Categories
Blogs Internet Jobs LinkedIN Microsoft Recruitment

Tuesday Club – Irish Recruiters on LinkedIN

Social Networking finally started happening on a proper scale in the recruitment industry in Ireland! What accelerated is that one of the largest US multinationals present here in Ireland made the best person to stimulate the social networking available. Declan Fitzgerald is today the best known blogger on the recruitment topics among Irish employers. Declan did not stop there, but organised the social networking via the LinkedIN Group – Irish Recruiters. The group today has 840 members, and is still growing quickly. The next step Declan decided is to bring the social networking from the web to the real life, so we got:

irish-recruiters-logo Tuesday Club – Irish Recruiters on LinkedIN

How to sign up? Join the Irish Recruiters group in LinkedIN first, and see the Group info for more!

Categories
Blogs Internet Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Recruit Ireland goes FREE!

Recruit Ireland found itself an a bit funny situation this month. On one hand they are the main sponsor of the National Recruitment Federation Conference later this week. The NRF is the association of the Irish Recruitment Agencies, and most of them are actually Recruit Ireland’s paying clients. On the other hand Recruit Ireland has decided to give Free Jobs Advertising for Ireland’s Employers – that are basically the clients of the agencies, hence their clients. Employers loved it since there is something free for them. We all like free things. Agencies hated it since they lost revenue while their cost (a fee that Recruit Ireland charges) is still the same.

Via the various channels different recruiters have publicly disapproved the move by Recruit Ireland. All the Recruitment Agency blogs and Social Networking Discussions state the clear and strong disapproval with the move. Recruiters feel it’s not a fair move. And they all raised the question – What will their own association (that charges them for membership as well) do about it? The 2009 NRF conference will therefore be very interesting, with the Recruit Ireland as the main sponsor, and 118 agencies, most of them angry (none has spoken anything positive about the move!)

From the Recruit Ireland’s perspective it was probably a – no brainer. They are not managing to sell any advertising to the Employers, and the Jobs site always looks better with the Employers jobs on it. No one likes the 100% recruitment agency dominated web site. So they decided to give it up for free to employers. It will fill their database of potential future clients.

I am really looking forward to the NRF conference later this week since there will obviously be some interesting discussions!

Categories
Career Internet Recruitment

Who’s Viewed My LinkedIN Profile

likedin-profileLinkedIN profiles are interesting thing. Your personal data stored in LinkedIN is actually the asset that LinkedIN sells. Whom to? Well to anyone interested to pay for it, even to you if you want to take your credit card out!

Here is the bait. LinkedIN tells you how many times was your profile seen in the last week, and it also tells you a bit about a few people who have seen it. If you want to know more – get ready to pay for it.

Who’s Viewed My LinkedIN Profile?

Your profile has been viewed by 9 people in the last 7 days, including:

HR Director at 3i
Someone in the Human Resources function in the Staffing and Recruiting industry from Ireland
Director at Premier Group
Someone in the Entrepreneur function in the Marketing and Advertising industry from Ireland
Someone in the Human Resources function in the Staffing and Recruiting industry from Ireland

The popularity of my LinkedIN profile in the last 7 days is listed above. It is actually quite relative to what I actually do for living, and reflects the group of people I am linked to in LinkedIN. Recruitment, staffing and HR people, from the entrepreneur to a director level, and a bit of marketing and advertising brought in to the mix.

Would you bite and pay to see who are those people who spent their time to view your profile?

BTP: Here is my public profile on LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ivanstojanovic

Categories
Internet Microsoft Recruitment

CPL, Irish Jobs & Microsoft: The Future of Recruitment

00992CS-UFor the €200 fee CPL, Irish Jobs and Microsoft will tell you what The Future of Recruitment is going to be like.

The conference will include content on:

What challenges the CPL and Irish Jobs are experiencing in the current climate?

How Microsoft recruits?

How cloud computing is evolving recruitment?

The future trends, techniques and technologies from the CPL Irish Jobs and Microsoft

Examples of Irish companies that are offering innovative recruitment products and services and connecting to job seekers in new ways…. – I believe this is again from the above three companies.

