I'm sitting here in anticipation and can’t wait for the New Year to begin! Great things are going to happen in 2010, I just know it!

When we launched www.SugarJobs.co.uk in April 09 it was extremely challenging, but also very exciting. Even though we entered a saturated Job Board market, we knew we had killer USPs that no other Job Board offered; a cost-effective “No Agency” online portal for Employers and Jobseekers to interact directly with one another.

It has taken all of 9 months from standing start with a brand new URL to generate over 13,000 visitors a month and these visits just keep growing month-on-month!

Simultaneous to promoting SugarJobs, we also decided to development our very own Job board software. This undertaking was more than just stressful! The new site was due for launch in October 09 and naively, I never imagined we would be 2.5 months behind schedule or how much anguish one goes through during testing and bug fixing. But hey, we got there in the end and the brand spanking SugarJobs finally went live this month.

So, whilst 2009 was exhausting, we have laid the foundations for 2010. SugarJobs are ready and determined to become your Job Board of choice!

Thank you so much to everyone who have given their support and encouragement – and a very special thank you to our investor without whom we may never have had the opportunity to challenge the future of recruitment!

God Bless and here’s wishing you a very Happy and Prosperous New Year!

What Jobseekers really want from a Jobboard

Our technical team promises me that our brand new bespoke jobboard will be ready for launch at the end of October 09 - Please, please let that be so! We begin testing with live data tomorrow, so fingers crossed!

Any volunteers (Customers or Jobseekers) willing to do a test drive and provide feedback for us before final launch will be most welcome!

For ideas, I had sent out an email to thousands of Jobseekers in order to gather feedback on what people want from their online jobs portals - these are the most popular features requested:

• Top of the list is the request for feedback on job applications. We will try to achieve this by sending a prompt to Employers for a response after 24 hours of receipt of a job application.
• The facility to search for opportunities in a variable radius from a defined post code, i.e. 30 miles from B77, etc. instead of just selecting specific areas listed.
• The opportunity to upload a cover note specific to the job applied for instead of pre-defined script most jobboards have as standard.
• Jobseekers are interested in simplicity and not artwork!
• Identify the 'killer criteria' at the start of a job description - for example if the role requires SV Clearance - this should be stated first to save the Jobseeker time in reading the ad only to find they are ruled out because of the key criteria.
• Jobseekers want "point and click" and jump menus and drop down menus - the less typing needed the better. The only areas they wish to type in are their name, address and anything related to a job type search. The advice is to make the site as "clickable as possible".

A Big Thank you to all the Jobseekers who took time to let us know what you want - we will do our utmost to accommodate all the requirements (perhaps not immediately) but we will endeavor to keep improving the site to ensure that it is "Simple but Effective."

Any comments or additional suggestions most welcome! please email me at cg@sugarjobs.co.uk

The Latest News on SugarJobs....

We are delighted to share SugarJobs latest updates with you!

SugarJobs is growing at an astonishing pace – We rank in the top four listings on Google under “employer only recruitment” both in the UK and USA.

Over 10,000 candidates registered in the past 4 months alone and we are absolutely delighted that many companies who have completed the initial free trial have now joined as members. The free trial will remain a unique feature and will continue to be available to all new advertisers!

FlagShip Customer Incentive

In order to build traffic in all Industry Sectors on our website we are currently running a FlagShip incentive.

Flagship customers enjoy free advertising for at least 3 months in their specific sector, which in turn attracts similar organisations to use SugarJobs for their job adverting.

We have already appointed Flagships in IT, Finance, Gaming, Marketing, Charity and Engineering, so if you are an employer in any other sector, call now to claim Flagship status and enjoy free advertising!

New Face of SugarJobs

Probably, the most exciting news is that we will be launching a brand new version of the SugarJobs website in October.

The new site will include a redesign and many new features aimed to vastly improve the Jobseeker and Advertiser experience. We aim to keep the site “simple” but unique.

If you have any great ideas or features you think would benefit you as an advertiser or jobseeker, please email your suggestions to shane@sugarjobs.co.uk

Daily Twitter Job Updates

For those of you that do not know about our Twitter account, we update this every day with the latest roles on http://www.sugarjobs.co.uk/

If you do not have a Twitter account it is very easy to setup and this will enable you to follow SugarJobs and our daily updates. To get started, visit http://twitter.com/ and sign up.

