Tag: Jobs

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Blogs Jobs Recruitment Search Engine SEO

Job Boards and SEO in Ireland

Year 2008 started funny for the Job Boards in Ireland. Job boards started understanding that the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the core of their business.

The reason the big job boards understood the y need to invest in SEO is because the year 2007 was the year where a largest number of the niche small job boards appeared in a single year. More than 20 new job boards requested to be included in the multiple job posting software eRecruit.ie in the year 2007 only! Those small niche web sites are in most cases industry specific, and usually have some link with some existing organisation or publication, or are just set up by someone who does know the industry. Knowing the industry helps in organising and running the small niche job board, so more often than not the niche job sites have some success as well. That hurts the job big boards, and it hurts them badly! So the national job boards decided to fight back in 2008, and to do so they are looking for the SEO people.

Irish Jobs - SEO JobIrish Jobs looking for the SEO Specialist:
http://www.irishjobs.ie/JobDesc.asp?ID=5125108&MID=3233

Due to continued expansion and focus delivering maximum jobseeker traffic to our websites worldwide a vacancy has arisen for an SEO specialist.
Job responsibilities:-
Knowledge and experience of SEO, Web 2.0 concepts, traffic and SEO analysis tools (Google Analytics, Google Webmasters Tools, keyword and structure research spiders)… Web 2.0?!

Jobs.ie Jobs - SEO JobJobs.ie (owned by Irish Jobs) are looking for that same SEO Specialist:
http://www.jobs.ie/ApplyForJob.aspx?Id=652847

This is actaully the same job in the same sompany as advertised by Irish Jobs. BTW Jobs.ie was purchased by Irish Jobs a year and a half ago.

Loadza Jobs - SEO JobLoadza Jobs made the adverts sound better by naming the job Online Search manager (SEO/SEM)
http://www.loadzajobs.ie/view-job-details.jobs?jobId=1077057

The Job Description finishes with the very funny sentence:

“Please do not apply if you have not got a good solid knowledge of the internet.”

That clearly shows they know what they are looking for!

Recruit Ireland…. nothing? About 20 different agencies have a job that appears in the search result for the word SEO, but no SEO jobs from the job site itself. Do they not need a SEO staff like the rest of the ob boards? Do they not trust the web site to deliver the candidate and have advertised in their papers?

Monster have a new site with a bit strange front page, and again they are not looking for a SEO specialist in Ireland. In all fairness, their SEO needs are probably managed from the head office in the US.

Ok, Ok,… EmployIreland.ie – no we are not looking for the SEO Specialist, we do have our SEO Consultant (that is available for projects!).

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Blogs Jobs Recruitment

Blog = Jobs Offers?

Will a good blog make you a magnet for a good job offers? Tom is the IT guy, who writes his blog for a few years not. His experience does not really show that having a good blog will make you attractive to the Irish recruiters. Is Irish recruitment industry a bit ‘Old Fashioned’, and glued to the Job boards and traditional advertising media? Do people in Ireland get a job via LinkedIN? Well definitely not in the numbers they should. What is missing from the whole recruitment process is the usage of the web outside of the job boards for searching the candidates. Blogging and social networking in general do not play any important part in the recruitment in Ireland.

At least not jet.

Until someone ‘understands’ it and just dives into the Gold Mine of the free Profiles, blogs, professional networks….

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Jobs Microsoft Recruitment

Jobs in Ireland – Microsoft & Yahoo

The proposed acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft will definitely have an impact on the jobs in Ireland if the merger goes ahead. By looking at the type of the jobs in Microsoft Ireland today, the majority of the jobs are in the European Operations Centre (EOC), where the Sales jobs and Customer Service jobs dominate. There are some Localisation jobs, and some software development jobs based in Ireland, that mostly relate to the Microsoft Live for the European markets.

Yahoo on the other had was always predominately a US market oriented company. Yahoo never really had much of an impact in Europe. Perhaps that is the opportunity that Microsoft wants to explore, in bringing the Yahoo services to the rest of the world, where Microsoft has a strong foothold? If they decide for such a move that would definitely mean a strong workforce presence of Yahoo in Europe.

The situation in the US is a bit different. What both Microsoft and Yahoo, and any other tech company has to recruit there is the techies who will make the products or the services. As in the

Cnet’s article: Another difficulty for a Microsoft-Yahoo marriage: Recruiting

The battle for tech supremacy, then, is largely a battle for talent. And so one crucial question about Microsoft’s $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo is whether a combined company could more easily attract software engineers–an increasingly precious commodity. Both companies are already fighting the perception that their most innovative days are behind them.

