Category: Recruitment Agency

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CV Database Internet Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Irish Jobs Advertising Prices

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

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

* all prices are exclusive of VAT at 21.5%

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

What do you think of the Irish Jobs sites pricing?

Categories
Career Internet Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Web design in Ireland

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

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

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

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

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

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Blogs Career Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Any Jobs in Ireland?

Today’s announcement from one of the leading jobs sites in Ireland nicely describes what does a jobs scene look in Ireland today:

Hi All

Just a quick note to let you know we have now added some new locations;

Europe
Australia
United Arab Emirates
New Zealand
Canada
USA
South Africa
North Africa
Middle East

If you have any queries please let me know.

The jobs sites cannot really survive advertising the jobs in Ireland only. Simply there is not enough jobs in Ireland to sustain the business model of advertising jobs in Ireland only. There simply isn’t enough jobs here anymore. Irish Jobs are gone. Jobs are elsewhere today.

Welcome to the emigration wave…

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Interview Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Business Development Manager required with excellent sales capacity

www.EmployIreland.ie is growing! We need help to manage that growth! Are you the one?

About EmployIreland.ie
www.EmployIreland.ie is the Irish Jobs site with a bit of the twist. It differs from the usual leading Irish Jobs sites by the fact that it is the only Irish Jobs site that is not advertising it’s services. Simply not paper, no radio, no TV, no print brochures, no cinema, no …. no advertisements. The removal of the advertising cost have helped us keeping our prices down to the minimum.

The current recession in the Irish industry pushed Irish recruitment and jobs advertisers to rethink their online advertising strategy. www.EmployIreland.ie with it’s unique pricing structure is the obvious answer. we are announcing a Sales manager / Business Development Manager position to help us manage the expansion.

The Sales Manager / Business Development Manager Role

Experience
Working in the Irish recruitment agency environment with at least 2 years experience essential. Both recruitment consultant (with hands on usage of the Irish job boards and multiple job posting systems) and team lead / branch manager (managing online advertising budget) experience is desired. Experience in the multiple recruitment agencies or recruitment web sites is a big plus.

Interview Questions:

Do you use LinkedIN or other social networks?
Do you write a blog?
Do you know what SEO stands for?
Can you explain why different job advertisements for a same job attract different candidates?
Do you use or have you used jobs sites to advertise (on daily bases) in your career?
Do you use an ATS?
Do you use the multiple job posting service?
Do you enjoy all above?

If the answer is yes to all the above and you love sales, you are the perfect candidate! We believe we have a perfect job for you!

Salary
We offer a wide range os the salary packages and different remuneration options tha YOU can choose from. From a basic salary plus benefits, to Basic plus sales bonus to a partnership or a pure revenue sharing offers. If you are the right person for www.EmployIreland.ie we will have the right package for you!

We are growing company. The number of clients is growing year after year. The number of services we offer grows every year. As such we do not believe in the salary freezing!

Categories
Blogs Career Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Sales Staff Salaries

I often thought how to structure the remuneration package for a sales staff in the recruitment or even more specific is the sales of the jobs site subscriptions. The jobs sites sell the three month, six months and the most often the annual subscription that includes the free usage of a number of jobs slots on the site. What it means is that the client, an employer or a recruitment agency can use their XX number of jobs slots as they like. There is usually some side products on the jobs sites like the CV Database Access, or a Hot Job – that is displayed on the home page. Some company branding packages with the company logos around the pages on the job site are also common practice.

The sales staff are usually paid so that there is a percentage of their salary that is a Basic Salary. It is guaranteed and not related to their performance. For a junior sales staff it is not far off the minimum wage, and it grows with the experience of the person. The other part of the salary is the bonus that is related to the performance achieved in each time period. The bonuses are really structured differently in different companies and industries.

Obviously the sales person should bring more in (revenue) the company than what his own costs are. So here is a question then:

Should a sales person rather accept a percentage of the revenue or the classis sales remuneration package comprised of a basic plus a bonus?

Obviously for a good sales person a percentage of the revenue if it is a substantial percentage should be a far more interesting option, since it brings the person to a ‘Partner’ level instantly. It is actually even better then a partnership since the sales person gets a percentage of the revenue generated, regardless if the company is actually profitable at all.

I have heard recruiters saying, that the percentage of the revenue is interesting for them but that the sales process can take long time to close, and there is the mortgage, the car,…

So I tried to look at it from a different perspective. How about a sales person taking home 100% of any revenue he makes for the first month or so? How about 100% of all the revenue made in the first two months??? Surely there should be quite enough clients you can close a deal with within 60 days?

What do you think? Am I on the right track? Would you take a job where you take home everything you make for the first few months?

Categories
Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Where are the Recruitment Agencies in Dublin?