Once you have signed up you can then follow us here: http://twitter.com/SugarJobs , you to receive the latest updates.

New Employer Advertisers
The speed at which SugarJobs is growing exceeds all expectation!

Jobseeker registration is growing at a rate of circa 200 new candidate applicants per day with more than half of those applying for roles on registration.

Our free trial offer for all new Employer Advertisers is extremely successful. Most hiring managers are delighted, not only with the volume and quality of relevant candidates, but also "our too good to be true" pricing structure!

To view a list of our current advertisers, visit: http://www.sugarjobs.co.uk/companies


With each passing day, it is more and more evident that SugarJobs unique approach to cost-effective direct recruitment is working and ... for any hiring managers not utilising our services as yet, why not join on a free trial - you will be pleasantly surprised!

For Jobseekers
We provide all Jobseekers with a transparent and confidential service – there is no agency involvement and registered Jobseekers know exactly which Employer is advertising and who is in receipt of their CV on application.

Without agency involvement, you have total control over your job applications. Simply apply to jobs and interact directly with prospective Employers.

Hot Companies Now Recruiting through SugarJobs:
Amnesty International
Martin McColl
IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising)
ICE (Institute of Civil Engineers)
ZiiLABS
SportingBet
RedHat
PartyGaming
IHS
BlueArc

Thank You
The SugarJobs team would like to thank you for all your support in helping us revolutionise online recruitment - Jobseekers can finally take control of their own job application process and Employers can finally enjoy a truly cost-effective online recruitment service!

SugarJobs is still a positive option!

SugarJobs is now 5 months old!

Since we launched, albeit quietly, we have had further positive results which have made this a very interesting proposition to employers and candidates alike.

5 Months results:
April visits - 2,035
May visits - 5,079
June visits - 8,156
July visits – 14, 715
August (20 days) – 9, 782, tracking at 15, 000 visits during UK holidays

Total visits – 39, 317
Total absolute unique visitors – 28, 099
Direct Traffic - 43.92%
Referring Sites - 33.40%
Search Engines - 22.68%

70% of all visits are absolutely unique visits.

292, 242 page views, which means that each visitor is being engaged on the site and finding the information relevant to the situation, our analytics benchmarking here is about 367% higher than average which is music to my ears and really means we are on track.

Average page views per visit – 7, 5

5:50 mins - average time spent on the site.

Our candidates are still proving to be the drivers of the business at the moment with around 6,500 having registered since launch and more recently we are having around 120 new candidates registering each day, this is our coal-face and it is hotting up daily.


We have recently employed the services of a sourcing company whereby they headhunt for certain roles (all free in our service), this has proved extremely positive and many employers are finding candidates they may not have found in the first place, if you have a role that you wish to trial with us based on this service we would love to hear from you.

Shane

SugarJobs week in review

It's Friday and yet another fantastic week for SugarJobs…

Institute of Practitioners in Advertising
SugarJobs recently formed an affiliation with the IPA enabling our respective companies to mirror all Advertising, Marketing and Media vacancies on each other’s sites. This greatly increases the exposure of customer vacancies to jobseekers in these sectors.

The IPA is one of the world's pre-eminent trade bodies for marketing communications agencies with 260 members including the UK’s brightest and best agencies which collectively handle an estimated 85 per cent of all UK advertising spend.

We are proud to be associated with the IPA and to date our affiliation has proved extremely successful, yielding excellent results for all concerned and making SugarJobs an enviable online portal to source Marketing and Advertising agency roles!

To learn more about the IPA and their membership please go to the website http://www.ipa.co.uk/

Growth of Quality Candidate Registration
SugarJobs are now partnered with a talented and reputable candidate resourcing company who will actively source qualified candidates for all our members’ roles. We have already achieved superb results during a trial period and are now confident that this unique resourcing service, focused on driving candidate traffic to all jobs on our website, will prove valuable to our customers, especially those recruiting more unusual roles. Please therefore let us know if you are not satisfied with your advertising response and we will ensure that the resource team focus on your vacancy traffic.

This week, 3000 candidates registered and growth in candidate registration is escalating at a rate of over 300% month on month.

Growth of Quality Companies Advertising on SugarJobs
Our free four week advertising trial for all new advertisers continues to attract great companies. The feedback we have received from hiring managers during their trial period has been extremely positive and most have expressing their delighted and surprise at the calibre of response and customer service.

