Tag: Recruitment

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Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency Search Engine

LinekdIN Recruiter

LinekedIN has a really slow take-up in Ireland. Irish recruiters are only recently being less ‘glued’ to the traditional job boards like Irish Jobs, and started embracing into the modern recruitment methods. LinkedIN is the most common place all the recruiters went to in a search for a new candidates. The problem that happened is that at some stage every second Irish LinkedIN member was a recruiter! :)

The US corporate started publishing the jobs in Ireland. Up until the end of 2007, there was a handful of jobs advertised in Ireland in LinkedIN only. Today that number grows higher. For example today there is 37 jobs advertised in Ireland in LinkedIN. A closer inspection will reveal that almost a half of those jobs are not necessary based in Ireland actually. Compared to the Irish jobs boards that had tens of thousands of jobs published (duplicates, duplicates!!!), LinkedIN Jobs section really looks poor in Ireland.

But that did not stop LikedIN to start selling tools like LinkedIN Recruiter to the recruiters.

Will it change the habits of the Irish Recruiters, and make them use LinkedIN more as opposed to the CV databases for harvesting applicants? Monster has that nice feature where you get that email every morning with the latest CVs entered in the database that are relevant to your given keywords. To switch to LikedIN it would mean actively searching the LinkedIN Profiles. And those are not really compatible with the CV parsers. So it would require an ‘Active Recruiter’ searching for the ‘Passive Candidate’!

Categories
Blogs Google Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency Search Engine SEO SERP

Google AdWords in Recruitment?

Google AdWords was good!

Years ago I was preaching to the recruiters in Ireland to start using Google AdWords. The cost per click (CPC) was literally a few cents. The early adopters really drove massive traffic, and relevant traffic to their web sites. I remember my own www.IrelandJobs.ie – and how easy was it to purchase a thousand visitors a day. We experimented a lot and found that the best click trough and the conversion rate on our web site was for the AdWords Campaigns linking directly to a job just advertised.

Today the scenario is the opposite.

Google AdWords is bad!

Cost per click started grooving from the day one. It was just a question of time when will it all stop making sense. In the late 2007, when CPC reached the 1 Euro, a lot of people started revaluating their Google AdWords accounts and rethinking if that spend still makes sense. A large number of advertisers stopped their accounts or limited their budgets. The results are that the CPC stabilised for a time. It took some time to get used to pay over a euro for a visitor. Advertisers got used to it, and the price is soaring up again.

So why is paying a single 1 Euro per job hunter bad for your business?

Well simply because you could be paying about half by purchasing your traffic from other sources. Call today for details: 01 440 1900!

Categories
Blogs Google Recruitment

CPL

CPL Web Site - pointing to the http://alliancenurses.ie/The CPL recruitment agency is the leading recruitment agency in Ireland. They managed acquire a number of competitors, and also grow organically in some areas. The web site is a quite important thing for any recruitment agency. It represents you on the Internet, and the Internet is the channel for the majority of the communication a recruitment agency does. Jobs are listed on the Internet for job hunters and your services are displayed on your site to your clients. Every single email has a reference to the web site to help drive the traffic to the recruitment agency web site.

And jet this most important communication channel gets neglected. How? Well simply entering the web address without the ‘www’ part in it so just cpl.ie gives you the web site of: Alliance Nurses Agency. You can view the real copy also on their domain address: http://alliancenurses.ie/.

How did that happen? Most likely the configuration settings on the Microsoft IIS web server. I am guessing that the domain http://alliancenurses.ie/ is set “All undefined” option, and the admin did not specify the CPL.ie to point to the same where the www.CPL.ie is pointing.

Note: Yes I did call CPL and have let them know….Note: Yes I did call CPL and have let them know…. And guess what I am told: “That is OK, they are part of our CPL Group.” :)

Categories
Blogs Jobs Recruitment

Video CV is here!

Ever noticed how hiring graduates based on their CV’s isn’t fun at all? Same CVs, with lots of education all over and no experience, at least not relevant one? Ever got into the situation where you cannot really determine anything relevant in eth CV, and started basing your filtering process solely on the ‘Interests’ and ‘Sports’ at the bottom of the CV?

If you recognise our self above, you will like what is coming next! A Video CV! You can actually SEE and HEAR the candidate. Now how is that in comparison to the poorly filled CV template with most of the required data for the CV (no Experience?!).

Thanks to a brilliant idea by CVizz.com that is all about to change!

Across the ocean:
A similar service in the US: VISAUL CV just got $5 mill. funding yesterday. Is that the first funding in the Video CV arena?

Categories
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….

Categories
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 Recruitment

Web 2.0 Recruitment

The recruitment industry is changing. To stay on top any recruiters has to in one way or the other follow the change, since the ‘old’ recruitment model will soon simple disappear in most industries. The Web 2.0 Recruitment will differ greatly from the traditional recruitment in the aspect of the recruitment advertising and searching and sourcing the candidates. The combination of the whole collection of the social networking web sites, the collective bookmarking and scoring web sites, the personal blogs, corporate blogs and a purely recruitment blogs with change the role the traditional job sites (job boards) have today.

Web 1.0 Recruitment

The job boards have replaced the traditional media like newspapers, radio, billboards, and TV. After the year 2000 the web was catering for the vast majority of the recruitment advertisement business. The broadband penetration was fuelling it. It still keep on fuelling it 8 years later, and bringing it to a next level. The level of the Web 2.0 Recruitment.

Web 2.0 Recruitment

The job boards and their CV databases will start losing their value in the Web 2.0 Recruitment model that we are entering. As Encyclopaedia Britannica disappeared when Wikipedia gained popularity the similar future is ahead for the job boards.

LinkedIN is slowly replacing the CV databases in the more advanced economies like UK and US. The most popular CV database in Ireland, the Monster’s CV database will soon start feeling the heat from LinkedIN. The crucial moment will be when the quantity of the newly created LinkedIN profiles becomes greater than the number of the new CV’s Monster’s database receives a day. And that is very likely to happen in the year 2008 if the current trends continue.

Recruitment agency and employer’s web sites will start blogging and utilising all the blog related content syndication, RSS, pinging, trackback and comment features to attract and engage the job seekers. The Job seekers will from their end in their personal blogs generate their own related content, and ‘engage’ really more than just ‘subscribe’ to the recruiters offerings.

Altogether the Web 2.0 Recruitment will be more characterised by networking, contributing to the content, and engaging in content development than just traditional advertising jobs.

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.