Category: Job Site

Why Recruiters don’t like blogging?

Post author By Ivan | JobsBlog.ie
Post date March 14, 2012
12 Comments on Why Recruiters don’t like blogging?

Statistically, less than 10% of recruiters write a blog. Less than 5% wrote more than 100 blog posts. That is one in twenty! There is a number of interesting theories why recruiters are rarely bloggers. My own opinion is that by nature of the recruitment as a business it is really about communication and social interaction. I mean recruiters are natural networkers. This is a core skill a recruiter is effectively selling in conjunction with the sales skills. Guess what, bloggers are more often than not, not so good networkers. To write a blog post you need to sit and think and write. Not really a social activity, is it? To write 100 blog posts, quite a lot of this sitting and thinking and typing is involved. And quite often a blogger needs to write a lot to perfect his technique, understand his skills and his audience before the blog gets any decent traction. And then, and only then it all changes, from the solitude to online social networking on steroids! A good niche blogger is more known and has a far greater influence than the editor of the industry magazine. It is to do with the payroll, with the freedom, with the social aspect of the blog as a publication.

The best recruitment bloggers I have seen have turned their career path completely. They blog. They teach. They train. They do not recruit any more. My best guess is that they have been in the wrong job in the first place.

I have spent my past 5 years preaching blogging to recruiters. I can tell you one thing: It was a tough 5 years! From the largest recruitment agencies to the start-ups I always had the same issue. They will be very excited about starting blogging after the training. But most of the recruiters will just get to that stage, being excited about it. But never post a single blog post. Well, one can only bring the horse to the water.

A few clients in the last 5 years have made some extraordinary successes. The one just got published yesterday: A blog post is worth €20,000 by the great Peter Cosgrove. Reading it, just makes me feel good since my last 5 years didn’t go to waste. It’s really fulfilling to see your clients doing things you thought them, and doing them right.

Tags CPL Blog, Irish Bloggers, Irish Recruiters, peter cosgrove, Peter Cosgrove CPL, Peter Cosgrove CPL Director, Recruiters blogs, Recruitment Blogs

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TruLondon – Career Websites Lab – Applying science to define the ideal career website

Post author By Ivan | JobsBlog.ie
Post date February 18, 2012
No Comments on TruLondon – Career Websites Lab – Applying science to define the ideal career website

#truLondon is next week, and by the looks of it – this is going to be the biggest one ever. 48 speakers or ‘Track Leaders’ in two days? With the tweetup and RIDE events added to the #tru event as well?

On top of the most interesting,… well to be honest impressive is the better word list of participants to any #tru event ever, there are some new things happening this time. Live streaming will surely be watched globally. One other thing that caught my eye is the detailed plan and schedule to build a recruitment web site – during the two days of the show. I have spent the best part of the last 10 years of my life defining what the recruitment web site should be, and hiring and managing teams who would work on the same. In fact today, I actually do very little outside of that main task – designing and building the future recruitment sites. Obviously when I saw the detailed plan to build a recruitment web site with the collective thinking of long list of people I have learned a lot already, I got excited! This is what Bill has planned for us next week:

TruLondon – Career Websites Lab -Applying science to define the ideal career website

The Brief – Day 1

Defining a career website
1. TruCareers – The Tru career website
2. Who is it for employer or candidate
3. What is it – a job board, an information platform, a community platform, gateway to the ATS
4. Defining the audience
  1. Active job seekers, semi active, inactive
  2. The visitor personas
  3. Where do they hang out, what do they use: Search engines, social, job boards, offline, mobile
  4. What should a career website contain
    1. Brainstorming functionality and content
    2. What is most important
      1. Defining what is important for the individual personas
      2. Scoring functionality and content
      3. Defining the wireframe structure
        
        Defining the user journey and what they need to see/access
        
        Defining the Home Page
        
        Defining a Job Family Page
        
        Defining the wireframe structure
        
        Defining a Page focussed at an active jobseeker
        
        Defining a Page focussed on a less active job seeker

Build the wireframe before day 2

Presenting the prototype
1. Feedback
2. What would you change – why
3. The candidate experience
  1. Expectations low or high
  2. Employer requirements, volume, filtering, prescreening
  3. Using channels
    1. Content via Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs etc
    2. Do you stay in channel or direct to career platform
    3. Capturing information, how do we…
      1. Register (LinkedIn, Quick Apply, CV Parsing, iProfile)
      2. Follow
      3. Express interest
      4. Apply
      5. Mobile
      6. Continuing the engagement, linking with other platforms
        
        ATS
        
        Talent Community
        
        CRM

This #truLondon, is going to be something else!

