Categories
Career Social Recruitment

Irish Social Media Recruitment Conference


When you put one of the best speakers on the recruitment topic Peter Costgrove, into one of the best venues Science Gallery in Trinity College, you get what you got yesterday – probably the best Irish Recruitment Social Media Event so far. And as we all know there is plenty of them lately. Everyone who doesn’t have anything better to do, all of the suddenly become some kind of self proclaimed Social Media expert! Hey even I get invited to talk on such Irish Recruiters and what not conferences. The difference is – when you hear it from Peter once,… your next few events, you will leave early! Peter just raises the standard of presentations very, very high. And that is not all. He is besides being probably one of the best recruitment managers, a very nice person to talk to. So a package hard to beat actually.

If you compare Peter Costgrove to most of other speakers on the Social Media in Recruitment topic, Peter is the only one who will clearly say what he just doesn’t get. There is no hiding. No gray areas. Most if not all others I have heard in the last years talk about the Social Media in recruitment and sourcing process very vaguely actually. All are swimming on the surface, that make you wonder, if they actually know much about what they are talking about (ehm,… me included!). Peter just dives in. Straight to Boolean Search live example. Off to Facebook, LinkedIn specific searches… no beating around the bush. Nosedive in the sourcing for search engines and social media sites.

That sets Peter apart. Next round is in January. (you are not taking my seat!)

What is also different is that it is free. Not like the Irish Recruiters events or other Social Media gurus, who make money on you there.

Categories
Internet Job Site Recruitment Social Recruitment

Costs of Jobs Advertising

Irish recruitment websites fall into two groups. First advertise their prices online and others do not. I always wondered why is that?

Here are the prices from the Irish job sites for a single job advertising:
RecruitIreland.ie – €99
Monster – €99
EmployIreland – €149 (includes CV Database)
LoadzaJobs – €280
Jobs.ie – €390
Irish Jobs -€950

The last two sites Jobs.ie and Irish Jobs do not have their prices published online. Now I realise why! Those are the two most expensive jobs sites in Ireland. Irish Jobs almost 10 times more expensive than the rest? They must have a really great sales team….

Now in all fairness, in a few minutes on the phone Jobs.ie did drop the price to €350 and Irish Jobs gave a whopping €150 discount to a total price of just €800.

Another available option is LinkedIN where you can post a job for €195. With 34 jobs posted for the whole country, it does not seem to be a greatest place to advertise a job. Or a hidden gem?

The cost of job advertisement in Ireland varies greatly. The web sites without the pricing clearly displayed seem to be by far the most expensive. Honestly I do not see how they justify the prices. Also their sales team has to be applauded. They will look for the commitment before close of business at 5PM. They would explain it with some ‘Cut off’ imaginary time for all ads of the day. All in all, serious sales training is involved there, and it’s obvious from the first 30 seconds on the phone – when they avoid telling you the price at all costs.

Categories
Career Internet Jobs LinkedIN Microsoft Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Irish Recruiters LinkedIn Group

After the recent success of the Irish Recruiters LinkedIn Group’s first conference – The Future of Recruitment – Part 1: The Road Ahead, Declan Fitzgerald has been planning already for Part 2, and after repeated requests to hold Part 2 before Christmas, Declan is now aiming for the 18th of November as the time to run the event and try get the Irish Recruitment industry together again to discuss what are the challenges currently facing our industry and what is the future of recruitment.

Declan is in planning phase at the moment but he has confirmed that Alexander Mann will be giving their RPO prospective on the theme as well as EMC from Cork will be discussing why they want a Cloud ATS and how they are going about implementing it. There will also be more presenters on the day but they have not been confirmed yet. To learn more please visit, Declan’s blog: the Irish CyberSleuth and also you can follow updates on Declan’s Twitter account. I’ll also keep you up to date with any other news I learn in the future about the event.

Hopefully, it will be another great event for networking, learning and debate.

Categories
Blogs

SixFigures

sixfiguresWell, just when you thought the season of the job boards is over, and there will not be new one every other week,… there is a new one!

The latest edition to the Irish recruitment industry is SixFigures!

Here is a little blurb about them from their own site:

SixFigures.ie is the members only job board aimed specifically at executives and high earners. Focused on jobs in Ireland, it displays only roles where the minimum basic salary on offer is at least €100,000.

Me thinks, finally a site where I can look for a job!

Free to members, SixFigures presents the executive job seeker, be they passive or active and employers with a new focused and confidential medium to access each other.

That is a strange one. Usually those highly paid job sites are charging candidates. Then again those are the US ones, and charging candidates is not that well looked upon from the low makers over here.

the-recruitment-businessHere is what the owners of SixFigures say about themselves: The Recruitment Business (TRB) is one of Irelands’ longest established recruitment consultancies.

