Categories
Career Internet Job Site Jobs LinkedIN Recruitment

Recruiting a Pope on LinkedIn

An interesting job post I Stumbled Upon,… (not really, I saw it on Mashable). It is for a Pope. Is it a good job spec? I’ll let you be the judge of it yourself:
popelinkedin1
popelinkedin2

Categories
Blogs Career Jobs Recruitment

JobBridge could only work if…

With JobBridge in the news again I couldn’t resist to clearly put myself in the ranks of those who are against it. Not like the Socialist Pary members like Paul Murphy MEP who writes JobBridge to nowhere! (I like the article!), but quite close to it. The internship scheme is a good idea and could work quite well if done right. The one we have today is very, very far from it. It is no surprise it is causing such all these troubles for the government, with the majority of people expressing themselves unusually vocally about it. And the majority of the votes are the NO votes for the national internship programme.

The internship programme could actually work well. If… If the rules are set right. Imagine that a company can ONLY get an intern if the intern will be doing exactly what the company specialises in, and if the intern will learn skills during the internship that will make him the very attractive hire for the same company he got an internship from? To put this in real life example the rules should look somewhat like this:

1. No internships for the jobs that are paid minimum wage (by that same company). Why? The government has a chance to get unemployed placed in the job and it should aim highest possible paid ones.
2. Internship can be offered where the work performed is one of the core skills of the company. A marketing company can have a marketing intern, not a web designer. A web design company can have a web designer as an intern, not a marketing person. Why? Simply because the internship is there for the intern to learn.
3. Strictly no receptionist, admin, PA, and similar internships.
4. A company must provide a Mentor for the intern. Such a mentor should prove he/she will dedicate 10% of the working time to the Intern for the training. A mentor must be a senior staff member (in years of experience) and have the skills relevant to the internship.

The internship should be exactly the same as the initial training a new hire gets in the first few months on the job. It would give the company an extended period to test and try the intern before they make a hire. A trained intern after 6 months of the internship should be a far more interesting hire than a new candidate since the company has already invested in the intern who is ready to start the work immediately (or has been doing it for the months already).

Wouldn’t this make far more sense than the Internship programme we have today?

Categories
Career Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency Social Recruitment

Job: Principal Resource Specialist (Senior Recruiter)

The role of the Principal Resource Specialist (Senior Recruiter) – PRS is to develop and deliver excellent recruitment services to the client in line with agreed service levels. A key component of this role is to design innovative sourcing strategies to attract candidates from within the market place in a cost-effective manner. The Principal Resource Specialist is also responsible for building excellent relationships within the hiring manager community in order to identify opportunities for direct hiring and provide guidance to ensure a best practice approach to resourcing is adopted.

This is a key role that requires a responsive, strategic and client-facing individual.

  • Essential to have in house recruitment experience
  • Proven track record of sourcing candidates directly & ability to source directly from multiple channels and recruit at all levels
  • Ability to deal with rapidly changing priorities
  • Excellent ability to deal with people at all levels – internal and external stakeholders
  • Good commercial and business acumen
  • Target driven and ability to meet key deadlines

Job Title: Principal Resource Specialist (Senior Recruiter)
Job Location: Dublin South
Hiring Company: Alexander Mann Solutions – global leaders in Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO)
Applications to: garreth.woods@alexmann.com

Categories
Career CV CV Database Job Site Jobs Recruitment Social Recruitment

Resumark: CV, Jobs, Free!!!

resumark_logoResumark brought in a nice new business model in the online recruitment industry. The concept is essentially borrowed from the Google AdWords – Google AdSense model. While Google pays the web site owners to show the Google AdSense on their sites and charges the Google AdWords clients to pay per click for those same adverts Resumark does the same with the CVs. Job hunters upload their CVs and get paid each time someone downloads the CV. Anyone can search the CV database for free, and gets a preview of the CV for free only. If you decide you would like the contact details as well – you pay to Resumark. Resumark in return pays the cut to the owner of the CV.

Just in case you did not get it, here is how Resumark explains their online recruitment and CV database business model:

Get Paid to Post Your Resume!

Post Resume or create it online using our free Resume Assistant. Make $1 every time an employer downloads your resume!

Search Jobs that match your profile and join the fastest growing Job 2.0 Network!

In today’s economy even job search monsters are not enough. Invite friends and earn money together when their resumes are downloaded.

And for the recruiters and employers:

Free Resume Search & Job Postings

Search Resumes for Free using Google™ search technology. We give you full access to the entire resume database.

Pay only for the resumes that you choose to download. Compare to other services.

Post Jobs for Free and have them automatically distributed to major jobs sites and networks reaching millions of job seekers

Regardless if the business will work or not, Resumark is a step from the usual recruitment jobs sites. Time will tell if it was a step in the right direction. But what needs to be applauded here is the courage and the innovation in the online recruitment industry.

