Category: Recruitment

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Internet Interview Recruitment

Review: Welcome to IBM® Kenexa® Prove It!® on Cloud

I was looking at the Welcome to IBM® Kenexa® Prove It!® on Cloud tests today. I took the Excel 2013 one. And it was fun!

I took a test on the latest Dell XPS laptop. For those who know little about Dell ranges, those are the fancy fast ones. So here is how it went:

Kenexa needs Java

You remember those annoying popups we used to get, Java this, Java that, Java Update and something? Well Kenexa sends to to Oracle site to Install THAT old Java. Great! So I am installing Java. Accepting any rubbish that comes along to get Java. I am seeing how Yahoo is becoming my default search engine… Fabulous!

Reboot PC to get Java running, opening online the site in the browser, nothing is happening, I am getting the same error message: You need Java. Java, that I just got?!

I remembered that Google Chrome was not really supportive of Java, so  I try with another browser (that Win 10 “thing”). That didn’t run Java either but suggested to “Open a link in Internet Explorer”. Old buggy one, I am thinking but let’s risk it! #YOLO

Internet Explorer opens Kenexa site and is running Java! Bingo! We are in business!

I am signing up to the Excel 2013 test and really looking forward to it. Now remember I have a quite new laptop, one that comes with the 4K resolution. Here is how my screen looks. Can you read it? Neither could I!

kenexa - excel test

All the zooming in or font increases or anything that is within my knowledge doesn’t help me get the test to a state where I can actually read what’s on the screen.

I just decided, Kenexa, you know what, that is really a wonderful customer experience. And CTRL+ALT+DEL – into Task Manager to kill the application.

So if you are using Kenexa for assessing your candidates… you might want to try to use it yourself before you push it on your applicants.

In Recruitment: candidate experience matters!!!

 

 

 

 

Categories
Recruitment

Muppets at Dropbox

It’s all cool that Dropbox has the Muppets in their recruitment video, but for the Employers Branding perspective, I would like to see at least one face there. Remember how well was it done in the original Muppets, where a guest of the show was a human? Could we not see one human the candidates could relate to in this Dropbox recruitment video?

Categories
Career CV CV Database Job Site LinkedIN Monster Recruitment Social Recruitment

Irish Jobs Sites – what’s in the bag for 2014?

The recession had a very negative effect on the Irish job board industry. All the job boards are struggling. The number of jobs advertised in the last 5 years is lower than the number of jobs advertised in a single year before the recession. All that is really happening in the jobs board space are sites that really never get any mileage. Most just lack the innovation really. Publishing and marketing a jobs board in 2014 and using the marketing channels of the ’90-es, does not work as well.

Job Aggregators in Ireland

The recession brought aggregators to Ireland. Those have a benefit of a low marketing cost, so the recession suites them. They all work in some or another freemium model. The easy adoption is fuelled by the fact no manual work or investment is required from the employers. It costs nothing so why not? In Ireland, especially in the recession, we learned to like the “free”!

SPAMmers

There isn’t a month that a new Irish aggregator job site isn’t published. As an employer, they email you with the link to their site that is full of jobs. You might even find your own ones, although those might be the ones you had advertised on some job site a year ago. Those sites are usually low-cost web sites with about a penny invested in the design. They usually contain links to their supposedly social media profiles. By clicking on those you will most likely find that they have about 1 (or even not even that!), followers, likes, etc. The one I got today called www.JobsIE.ie – took their ignorance to the new level and didn’t even make the social media profiles they are linking to from their page. All those are the sites bound to disappear in the darkness of the Big Data on the internet. Never to be found by the search engines or the visitors. Their business model is based on spamming the employers and job seekers, with an aim to sell anything on top of their fermium model. Quite often they are passing off as a known job site, in this case, JobsIE.ie sounds like the Jobs.ie by SAON Group. Some employers might be fooled and actually end up paying them thinking they are paying a known job board, with over 10 years in existence.

