A study by Irish jobs website MyHorizon has found that 94 percent of Irish people are not working in their dream job.
The report found that job seekers are willing to take the measures required to change this however, as 60 percent said they would be willing to go back to college to get the training needed to find their dream job. Career guidance had proven to be a problem area for most respondents with 88 percent saying they had received no guidance since leaving second level education.
Just read a press release on Monster web site. It starts extremely positive with Monster is hiring 80 new staff!. Later on it actually reads that that same monster is making 160 people redundant. Makes you wonder, if that is a positive news or …?
What is obvious is that Monster is realising that they are completely uncompetitive in the current market. So a shift in skills of their staff is essential to bring them to the stage when they will have something interesting to offer to Employers again.
Here is the Monster press release, with new jobs, job cuts,.. or however you want to take it:
Monster to Open New Technology Center of Excellence & Innovation in Cambridge; Makes Organizational Changes in Line with Innovation Strategy; Now Recruiting for 80 New Positions
MAYNARD, Mass., Jul 08, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Monster Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE:MWW) today announced publicly plans for a new Technology Center of Excellence & Innovation to be located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, along with certain organizational changes designed to enable the company to shift or add talent and skills to support the company’s innovation strategy. The Cambridge center is the latest addition to Monster’s global innovation and development sites in Maynard, Massachusetts; Mountain View, California; Prague, Czech Republic; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and New Delhi, India. The company is now actively recruiting for approximately 80 new technical positions to be located in the Cambridge center, with potential capacity for adding a total of 170 new positions at this center.
The announced organizational changes include the elimination of approximately 160 positions within the product and technology group globally, with approximately 50 Maynard-based positions being affected. Monster also announced the creation of a new leadership position focused on long-term strategic planning and customer engagement, and the consolidation of the employer and seeker product development teams, plus several related promotions.“Over the past two years we have successfully re-launched our employer and seeker sites on a global basis and we have made substantial progress on the consolidation of our various operating platforms which has resulted in a need for different skills and expertise as we pursue our next generation of product and search technologies,” said Sal Iannuzzi, Monster Worldwide CEO. “We believe that our new technology center will provide the physical and personnel resources to help us successfully execute on our strategic investments. We are making what we believe are the right moves to create the new products and services our customers need.”
“Cambridge is a logical location for us to grow, with its world class talent and leading edge research and development infrastructure,” said Darko Dejanovic, executive vice president, global CIO and head of product at Monster. “Our Cambridge center complements our existing innovation investments, and we expect additional game-changing product offerings to emerge from this group in collaboration with our global technology team.”
The Technology Center of Excellence & Innovation is located in the Kendall Square area of Cambridge, with occupancy currently expected to begin as new hires join the company. For more information on job opportunities at Monster, visit http://www.monsterhires.com.
About Monster Worldwide
Monster Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE: MWW), parent company of Monster, the premier global online employment solution for more than a decade, strives to inspire people to improve their lives. With a local presence in key markets in North America, Europe, and Asia, Monster works for everyone by connecting employers with quality job seekers at all levels and by providing personalized career advice to consumers globally. Through online media sites and services, Monster delivers vast, highly targeted audiences to advertisers. Monster Worldwide is a member of the S&P 500 index. To learn more about Monster’s industry-leading products and services, visit www.monster.com. More information about Monster Worldwide is available at http://about-monster.com.
SOURCE: Monster Worldwide, Inc.
Monster Worldwide, Inc.
Janet Swaysland, 978-429-5918
Janet.swaysland@monster.com
Twitter @jsways
or
Kathy O’Reilly, 978-823-2002
Kathy.oreilly@monster.com
Twitter @kathyoreilly
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.
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!!!
By 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
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!
Since the Irish recruiters have finally understood that the search engine optimization strategy is the key to the success of their business I get asked a same question more and more, and more often:
How do I write a job advertisement so that it attracts more and better quality candidates?
While the page you are publishing a job advertisement has the critical determining factor when it comes to search engine rankings, the targeted keyword phrase should still appear in the add itself. Also having your keyword combinations appear throughout the job specification generally helps search engines further identify the relevancy of the page for your search keywords.
Here are a few general tips for keyword integration in your jobs advertisements:
1. Job Titles
The most important place your keywords should appear is in the title tag of the page. The nice thing about job boards is that your job post or page title will be automatically transformed into both title tags and either an H1 or H2 heading tag as well. Remember, your headline should wrap your keywords in a pithy promise that perfectly communicates what the job is about.