We are constantly striving to ensure that the service we provide exceeds expectation! Even companies used to recruiting through agencies and initially sceptical about direct recruiting have been converted during their free trial period. They now know that they have nothing to loose and everything to gain – no more agency fees; dedicated resource to drive traffic to their adverts; quality candidate responses; complete control of the recruitment process and above all, a massive saving on their recruitment costs!

Finally, to all those candidates and companies supporting our mission to enable cost effective recruiting without agencies, we are most grateful for your support in helping us go from strength to strength and we will continue to strive to improve our service as we go!

Results are proving positive

SugarJobs is now 3 months old!

Since we launched, albeit quietly, we have had very positive results which have made this a very interesting proposition to employers and candidates alike.

3 Months results:
April visits - 2,035
May visits - 5,079
June visits - 8,156
Total visits - 15,270

70% of all visits are absolutely unique visits.

115,333 page views, which means that each visitor is being engaged on the site and finding the information relevant to the situation, our benchmarking here is about 180% higher than average which is music to my ears and really means we are on track.

5:47 mins - average time spent on the site.

Our candidates are proving to be the drivers of the business at the moment with around 2,500 having registered since launch and more recently we are having around 100 new candidates registering each day, this is our coal-face and it is hotting up daily.

This is merely a small snap-shot of where we are currently and we are expecting these figures to convert into higher numbers in the months to come (with more hard work of course) :-)

We have a number of great businesses who have been on trial for a few weeks and the response from a large majority of them has been positive, and 1 or 2 have even used the words "surprisingly good" which to us, is Gold.

Moving on to the next quarter, we plan to re-skin the website to have a more engaging look & feel and one that we hope will be more engaging to the end-user. The design is just one of the many changes we are planning.

We are also engaged in setting up affiliations with credible partners that we forsee being a great part of the SugarJobs network who in turn will be offering these services to all end-users alike.

Now these results may seem trivial but remember, we launched this in a market that is reticent to try something new as well as the current financial climate that makes the decision process a little different and we seem to be keeping on track.

Finally, may I take this time to say thank you to all involved and we trust you will spread the word.

Shane

Evolution within Recruitment

So Spring is in the air and that means a new day, a new attitude and a fresh approach.

A well known evolutionianist once said that evolution eliminates the competition, well we really do agree with that sentiment. If one finds that there are too many competitors all competing for the same pie then one should change ones diet - adapt or die!

This is so relevant in the Recruitment industry as there are too many companies offering the same for the same, there is no USP or difference in how they approach employers and job-seekers, so much so that employers and job-seekers are a little disillusioned with the whole industry, which is a shame especially in this economic climate.

Brick and mortar recruitment agencies (in my opinion) are becoming giants that are sluggish on profit and arrogance based on the last 15 years of unprecedented growth. We will soon be finding that employers and job-seekers are going to be looking at alternative ways of finding a job or how that job/role is advertised to the open market, and right now that market is wide open.

SugarJobs has taken a new approach to this recruitment model by allowing employers and job-seekers to get in touch with each other directly - whoa, whoa I hear you say!! This is exactly what I mean adapt or die.
By adopting this approach we have found that employers can save massive amounts of time as well as budget by talking directly to job-seekers and vice versa.

This cannot be a negative but can only be seen as a postive step in a massively bloated sector that is crying out for any change. In this economic climate one must be really aware of who the market is and what they need and when they need it, by adopting this model SugarJobs will be driving this into the industry and hoping to make a fresh clean approach within the recruitment industry and you are most welcome to join us.

Shane

SugarJobs going down a storm!

I am absolutely delighted and if I were more flexible, I would do flick flacks over the progress made by www.SugarJobs.co.uk !

Since launch on 4 April 2009 and from a complete standing start, we have seen over a 1000 jobseekers register; almost 50 customer post jobs (a nice mix of high profile and smaller businesses) and; we are currently beating all similar sized competitors (hands down) on all Google analytics benchmarking statistics!

How fabulous to discover that there are so many like minded folk out there with similar experiences. In today's online age, the day of the "middleman" to recruit is an utterly unnecessary expense and inconvenience.