Career Job Site Jobs Recruitment

No quality candidate needs apply.

Post author By Ivan | JobsBlog.ie
Post date February 9, 2012
No Comments on No quality candidate needs apply.

Once a year I get an urge to write about the job seekers experience on the employers careers sites. Why? It really is an easy topic to write about because the careers web sites are usually some hybrid sites. Partly managed by the employers content management system and then some application tracking system brutally glued and stitched to it. The results are in most cases horrendous. Marketing people are not allowed to even come close to the carers section of their own company site. It is owned by HR and via some strange channel managed by the IT department outsourced to some ATS solution provider’s partner. Who is really responsible for the HR site of a corporation is in most cases a total enigma. The results are that it is a really tough work to apply for a job in most companies on their own web sites.

The problem with that is that good candidate do not need to spend their time to get through the hurdles of an employer’s career site. They get headhunted by the agencies. So your poor careers section if filtering quality candidates. Like saying to the visitors:

No quality candidate needs to apply.

Looking at the largest companies in Ireland and their careers sites, there is one that has been completely different from the others. Oracle has a recruitment web site where a candidate can actually apply by just uploading their CV on the same page where each job is advertised! I know you must be thinking, well that is not really rocket science. After all, all job boards work like that. But go to apply to a random job to each of the 10 employers of your choice. It is a full days’ worth of work!

Now Oracle buys Taleo – this might be the best thing that happened to job seekers ever.

Career Internet Job Site Jobs Recruitment Search Engine

Indeed coming to Dublin

After Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter setting up in Dublin, the global job scraping site Indeed is setting up its European HQ on our soil. The first interviews will be held in the second half of January by their US staff (VP level) and the UK based Indeed staff.

About Indeed from their own web site:

Indeed is the #1 job site worldwide, with over 50 million unique visitors and 1 billion job searches per month. Indeed is available in more than 50 countries and 26 languages, covering 94% of global GDP.

Indeed has been active in Ireland in some form by sending traffic to the Irish job sites for many years now. They would ‘scrape’ the jobs from the job sites, display on Indeed.com and when a visitor clicks to apply, he or she lands on the job advertised on the job site (and exact page) the job is taken from. Indeed has also registered the Irish domain indeed.ie quite a few years ago, and a couple years ago started actually displaying jobs on the Irish sites on their own indeed.ie. Paid service includes submitting a feed to Indeed, with your latest jobs in the XMPL format that they update once a day on their own site.

We wish all the best to Indeed with their future in Ireland!

Tags indeed, indid recruitment site, job scraping, jobs scraper, selling web traffic

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Ivan Stojanovic interviewed for the Irish Executives (LinkedIn Group): Inspire Ireland award 2011

Post author By Ivan | JobsBlog.ie
Post date December 12, 2011
1 Comment on Ivan Stojanovic interviewed for the Irish Executives (LinkedIn Group): Inspire Ireland award 2011

Jobs Board got shortlisted for the Irish executives Inspire Ireland 2011 Award. 7 of us got shortlisted and one after another we presented our business plans to the Irish Executives judges today. It was an online event. Video conferencing was used that connected us all. I never presented a business plan to a camera as opposed to the live audience in front of me so it was a bit strange doing it the first time. The video quality regardless of how good it is, still makes it harder to ‘read’ your audience. You do not see those fine details of their facial expressions. Also, you only see the part of the body that the camera is capturing. I only realised all that at the end of the conference, since although I ‘saw’ the recipient, I could not really confidently say how good did the whole presentation actually work. Was it all convincing? I am not sure actually.

The format is also distracting a bit because the PowerPoint presentation has to be managed by a precise click on the screen, as opposed to the clicker. This makes you look for a second or two at the screen as opposed at the camera, and being aware it does not look right on the other end it made me uncomfortable a bit. A hint if you are developing a video conferencing software. Make sure people can use the keyboard or the clicker for their PowerPoint presentations as opposed to some super small arrow buttons on the screen.

