With a host of employers and job-hunting hopefuls aboard, Dean Bruce gives an update about Rail Recruiter – the revolutionary new platform for railway industry recruitment.
It has been a fantastic start at Rail Recruiter, and we are well on our way to achieving our ambition of being the go-to place for all job seekers and recruiters working in the rail sector.
Rail Recruiter was always intended to be ambitious and streamlined at the same time. And because it is an online platform that uses the latest technology, we can see it in action. Job seekers and recruiters are using our sophisticated but clear website to easily search for jobs and to post them. In just a short time, we are seeing job seekers and recruiters find each other quickly and effectively, making good use of our search functionality, alerts and advertising.
Success in numbers
Now we have had a few weeks, we have been able to gather some numbers, and they are extremely encouraging for me and my team. We are working directly with more than 20 recruiters, including the biggest agencies and businesses with the strongest reputations. We have passed the 1,000 mark in terms of advertised jobs, adding 100 new jobs in the past few days alone.
And those jobs are getting looked at: in a very short time, 10,000 people have gone through the site and looked at 50,000 different pages.
The great news is that these numbers will continue to grow. More recruiters are being signed up every week, and more jobs are posted every day.
And we are genuinely covering the entire rail industry. We have nationwide opportunities for a broad spectrum of roles, including welders, track workers, project managers, machine operators, engineers, quantity surveyors, track designers, production managers, sales executives, and senior executive roles. Last week, we posted our first overseas vacancy in Melbourne.
All of this means there is a very clear need for this platform in the rail jobs market.
Proof of concept
Right from the start, we decided that we’d only be successful if we had a product that worked in the real world. It’s easy when developing a new digital product to make huge assumptions based on internal tests. But to succeed, you have to reach out, and we did.
We engaged with recruiters during the design and development phase and asked them what they needed and what they liked and disliked about the platform; we then changed and improved our offering before launch. This investment is now bearing dividends – new recruiters are seeing the same value our first industry collaborators did.
Over the past few weeks, we have been able to undertake a similar process of collaboration with our job seekers. That’s not to say it is easy: you always enter into an open dialogue like this with some trepidation, wondering if there is something that has been missed or could be done better. But thankfully, the overriding feedback we have received is that the platform is simple, intuitive and easy to use – exactly what we aimed for. Job seekers can register in minutes, making the start of their journey easy with no stumbling blocks.
We will continue to talk to all of our users and look for new and better ways to do things, whether this is based on taking advantage of new technology or removing wrinkles from the platform. In fact, we have couple of small innovations in the pipeline that will make it even easier for recruiters to match talent to their jobs. Watch this space.
Looking to a bright future
Although it is still early days, we could not have hoped for such a positive start, and we are very excited about Rail Recruiter’s future. We are in active discussion with more recruiters, some of whom are now contacting us to talk about posting their jobs, so we expect the site to continue growing both in terms of job posts and job seeker use.
On a personal note, following a career spanning more than 20 years in marketing, it has also been a real privilege to launch and market the site over the past few weeks after the development and testing phase concluded. Making sure as wide an audience as possible knows about the site, and the great jobs we have, will always be a big part of our success – and spreading the word far and wide about how Rail Recruiter can help the rail industry is a reward in itself.
So here’s to helping extend the railway family each day: Rail Recruiter is here, and we are ready to help you take your next important steps, be it in looking for a job or growing your team.
Find out more about Rail Recruiter by clicking here.
To talk to Dean about how Rail Recruiter can help your business email dean@rbdrailrecruiter.com