Category: Social Recruitment

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

Post author By Ivan | JobsBlog.ie
Post date February 14, 2014
1 Comment on Irish Jobs Sites – what’s in the bag for 2014?

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

Job Aggregators in Ireland

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

SPAMmers

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

International Aggregator job sites

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

What is next for the Irish job sites?

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

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

Post author By Ivan | JobsBlog.ie
Post date January 21, 2014
2 Comments on Discoverly’s nifty free Chrome extension marries data from Facebook & LinkedIn data (exclusive)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Christina Farr, Venture Beat.

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Recruitment Advertising Workshop

Post author By Ivan | JobsBlog.ie
Post date April 24, 2013
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Great Recruitment Advertising Workshop event organised by Stephen Harrington Recruitment Manager: Sales | Marketing | Multi-Lingual @ Allen Recruitment. Here is the original announcement:

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

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

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

The agenda:

8.45-9.10 Registration, Tea/Coffee and Pastries

9.10-9.20 Welcome by Brian Cunningham, MD Allen Recruitment

Session 1

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

Tea/Coffee

Session 2

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

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

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How to use LinkedIn Skills Endorsements for Recruitment?

Post author By Ivan | JobsBlog.ie
Post date April 11, 2013
No Comments on How to use LinkedIn Skills Endorsements for Recruitment?

How to make sense of the LinkedIn Skills Endorsements?

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

Crowdsourcing

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

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

How to use LinkedIn Skills Endorsements for Recruitment?

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

Here is How to analyse the value of the LinkedIn Endorsement

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

Tags CV, endorsements, google pagerank, hiring manager, LinkedIN, Recruitment, Resume, word skills

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New LinkedIn Profile is good (for Recruiters)!

Post author By Ivan | JobsBlog.ie
Post date December 18, 2012
1 Comment on New LinkedIn Profile is good (for Recruiters)!

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

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

Company
School
Location
Industry

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

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

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

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

Tags CV, industry profiles, LinkedIN, new profile, profile section, recruiter profile

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What is The Recruitment Unconference?

Post author By Ivan | JobsBlog.ie
Post date September 4, 2012
No Comments on What is The Recruitment Unconference?

What is a recruitment conference? We all know the answer to that. It is a large meeting where a number of people (one by one) speak to the group. There are short breaks in between speakers, for the people get a coffee and network.

Who comes to the conference?

Speakers – are people presenting. Salespeople presenting how their solutions, products or services changed the industry for the better.

Delegates – people who sit, listen, take notes and have coffee in the breaks. Delegates are quite often people who are looking for a new job. They look around what else is there. Some attendees are there because they are sent there by their employers. They have to attend one or two of those a year. You can see them leaving quickly after the last presentation, to catch some time off for an afternoon shopping or something alike.

What is Recruitment Unconference?

Recruitment Unconference is a gathering of recruiters with the social media rules applied. There are no speakers. There are no delegates. Just recruiters who can behave as they do in the social media: lead conversations, contribute, listen, move to another room/topic, network or just have a coffee. Yes, there is a coffee here as well!

It is list Facebook or Twitter really. Everyone can talk about anything they want to really. Everyone can listen (follow/connect) whoever they choose. Anyone can comment, contribute and even ‘take over’ the conversation. Anyone can change the topic. Anyone can. And everyone is invited to do exactly that! Everyone is asked to contribute. Everyone’s opinion is asked for in a discussion on every topic he is physically present at.

Now that we know what the Recruitment Unconference is, let’s check on how the most popular one actually functions in the recruitment industry. This brings us to its founder @BillBoorman and his unconference events taking place around the globe. They are called TRU for The Recruitment Unconference. After the three characters, there is a name of the city or country the event is in. So you have TRULondon, TRUDublin and similar. If an event is held multiple times in the same city the name also gets a number Like TruDublin4. This is to form a hashtag for Twiter. Why is Twitter important? Well, the usual ways of communication like email and phone are one to one or one to many (mailing lists). The Unconference is different because everyone is welcomed to contribute. So social media is a place to look for any info (or post any info!) about the recruitment unconference.