Being shortlisted for the Irish Recruiters Inspire Ireland Award is probably the best thing that could happen to JobsBoard.ie so early in its lifetime. The only better thing would be to actually win the Award! The publicity is what it is all about, and a recognition by the very high-level judging panel.

I wish all the best to all other participants, especially those that got shortlisted and interviewed today with me. Regardless of the end results being shortlisted is an achievement we should all be proud of. Let the best man win tomorrow!

Tags Irish Recruiters Inspire Ireland Award, Irish Recruiters LinkedIn, Ivan Stojanovic, Ivan Stojanovic Award

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Monster CV database vs. LinkedIn free Public Profiles

Post author By Ivan | JobsBlog.ie
Post date December 3, 2011
2 Comments on Monster CV database vs. LinkedIn free Public Profiles

For the most European recruiters Monster used to perform the best as the CV database. The quality of candidates was on average higher than the average quality of the applicant who would apply on a job site in. Monster advertised this as a ‘Passive Candidate’ as opposed to the ‘Active Candidate’. They claimed that a CV is their database represents professionals that are in a search of their career progression (passive) as opposed to the unemployed person who is simply looking for a job (active).

LinkedIn came into the picture and have let anyone create a free personal ‘Professional Profile’ on their site. In the years to come the LinkedIn recruitment social network web site grew at a fast pace and the inevitable has come true – it’s number of users profiles outgrew the size of the Monsters CV database. Each day passing that difference is growing rapidly. LinkedIn is rapidly expanding while the number of CV’s in the Monster’s CV database in most cases does not grow at all.

Monetisation of the CV database

While Monster still uses the ‘old fashioned’ model in selling access to the CV database and charging per certain number of CV’s downloaded, LinkedIn sells you their packages where your credits are number of internal messages in the LinkedIn web site you can send to the potential contacts. Both approaches have their advantages. With a Monster subscription you actually end up with a few good CV’s. That is if you figure out how to use their CV search and do not waste all your credits in the process. LinkedIn on the other hand lets you see far greater amount of candidates. Again it is all up to you if you will find a way how to interact with them and intrigue them to engage with you via that brief message you can to a few them. More often than not a recruiter ends up with nothing at the end of the LinkedIn subscription. No CV’s added to the internal database or any other longer term value.

So Monster or LinkedIn?

There is no clear answer. There is far more recruiters who are proficient in searching the Monster CV database. For them it is hard to go wrong on Monster. LinkedIn recruitment packages have a far greater failure rate. Quite often a recruiter will after the subscription activation ask – What exactly is the difference between the free and this paid account?

There is a third option there as well. As opposed the investment into Monster or LinkedIn, you can also invest in yourself by getting yourself trained into what is mostly referred to Boolean Sourcing techniques. You can teach yourself by reading various resources online, or get the course that will bring you up to speed within a day! The result is that you have the whole LinkedIn opened in front of you without the limitations their recruitment packages are putting in front of you. If you are into the recruitment for a long haul – that is the best route for sure.

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Press Release: NRF Awards Winners 2011

Post author By Ivan | JobsBlog.ie
Post date November 29, 2011
No Comments on Press Release: NRF Awards Winners 2011

Press Release NRF Awards Winners 2011

NRF in association with Irish Independent

Parc Aviation “FLY AWAY” with 4 awards at NRF Recruitment Industry Awards 2011

Parc Aviation scooped the best agency of the year award for large agency whilst Recruitment Plus scored Best Small Agency for the 2^nd year in row, at the 5^th annual recruitment awards which took place on Friday evening, (25^th November 2011) at a gala awards ceremonyin The Shelbourne Hotel, Dublin. This was the biggest event ever held by the NRF with more than 320 attendees at the Ceremony which was presented by RTE’s Pamela Flood.

Robert Walters clinched the award for Best Agency Online Service for the second year running whilst Careers Register won the Accountancy and Finance category for ‘Best in Practice’.

Parc Aviation and Recruitment Plus were hailed by the judges as ‘leaders in their industry’. The judges found them to ‘have clear roadmaps of where they want to be, their commitment to the customer came across very strongly and they are completely in touch in what is required of them. Staff retention is testament to what they have achieved and in both cases professionalism has shone through’.

