Categories
Job Site Jobs Recruitment Social Recruitment

EmployIreland.ie Looks to Rebound in Tough Job Board Climate

Since the economy bottomed out and took scores of Irish jobs with it, purveyors of job boards have seen corporate customers curb or cut contracts at the same time they’ve dealt with an influx of résumé postings from the newly unemployed.

More companies also are adding job postings and career centers to their Web sites, or are using social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn for recruiting, which raises the possibility that they won’t go back to previous levels of job board spending once the recession ends.

The result: falling revenue and earnings, as evidenced by publicly traded job boards such as industry leader Monster Worldwide, which in the first half of 2009 lost $11.7 million on revenue of $477.4 million, a 34 percent drop from the same period last year.

Peter Zollman, executive editor of Classified Intelligence, a consulting group that tracks the classified advertising and job board industries, says that while the job board industry has struggled in 2009, some privately held firms may be better positioned to weather the recession.

One such firm…

The above article is actually from: http://www.workforce.com/section/06/feature/26/71/27/index_printer.html

The second part of the article is less interesting and less relevant for Europe and Ireland in particular. This is my attempt to finish it up:

One such firm is EmployIreland.ie.

EmployIreland.ie is the only job site in Ireland that hasn’t been letting go it’s staff during the recession.

Irish Jobs lost their largest client – CPL. Jobs.ie is selling traffic left right and center. They even implemented Pop Under windows, and that’s surelly the worst marketing practice. RecruitIReland even went free for a the best part of the year to get jobs on their site. Loadza made all kind of experiments like Online Jobs Fair that did not stop clients leaving.

The traffic job boards in Ireland are attracting fell drastically, as well as their revenues in 2009. Most of the jobs sites are actually using Google AdWords PPC to drive traffic, since there is simply not enough ‘organic’ – natural traffic from the search engines.

The fact that the revenues of the Irish job boards will not bounce back up is something all of them are trying to hide. Or they simply live in denial.

Social networks is where the recruitment is turning to and massive job boards will slowly be losing their revenues. Going forward it will not be so rapid as it was in the 2009, but there is less and less advertising revenue available for jobs advertising in the years to come.

Even new jobs sites are not popping up as quick as they did up until just a few months ago.

EmployIreland.ie is in the unique position to thrive in the current market. It is agile enough to change with the times. EmployIreland.ie is in its core a technology company Portal.ie. The experiments with the recruitment social networks lead to a number of BETA releases like JobsMarket.ie and JobsBoard.ie, and a few international ones.

By running the only Irish real time job posting system eRecruit.ie, the company is in the unique position to….

I am kind of out of inspiration any more. Just remembered the title of the Recruitment Conference yesterday: The Future of Recruitment … Job boards are less and less part of that future. EmployIreland.ie will lead the way by innovation, and embracing the new ways of doing business in recruitment industry!

Categories
Recruitment Agency

NRF Awards 2009

The National Recruitment Federation Awards 2009 was really a great night. It was the celebration of the recruitment industry and it was really amazing how positive it all was. Recruitment in Ireland has gone through its worst years for decades. After excellent Recruitment Conference earlier this year, the Awards Ceremony to be even more uplifting, one couldn’t really expect. It is the people in the recruitment industry in Ireland, the National Recruitment Federation members, and all their representatives present last Friday, that made it all as great as it all was.

Elaine Roddy, NRF Director deserves a special thanks for organizing it all (Yes I was there a few hours earlier to check how the things are going with the organization! :)).

Frank Collins, NRF President – made the shortest speech possible, making sure the dinner doesn’t get cold. On a serious side Franks work with the NRF shows outside of the NRF organization, making him a as respected person in the recruitment industry in Ireland as he is.

Mark Fielding, CEO ISME - NRF Awards 2009

The panel of judges were made up of Sean O’Meara, Former Chief Executive of Young Advertising; Kirsty Kirkwood, Former European Head of HR at State Street Ireland and Mark Fielding, CEO of the Irish Small & Medium Enterprises Association, (ISME). Ex-MD of Computer People Ltd, Grainne Martin was a new addition to the panel this year as a recruitment advisor.

