Categories
Internet Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Irish Recruiter

The Twitter Job Search post today reminded me about an account I opened to check Twitter some time ago. The Irish Recruiter Twitter account: http://twitter.com/irishrecruiter

By using the Twitter Job Search I found and Irish recruitment agency Grafton Recruitment using the Twitter Job Search already. Actually they submitted their jobs 6 hours ago. I wonder if there have been any applications. Grafton Recruitment also has their own Twitter account and I found the press release linked from it. The PR is on onrec:

Grafton tweeting recruits to a new career
26/03/2009

Recruitment firm connects online offering to global twitter phenomenon.
Grafton Recruitment has become the first recruitment agency anywhere in Ireland to incorporate the revolutionary internet tool ‘Twitter’ as an integral part of their e-marketing strategy.

The company have used existing technology to ensure that every new job posted to their own website broadcasts as a ‘Tweet’ on Twitter which is then added to the TwitterJobSearch.com database opening up Grafton jobs to a potential worldwide audience.

As well as this facility Grafton Recruitment will also be ‘tweeting’ updates on news, industry statistics, market trends as well as exclusive jobs making it one of the must-read recruitment Micro-blogs online.

Nico Fell, Grafton Recruitment e-Business Manager said:

“By allowing candidates to follow Grafton jobs on Twitter, we have created a channel of pull media which is perfect for those on the move or people who aren’t based in front of a computer all day. With mobile access and the explosion of the iPhone and Blackberry into the online world, sites like Twitter and TwitterJobSearch.com are ideal for keeping up to date with the latest jobs. With this new tool commuters weary of their current job can keep up to date in the market for a more rewarding role on the way home from work.”

Outlining Grafton’s experience of how the job market has become increasingly global in recent years. Mr Fell said,

“Grafton Recruitment’s own site attracts visitors from over 130 countries worldwide and will be complimented well by the global reach of Twitter’s new job search service which is already serving over 80 countries. We see the competition for roles coming not only from local candidates but also those from overseas as the willingness to travel to find your ideal job increases.”

This weeks’ announcement comes on the back of Grafton Recruitment’s recent shortlisting for ‘The Recruiter Awards’ for Best Recruitment Firm Website and Nico Fell said the Twitter service was just one of a number of recent innovations Grafton Recruitment had added to their online service as web-based traffic continued to grow.

So the new buzz in town is: Grafton is on Twitter!
(you read it here first! …. or perhaps on onrec,… or actually on Twitter,… :)

Categories
Career CV Internet Jobs Recruitment

Twitter Job Search

twitter-job-searchTwitter emailed us today to ask if they can take our jobs and publish them on Twitter. I had to read their email twice since I could not really understand / believe / comprehend / …fill here something yourself … / see value for them us or the end users.

So I tried to use the Twitter Job Search (beta), and made a number of searches. It is just a text search so not that sophisticated, you cannot really choose a salary range or a location. Just pure text search.

I wonder who is the next who will come in to the jobs sites market in Ireland. TescoJobs.ie ? Dunnes? Nothing would surprise me anymore….

Categories
Blogs Career CV CV Database Internet Jobs Recruitment

Jobsket

I visited the Jobsket (Jobsket.ie) web site today. It’s one of those now innovative sites that their owners and founders know will be the next big thing on the Internet. Unfortunately as we all know not every single site can success, such is the nature of the market. You can recognise those sites by not really having any real meaningful info what they are about, and you cannot really do much yourself on the site.

Jobsket will force you to give up your email address (do I have SPAM…) and then they let you in to log in. When you do log in there is less to see then on the outside, so let’s not waste ink on the Jobsket here anymore. What I wanted to show you is the interesting poll results left from the people who visited Jobsket. The Question was:

Submit an Idea
We’ve setup a feedback forum so you can tell us what’s on your mind. Please go there and be heard!
20 Votes – Import CV from LinkedIn
4 Votes – Change tags
3 Votes – Improve CVs viewer
3 votes – Allow import your CV from Google Docs
1 votes – Allow sending my CV

jobsket

What this tells us is the people do not care really about the fancy feature about a jobs site. What people do care is their own time. I do not want to insert another bloody profile and online CV here. I have a profile (that I am proud of) in LinkedIN. Now go and take it from there you lazy….

Twice many more people suggested the LikedIN connection than all the other suggestions altogether. Now what does that tell you? It tells you that people are sick of creating their profiles and filling the repetitive info in the forms on the various sites. It tells you that there is the time for one site to be a holder of your personal info, where the subsets of it you as the account holder will be able to open to various other sites.