Parc Aviation got off to a winning start from the beginning of the night. First up to the winning podium for Parc Aviation was Nikki King who was awarded one of the coveted Graduate of the year awards. Also receiving recognition in the ‘Best in Practice’ category they won Best in Practice Technical, Engineering & Science and the Best Practice in “Specialism” Awards.

Sigmar’s Peter Nunan was awarded Recruitment Consultant of the year narrowly beating off stiff competition from the other 6 shortlisted nominees who were,Grafton Recruitment’s Kevin Clarke, Lisa Collins from Hays, Sandra Mc Guirk from Parc, Lisa Russell from Servisource, Louise Delany from Quest Recruitment and Karen Kavanagh from Noel Recruitment. Sigmar were also awarded Best in Practice Sales & Marketing for the 2^nd year running whilst Shaun O’ Shea was another winner of the Graduate of the Year award.

Servisource took the Best in Practice “Healthcare” and O’Reilly Recruitment took the Best in Practice “Light Industrial”.

CPL was awarded Best in Practice “IT & Telecoms” and Misty Plotner received a winner award for Graduate of the year.

Osborne Recruitment took the Best in Practice “Office & Secretarial” and Joanne Murray received a graduate of the year winners’ award.

Noel Recruitment took the Best in practice Hotel & Catering for the 4^th year running and Karen Kavanagh took a winner award for Graduate of the year.

Designed to identify and reward excellence in recruitment in Ireland, the initiative was open to all NRF members and judged by an independent panel.

FULL WINNING LINE-UP AS FOLLOWS:

BEST AGENCY ONLINE SERVICE – Robert Walters
RECRUITMENT CONSULTANT OF THE YEAR – Peter Nunan Sigmar
BEST IN PRACTICE – HEALTHCARE – Servisource
BEST IN PRACTICE – ACCOUNTING & FINANCE – Careers Register
BEST IN PRACTICE – OFFICE & SECRETARIAL – Osborne Recruitment
BEST IN PRACTICE – IT & TELECOMS – CPL
BEST IN PRACTICE – HOTEL & CATERING – Noel Recruitment
BEST IN PRATICE – LIGHT INDUSTRIAL – O’Reilly
BEST IN PRACTICE- SALES & MARKETING – Sigmar
BEST IN PRACTICE – TECHNICAL ENGINEERING & SCIENCE – Parc Aviation
BEST IN PRACTICE – In a Specialism– Parc Aviation
AGENCY OF THE YEAR – SMALL – Recruitment Plus

· AGENCY OF THE YEAR – LARGE – Parc Aviation

· NRF Cert RP Graduates of the year – Karen Kavanagh Noel Recruitment, Nikki King Parc Aviation, Joanne Murray Osborne Recruitment, Misty Plotner CPL and Shaun O’Shea Sigmar Recruitment.

The panel of judges were; Tony Lambert – CEO, Fingal Chamber of Commerce, Patrick Meehan, Invictus Management, Gillian Econopouly, Recruitment Employment Confederation UK, and the online award was judged by Sorcha Corcoran of Silicon Republic. Chairperson of the Judging Panel, Tony Lambert told the delegates how challenging it was for the adjudicators to elect a winner in a lot of categories. Not only had the volume of entries increased on every other year since the awards began but the sheer quality and outstanding excellence was evident in all applications. To be on the shortlists this year was in itself an achievement.

NRF President Mr. Colin Donnery (FRS Recruitment), “It was a fantastic celebration of our industry and the industry should be proud of all it has achieved over what has been another hard and turbulent year for some. Resilience and determination has shone through and this was echoed by the number of entries to this years awards and the turn out at the ceremony. The atmosphere in the room was one of great camaraderie and respect amongst our industry.”

The NRF also awarded Mary B Cremin with an Honorary Fellowship Award. Director of NRF Geraldine King gave the delegates a little bit of history of how Mary came to be one of the most respected names in the Industry. Even though she is now retired her reputation and her passion for excellence will always be remembered.

The National Recruitment Federation is a voluntary organisation set up to establish and maintain standards and codes of practice for the recruitment industry. Representing member companies throughout Ireland the NRF focuses its attentions on providing these members who have opted for self-regulation with the best possible service in terms of communication, support, advice sharing and problem solving.