Mark Fielding, CEO ISME & Ivan Stojanovic, MD Employ Ireland

Photo by Ian Wortley of Jackie Brown Medical

I spent most of the evening chatting with the judging panel of the NRF. It was interesting to hear their reasoning for awarding each award. Mark Fielding, CEO ISME
Made it the most clear by defining the ‘Passion’ as what made the largest impression on him. He was amazed by the quality of shortlisted companies this year, and admitted it was really hard to choose one in each category.

It was also the eve of the Lisbon Treaty Referendum that night, and we had a chat about that. I was shocked the day later realising that Marks prediction of the outcome of the referendum was absolutely correct – he predicted the percentages exactly as the results published a day later! Well done!!!

NRF 2009 Disco

As a true night out – National Recruitment Federation Awards 2009 ceremony culminated with a live music and dance… With most of the cameras way out of focus to capture any of that!

Categories
Recruitment Agency

NRF Awards 2009 Winners #nrf2009

Categories
Recruitment Agency

National Recruitment Awards NRF 2009 (Twitter: #nrf2009)

Jobs Blog is only about 2 years old. And web site about the online recruitment in Ireland. I write it, when I catch some time (from my ‘real job’), and when there is something interesting to write about. National Recruitment Awards 2009 was last Friday. A superb event. I mean it. A SUPERB event!

I will write about it. I will write quite a lot actually! Yes, I have some photos from the event as well, and will publish those as well. If you want your photos to be published email them to IrishRecruiter [at] gmail.com.

Right now I really cannot write more about the National Recruitment Awards Ceremony 2009, since my ‘Real Job’ is a priority. (BTW it reminds me of a company I used to have called RealJobs.ie).

Here is just the first picture I took – more to follow:

Pamela Flood NRF

Pamela Flood opening the National Recruitment Awards Ceremony 2009 in Four Seasons Hotel in Dublin on Friday 2nd October 2009

Twitter: #nrf2009

Categories
Internet Interview Job Site Recruitment Search Engine SEO Social Recruitment Twitter

Bill Fischer, Co-Founder of TwitterJobSearch.com

bill fischerBill Fischer is having a speech in Dublin on the Microsoft’s Future of Recruitment conference later this week. His company in Bill’s own words: TwitterJobSearch.com, is a global search engine for Twitter that uses natural language processing to identify and index offers of employment.

I asked Bill what will he be talking about in the recruitment conference in Dublin. Here is from Bill in his own words:

Bill Fischer: Hi Ivan, Yes, I’ll be discussing some of the challenges and opportunities that the real-time web brings to the recruitment space. There will be some analysis of the current social media landscape, some thoughts on search/cpc approaches to recruitment, and an introduction of some of our new products that sit in the social media/search space.

Bill is the expert in the field, and his latest Twitter Job Search gig raised a lot of dust in the online recruitment world. In the Ireland lagging in Social Media adoption article only a few days ago, I wrote about the Twitter Job Search penetration in Ireland. It will be interesting to see how will Bill’s presentation affect the number of jobs in Ireland in the Twitter Job Search and in the social media in general.

About Bill Fischer
Co-Founder and Director of Workdigital Ltd, the vertical search solutions development company that built workhound.co.uk and twitterjobsearch.com. Co-Founder of DVD Station, Inc., a world-class media/entertainment internet retail systems company. Former VP of marketing for a massively multiplayer online gaming company with over 2.4mm customers in 50+ companies, and builder of marketing systems for a user generated content site acquired by Electronic Arts. Previous marketing and general management experience at more.com, threerings.net and Ebates.com. A frequent speaker, interviewee, and panelist for entertainment trade and classified search and was acknowledged in the editor-in-chief of Wired’s book, The Long Tail, as an expert on collaborative filtering and internet search engines. Twitter: @williamfischer LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/wmfischer

Categories
Career Interview Microsoft Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Martin Cerullo

martin_cerullo1Martin Cerullo, Director, Resourcing Communications, Alexander Mann Solutions is presenting in two events later this week in Dublin. First is the event organised by Microsoft Ireland: The Future of Recruitment conference on the 7th of October in Westbury Hotel, Grafton Street. The second is the Bringing Consumer Marketing Techniques into the World of HR in The Penthouse Suite at the Morgan Hotel, 7-12 Fleet Street, Dublin and will run from 8.30am to 10.30am.

