Category: Recruitment Agency

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Irish Recruiters LinkedIn Group

After the recent success of the Irish Recruiters LinkedIn Group’s first conference – The Future of Recruitment – Part 1: The Road Ahead, Declan Fitzgerald has been planning already for Part 2, and after repeated requests to hold Part 2 before Christmas, Declan is now aiming for the 18th of November as the time to run the event and try get the Irish Recruitment industry together again to discuss what are the challenges currently facing our industry and what is the future of recruitment.

Declan is in planning phase at the moment but he has confirmed that Alexander Mann will be giving their RPO prospective on the theme as well as EMC from Cork will be discussing why they want a Cloud ATS and how they are going about implementing it. There will also be more presenters on the day but they have not been confirmed yet. To learn more please visit, Declan’s blog: the Irish CyberSleuth and also you can follow updates on Declan’s Twitter account. I’ll also keep you up to date with any other news I learn in the future about the event.

Hopefully, it will be another great event for networking, learning and debate.

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Blogs Internet Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Jobs Blog on UK Recruiter

ukrecruiter_logo Jobs Blog featured on UK Recruiters: One page guide to what UK recruitment bloggers are talking about; aggregated blog feeds from a variety of UK bloggers specialising in recruitment.

About UK Recruiter:

The UK Recruiter site is an information resource for recruiters operating in the UK. We like to think of ourselves as creating a community of recruitment professionals. It is completely free for UK recruiters to use the site.

Our main areas of activity are our industry supplier directory, our weekly email newsletter and our discussion board. Louise also writes a blog and we run networking events.

Our objective is to provide the most comprehensive set of information and links for the UK recruitment industry.

Thanks Louise for listing Jobs Blog!!!

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Blogs Internet Interview Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Independent: Headhunters hit by the recession

independent-dublinBy Anne-Marie Walsh Industry correspondent, Monday June 15 2009

OVER a third of recruiters have lost their own jobs, due to the record hike in unemployment.

The industry dedicated to matching vacancies with workers has itself been decimated over the last 12 months with a total of 4,500 jobs lost in what was once a 12,000-strong sector.

Many employment agencies have drastically reduced their staffing levels as the numbers signing on soared by 97pc.

The group representing employment agencies, the National Recruitment Federation (NRF), saw just a handful of clients go to the wall but has recorded a massive drop in the number of employees.

NRF president Frank Collins, said he knew of one agency where staffing levels plummeted from 12 to just one person, and another where they fell from 28 to eight.

He said “green shoots’ were visible in some sectors of the economy, although employers were waiting to see if this would lead to a recovery.

Managing director of recruitment website employireland.ie, Ivan Stojanovic, said his business survived purely because it was not heavily dependent on placement adverts.

“Recruiters have been the hardest hit of any sector,” he said. “As time goes by, it’s getting worse and worse. I believe the figure of those who have lost their jobs in recruitment could be around two out of three.

“If there are no signs of the unemployment rate dropping, we are facing the current Spanish rate of 18pc.”

However, Mr Collins was more optimistic about the prospects for recruiters following a pickup in ads in the past few months.

“January and February were the worst months, but since then it has picked up,” he said. “Recruiters had to cut their cloth to suit their revenue.

“Without placements, there is no revenue.”

Anne-Marie Walsh Industry correspondent

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Blogs Career Internet Jobs LinkedIN Microsoft Recruitment Recruitment Agency Twitter

Recruitment Conference

irish-recruitment-conference-2009

Irish Recruiters LinkedIN Group got together in the a form of a Recruitment Conference.

It was great to see so many friends together, thank you all for coming!

We all need to say a BIG: Thank You to Declan Fitzgerald who organised it all again so well!

Pictures? Well this time around I decided I will mail you the pictures – and only the ones you are on! Just put the comment below and I’ll mail you all the photos you are on. I emailed some nice photographs to your mailboxes already, so check there first. This is just out of a respect for all of you who joined us for a pint afterwards. Please no funny faces to the camera anymore! :)

When the world’s largest professional social network is at the same table with the country’s largest jobs site and the largest recruitment agency, all organised by the world’s largest (richest) IT company… it has to be interesting. Even in the extremely sad times like these. 3 out of 2 recruiters have been made redundant in the last 9 months. I guess the room would be fuller if the conference took place a year ago.

