Job Board Advertising

How we differ from a recruitment agency

Our digital recruitment advertising platform is unique, and we often get asked, what is the difference  between using Blue Rocket to using a traditional recruitment agency.

Blue Rocket is different (better) in so many ways.

Having worked in recruitment for over 20 years, we knew recruitment was broken, so we have fixed it and launched Blue Rocket Recruitment. Our mission is to save you time & money by simplifying the recruitment process. No contracts. No commissions. Low cost, with a one-off payment of just £399.

Here are the 4 main differences:

Agency Fees – There is none. No paying 16% or more of the successful hire’s first year’s salary, which results in £1000s. Once more, you can make multiple hires from any one campaign and not have to pay a penny more.

Maximum Exposure – We use all the leading job boards such as reed.co.uk, CV Library & Total Jobs, as well as more niche & location specific job boards, plus aggregators such as indeed and of course social media. We advertise your role across over 800 platforms. A typical agency will rely on just 1 or 2 (to save money).

Full Transparency & Brand Protection – We represent you, the employer and not the applicants we attract. This means the candidates are yours, so you are in complete control of all communication with them, so you can protect your employer brand, and ensure a great candidate experience.

Candidates Not Pitched Other Roles – Recruitment agencies, due to the nature of the no placement, no fee model, send the same candidates they have sent to you, to your competition. This maximises their chance of a placement, plus in some cases they try to persuade the candidate to accept a job in which they would earn the higher fee. With Blue Rocket, every candidate that applies to your role is yours and will go straight into your candidate dashboard, in which no other clients have access to. They certainly will not be contacted or pitched any other roles from us.

So, in a nutshell – if you have a job which you need to fill quickly and want to access the leading job boards & online recruitment platforms, for a fraction of the price of using an agency or buying the media directly (just £399), then call either myself or one of our friendly team on 023 8033 6633 or email hi@bluerocketrec.co.uk

All the best,

Steve Wyeth

Founder 🚀

Hiring secrets that recruiters don’t want you to know

Hiring secrets that recruiters don’t want you to know

Recruitment has moved on dramatically from the days of your local cock of the walk recruitment consultant holding all the cards, by having their little black book of candidates that you cannot gain access to elsewhere.

The internet has changed recruitment dramatically, and technology & innovation will continue to do so, as with most industries.

However, in most cases the dysfunctional recruitment agency model has not changed at all since the 90’s. It has stayed outdated and living on the past glory of being able to gain access to that ‘little black book’.

Recruiters up and down the country, actually no – worldwide, claim that the best candidates are not on job boards or are not looking online.

When, today’s job seeker is always searching. Did you know that over 90% of job seekers use their smartphone to find their next role?

So, is it any surprise that over 94% of the vacancies a typical recruitment agency will fill, the successful candidates would of actually responded to an advert that the agency had run on job boards or online.

They won’t tell you that…

However, to be able to successfully recruit yourself, you need to make sure your job adverts are attracting the best people.

A well thought out, well written and an engaging job advert that appeals to your ideal target audience is key to your recruiting success.

That’s where our 20 years of recruitment marketing experience comes in.

For just £399, not only will we post your job advert across all the leading job boards & online platforms. Plus, give you full access to your own, award winning cloud-based dashboard to manage all applications from. We will transform your job description into a compelling, fully optimised job advert, selling your opportunity and engaging with your ideal candidate.

So, next time you look to recruit using an agency, paying thousands of pounds in recruitment fees, for the same candidates that with a little help & expertise from the team at Blue Rocket, you can recruit yourself for just £399. Plus, with Blue Rocket, you are able to make multiple hires from any campaign at no additional cost. Think again & slaughter them sacred cows.

The future of recruitment is here. Recruit like you are in 2020 🚀

For more information, don’t hesitate to contact myself of one of the team on 023 8033 6633 or email hi@bluerocketrec.co.uk

All the best,

Steve Wyeth

Founder 🚀

There is no better time to recruit

If you are looking to recruit & grow your business as we start to come out of the pandemic, I have good news – there is no better time to recruit.

Now is the ideal time to advertise your vacancy. With more & more candidates looking for work and fewer jobs being posted, the opportunity to hire the right candidate into your business has never been better.

Plus, due to many companies cutting back and making redundancies – exceptional, high calibre candidates, who were once incredibly happy and no inclination of looking for another job, now find themselves searching online, looking for their next career opportunity.