Our situation in Ireland is quite different. Since the techies are a minority in the US based companies operations on Ireland. The Customer Support Jobs and Sales Jobs make a majority of an average Irish based subsidiary of the US corporation. So the Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo, if it goes ahead is bound to make a strong Yahoo presence in Ireland. The best bet is actually in South Dublin in the Sandyford Industrial Estate & Leopardstown Business Park where Microsoft is based as well.

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Blogs

The Second Generation Of Job Aggregators

Julian Stopps wrote an article: “The Second Generation Of Job Aggregators” that made me thinking. What is the next generation of the online publishing and advertising media going to look like (and function like)?

The following are the basics:
1. Web 1.0 – a ‘Classic Job board’, where people go and advertise jobs, and job seekers browse and search.
2. Web 2.0 – A ‘Jobs Aggregator’, a site that displays jobs from different job boards.
3. Web 3.0 – this is the question….

It is strange actually that the modern job boards do not include any job seekers generated contents. That would actually bring a job board to a Web 2.0 Recruitment era. There is obviously an issue in sticking a Wiki on a job board. This actually prevents the ‘Classic Job Board’ to even enter the Web 2.0 group of web applications.

Job Aggregators in Ireland and worldwide, have their fair share of success and problems. If they pass on the queries in the real time to the job boards the speed (and traffic) becomes an issue. If the results are spidered or crawled and stored up front, the possibility of the removed jobs gets higher the older the spidered data is kept.

So a Jobs Aggregator would be ‘perfect’ if it could quickly display the fresh and accurate data from the jobs boards. For that to happen there needs to be a process of the job board ‘pushing’ the new data to the Job Aggregator. The second requirement is for the job board to ‘announce’ any changes like a job updated or a job deleted.

PING

The first part of the technology required actually already exists and is used within most of the blogging engines. There is a facility in the job blogging engines to ‘PING’ other web sites – to announce a new content published. The example is this blog that you are reading, published on the WordPress blogging platform, that can be (and is this case is) set up to PING the Google search engine every time a new blog post is published. What does Google do when it receives a PING notification with the URL of the new post? Google sends it’s crawler, and in most cases within minutes crawls the new page, and includes the new page in the search index. The whole process takes a few minutes only, and that is with a very, very busy Google search engine that crawls the whole Internet.

So imagine a scenario where there would be a jobs web site that would let other sites PING it, and would send a crawler to the site path pinged her, and included the new page in its search index. The process would not take more than a couple of minutes. What that would mean is that the new job site would have the new jobs added to it in almost real time. There would be a couple of minutes lag, and that is more than tolerable. What is really needed for this to happen is that the recruitment sites build in the automatic facility to be able to send a PING when a new job is posted. That as we know is not really that hard since a PING in reality is a pure simple http request containing the URL of the new page advertised.

The next steps?

The technology of updating the jobs and especially removing them does not really exist. Updating might actually be implemented on a recipient side in the sense when a PING request sends a same URL that is already stored in the database, for the crawler to be sent to the originating page gain, and the old record overwritten. The deletion is a totally different story. The whole PING technology just does not support it jet (at least not that I am aware of it?). Perhaps an implementation of the existing PING technology could be used with a small extension, perhaps with a DELETE command sent somewhere in the PING http request.

Categories
Jobs Recruitment Search Engine

Job Aggregators in Ireland

Job Aggregators have their fair share of success and problems. As far I can remember the first one in the Irish market was www.IrelandJobs.ie. It was displaying jobs from about 5 to 7 job boards that existed in Ireland back in 2002 -2003. Job boards went ballistic!!! Every single one of them turned aggressive, and word ‘court’ found its place in every single sentence they produced. It wasn’t funny. Later the service was actually reversed. So as opposed to take the jobs from the job boards we made a Multiple Job Posting service www.eRecruit.ie, so as opposed to take jobs to job boards, all of the sudden we started feeding the recruiters jobs to the job boards. Now we are all ‘Partners’ and we get nice boxes of chocolates and stuff for Christmas from them (Except one!!!).

A number of jobs aggregators have been launched since in the Irish jobs market. Actually about one a year. You can see them stopping advertising in Google AdWords from a few months from the launch to about a year later. None of them invests in the search engine optimisation (SEO), therefore are dependent on the visitors traffic from the search engine marketing campaigns (SEM). Economically such a business model is not sustainable economically, and when the investment is spent, they tend to vanish from the job advertising scene in Ireland.

