I think that’s long enough of a blackout for SOPA to take notice….welcome back to the
Dylan blog! Happy New Year guys, hope you had a good one? Last year was a big big
year for Dylan, we were recognised by MARA’s & NORA’s for our work in the last 12
months, which was a huge honour. If that wasn’t pleasing enough we were awarded Best
Recruitment Blog of the year by Jobsite. Thanks! They have great taste in them Jobsite
offices (Max Beesley aside).

Anyway rather than talk about how great we are (let’s face it, we are great) we want
to say a massive well done to Creature for winning business from Adidas to help launch
new trainers in the Adidas Orginals range. This is an awesome win which includes TV,
print, digital and out of home. Great work guys.

I love LinkedIn, not in the love I will have for my first child, but close to it. LinkedIn has revolutionised the recruitment industry. It plays on a very simple emotion, vanity. You may disagree with the vanity suggestion, but if you are on LinkedIn, then you are comfortable with promoting yourself to the world, which is being vain.

Your profile is effectively your CV, it’s a highlight reel of your corporate life, an opportunity for everyone to see what you do and how good you may be.  For companies this is an interesting problem because you know you star performers are constantly visible for all to see and for all to contact.

Recruiters obviously use LinkedIn as a first port of call to head hunt candidates. It allows upfront honesty and assuming that the recruiter is ethical in their approach and respects the persons contact settings (ie, the “open to career opportunities” is highlighted in their contact settings) it is an unobtrusive manor to get in touch. So knowing this is the case, why do companies like their employees being on LinkedIn?

The reason is that it offers a readymade eco-system to help understand what your talent is doing and where. Many companies are buying staffing enterprise solutions, such as Watu, www.watuhq.com, a subscription based staffing ecosystem that manages recruitment. Watu also schedules, deploys and runs payroll for staff. It’s a fantastic product that is revolutionising the field staffing sector. But if you don’t need the extras then LinkedIn is ready made. Coca-cola famously used it to track down talent in their organisation. They required a specialist skill-set and via LinkedIn found out someone in their organisation had it, saving thousands of pounds in recruitment fees.

I believe LinkedIn to be a friend. It creates transparency in the work place, allows for business to flow and a freedom to develop that we didn’t have 10 years ago. LinkedIn is here to stay, so I say embrace it!

I have been here since March 3rd 2007 when Dylan first opended its doors as Mash Recruit. We opened them as a new and fairly green agency, we made some good headway through determination and a genuine ambition to create a unique recruitment consultancy. It was untimley that the recession took hold soon after but we were tenacious, dug deep and kept our heads above water, still trying to continue to stick to our ethos of trying to be a bit different but a lot better than the norm.

On Wednesday night last week, donned in a tuxedo with the team, I felt very proud to see us pick up two awards at the MARAs (best recruitment website and highly commended in the medium recruiter category) as well as picking up best small recruitment agency in the NORA awards recently too. It was a sign of how far we have come, it was a just a shame yours truly who was shortlisted for the best recrutiment awards wasn’t victorious, we must have missed the application deadline!

These awards are testament to the sheer hard work of the whole team and wonderful to see it acknowledged. Dylan is a wonderful place to work; there is a great culture, a fantastic team and a genuine pride of who we all work for and the brand that has been created. Next year I hope to go one better and scoop best medium agency of the year… see you on the podium.

 Having recently won awards at both the NORA and MARA Awards, we’re delighted to announce that Dylan has been chosen to join the distinguished recruitment PSL of Proximity London, officially the ‘world’s most creatively-awarded direct and digital agency network’.

This is a great win for us as a business and, having also recently been retained across the board on the BD Network PSL, it helps in our drive to work with the very best creative agencies in the world, providing career opportunity to our brilliantly talented and super ambitious candidate network.

If you’re looking to work for the very best and want your interests represented by consultants as passionate about recruitment as you are about your discipline get in touch with us.

11.11.11 was always going to blow the tweetosphere into oblivion, but Miguel Rios has captured the magical moment (or should I say moments) in a geographic spin of the volume of tweets moving across the globe like a pulse, first at 11:11am local time and again at 11:11pm. The size of the 1 represents the volume of tweets from that location at that time. I think this is a fascinating example of the prevalence of social media across the globe and the increasingly important role it plays in communication.

Twitter said of the phenomenon, “Whether you were inclined to crack a joke about this rare binary occurrence, wax poetic about its meaning, or join in a global game to share photos at 11 a.m. and 11 p.m., numerology dominated the conversation,” this trend did not go unnoticed, even by myself who is far less then an expert in tweet!

The significance of 11.11.11 is it being the last binary date of the 21st century, and thus important if you believe in the power of numbers. Dubbed the ‘Nerds New Year’ it is believed to be the perfect opportunity to turn over a new leaf and make those all-important life changing decisions, something I seem to do every Monday morning! A novel idea is the production of a film, 11/Eleven Project, designed to capture a snippet of thousands of individuals experiences during the big day to frame this historic date, these are to be made as digital submissions of any kind: blog, audio, tweet, video, and will be screened in September 2012. Being a digital enthusiast, I think this is a great method of collecting moments and really taps into the zeitgeist.