So very many candidates have called to say how delighted they are at not having to speak to agents who have no understanding of their skills, yet make the final decision as to whether to submit their CV to a customer or not (that's if you ever get to speak to an agent again after initial contact!)…. and, so many Employers, as soon as they hear “SugarJobs” say “Sorry, we don’t use agencies” ……what a great invitation to start selling our services and they love it!

Now, I am not knocking agents - there are some very good ones, but by and large the majority leaves a great deal to be desired! I am simply telling the truth and feel justified in my right to criticize – I worked for over 20 years in recruitment and made a good living charging my customers 20% per candidate placement. Over the past 5 years, mostly through very little effort – like every other agent today, I simply posted my customer’s jobs on jobboards and filtered the response through!

Well, I am now making up for my guilt – SugarJobs is pay-back time and so far it’s working a treat! If you advertise, you’ll soon recoup all the fees I’ve charged you over the years! J

A very big Thank You for all your support – watch your back Monster! :-)

Regards
Carolynne

Why are we still paying recruitment agency fees?

Let’s face it - how many hiring managers are fed up with paying inflated recruitment agency fees for a service, which literally involves an agent placing your vacancy advert on Job Boards and then filtering the responding CV’s through to you? Unless you have been fortunate enough to find a good agent, how many employers actually take any notice of the agent summary attached to a candidate CV submission? The reality is that if you receive a good CV, you will conduct an interview, irrespective of what the agent might say!

Well, the good news is that we finally have a solution to cut out the middleman – welcome SugarJobs.co.uk

Not another jobboard I hear you say! And yes, it would naturally seem daft to launch a brand spanking new on-line recruitment portal when there are already circa 800 Job Boards to choose from, let alone launching a new business in a recession!

So what is the logic behind SugarJobs and why enter into what would appear to be a saturated market? Well, that’s easy; despite the apparent competition, SugarJobs is truly unique and to explain why, let’s discuss the current recruitment options:

Option 1 – You can register with an agency and pay between 15 to 30% of the candidates annual salary offer. If the candidate does not work out, you loose your fee or the rebate terms are such that you cannot afford to give the new incumbent a decent chance to prove themselves!

Option 2 – You can use a traditional Job Boards (Monster, Total Jobs, CV-Library or Jobserve, etc...) and pay on a per-job posting basis. These boards are expensive and geared to servicing agencies (volume recruitment) so the likelihood is that you will spend anything from £500 per job posting and you have no guarantee of attracting response!

Option 3 – You can use one of the growing “fixed-fee” Job Boards. This service is half-agency and half-Job Board. On these portals, you will pay circa £660 to £2050 per advert for candidates to be sourced for you on the traditional boards.

The above options are less than cost-effective nor do they provide any guarantee in finding the right candidate. Frankly, it’s all a bit of a lottery and the likelihood is that you will have to repeat your job advert / fee paying several times in your quest to source the ideal person.

That is why SugarJobs have come up with Option 4 – an online portal to put employers directly in touch with jobseekers. The hiring manager joins as a subscribing member for a mere £1500 per annum in exchange for advertising an unlimited number of jobs (repeated or otherwise) and sourcing an unlimited number of candidate CV’s. And... that’s not all SugarJobs give you for your money – they will actively promote your company with banners and featured advertising links to your website.

You can also write a corporate summary to attract candidates, create CMS pages and set application filters to manage your job application response. Furthermore, you can opt for their Gold or Platinum membership, which includes use of internal resource to drive suitable JobSeeker traffic directly to your adverts. It’s nice and simple – an entire advertising and search & selection service at a fixed annual fee, no matter how many candidates you recruit! Goodbye expensive agencies and “per advert” posting boards!

Jobseekers benefit too. Registration on SugarJobs is free and candidates no longer have to be reliant on agencies – they control their own job seeking and application process without the “fob off” attitude many experience when registering with agencies.

Traditonal on-line advertising and agency placement fees are over rated and inflated! The recruitment budget for any business using these services is enormous! Which is why launching SugarJobs in a recession is not such a daft idea afterall!

SugarJobs allows you to control your recruitment budget - you pay a fixed annual subscription (half that of a single agency candidate placement fee) for unlimited advertising and CV search access. Furthermore, if SugarJobs fails to find at least one suitable candidate for you in a 12 month period, they refund your entire annual fee – You have absolutely no risk! What a fab idea!