I asked Martin what he is going to talk about in Dublin:

Martin Cerullo: On The Future of Recruitment conference I’m going to be talking about how we are embracing the world of technology to improve financial and quality performance throughout the whole recruitment lifecycle. I’ll be covering everything from employer brand to attraction as well as assessment and onboarding. As the recently voted Global Leader in RPO (HRO Today Magazine), I think we come at this from a unique perspective due to the different types of organisations we work with, the geographies we cover and the technology neutral position we occupy.

Martin Cerullo: On Bringing Consumer Marketing Techniques into the World of HR breakfast event: In a tough financial climate, many organisations struggle to gain investment for employer branding activities. Come along to this event where we will explore the business case for building a strong employer brand and the return on investment it delivers.

About Martin Cerullo
Martin has worked for Alexander Mann Solutions since 2006, and is the Director responsible for the global resourcing communications practice, which manages all employer branding, sourcing and recruitment innovation across AMS clients. Martin has 12 years experience of working in the recruitment sector, with a major focus on employer brand management and development, recruitment advertising, website development and sourcing strategies. Martin has also built and managed solutions in outsourcing of graduate recruitment attraction and selection. Before Martin joined AMS, he spent the previous 6 years working for Euro RSCG Worldwide, one of the world’s largest global advertising groups. As a board director of the Riley division, Martin had responsibility for 2 advertising agencies as well as the development of strategic services such as employer branding, diversity and digital recruitment and managing relationships with clients including Morgan Stanley, British Airways, BP, Airbus and B&Q. Twitter: @martincerullo; LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/martincerullo

Categories
Internet Social Recruitment Twitter

Ireland lagging in Social Media adoption

Ireland is getting further and further behind in the adoption of the new technologies. Only a few years ago we have been on the forefront, and look at us now? The time has stopped here. Words clock is ticking, but we got occupied with our own issues and forgot to look across our shores. Social media is just one of the examples. Here is the sample from the Twitter Job Search. You might remember I published the instructions on how to use it months ago (a week after it become available!). Where are we today? Well, the map below does not really need much comment:

Twitter Jobs Search in Ireland

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN… all got really small penetration percentage in Ireland comparing to the rest of the developed world. Perhaps the housing market ‘collapse’ (one third of the peak value is lost on average), or unemployment in Ireland at 12.6% and still raising, pushed us to think about the basic needs. Euro Disney got replaced by self catering holidays. Bread on the table is more in peoples mind today than thinking about the emerging marketing media. Unfortunately that is the perfect way to stop the innovation, stop the development, and back into the ‘Dark Ages’.

The social media adoption is actually a quite reliable indicator of where the country is going. It represents the mood of the population, on top of the basic indicators like the computer literacy, internet penetration, etc.

Categories
Blogs Career CV Internet Jobs LinkedIN Recruitment Social Networks Social Recruitment

The most powerful marketing tool for a job seeker is…

… when all the personal branding channels are combined.

In no particular order:
1. Social networks presence – descriptive public profile combined with the active participation in discussions.
2. Personal Blog
3. Presence on the Corporate Blog
4. Any online publication (indexed by Google)

The real power of all your online presence is in the ability to connect all those channels together. Ad your friends and co workers in social networks, drive them to your blog for more status updates, get them subscribed to your RSS feeds and twitter. From your RSS and tweets send them back to your questions and discussion on your blog and social networks, and increase the readership in every jump from one media to another.

Personal branding practice as above replaces the necessity to look for a job on jobs sites. The recruiters will ‘know about you’ already anyway. Just blog daily, and publish one article or a question in the social network of your choice (relevance to your target industry).