Ever wondered where are the recruitment agencies in Dublin? Well Golden Pages has a service called FindOnMap.ie that has a location on the map of their listings in the Golden Pages. How accurate it is? Be the judge yourself:


dublin recruitement agencies

I know one thing I did a training and consultancy in the recruitment agencies this year From Swords to Bray, and even further in Graystones. None of those recruitment agencies are on the map. Perhaps those are other counties? Bray and further south is Wicklow, and perhaps those are only the Dublin based displayed?

A nice touch from the Golden pages, I think. Is it worth their subscription fee, that is another question.

96 recruitment agencies opted for this advertisement. I wonder if it brought any business?

Categories
Internet Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Giggzy Ireland’s Biggest Industry Network

Just in case you have not heard, the biggest Ireland’s Industry Network is Giggsy. At least according to Giggsy web site:

Giggzy is a Business Network website. It provides a platform for industry leaders, professionals and job seekers to interact online.

Underneath that lovely introduction there is also a feature to register as a Job Seeker and Employer. The most prominent feature on the site is also the Job Search. You can also exclude agencies in your search.

So what is Giggzy really about?

It is a wana-be jobs site, and a social networking site in one? Kind of like LinkedIN, but for Ireland, and Ireland only? I really like the idea. But the packaging is just awful. The mixture between the jobs site and the networking site in the branding messages is extremely confusing, or just simply put – bad.

The implementation of the web site from the technical perspective is on the level of the site you get for free from a nephew, or a low paid student.

The company behind Giggzy is called: Active Staffing Solutions. It sounds like a recruitment agency, doesn’t it? Is it jet another jobs board by an Irish recruitment agency?

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Blogs Career CV Database Google Internet Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency Search Engine SEO

Green Jobs

I am pleased to announce the nicest Irish Job board: Green Jobs!

A this is second new job board I am looking at today, and funnily enough the first one was also ‘green’ or perhaps a bit to ‘green’!

Anyway back to Green Jobs! It is again the jobs site owned by the recruitment agency, and the good thing is – they do not hide it a bit! Their Green Search logo is proudly displayed in the header next to the Green Jobs one.

The Green Jobs Design

The design of the Green Jobs web site is probably the nicest site design of all Irish recruitment web sites. Modern, Web 2.0 (and beyond), light colors on the white background, 3D,… what can I say? It ticks all the right checkmarks! It really is a pleasure to look at, and I find hard to write about it, since I just keep starring at the front page. And not only the front page. When you browse around, you find the little graphics in the site that are relevant to the content, and make the site easier to read and follow.

There are some possible improvements on the looks, it could be a bit modernised since some elements are a bit… ‘old’. The latest jobs scrolling make me really nervous since I cannot really read about the job. It’s too quick! Featured employers box ruins the balance, and is over, over,… out-standing. Fonts could be a bit more exiting… But hold on! This is still probably the nicest (Heineken) jobs site in Ireland!

PS. If you are a graphic designer who made those graphics please call me on 076 670 8888 now! I have a job for you!
PS2. In case you are calling from Brasil, there is +353 for Ireland in front of the number…

The Green Jobs Usability

Well,…. there is always a room for improvement. Again, there is only one green button, on one page only that leads you to the job search facility. I think a job site’s main purpose is to show jobs. The Jobs Search should be on every page. I will repeat that. The job search should be present on every page.

SEO of the Green Jobs

Well not much of SEO on the Green Jobs page. There is actually a test you can do on a job site to check how serious contender are they. You just look at the URL of their job posting. If the page where the job is actually displayed does not contain the job name in the URL, in the TITEL, in the META, in H1 Tag, and a few times in the text…. well then that page will not get much relevant traffic from the search engines. You have to ask yourself – why publish something if it will not have any reach?

So let’s see the URL of the job post on Green Jobs:
greenjobs.ie/jobseekers/info.php?jobid=158

Well, you be the judge… My take on it is that they will always depend on Google AdWords for the traffic to their site, and we all know that this is not really sustainable way to run a job site.

Conclusion?

Green Jobs is the nicest little recruitment site in Ireland. It is cute in its simplicity really. Well done and all the best Greens!!!

Categories
Recruitment Recruitment Agency

A recession is the best time to be in the recruiting business!

As companies tighten their budgets, the recruitment freezes become more and more widespread. When it comes at the end of the year, you will hear a large number of recruitment managers mentioning the recruitment freeze as early as October. What does it mean for the recruiters? Almost no new business for the last two months of the year.

A lot of recruiters will look for another job this winter.

Especially the ones providing the ‘Volume Recruitment Services’, lower in the food chain. If nothing drastically changes in the industry until the next year, those that are still around in January 2009 will cash it big in the February. Long hiring freezes always generate a large wave of the new heads required short afterwards.