Tags annual recruitment awards, Best Small Agency, CPL, Karen Kavanagh, Kevin Clarke, Lisa Collins, Lisa Russell, Noel Recruitment, Nrf, NRF 2011, Parc, Parc Aviation, Recruitment Plus, Sandra Mc Guirk, Servisource, Sigmar

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Jobkey.ie

INTERVIEW with Robert McGonnell, founder of the new Irish video recruitment web site: Jobkey.ie.

How did you come to the idea of starting the site (tell us about yourself here a bit)?
My background is primarily recruitment orientated having managed a busy Sales & Marketing desk in a Dublin based agency and having dealt with some major market leading FMCG companies. I also worked as a Grade IV Office in St. James’ Hospital in Dublin where I was responsible for the wage processing and recruitment administration of over 400 Nurses, Attendants and Clinical Nurse Managers. But my work history has also included employment in the high end equine breeding industry, motor vehicle sales and tourism so I guess I like the challenges that a bit of variety can throw at you. This experience coupled with an academic business grounding from the Michael Smurfit Business School in Blackrock had the cogs turning in my brain about how to deconstruct and re-approach the online recruitment business model.

What was the gap that you found out in the crowded market of job sites in Ireland?
Basically I found that many of the mainstream recruitment websites in Ireland offered very little differentiation and I wanted to launch a recruitment site that had a “help-centric” focus. I decided to focus on presenting an alternative website that offered a benefit for both job seekers and employers.
Granted the mainstream recruitment websites in Ireland are well established and have thousands of registered users, high traffic volumes, brand recognition etc but in many ways they’re just a talent swamp. The main problems I identified; if I as a candidate upload my CV on one of these websites it’s tricky to stand out from the crowd and get noticed which ultimately translates to a reduced likelihood of securing an interview/job. A CV can’t effectively demonstrate how a candidate may present, give an indication of their personality, communication skills etc. Jobkey.ie offers candidates the opportunity to upload a 60 second Introductory Video Profile to accompany their standard CV application. A Video Profile gives a candidate an opportunity to bring their CV to life and give a personal touch to their job application.
The main benefit of a Video Profile as an employer is this. If a recruiter posts a job they’re likely to receive dozens if not hundreds of applications with limited tools to rank or select according to suitability. It can sometimes be a gamble when inviting candidates to interview based on their CV/cover letter alone which can often lead to disappointment and time waste. A 60 second Video Profile is in no way meant to replace a face to face interview but is intended to be a useful stepping stone by providing a recruiter with an immediate online first impression prior to interview stage.

Unique selling proposition?
The Video Profile feature coupled with Jobkey.ie’s help-centric focus could save could save time, cost and effort for everyone involved in the recruitment process.

What is the intended route to market?
Mostly online advertising with planned radio advertising, “grabvertising” and guerrilla marketing campaigns planned for the New Year 2012.

Monetisation strategy?
The website’s build has been self-funded with a zero debt policy. It’s meant having to live like a bit of a hermit over the past year but I’m confident this sacrifice will pay off in the long run. I plan to introduce an online payment system on the site where recruiters/employers can choose an advertising package that matches their requirements. For the time being though I’d like to invite all first time advertisers to a FREE trial of the site. Simply register on Jobkey.ie and we’ll help you find new staff for the Christmas rush or New Year 2012… no fee, no charge, no catch or tie-in, 100% FREE. Contact me at contact@jobkey.ie for info.

How are you finding it so far?
It’s been a big learning curve as Jobkey.ie is my first venture but the experience I’ve gained is amazing and will stand to me in the long term. Right now I’m looking forward to earning Jobkey.ie a reputation as a mainstream recruitment website in Ireland.

What do recruiters say?
The feedback I’ve receive has been very positive however there’s always going to be some reluctance and hence persuasion involved as it’s a brand new website. Recruiters are especially interested in the potential time save that Video Profiles could result in as they would reduce the reliance on having to conduct preliminary screening interviews.