What I took from the conference is that the social networks definitely ARE the most important recruitment tools. LinkedIN is the most important although having so slow penetration in Ireland. Less than 150 000 registered, and only a small percentage of that with a useful profile (from the recruitment perspective).

Job Boards still dominating the market but quickly losing their prior historical dominance. Recruitment advertising fees are dropping, and also disappearing with RecruitIreland.com leading that avenue.

Recruitment agencies are changing their offerings and repositioning themselves in the recruitment process. From all we have heard on the recruitment conference and especially on the ‘After Party’ – if you know how to use Twitter to source the candidates, there is a great future for you in recruitment!

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Career CV Database Internet Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Two recruitment agencies go out of business for every new job board

New recruitment web sites in Ireland are popping up. About 2 a month in the last 12 months. Recession stimulates the jobs sites creating somehow.

The new sites try to be unique somehow. All trying to solve some problems that either recruiters or employers or job seekers seems to have. The real problems Employers have right now are far most related to financing the redundancy packages. The secondary problem is managing the volume of low quality applicants. Recruitment agencies have a problem that there are no jobs for them to fill. No jobs to advertise on the expensive job boards they prepaid. There are two recruitment agencies that go out of business for every new job board that pops up!

Since recruitment industry has shrank by 2/3 of its headcount nationally, there is basically no money left in it. So a new job boards are looking for someone else to charge for their services. And there is just one more type of the user of the job board – The Candidate. A new recruitment video jobs site is thinking about exactly the candidate as the source of their revenue.

I am against of charging applicants in principle. When you finished your school, did you have money to spend on presenting you to the potential employers? The result is that the service provider of such video application web site would advertise jobs in the coolest companies, and all the poor applicants would pay to upload their videos there.

The end result is that a poor applicant would be a few applications or euro worse off. The Google’s and the other brand names employers would get another trillion applications, and someone in between would get very rich.

As a principle I am far more fond of the Robin Hood principle where you take from the rich (employers) and give a free service to the poor (candidates).

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Career CV Database Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

TalentTank.ie

talenttankieWell the recession does not seem to have any impact on the creativity of the Irish future jobs board owners. TalentTank.ie is the latest proof of that. While some of the largest ones are changing their business models drastically:

  • Jobs.ie adopted Google AdSense advertisements, and is selling pop under traffic (those popup windows that open behind the main window with some unrelated (usually dodgy) web site
  • IrishJobs.ie selling pop under traffic
  • RecruitIreland.com giving it away for free to any employer to advertise

    • TalentTank.ie has a quite different business model from a day one. This is what they say about themselves:
    In essence, TalentTank.ie is a web-based platform that provides both Individuals and Employers to quite simply make a difference in this current down-turn.

    TalentTank.ie will also explain the details:

    Talented Individuals register with TalentTank.ie to offer their talents and skills for free, for a couple of hours or days a week for a specified period, so as to demonstrate their skill sets. Employers in turn register with TalentTank.ie to avail of this free pool of resources in turn driving productivity with out any additional cost over-head.

    Basically it is a free labour for the Employers. As TalentTank.ie say – ‘no cost’.

    Thereafter, having demonstrated their net worth to their Employer colleagues, Individuals then have the opportunity to onward and directly network with potential Employers, in effect bypassing costly recruitment agencies and enabling a quicker and more cost effective route to employment for both parties.

    Recruitment agencies are being bypassed to avoid their cost as well. So Employers do not have to pay for the staff or the recruitment.

    This initiative will allow Employers become more competitive in terms of reducing labour costs and driving skills-base, which if adopted cross sectors and industries, will contribute significantly towards establishing a foundation for recovery. And of course, as an Employer’s business grows, so to will the need for new Employees.

    Employers are getting staff and the recruitment of the staff for free so they will be more profitable and as ThinkTank.ie page say – establish the foundation for the economic recovery. Staff and recruitment costs written off profit margins shoot up, and Ireland becomes competitive again. The roar of the Celtic Tiger can be heard running back towards us!

    Or did I not get it right somehow? Do you get it?