Ehm,… this blog post was about Jobsket. So what is Jobsket really? Jobsket is a spider that takes jobs from Jobs.ie and than matches your CV with the positions advertised and calculates from the published salaries what is your CV, or what are you ‘worth’. I tried. In my case rolling the dice gave more precise results.
The data they collected from Jobs.ie is so old – yeas there are the positions in there that have been published not last year, but before the recession started – so you can guess how accurate the figures are.

The Feedaback from (powered by uservoice) on Jobsket is nice though.

Categories
CV CV Database Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Canvassing in Recruitment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Interview Recruitment

Recruitment Video

In the last couple of years we have seen a number of recruiters trying to bring the Recruitment Video into use in Ireland. So far, all have failed (I think?).

What is Recruitment Video?

Recruitment video is a video used in recruitment process. It is either real time or pre-recorded video.

Pre-recorded recruitment video consists of the:

Recruitment video files recorded by the recruiter or employers, that is used for company and corporate branding purposes. It is there to show how fun it is to work for the company.

Recruitment video files that applicants create and use t apply for the job advertised. (CVizz model in Ireland)

Recruitment video that is there for purpose of promoting itself. (Jobsfair – we all know how that ended)

There is also something else. Earlier this year there was also something else. There is a really good looking web site (perhaps a bit too much text, but nice graphics) that offered interviewing people with a web cam. The site is called Sonru, and again I really like the way it looks!

Here is an example of what happens when a good marketing agency creates a pure marketing video for its products and services. Guess how well does that work for their recruitment: SEO Consultant – Inbound Marketing.

Categories
Google Internet Interview Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Sonru… or the day I ditched Skype, MSN and YouTube altogether!

2009 is probably going to be remembered as the year the Irish recruitment industry exploded! Why is that? Well this is what I am here to tell you today!

Late 2008 and the first quarter of 2009 was probably (Carlsberg) the worst time for the recruitment agencies in Ireland. Majority of the agencies have let a percentage of their staff go. Quite a number of them vent under and have been sold for not really desired (by their founders) sums.
sonru-small
And then it has happened! Sonru was born!

Sonru.com launched in Public Beta on the 27th of February. The launch took place in the Enniscorthy Enterprise & Technology Centre in Wexford in the company of Paul Kehoe TD.

So what is this Sonru and why will it change your life as a recruiter in Ireland? Here is the magic answer: Sonru is a really simple video interview tool based on the web.

What will you use this Sonru for: Sonru is used for lots of different interviewing purposes, the most common being, 1st round job interviews and mock interview preparation.

How much will it set you back? Not only is Sonru convenient it is also very cost effective. Also the folks at Sonru strongly believe that – We believe Sonru is great value for money.

So now you know. Sonru is The Thing in 2009. And just in case you didn’t get it by now, here is a comparison chart for you:

sonru

And this is why you should as well as I did, ditch your Skype, MSN and YouTube instantly! This is all so ’08! Sonru is NOW! Sonru is the future! Long live Sonru!

The author of the above post is not in any way affiliated with any of the above companies Sonru and Skype wile holds some shares of MSFT and GOOG, but their value seems to be melting quickly. Obviously accelerated by the Sonru arrival).

Categories
Blogs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

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

Irish recruitment agency Brightwaters online poll for January 2009 was:

Are we as a nation too hard on ourselves?

online-poll-feb-results

David Bloch, CEO of the Brightwater Group comments:

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
CV Database Internet Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Irish Jobs Advertising Prices

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

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

* all prices are exclusive of VAT at 21.5%

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

What do you think of the Irish Jobs sites pricing?

Categories
Career Jobs Recruitment

Bankers applying for jobs in McDonald’s

jobs-in-mcdonaldsPhoto credit: Myung Jung Kim/PA Wire

Evening Echo:

Jobs in a new McDonald’s branch in Ennis have attracted applications from unemployed bankers, architects and accountants.

There were 500 applications for jobs in the new branch in 10 days. The jobs were advertised solely on a banner at the site which was taken down after 10 days because franchisee Kieran McDermott had received so many CVs.

He said the situation was the direct opposite in 2002, when he opened a branch in Shannon.

Employees were difficult to find then, as Ireland was at the height of the boom with very low levels of unemployment.

Categories
Blogs

Career Builder is comming to Ireland!

Something strange happened today. First a well known Irish Recruitment agency called on the phone this morning and asks if we can post their jobs via our Multiple Jobs Posting service to the CareerBuilder job site. I found it strange because CareerBuilder is an old site and it used to be US oriented so far. So I checked and guess what? There is a CareerBuilder.ie Irish site.

cpl-jobs-web-site

I looked around and it has about 15 clients advertising jobs. Not overtly impressive, but hey!? It’s a start. CareerBuilder is in Ireland!