Categories
Jobs Recruitment

Multiple Job Posting Software

eRecruit.ie is the leading Irish multi-posting service. Working alongside all Irish job boards and utilising cutting edge technology, eRecruit.ie can offer recruiters the most comprehensive and cost effective job posting service available.

eRecruit.ie is the only Irish ‘Instant Job Posting’, Multiple Job Posting Software that enables you to preview you jobs posted in real time on all Irish Job boards.

Post to your own website – Set up a link so your adverts are also posted on to your own website.

Integrate with your recruitment database – Export job adverts directly from your database.

eRecruit.ie ‘no strings attached’ free trial is available to all Irish Recruiters.

Categories
Blogs Google Jobs Recruitment Search Engine SERP

Irish Defence Forces Jobs

Irish Defence Forces JobsJust saw a quite unusual Google AdWords campaign for the Irish job advertising market. The Irish Defence Forces is advertising (and paying the TOP Google AdWords rate!) for their add to be displayed for the keyword ‘jobs’ in Google.ie.

Is this the first time a Governmental agency (or how do you call the Army?) has engaged in the recruitment advertising? Is it the case where Army (The Marines) goes first to the new territories, and the others follow afterwards?

Categories
Jobs Recruitment Search Engine

Monster Jobs via RSS

Just noticed the update to the Monster.ie job site this morning. First impressions are really good. Nice usage of cookies, it stores a job seekers activity history. That enables you to see je list of jobs you have viewed on Monster jobs site before. The interface seams upgraded with the right column with different data, filers and menus that ease up job searching and filtering. It reminds a bit of the new eBay layout of the eBay US web page (eBay.com – when you are logged in).

The important update of the Monster Jobs Search Page is the inclusion of the RSS feed. This enables a job seeker to subscribe to any custom developed search, and store it in the RSS feed URL that can be called from any RSS Reader to display up to date Job Search results for the defined search. Since we at www.EmployIreland.ie introduced that feature in the early 2007, more and more job boards will have it.

Well done Monster on the inclusion of the RSS feeds Jobs Search results subscriptions!

Categories
Jobs Recruitment

Best Companies to Work for in Ireland 2007

Best Companies to Work for in Ireland 2007

According to the Great Place to Work® Institute Ireland The best place to work in Ireland is in one of the 10 companies listed below:

Accenture
Airtricity
Brightwater
CB Richard Ellis Ireland
Diageo Ireland
eBay
Google Ireland Ltd
Microsoft Ireland
Sigmar Recruitment
Unicare Pharmacy Ltd

In other words, if you work in one of those you are within the ‘privileged’ ones between us and should consider him/herself extremely happy. Why? Since the rest of us DO NOT work in the 10 best companies to work for in Ireland! You who work for the best companies to work for in Ireland have absolutely no right to moan and complain about ANYTHING!

The rest of us? We can say EXACTLY what we want about:

– That crazy, crazy, crazy new layout on the Red Cow roundabout. Why do they call it a roundabout anyway? It looks far more like a mixture of a number 8, the infinity sign, and a few more 9-es and 6-es!
– The Bus that is full again, just passing by the station where we are waiting in the rain, and some idiot smashed the bus shelter again.
– CHAOS in traffic in city centre
– M50 is a parking place again. They should start charging per hour!
– M50 Toll Bridge cue forming at Malahide roundabout.
– Sandyord Industrial Estate MADNESS. And you from Aitricity and Microsoft, just keep your mouth shut!
– DART, ohh, DART…. not again? What works on the rails now?!
– LUAS where one gets that sardine feeling (who said smell?!)
– Rent up again? How comes rent always goes up more than my salary increases?!
– … and do not get me started on,… well, that’s enough here.

So if you work for one of the best places to work listed above, just keep on enjoying your life. The rest of us can complain. You cannot!

From the looking for the new job perspective, wouldn’t it be normal then to first try to get a job with one of the best companies to work, and then talk to the recruitment agencies if you do not succeed to enter this holy circle?

Categories
Google Jobs Recruitment

Google Ireland Jobs

The Google Ireland Jobs page is designed in the traditional Google Design Stile. The only ‘Outstanding’ design elements Google Recruitment or Web Development department found appropriate to place on the site is a bit of the green font. Noticeable is also the usage of the word ‘Opening’ instead of the job. That is most likely the trace of some super-wise marketing agency, trying to avoid the connotation of job – work – long hours – low salary – slavery. Instead they call it an ‘Opening’ where one could build his career – success – happy family – new house – a Volvo Estate, two dogs, and a house in the suburbs.