2. Short Job Description
I’ve always found it useful to repeat the targeted keywords in the short job description, as long as it can be done in a way that is appealing to the candidate and reinforces relevancy. Since many job boards use this initial copy as the displayed description of the job, you want to make sure you are accurately inviting the candidate to click through as well.
3. Subheadings in Job Description
Another important place that keywords can appear is in subheads that aid the reader in navigating down the page. A resource that matches up well with the targeted keyword phrase will find natural opportunities to restate keywords in subheads, as an introduction to the next topical section of the page. Subheads are on jobs sites typically created using the H3 tag.
4. Related Words and Synonyms
Good job description copy should naturally result in words that are related to, as well as synonyms for, the keyword phrases you are after. Rather than mindlessly repeating the same words ad nauseam, assume that search algorithms are advanced enough to look for proper contextually-related words that support your targeted keywords. Think skills!
5. Specificity
One of the hallmarks of great job description is specific, descriptive words in lieu of bland general terminology. Specificity aids the reader by clearly demonstrating relevancy, allows for more dynamic copy, and provides opportunities to increase the general on-page keyword frequency. Make sure to employ your specific keywords when feasible within the context of the job description, rather than rely on generic wording.
6. How to Apply?
Let us not forget that we want the Candidate to apply for the job. Otherwise, what’s the point of advertising? Once again, your job advertisement should conclude with a call to action that prompts the reader to travel down the path you desire. It might be to use a facility to apply for a job on a jobs site, or to contact you directly. Your primary keywords should naturally fit in with the next step you want the reader to take.
Conclusion
The key to good job advertisement is crafting the content that seamlessly integrates keywords in a way that doesn’t offend the reader. In fact, good keyword-rich job advertisement should never even consciously alert the reader that keyword repetition is being employed for any reason other than his or her own benefit.
The other factors that determine whether your job advertisement will appear in the search results in the search engines, or your competitors is the number and relevancy of the links to the page where the job is advertised. You should certainly submit your jobs to the social media sites, especially if advertising jobs on your own web site as opposed to a jobs board shared with your competition.
The news headline today is that ISME, via Mark Fielding says that 70000 jobs are in danger.
Here is the full story from the RTE web site. I’ll pay a pint to the one who can explain why are 70000 people in danger of losing their jobs, and where does it say so in the piece of news broadcasted on all Irish media?
Call for employment action plan
Tuesday, 2 June 2009The group representing small and medium sized businesses in Ireland has called on the Government to introduce an emergency employment action plan.
The Irish Small and Medium Enterprises Association says some 70,000 jobs in the sector are in immediate danger.
In a survey published today, ISME confirms that almost all such businesses have introduced either a pay cut or a wage freeze since the start of the year.
ISME is calling for an emergency plan including PRSI exemptions for employers taking on new staff and job maintenance subsidies to deal with the number of firms planning lay-offs, which according to the organisation’s survey, has risen to 35% from 25% two months ago.
Almost all small and medium business have introduced pay cuts or wage freezes since the beginning of the year, ISME says.
ISME Chief Executive Mark Fielding said that immediate action was called for and that drawn-out negotiations with trades unions needed to be cut short.
He said that it was better to have workers remaining in employment than to add to the Exchequer costs by becoming what he called a burden on the State.
Twitter is a social network that lets the users communicate with messages of only up to 140 characters. SMS-ish like. When you register you can follow other people and what happens when you follow them – whatever they write is shown on your profile. You actually subscribe to their updates. Other people can follow you and that enables you to place your message on their Twitter profile page. Altogether twitter is a tool taht delivers short message from a user to a group of users who subscribe for this updates.
The description above actually describes a fantastic marketing tool. You can subscribe to whoever you like, and get their messages. Anyone else can subscribe to you. It is a massive permission based marketing model, dressed up as a social network.
Twitter can be used as a marketing channel to market anything. A business, a brand, a product, or a person. In fact it is used in personal branding right now in Ireland with candidates marketing themselves on Twitter just nine days before the Elections for the European parliament.
Here is how candidates from the Dublin constituency use Twitter to market themselves to the Irish voters.
Another interesting aspect , besides the number of followers and following, is the Activity. How many messages or broadcasts to their followers have each candidate made so far?
| Name | Number of Tweets |
|---|---|
| Déirdre De Búrca | 259 |
| Eoin Ryan | 144 |
| Joe Higgins | 160 |
| Proinsias De Rossa | 44 |
| Eibhlin Byrne | 30 |
| Caroline Simons | n/a |
| Mary Lou Mc Donald | n/a |
| Patricia McKenna | n/a |
| Gabriel ´Gay´ Mitchell | n/a |
The article Twitter and European Elections in Dublin South shows the number of followers and people following – or basically a ‘Broadcast Network’ of each candidate. You can clearly see that the number of messages published is in direct correlation with the number of people following you.