As the day goes by, I was checking some recruitment sites of the Irish recruitment agencies to get some inspiration, and guess what? Cpl has a new web site. I actually liked the old one better. But this one has all the right things that a recruitment site should have today: Video, blogs, and this giant footer made of gazillion links. I watched the video. And noticed that the vide on the CPL web site is an advertisement for the CareerBuilder! I still do not get what is he jobs site advertisement actually doing on a recruitment agency web site. Beats me!


Categories
Career Jobs Microsoft Recruitment

When will the recruitment market in Ireland turn around?

There is the current state of the LinkedIN Poll from Microsoft Ireland:
When will the recruitment market in Ireland turn around?

likedin-poll-When will the recruitment market in Ireland turn around

The responses do not seem very optimistic! :)

likedin-poll-results- When will the recruitment market in Ireland turn around

The fact is that recruitment in Ireland is still very much alive. It might be hard to believe since you are bombarded with the news about job losses every day. Check the Jobs News site for the published news about jobs in Ireland. But the reality is that the vast majority of the Irish workforce is still working. The Irish companies are still doing what they have been doing before the crisis. A large number of the companies have made some staff redundant, and those have been the staff that are not triticale to the operations. If company can get their product out with 20% staff reduction, they did it in the last few months. The words like efficiency and productivity finally got their meaning now. The end result is actually going to be good for the Irish economy. We will get more productive workforce. The people who lost their jobs will eventually find a job somewhere else or start their own business. This is what we are good at in Ireland.

The next result is that we will eventually bring our prices down. January 2009 was the first month in the long time that we had negative inflation, or deflation. And we need a quite a few more months like that. That will drive the prices down. Cost of living will be balanced with the rest of Euro zone. We will stop going shopping to Northern Ireland, because ‘everything is half price up north!’. Ireland will become competitive.

We do need this process of restructuring of our companies, and if we do it right we will come out stronger.

I know that this sounds a bit like David McWilliams. But guess what, the Microsoft Recruitment Poll results are even less optimistic! More than half of the people think the recession is to stay here for MORE THAN 2 YERS!

Categories
Blogs

Lifestyle Sports

Lifestyle Sports, known for its overstuffed outlets, with loud music, long queues, and football jerseys expressed the interest to purchase the number of Sasha shops. Sasha, and it’s owner Lyric Retail have been losing money for a few years, and have decided to pull off from the market with its Sasha brand.

If Lifestyle Sports really acquires a number of the Sasha shops, I wonder what will happen with the staff. Sasha employed almost exclusively female staff, while the Lifestyle Sports shops use to have mixed staff with a majority of the male sales staff.

I guess Lifestyle Sports could be smart and try to keep the staff of some shops and brand them as ‘Girls Sports Stuff’ shops for the female market.

Categories
Blogs

LoadzaJobs

It is funny how an economic climate change can make your company name sound funny: Loadzajobs!

In the Celtic Tiger era the name Loadzajobs meant something. Loadzajobs meant something good. It sounded somehow relaxing, in a sense, telling you not to worry about anything since there are Loads of jobs in Iceland available at anytime. Well those times are gone! The more appropriate description of the state of the Irish Economy today would be Lodzaredundancies!

Loadzajobs is still displaying some jobs there on the web site. Somehow it doesn’t sound so convincing any more. Loadzajobs sounded much beter a year ago. Today it would sound funny if it would not be happening to us!

Categories
Internet Jobs Recruitment

Recruiting Blogs: Social Networking and Jobs Board

Posted by Ivan Stojanovic | www.JobsBlog.ie on October 13, 2008 at 3:43pm
View Original Blog Post on Recruiting Blogs

Delete Post Manage Blog If you would be given a chance to create your own recruiters profile on Monster or any other job board, would you do it? The profile would be your page on that job board, with a number of customizable elements like the profile on RecruitingBlogs.com or LinkedIN has.

How about being able to create groups, to link the people in your company, or with your interests. How about job hunters being able to create the profile on the site as well, with various levels of the content published on them. Would that be a LinkedIn that would actually function as a recruitment platform 9as opposed to the current LiknedIN). Wouldn’t that be Monster that would give you that little bit more? Wouldn’t that enable ‘passive’ job seekers in Monster instead in being able just to publish a CV – but also actively approach the recruiters they are interested in?

Would your own profile with your name, contact details, URL to your company web site & logo, links to your blogs, to your online profiles, jour photo and your latest jobs listed be a nice ‘Branding Package’ as well?

What would motivate you to populate such a profile on the next job board that enables such a ‘Social Networking Profile’ of a recruiter? What would it have to contain for you to go and fill it up with your data?

Categories
Career Internet Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Web design in Ireland

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

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

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

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

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