At Blue Rocket, we can help you take advantage of this new (and increasing), available pool of candidates.

We know you are busy working on your business, so dedicating quality time to writing effective job adverts, posting on the job boards and sifting through applications to create a shortlist, is no doubt not on your top priority list.

One of our online recruitment experts will take your job description and transform it into an attractive engaging advert and post it across all the leading job boards and online platforms for you. We will give you access to your very own cloud-based candidate dashboard to review and manage all applications in one place. Plus, you’ll get your very own dedicated account manager to help & offer advice throughout your campaign.

All for just £399

If you’d like to know more, just get in contact with myself or one of the team for a no obligation chat.

All the best

Steve Wyeth

Founder 🚀

Online Recruitment Advertising - Blue Rocket

Save £1000s in recruitment costs, without sacrificing top talent

For most companies, recruitment can take a big chunk out of your budget, especially if you use a recruitment agency, which could cost you anything upwards of £3K in fees.

One of the key factors in making recruitment a success is hiring great candidates from the start. This will save you a lot of time, expense and headaches down the line. For this reason, many owners and hiring managers feel they must go to an agency to find the best talent available, but this simply isn’t true.

Having worked in recruitment for nearly 20 years, mostly in agency recruitment, I am not going to sit here and bash the sector, as although it doesn’t have the best reputation, most agencies do a great job, operate ethical and can un-earth some amazing talent that may not be available elsewhere.

However – for at least 80% of the hires a typical company will make using a traditional recruitment company, the shortlisted applicants and ultimately the successfully hired candidate would of all applied to the agency through a job advertisement they placed, for your vacancy online, albeit via a job board, aggregator like indeed or on social media.

So, you end up paying, £3K, £4K, perhaps even £6K if they are a senior appointment, when you could have advertised the role across all the leading job boards, online platforms and social media, with Blue Rocket Recruitment for just £399, yes, that’s it – £399! We’ll even write your advert for you!

All of the applicants will appear in your very own, company branded, cloud-based candidate dashboard. All applicants will be ranked in order of their suitability. You can review, contact, set up interviews from any device at any time. What’s more you can hire, 2, 4 or 10 candidates and wont ever pay a penny more. The candidate dashboard is yours, to store candidates’ details, sort into folders and use in the future, whenever you need to hire again – all GDPR compliant and at no extra cost.

So, before you use an agency for your next job vacancy, consider using Blue Rocket. We are changing the way companies recruit by offering simple, effective, and affordable online recruitment solutions for business of all shapes and sizes.

Let’s be honest, most traditional recruitment agencies have charged too much, for too little, for too long?

If you’d like to have a no obligation chat, on how we can help you recruit or have any questions on any aspect of our online recruitment advertising service, please don’t hesitate to give me a call on 023 8033 6633 or drop me an email to hi@bluerocketrec.co.uk – it would be great to hear from you.

All the best

Steve Wyeth

Founder & Director

Online recruitment advertising

Writing a Job Advert

5 Things Candidates Want from a Job Advert

When you start to write a job advert, it can be very easy just to list the day-to-day responsibilities, perhaps the hours and the must have skills. But in today’s job market market, this is not enough to attract good quality, experienced applicants to apply for your job – so you could be missing out on finding your perfect hire.

So, to make sure that your adverts appeal to the best candidates, we have put together 5 things that every candidate wants from a new job. Craft your advert with this in mind, and watch the difference in applications – both the volume & quality.

  1. Your company culture

This doesn’t mean you have to sound like Google, but cultural fit is a massive thing for job seekers. Candidates don’t only want to know what their working environment is going to be like & the management style, they want to know about your values, social responsibility – what does your company stand for and how does it make a difference. This is especially important to millennials.

  1. Career prospects

No one wants their career to stand still, so if a job advert clearly states the possibility of long-term progression, candidates are far more likely to apply. They want to hear that they have the opportunity to develop their skills & receive additional training. Also phrases like, you will have the opportunity to grow your career and increase responsibilities as the company expands, always prove a hit.

  1. Attractive Salary

Money matters. Of course it does, we all have bills to pay. In fact, across all age & experience levels, salary is the highest priority for job seekers looking for a new role. Of course, it is not the only thing people look for in a job, it’s normally always the first.

