Intellectual Vanity Fair: innovative recruitment festival addressing industry gaps

Head Hunting Festival 2009

Intellectual Vanity Fair" is an exhibition/festival project that offers an innovative approach designed to address the issues, shortages and limitations of the current recruitment processes.

The company goal is to attend the scope of the difficulties identified our group applies the theories and the principles of entrepreneurship to explore the opportunities presented by the issues and offer an alternative solution to the problem.

More specifically, the company intends to research current recruiting processed in major companies, with a focus on it industry, analyze trends and write best practices, including here the definition of key performance indicators established for the suitable candidates. The best practices will then be applied in the company's day-to-day work to match the candidates' skills with clients' needs. This solution is assumed to be beneficial for both employers and job seekers as it guarantees a good employee/employer.

Given the current recruitment market outlook dominated by a shortage of skills on the Australian labour market, an innovative idea such as the "Intellectual Vanity Fair" should be embraced quickly by high skilled companies. The annual sales are expected to be $1,440,000 in the first year of activity and increase up to 59% per year. The costs corresponding to the first year of activity include mainly personnel expenses and are estimated at $382,800 and increase up to 14% per year.

II. Management Team

Founder and executive manager - extensive recruiting experience; the person will be in charge with the internal and external recruiting processes.

Senior business analyst - extensive business and customer analysis experience; the person will be in charge with the development, assistance and overseeing surveying activities, data manipulation, analysis and interpretations and KPI definition.

Senior PR - extensive event organisation experience; the person will be in charge with the setting up of the festival.

Financial Manager - extensive finance/accounting analysis; the person will be in charge of the company's monthly financials as well as with the budgets approve for various business-related activities.

III. The Industry and the Company and its Product(s) or Service(s)

The Industry

The shrinking labour force and increased unemployment will ensure that the recruiting industry's growth as this movement is translated in dynamism. However, the current economic growth trends will be quite a challenge for the industry in 2008 and 2009. The major players in the industry will manage to consolidate their business despite the global environment becoming increasingly competitive. The Australian market is dominated by five major players, including Manpower, Hudson/TMP, Adecco, Michael Page and Hays. The big five companies often resort to acquiring to new companies to increase size and maintain their market share.

Second tier companies are spread throughout the country in large cities, such as Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne; they offer a good, flexible package of services and the average annual salary range is between $30,000 and $110,000.

Evaluated at $10bn, the recruiting industry in Australia took a big hit in October 2007 when 474-visa system was adopted because the most skilled emigrants were no longer able to meet the requirements of the new system.

The Company and the Concept

Intellectual Vanity Fair" is an exhibition/festival project that offers an innovative approach designed to address the issues, shortages and limitations of the current recruitment processes.

The human resources' contribution to the economic success of an enterprise and entire industries is fundamental in the highly competitive business world. The results of recent studies identified shortages and limitations regarding current approaches to matching the abilities of candidates with employers' needs. The issues experienced by the thousands of unsatisfied potential employees (Lencioni, 2007 and Kaffman & Kleiner, 2003) and enormous amounts of resources the corporations spend annually (Bowden, 2007 and Midler, 2005) in the process of screening potential candidates further signified the problem. Hence the concept of Intellectual Vanity Fair: a company to address human capital supply and demand optimal matching. The suggested solution could be designed and implemented as the following set of measurable and achievable tasks:

group of business analysts is hired to collect the information of the interview processes conducted using surveys of the leaders of it industry in Australia, the KPI established for the suitable candidates, the mandatory requirements that shall be satisfied

The information is processed and the set of computerised tests is designed to assess the knowledge and skills required

The future exhibition/competition is designed and promoted among the graduates of the Universities and other potential candidates

The venture is conducted in tours with all the potential employees attending the series of automated, computerised tests.

The group of semi-finalists are presented to the recruiters for personal meetings

The finalists are guaranteed the work placement

Once the structure is established the process is repeated in China and Russia for it and other industries.

The Product(s) or Service(s)

Intellectual Vanity Fair will organize recruiting events meant to bring together highly specialized job candidates with companies from different industries. The purpose of these events is to gather as much information as possible about potential candidates, analyze it and use it to match candidate abilities and skills against the company's clients' job requirements.

Additionally, the company will provide specialized recruiting services to its customer base consisting of a candidate short-list for certain job description. The candidate short-list will be generated based on the series of automated, computerised tests described in the previous section.

Entry and Growth Strategy

Intellectual Vanity Fair is the unique concept on the recruiting market, which will be first presented to the public at the Head Hunting Festival in 2009. Prior to this event, the company will present the business concept to the giants of the it industry, which are likely to participate in the first phase of the business, namely the critical analysis of recruiting processes in various companies.