Interestingly enough their main site of the TRB.ie reads:
Registered Number: 152015
Registered Address: 24-26 City Quay, Dublin 2
The same legal requirement is not published on their SixFigures site. Just the phone and an email address. If they are trying to hide that a recruitment agency is owning a job site, you can be the judge of that yourself.

Categories
Jobs LinkedIN Microsoft Recruitment

Irish Recruitment Conference

Reminder: Today is the last day to get a discount for the tickets for the Irish Recruitment Conference: The Future of Recruitment – Part 1:The Road Ahead!

Save 25% on the ticket by buying today. Go and get yours now! See you there!

Categories
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!

Categories
Blogs

Job Spy (Jobspy.ie)

Recession? What recession? Not even this snow is stopping the new Irish jobs sites from popping out like mushrooms from the ground after the rain. THE fact that there is far more people being made redundant in hte last six months than the new positions created really does not bother no one in het Irish jobs board and recruitment industry.

Do not believe me? Hell here is another new jobs site for you. It’s called Jobs Spy. Of course the owner did not bother to put he company registration number or registered business address on the site as it seems to be the fashion lately with the new Irish jobs sites contrary to the rules from the Company Registration Office. Perhaps it does nto even apply to someone doing business as a sole trader – since he is not a company, so the CRO rules do not apply? :)

Who knows…

The only thing that is a fact is that if you are not certain where to publish a job in Ireland today, you have plenty of choice!

Categories
Blogs

Anne Heraty (CPL) resigns from the Anglo Irish Bank Board of Directors

A great loss for the financial sector happened today with the partial takeover of the Anglo Irish Bank by the government the existing Board of Directors have all resigned. Anne Heraty who is running the largest Irish recruitment agency CPL also resigned today from her Directors role in the Anglo Irish Bank.

I see it as a loss for the whole financial industry, to lose people like Anne Heraty. She is a clear leader of the whole recruitment industry in Ireland, and actually quite unique in her capacity and the leading role in the industry in general.

Categories
Career CV Database Internet Jobs Microsoft Recruitment

Take a sneak peek at the new Monster

Take a sneak peek at the new Monster Jobs Site

Monster is all about their new site. That isn’t actaully available. And will not be available this year. That does not stop them advertising it for the last couple of months. They started sounding a bit like Microsoft advertising their Vista. A lot of hipe, for a long, long time, but the result is…

Well let’s give Monster a chance to actaully show it to us. They promised it in Januarry next year (how crazy do you have to be to release teh new version of the job site in the month when job boards have the most traffic? If someting goes wrong, and things allways go wrong with the new releases, do you really need to show it to the most of visitors? :)

Well I guess it was a marketing driven decission, as Monsters decisions allways are, as oposed to the someones who knows how to run the operations.

Releasing a new jobs site in the year 2009, I would consider to be a failure if it does not have an element of the social networking. Is Monster smart and brave enough to bring the social networking in online recruitment on a large scale, as oposed to what LinkedIN is trying to do? Let’s wait and see ….

Untill then we will just be getting thoise emails and PDF’s titled Take a sneak peek at the new Monster or simmilar…

Categories
Blogs

SnazzyJobs

I guess some people will say I like writing about the Irish Jobs boards. The funny thing is that there is so many popping out, it is almost every week you hear about a new one. This is just in the last month or so:
TheJobs.ie, JobisJob.ie, Jobs2do.ie aka Spamers, Monster Finance, urHired

So here goes an interesting one. The Irish .ie domain seemed a bit too expensive so it is called SnazzyJobs.com. At least it is Hosted in Cork, so Google.ie might actually not ban it completely, if Google Webmaster Tools is to be believed.

Here are the first impressions:
1. Logo resembles any other stock logo sample, not really inspiring (as was the case with a number of the recruiters logos earlier this year).
2. Legal Stuff – company registration number and the registered address nowhere to be seen on the site.
3. Why publish so many pages to have only Coming Soon text on them?
4. The site is actually designed in some ’90-ies style. It is really hard to read the font in the menu. Green font with the green shadow on the green background? Here are some Design ideas: Jobs Board.
5. The code is not as messy as most of the jobs sites are actually, but a bit too much of that Java code all over. It is an interesting choice to have the jobs board in php, while all the leading job boards are the powered by the Microsoft .NET. Another interesting choice is
6. StatCounter as opposed to Google Analytics? Interesting choice. I would still use both, since the speed the Google Analytics is being developed at the moment, with stuff like Data Visualisation (Google Analytics Motion Chart), will overshadow most of the aspects of otherwise very useful StatCounter.

You need to be brave to show your price list online where there is nothing really anyone can buy for less than a thousand euro. It could actually be used as a company slogan:

Snazzy Jobs
Where prices start at thousand Euro

Or maybe not?