What do job seekers say?
Ok, to put this question another way…’Why would a job seeker be bothered creating a Video Profile?’ I think this would’ve been a tricky question to answer a couple of years ago but essentially now job seekers really should be prepared to try any means possible to get their application noticed. The instance of the ‘Jobless Paddy’ during the summer highlights the extreme lengths some candidates are willing to go too just to get noticed. Couple this reality with the spread of tech savvy knowledge regarding online social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Skype, Twitter, MySpace etc and I think it’s reasonable to say that a large section of job seekers should be perfectly capable to record a 60 second video profile on a webcam and follow the instructions for uploading it on Jobkey.ie!
The candidate will find helpful tips and guidelines on creating a Video Profile on the Jobkey.ie homepage. The merits of a Video Profile basically allow a candidate to back up any claims made in a CV, for instance if they say they have effective communication skills or fluent French the video permits them with an outlet to validate those claims. The jobseeker can also select the level of privacy for their Video Profile/CV on their private account.
A Video Profile is generally new territory for job seekers in Ireland. However recruitment is going to move more and more in this direction in the future and the feedback that I’ve receive so far has been very positive.

What re the next steps?
Jobkey.ie’s focus is to offer a help-centric approach to online recruitment in Ireland. The Video Profile is the first step. Jobkey.ie plans to introduce innovative new features and solutions on an incrementally basis as the site goes from strength to strength so stay tuned.

What are the next milestones?
Jobkey.ie’s mission is to become a mainstream online recruitment solution in Ireland. However there’s no sense in having an unrealistic expectation that that sort of milestone is going to be achieved without a lot of hard work. So for the time being it’s going to be baby steps, the 1000th registered candidate isn’t far off now so that would be a mini triumph.

Where do you see it in a year?
I see Jobkey.ie a well-recognised brand within recruitment circles and a cost effective online recruitment solution for employers.
I also see Video Profile’s as a more accepted standard of job application method for job seekers.

How do you see the online recruitment market evolving in Ireland?
10 years ago the majority of CV’s/job applications were sent in the post, that’s pretty much unheard of today as job applications are mostly done online now. So I think recruitment in Ireland is sure to move further into the realm of online technology and social media platforms in the future. Taking this into account I think virtual interviews and ready to view Video Profiles will become standard practice.

Tags Jobkey.ie, Video CV

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Vintavu

Searching for a developer, looking at client success stories I found an interesting video recruitment site. Here is a full case study from a web developer about it.

Client background
Bee Interviewed Limited is in the business of online recruitment. They are innovative and always look for smart solutions to the job portal market. They started a project in which the conventional CV would not play any major role. Instead they wanted to use Video technology to integrate with candidate profile. This would give the employer to see and evaluate a candidate on various soft skills.

The challenges
The need was to develop an interactive platform whereby both employers and candidates have the best solution concerning jobs. The market is flooded with job portals, and it was no easy task to spearhead the competition unless some innovative techniques are provided that result in more effective evaluation of the candidate by employers. A video profile system creation is the absolute solution towards judging ability of the candidate in a more distinct way.

eCeltics Solution
Vintavu was developed for creating an interactive job vacancy form for candidates. This web application is to be conceived in its current form as a dynamic site-requiring constant updates both from the seekers as well as the companies. It focuses on the Graduate and Pre-Graduate candidate with career experience.
On the whole the objective of the project is to enable jobseekers to place their resumes and companies to publish their vacancies. It enables jobseekers to post their resume, search for jobs, view personal job listings. It will provide various companies to place their vacancy profile on the site and also have an option to search candidate resumes. Apart from this there will be an admin module for the administrator to make changes to the database content.

Implementation
Vintavu application is the recruitment process to suit the modern jobs marketplace.
Job seekers- Job seeker, who is searching for job can enter the website, they can register and build their resume for free of cost.
Employers – The employer can enter the website & create their own account for free of cost. They can post job & search employee database.
Admin- The full control over the users & their functions

Technology used
.Net, C#, ASP.NET, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, On2 Flix Publisher

The development of job portal benefited in more ways than one.

Quick search through numerous candidates and explore their capabilities.
Video profiles offer the leading edge to gain insight into candidate’s abilities.
Employers content with shortlisted candidates.
Short listing the right employee is not cumbersome anymore.
Great save on time and money.

Tags video recruitment, Vintavu

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Morgan McKinley Enables Job Seekers To Apply With LinkedIn

Post author By Ivan | JobsBlog.ie
Post date October 26, 2011
2 Comments on Morgan McKinley Enables Job Seekers To Apply With LinkedIn

Morgan McKinley is the first Irish recruitment company that have enabled job seekers to apply to their jobs via the Apply with LinkedIn plugin from LinkedIn. After talking to recruiters in Morgan McKinley they say that it does have a drawback because they do not get the applicant’s CV but just a link to the LinkedIn profile.