How to get to 2008? Watch for the competition bailing out, and grab their contracts. Expanding your client base in the following months in 2008, will make a huge impact in the Q1 of 2009!

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Blogs Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Is Jobs Blog still alive?

Is Jobs Blog still alive?

That is the question I got a lot last few weeks. It is funny how your constant readers almost expect you to publish regularly, and note the absence of the new blog posts. My summer was a strange mixture of (tele)work, holidays, sailing, diving, travelling, business, networking, socialising and visiting people and places. The result was devastating for my blog. The only posts I did post was being stuck on the airports with flights cancelled or delayed, or such weird situations.

It is September! And September is a Special Month in the Recruitment in Ireland. Majority of the advertising contracts are renewed in September. January is the second most popular month for such an activity. Sales people are very busy. If you did not book your business (Let’s do Lunch!) meeting or a dinner, you will find hard to get a face to face meeting with a salesman of the recruitment advertising! Fully booked in advance!

New start up recruitment agencies pup up like mushrooms after the rain in September. Considering the amount of rain in August…

Jobs Blog is Alive!!!

The question is how is the recruitment alive in those turbulent economic times…

Categories
Google Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency Search Engine SEO

Recruitment Roadshow 2008: What is The Best Job Title?

Recruitment Roadshow 2008 took me to Swords and Tallaght today visiting the two La Creme & Premier offices. It was really interesting how the same presentation I am giving every day evolves from the contribution from the recruiters I meet every day. The most interesting topic we spoke about today was the Job Titles. Basically the question was:

What is The Best Job Title?

Since the Job Title appears in the Job Search Results on the job boards, and it also appears on the Search results of the search engines, it is very important to write the job title in a such way that it invites the web site visitor to click on it. If the job title does not make a job hunter click on it to see more of the job, the application process gets ‘broken’ and a visitor/CV is lost.

The conclusion is that a job title has to be:

    Short
    Descriptive
    Attractive – it needs to sell the job

By looking at the Google Analytics data of a recruitment agency web sites or a job sites, and comparing the number of views of the same job with a different job titles gives a definitive answer, and that is that:

The job tile on a recruitment agency web site and a job boards shouldn’t be the same!

Why? Simply because you are trying to attract the job hunter in the different environment.

Job Titles for the Job Boards

Job boards contain thousands of jobs. Most likely there will be numerous jobs with the job tile that is exactly as yours. Standing out is a good thing. Sometimes you need to ‘Go Crazy’ as well (for certain type of jobs). I have heard how the tiles like: ‘Can you sell ice to the Eskimos’ work well, simply since they stand out.

Recruitment Agency and Corporate Site Job Titles

Job tiles on your own web site need to be far more formal. There are two reasons for it. Here you do not compete with the rest of the recruiters in the country. Here it is all about you and your brand. Informative, descriptive, short, attractive…

Another point is that your web site content is the main driving force to the web traffic to your recruitment web site. The majority of the content of the recruitment sites are the job descriptions. Google just loves your jobs online since they get updated regularly, and Google ‘loves’ the live content. Your job titles will most likely (should really!) contain the most used search phrases to drive the traffic from Google. If you want relevant traffic you need the job titles that are 100% relevant to your jobs.

This simply points to the obvious:

Job titles for the job boards and job titles for your company web site shouldn’t really be the same.

Categories
Jobs Recruitment Agency

Ireland Jobs

A few years ago I had a web site called Ireland Jobs. The domain was IrelandJobs.ie. It was actually a really nice web site. Here is some artwork from it:

Ireland Jobs Logo:
Ireland Jobs Logo

Ireland Jobs Banner:
Ireland Jobs Banner

Ireland Jobs Rectangle:
Ireland Jobs Lighthouse

Ireland Jobs Banner Long
Ireland Jobs Banner Long

Like them? I do!

Categories
Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Irish Recruitment Marketing

If we clearly define and make a distinction between Marketing and Advertising in saying:

Advertising–what Larry Heiman refers to as “Lead Generation”–is the “magnet” you use to attract the customers you want to your business. Marketing is the process you use to determine who and where those people are, what they buy from you, why they buy from you, and how they think. With that information at your command, then–and only then–can you begin to construct the strategic magnet that irresistibly attracts your ideal customers.

The typical Irish Recruitment Agency hires a Marketing Manager. The Job of a Marketing Manager of an Irish recruitment agency is to… ADVERTISE! Marketing manager manages the advertising budget, typically spent on the Irish Job boards, and the print, radio, beer mats, bus shelters, LUAS, cinema, bank machines, taxi, airports and other visual advertisements.

The closest the Marketing Managers of the Irish recruitment agencies ever get to the real (Internet) marketing is when they ask the job boards to supply them with the ABC approved figures, that show the number of the visitors per day, their geography, and so no. Anyone who has ever seen the two of the such reports from different Irish Jobs Boards knows that you simply cannot compare one with another. And if you try to reach some conclusions from those reports – it is in clear disparity with what you see yourself online.