Categories
Career CV CV Database Job Site Jobs Recruitment Social Recruitment

Resumark: CV, Jobs, Free!!!

resumark_logoResumark brought in a nice new business model in the online recruitment industry. The concept is essentially borrowed from the Google AdWords – Google AdSense model. While Google pays the web site owners to show the Google AdSense on their sites and charges the Google AdWords clients to pay per click for those same adverts Resumark does the same with the CVs. Job hunters upload their CVs and get paid each time someone downloads the CV. Anyone can search the CV database for free, and gets a preview of the CV for free only. If you decide you would like the contact details as well – you pay to Resumark. Resumark in return pays the cut to the owner of the CV.

Just in case you did not get it, here is how Resumark explains their online recruitment and CV database business model:

Get Paid to Post Your Resume!

Post Resume or create it online using our free Resume Assistant. Make $1 every time an employer downloads your resume!

Search Jobs that match your profile and join the fastest growing Job 2.0 Network!

In today’s economy even job search monsters are not enough. Invite friends and earn money together when their resumes are downloaded.

And for the recruiters and employers:

Free Resume Search & Job Postings

Search Resumes for Free using Google™ search technology. We give you full access to the entire resume database.

Pay only for the resumes that you choose to download. Compare to other services.

Post Jobs for Free and have them automatically distributed to major jobs sites and networks reaching millions of job seekers

Regardless if the business will work or not, Resumark is a step from the usual recruitment jobs sites. Time will tell if it was a step in the right direction. But what needs to be applauded here is the courage and the innovation in the online recruitment industry.

Categories
Career CV Database Internet Job Site Jobs Recruitment

Monster rethinking service offering

Monster is interested in what job seekers think of their jobs web site. Here is the mail sent to job hunters today:

SATISFIED?
LET US KNOW WHAT YOU THINK

Dear Job Seeker,

At Monster, we are committed to creating an online experience that advances your life and your career. To help us achieve this, we would like to invite you to provide some feedback on your experience using Monster.

Our Satisfaction Survey should only take around 12 -18 minutes to complete and all responses are confidential. Start the survey by clicking the link below. Your honest thoughts and opinions are greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your participation.

Click here for the satisfaction survey »

Best wishes,

Jesse Harriot
Vice President of Research

2009 Monster – All Rights Reserved
Hillview House, 15D Gilford Road, Sandymount, Dublin 4, Ireland

How about a iPhone raffle or something similar to get people to participate? Or is Monster not really interested in what people really think. Or not that much to give them the incentive to fill up the questionnaire?

Or Monster Marketing just didn’t think of it at all? :)

Categories
Blogs Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency Twitter

NRF Recruitment Industry Awards 2009 Twitter #nrf2009

The National Recruitment Federation (NRF) Recruitment Industry Awards are only a week away!

The gala awards ceremony on Friday, 2nd October 2009 is at The Four Seasons Hotel. Get your dresses ready ladies, and have your suites pressed gentleman! Besides the NRF Annual Conference, this is the most important gathering of the recruitment industry professional in the calendar. Where the national conference is more as a presentations and the status check of the industry, the Gala Awards is where most of the recruiters will tell you – the real staff happens. The more relaxed evening atmosphere usually gets recruiters to ‘open up’ to each other. For Seasons Hotel is a great choice of the venue to build the atmosphere – Well done NRF!

In the run-up to the night, the general public (a.k.a. job seekers) can nominate an agency for the jobseekers choice category. A number of recruiters have tweeted about it already. I used the twitter hashtag #nrf2009 to bring them all together. Here it is so far:

Real-time results for #nrf2009

Ivanstojanovic_normal IrishRecruiter: RT @BarryVickers: #nrf2009 NRF Recruitment Industry Awards – vote for your favourite agency!: The NRF i.. http://trim.li/nk/iex about 23 hours ago from TweetDeck    

  • Ivanstojanovic_normal IrishRecruiter: RT @CPLMultilingual: #nrf2009 NRF Recruitment Industry Awards – vote for your favourite agency …: Last year.. http://bit.ly/17lixW about 23 hours ago from web    
  • Ivanstojanovic_normal IrishRecruiter: RT @nuparcdublin: PLEASE vote for Nuparc to win NRF Jobseeker’s Choice Award!! Every Vote Counts!! http://tiny.cc/KmMxz #nrf2009 about 24 hours ago from TweetDeck    
  • Ivanstojanovic_normal IrishRecruiter: RT @gcerasi: Will Logiskills win the NRF Jobseeker Award? Vote now and help us at http://bit.ly/ZyUtT #nrf2009 about 24 hours ago from TweetDeck    
  • Ivanstojanovic_normal IrishRecruiter: Hashtag – #nrf2009 = #NRF #Recruitment #Conference #Ireland #2009 about 24 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • Categories
    Career CV Interview Job Site Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

