and categorized yourself on your Linked In profile (I know there is a third option that you might not have a Linked In profile… *gasp* …but I doubt you’d be reading this blog if you haven’t even progressed that far yet).
If you don’t know what I’m on about then I can explain. This message quietly slipped into my Linked In inbox on Monday night:
Dear Jonathan Rice,
Hudson is the place where the best recruitment consultants do better.
From our A-list client base to a genuine focus on work/life balance, we invest heavily in supporting you so you can do what you do best.
Hudson is growing, and growing quickly. We’ve seen your LinkedIn profile and we’re keen to talk to you about joining the Hudson team. From A to Z, we can list the benefits of taking your next career step with Hudson.
We’re looking for talent management professionals and for recruitment consultants to join us across accounting & finance, sales & marketing, legal, human resources, ICT, office support, managed services, property, public sector, supply chain and technical & engineering.
If you’d like to find out more about why Hudson is the place where the best recruitment and talent management professionals do better, please email careers @ hudson and one of our team members will be in touch.
Pretty slick eh? Thanks but no thanks Hudson, I’d rather remain a supplier if you’ll have me, but I admire the tone, nature and innovation of your approach.
So what’s going on? How have Hudson managed to become a “Linked In Partner” and gain such unbridled access to all of our inboxes? I imagine they have probably signed up to Linked In Recruiter Professional Services which is a system that basically allows you to use Linked In as a giant global CRM database and do candidate searches and “e-shots” (terminology from my Hays days) to people’s Linked In profiles.
Makes sense really – I mean did you think Linked In were a Not-For-Profit or a Charity? Of course not. It’s just that they didn’t really have much of a focus on revenue generating strategies outside of the US until earlier this year when Australia surpassed 1 million Linked In users and they opened an office on Sydney’s Pitt Street. Steve Barham popped over from their Californian HQ as Director for recruitment solutions for their Australia and New Zealand markets and from that point on it was only a matter of time before we would start to see more premium Linked In usage entering our realms of reference.
One of the first to sign up was Rio Tinto’s internal recruitment team in Australia. Now it looks like Hudson are having a go with it too. So how effective do you think this will be? I’m sure this premium product must cost a fair premium too – will they get a decent ROI?
I have already heard from a few recruiters out there in New Zealand who have received this approach from Hudson. I’d be keen to see how wide the reach has been – feel free to leave a comment on the blog if you received it too (and yes, you can remain anonymous if you wish).
Most of all I’d be interested to hear your views on whether you feel this is an effective approach or not and, again anonymously, if any of you are planning on contacting them as a result.
I wish Hudson good luck with this new approach but I hope not too many of you say “yes” as I might need to start doing things a bit differently myself! Always up for a bit of innovation though!
Have a good Friday and weekend everyone – talk again soon.
The Whiteboard 