So how to use Twitter in the recruitment or looking for job? Simple! Just log in, create your account, look for interesting people, follow them, publish the messages you want to be found and followed for. The more messages you post to the larger and ‘more interesting’ network, the more effective will your Twitter marketing be.
Do not forget how are you presenting yourself as well. There is a full Profile you can fill on Twitter about yourself.
Make sure you do not put a face of a dog instead of your photo as the
Major of Dublin did, since people will be quite reluctant to follow a dog!?
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).
Reminder: Today is the last day to get a discount for the tickets for the Irish Recruitment Conference: The Future of Recruitment – Part 1:The Road Ahead!
Save 25% on the ticket by buying today. Go and get yours now! See you there!
The Interview with Joy Redmond – Marketing & Operations Director of Flexitimers
About Flexitimers
Flexitimers is a self-service project board enabling companies to connect with consultants, freelancers, small businesses, contractors and specialists/experts for professional project work in Ireland.
The site is completely free for both professionals and companies to use. Flexitimers is a closed network – employers or other professionals cannot search through profiles. Profiles are only viewable to employers whose project matches your profile.
Ivan: New Flexitimers site is launched, the media love it, and the response has been very positive. How happy are you with the media coverage?
Well obviously we’re very pleased and I think the reason is because Flexitimers is a good news story during recession overload. Everyday we’re hearing and reading about the recession, job losses, redundancy and market uncertainty. Flexitimers is good news for a few reasons. Firstly, we’ve hit on a previously untapped sector with the recruitment industry in Ireland being a mix of web2.0 and project work – this is very new and hugely necessary. Secondly, project and indeed flexible work tended to be quite siloed – IT and design sectors largely but our intention was to offer flexibility to a broader occupational base. Traditionally I suppose IT and design were easy outsource targets because the output was so tangible but there is no reason why any company can’t outsource less tangible operations/functions such as PR, sales and marketing, admin, legal and financial roles. It all goes back to people skills and effective management and just because someone is sitting in your office 40 hours per week doesn’t always translate into an optimal solution. Thirdly, we practice what we preach – I live in Wexford and co-founder Dervla Cunningham is based in Dublin and we’ve managed to research, develop and launch a business by working remotely.
Ivan: The Recruitment industry in Ireland is changing. What role will Flexitimers play in the future?
Of course the recruitment industry is changing because it had to, it’s a bit like the construction or property sector during the boom which was synonymous with over-charging and under-delivering. Today, no company can afford to pay for mediocrity whether that’s in suppliers, staff or services.
To get back to recruitment, we believe the employment model is changing and the focus will be less on hiring full time permanent staff but will be more project driven. It’s a win-win situation for employers because they get to pick and choose the best people for each task and manage their overheads more effectively.
Flexitimers’ role is to provide companies with access to a pool of skilled and experienced professionals who are actively seeking project work. Traditionally companies tend to find project workers through their own networks but this is random and unfortunately the best people aren’t necessarily within your reach. On Flexitimers you can hire beyond your network and not compromise on quality or caliber. I suppose, Flexitimers confounds false economy and mediocrity.
Ivan: The way we live and the way we work is not the same. Flexitimers seems to be accommodating this and applying it to recruitment?
Absolutely, as the line goes ‘nobody ever said on their deathbed, I should have spent more time in the office.’ But there is one key point I want to make here: just because you want to work flexibly doesn’t mean you have to compromise your career. Take part-time work for example, typically available only in retail, catering and administrative jobs. Like I said earlier, Flexitimers is broadening that occupational base. How? We provide professionals with access to flexible positions i.e. contract, temporary, freelance, consulting and telework across a variety of roles so we’re there to help anyone who’s just been made redundant to earn income while they’re in between jobs. Furthermore, more and more of these interim project workers who join the site for interim or stopgap work find it works better for them – so now not only have they flexibility but also they’re expanding their profile, career and portfolio.
Ivan: Flexitimers – what is the next step? What is the plan for the future?
I could tell you but I’d have to shoot you afterwards! Only joking, big plans and plenty of exciting developments. I suppose the biggest news at the moment is that our service is FREE to use which again reflects the dramatic changes in the recruitment industry. We’ll of course want to build our brand and awareness over the coming months. In the background we’re working on expansion plans both in terms of functionality and geography. I speak French, Spanish and basic Dutch so who knows, maybe I’ll be teleworking from a sunnier climate!