International Aggregator job sites

The largest international aggregator job site that shored in Ireland is, of course, Indeed.ie. Is it profitable here in Ireland? I am guessing not. Do they care about it? I am guessing not as well. By having their presence in Ireland they are probably using Ireland as the rest of the internationals, paying their taxes here, or .. ehm,… avoiding to do so as to do Google, Apple, and the rest of the US gang here.

What is next for the Irish job sites?

It really depends on how the Irish economy develops in the years to come. If the recession continues, it is unlikely for any new job site to appear, and it effectively means a Status Quo. A handful of the leading sites will still be here, not turning any or turning a minimal profit. The shortage of proper advertising budgets will benefit those scammers and imposters. On the other hand, if the economy turns around, and especially if it does so rapidly (oh how we all wish that to happen!?), the new doors will open. There will be space for innovation. There will be space for the entrepreneurial spirit and new projects to be launched in this space. That is simply because there is no model that actually works well for everyone in the online recruitment today. LinkedIn, we know now isn’t the answer for most jobs. Neither is a traditional job site like IrishJobs. Monster changes so many times lately that I do not know what it is any more (but a CV database)? BranchOut and all those apps sitting on top of Facebook simply do not deliver anything to anyone. We need something new for the future. What do you think it is?

Categories
Career Recruitment Search Engine Social Recruitment

Discoverly’s nifty free Chrome extension marries data from Facebook & LinkedIn data (exclusive)

Ivan Stojanovic - Discoverly - The Inspirer

Facebook boasts a wealth of data about your relationships but very little professional information. LinkedIn is just the opposite.

A startup called Discoverly has developed a chrome extension that marries data from Facebook and LinkedIn. Founder and chief executive Theodore Summe jokes that Discoverly is “playing Switzerland” between the two social networking giants, which don’t speak to each other.

“Facebook and LinkedIn are great but don’t play well together, so valuable potential of users’ social data goes unrealized,” Summe told me via email. San Francisco-based Discoverly is building a series of products under the tagline “putting social to work,” and it competes with social business services like Rapportive.

discoverlychrome

Prior to starting Discoverly, Summe worked as a senior product manager for the Chatter product at Salesforce and was a technical analyst at Morgan Stanley. He has grown the team to five employees, including a UI and developer lead.

Summe gave me a link to the beta version, so I was able to give the service a whirl prior to today’s launch. I clicked the link, registered both my Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, downloaded a Chrome extension, and waited about five minutes for the service to “warm up.”

Once you’ve installed the free extension, you’ll be asked a series of personal and professional questions. I completed the quiz in a few minutes and was informed that I’m “practical, realistic, matter-of-fact,” which are qualities that I apparently share with both Michelle Obama and Alec Baldwin. Winning.

You’re also invited to create infographics from your social data. Discoverly can pull information from Facebook and LinkedIn to discern the location of your friends, popular universities in your network, and other insights. This is a particularly useful feature for those who are considering applying to college or moving for a job.

All in all, it’s well worth the five-minute download to view Facebook data on LinkedIn, and vice versa.

Recruiters might use Discoverly’s chrome extension to track down candidates and quickly discover whether they share any mutual friends on LinkedIn or Facebook. It’s also potentially valuable for graduating students and new entrants to the job market.

At every turn, you’re asked to share Discoverly’s findings with your friend networks. Clearly, the product is built to go viral. It’s fun and contains some useful information, so I could see it taking off.

From a privacy standpoint, Summe stresses that you already have access to this information on Facebook and LinkedIn. The startup merely makes it a bit easier to navigate. It won’t share that you’re using the service with your networks without your permission.

Discoverly also offers a business service, which is primarily how it plans to make money. That product is used by 40 corporate customers in beta. The startup has raised a small seed round of $750,000 from Bessemer Venture Partners, Atlas Ventures, and senior executives at Yammer. It’s a graduate of the Silicon Valley-based Alchemist accelerator, which only accepts early-stage enterprise startups.

By Christina Farr, Venture Beat.