But Morgan McKinley might me one something much larger here actually. The Apply with LinkedIn button solves one problem that always puzzled me. And that was the applications from the mobile devices? Ireland mobile users are predominantly iPhone 4 users. And guess what – in the iPhone you cannot apply to a job on a web site. Uploading of a CV is not supported. So with all this tremendous growth of the mobile smartphone (or not so smart!?) web traffic the only conversion one could achieve is to make job seekers email themselves with a link to the job advertised, and deal with it later on, on the PC. And that we know is pure rubbish of a process. Having a button that sends a recruiter your LinkedIn profile instantly – and all that with a single click (well two actually) sounds much better to me.

Morgan McKinley being ranked as a second highest ranking recruitment agency in Ireland by Alexa has a significant traffic on their site. We are not talking hundreds a day any more for a long time now. There is most likely still a single digit percentage of the mobile visitors, but that will grow to double digit figure in the next year as well. Without the Apply with LinkedIn button – they would not get a single interaction from all those mobile users.

Well done Morgan McKinley!

Tags Apply With LinkedIn, Jobs on iPhone, Mobile Recruitment, Morgan McKinley

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CPL.ie: Top Recruitment Agency Web Site in Ireland

Post author By Ivan | JobsBlog.ie
Post date October 26, 2011
No Comments on CPL.ie: Top Recruitment Agency Web Site in Ireland

When your competition and independent industry experts point to your web site as the best there is very little more, that is more satisfying. Yes I know you are going to say what about the revenue and profits? OK, yes that too, but the first next best thing then is a clear industry recognition of a true winner. A real market leader, the one all the competition aspire to be. Here is Jonathan Campbell the most known recruitment trainer in Ireland today showcasing the elements of the CPL.ie web site in his training session, and also publishing statistics showing CPL.ie on top of the list of Irish recruitment agency web sites.

For two years I have worked on the CPL.ie web site. It was far from a leading spot when I took over the ownership of it. The worst thing was Google didn’t really ‘like’ it very much. As time went by, optimizing the site little by little, I watched Google Analytics every morning, and witnessed the traffic growing. In the first 12 months we got it 4 times higher. Yes, 400% traffic increase in a year on CPL.ie.

Funny enough we still couldn’t say – we (CPL.ie) are number one web recruitment agency site in Ireland. You simply do not know what traffic others are achieving. Every now and then I would get a recruitment manager of a certain industry saying –this and that agency are always above us in the searches! What do we do about it?! I could do nothing to prove them wrong. I only had our visitors data, and could show it growing, and growing quick.

In the second year of working on CPL.ie web site, and staring in the traffic figures every day, I realised we have actually done something. We have done something BIG. I simply couldn’t believe ANY recruitment agency could be having such traffic and especially number of applications made on the web site. We go to the stage where the CPL.ie would deliver more CV’s than paid jobs sites. Even within CPL there have still been those that believed that we are still below some other agencies. Some also believed we are just scratching the surface, and our traffic could be 100 times more based on ‘their estimates’. I love democracy and the freedom of speech but,…

Most importantly, the same growth we have achieved with the CPL.ie web site was exactly in the years that job seekers drastically changed their online behaviours, and simply stopped looking for jobs online as they have been before. All job sites have shown a decrease in web site traffic number in that same period when CPL.ie grown so much.

Last month I looked at requests for proposal from different recruitment agencies to develop their web sites. What was remarkable was the number of times CPL.ie was referenced in those documents. Yes, it made me feel proud about what we did with CPL.ie web site. Especially since now I can proudly say aloud: CPL.ie is the top recruitment agency web site in Ireland!

Tags Best Recruitment Web Site, CPL, CPL Recruitment Agency, CPL.ie, Top Recruitment Web Site

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Rock bottom quality journalism from Silicon Republic

Post author By Ivan | JobsBlog.ie
Post date October 25, 2011
2 Comments on Rock bottom quality journalism from Silicon Republic

In the lovely article titled ‘UK tech companies fall behind US in social recruiting – survey’

Silicon Republic states:

US companies are ahead of their UK counterparts when it comes to using the web and social media to recruit new employees, new research from recruitment software provider Zartis suggests.
LinkedIn is the most popular social media network for recruitment, with one-quarter of US companies directly advertising job vacancies on the site, compared to 14pc of UK companies doing the same.

