Director of Recruitment Services for the SCMP, Stanley Suen, tells how a diversified range of publications has facilitated continued growth across the entire recruitment market.First published in 1903, the South China Morning Post is very much an institution in Hong Kong. Many will remember as recently as 10 years ago the Saturday SCMP came with at least eight sections on recruitment in the Classified Post. A weighty tome indeed, as eager jobseekers struggled to fold the newspaper in half and carry it home to pore over the job ads with their morning coffee.
Driven by the advent of online advertising, the SCMP Classified Post has undergone significant changes in recent times. HR Magazine caught up with Stanley Suen, Director, Recruitment Services for SCMP to find out how the organisation has been faring since the Global Financial Crisis and to get his take the current recruitment landscape.
On the rebound
Industry-wide print advertising revenue has dropped by about 60% in the past decade. Despite this the cornerstone Classified Post, Jiu Jik (招職), and the recently launched fuel , occupy an important niche in the Group’s diversified suite of recruitment solutions and have positioned the Group well for continued growth as the economy starts to improve. Suen commented, “The economy is recovering quite well. Not just [the SCMP Group] but all the players in the market have recovered well. We have seen quite a good rebound in the economy across the board. The larger organisations are more resilient and able to more quickly enjoy the benefits of the rebound.”
The banking and investment sectors, in particular, are recovering quite strongly. Suen offered two main reasons for this. Firstly, the fact that in 2009 companies within these sectors may have gone through tough times, with staff numbers slashed during the financial tsunami—now the same companies need to replenish their workforce. Secondly, changes to regulations being implemented by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority in the finance sector has also had an impact, leading to an enforced separation of core banking services, and an increased requirement for staff to perform specific banking functions including: frontline, investment related and sales functions. Consequently, the banking sector is hiring specialised people to conduct these core business functions.
Suen pointed out that the retail and hotel industries have also been quite vibrant in their recent recruitment activities with a number of new retail projects and hotels being launched in the region.
While recruitment advertisements have been rising at the SCMP, Suen explained that the Chinese language recruitment publication Jiu Jik has received the strongest rebound in classified advertisements. This reflects the on-going growth in the retail, hotel and food & beverage sectors, which the mass-market publication targets.
Print vs online recruitment
While online recruitment has been gaining popularity over print media recruitment in the past five to ten years, Suen was quick to warn not to be too hasty in predicting the demise of the hard-copy Classified Post section. He observed, “Print advertisements still maintain their power in terms of recruitment branding. This credibility is something that is not easily replicated by the internet.” Suen observed that a jobseeker who is a generalist, with general skill sets often favours traditional print media as it allows passive browsing of a wide range of vacancies. In contrast, jobseekers with more specialist skill sets, such as those in the legal sector may favour more tailored online searches.
By separating the recruitment related publications into three distinct different products: Classified Post, Jiu Jik and fuel —the news group has been able to extend its reach across the entire recruitment landscape targeting specific recruitment audiences with each one. Classified Post focusing on people looking for roles requiring more experience, better English standards and/or higher levels of academic qualifications; Jiu Jik focusing on the mass market; and fuel honing in on the emerging sector of young up-and-coming future executives.
Strategic plan
The SCMP’s latest recruitment publishing venture: fuel has been gathering pace and has now secured a distribution point from convenience store Circle K outlets—sure to give it further traction in the highly competitive recruitment advertising market.
Suen elaborated on the strategic plan for fuel in targeting Gen-Y jobseekers, which he referred to as ‘up-and-coming executives’. He said, “Even though they may be seeking entry-level positions, it is important these jobseekers are comfortable with the English language…with certain requirements for their academic background.” Jiu Jik is also entry level, but more focused on the general job market.”
Suen added, “From the company’s perspective we need to serve the whole market. Those who are mature and professional are served by the Classified Post, those who are young up-and-coming university graduates and comfortable with English are served by fuel and those who are more comfortable with a Chinese-language publication will access Jiu Jik. In this way we can target three distinct sections in the jobseeker market.”
Fuel for HR
Suen pointed out that fuel is not just for jobseekers but that HR practitioners should be reading it as well, as a way of monitoring the job market. He explained, “In this way HR can monitor competitors to its organisation. They can see what techniques their rivals are using to hire people… even down to simple things like what their competitors’ ads look like and how many positions they have open. This is all strategic information. HR needs this kind of information to gauge how they themselves are doing in the market for talent.”
From the jobseekers’ perspective, fuel also gives them a helping hand with a number of features on how to, for example, write CVs. In this way the publication acts as more than a simple recruitment tool, and also offers assistance to jobseekers in terms of training. Suen added, “What’s most practical for jobseekers is that the publication focuses on companies who are hiring. Most Gen-Y candidates are now generalists—they can switch from industry to industry; job function to job function. But of course switching industries is not easy, so when candidates do this they need intelligence, they need advice.”
The Gen-Y challenge
With Gen-Y’s focus on getting information through mobile devices, it’s important for recruiters to be able to reach its target jobseekers through digital means. To meet this demand, there is an electronic version of fuel and all recruitment advertisements are also posted online.
fuel also has its own Twitter page for jobs and while it is yet to take advantage of technology to send out targeted ads to interested candidates—via SMS direct to their mobile phones—Suen pointed out that the technology is there, but there are no plans to roll it out just yet. The Group continues to explore new opportunities and research new applications that will utilise one-to-one marketing, and there is already a premium job alert which can be sent via email to specific jobseekers for important positions.
Paul Arkwright
Publisher