    How to prepare an electronic CV

    While many jobs can still be applied for in the traditional way, by sending a printed CV and covering letter by post to the organisation that is offering the position, an increasing number of employers now accept and even encourage the practice of sending of CVs via e-mail. There are a number of advantages to this approach – it’s almost instantaneous, it works out a lot cheaper, especially if you are applying for jobs abroad, and it reduces paper waste. In addition, some websites offer you the chance to post your CV online where it can be seen by thousands of potential employers without you having to lift a finger. An electronic CV is generally similar to a printed CV, however there are several key differences between the two forms that are important to bear in mind when producing the document.

    Perhaps most importantly, you have to ensure that your CV can be easily read on any computer, regardless of software and hardware differences. For this reason it is best to save your CV in ASCII or plain text format, as the recipient may not have the same word-processing software, or even the same version of a particular program, as you have typed the CV into. Keep the formatting as simple as possible, as indents, columns, page breaks and bullet points can all be interpreted differently by different computers and leave your CV looking like a mess on arrival.
    Although most paper CVs are lucky to receive anything other than a quick perusal, if anything an electronic CV will receive even less detailed attention. Therefore, it is of paramount importance that you keep it short and crisp. Summarise what you feel to be your strong points and avoid unnecessary detail. The primary function of an electronic CV is to grab the attention of the employer. If what they see intrigues them, then they will get in touch with you for more details.
    For the same reason it is important to make appropriate use of keywords to draw attention to the important things in your CV, especially if it’s posted on a jobs site. Given that the great majority of internet searches are keyword-based, it is important to use words and phrases that are likely to be searched for by potential employers. Use keywords that are specifically related to the industry and the type of job you wish to work in. Try to incorporate positive, descriptive terms into descriptions of your skills and experiences that you feel employers will be likely to search for. For example, an employer looking for clerical staff might search for terms such as ‘fast and accurate typist’ or ‘strong IT skills’.
    Finally, be sure to include your name, contact details and website, if you have one that you feel is worth showing to employers, along with a short profile of your career and achievements to date in reverse chronological order. If an employer is interested in your CV but finds it anything other than easy to find your contact details, chances are they won’t contact you at all.

    For jobs and career advice, visit employireland.ie.

    Categories
    Career CV CV Database Jobs Recruitment Social Networks

    How To: Make your CV look good

    Good presentation is key to producing a successful CV. In today’s crowded jobs market, making the right impression with your CV can make all the difference between getting an interview and being completely ignored. Given that your potential future employer may well have read through a pretty big pile of applications before even casting an eye over your application, a CV that can be quickly and easily read and summarised will stand at a great advantage over those that can’t. Also, a neat, concise CV and covering letter is bound to create a far more positive impression than a tatty, poorly presented document. While there are no specific rules regarding the presentation of a CV, you can’t go too far wrong if you stick to these guidelines:

    • Type up your CV on a computer using a word processing package or on a dedicated word processor. If you don’t have access to a computer at home, many public libraries offer computer use free of charge to their members and printing for a small fee.
    • Use good-quality paper that looks nice, feels fairly substantial and doesn’t get tatty easily.
    • Don’t go crazy with the formatting unless you’re applying for jobs where creative or artistic skills are required. In many lines of work, eccentricity is not regarded as a desirable asset. Stick with A4 paper in portrait mode, and use mainstream fonts such as Times New Roman, Arial, or Helvetica at size 11 or 12.
    • Cut out unnecessary information, such as the dates of short courses or qualifications that have been superseded, to keep your CV concise and easy to read.
    • Full pages look good. Don’t have a full page followed by a quarter page – if necessary cut out less important information to bring it down to size, or put in extra information or spacing to bring a nearly full page up to size.
    • Use bullet points rather than paragraphs for the majority of your CV. Your personal statement or profile, however, may well benefit from the more conversational tone that paragraphs help to create.
    • Summarise the experiences and qualifications that you think are the most relevant to the job in question at the beginning of your CV. Use bold type to draw the eye of the reader towards them, and try to avoid repeating them later in the CV.