So what a Silicon Republic reader is let to believe is? Yes, you have guessed it right, and the title of the article have helped you: UK tech companies fall behind US in social recruiting.

The only fact in the whole article to back it up is that there is more top US companies advertising jobs on LinkedIn than in UK. So the conclusion that the UK companies fall behind US ones is based on the number of jobs advertised on LinkedIn.

The reason this is so sad is that it shows absolute lack of understanding what online recruitment on the social networks actually is from the author of the article from SiliconRepublic. Any recruiter that uses LinkedIn knows well that even the city with the largest number of recruiters in the World on LinkedIn is – guess what? London! The number of social recruitment conferences in London is as well greater (per capita) than in any other city in the world!

The truth is that the UK, as well as majority of the European recruiters know well that advertising jobs is the last thing to do on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a ‘Social Network’ not a ‘Jobs Board’. Making a statement that the UK recruiters are ‘falling behind’ based on the number of jobs posted is just very, very wrong.

The best will be in about a year’s time when the ‘Update’ to this statistics gets published with the update: ‘UK recruiters are catching up with the US’. That will be based on the increase of the number of jobs published on LinkedIn in UK next year. I am guessing SiliconRepublic will not see any connection on the LinkedIn sales staff numbers in UK in the increase of the number of jobs posted next year.

Tags LinkedIN Jobs, LinkedIn UK, Silicon Republic, SiliconRepublic, Zartis

Blogs Career CV Internet Job Site Jobs LinkedIN Recruitment Social Networks Social Recruitment

Review: LinkedIn Job Seeker Account Upgrade

Post author By Ivan | JobsBlog.ie
Post date October 3, 2011
No Comments on Review: LinkedIn Job Seeker Account Upgrade

LinkedIn is the No. 1 Recruitment Social Recruitment Network in the world. That is the fact. There is no one in the recruitment social networking space that managed to do anything similar on the global space. And there is no shortage of well-funded start-ups who would love to take a bite at that business. When you think online social recruitment – you think of LinkedIn.

I tested the paid Job Seeker Account in the last 30 days, and published my findings in the blog post at the Irish Recruiter blog on LinkedIn Job Seeker Account.

Tags LinkedIn Job Seeker Account Upgrade, Review: LinkedIn Job Seeker Account Upgrade

Internet Job Site Jobs Recruitment

Job Categories – what do job seekers look for? – September 2011

Post author By Ivan | JobsBlog.ie
Post date October 1, 2011
No Comments on Job Categories – what do job seekers look for? – September 2011

Ever wondered what industries do job seekers search for jobs on job sites? Here is the data from www.EmployIreland.ie
– showing the data for September 2011. The most popular is: Construction, Architecture & Property, followed by Security, Trades & General Services, Medical Professionals & Healthcare and Hotel & Catering.

Note the Telecoms, IT, HR and General Management with very little interest form Irish Job seekers.

Tags Job Categories, Popular industries to work in, What are job seekers looking for

Blogs Internet Job Site Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

National Online Recruitment Awards, NORA – how does it look like in UK?

Post author By Ivan | JobsBlog.ie
Post date September 27, 2011
No Comments on National Online Recruitment Awards, NORA – how does it look like in UK?

In Ireland we have our NRF that gives awards to the recruitment agencies (NRF members only) and within those there is an Award for the Best Recruitment Web Site.

Then we have the Golden Spiders awards that again one has to pay €150 per site to get ‘Nominated’, so the real good work of start-ups is never seen there. Recruiters actually rarely feature there at all with the exception of national job boards that use it for branding.

UK has National Online Recruitment Awards – NORA. In 5 days NORA will be announcing the winner in the long list of categories. Here is a full list of categories and 5 shortlisted candidates for the awards in 2011.

The Finalists for the National Online Recruitment Awards 2011 are as follows:

Best Generalist Job Board

Jobserve

Jobsite

Monster

Reed

Totaljobs

http://totaljobs.co.uk