Since the recruiters who attend the unconference are (in most cases) the natural users of the social media, they post their thoughts especially on the Twitter, as it is the fastest channel, in real-time during the unconference. They all use the hashtag so it is really simple to follow what anyone is tweeting about. That usually is a reflection on what is spoken about. You can usually follow multiple discussions from the same conference at the same time. What is the best about it is that anyone on Twitter can contribute to those discussions by using the same unconference hashtag. This makes the discussions leave the room and go out to social media. There the discussions get the life of their own.

The format that Bill has made for this TRU events is the following. There is a quick opening. The bigger the conference the quicker it is, since the larger the crowd is the harder it is to keep them quiet. Remember those are not your Delegates. These people are here to participate.

Tracks

Bill usually announces the tracks (topics) that will be discussed in different rooms. He also announces who is the track leader for each topic. That is usually an expert in that field. Or a recruiter who wants to share the recent experience with some new tool used for the recruitment, and ask for feedback. Depending on the size of the unconference there are usually 3 tracks running in parallel. They are held in separate rooms. Anyone can choose any track and even move to another track whenever they choose. Bill himself would for example move quite often from a track to track, hopping from a conversation to another and contributing to each one he hops in. Sometimes he would also bring the relevant points being made in another track that is happening in parallel.

As social media is not for everyone, the recruitment unconference is not for everyone as well. Some people prefer to be delegates rather than to participate. Social is not for everyone. The anti-social or traditional conference is not for everyone as well. People discovered they can apply the social media rules to the conference and that some types of conferences the social conference or the unconference is a much better format. Hence the recruitment unconference TRU that @BillBoorman started 5 years ago in London has spread to a long list of counties on different continents. Recruiters themselves found the unconference format to work better than the speaker-delegate format. Not all of the recruiters that is. But the recruiters that understood the social media and found the way how to use it for recruitment.

The #TRU in the City near YOU!

The recruitment unconference, the #TRU will come to the city near you if it didn’t already. You will not find a flyer in your post with a list of fabulous speakers. There is not even a list of delegates. To be honest not even flashing your own business card is a welcome gesture. Connection on LinkedIn and Facebook or Follow on Twitter is on the other hand. If you are a delegate type, trust me, it’s not for you. Where you will find about #TRU is in the social media channels, and there only. On Bill’s Blog as well. And from there to hashtags on Twitter. While I am writing this the #TruHelsinki is on right now. Guess what it is all on social media in real-time as well. You can follow it here: https://twitter.com/#!/search/?q=%23TruHelsinki&src=hash.

If you like what you see there we will see you soon at #TRU. If not, that’s OK too.

Tags attendees, coffee, conference speakers, Conversations, delegates, Facebook, Looking For A New Job, Recruiters, Recruitment Conference, Recruitment Industry

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Recruitment SEO: How many web sites link to yours?

Post author By Ivan | JobsBlog.ie
Post date May 29, 2012
No Comments on Recruitment SEO: How many web sites link to yours?

In the Links are the currency on the web we looked at the total number of links no the web that the Link Count tool from SEOmoz would show for our 20 recruitment agency web sites. But not all the links are equal. The more I think about it, it would be fair to say that no two links are the same. One (smart) way thinking about the links is to count just the web sites that link to your web site. So if there are 2 or 2 million links from some domain to your web site it would still count as one.

If we look at our 29 recruitment agency web sites list and www.JobsBlog.ie between them where is what we get:

URL	Sites Linking
http://www.cpl.ie	568
http://www.hays.ie	294
http://www.morganmckinley.ie	265
http://www.brightwater.ie	127
http://www.jobsblog.ie	126
http://www.hrm.ie	125
http://www.collinsmcnicholas.ie	100
http://www.eolas.ie	100
http://www.careerwise.ie	86
http://www.EdenRecruitment.ie	77
http://www.peoplegroup.ie	70
http://www.frsrecruitment.com	68
http://www.Vantage.ie	65
http://www.icds.ie	55
http://www.Sigmar.ie	51
http://www.3qrecruitment.ie	46
http://www.rftgroup.ie	44
http://www.Stelfox.ie	34
http://www.recruitmentplus.ie	32
http://www.accountancysolutions.ie	26
http://www.Recruiters.ie	19
http://www.MatrixRecruitment.ie	14
http://www.harmonics.ie	14
http://www.hudson.ie	13
http://www.gempool.ie	9
http://www.qedrecruitment.ie	7
http://www.Brompton.ie	5
http://www.placeme.ie	5
http://www.enterprisepeople.ie	5
http://www.solasconsulting.ie	4

The results show that only 5 Irish Recruitment agencies have more web sites linking to them than this blog. If you want your jobs to be seen by as many possible job seekers and as many possible clients (employers) it would be natural to want to bring visitors from as many sites to your site. Therefore having as many web sites linking to your site would help you get more candidates and clients. As simple as that. The above table show how good are you at that particular task. If your site is not on the list, you can get this figure for your site and compare yourself with the competition.