About Joy Redmond, co-founder of Flexitimers
Joy Redmond started her career in 1996 as Marketing Director of Newmedia, one of Ireland’s first web design companies. She remained agency side working with Zartis.com and Campaign HTDS before moving client side to become online marketing manager of IngredientsNet.com (a joint venture between Fyffes and Glanbia). Before setting up Flexitimers with Dervla Cunningham, Joy was a lecturer in E-business, research and marketing in the Dublin Institute of Technology and was Course Director of the Masters in Business & Entrepreneurship. Joy also is a busy project worker doing consultant marketing and research for many blue chip companies in Ireland such as Bank of Ireland, eircom, NTL, Poster Plan and JCDecaux. She is a mentor on the Wexford County Enterprise Board and a member of the Irish Internet Association Social Media Working Group.
Joy: Thanks Ivan, a pleasure doing this interview, keep up the good work.
Twitter is surprisingly good tool for the recruitment. You can track the conversations and when used in conjunction with LinkedIN or any other tool it shows the real time live activity of the person. As does Facebook. Monster or any other CV database will never tell you that. An application from a job site or your web site will never tell you what a person is really about. Twitter does. It also tells you what other people think the person is about. And that is unique in the recruitment industry.
Do not try to recruit by using Twitter alone. But you can use Twitter to find the conversation about topics. You can use the job skill as the topic, or even better a conference or something that has a time factor. You can find people that are talking about the certain themes – related to the job or a position you are trying to fill. Find who is talking about it, what do they talk about it and who do they talk about it to. There is your talent pool, with reference check, and a real time data about their recent activity.
Or you can put it all upside down. You talk about what you do. People who use Twitter well will know how to find you. Actually they will find what you have to offer, and that is your jobs. Talk, tweet, comment others, follow, you will get the lingo quickly. Find people that you know and respect, follow, monitor their followers. Just be active, as you would be on any networking event. Twitter is actually just one constant networking event. It is happening with or without you. It will not wait for you. You need to be in to meet the people you want to meet.
Worky is a Recruitment Social Network. Kind of like LinkedIN, but a few years later. Worky has no people in it jet, but has the pricing model – a bit steeper than LikedIN.
What is wrong here:
RecruitIreland goes FREE and in the same month Worky is goes live more expensive than LinkedIN, that Irish recruiters find too expensive.
Oh,… and also Flexitimers stopped charging for the jobs advertisements as well. There are clear signs more and more sites are going to go free. But not Worky. Worky is more expensive, so obviously better than LikedIN.
But Worky is global, so not in a league with Irish Jobs and Recruit Ireland. Worky is the new Monster. Actually Worky is a new Monster and LikedIN together.
Worky we wish you well!
Here is what Worky says about themeslves:
Why Worky? … The before and afterCandidates
No more dark ages of the job boards
When everybody first started using the internet it was a novelty to see jobs from the newspapers up there
It gave us all a buzz applying for a role online
And for a couple of years that model of offline or newspaper style job adverts stuck up on the internet kept us happy in the darkBut not for long
Very soon it was endless lists of jobs and endless lists of job boards, sites boasted about how many jobs they had but candidates only wanted one job and so lost heart..Did the agency or the company get my application?
Did my application fall into a big black hole?
Who is looking at my application?
Do they like my application?
Can I not see a bit more about where this job is before I apply?
Don’t they want to know my preferences before we get off the first block?
For employers and agencies it became heartache too
Why can’t I find suitable matches?
Why do so few applicants match what I’ve asked for?
Which job board do I use?
Do these job boards spend anything on advertising?
Which one actually engages with the mainstream everyday candidates?
Along came the Upload your CV era – but full of broken promiseFor candidates
Who is looking at my CV?
Is it still live?
Do I have any control?
It’s too complicated to make it anonymous?
Can my boss see my name or our company name?
For EmployersEmployers grew tired of seeing that 1458 people matched their job
Grew tired of keyword searches so man who sold java coffee was matched against 1000s of java programming jobs
At last Worky…
Not a job board
Not an upload your CV mechanism
For candidates a place to create your own individual online skills profile and have it seen by every employer for free in the safe knowledge that it is anonymous until you see that they may have a role to suit. A place where once you upload your profile, you can job-hunt while you sleep.works for candidates… Join in
For Employers A place to copper fasten the skills you want in an employee, a place where you can see with ease who matches your job financially, geographically, by skills and by work experience to name but a few. A place for employers to see first if there are matching candidates before committing to pay
works for hirers… Try it now