Categories
Career Internet Recruitment

If there is a job, Hound will sniff it!

hound-job-siteAmerican marketing was always a bit specific. In some cases it just does not ‘cross the water’ well, and sounds a bit off on our shores here. In recruitment the example is the job site Hound.com. It is a Employers Only model job site, like Ireland has its own RealJobs.ie. It’s marketing is very original and different from the usual jobs sites. On Hound everything is about the hounds and the front page is full of dogs images. 13 dogs will welcome you on the Hound home page. Quite impressive for the jobs site, isn’t it?

This is Hound they think you should use them:
Hound shows its members jobs from every employer website it can find in the United States and throughout the world. It is the most powerful job-search engine in existence and powers several job boards. Recruiters use Hound to track down potential jobs for their clients.

Meaning: If there is a job, Hound will sniff it!

Categories
Career Internet Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency Search Engine SEO

How to post a job online Part 3: Job Description

The following article is the third part of three articles on – How to Post a Job Online. The first article is Job Titles. The second is Job Tags and Keywords.This third article concentrates solely on the Job Description.

Job Description

Do not start your job description with:
Your job title – since it is probably printed above it on your Jobs Page in larger font.
An advertisement – We are the best company for…

Do start your Job Description with a sigle sentence that is 3 – 5 second sales pitch for your position. When a job seeker gets to the page your job is advertised you have a few seconds to get his attention to read the full long page and apply to your job. That is why your first sentence of a Job Description is crucial. Remember that a job seeker have seen the Job Title already, and that message brought him to the job advertisement page. The first sentence have to be the natural extension of the Job Title, so do not repeat it in full again, but tell the job seeker more about your job.

Under your first sentence very short paragraph use the headings to name the following parts of the job specification. Do not use more than 4 or 5 headings. Use the combination of the lists and the text in every job specification. It makes the page easier to scan and digest in seconds.

Do not end your job specification with jet another advertisement. Apply button is where you want the job seeker to end up, as quick as possible. Your conversion rate drops a single percent with every word too many in your job description. The unnecessary words at the need of the job description have even worse effect. A pure branding sentence about your company can reduce the conversion rate of a page where the job is advertised more than 10%, especially if it contains a hyperlink to another page (your home page).

A job description advertised on a web site has a function. When writing the content for that page – a Job Description, have that in mind. Be aware that the goal is to get the right candidate to the page (write relevant content) and get him trough the content as quickly as possible (headings, lists, formatting) to the application form. Your advertisements and branding messages have its place in your Company Profile (on jobs sites or anywhere else on your own web site. Their effect on the job advertisement page is just the reduction of applications.

Categories
Blogs Career Internet Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency Search Engine SEO

How to post a job online Part 2: Job Tags / Keywords

The following article is the second part of three articles on – How to Post a Job Online. The first article is Job Titles. This second article concentrates solely on the Job Tags or Job Keywords.

Job Tags

Tags or Keywords are the words or phrases we can associate any page with to help the search engines and content management systems understand what is our content about.

How to create a set of tags that will drive traffic from the search engines to your job advertisement?

When you have crated your ‘perfect’ Job Title, you will most likely and up choosing one of the number of the good ones you came up with. That best one will then be your Job Title, and the rest of them you can use as Tags. How many? The more the better! Job sites usually let you publish around 1000 characters in the Job Keywords field, so do not exceed that limit.

Tags multiply the power of the Job Title. How do they do it? Simply because most jobs sites and modern CMS-es know how to use tags to generate pages, and links from them. If tags structure is applied correctly, it can multiply your job applications numbers.

Categories
Career Internet Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency SEO

How to post a job online Part 1: Job Title

The following article is the first part of three articles on – How to Post a Job Online. This first article concentrates solely on the Job Title.

Job Title

Job Title is the most important part of your job description. Why? Job title is the first part that the job seeker will see of your job advertisement. In half of the different displays that is also the only part of the job description a job seeker will see. If your Job Title is not catchy, you will lose the attention of a job seeker and he will go to apply for a job better presented by its title.

Besides the visual presentation, the Job Title has the extreme importance in driving the traffic to the web site where the job is advertised. Why? Best job sites are designed so that the Job Title from your job advertisement actually generates dynamically the most important web page elements on the page the job is displayed. Your job title will also become a web page title, a link title, and will display itself on huge number of the places on the web site where the job is published. The result is that the search engine will drive traffic to the page where you have advertised your job – and the traffic will be related to the job title you have chosen for your job.

