Think Job Boards are dead? You’re wrong. Reed MD Martin Warnes tells you why.

To execute customer experience properly, it takes really hard work and dedication by a team who are focussed purely on that experience…..recruitment is much more than just pushing data and clicks about the internet”

Steve: You’ve got people in the industry saying that job aggregators like Indeed are providing the majority of the traffic to the job boards which ultimately is reducing the relevance of job boards. How do you feel about that and what’s your response?

Martin: We work with thousands of customers on a weekly basis- and what we focus on is the customer experience, both for our jobseekers and for our hiring customers.

And what I mean by that is we really look to understand the service they expect, what they’re looking to get from reed.co.uk, who they’re trying to hire, and to make sure that they receive those matching candidates or matching jobs in the most user-friendly way possible. And I think if we do that then we’re really confident in the service that we give to our customers.

You mentioned Indeed. There are lots of aggregators out there and they can be very proficient at passing clicks around, and it’s great that they work for some companies, but we’ve got our own way of approaching it which is very people focused.

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Steve: So you would say that the acute search engine optimization focus aggregators have to use to capture the candidate is always going to reduce the ensuing candidate experience they can provide?

Martin: I think to execute customer experience properly, it takes really hard work and dedication by a team who are focussed purely on that experience, and we put lots of investment into that. There will be companies who gear themselves much more towards search engine optimization and that’s fine if it can bring an audience – we also look at search engine optimization as well as one of our marketing initiatives.

But the first and last point for us is our customers and the experience we give them.

Steve: Why do you believe that talent pools have become so important?

Martin: I think for hiring customers – they understand that they’re managing candidates. Managing a talent pool of candidates is an important part of the flow of good talent into their business. and the smart ones will look to nudge their relationships with those candidates over time.

Steve: There’s a lot of talk in the industry that the robots are going to take over, and that recruitment will become completely automated. What’s your opinion?

Martin: Well, a depressing thought. Ultimately, recruitment is about people. It’s about individuals who’ve got dreams of a new job, and it’s about companies who need a great individual to come in and work with their team. So I think recruitment is much more than just pushing data and clicks about the internet.

That’s why we try to take such a people-first approach to our service.

Steve: Martin, thank you very much!

Martin Warnes is the Managing Director of REED.CO.UK (@reedcouk)