Already widely acknowledged as one of the UK’s leading European IT recruitment specialists, Michael Bailey Associates (MBA) decided to further entrench this reputation by embracing multilingual functionality in order to launch a brand new trans-euro website, powered by recruitment web specialists 4MAT.

Sourcing and supplying staff both in and beyond the British shores, MBA’s offices can be found in France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and Holland. Each site now has its own interface, with the Swiss and Belgium sites each having two due to the prevalence of two languages in each country. Furthermore, each interface will be fully optimised in order to rank on the international search engines, thereby fully enabling candidate and client accessibility to the site that is linguistically and subjectively relevant to them. This pan-European search engine optimisation forms part of a larger digital marketing campaign that 4MAT will be undertaking as part of their ongoing service to MBA.

Conscious of the different audiences MBA are catering for, the website adopts a clean navigational style alongside a universally appealing design. This design carries through into the candidate community area to ensure continuity and ease of understanding.

“Whilst many of our competitors have had to reduce overheads in 2009, we have adopted a new website that better suits our multinational clients and candidates,” commented Mike Garlick, MD of MBA. “We have streamlined our approach to recruitment and the new website will ensure new clients and candidates can be supported. This year we have invested in our marketing function to continue our best practice approach to recruitment.”

www.mbauk.com

Christmas came early in December when specialist property recruitment consultancy ‘Deverell-Smith Recruitment’ chose 4MAT as their web design partners. Work will commence in January with an expected go live at the end of March 2010/start of April 2010.

One of the major goals is to move away from their current all-flash web platform that was created in 2006 by an agency that had no recruitment strategy experience. Deverell-Smith Recruitment were keen on 4MAT’s dotVacancy3 software because it’s an expandable platform, and the company plans future growth, and therefore expect to develop extra interfaces.

The new website will contain standard recruitment functionality, plus banner managers, latest jobs tickers, and self-optimised vacancies supporting the standard job search. Their current site has not had any SEO in the past, so a Digital Marketing campaign will be on the cards for 2010, as whilst they are a incredibly successful boutique agency in their niche market, they are not ranking for the desired search terms.

Andrew Deverell-Smith, Managing Director of the self-titled agency commented, “We looked no further than 4MAT because we knew that their delivery and service standards were extremely competitive and that fits in well with the goals we have for the new site. We’re confident that this partnership will be successful, and I am looking forward to commencing the new financial year with a great new website.” 

www.4MAT.com

And who makes up this “us”? Well, according to one of the UK’s leading not-for-profit recruiters, it’s the extraordinary people with whom they work – their candidates, their clients, as well as their team. Like the economists predicting a global financial upturn , ProspectUs are setting their sights high for 2010’s expected socio-economic recovery, and in an industry where reputation and values are prized, they are paving the way for all of “us” to successfully kick off the new decade.

And what better way to do this than by launching a brand new website (www.prospect-us.co.uk) after starting a new partnership with long-established recruitment web design agency 4MAT.  This bright and colourful website is a visual manifestation of the company’s ethos that stands out not only against their competitor sites, but against the traditional recruitment web style that has prevailed over the past 3 years.

Embracing split-navigation in order to colour-coordinate client and candidate areas, this multi-interface domain comprises of six sites including an external jobs board (jobs.tactcare.org.uk) and uses 4MAT’s dotVacancy3 software to post jobs on the ProspectUs sites and Tact directly. The site offers two application methods – the standard apply options for regular (non-featured) jobs, and a downloadable pack for those roles that are advertised by external clients. These advertised jobs enable an interactive employer function in the back-end of the website: each vacancy’s applications allow exportable data including the statistics surrounding each download and application, as well as user behaviour information.

Where ProspectUs differ to standard recruitment agencies is their sub-business in recruitment advertising, design and communications. Drawing on their extensive knowledge of their industry including an understanding of the sector’s values and monetary priorities, they have had enviable results from their creative advertising solutions, intelligent response-handling services and independent comms/design campaigns. A ticker of design work scrolls through this section of their website to provide examples to interested parties.

ProspectUs’ passion is for people – not surprising given the area in which they work – and unlike their competitors, they ensure that this value isn’t lost to commercial and economic influence through their operation of a non-targeted/non-commission-based structure for their agents. The rhetoric and imagery across the site reflects this transparent accessibility and desire for constant improvement of the “us” – in an effort to keep it web2.0, they have even facilitated a comments section to gain feedback about their new website.

David Gold, CEO of ProspectUs, sums up the project. “When we first approached 4MAT, we knew we needed their online recruitment expertise but were genuinely concerned with the very real possibility of them building us a ‘me-too’ website – especially as their clients are all recruitment companies. ProspectUs is unique in the Not-for-Profit marketplace in which we operate – we’re passionate about the sector and align many of our values and ideals with the 1,500+ organisations we work with. It was this uniqueness we wanted 4MAT to capture and then bring it to life in our new website – a site where visitors (both clients and candidates) would instantly feel they’d arrived at the right place. So there was the proposition….build us a website that is ProspectUs. The creative journey was not without its challenges (expected) but the site that has been created is exactly what we asked for (delighted). It is very…. ‘Us.’”

www.prospect-us.co.uk

www.4MAT.com

Talent Quest, the recruitment industry’s brand new start-up celebrated their website launch two weeks ahead of schedule last week, and have already been likened to contend against Hays.

Working intently with digital marketing agency 4MAT since August 2009 to create branding for a fully-functional web site, the Talent Quest team will provide comprehensive and intelligent recruitment solutions into the Media, Games & Interactive Entertainment, IT, Digital, Technology and other commercial sectors by working in partnership with organisations and aligning themselves to the specific company goals in order to recruit the best.

Having already proactively developed an online buzz preceding their launch through social media sites including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, the brains behind Talent Quest are no strangers to buzz marketing and brand awareness for the recruitment industry. Leigh Johnson, Director and Talent Acquisition Specialist, says “Candidates and clients alike are on social networking sites, so it’s important to ensure your brand has a presence. If you don’t have hits or followers, it’s not unlikely for your company to slip by the wayside, so we’ve ensured that we’ve hit the ground running.”

The website embraces standard functionality including quick applies, registration forms, quick CV drop, job alerts, short listing, and post a vacancy, and phase two of www.tqrecruitment.com will include RSS feeds and blogs to complement their social network and web2.0 goals. The Talent Quest team are also planning on developing their Career Centre offering – already their article “the art of body language” has been picked up by search engines and is bringing a lot of relevant traffic to the site, and demand for more articles has been noted. “This feedback has come not only from visitors of our core site, but through our social media links,” continues Leigh. “People keep coming back for more, which is indicating that our goal of both working and recruiting intelligently is hitting home with our audiences.”

Marrying orange and blue on the website reflects the Talent Quest work ethic: calm yet vibrant, hip yet classic, passionate yet reliable. These values, combined with a realistic and adaptable attitude towards business development in a recession, give Talent Quest a unique position from which to raise the recruitment bar.