In the more bizarre trends across the globe, Las Vegas was kept busy with nearly 4,000 wedding applications to be held during the crowning moment, and South Korean midwives had a manic day with an influx of expectant mothers demanding c-sections to ensure infants bore the lucky birth date. Here in the UK I imagine gym memberships doubled and McDonalds profits halved over the 24 hours!

And if you missed out on the hype and the fuss of this day in history, you’ll have to wait 88 years until the next binary six-digit date will occur – on January 1, 2100, so you’d better consider the life preserving lifestyle changes if you plan to be around!

Whilst talking Twiiter, the record number of Tweets per second was unsurprisingly held in Japan with Tweeters wishing family and friends a Happy New year, or should I say “Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu,” on the tide of welcoming in 2011. A record of 6,939 tweets per second, almost twice the record previously set last summer when Japan beat Denmark in the World Cup.

It has been award season in the recruitment world and following our recent success in the “Best Small Recruitment Agency” award at the National Online Recruitment Awards we are thrilled to have struck gold again, this time scooping the “Best Recruitment Website” award at last night’s Marketing and Advertising Recruitment Awards.

The website is designed to make finding your next job as easy as possible. Sign up for a My Dylan account and let Dylan do the searching for you, it will learn what you are looking for and start suggesting jobs for you! We also hope the website lets you get to know us, the consultants, much better. We ask a lot of questions of our candidates and clients so we get to know everyone really well, it allows us to make the right talent matches. With that in mind, we think it’s only fair to let you know more about us too!

We hope you like the website too. Please have a look around, we’d love to know what you think.

In today’s edition of The Times, Phil Edelston (Dylan MD), talks to Carol Lewis about hiring staff in small businesses, click the above image to read more.

Ok, so I know I’m a little slow off the mark with this one but, having recently taken part on a day’s coding course, I have a new-found respect for the art of the website. And it couldn’t be more arty than with this little stunner – http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/ – an enchantingly beautiful fusion of Arcade Fire’s “We Used to Wait” and Google Chrome’s diverse capabilities.

So, there are quite a few things I like about this. Firstly, Arcade Fire can do no wrong in my eyes. Their music is awesome and I will always be a huge fan. Secondly, I love the fact that they’ve gone against the traditional music video grain. Chris Milk, the “video’s” Director, has a pretty impressive CV, having directed Kanye West’s “Jesus Walks” and U2 and Green Day’s “The Saints are coming”. Of the music video medium, he has said “Honestly, I’m not sure music videos can ever really touch you as deeply as music alone can. Music scores your life. You interact with it. It becomes the soundtrack to that one summer with that one girl. Music videos are very concrete and rigid because they rely on someone else’s vision. Sometimes mine”. So true, Chris. Clearly, this opinion was shared by the Canadian group and The Wilderness Downtown was born.

Google Chrome allows for a more personal, immersive experience. At the beginning the viewer is asked to enter the destination of where they grew up, which calls up images from Google Maps at certain moments in the song. You’re also allowed the opportunity to enter a message to your younger self which is, in turn, incorporated into the video.

Google’s technology became a crucial ingredient in The Wilderness Downtown. “Google Maps and streetview provided a really good answer to a big question I had when we began the project,” says Milk. “What could we do, using the tools available, that would emotionally resonate with people, without getting them bogged down in the technology? It’s easy to lose the humanity when you start showcasing tech. Google Maps and streetview embody this contradiction of cold high-tech that can be incredibly emotional when used in the right context.”

The result is, I think you’ll agree, bloody impressive. I compel you to watch it and not be affected.

Check out the website here: http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com

Many agencies have put their hand to creating promotional videos, some of which were not necessarily originally created for an external audience but have made their way in to the public arena. Many have created a lot of chatter and gained extensive coverage especially through social media and in the online press, just search for Sapient on twitter now and you’ll see what I mean. OK, so not all of this coverage is positive but as a recruitment consultant coming from a talent attraction perspective, I know that it is the work that our client’s (the agencies) do for their clients that is far more important in attracting talent than a promotional video. The same can be said of acquiring new clients.

For job seekers, the culture, environment and values of a company are key. Live your company values and ensure you have a working environment that nurtures your talent and word will spread, especially in the ‘agency-world’ bubble in London…it’s a small world. That’s not to say assets like promotional videos can’t be a useful tool for promoting your company values, done well they can be a huge benefit and I’d recommend them, just remember that a good or bad review from an ex-colleague or friend is likely to carry far more weight than being knocked on twitter.

Will Sapient come tumbling down as a result of the bad reviews of their video? No, clients will still use them for their track record and work. Will it put off off potential talent joining them? I’d hope not. Will Sapient be getting a bashing on twitter for a while? Most certainly.

Here are some examples of promotional videos various agencies have produced, including a response to Publicis thanks to Mother.

Sapient Nitro – Idea Engineer Music Video

Publicis London

Mother – in response to Publicis London

Mindshare - some years old and I understand it was produced for an intenral conference…

We work Hard for your money – Watch MoreFunny Videos

PHD Media – “We Are The Future”

Engine Group – as featured in previous blog Big Pimpin’ – I don’t agree with the rather unflattering title the YouTube user who posted this video chose by the way, I think it’s hilarious and I couldn’t find the video anywhere else!

David Ogilvy at 60