The Online Marketing Manager of an Irish Recruitment Agency should know the answers to the following questions:
1. Who are our clients (employers) looking for, and expecting us to deliver?
2. What internet recourses do those candidates use?
3. Who is advertising on those web sites (or online software like Skype for example)?
4. How likely is it that an advertisement is going to be seen on the web page where it is advertised?
5. How likely that the advertisement will result in a ‘click’, and wring a job hunter to our web site?
6. What is the cost per application from each of the web sites where the jobs are advertised?

As opposed to the above, the typical Irish Marketing Manager of an Irish recruitment agency is interested in and managing:
1. What Job boards to use and advertise on?
2. How many jobs can be advertised there (number of job slots)?
3. Are our jobs ‘seen’ in the searches on the job boards ‘high enough’ – or down below thousands of other advertisements?
4. Can we reduce the rates paid to the job boards (or increase job slots!)?

We all know that people use the search engines more than job boards. In fact, the job boards get the vast majority of their visitors from the search engines. In the same time the Irish Recruitment Marketing Managers are totally oriented and dependent on the Irish Job Boards as opposed to the search engines. The only exception is Google AdWords that most of the agencies have trued using, but were simply outbid by their own money they invested in the Jobs Boards, who simply outbid them.

An Irish Online Marketing Manager of the Recruitment Agency should think on how to put his advertisements on the web sites that are being visited the most. Google.ie is on the top, for a long time now. Why is there not a single recruitment agency on top of the search results for the phrases job hunters use to find the jobs? Simply because the Marketing Managers have got the wrong job description. They should not manage the advertising budget, but monitor what job hunters use, and where they can be ‘surprised’ with the advertising message.

Categories
Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Recruitment Process – Getting the Right Candidate for the Job

Larry Heiman wrote a nice blog post: Recruiting is a Marketing Task
Here is the part where he explains the Marketing processes applied to the recruitment, and sourcing to help you find that right candidate for the your jobs:

As an enlightened business owner, you understand the importance of doing market research on your prospective customers. For example, you want to know where they’re located, any common characteristics they may have and, ultimately, as much as possible about how they think – their needs, wishes, and motivations. The goal, of course, is to refine your ability to effectively and efficiently target your message to those with whom you most want to do business.
Well, you may be surprised to learn that this wisdom equally applies in seeking prospective employees. In fact, marketing for customers and marketing for employees address the similar four key questions:
• What is my likely trading area? (Where are my likely employees located)?
• What is my product? (What is the position?)
• Who is my “ideal customer”? (What are the qualities of my “ideal employee”?)
• How can I best attract their attention?
Even when you are feeling the pressure to quickly fill an unexpectedly open position, you’ll save yourself a lot of grief if you take the time in advance to get very clear on the answers to those four questions.

In the Irish market – that is dominated with the recruitment agencies advertising on the job boards and the traditional media, would you see such model as a ‘workable’ one? The most agencies will try to get the candidate who is slightly overqualified, to impress the employer with a quality of the CV. Also they try to match the same role title – of the past and the future role of the candidate.

So in a sense – the recruitment agencies her in Ireland do all the opposite to what Larry is suggesting above.

I personally like the marketing processes applied to the recruitment model. I can see it work beautifully, especially with the lower level jobs in Ireland.

Categories
Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency Search Engine

LinekdIN Recruiter

LinekedIN has a really slow take-up in Ireland. Irish recruiters are only recently being less ‘glued’ to the traditional job boards like Irish Jobs, and started embracing into the modern recruitment methods. LinkedIN is the most common place all the recruiters went to in a search for a new candidates. The problem that happened is that at some stage every second Irish LinkedIN member was a recruiter! :)

The US corporate started publishing the jobs in Ireland. Up until the end of 2007, there was a handful of jobs advertised in Ireland in LinkedIN only. Today that number grows higher. For example today there is 37 jobs advertised in Ireland in LinkedIN. A closer inspection will reveal that almost a half of those jobs are not necessary based in Ireland actually. Compared to the Irish jobs boards that had tens of thousands of jobs published (duplicates, duplicates!!!), LinkedIN Jobs section really looks poor in Ireland.

But that did not stop LikedIN to start selling tools like LinkedIN Recruiter to the recruiters.

Will it change the habits of the Irish Recruiters, and make them use LinkedIN more as opposed to the CV databases for harvesting applicants? Monster has that nice feature where you get that email every morning with the latest CVs entered in the database that are relevant to your given keywords. To switch to LikedIN it would mean actively searching the LinkedIN Profiles. And those are not really compatible with the CV parsers. So it would require an ‘Active Recruiter’ searching for the ‘Passive Candidate’!