There seems to be some 250 jobs advertised. Considering the time of the year and the (econ)comic situation in the country it is not bad really. There is also 2 jobs advertised in the last 7 days, so the site is not dead!

But honestly it will not be much more if some serious effort is not applied. The designers have decided to ignore a few important facts. SEO and Usability. The URL’s look like this:
snazzyjobs.com/jobsearch.php?ok=1&v000=&v001=1&v010=0&v011=&v101=&v111=....

To find the job search you need to click on some well hidden green button on the green background. And that button is one the single page on the site? Perhaps this is a part of the screening process: If you manage to apply – you must be a smart person, so we will look at your CV!

And,… you also need to create and account with Snazzy Jobs to be able to apply for the job. That last hurdle in the application process will definitely go well with the applicant. If banks and governments are losing the personal data, should I be leaving it on the web site that even does not confirm the company registration number required by the CRO?

Snazy Jobs we honestly wish you the best!!!

Categories
Blogs

Recruitment SEO 101: Keyword Analysis

Any SEO Consultant will tell you that a decent SEO project should somewhere in its starting phase have a step called Keyword Analysis. Unfortunately different people have a quite different idea what exactly does the Keyword Analysis mean. Some mean that it is about finding the most relevant keywords, some that it is about the number or keywords, and the rest arte somewhere in between.

Google has a quite easy to use Keyword Suggestion Tool. Here are the keywords that Google will ‘suggest’ as a similar and relevant search keywords to the term ‘Jobs’.

I’ll leave up to you to draw your own conclusions about the suggested keywords. Are those really relevant? Too many? Too few?

Keywords related to term(s) entered – sorted by relevance:

jobs, sales jobs, job, accounting jobs, job opportunities, job search, finance jobs, medical jobs, find jobs, hr jobs, legal jobs, nursing jobs, summer jobs, temporary jobs, job vacancies, job site, job bank, jobs search, jobs online, jobs google, internet jobs, full time jobs, jobs available, financial jobs, healthcare jobs, temp jobs, job listings, part time jobs, banking jobs, top jobs, retail jobs, job sites, government jobs, jobs uk, jobs london, graduate jobs, engineering jobs, office jobs, new jobs, jobs com, parttime jobs, jobs wanted, jobs banks, find a job, social work jobs, contract jobs abroad, job fair, job find, advertising jobs, job seekers, environmental jobs, pa jobs, job agency, need a job, technical jobs, media jobs, administration jobs, accountant jobs, financial services jobs, sales rep jobs, job vacancy, job agencies, jobs waterford, online job, recruitment jobs, job recruitment, job google, part time job, jobs vacancies, jobs in london, jobs cork, accountancy jobs, local jobs, jobs international, irish job, jobs it, finance job, engineer jobs, jobs canada, hotel jobs, home jobs, sales job, jobs bank, language jobs, job applications, irish jobs, jobs on line, www jobs, looking for jobs, jobs france, all jobs, list of jobs, jobs no experience, ebay jobs, jobs club, jobs i, delivery jobs, microsoft jobs, receptionist jobs, promotions jobs, jobs websites, customer service jobs, child care jobs, fun jobs, jobs website, forklift jobs, partime jobs, maintenance jobs, clerical jobs, manufacturing jobs, jobs compliance, job seeking, loads of jobs, i need a job, ice jobs, microbiology jobs, job search google, tv jobs, nursing home jobs, promotional jobs, jobs in google, health promotion jobs, looking for job, health care jobs, jobs in healthcare, computer jobs, google job listing, job finder, gallery jobs, seasonal jobs, logistics jobs, dental jobs, job boards, jobs in boston, night jobs, jobs in chicago, my jobs, jobs in san francisco, jobs with animals, midland jobs, jobs in radio, payroll jobs, forestry jobs, welding jobs, entry level jobs, looking for a job, art jobs

Google has a bit more for your Keyword Analysis study. Here is the list of:

Additional Keywords to be considered – sorted by relevance

employment, employment agencies, employment opportunities, careers, recruitment, recruitment agencies, career, job listing, job postings, hiring, vacancies, opportunities, vacancy, help wanted, part time, employers, work, telemarketing jobs, employment google, employment online, job opening, job posting, entry level positions, employment agency, job opportunity, openings, auditing positions, recruiters, employment cork, jobs marketing, accountant hiring, positions, sales vacancies, home employment, entry level, recruit, full time, recruitment companies, telesales, recruitment agency, career opportunities, auditing position, part time work, typist, staffing, recruitment google, irish employment, sales reps, irish recruitment, legal recruitment

This second list is actually very interesting. What one can do is take any of those and ask the Google Keyword Tool for the Related Keywords suggestions again. By doing so the keyword list expands indefinitely.