Huge Developments at FE Careers

FE Careers have launched their biggest development to date. This is their ninth major development in the past 3 years, but this development is the biggest yet. FE Careers who are the UKís premier Further Education and Work Based Learning job advertising site, has a whole new design and implemented loads of new time saving features for job advertisers. Job seekers can now find jobs more easily with several more ways to search, jobs via email improvements and enhancements on jobs via RSS. FE Careers has also implemented an interactive rate card for new clients, saving time and making their advertising service even more automated. Gavin, FE Careers CEO explains the significance of this latest development ìThis is a major, major development we have just released. Imagine Arnie, dancing like Michael Jackson and youíre close to the new FE Careers system!î

FE Careers have spent six solid months on their latest developments. Job seekers can search in 7 ways to find jobs, compared to 4 with the old system. Jobs via email and Jobs via RSS have been enhanced. Advertisers have a whole series of time saving tricks to play with, such as screening questions, up to 4 attachments per job ad. Advertisers can also have a custom RSS feed built so their job adís administered on FE Careers will be automatically updated on their own companyís / collegeís vacancy web page. FE Careers have a number of Recruitment branding tools to help advertisers promote their business. Due to the launch of FE Video (www.FEvideo.co.uk) at the beginning of the year advertiser can also upload videos about why job seekers should work with them.

Gavin explains ìWe have been asking for feedback from job seekers, our advertisers and new clients on what they want from the site. Itís their site after all. So we have added all of these to the new FE Careers system, and thought up a few more time saving features to make life easier for everyone. Life just seems to have sped up over the past couple of years for everyone ñ time is no longer money ñ itís a precious commodity. So if we can save time and make more accurate matches for job seekers and advertiser ñ then weíre doing our job.

ìJob seekers have more flexibility in the ways they can search for jobs. We are also offering more accurate proactive approaches with jobs via email and jobs via RSS. We have also set up a jobs via RSS service to mobile for job seekers that are keen to use this feature.

ìNow for advertisers weíve totally gone for it. Our advertisers have always feedback how happy they have been with the quality of applicants from FE Careers; weíre a quality ñ not quantity site. No one wants to wade through hundreds of irrelevant CVís ñ thatís why our advertisers choose usÖ but we wanted to take this a step further and ensure that job seeker responses are even closer to the advertisers requirement. So we have introduced screening questions and attachments to jobs to ensure that job seekers that apply are hitting the bullís eye even more.

ìMany of our advertisers found it difficult to juggle their time to administer several websites at once, particularly advertisers from Large Training Providers and FE Colleges found it difficult to keep their vacancies up to date on their organisations website. So we developed Custom RSS feeds so they only have to update FE Careers, and this will automatically update their own website with their latest vacancies.

ìMany of our advertisers on FE Careers are also big on recruitment branding, so now they can easily upload short videos on why someone should work there. Many advertisers are excited by this, to be honest the majority are not ready to implement this yet ñ but weíre offering future proof recruitment branding solutions. Weíve always got a waiting list on enhanced advertising on FE Careers, with some of our packages commanding a six month to a year waiting list. This was frustrating to many of our advertisers, so with our re-design we have enabled more enhanced advertising options to keep more of our advertisers happyî

Itís been a busy period for the FE Careers team; an overhauled www.FENews.co.uk was launched last week. At the beginning of the year www.FEvideo.co.uk was released and last year they released www.FEevents.co.uk the education exhibition, conference and event information site
FE Careers appears to be looking to not just offer job advertising, but a one stop shop for the interest and needs of the Further Education sector. Last month before the launch of the new FE Careers site, they had yet another record month with over 2,000 FE and WBL jobs advertised at any one time, 2.2 Million hits, 1.39 Million Page views, 109,000 visitors and 23,500 first time visitors. These are stats just for FE Careers, if you include FE News, FE Events and FE Video it will be significantly more than this.

Gavin explains the reason for the major developments ìSome people say, if itís not broke, then donít fix it, but I like to listen to our advertisers, job seekers, news readers. I like to hear what people want when I attend exhibitions and conferences. I like to hear what potential clients are looking for. Everyone can always improve. Itís a case of see a need, fill a need. FE Video and FE Events were spurred by what I was hearing at exhibitions and conferences. Like I said earlier, peopleís time is very precious. If we can make life easier for them, if we can give them the latest jobs, whatís happening in the industry, what events are happening and what strategies and new ideas are developing. This is useful, we help keep their finger on the pulse of developing ideas in the FE Sector - itís relevant and itís brilliant use of their time ñ they and their friends are going to keep coming back- and thatís what itís all about at the end of the day. Happy web visitors, whether they are job seekers, news readers, advertisers or future Spielbergís - if theyíre happy and felt that their time spent on our sites was beneficial ñ then weíre doing our jobî.

FE Careers have introduced several services beyond the traditional job board model. Letís see how their audience and advertisers respond to their latest developments. This is FE Careers ninth major development in 3 years, so we think there could still be more up the teams sleeve in the future.

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