Choose a wrong job title, and you have missed the opportunity to drive interested job seekers to your job.

So what should a Job Title be on a job site?

In most cases you have some predefined title already. It is usually a name of the role the position will be working on in the company. It is something like Welder, Project Manager, Quality Assurance Specialist, etc.

Now let’s think like a job seeker for a second, and try to imagine what will a job seeker be searching for in the search engines? He might logically start looking for the role name (like Project Manager). If the results are not close enough, the job seeker will include the location. The search phrase will look like Project Manager Dublin. If that does not return what he is looking for, he will filter further with a skill he possesses. So the search phrase comes to Program Manager Dublin Six Sigma.

Now let’s go back to your job advertisement, and look at the ways to attract that candidate. Why him? Well he knows exactly what role, where and with what skills applied is his desired role. People who do not look for a job in Dublin are not potting the word Dublin in the search phrase. It’s a natural filtering process, and the perfect candidate is the one who comes to your job advertised with a search phrase that is a good representation (or the exact match?!) of your job and therefore your job title.

The average quality of the job applications for the position advertised as just a role (Program Manager) is really low compared to the job advertised with a Job Title constructed as a role + location + skill.

Furthermore your jobs page with your job advertised as a simple job role name most likely has a greater competition, meaning many other sites have a page like this, and it will be extremely hard to get the job hunter to your page from the search engine. The more complex your job title is – the less competition for that phrase exists in the search engines, Jour job is more likely to get there on top of the search result and drive the traffic to your job page the page your job is advertised.

Next: Job Tags & Keywords

Categories
Internet Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Irish Recruiter

The Twitter Job Search post today reminded me about an account I opened to check Twitter some time ago. The Irish Recruiter Twitter account: http://twitter.com/irishrecruiter

By using the Twitter Job Search I found and Irish recruitment agency Grafton Recruitment using the Twitter Job Search already. Actually they submitted their jobs 6 hours ago. I wonder if there have been any applications. Grafton Recruitment also has their own Twitter account and I found the press release linked from it. The PR is on onrec:

Grafton tweeting recruits to a new career
26/03/2009

Recruitment firm connects online offering to global twitter phenomenon.
Grafton Recruitment has become the first recruitment agency anywhere in Ireland to incorporate the revolutionary internet tool ‘Twitter’ as an integral part of their e-marketing strategy.

The company have used existing technology to ensure that every new job posted to their own website broadcasts as a ‘Tweet’ on Twitter which is then added to the TwitterJobSearch.com database opening up Grafton jobs to a potential worldwide audience.

As well as this facility Grafton Recruitment will also be ‘tweeting’ updates on news, industry statistics, market trends as well as exclusive jobs making it one of the must-read recruitment Micro-blogs online.

Nico Fell, Grafton Recruitment e-Business Manager said:

“By allowing candidates to follow Grafton jobs on Twitter, we have created a channel of pull media which is perfect for those on the move or people who aren’t based in front of a computer all day. With mobile access and the explosion of the iPhone and Blackberry into the online world, sites like Twitter and TwitterJobSearch.com are ideal for keeping up to date with the latest jobs. With this new tool commuters weary of their current job can keep up to date in the market for a more rewarding role on the way home from work.”

Outlining Grafton’s experience of how the job market has become increasingly global in recent years. Mr Fell said,

“Grafton Recruitment’s own site attracts visitors from over 130 countries worldwide and will be complimented well by the global reach of Twitter’s new job search service which is already serving over 80 countries. We see the competition for roles coming not only from local candidates but also those from overseas as the willingness to travel to find your ideal job increases.”

This weeks’ announcement comes on the back of Grafton Recruitment’s recent shortlisting for ‘The Recruiter Awards’ for Best Recruitment Firm Website and Nico Fell said the Twitter service was just one of a number of recent innovations Grafton Recruitment had added to their online service as web-based traffic continued to grow.