Categories
CV Database Jobs Recruitment

Mapping Your Recruitment

The recruitment has changed dramatically in the last decade or two. The older recruiters still remember the Rolodex and the Filofax. Faxing the CVs to the clients, well it wasn’t that long ago. Computers & internet replaced the paper-based systems. We, recruiters, become more productive and effective. Really? :)

The social networks changed the recruitment completely once again, but that’s not all. The whole other set of technologies are now at the recruiter’s disposal that we couldn’t dream of only a few short years ago. In this post, I will talk about the mapping software.

Mapping Software in Recruitment

How can Mapping Software help your Recruitment?

I was approached by an American company based on a talk I made on the last #TruDublin (The Recruitment Unconference) that was looking to set up in Ireland. They picked Ireland for the most common reason companies pick Ireland when setting up their HQ in Europe. They decided to set up a call centre in Ireland. I wonder if that is related to the staff number they had to promise to get their incentives, but that is another story. Their dilemma was about what is the best location in Ireland to set up. They looked at the obvious choices, as “close to the major Airports” and the usual locations the US multinationals are setting up. They asked me what are the benefits and drawbacks of Intel being in Lexlip, Microsoft in Sandyford, and Apple in Cork?

We looked at what type staff do they plan to hire here in Ireland. We looked at the cost of living, possible buildings they could rent and their availability in the Business Centers and Industrial Zones. Obvious choices in Dublin have been Sandyford, City West & East Point and a few buildings close to Google in the Docklands. Since the staff cost makes a large part of their running costs we looked at other locations in Ireland where the staff costs would be far less than in Dublin. And the move out of Dublin seemed to have a lot of sense. Actually the move away from all the major cities.

Where are the Candidates?

In this whole long-lasting exercise no one ever looked at where will the applicants came from. Where do people that will likely work there actually live? What we did is we have made a Recruitment Campaign in the various media. Mostly online since the IT knowledge was one of the requirements for those jobs anyway. We got plenty of CVs. What did with them I extracted the address of each applicant from the CV and used the location mapping software to show where the candidates are.

The resulting map instantly ruled out most of the country. We simply got no applications miles away from some of the most obvious spots like the Industrial Zones where most of the US multinationals are set up already. And the telesales/support roles we had are not much different than the other companies have.

What we learned is that if we didn’t use the map of the applicants we would have 90% chance to set up in the area with very little or no applicants for any the jobs.

Categories
CV Database Job Site LinkedIN Recruitment

LinkedIn Is A Great Tool For Recruitment

Some people say that LinkedIn is just a job board dressed up in a social media dress. I tend to disagree. In the same time, if you don’t know how to use LinkedIn, I completely understand your frustration. LinkedIn for you really might be just another job board. The fact that some people use it “better” than you, will mean that your applicant’s response will be lower than on any other good job board. Candidates simply rarely apply for jobs on LinkedIn. They do all other things but Apply for the jobs advertised.

The first thing stopping you to hire on LinkedIn is your small reach.

With up to 500 contacts, you are scraping the barrel really. You might as well just leave LinkedIn alone. Depending on the size of your market or your niche, to recruit in LinkedIn you really need to have access to thousands of people. Candidates AND clients.

LinkedIn Premium is a great product for a recruiter. In most cases you will need the “Full Network Visibility”, so the Talent Finder and Talent Pro are the versions you should consider. The Only difference is the double number of inmails you can send at a time.

There are also a number of advocates of using LinkedIn for recruitment without any subscription. I have seen that work, but realistically for a very small number of people. Why? It requires investment in time that a very few recruiters have. Building a network of thousands of very, very targeted contacts is hard and time-consuming.

Here is a live example that shows you the power of your LinkedIn network and reach.

LinkedIn Update Reach

A simple LinkedIn update in the first 24 hours got:
2433 views, 47 likes, 2 comments

Now let’s analyze the views:

  • 789 views are from the 1st connections – people I am connected with
  • 1342 views are from the 2nd connections – people my connections are connected with.
  • 305 views – are from the 3rd connections – and you know who those are by now! 

