Keep a laser-like focus on your customers and their needs — it will help you stay relevant
ONE of the main things I’ve learned is that it’s not just the speed of technological change, but how fast people’s expectations and behaviour evolve to match it. When I joined IrishJobs.ie (part of Saongroup) the common wisdom was that “finding a job is a job in itself ”. Even though applying for jobs online was a step forward from newspaper advertisements and putting your CV in the post, back then — from a technical point of view — it was still a chore to apply for jobs.
People were accessing the internet via dial-up and connectivity was a major issue; one of our primary technical concerns was making sure the pages on the site loaded quickly.
Fast forward 12 years and everyone is carrying their own personal computer around in their back pocket, their lives conducted through the medium of the mobile phone. They use best-in-class technology every day and expect every online experience to match this level of technological development.
Keep a laser-like focus on your customers and their needs. It will help you stay relevant and navigate the technological changes.
In an enterprise with multiple stakeholders, you have to identify who is most important to your business and be single minded about designing your product offering around them.
From the start we’ve always been clear that helping jobseekers find a job is what we are all about and that has stood to us. Even though new technologies are presenting every day, we are able to sift through the noise and focus only on what makes getting a new job easier.
Instinct is good, but data is better.
When I started my career a lot of kudos was given to business “instincts”, but good data is now fundamental to my decision making.
The digital adage “track and act” helps us measure the technology we implement and assess whether it is supporting job seekers in their job hunt.
Staying on top of technology is a challenge for every business today. As an organisation we’ve always embraced progress so we channel technology effectively. I like to think that we’ve used it to take the work out of finding a job.