Even more important than this direct traffic of visitors that you get from other sites is the fact that from the perspective of the search engines like Google, your site the more “important” the more web sites link to your site. So the more links you have to your site – the more likely is that Google will display any content on your site above the similar content on any other web site. This is extremely important for the ranking of your jobs. When a similar job is advertised on many job boards and recruitment agency web sites, the site that will get listed on top is very often the one that has the most links from other web sites.

How to get more links to your web site?

Submitting your site to an online directory? – that is the most common answer I get when I do the Recruitment SEO Training. Unfortunately, the answer is always – no. Why not? The practise was abused and Google decides to in most cases ignore it, and in some cases even penalize it.

Just do not buy links. Please. – That is what Google would say, and in my experience, this is the best advice possible in most cases.

Spamming social media with your links. – Will make sure you get ignored, not followed by anyone but bots. Again the time and money the drain.

SO WHAT THEN?

Think about what links do you click at on the web.

You might click on a link in the article you are reading on some site. If you are reading a review on some blog, about the new tool the LinkedIn has launched, and there is a link to that tool within the article – you might click it. Ask yourself how did that article ended up on a publication you are reading? Can you submit your content there? With a link to something new and cool on your web site? If you are thinking of PR submissions at this stage, I can tell you, you are on the wrong track. Think of guest blog posts. Think of the places where different people publish content. You are probably getting where I am going with this… yes the combined name of all such sites is Social Media.

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LinkedIn: Follow a company button

Post author By Ivan | JobsBlog.ie
Post date April 17, 2012
No Comments on LinkedIn: Follow a company button

If you are still wondering why have you placed the Facebook ‘Like’ button on your home page this will be interesting for you!

If at some stage you got bored checking how many Facebook ‘Likes’ your page got and you have offered an iPhone draw when you reach 10 000 ‘Likes’ this is even more relevant for you.

Remember that job site dressed in the social network that has sent you those nice young people to show their fabulous Recruiter Package? The one that cost more than your total advertising budget? Well, they would like you to place their button on your Home Page. And guess what they do not want to you pay for advertising them on your home page. They want to help you get more followers on their platform. Why? So that they can sell those to you. In a lovely Linkedin Recruiter Package.

Quite a strange sales model from LinkedIn, isn’t it?

Google did something similar some 6 months ago asking all web site owners to put a ‘Google+’ Button. Blogs accepted it because of the simplicity of installation of it. Does it drive any substantial traffic or bring any other benefit? Well no.

Do you think web sites will not get the LinkedIn Follow button?

If you decide to place a LinkedIn Follow button on your page, here are the three nice formats you can choose from:

Will LinkedIn Follow button slow your web site? Yes.
Does the speed of the site affect the site ranking in Google? Yes.
Will you site drop in Google index because you have placed a LinkedIn Follow button. Yes, a bit.

I have to admit the ‘Like’ from Facebook was more original than any of the copycats. They could have really come up with something better in all this time!

Tags Facebook Like, Google, LinkedIn Follow Button, REcruitment Home page, Social Shareing

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Why Recruiters don’t like blogging?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Manpower Employment Outlook Survey: Employers in Ireland to be challenged by marketplace uncertainty in Quarter 2 2012

Despite hiring intentions remaining weak, the percentage of employers surveyed expecting to add to their workforce is the highest since Quarter 4 2008

