Tag: Social Networking

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Career Internet Job Site Jobs Recruitment Search Engine Social Networks Social Recruitment

Simply Hired releases their first-ever UK Today’s Job Seeker Report

SimplyHired.co.uk has released it’s first annual Today’s Job Seeker report for the UK market. Based on the results of more than 60 user polls conducted on the site since October 2009, the report provides the industry’s most comprehensive picture of job seekers and their interests, behaviours and motivations. To download the full report visit http://scr.bi/ukjobseekerreport.

Highlights of the report include:
• Today’s job seekers say the most important consideration when looking for a job is work-life balance (36%)
• 69% of job seekers are willing to take a pay cut to avoid redundancy
• More than half of job seekers use social media sites in their job search, including Facebook (18%) and Linkedin (31%)

Gautam Godhwani, co-founder and chief executive officer, Simply Hired, said: “The current recession has created a new group of candidates, distinctive in their job search methods and what they want from their career. Today’s job seeker is part of a selective, independent and passionate group actively searching for work through social networking and personalised online job sites. We are pleased to share this data through our first UK Today’s Job Seeker Report.”

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Internet Job Site LinkedIN Recruitment Social Networks Social Recruitment

LinkedIn Future – Advertising Platform

I have spent most of the last week with Facebook and Google in their fancy Dublin offices. One word I have been hearing over and over: Maximize. They used the word Maximize in every second sentence. It is absolutely unbelievable on how many places you can put that word and almost not lose the meaning of what you are talking about. It reminded me of the Supersize Me a bit, and sometimes I just had to apologize because I started laughing laud (lol).

If you think about the top companies that are ‘in’ lately, we are talking about the (Google) search engine turned into the advertising platform. Social Networking Web Site (Facebook) turning into the advertising platform. Computer company (Apple) turning into mobile phone (iPhone) company turning into the advertising platform (App Store).

The common denominator is the Advertising Platform. Hence the more time you can say Maximize in describing your products and services the better chance of success in the modern economy.

So how can LinkedIn Maximize?
Maximize your Employer Branding – Company Page on LinkedIn
Maximize yourself as a job seeker – Paid Job Seeker Account

Somehow I do not think it is enough. LinkedIn will have to think of more places and times they can put the medical word Maximize in their lingo. To thrive they need to become an advertising platform of some sort. There is no other way up the food chain.

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Blogs

Irish Jobs feeling the heat from Facebook

The social media is leaving scars on the traditional advertising models. How your brand is represented on Facebook is far more important than the article in Irish Times. Why? Simply because of it far greater reach. Far more people read Facebook than Irish Times. Far, far more, and the gap is getting bigger each day.

In recruitment the social media is finding it’s place, and Irish Jobs Sites feel it on their skin. A dozen of small job boards simply vanished during the last year. The big national ones are in the panic mode. Here is the sample from Irish Jobs, how they are reacting to the recruiters and candidates embracing he social media sites, and just leaving their IrishJobs.ie web site. They publish a survey that shows people spend tons of time on Facebook, and less on LinkedIn and Twitter. But they take a protectionist view to try to save their (extincting) industry. So they say that the social media sites, with Facebok leading the game actually costs Irish industry – since people hang out on Facebook as opposed to work. Here is their story:

Findings from IrishJobs.ie’s social networking at work survey

Ninety per cent of all respondents said they used Facebook in general, while 39pc visit YouTube and 15pc use Twitter.
The survey found that workers were against the idea of banning these sites at work. Some 77pc were in favour of some sort of access to them during working hours.
More than half of the respondents felt they are just as productive as ever and 7pc feel that social networking sites make them more productive.
The 7pc claim that short breaks to check these sites help them concentrate better when they returned to work.
Five per cent of respondents claimed they were less productive, as they were constantly distracted.
It was also revealed that large companies were more inclined to have a social networking usage policy during work hours, with 58pc of those within these companies confirming it.
Usage among employees in these companies was lower, with 43pc logging onto social networking during work hours.
Some 27pc of SME employees said their workplace has a social networking policy and as a result, 55pc of employees admitted to using these services at work.