    For jobs and career advice, visit employireland.ie.

    Categories
    Career CV CV Database Job Site Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency Social Recruitment

    How to impress with your CV

    When it comes to applying for jobs, first impressions can count for a great deal. Very often, the very first thing a potential employer will know about you will be written on the CV that you included with your job application. Having a great CV can make all the difference between being asked for an interview and being rejected out of hand.

    When writing a CV, it is helpful to consider things from the employer’s point of view. They will be looking for those people who would seem, at least on paper, ideally suited to the position being offered. They may well have to read through a great number of CVs before they decide which candidates they wish to interview, so they will, naturally, be looking for the ones that really stand out from the crowd.

    While using the same CV for a variety of job applications, and changing only the covering letter, might seem a time-efficient way of applying for jobs, this approach has several drawbacks. Chiefly, it will decrease the chances that your CV is truly marketing you as a person well suited to the demands of the job in question. In addition, sending in a generic CV unmodified to the demands of a particular job, especially now in this digital age, smacks of laziness, incompetence, and a lack of desire for the job – hardly an image that you would want to project to a potential employer!

    By tailoring your CV to the job you are applying for, you can significantly increase your chances of being asked to come in for an interview. In order to do this successfully, you will need to do some research into the background of the organisation in question as well as judging the personal characteristics and qualifications that they would seem to be looking for in an applicant.

    Not only should your CV be tailor-made for each and every one of the jobs that you apply for, it should also be updated regularly to take account of any advances you have made in your education and career. It would probably be a good idea to keep a constantly updated ‘master’ CV file on your home computer, which can then be quickly customized to highlight the qualifications and personal attributes required by the jobs that you are applying for.

    For jobs and career advice, visit employireland.ie.

    Categories
    Career Interview Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

    How to: Impress at the interview stage

    Applying for jobs can be a difficult business at the best of times, but for many people the most nerve-wracking and difficult part of the recruitment process is getting past the interview stage. After sifting through the various applications, the interview process offers a chance for employers to meet some of the more promising candidates for a particular job in person to try to form a more complete picture of their strengths and weaknesses. A candidate’s performance in a job interview can often be the decisive factor in the success or otherwise of their application, and as such it is important to prepare well.

    Before you attend the interview, make sure that you done your research and know something about the history and guiding philosophies of the organisation, as well as their current activities. Find out what the job entails so that you can present your qualifications, experiences, previous jobs, and personal attributes in such a way that you appear to be an ideal candidate for the position. Be sure to brush up on your descriptions and knowledge of all of these things, as an inconsistency between the facts as presented in your CV and your interview could make you seem dishonest. You also need to be prepared to answer stock interview questions such as ‘why do you want this job?’ or ‘what would you say were your strengths and weaknesses?’. It can be both beneficial and reassuring to rehearse an interview situation with a friend or relative, especially if they have any experience in hiring people themselves.

    When you turn up to the interview, it’s important that you appear clean, neat and tidy, in attire appropriate to the tone of the organisation, and that you do not smoke or chew gum. It’s better to be a bit early than a bit late, so make sure to set for the interview in plenty of time and plan your route well in advance.
    During the interview itself, learn your interviewers name and shake their hand firmly (within reason!) upon meeting them. Be well mannered and polite with everyone you meet, and speak clearly without the use of slang words. Don’t slouch or avoid eye contact, as this can be interpreted as a lack of confidence, or even worse, a lack of interest! Make sure to use body language to demonstrate your interest in what the interviewer is saying, and try to appear confident and enthusiastic without being overbearing. Ask questions of the interviewer about the job and the organisation, but avoid questions that could be answered by looking on the company website as this will smack of a lack of preparation and thoroughness. At the end of the interview, thank the interviewer and be sure to shake hands with them again before you leave.

    For jobs and career advice, visit employireland.ie.