What this shows us is that my update was seen by more people I am not connected on LinkedIn than those I am connected to. The same goes for the Likes and the Comments actually.

The size of your network and the quality of your update will determine how many “eyes” will you get on it.

On social networks you actually have to behave quite social.

Only if you intend to be successful, that is.

Time is the most determining factor for most people when choosing if to use LinkedIn free or paid accounts. It is a bit like SEO and PPC. If you want to get instant results the paid account is the best for you. If you have been using LinkedIn for years, and have thousands of very targeted people you are connected to you will most likely get away without paying for your LinkedIn account.

Whatever way you decide to use LinkedIn, I can tell you only one thing: LinkedIn is a great tool for recruitment!

Categories
CV CV Database Internet Job Site Jobs Recruitment

Enterprise Ireland must think it has a jobs board?


Someone was quite imaginative in Enterprise Ireland and have decided to put an end into the growing problems of Irish start-ups. How to stimulate growth and rapid expansion? If you can hire new staff easily it will help!

To enable this hyper-growth of Irish start-up the Enterprise Ireland have decided to help them do just that – by creating a jobs board! Like his country doesn’t have enough of them. And guess what – vast majority of them are struggling.

its_happening_hereIT’s Happening Here – www.itshappeninghere.ie is the Enterprise Ireland’s answer to the recruitment and staffing problems in Ireland. A job board. But not just like any other job board guys…

Enterprise Ireland is a state-funded company, so they had funds (yours and mine tax pays that) to make it done right. So unlike all the Irish jobs sites that popped up in the last years and failed to get any traction Enterprise Ireland did it very differently. They made sure their job site will stand out!

And it does. One of the features stands out more than the rest actually and it’s the:

Price!

Yes since they are not for profit they can do anything they want with their price. But here is the interesting twist. No, they didn’t make it free to use. Not, that would not really make a good story. They made the job site that is the most expensive!

€500 to advertise a job on Enterprise Ireland web site!

And guess what, they are not even sure if that includes VAT or not. Seriously. I asked. I was told that if I proceed with the registration it will tell me then.

God Bless Enterprise Ireland! What would we be without them…

Categories
Career Internet Interview Jobs LinkedIN Recruitment Recruitment Agency Social Recruitment

Is Phone interview enough? LinkedIn poll suggests…

The responses to the recent poll on LinkedIn:

When presented with a good IT candidate not available locally, would you do the phone interview?

Show that the phone interview is the way to start the interviewing process. Still, the majority of the recruiters would fly the top candidate in for the last round of the interview before the job offer is made.

You can see the results and put your vote here:

Categories
Google Internet Job Site Jobs Monster Recruitment Recruitment Agency Search Engine SEO SERP Twitter

Google Penguin 2 and the Jobs in Ireland

Did you hear Google released a major update to Penguin 2 on Friday? Matt Cutts (the head of Google’s Webspam team) recently confirmed on his blog that Penguin 2.0 is now live.

So let’s see how did the Google Penguin 2 update affect our Irish online recruitment industry. Here is the search result page for the word “Jobs” made in Google.ie.

Make sure if you do this search yourself that you are not logged in into Google yourself, have removed the Google cookie, etc – so that you do not see the Google’s “Personalised” search result for you.

Here is the new google.ie ranking for the search word “jobs”:

  1. Jobs.ie
  2. IrishJobs.ie
  3. FindAJob.ie
  4. Indeed.ie
  5. RecruitIreland.com
  6. Monster.ie
  7. Fas.ie
  8. Ie.JobRapido.com
  9. JobsToday.ie
  10. Twitter.com/jobs

So what can we conclude from the list of the sites that a are on the first page for the phrase jobs? By comparing what we have used to see there before the Google Penguin 2 update we can see what sites have been affected. Let’s start with the sites not affected by the update:

The SAON Group web sites leading with the purchased Jobs.ie site on top and their original IrishJobs.ie is steadily on top.

Nothing changed there for years. In fact may years. The last change there actually when Jobs.ie overtook IrishJobs.ie. If my memory serves me correctly that was towards the end of 2005. Very shortly after that IrishJobs.ie bought Jobs.ie.

