Top Referrers to www.JobsBlog.ie:
- linkedin.com – 276 Visits
- t.co – 82 Visits
- google.com – 22 Visits
- google.ie – 18 Visits
- facebook.com – 15 Visits
Tag: Twitter
Categories
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.
Categories
For Hire: Recruiter On Demand!
A company is hiring a blogger / social media person. Senior management have spent a lot of time defining the position. They couldn’t really make up their mind if that is a web (hence IT) position or a marketing position. Number of different people contributed to the job specification. The required skills list had 50 items. From various program languages, sys admin, and db admin skills, to B2B and B2C, and B2B2C marketing skills. There was of course a lot of Photoshop, Flash and Action Script as well. And PPC. And people management. And CSS.
Their company HR have shortlisted the top 5 candidates, and interviewed them. 4 of them got sent to the next stage with the Managing Director (they are serious about his position!). The managing director is an accountant by profession. He doesn’t understand more than a half of the abbreviations used in the Job specification. As did the HR personnel (none of the skills required for this position are the core skills for the company average employee).
Fortunately the MD is smart enough to realise: How are we to hire someone when we know nothing about what that person should be doing? How are we to determine if one or the other is better or worse between the last few candidates? How to include professionalism as opposed of the ‘Blink Effect’ and just hire the one we like the most as a person?
01 440 1900 rings.
The HR Manager explains the situation. They need a blogger. And a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and (the list was long here) person. And PPC management. And much more. Jet there is no one in the company competent enough to interview a candidate. So they get an idea. To hire a Recruiter. A Social Recruiter. A blogger, a Twitter, a LinkedIn, a Ning,… advanced user – specialist. They need someone to interview the shortlisted candidates and make the professional decision – who is the best match for the company?
How do you hire a blogger today, if you yourself never wrote a single blog post yourself? Or perhaps never even read one?
ADVERTISEMENT: Call 01 440 1900 Today for your Irish Social Media Recruiter – we will help you choose the best candidate for your company!
Creating your personal and or company brand is a delicate act on the social networking sites. You really need to be genuine, positive, honest, and stand behind anything you say. And that is something in the contradiction with the main task – being Active. What do you say on a web 2.0 sites – if you have nothing to say that day? You know you need to be active and communicate with others. The long term success of that contribution you make to the social networking – depends on the Quality of your contribution. If you have nothing to say – say nothing.
Quality of your online content
It took me a lot of time to learn that. After some time (and numerous mistakes!) I have realised that it is sometimes worth far more to post once a week on a blog than once a day! The quality of the content is actually far more worth than the quantity. If it takes a week to write a good article, do not rush it. Do not force yourself to publish when you do not have something of a value for your audience.
Digital Footprint
All you say (write) on the Web 2.0 sites will stay there, and will work for or against you in the future. It will always be easy to put your name or your company name in Google and check what you are all about. Your name associated with something you are not proud while publishing it – will most likely hurt you at some stage in the future. Carefully choose what photos you publish, and how you represent yourself on the web. Your digital footprint is there to stay!
Release your Marketing Message
The social networking sites like LinkedIN, Twitter and Facebook and blogs let you publish your ideas, thoughts and opinions. Define who you are and what you are. Then define who your target market and the audience are. List the topics you know about and they want to hear about. Bring your original marketing message in the mix. Do not push it on your audience. Leave it there for them to take it.
Let Go of your Marketing Message
This is what worries most of us. Corporations are shivering with just the idea of it! What do you mean by letting go of our (so far always tightly controlled) marketing message?
In the Social Web, the users will take your messages and give their spin on it. Here you are getting crowd generated picture of your brand. Your only made the initial input and slightly steering and maintaining it later on. Your audience – the crowd will decide if they like your message, and will contribute to it.
Candidate Digital Personal Branding
Your CV is great tool to open the doors. But it gives you what you want to say about yourself. This is why recruiters ask for references. To check up and make sure all you wrote is true, and that there isn’t something important missing.
In the Digital world of the Blogs and Social Networks – it is all about the public opinions being formed around yourself. It is about the number of people you are connected, about the ‘qualities’ of this connections. It is about the quality of your contribution to the public communication. It is about the response from the crowd on your social communication contribution. Does the crowd like you? Do they value your professional opinions?
How do you measure your Digital Branding success?
When the people you do not know, not your co workers, not friends or family, simple people who find you online – publicly show respect to your work and you – you must be doing a lot of good! It doesn’t happen overnight! You will need to invest a lot in creating a digital brand. Regardless if that is yourself or your company brand. It takes time.
The Social Web is changing. Remember MySpace? Remember Bebo? Both are gone. Have you started with Google Wave, or did you decided that you will be left behind? Social media tools are changing. You need to change your skills to be able to follow the change. Your message although always the same in its essence will have to be adapted for every new web publishing and collaboration tool that comes around.