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    Blogs Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency Search Engine

    Get Your Jobs Indexed by TwitterJobSearch

    If you are a recruiter in Ireland I am guessing you would like your jobs to be advertised in real time in as many publications as you can afford. Any Irish Jobs boards are the obvious choice, and then the FREE Jobs sites that accept job advertisements. In Ireland there aren’t that many free jobs sites, but here is a free one, trying to be a jobs site – Twitter!

    How to get your jobs in Twitter Job Search?

    You will need to get your jobs in the format below and submit them to the Twitter Jobs Search.

    <?xml version=”1.0″?>
    <jobs>
    <publisher-name>Your Job Site</publisher-name>
    <publisher-url>http://www.yourjobsite.com</publisher-url>
    <job>
    <id>unique12345</id>
    <date>2004-06-22 10:33:11</date>
    <title>Customer Service Representative</title>
    <company>Big ABC Corporation</company>
    <url>http://www.yourjobsite.com/viewjob.php?jobid=unique12345</url>
    <salary>50K per year</salary>
    <jobtype>full-time, part-time, permanent</jobtype>
    <education>Degree</education>
    <experience>2+ years</experience>
    <location>London</location>
    <postcode>W1 3GR</postcode>
    <description>Strong Applicant. Communication skills. </description>
    <category>IT, Internet</category>
    </job>
    <job>
    <id>unique12346</id>
    <date>2004-06-22 10:33:11</date>
    <title>Customer Service Representative</title>
    <company>Big ABC Corporation</company>
    <url>http://www.yourjobsite.com/viewjob.php?jobid=unique12345</url>
    <salary>50K per year</salary>
    <jobtype>full-time, part-time, permanent</jobtype>
    <education>Degree</education>
    <experience>2+ years</experience>
    <location>London</location>
    <postcode>W1 3GR</postcode>
    <description>Strong Applicant. Communication skills. </description>
    <category>IT, Internet</category>
    </job>
    </jobs>

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    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!

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    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.

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    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.

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    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

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    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,… :)

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    CV CV Database Recruitment Recruitment Agency

    Canvassing in Recruitment

    The following is a real life example on the canvassing email sent by an Irish recruitment agency. You might use it as a template, but then again you might read this post to the bottom, and this might change your mind – not to use this as a template, but rethink you recruitment canvassing strategy altogether!

    Dear (candidate name)
    (your name) here from (recruitment agency), I hope this email finds you well. Apologies for the email intrusion – if this does not apply to your circumstances please feel free to forward to anybody who might be interested. You have previously registered your CV with (recruitment agency). I am contacting you to see if you are currently looking for a role and if I can be of assistance to you.
    I specialize in placing (inustry) Contractors throughout Ireland and in the UK also. Please send me a copy of your up to date CV along with your required daily rate, availability and preferred locations. I will give you a call to discuss further.
    Note that we also have a permanent recruitment team so if you are only looking at permanent opportunities please let me know also.

    Kindest regards
    (your name)
    (industry) Contracts Recruiter
    (recruitment agency)
    (slogan)
    (address)
    (phone)
    (email)
    (web address)
    Winner of the National Recruitment Federation Award: Very Small Agency Category – Superb Agency of the Year 2006/2008/2009
    All listings in the (recruitment agency) website are automatically deleted after 2 weeks, ensuring that there are no old vacancies on the site. This means that every role you see as a candidate is active and current. Check out our referral scheme on: (web site)/referral.html

    That sounds just lovely doesn’t it? Kind of like the fake mails from the banks, or mails offering you different products that will help you to please your partner.

    Dear (Candidate)
    Joe Blogs here from (recruitment agency), I hope this email finds you well.
    Candidate: This is a classic opening sentence of the American canvassing letters. Joe from Company here, I hope you are well buddy! Well the style does not travel well. The message just does not sound right. This is the basics of the localisation – making the message sound right locally. This does not. And it sounds like you link exchange request, or a mail from the lottery in some far country announcing you just won millions, and they just want €100 for the cost of transferring it to you.