A bit of showing off with the always suspicious: 10 Best Companies to Word For – Ireland 2007, awarded by the Irish Independent (presumably to the largest advertisers).

Striking is the Google’s complete ignorance of the SEO on its own recruitment pages.
The URLs like:
http://www.google.ie/support/jobs/bin/topic.py?dep_id=1054&loc_id=1110
http://www.google.ie/support/jobs/bin/answer.py?answer=74881

The non existence of the proper and relevant META and TITLES just shows how Google is the company that does not depend at all on the Search Engine Optimisation, but probably has a completely different set of problems like managing the volumes than the average recruiter.

The absence of any contact details, not phone, no email not even a physical address(???) just confirms the obvious problem with the quantity of applications.

From the usability point, there is no way for a job seeker to subscribe in any way. No email alerts and no RSS. That is a decision I do not really understand. It is like saying: “We do not want return visitors!”. Non inclusion of the RSS feed is probably the biggest mistake on the Google’s Jobs site.

There is also a greyed out footer on all the pages that reads:
To all recruitment agencies:
Google does not accept agency resumes. Please do not forward resumes to our jobs alias, Google employees or any other company location. Google is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.
Perhaps the last sentence of that footer tells you about the business practices of the recruitment agencies Google has had to deal with.

Overall impression? Google’s Recruitment web site is the fastest recruitment web site. But there is a feeling that there is something missing here. The absence of any contact details is just striking. I believe it is unique in the Irish market, and that alone makes it hard/not acceptable. The absence of the RSS feed is also surprising from a 100% Web 2.0 company.

The extensive usage of Google AdWords to advertise this site puts other AdWords publishers in the recruitment industry in a disadvantage, since Google itself does not have to pay for it. In the same time it is competing for the positions in AdWords with its clients who pay big sums every month. It might be (or is it?) legal, but certainly is not moral at all.

Conclusion: One would expect Google should do better. Recruitment obviously is obviously falling far behind the strengths the company has in other fields.

Categories
Blogs Jobs Microsoft

Microsoft International Tech Jobs Blog

As Gretchen correctly pointed out in the comments of the Microsoft Jobs Blog – The Winner of The Best Recruitment Blog in Ireland Award 2008 the Microsoft Jobs in Ireland are actually covered on the Microsoft International Tech Jobs Blog as opposed to the US one.

The Microsoft International Tech Jobs Blog is actually on a Live Space platform that has its own advantages and disadvantages as a blogging platform. Live Spaces is great for networking since it is integrated with both Hotmail and Instant Messenger, and you can have your Profile and Photo albums there as well. So kind of a well rounded service offering a nice integration of all various social networking activities. The drawback for a blog itself is that if the blog is the only thing you want to promote, your interface is extremely cluttered with all this MSN stuff all over the page. There isn’t a 1000 WordPress Skins to choose from to apply to match you taste and needs. You are just stuck with all this advertisements for Windows Live Something. OneCare. WhoCares?

Declan Fitzgerald’s blog is in the Irish environment simply revolutionary. Two things stand out:

  • 1. RSS Feeds of Microsoft jobs in each EMEA Centre
  • 2. Video representation of each Microsoft EMEA Centre

Oh, and BTW all the Microsoft Jobs in Ireland posted as blog posts.

Declan has got it right. It is extremely simple to check and subscribe to the RSS of fresh Jobs in Ireland for example, and there is an inviting video where Declan will walk you through what they do, and what they are looking for. Those are the two main messages a recruitment blog should have. It needs to say what are we looking for in the skills list, and show what positions are currently open. The RSS Feed is actually above the expectation here. Since this is the first Irish Employers Recruitment Blog, it has set a high standards for the followers.

Again, well done Declan, and well done Microsoft in Ireland!

Categories
Blogs Jobs

Irish Recruitment Blog Toppic?

Every Recruiter in Ireland I spoke to about Blogging asked me the following same questions:
How should I go about it? See the bottom post 22 hours for detailed steps.

Then the next question is always: What should I blog about?
Danny Wall wrote the shortest and simplest answer in the article Number 1 in Google – The Blog:

The Blog

This is one of the best and easiest methods of getting traffic and links, yet it is also the one that is most often done wrong. All too many blogs for ecommerce sites are nothing more than “product posts.”
So, let me say emphatically that:

People don’t care about you, your cat, or your products!