So since 2005 the first two search results for the search for “jobs” have not changed in Ireland. So is Google doing much really with all these Panda, Penguin & Penguin 2 “updates”? Well in the last 7 years the results on top are not changing at all. Or does IrishJobs.ie & Jobs.ie have so good SEO specialists to keep them on top for all these years? It must be one of those.

The next three slots are Findajob.ie (aka LoadzaJobs.ie), Indeed.ie and Monster.ie. So what’s new here? Nothing much really in relation to the Google Penguin 2 update. Long term there isn’t much that has changed in here in the last 10 years really. What has changed is that Loadza has changed its domain name several times. They cannot seem to get it right really. EmployIreland.com that was 4th there is replaced by Indeed.ie about a year or more ago when they came to our market. Monster is the 5th recruitment web site there for the last 10 years.
So in essence the top 5 results for the word “jobs” haven’t changed at all in the last Google Penguin 2 update.

Where the changes that did occur are on the bottom part of the search page. That is the space that in the last 10 years have been occupied mostly by the Irish start-up job boards or similar sites. FAS was always there somewhere. They did rebrand to SOLAS, but forgot to do it online. Hence FAS.ie is still there. Good old civil servants…

So what the Google Penguin 2 update did affect is the last 4 remaining slots the search results page fro the word “jobs”. You can say Google hasn’t changed much really. What we are going to look at is if the Google Penguin 2 update was good actually. Or is it a step back in the quality of the search results?

The bottom of the page of the search results for jobs has been occupied by start-up job boards. It always was a dynamic space. In the last 10 year, about 100 web sites appeared and disappeared from there. I can remember the first Irish Jobs Aggregator IrishJobs.ie featuring there, and a long list of the site showing Irish jobs listings. There was one recruitment agency that made up there – in 2010 when the CPL.ie new web site was released. In this new update, CPL.ie dropped to 128 places, while their other site CPLJobs.com landed on a much better 53rd slot. Is there a hint that CPL.ie got hit by the Google Penguin 2 update? Most likely from the way it is ranking now.

It is still quite strange that no other recruitment agency got listed on the first page for the word “jobs” there ever, isn’t it?

So what did Google Penguin 2 update replaced the Irish start-ups with?

Ie.Jobrapido.com – one job aggregator. Well, it is the only .com web site here. It actually does have jobs aggregated from sites like freelancer.com and similar. Some Irish recruitment agencies as well. The overall quality of the jobs advertised (content) if poor. A large number of jobs are taken down from the sites they are originally published on anyway, and the whole set of jobs is a really poor representation of the list of active jobs in Ireland. In essence a really poor experience for a job seeker.

JobsToday.ie – a UK newspaper publisher. Note that any link you click on that site it brings you to their UK web site (.co.uk). This results-driven by the backlinks from their newspaper releases is so wrong that it actually reminds of the Yahoo style paid search result placements from the end of the last century. It is pointless and out of place. It is no good to a Google visitor. There are simply a handful of jobs listed there on some UK newspaper web site.

Twitter.com/jobs – The page with the HTML Title: Jobs at “Twitter –San Francisco”. San Francisco??? A search result to someone looking for a job in Ireland in Google.ie? Google? Don’t you have a Google Maps division? Or do you want us all to emigrate? What’s the story there? What kind of a (crap) search result is that? Or did the Google Penguin 2 algorithm value a social media sites results “a bit” too much so the results from the social media are going to creep into any search we make?

So to conclude what have the Google Penguin 2 update brought us? It removed Irish start-ups and replaced them with what can be the best described irrelevant search results. In their own vocabulary, they call it SPAM. Luckily for us, this only affects the bottom part of the page. The “under the fold” stuff. The top part of the page wasn’t affected by the latest update.

How did your site ranking feature in the Google Penguin 2 update last week? If you are stuck give the SEO Consultant a shout!