    Apologies for the email intrusion…
    Candidate: Off so you do feel bad do you? Well you should!

    if this does not apply to your circumstances please feel free to forward to anybody who might be interested.
    Candidate: Let me get this straight. You feel bad by sending SPAM and I feel bad that mi SPAM filter didn’t block you, and now you are suggesting I should forward it further? As a chain letter perhaps? You forward this to 10 of your contacts in next 10 minutes and you will feel happy! – kind of a thing??!!!

    You have previously registered your CV with (recruitment agency). I am contacting you to see if you are currently looking for a role and if I can be of assistance to you.
    Candidate: Did you find me a job in the first place? You failed? And what now? You want a second chance? Worming up the cold soup? What’s the story here???

    I specialize in placing (industry) Contractors throughout Ireland and in the UK also. Please send me a copy of your up to date CV along with your required daily rate, availability and preferred locations. I will give you a call to discuss further.
    Candidate: Ehm,… didn’t you just say that you have my CV. And that is the fact that I regret. Since you did not help in finding me a new job, but instead are sending me stupid emails like this?

    Note that we also have a permanent recruitment team so if you are only looking at permanent opportunities please let me know also.
    Candidate: Right… And in some different industry, and different country you say? Different continent? Actually a different planet?! What good dies it make me in finding a better job where I live. Here on our green planet? In our Green country? (who said Green Party?!!!).

    Kindest regards
    (your name)
    (industry) Contracts Recruiter
    (recruitment agency)
    (slogan)
    (address)
    (phone)
    (email)
    (web address)
    Winner of the National Recruitment Federation Award: Very Small Agency Category – Superb Agency of the Year 2006/2008/2009
    This is like a bantam weight category then? NRF is a bit like the boxing scene. There is so many belts and boxing organisations that there are probably more winners and titles available than professional boxers. In recruitment in Ireland if you do not have a few titles every year – you are nobody!

    All listings in the (recruitment agency) website are automatically deleted after 2 weeks, ensuring that there are no old vacancies on the site. This means that every role you see as a candidate is active and current.
    One would thought that you actually remove the vacancy when you fill it, but not have it online for two more weeks?

    Check out our referral scheme on: (web site)/referral.html
    I get a an iPod when I make you earn your monthly salary? Or in other words I get a six pack or two, for sourcing the candidates to be placed in the positions that will pay your annual salary?

    Well, that is how it to someone looking for a job. Or someone that was actually looking for a job some years ago. So think how are you going to structure your recruitment canvassing email…

    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
    Blogs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

    Brightwater: Are we as a nation too hard on ourselves?

    Irish recruitment agency Brightwaters online poll for January 2009 was:

    Are we as a nation too hard on ourselves?

    online-poll-feb-results

    David Bloch, CEO of the Brightwater Group comments:

    Until now I have gone with the “ask the audience” answer, but not this time. I think the Irish are too hard on themselves!

    I am speaking as a person who has worked in Ireland for 11 years, but was born in the States, and lived in 6 different countries. I love Ireland, but recognise that while the Irish are wonderfully proud and patriotic, they are also the first to be hard on themselves. Self-deprecating humour and an almost disbelief that they really are as wonderful as so much of the rest of the world believes them to be. Even during the Celtic Tiger years, while certainly there were Irish people who believed their own hype, there were so many that believed Ireland’s success was too good to be true. Now that the bubble has burst, there seems to be the belief that it really was just an illusion and Ireland will sink back into the mire. The UK, the US and most of the rest of the world exhibit more self confidence!

    Confidence is a fundamental emotion and cannot easily be switched on and off. Ireland must believe in themselves and believe they are worthy of being at the top table, to remain at the top table.

    Self belief springs from many things, but starts with honesty and trust in the country and the system. I am therefore adamant that wrong-doers (there are question marks hanging over several government, banking and other officials) should be dealt with quickly and severely! The worldwide view of Ireland Inc is at stake. Is Ireland a country of law? A country we should invest in? More still, the self confidence of the country is at stake. Are we still a nation of corrupt politicians and businessmen (you scratch my back & I’ll scratch yours), or are we a nation of integrity and strength who will not tolerate corruption? It’s time Ireland stopped putting themselves down and stand up proud and strong. We will not accept being treated like that, we deserve better!

    Only by overcoming obstacles can you prove to yourself what you’re really made of. The recession is a challenge and an opportunity. As President Obama says: Believe!