Always include a salary, don’t just put depending on experience or competitive. Statistics show 2 in 3 job seekers are more likely to apply when a salary is displayed.

  1. Good benefits

If you offer good benefits, shout about them. 20 days plus Bank Holidays is not a great benefit, it is the minimum legally you can offer. The same with company pension – in most cases it is the minimum pension an employer can offer by law. Good benefits include; healthcare, substantial holiday, a day off on your birthday and discounted gym membership – these could be the deciding factors when candidates are deciding whether to apply for your job.

  1. Flexibility

The majority of job seekers are looking for a good work / life balance. If you can be a bit more flexible with the working hours, which can be a real selling point with candidates with young families.

If you add even some of the above into your advert, you will dramatically increase not only the number of applicants but the quality of applicants, so increasing your chances of making a successful hire.

If you would like any advice with regards to writing good adverts or candidate attraction tips, don’t hesitate to get in touch with one of the team – we’d love to hear from you. 🚀🚀🚀

44 Questions you could ask a candidate during an interview

When hiring a new employee, it’s important to ask the right questions.

But how do you really dig into what makes someone tick as an employee, and how do you determine if they’ll be a good fit for your business — not only in terms of their skills, but also their personality, and as a part of your company culture?

To help you come up with the perfect list of interview questions to ask potential employees, we’ve come up with 44, divided this list into five categories; basic interview questions, behavioral interview questions, salary & career development questions and getting started questions. Pick and choose a handful that feel most applicable from each list.

Happy interviewing! 🚀🚀🚀

Basic interview questions:

  1. Tell me about yourself.
  2. What are your strengths?
  3. What are your weaknesses?
  4. Why do you want this job?
  5. Where would you like to be in your career five years from now?
  6. What’s your ideal company?
  7. What attracted you to this company?
  8. Why should we hire you?
  9. What did you like least about your last job?
  10. When were you most satisfied in your job?
  11. What can you do for us that other candidates can’t?
  12. What were the responsibilities of your last position?
  13. Why are you leaving your present job?
  14. What do you know about this industry?
  15. What do you know about our company?
  16. Are you willing to relocate?
  17. Do you have any questions for me?

Behavioral interview questions:

  1. What was the last project you led, and what was its outcome?
  2. Give me an example of a time that you felt you went above and beyond the call of duty at work.
  3. Can you describe a time when your work was criticized?
  4. Have you ever been on a team where someone was not pulling their own weight? How did you handle it?
  5. Tell me about a time when you had to give someone difficult feedback. How did you handle it?
  6. What is your greatest failure, and what did you learn from it?
  7. How do you handle working with people who annoy you?
  8. If I were your supervisor and asked you to do something that you disagreed with, what would you do?
  9. What was the most difficult period in your life, and how did you deal with it?
  10. Give me an example of a time you did something wrong. How did you handle it?
  11. Tell me about a time where you had to deal with conflict on the job.
  12. If you were at a business lunch and you ordered a rare steak and they brought it to you well done, what would you do?
  13. If you found out your company was doing something against the law, like fraud, what would you do?
  14. What assignment was too difficult for you, and how did you resolve the issue?
  15. What’s the most difficult decision you’ve made in the last two years and how did you come to that decision?
  16. Describe how you would handle a situation if you were required to finish multiple tasks by the end of the day, and there was no conceivable way that you could finish them.

Salary questions:

  1. What salary are you seeking?
  2. What’s your salary history?
  3. If I were to give you this salary you requested but let you write your job description for the next year, what would it say?

Career development questions:

  1. What are you looking for in terms of career development?
  2. How do you want to improve yourself in the next year?
  3. What kind of goals would you have in mind if you got this job?
  4. If I were to ask your last supervisor to provide you additional training or exposure, what would she suggest?

Getting started questions:

  1. How would you go about establishing your credibility quickly with the team?
  2. How long will it take for you to make a significant contribution?
  3. What do you see yourself doing within the first 30 days of this job?
  4. If selected for this position, can you describe your strategy for the first 90 days?

 

How to write a Job Advert

What is the main purpose of a Job Advert?

You would think the answer is quite obvious, and being such a key part of the recruitment process to get right, you would think that this is an area that hiring managers, directors, business owners & the like would spend the most time on, ensuring they get it right. Wrong. Just take a couple of minutes do a quick job search on indeed within your industry, and within the first couple of listings I bet you’ll see either a job ad containing just 2 short sentences, or a job ad with loads of spelling mistakes, or someone has just copied and pasted a job spec, full of jargon and about 3 pages long! You’ll probably soon come across all 3.