Categories
Career CV Interview Jobs Recruitment

How to gloss over gaps in your CV

If you have a large gap in your job history, an employer may well ask you to explain what you were doing during this time. Gaps left unexplained in your CV can show you in a less than positive light, as they can lead the employer to draw their own, quite possibly unfavourable, conclusions about your character and work ethic. Writing your employment history in yearly, rather than monthly, instalments can easily erase a gap of only a few months and help to keep your CV short and concise. Longer gaps are harder to gloss over, but that’s not to say that it’s impossible to do so.

If you left a job to pursue further or higher education, especially if it is relevant to the job you are applying for, be sure to let the employer know, as this will most likely be seen as a positive step. Likewise, if you had to leave your job to have or care for a child, be sure to make this clear. However, if you were just plain old out-of-work during this period, try to think of positive projects you were involved with. Perhaps you helped a friend or family member to set up their business during this time, or you were involved with a local charity of some description. You have to be prepared to back up these stories with details, so be sure to prepare thoroughly for the interview, so that you don’t have to make anything up on the spot, making you seem disorganised, dishonest, or both! If you kept yourself afloat during this period by doing odd jobs unconnected with your chosen career, list these jobs in your CV and be prepared to talk about them if questioned.

If you were fired from a previous job, it would be a good idea to avoid mentioning this in your CV or interview if at all possible. However, if you are unable to provide a believable reason for leaving the job, or it is likely that your story will be contradicted by a reference, it is possible to say that you were fired without losing too much credibility. If you were fired as part of a downsizing or cost-cutting operation, then say so, as this does not reflect nearly as badly upon you as if you were fired for poor performance or a lack of discipline. If you have to say that you were fired for personal or performance reasons, explain the situation truthfully and without bitterness, and highlight what you have learned from the situation and how it has changed your awareness and, if necessary, your attitude, for the better.

For jobs and career advice, visit employireland.ie.

Categories
Career CV Interview Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Free Jobseekers Workshop

The workshop will run for 90 minutes and will cover:
• Writing a world class CV
• Where to find the next job
• Advice on dealing with recruitment agencies
• Improving interview skills and techniques
• Networking skills
• Negotiating salaries

The goal is to provide insight and support to candidates who are currently in a difficult job market. Free Jobseekers Workshop is targeted at all levels of candidate, from junior through to senior management.

Where & When?
September 30th from 6PM to 7.30PM at the Grand Canal Hotel, Dublin 4 and will be presented by NRF Committee member Peter Cosgrove.

Register
To register a candidate for the NRF Jobseekers Workshop or offer your services for the CV Clinic please contact the NRF office on 01-8161754 or email name and contact details to director@nrf.ie

Categories
Blogs

Jobs Market works for you!

JobsMarket.ie is a Social Network for recruitment. Here is a how Jobs Market front page describes the jobs sites:

Jobs Market works for you!
There are three fundamentally bad aspects of the jobs boards:
1. The job boards are selling YOUR data and you gave them it for free.
2. The job board has effectively restricted access to companies who can afford to pay for the service.
3. Your data is only visible for those periods of time when companies pay for it and actively search for some skills.

Jobs Market is the reverse of this and bring benefits for those actively looking for work, those not actively looking for work, employers and even recruitment agencies.

So what is Jobs Market?

Here’s what Jobs Market does:
1. Enables people to promote their skills
2. Enables people to publish their availability and references
3. Enables people to control how their data is presented and how they can be contacted
4. Allows ALL employers to search for people

Best of all? It’s simply free to everyone.

Jobs Market recruitment Social Network is in BETA stage. With the interesting usage of LinkedIN hResume. :)

Categories
Career Internet LinkedIN Recruitment Twitter

How to use Twitter for Recruitment?

twitter_logo_headerTwitter 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.

http://twitter.com/irishrecruiter

Categories
Career Internet Jobs LinkedIN Recruitment

Worky

workyWorky is a Recruitment Social Network. Kind of like LinkedIN, but a few years later. Worky has no people in it jet, but has the pricing model – a bit steeper than LikedIN.

What is wrong here:

RecruitIreland goes FREE and in the same month Worky is goes live more expensive than LinkedIN, that Irish recruiters find too expensive.

Oh,… and also Flexitimers stopped charging for the jobs advertisements as well. There are clear signs more and more sites are going to go free. But not Worky. Worky is more expensive, so obviously better than LikedIN.

But Worky is global, so not in a league with Irish Jobs and Recruit Ireland. Worky is the new Monster. Actually Worky is a new Monster and LikedIN together.

Worky we wish you well!

Here is what Worky says about themeslves:

Why Worky? … The before and afterCandidates
No more dark ages of the job boards
When everybody first started using the internet it was a novelty to see jobs from the newspapers up there
It gave us all a buzz applying for a role online
And for a couple of years that model of offline or newspaper style job adverts stuck up on the internet kept us happy in the dark

But not for long
Very soon it was endless lists of jobs and endless lists of job boards, sites boasted about how many jobs they had but candidates only wanted one job and so lost heart..