What this press release is supposed to achieve is a knee jerk reaction from the directors and business owners – to shut down access to Facebok (please correct me if I am wrong here)! It is the same surfers that Irish Jobs have lost over the last years, that went to Facebook. Facebook is more fun than boring jobs sites. And Irish Jobs and the likes are losing visitors, losing advertisers, and the revenue. Their business model is actually quite ‘Last Century’ really. And with no future. And it is a hard fact to swallow! Hence the scare tactics here by the Irish Jobs marketing gurus.

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Blogs Career CV Jobs Recruitment

Less jobs and far less candidates in 2009

The recruitment in Ireland is changing, and changing a lot in this recession. We all know there are far less jobs advertised. All the metrics point to it like the Irish Employment Monitor by Premier. The Unemployment is growing as companies are reducing their staff levels or closing and leaving Ireland due to its un-competitiveness. The problem is that the skillset of the people being made redundant, in most cases does not fit the jobs advertised. The jobs advertised therefore cannot be filled by the unemployed people.

Passive Candidate is Cautious

Who will fill the jobs then? What about people that have jobs already? Are they interested in the career move? Well most of them again, in this market, would still prefer to stay with the existing employer. At least they will collect a redundancy package if they get fired. Leaving a job for a better one with the new employer is not on the cards of most people in the current market.

Tough Recruitment

This shortage of jobs combined with the current un-predictive economy actually created a shortage of the qualified candidates. Employers are hoping of hiring the top skilled staff for less then what they had to pay for a year ago. In most industries, that is just not happening to them. To make the things worse there is a whole lot of CV’s to browse trough for every job advertised, and it takes time…

Recruitment is tough today

Then again there are jobs that can be filled today that could not be filled 12 months ago at all. There are also cool new skills emerging, and new jobs demanding those skills. Who was hiring Search Engine Optimization Consultants, and Pay Per Click Specialists 12 months ago? Not to mention Bloggers, Social Networking Professionals, Online Branding Managers and whatever you will need in the coming months?

Required skills are changing. Jobs are changing. The same workforce should fill those places and do those jobs. That is one of the core problems in the recruitment for the current jobs advertised in Ireland.

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Career Job Site Jobs LinkedIN Recruitment Social Networks Social Recruitment

Find a Worker

find-a-workerFind a Worker is a jobs site and a business directory with a little bit of the social networking as well.

Find a worker is a job site. You can post a job for free.

Find a Worker is a business directory web site. You can promote your business here. Like the Golden Pages.

Find a worker is a personal branding site. You can advertise your own skills for free. Like LinkedIN.

What is missing on Find a Worker? Of course, and iPhone application to grasp all that data.

As a side offer, you can also purchase web sites on Find a Worker. They will also make sure that: “… your site is added to google with the appropriate keywords and meta tags…”.

Irish online recruitment scene is changing. There is more and more sites with innovative ideas like Find a Worker. Hundreds if not thousands will finish where they started, but one day one new idea and a site like this will change the way we do recruitment completely. It is the right time for the change!

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Blogs Career CV LinkedIN Recruitment Social Networks Social Recruitment Twitter

Does your CV and LinkedIN Profile Match?

Your LinkedIN Profile is most likely a copy of your CV. If a recruiter does a ‘Background Check’ to verify your CV the same data will be on your LinkedIN ‘Published’ online Profile, and that is great. Your CV is all true. The issue with the CV and the LinkedIN Profile being the same is a missed opportunity for a job seeker.

Your LinkedIN Profile should tell far more than your CV does to a recruiter.

What to include in your LinkedIN Profile?

Link to your Blog. On your blog you can show all different qualities a recruiter is searching for:
Expertise in a subject
Communication skills
Writing skills
Presentation skills
Team Building skills
And much more!

Links to your Twitter account where your conversations with the other influencers in the market and subject matter expert are published and visible are the next essential part of your LinkedIN Profile. Your network of known people and especially their recommendations are what sets you apart from the thousands of other applicants for the same job.