Conclusion and a Real Life Personal Branding Example
Related to the recent article about the Internet traffic on Job Sites, I asked the LinkedIN Users for their input via the LinkedIN discussion: Irish jobs sites traffic comparison chart. Here is just a short few sentences I got as a reply:
Thanks Ivan and admire your humble approach. I suspect this combined with your vast knowledge and being a genuine nice person is how you have gained my respect and trust of so many others also. You have not become one of the market leaders for no reason…
…Hope to catch up with you again at the Christmas drinks.
Would like to hear how other niche and generalist job boards are doing, if you’d like to share….
MD of one of the Irish Jobs Site
When you start getting positive comments like this from the ‘crowd’ – people you are not associated to in any way, they start forming a Digital Image of your brand. Competitors recognition as in this case is of the utmost importance – that was the reason I have chosen this comment in front of all the others. It is a bit like the eBay and the recommendations it introduced smartly in ecommerce. People trust brands that are positively spoken about online.
What will you do today to create a Digital Image of yourself that you desire?
Jobs Blog is only about 2 years old. And web site about the online recruitment in Ireland. I write it, when I catch some time (from my ‘real job’), and when there is something interesting to write about. National Recruitment Awards 2009 was last Friday. A superb event. I mean it. A SUPERB event!
I will write about it. I will write quite a lot actually! Yes, I have some photos from the event as well, and will publish those as well. If you want your photos to be published email them to IrishRecruiter [at] gmail.com.
Right now I really cannot write more about the National Recruitment Awards Ceremony 2009, since my ‘Real Job’ is a priority. (BTW it reminds me of a company I used to have called RealJobs.ie).
Here is just the first picture I took – more to follow:
Pamela Flood opening the National Recruitment Awards Ceremony 2009 in Four Seasons Hotel in Dublin on Friday 2nd October 2009
Twitter: #nrf2009
Bill Fischer is having a speech in Dublin on the Microsoft’s Future of Recruitment conference later this week. His company in Bill’s own words: TwitterJobSearch.com, is a global search engine for Twitter that uses natural language processing to identify and index offers of employment.
I asked Bill what will he be talking about in the recruitment conference in Dublin. Here is from Bill in his own words:
Bill Fischer: Hi Ivan, Yes, I’ll be discussing some of the challenges and opportunities that the real-time web brings to the recruitment space. There will be some analysis of the current social media landscape, some thoughts on search/cpc approaches to recruitment, and an introduction of some of our new products that sit in the social media/search space.
Bill is the expert in the field, and his latest Twitter Job Search gig raised a lot of dust in the online recruitment world. In the Ireland lagging in Social Media adoption article only a few days ago, I wrote about the Twitter Job Search penetration in Ireland. It will be interesting to see how will Bill’s presentation affect the number of jobs in Ireland in the Twitter Job Search and in the social media in general.
About Bill Fischer
Co-Founder and Director of Workdigital Ltd, the vertical search solutions development company that built workhound.co.uk and twitterjobsearch.com. Co-Founder of DVD Station, Inc., a world-class media/entertainment internet retail systems company. Former VP of marketing for a massively multiplayer online gaming company with over 2.4mm customers in 50+ companies, and builder of marketing systems for a user generated content site acquired by Electronic Arts. Previous marketing and general management experience at more.com, threerings.net and Ebates.com. A frequent speaker, interviewee, and panelist for entertainment trade and classified search and was acknowledged in the editor-in-chief of Wired’s book, The Long Tail, as an expert on collaborative filtering and internet search engines. Twitter: @williamfischer LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/wmfischer
… when all the personal branding channels are combined.
In no particular order:
1. Social networks presence – descriptive public profile combined with the active participation in discussions.
2. Personal Blog
3. Presence on the Corporate Blog
4. Any online publication (indexed by Google)
The real power of all your online presence is in the ability to connect all those channels together. Ad your friends and co workers in social networks, drive them to your blog for more status updates, get them subscribed to your RSS feeds and twitter. From your RSS and tweets send them back to your questions and discussion on your blog and social networks, and increase the readership in every jump from one media to another.
Personal branding practice as above replaces the necessity to look for a job on jobs sites. The recruiters will ‘know about you’ already anyway. Just blog daily, and publish one article or a question in the social network of your choice (relevance to your target industry).
Do you or your company use social media networking or social media to support recruitment efforts?
76% plan to invest in employee referrals
72% plan to increase their use of social networks
66% have successfully hired a candidate identified or introduced through an online social network
Jobvite also asked employers to list the social networks and here is how they rank against each other.
95% or recruiters use LinkedIN to find candidates(!). Do you?
Twitter is a social network that lets the users communicate with messages of only up to 140 characters. SMS-ish like. When you register you can follow other people and what happens when you follow them – whatever they write is shown on your profile. You actually subscribe to their updates. Other people can follow you and that enables you to place your message on their Twitter profile page. Altogether twitter is a tool taht delivers short message from a user to a group of users who subscribe for this updates.