Dublin, Tuesday, 13th March 2012 – Manpower, the leader in contingent and permanent recruitment solutions, today releases the Manpower Employment Outlook Survey, which reveals that overall hiring activity will remain sluggish in Quarter 2 2012. Of the employers surveyed in Ireland, across five regions and 11 industry sectors, 7% anticipate an increase in headcount, the highest percentage since Quarter 4 2008, and 10% expect their workforce numbers to decrease, resulting in a Net Employment Outlook of -3%. When adjusted to remove seasonal variations, the Net Employment Outlook stands at a muted -2% which is relatively stable both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year.
“Our Q2 research results reflect the uncertain business environment and challenges faced by employers. Rapid adjustments are required to operate at present; businesses have to manage demand fluctuations, increasing operating costs and competitive pressure, which require maintaining tight control over costs and increasing productivity,” commented Krissie Davies, Manpower Ireland Managing Director. “A workforce strategy aligned with the business strategy, as well as flexibility, are likely to be critical to success in the current climate,” she added.

Industry results
Employers in eight out of 11 industry sectors anticipate negative hiring activity for Quarter 2 2012. The strongest Outlooks are reported by employers in the Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing (+10%), Public & Social (+4%) and Pharmaceutical (+3%) sectors. In contrast, the weakest hiring intentions are anticipated by Restaurants & Hotels (-17%), Transport, Storage & Communication (-17%) and the Mining & Quarrying (-13%) sectors employers. A subdued hiring pace is also expected in the Construction (-8%), Finance & Business Services (-6%), Wholesale & Retail (-5%), Manufacturing (-3%) and the Electricity, Gas & Water (-2%) sectors.
“Industry sector results correlate with the two-speed recovery pattern that has emerged in recent years. Employers in the Agriculture, Forestry & Fishing and Pharmaceutical sectors anticipate positive hiring plans while the weak Outlooks in the Wholesale & Retail and Manufacturing sectors is due, in part, to low consumer spending in Ireland,” said Davies. “The current uncertainty in the EU will likely continue to challenge tourism and export-led businesses during the first half of the year,” she added.
The Outlook for the Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing sector strengthens by 6 percentage points compared to Quarter 1 2012 and by a considerable margin of 17 percentage points year-over-year. The Outlooks decrease in seven out of 11 industry sectors both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year. The sharpest year-over-year declines are reported by employers in the Restaurants & Hotels and Transport, Storage & Communication sectors where Outlooks sink 22 and 19 percentage points, respectively.

Regional results
Employers in three out of five regions surveyed expect negative headcount growth in the next quarter. Munster employers report the weakest hiring plans with an Outlook of -10% which represents a decline of 11 and 7 percentage points quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year, respectively. The Net Employment Outlook for the Ulster region stands at -5% which improves marginally compared to Quarter 1 2012 and the same time last year. The most positive Outlook is reported by Leinster employers (+1%) and employers in the Connaught region report muted hiring plans with an Outlook of 0%.
“The employment market will remain challenging for job seekers in Quarter 2 2012 and networking is key. Manpower recommends carefully reviewing job specifications to invest time applying for suitable roles. It is essential to tailor CVs and cover letters to highlight the skills and competencies needed by each of the different organisations one is looking to join. Outlining not only responsibilities, but also achievements and carrying out sound company research, can help one’s CV stand out from the crowd,” recommended Davies.
The holding pattern on hiring is most prevalent across the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region with employers in 12 of 23 countries reporting relatively stable hiring plans compared to the first quarter of the year and those in nine anticipating an increase in the hiring pace. The hiring picture is mixed compared to this time last year, with Net Employment Outlooks falling in 13 countries but improving in seven. Regional hiring plans are strongest in Turkey (+26%), Israel (+17%), Romania (+13%), Norway (+11%), and weakest in Greece (-13%) and Spain (-8%).

The next Manpower Employment Outlook Survey will be released on 12 June to report hiring expectations for the third quarter of 2012. The Manpower Employment Outlook Survey is available free of charge to the public and can be downloaded from www.manpower.ie.

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

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

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

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

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

The Brief – Day 1

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

Build the wireframe before day 2

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

This #truLondon, is going to be something else!

Career Internet Jobs Recruitment Social Networks Social Recruitment

#truDublin Social Recrutitment Video in the making

Post author By Ivan | JobsBlog.ie
Post date December 19, 2011
No Comments on #truDublin Social Recrutitment Video in the making

Tags #truDublin, #truDublin 2, recruiters video, recruitment video

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

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

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

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

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

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

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