So the new buzz in town is: Grafton is on Twitter!
(you read it here first! …. or perhaps on onrec,… or actually on Twitter,… :)

Categories
Career CV Internet Jobs Recruitment

Twitter Job Search

twitter-job-searchTwitter emailed us today to ask if they can take our jobs and publish them on Twitter. I had to read their email twice since I could not really understand / believe / comprehend / …fill here something yourself … / see value for them us or the end users.

So I tried to use the Twitter Job Search (beta), and made a number of searches. It is just a text search so not that sophisticated, you cannot really choose a salary range or a location. Just pure text search.

I wonder who is the next who will come in to the jobs sites market in Ireland. TescoJobs.ie ? Dunnes? Nothing would surprise me anymore….

Categories
Blogs Career CV CV Database Internet Jobs Recruitment

Jobsket

I visited the Jobsket (Jobsket.ie) web site today. It’s one of those now innovative sites that their owners and founders know will be the next big thing on the Internet. Unfortunately as we all know not every single site can success, such is the nature of the market. You can recognise those sites by not really having any real meaningful info what they are about, and you cannot really do much yourself on the site.

Jobsket will force you to give up your email address (do I have SPAM…) and then they let you in to log in. When you do log in there is less to see then on the outside, so let’s not waste ink on the Jobsket here anymore. What I wanted to show you is the interesting poll results left from the people who visited Jobsket. The Question was:

Submit an Idea
We’ve setup a feedback forum so you can tell us what’s on your mind. Please go there and be heard!
20 Votes – Import CV from LinkedIn
4 Votes – Change tags
3 Votes – Improve CVs viewer
3 votes – Allow import your CV from Google Docs
1 votes – Allow sending my CV

jobsket

What this tells us is the people do not care really about the fancy feature about a jobs site. What people do care is their own time. I do not want to insert another bloody profile and online CV here. I have a profile (that I am proud of) in LinkedIN. Now go and take it from there you lazy….

Twice many more people suggested the LikedIN connection than all the other suggestions altogether. Now what does that tell you? It tells you that people are sick of creating their profiles and filling the repetitive info in the forms on the various sites. It tells you that there is the time for one site to be a holder of your personal info, where the subsets of it you as the account holder will be able to open to various other sites.

Ehm,… this blog post was about Jobsket. So what is Jobsket really? Jobsket is a spider that takes jobs from Jobs.ie and than matches your CV with the positions advertised and calculates from the published salaries what is your CV, or what are you ‘worth’. I tried. In my case rolling the dice gave more precise results.
The data they collected from Jobs.ie is so old – yeas there are the positions in there that have been published not last year, but before the recession started – so you can guess how accurate the figures are.

The Feedaback from (powered by uservoice) on Jobsket is nice though.

Categories
Google Internet Interview Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Sonru… or the day I ditched Skype, MSN and YouTube altogether!

2009 is probably going to be remembered as the year the Irish recruitment industry exploded! Why is that? Well this is what I am here to tell you today!

Late 2008 and the first quarter of 2009 was probably (Carlsberg) the worst time for the recruitment agencies in Ireland. Majority of the agencies have let a percentage of their staff go. Quite a number of them vent under and have been sold for not really desired (by their founders) sums.
sonru-small
And then it has happened! Sonru was born!

Sonru.com launched in Public Beta on the 27th of February. The launch took place in the Enniscorthy Enterprise & Technology Centre in Wexford in the company of Paul Kehoe TD.

So what is this Sonru and why will it change your life as a recruiter in Ireland? Here is the magic answer: Sonru is a really simple video interview tool based on the web.

What will you use this Sonru for: Sonru is used for lots of different interviewing purposes, the most common being, 1st round job interviews and mock interview preparation.

How much will it set you back? Not only is Sonru convenient it is also very cost effective. Also the folks at Sonru strongly believe that – We believe Sonru is great value for money.

So now you know. Sonru is The Thing in 2009. And just in case you didn’t get it by now, here is a comparison chart for you:

sonru

And this is why you should as well as I did, ditch your Skype, MSN and YouTube instantly! This is all so ’08! Sonru is NOW! Sonru is the future! Long live Sonru!

The author of the above post is not in any way affiliated with any of the above companies Sonru and Skype wile holds some shares of MSFT and GOOG, but their value seems to be melting quickly. Obviously accelerated by the Sonru arrival).