The description above actually describes a fantastic marketing tool. You can subscribe to whoever you like, and get their messages. Anyone else can subscribe to you. It is a massive permission based marketing model, dressed up as a social network.
Twitter can be used as a marketing channel to market anything. A business, a brand, a product, or a person. In fact it is used in personal branding right now in Ireland with candidates marketing themselves on Twitter just nine days before the Elections for the European parliament.
Here is how candidates from the Dublin constituency use Twitter to market themselves to the Irish voters.
Another interesting aspect , besides the number of followers and following, is the Activity. How many messages or broadcasts to their followers have each candidate made so far?
| Name | Number of Tweets |
|---|---|
| Déirdre De Búrca | 259 |
| Eoin Ryan | 144 |
| Joe Higgins | 160 |
| Proinsias De Rossa | 44 |
| Eibhlin Byrne | 30 |
| Caroline Simons | n/a |
| Mary Lou Mc Donald | n/a |
| Patricia McKenna | n/a |
| Gabriel ´Gay´ Mitchell | n/a |
The article Twitter and European Elections in Dublin South shows the number of followers and people following – or basically a ‘Broadcast Network’ of each candidate. You can clearly see that the number of messages published is in direct correlation with the number of people following you.
So how to use Twitter in the recruitment or looking for job? Simple! Just log in, create your account, look for interesting people, follow them, publish the messages you want to be found and followed for. The more messages you post to the larger and ‘more interesting’ network, the more effective will your Twitter marketing be.
Do not forget how are you presenting yourself as well. There is a full Profile you can fill on Twitter about yourself.
Make sure you do not put a face of a dog instead of your photo as the
Major of Dublin did, since people will be quite reluctant to follow a dog!?
Categories
Digg, Facebook, iPhone, LinkedIn, Twitter
I just love analyzing the statistical data. Where is a LinkedIN poll:
What is the most important new platform for brands to master: Digg, Facebook, iPhone, LinkedIn, Twitter ?
Twitter 36%
Facebook 29%
iPhone 17%
LinkedIN 15%
Digg 1%
Great! Now let’s put this into the perspective. This is a poll on the LinkedIN page. So the 100% of teh people who answered are a registered LinkedIN users.
Imagine now that you put a poll with the same question on Twitter? One think is almost sure. iPhone would be twice the size of LinkedIN. Twitter would be more than 60% is my best guess. Wouldn’t be surprised if it would jump to 80%.
Put the same poll on Facebook – and you will get Facebook lading, and Twitter afterwards.
The conclusion is that even the LinkedIN users know that LinkedIN is not the most important platform for companies to master.
The following shows chart that the higher you are in your company organization structure, the more you are aware that Twitter is the next BIG thing. More than half of ‘Business Owners’ say Twitter!
Twitter is surprisingly good tool for the recruitment. You can track the conversations and when used in conjunction with LinkedIN or any other tool it shows the real time live activity of the person. As does Facebook. Monster or any other CV database will never tell you that. An application from a job site or your web site will never tell you what a person is really about. Twitter does. It also tells you what other people think the person is about. And that is unique in the recruitment industry.
Do not try to recruit by using Twitter alone. But you can use Twitter to find the conversation about topics. You can use the job skill as the topic, or even better a conference or something that has a time factor. You can find people that are talking about the certain themes – related to the job or a position you are trying to fill. Find who is talking about it, what do they talk about it and who do they talk about it to. There is your talent pool, with reference check, and a real time data about their recent activity.
Or you can put it all upside down. You talk about what you do. People who use Twitter well will know how to find you. Actually they will find what you have to offer, and that is your jobs. Talk, tweet, comment others, follow, you will get the lingo quickly. Find people that you know and respect, follow, monitor their followers. Just be active, as you would be on any networking event. Twitter is actually just one constant networking event. It is happening with or without you. It will not wait for you. You need to be in to meet the people you want to meet.
Categories
Flexitimers
When you put a good team together with a bit of funding a good things happen. It might take a few iterations, and polishing of the product, but the end result is what makes Ireland what it is – a nest for the Entrepreneurs!
Who is behind Flexitimers?
Dervla Cunningham and Joy Redmond made it all happen.
Cormac Kelly that we all know from the Sonru site review made sure the site has its looks.
What is Flexitimers then?
Here is what they say themselves:
Flexitimers is a self-service project board enabling companies to connect with consultants, freelancers, small businesses, contractors and specialists/experts for professional project work in Ireland.
To ensure both professionals and companies receive quality matches – profiles will not be ‘live’ on the site until they have been checked for completeness and email addresses verified.
The site is completely free for both professionals and companies to use. But both professionals and employers must register their details and verify their email address. This is to ensure to ensure all users of the site are genuine. It is also important to note that Flexitimers is a closed network – employers or other professionals cannot search through profiles. Profiles are only viewable to employers whose project matches your profile.
Flexitimers Pricing?
Flexitimers joins RecruitIreland.com as a second FREE recruitment site for Irish Employers.
Flexitimers we wish you all the best!