Categories
Career CV Database Job Site Jobs LinkedIN Recruitment Recruitment Agency SEO Social Networks Social Recruitment

Recruitment Advertising Workshop

Great Recruitment Advertising Workshop event organised by Stephen Harrington Recruitment Manager: Sales | Marketing | Multi-Lingual @ Allen Recruitment. Here is the original announcement:

When and Where:
Aviva Stadium, Lansdowne Road, Dublin 4 – Vavasour Suite, registration at main reception.
Wednesday 24th April, from 8.45 to 11.30am
Enter via entrance A on Lansdowne Road
Car park is situated on Lansdowne Road

Who is attending?
Confirmed attendees include Jonathan Campbell (Social Talent), James Mailley (Monster), Jennifer Bray Kennedy (TMP), Ivan Stojanovic (Jobsboard.ie), Lynne Rooney (LinkedIn) and many more from many or Irelands best known companies.

The Format
We will run two sessions, in each one there will be four discussions happening at the same time. There will be no presentations, each discussion will be started by the discussion leader but after that, the conversation will go where ever the participants want it to. You can join in at any time by providing details of your own experiences or asking questions. If you find that one discussion is not so relevant to you, you can simply get up and join another one mid-way through!

The agenda:

8.45-9.10 Registration, Tea/Coffee and Pastries

9.10-9.20 Welcome by Brian Cunningham, MD Allen Recruitment

Session 1

Job Boards
When to use job boards, which ones should you use, quality applicant’s v quantity, filtering applicants?
Career Websites
Effectively advertising on your own careers site, employer branding, SEO, getting candidates on to your site
Alternatives to advertising
Searching for candidates directly (Boolean, xray etc), referrals, networking, job board databases
Start your own discussion
This is a break out area where anyone is free to start another topic that is relevant to them!

Tea/Coffee

Session 2


Job Boards
Getting the most from these, how people find jobs on job boards, getting your jobs to the top of the lists
Advertising Master class
How to measure success, getting your adverts noticed, the psychology behind advertising, what we can take from advertising in other industries and apply to recruitment.
Referral’s and Networking
Referrals, Networking, social networks & Talent Pooling
Start your own discussion
This is a break out area where anyone is free to start another topic that is relevant to them!

Well done again and thanks for the Allen Recruitment “cube”!

Categories
Career CV Database Job Site Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Recruitment Consultant job by the SAON Group

Here is a new job for the Recruitment Consultant advertised by the SAON Group (IrisJobs.ie):

Resourcer/Recruitment Consultant

 

Saongroup operates online recruitment websites for recruiters and career seekers across four continents – Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas – and websites live in 29 countries. The Group also includes Candidate Manager, a leading provider of recruitment management software. Saongroup.com has been headquartered in Dublin, Ireland since its foundation in 1995.

In March, Irishjobs.ie and Jobs.ie launched a new service, TalentScout, which in addition to advertising vacancies on www.irishjobs.ie and www.jobs.ie now gives their large corporate client base access to a Headhunting and Candidate Filtering service.

Due to the successful launch and client reaction to TalentScout we are now looking to expand the team and we feel that this position would be well suited to a candidate who is currently employed as a Recruitment Consultant. This is an excellent opportunity to progress your career with Saongroup, a company that is internationally recognised as a Market Leader in the online recruitment space. The role offers an excellent commission and bonus structure with a rapid path to promotion for the right candidate.

Job responsibilities:-

  • Conduct telephone interviews
  • Use innovation in attracting staff to include networking, headhunting, and database search.
  • Post vacancies on all available media and identify new media to source applicants.
  • Manage and filter incoming applicants
  • Create application forms and screening questions
  • Liaise with Account Managers and Sales Manager regularly on progress of open roles

Skills required:

 