Did the agency or the company get my application?
Did my application fall into a big black hole?
Who is looking at my application?
Do they like my application?
Can I not see a bit more about where this job is before I apply?
Don’t they want to know my preferences before we get off the first block?
For employers and agencies it became heartache too
Why can’t I find suitable matches?
Why do so few applicants match what I’ve asked for?
Which job board do I use?
Do these job boards spend anything on advertising?
Which one actually engages with the mainstream everyday candidates?
Along came the Upload your CV era – but full of broken promise

For candidates

Who is looking at my CV?
Is it still live?
Do I have any control?
It’s too complicated to make it anonymous?
Can my boss see my name or our company name?
For Employers

Employers grew tired of seeing that 1458 people matched their job
Grew tired of keyword searches so man who sold java coffee was matched against 1000s of java programming jobs
At last Worky…
Not a job board
Not an upload your CV mechanism
For candidates a place to create your own individual online skills profile and have it seen by every employer for free in the safe knowledge that it is anonymous until you see that they may have a role to suit. A place where once you upload your profile, you can job-hunt while you sleep.

works for candidates… Join in

For Employers A place to copper fasten the skills you want in an employee, a place where you can see with ease who matches your job financially, geographically, by skills and by work experience to name but a few. A place for employers to see first if there are matching candidates before committing to pay

works for hirers… Try it now

Categories
Career Internet Recruitment

If there is a job, Hound will sniff it!

hound-job-siteAmerican marketing was always a bit specific. In some cases it just does not ‘cross the water’ well, and sounds a bit off on our shores here. In recruitment the example is the job site Hound.com. It is a Employers Only model job site, like Ireland has its own RealJobs.ie. It’s marketing is very original and different from the usual jobs sites. On Hound everything is about the hounds and the front page is full of dogs images. 13 dogs will welcome you on the Hound home page. Quite impressive for the jobs site, isn’t it?

This is Hound they think you should use them:
Hound shows its members jobs from every employer website it can find in the United States and throughout the world. It is the most powerful job-search engine in existence and powers several job boards. Recruiters use Hound to track down potential jobs for their clients.

Meaning: If there is a job, Hound will sniff it!

Categories
Blogs Career Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Sales Staff Salaries

I often thought how to structure the remuneration package for a sales staff in the recruitment or even more specific is the sales of the jobs site subscriptions. The jobs sites sell the three month, six months and the most often the annual subscription that includes the free usage of a number of jobs slots on the site. What it means is that the client, an employer or a recruitment agency can use their XX number of jobs slots as they like. There is usually some side products on the jobs sites like the CV Database Access, or a Hot Job – that is displayed on the home page. Some company branding packages with the company logos around the pages on the job site are also common practice.

The sales staff are usually paid so that there is a percentage of their salary that is a Basic Salary. It is guaranteed and not related to their performance. For a junior sales staff it is not far off the minimum wage, and it grows with the experience of the person. The other part of the salary is the bonus that is related to the performance achieved in each time period. The bonuses are really structured differently in different companies and industries.

Obviously the sales person should bring more in (revenue) the company than what his own costs are. So here is a question then:

Should a sales person rather accept a percentage of the revenue or the classis sales remuneration package comprised of a basic plus a bonus?

Obviously for a good sales person a percentage of the revenue if it is a substantial percentage should be a far more interesting option, since it brings the person to a ‘Partner’ level instantly. It is actually even better then a partnership since the sales person gets a percentage of the revenue generated, regardless if the company is actually profitable at all.

I have heard recruiters saying, that the percentage of the revenue is interesting for them but that the sales process can take long time to close, and there is the mortgage, the car,…

So I tried to look at it from a different perspective. How about a sales person taking home 100% of any revenue he makes for the first month or so? How about 100% of all the revenue made in the first two months??? Surely there should be quite enough clients you can close a deal with within 60 days?

What do you think? Am I on the right track? Would you take a job where you take home everything you make for the first few months?

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.

Categories
Blogs Jobs Microsoft

Declan Fitzgerald’s (Lead Technical Recruiter in Microsoft)Blog

It is interesting to see how Microsoft employees know how to blog only, and I mean ONLY about Microsoft. They might stride to a game of golf, but in general, every single blog post from a Microsoft employee is about the Glorious Microsoft. No other company managed to ‘swing’ the employees as well as Microsoft does.

Declan is a Lead Techincal Recruiter in Dublin. Check the blog yourself:

http://internationaltechjobs.spaces.live.com/

www.joinmicrosofteurope.com is brilliantly designed using’…. something tells me I will disagree, but let’s not jump o conclusions, perhaps this Silverlignt is not as it looks like, just another Flash. I will be writing about SilverLignt as a development platform for a recruitment agency web site early in the next year. It would be interesting to see if Silverlight can challenge WordPress (on php!).