So, lets just cover the main purpose of a Job Advert…

  1. To communicate & sell the opportunity to potential applicants
  2. To outline key tasks & responsibilities without sounding like a job description
  3. To make the grass look greener (without bending the truth) – why is this opportunity better than the job they currently have?
  4. To subtly repel unsuitable candidates who do not have the experience you require
  5. Ultimately, to get suitable candidates to apply for the job

What you need to remember is that around 75% of all potential applicants are in work right now – working for one of your competitors. Within this 75%, you are most certainly going to find the best calibre candidates.

The 75% that are currently working, are very time poor – so if they are searching online, they are only doing this either at lunchtime or early evening, most likely whilst they’re eating their tea after a bad day at the office.

With this in mind, you firstly need to ensure that you advert is fully optimised and appears towards the top of the listings, if not – the very top. The potential applicant needs to click the job title and then you need to quickly address the applicants subconscious question of – what is in it for me?

You need to hit their emotional buttons & influence them into applying for your job. Job seekers have become job shoppers!

Remember – the main goal is get them to click the apply button and turn them into an applicant!

So, the next time you hear recruiters, employers, friends & colleagues moaning how job adverts & job boards don’t work anymore. Is it any wonder they receive a poor response? The quality of their job advert is crap.

At Blue Rocket, we are experts in all things recruitment advertising & marketing, so if you’d like any advice or you would like to learn more about our online recruitment advertising solution, please get in touch, we’d be delighted to hear from you 🚀🚀🚀

Hiring Mistakes

6 Most Common Hiring Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

Here at Blue Rocket, we’ve put together 6 of the most common hiring mistakes, with some advice on how best to avoid them…

  1. Not asking the right interview questions

A lot of hiring managers do not take the time to prepare properly for interviews. This means that interviewers can end up just asking superficial questions about previous experience and not really probing a candidate to see how well they will do in the job & if they have the right skills.

  1. Not recruiting for a cultural / team fit

Whilst recruiting different personalities with different views, should be seen as a positive – it is important that any new member of staff fits in with the rest of the team. Similar ethics & values, should keep you on the right path.

  1. Automatically rejecting overqualified candidates

When initially shortlisting CVs, it can be tempting to take out any candidates who exceed the required experience. You may think that they will not be challenged enough & get bored, or will move on as soon as a more challenging position presents itself. However, think of the advantages taking on someone with more experience & additional skills. This can often outweigh any possible downsides and ultimately, you could get a lot more for less.

  1. Missing the opportunity to sell your company

In a candidate short market, job seekers have a lot more choice and often will be presented with a handful of job offers. So, with more competition than ever for the very best candidates, you need to sell your company in the interview. Why should this candidate want to work for you? What is important to them? Talk about the future, talk about your values, the team and of course any benefits, like flexible working or regular social activities.

  1. Writing BAD job adverts

Go on indeed.com & take a couple of minutes to scroll through a few jobs either in your town or sector, or both and it won’t be long before you come across a number of really poor written adverts. These adverts have been written with no thought going into them & probably within just a couple of minutes.

Surprisingly, its not always smaller companies who are guilty of this, but large corporates also, and even recruitment agencies, who should really know better – they should be experts at this?

Firstly, you need to optimise your advert so it appears towards the top of the listings, if not – the very top. You need to get the job seekers attention so they click, then you need to hit their emotional buttons – answer the question of what’s in it for me?  Then, influence them into applying for your job. Job seekers have become job shoppers.

  1. Only having a small pool of candidates to shortlist & hire from

As with most things in life, the more options you have the better the decision-making process. So, with your recruitment advertising it is vital that you maximise your exposure and this will significantly improve application rates & ultimately give you more choice to hire from.

We would certainly recommend using at least 2 job boards, aggregators such as indeed.com & social media. Our online recruitment advertising bundle is perfect for this, but of course there are other companies out there who offer advertising & recruitment solutions, and of course you can always go to the job boards / online platforms directly.

I hope this helps, and if you’d like any more advice, or if we can be of assistance with your recruitment advertising, we’d be delighted to hear from you   🚀🚀🚀