The growth will be ensured by increasing fund allocation to the improvement of company recruitment process analysis, expansion to foreign markets and learning of best practices abroad and the attraction of foreign and domestic skilled personnel. A strong candidate database will be one of the success keys of Intellectual Vanity Fair business idea. Additionally, the company will organize events abroad and increase frequency as revenues increase.

IV. Market Research and Analysis

Competition and Competitive Plane

The competition on the Australian recruiting market is quite big. The market share is concentrated in the hands of a small number of large and multinational players. Additionally, companies focused on recruiting individuals for specific jobs (e.g. it) have very well established recruiting processes, whose focus on a small number of skills makes their results very precise.

The substitute companies should be considered a threat for Intellectual Vanity Fair as they translate into a cheap solution for both companies and job seekers. Also, traditional recruitment companies are likely to cover a considerable number of potential employers with their service portfolio.

Finally, industry entrants with similar business ideas may turn into a threat, as the Australian skill shortage is putting pressure on recruiting companies to find more efficient ways to match candidate skills with business needs.

Estimated Sales

TABLE 1 - COMPANY EXPECTED SALES

Indicator

Hired candidates

Average candidate annual salary

Company commission (15%)

V. Marketing Plan

The marketing plan includes pricing, the promotion, the product and the placement strategies all of which are meant to increase product/service awareness.

Pricing strategy

Despite being an innovative business concept, the Intellectual Vanity Fair is a start-up company, that doesn't enjoy product notoriety among employers. Therefore, the market entry pricing strategy will be to charge below market practices, namely 15%-20% of expected base salary of future employee, market averages being around 20%-30%. Additionally, as a guarantee of high quality services, if the hired employee leaves its position within 90 days from the hiring date, the company will find a replacement at no extra cost for the client.

Promotion strategy

The official launching will be organized at the Head Hunting Festival 2009, where the company will have a general presentation of the business concept and will distribute flyers and business cards to all participants.

To attract companies to participate in the initial research phase of the business concept, the Intellectual Vanity Fair will organize individual presentations to major players in the it market and distribute promotional materials to them.

Product strategy

The company will sell recruiting services with 90-days guarantee on the service.

Placement strategy

The fairs will be organized in large university cities to attract a large number of candidates and the headquarters will be in Sidney, Australia as this is a major business center.

VI. Proposed Company Offering

The main costs will be associated with personnel and promotional activities.

TABLE 2 - PERSONNEL EXPECTED COSTS

Position

No of employees

Average Monthly Salary ($)

No of months

Executive manager

Senior BA

Senior PR

Financial manager

Contract-based analysts

An additional monthly $5,000/monthly will be allocated to promotional activities and $4,000 to rent costs.

TABLE 3 - KEY FINANCIAL FIGURES

Key indicators

Expected costs

Expected sales

Gross profit

Reference List

Amble, Brian. "Recruitment & retention problems on the rise." Management Issues, 2004: 12-15.

Australian Bureau of Statistics. Labour Force Australia. October 2008.

Bowden, Bob. Hiring costs being underestimated by Australian businesses. 14 March 2007.

HP Philanthropy and Education Annual Report. 2005.

A www.hp.com

Kandola, Rajvinder, Robert Wood, Bindi Dholakia and Caron Keane. The Graduate Recruitment Manual. Gower Publishing Company, 2001

Lencioni, Patrick. The Three Signs of a Miserable Job: A Fable for Managers (and their Employees). Jossey-Bass, 2007.

Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft Invests in Strategic Alliance with CareerBuilder. 09, 1999. http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1999/may99/careerpr.mspx (accessed 10-17, 2008)

Midler, David. Downtown Business Recruitment. Lulu, 2005.

Thornton, Grant. International Business Report 2008 - Country Focus. 2008. http://www.grantthornton.com.au (Accessed Nov 2008).

Intellectual Vanity Fair

The Australian employment has had an upward trend in absolute values since 1998 until 2008, rising from 8,674,900 individuals in October 1998 to 10,752,800 in October 2008.

Substitutes

Internet job search engines.

Traditional recruitment companies, with already established client portfolios

Positive implications

Negative implications

Rivalry

Specialized recruiting companies focused on certain jobs

Major players in the industry

Buyers

Giant it companies interested in recruiting highly skilled personnel

Suppliers

Business analysts - to analyzed surveyed data

Candidates - to help build a strong candidate databased

Staff - since the company is small, the staff have a great impact on the company. If a person leaves, the impact is deep.

Entrants

Companies founded by former employees of existing HR companies with similar business concepts.