The CV opens the door. It invites the recruiter to start the research about you. Make sure your social media and social networking presence is the extension of your CV. If your LinkedIN Profile is a copy of your CV, it doesn’t really have a great value. It is also an opportunity missed.

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Blogs Google Internet LinkedIN Microsoft Recruitment

Declan Fitzgerald

Social Networking, Blogging, Recruitment 2.0, an all the other buzz words do not mean anything until all those technologies are utilised, and utilised properly. It is actually quite easy to embrace it all, or any part of it, and make absolutely nothing. How many web sites, job sites, blogs social networks or internet projects in all shapes or forms get published and just nothing happens with them afterwards? If you do it, you have to do it right, to make any kind of impact. There is a long list of people and companies trying, and all are in the same race. Only one or a small number can therefore succeed in every niche.

Irish employers have stayed out of all this new way of attracting talent. Irish companies haven’t made much success in blogging or the next step – recruiting via their blogs. LinkedIN and Facebook are used as the tool for the background checking more than what they are built for – for sourcing. Boolean searches, we all tried it and found gems, but very few in Ireland and it was disappointing.

But then it all started changing. And the change started with Declan Fitzgerald – a recruiter form Microsoft who calls himself – The Irish Cyber Sleuth. Declan was brave and jumped heads up into the blogging and social networking. Fairly quickly all his efforts come together with a great result. The result is actually so great that not only Microsoft will benefit from it, but it has far greater repercussions on the whole Irish Recruitment and Human Resources industry. Things will never be the same again. Declan lifted us and made us all think on how we do our business, and in some cases ‘Pushed’ us into the future of the recruitment.

So how did Declan Fitzgerald do it all?

Well Declan did a lot of things, and the result we see today is the combined result of all of those actions. What we have today is:

Blog: The Irish Cyber Sleuth: The Future of Recruitment is in the Cloud
Talking about someone’s blog is just like painting about someone’s music. Read it! It is the most popular Employer recruitment blog in the country for a reason. Here is how Declan describes it himself:
I am passionate about technology and recruitment. This blog is about the intersection of both, keeping an eye on what is happening in both industries in Ireland and abroad and understanding, commentating and theorising about what is happening on the gleam of the knife of recruitment innovation.

LinkedIN Group: Irish Recruiters
Declan made the largest group of the Recruiters in Ireland on LinkedIN. He closely monitors the activity, moderates it and encourages positive discussions. A lot of hard work and it is all paying off not since the group has 852 members today, and not just ‘anyone’ in it.

Tuesday Club
Being such a great networker, Declan knew that he needed to organise the Irish Recruiters to meet physically as well, not only over the Internet. The Tuesday Club is the meeting only for the members of the LinkedIN Group Irish Recruiters. And this is what makes it so good. Only the people who keep an eye on the future have been there. This makes the quality of discussions that Declan organises with the questions prepared up front, on the highest level. We all learned something on Tuesday Club! It is not that often to see people working the Irish jobs sites, multiple job posting service providers, ATS, recruitment agencies and in house recruiters all in the same room in the very open discussion? Recruiters sharing experiences like what jobs site they use for what kind of a position? The timing was perfect for the Tuesday Club. Recession brought us recruiters very close together as the industry. We genuinely want to help each other and care about each other. Even that we might be a competition some times. The ruthless ‘Sales and Nothing but the Sales’ approach we used to have during the past decade grew into a nice and relaxed atmosphere. Enjoyable. Tuesday Club that Declan so passionately organises is just the best that could happen to the recruitment industry in Ireland.

Recruitment Conference: The Future of Recruitment – Part 1:The Road Ahead!
As if the above wasn’t enough, Declan went on and organised a recruitment conference. Ireland has seen a very few of those, and if I remember correctly the biggest so far was the one Marco and his Jobs.ie crowd organised some 4 years in Westin Hotel in Dublin. Declan invited the top heads from the largest Irish recruitment agency and largest Irish jobs site, and some people from Microsoft and LinkedIN. A serious line-up. He asked them to give their views on the future of the recruitment. Declan was brave again since those 4 views should be all going in their separate directions. The Q&A session will be lively!