  • At least 2 years’ experience in recruitment
  • Expertise in sourcing via headhunting and social media required
  • Human Resources or Business related degree desirable. CIPD qualification an advantage
  • A proven ability to build strong client relationships
  • Tenacity to develop new business, both face to face & on the phone
  • A record of success in a highly results driven environment
  • Track record of achieving monthly revenue targets
  • Great time management, computer proficiency and excellent communication skills
  • Proficiency in using Salesforce or equivalent CRM
  • Experience with applicant tracking systems is useful
  • Ability to work in a fast-paced, rapidly-changing environment
Location Dublin 2 (Dublin Centre, IE)
Payment Not Disclosed
Category HR / Recruitment, Sales – €35k+
Terms Permanent, Full-time
Last updated 15/04/2013
Contact Denise Hannon
Categories
Career Internet Job Site Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Adecco Ireland & my iPhone 6

My Adecco goodies arrived in the post today thanks to the good people of Adecco Ireland.

Thanks, this will get my “iPhone 6” safe!

Adecco Ireland iPhone 6

Categories
Job Site LinkedIN Recruitment Social Networks Social Recruitment

How to use LinkedIn Skills Endorsements for Recruitment?

How to make sense of the LinkedIn Skills Endorsements?

LinkedIn Skills Endorsements is not the first time the Skills have been implemented as a part of a personal LinkedIn Profile. Some iterations had a self-scoring of out to 5 or 10 skills. Then just a pure 50 word skills. The current way the skills are implemented is by far the best I the whole history of LinkedIn! Why?

Crowdsourcing

What you say about yourself in your LinkedIn profile if more often than not a TRUE reflection of you. Your LinkedIn profile as your CV or a resume is a reflection of the portion of you that you want to show to the hiring manager of your next dream job. If that is not the case, we need to talk about it!

What your LinkedIn connections tell about you, by clicking on your Skills listed tells a whole different picture about you. In most cases the far more accurate one than the rest of your LinkedIn Profile.

How to use LinkedIn Skills Endorsements for Recruitment?

The challenge is to assess what endorsements are really valid ones, and what ones are the result of the gamification LinkedIn have created in this Skills environment. What it means is that all the skills endorsements are not the same (value).

Here is How to analyse the value of the LinkedIn Endorsement

It is quite similar to the Google PageRank algorithm actually. The more people have endorsed my skill “X”, the more valuable is my endorsement given to someone else for the same skill. Why? The more endorsements I got for a certain skill, the more likely is that I actually know about it. The more I know about the skill the more valid my endorsement for the same skill is.

Categories
Career Internet Job Site Jobs LinkedIN Recruitment

Recruiting a Pope on LinkedIn

An interesting job post I Stumbled Upon,… (not really, I saw it on Mashable). It is for a Pope. Is it a good job spec? I’ll let you be the judge of it yourself:
popelinkedin1
popelinkedin2

Categories
Internet Job Site LinkedIN Recruitment SEO Social Networks Social Recruitment

New LinkedIn Profile is good (for Recruiters)!

The LinkedIn haven’t really updated the Profile section for far too long time. It becomes a bit archaic in fact, so a new profile is really welcome. It is far easier to read and more importantly scan, as we consume the web sites. It also tells you far more about the person than the any older LinkedIn Profile version did.

One feature that really helps the recruiter to assess the potential candidate from his LinkedIn profile is the ability to quickly assess the candidate’s connections. You have a choice to display the connections by:

  • Company
  • School
  • Location
  • Industry

By looking at the graphical representation of your LinkedIn connections grouped by and industry the recruiter can quickly get what type of people the candidate is connected to on the social network.

It tells a lot about the person when you can see what schools are the people his connections are from. What companies do the candidate’s contacts work for is priceless. Location and industry profiles of the candidates LinkedIn contacts just add to the complete picture of a candidate.

All this data combined gives you very quickly a profile of the candidate’s connections. This data can help a recruiter profile a candidate much better than by just looking at a very static data, a document like a CV or the (old) LinkedIn profile.

Where LinkedIn could improve the display is in including what the number represents as opposed to displaying just the number of the connections in each group. It is annoying to have to put a mouse over each circle to find out what company or country the contacts are from. A tag cloud would be far more usefully display. A company name printed and on mouse over the exact number of the connections in that company? Would you agree?