That may sound harsh, but it’s true, they don’t. What your potential customers will care about is their problems, wants, and desires. Therefore, your posts should play to the customer but target the niche to which you market.
Blogs should contain articles that will be of help and interest to your target market. They should contain links to interesting news stories or bits of information. In other words, your blog should be a valuable resource to your target market independent of what you sell. Additionally, you should post to your blog every day (and twice a day is better).

So in the Irish Recruiters world, what can you blog about? Just start the two lists. One is the list of questions that your employers ask you during your day. Write them all down, one under another. Do the same for the questions you get during the day from the Irish Job seekers. An hour before you go home take a look at your lists. See chat questions keep on popping up. Are the clients concerned about the quality of the candidates? Perfect. Your first Recruitment Blog Post is going to be titled: ‘Quality Candidates’. In the article define the ‘Quality’, write a short quality matrix table, search the web to se what others wrote about the ‘Quality’ of the candidates. You might learn something!!! Put it all together in a short one page post and Voila! You have your first post!!!! Just do the same every day.

Categories
Blogs

Wikipedia: Recruitment in the Republic of Ireland

The ‘Official’ definition of Recruitment in Ireland on Wikipedia.

Categories
Jobs

Recruiters Turn to Facebook

Is it a dawn ow the job boards with all the Facebook, LinkedIN and the rest of them popping up? Or is there a space for both to coexist, perhaps in an semi integrated / partnership way?

Would it not be nice if you would get an Job Applicatin with a CV and a link to a LinkedIN Profile, so that you can check if you know someone who knows the applicant? Did some of the people you know know them and trust tehm, or even reccomend them? Or a MySpace web page? Or anything else to help you get ‘The Feel’ about the person? It would, wouldn’t it?

Facebook will not replace a job board, but could definatelly help if brought in into the recruitment process. The question is, would job seekers like it?

http://www.pcworld.com/…/tech_recruiters_turn_to_facebook.html

Categories
Google Jobs Search Engine SERP

Internet Activity, or ‘Will Irish Recruitment Agencies get the importance of the Google.ie Search Engine Ranking?

What do people do most on the Internet? When asked, the response is the mixture of:
House hunting
Cars related searches
Jobs searches

Holyday related searches, mortgage, insurance are the second most important group.

Almost all the behaviour monitoring will record the same above activities. This is what we ‘admit’. In the same time Internet itself consists of more than 2/3 of some king of pornographic content. I wonder whom is that for?

Anyway, the major three activities, let us call them Property, Cars and Jobs here, and really very funny when it comes to the Irish Google placements (web site positioning) for the relevant key phrases. While Property and Cars have a 3 to 5 strong market leaders, and the rest of the first page of Google.ie search results is filed by the sites that just ended up there, the Jobs category seems to have a super strong competition (compared to the two other categories).

By default Google.ie shows 10 results of a search performed. So 10 web sites can be of the first page. The rest of the results has a far less ‘Visibility’. The top 5 or 6 pages are what was called ‘Above the Fold’ before, since ht monitor resolution would allow only the top half of the Google.ie results page to be displayed at a time. To see the rest, the user had to scroll down.

In general the people click more on the result positioned higher. The Number One listing in a Google Search Result is extremely important for any Internet related business. So if you are a Job board… you get the point.

Again the problem with the ‘Jobs’ market in Ireland is that there is currently about 35 web sites that would like to call themselves a Job Board. There is also about 400 Recruitment Agencies web sites that would benefit greatly from the high placement in Google.ie search engine results pages.

Historically looking, for the most important keyword for job searching in Ireland: ‘Jobs’ – there NEVER was a single recruitment agency on the first page of the Google.ie search engine results page. At least not in the last 5 to 7 years. That is simply because there are all those job boards filling up the spaces. To make the situation even more interesting every year there is more and more job boards in Ireland. Niche job boards are popping up like mushrooms all over. It really is not that easy to find the industry that does not have its own ‘Specialist Job Board’. Most of the strong industries have multiple niche job boards active today.

It really is interesting to see the recruitment agencies that are multimillion businesses paying for the advertising slots on a job boards that are a single man operation, or even someone’s ‘Second Job’.

I am really interested to see who will be the first Irish recruitment agency that will realise the importance of being listed on the first page of Google.ie for the phrase like ‘Jobs’, and actually manage to do it! Anyone ready to place a bet???