Categories
CV Database Internet Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Irish Jobs Advertising Prices

The jobs postings on Irish jobs sites are purchased as job slots. The slots last for 30 days and can be re-used. Some of the web sites do not let you reuse the jobs slot, but sell you jobs credits as opposed to the jobs slots (be aware!). Extensive discounting is available with volume that usually follows the pattern below:

Quantity Price Per Slot Cost
1 €150 €150.00
3 €375 €125.00
5 €575 €115.00
10 €725 €72.50
20 €775 €38.75
50 €1750 €35.00
100 €3000 €30.00

* all prices are exclusive of VAT at 21.5%

In addition to jobs advertising services jobs sites will also offer sponsored branding opportunities to recruiters via jobs by email alerts and monthly newsletter emails. Banner advertising on most of the sites is also available.

What do you think of the Irish Jobs sites pricing?

Categories
Internet Jobs Recruitment

Recruiting Blogs: Social Networking and Jobs Board

Posted by Ivan Stojanovic | www.JobsBlog.ie on October 13, 2008 at 3:43pm
View Original Blog Post on Recruiting Blogs

Delete Post Manage Blog If you would be given a chance to create your own recruiters profile on Monster or any other job board, would you do it? The profile would be your page on that job board, with a number of customizable elements like the profile on RecruitingBlogs.com or LinkedIN has.

How about being able to create groups, to link the people in your company, or with your interests. How about job hunters being able to create the profile on the site as well, with various levels of the content published on them. Would that be a LinkedIn that would actually function as a recruitment platform 9as opposed to the current LiknedIN). Wouldn’t that be Monster that would give you that little bit more? Wouldn’t that enable ‘passive’ job seekers in Monster instead in being able just to publish a CV – but also actively approach the recruiters they are interested in?

Would your own profile with your name, contact details, URL to your company web site & logo, links to your blogs, to your online profiles, jour photo and your latest jobs listed be a nice ‘Branding Package’ as well?

What would motivate you to populate such a profile on the next job board that enables such a ‘Social Networking Profile’ of a recruiter? What would it have to contain for you to go and fill it up with your data?

Categories
Career Internet Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Web design in Ireland

Serving the needs of the online recruiters in Ireland for the last 5 years I got to know a number of the web design companies in Ireland. There is quite a large pool of excellent web design and/or web development companies. The fact that there used to be over 600 registered recruitment agencies on average during the last 5 years generates a need for a hundreds of recruitment agency web sites. On average a recruitment agency (or any other) web site needs to e replaced every two years. That defines the size of the recruitment agency web site market in Ireland of about 200 to 300 web sites per year!

So no wonder the web design companies in Ireland had it good over the last number of years. The average budget was about €25 000 per the recruitment agency web site and a number of big players got their site done for over €50 000. And then the Celtic Tiger got a bit tired, and could not sustain pricing structures implemented in the Irish recruitment industry. As a side effect the web design in Ireland was and still is hit badly. The web design was the industry where huge sums of money have been changing hands for many years between gentleman. Today, when the market is almost gone completely, there is this bitter taste in the mouths and the solicitors are getting involved to untangle the complex contracts and unfinished projects.

The number of the new job boards in Ireland is greater than the number of the new recruitment agency web sites being published in the last 6 months. The job boards owners are forgetting that it is the recruitment agencies who are supposed to be paying their fees. And the Recruitment agencies cannot even invest in their own web sites?

It seems that the online recruitment is the industry that is disappearing from the radar of the web design companies in Ireland. And that is the same industry that up until the last year had a few hundred new web site releases. The size of the market is not smaller, but the market almost do not even exist for the recruitment web site design.

We all had it good for many, many years now. In the same time we become extremely expensive and therefore uncompetitive on the international web design (or any other) market. Foreign companies are running away, since our tax breaks cannot justify our costs any more. It simply does not pay to do business in Ireland any more. Irish web design companies should rethink their strategies and pricing in general. Otherwise very few of the web sites will actually be made in Ireland any more. We all know it would really be a pity, simply because there is and there is quite a few really good web design companies in Ireland. If we loos them, the internet based businesses like the online recruitment will suffer as well.