Declan does not show any signs of tiring actually. The Tuesday Club ended in him making sure everyone knows their input on the topics for the next meeting is not only welcome but expected! He names his first conference ‘Part 1’ for a reason. He already has a plan what will the next one be about and when are the likely speakers.

Well done Declan!

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Blogs Internet Jobs LinkedIN Microsoft Recruitment

Tuesday Club – Irish Recruiters on LinkedIN

Social Networking finally started happening on a proper scale in the recruitment industry in Ireland! What accelerated is that one of the largest US multinationals present here in Ireland made the best person to stimulate the social networking available. Declan Fitzgerald is today the best known blogger on the recruitment topics among Irish employers. Declan did not stop there, but organised the social networking via the LinkedIN Group – Irish Recruiters. The group today has 840 members, and is still growing quickly. The next step Declan decided is to bring the social networking from the web to the real life, so we got:

irish-recruiters-logo Tuesday Club – Irish Recruiters on LinkedIN

How to sign up? Join the Irish Recruiters group in LinkedIN first, and see the Group info for more!

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Blogs Internet Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Recruit Ireland goes FREE!

Recruit Ireland found itself an a bit funny situation this month. On one hand they are the main sponsor of the National Recruitment Federation Conference later this week. The NRF is the association of the Irish Recruitment Agencies, and most of them are actually Recruit Ireland’s paying clients. On the other hand Recruit Ireland has decided to give Free Jobs Advertising for Ireland’s Employers – that are basically the clients of the agencies, hence their clients. Employers loved it since there is something free for them. We all like free things. Agencies hated it since they lost revenue while their cost (a fee that Recruit Ireland charges) is still the same.

Via the various channels different recruiters have publicly disapproved the move by Recruit Ireland. All the Recruitment Agency blogs and Social Networking Discussions state the clear and strong disapproval with the move. Recruiters feel it’s not a fair move. And they all raised the question – What will their own association (that charges them for membership as well) do about it? The 2009 NRF conference will therefore be very interesting, with the Recruit Ireland as the main sponsor, and 118 agencies, most of them angry (none has spoken anything positive about the move!)

From the Recruit Ireland’s perspective it was probably a – no brainer. They are not managing to sell any advertising to the Employers, and the Jobs site always looks better with the Employers jobs on it. No one likes the 100% recruitment agency dominated web site. So they decided to give it up for free to employers. It will fill their database of potential future clients.

I am really looking forward to the NRF conference later this week since there will obviously be some interesting discussions!

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Career Internet Recruitment

Who’s Viewed My LinkedIN Profile

likedin-profileLinkedIN profiles are interesting thing. Your personal data stored in LinkedIN is actually the asset that LinkedIN sells. Whom to? Well to anyone interested to pay for it, even to you if you want to take your credit card out!

Here is the bait. LinkedIN tells you how many times was your profile seen in the last week, and it also tells you a bit about a few people who have seen it. If you want to know more – get ready to pay for it.

Who’s Viewed My LinkedIN Profile?

Your profile has been viewed by 9 people in the last 7 days, including:

HR Director at 3i
Someone in the Human Resources function in the Staffing and Recruiting industry from Ireland
Director at Premier Group
Someone in the Entrepreneur function in the Marketing and Advertising industry from Ireland
Someone in the Human Resources function in the Staffing and Recruiting industry from Ireland

The popularity of my LinkedIN profile in the last 7 days is listed above. It is actually quite relative to what I actually do for living, and reflects the group of people I am linked to in LinkedIN. Recruitment, staffing and HR people, from the entrepreneur to a director level, and a bit of marketing and advertising brought in to the mix.

Would you bite and pay to see who are those people who spent their time to view your profile?

BTP: Here is my public profile on LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ivanstojanovic

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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?

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Blogs

Social Networking Media Rap

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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’!