Categories
Blogs Internet Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency Search Engine SEO SERP Social Networks Social Recruitment Twitter

Recruitment SEO: How many web sites link to yours?

In the Links are the currency on the web we looked at the total number of links no the web that the Link Count tool from SEOmoz would show for our 20 recruitment agency web sites. But not all the links are equal. The more I think about it, it would be fair to say that no two links are the same. One (smart) way thinking about the links is to count just the web sites that link to your web site. So if there are 2 or 2 million links from some domain to your web site it would still count as one.

If we look at our 29 recruitment agency web sites list and www.JobsBlog.ie between them where is what we get:

URL

Sites Linking

http://www.cpl.ie

568

http://www.hays.ie

294

http://www.morganmckinley.ie

265

http://www.brightwater.ie

127

http://www.jobsblog.ie

126

http://www.hrm.ie

125

http://www.collinsmcnicholas.ie

100

http://www.eolas.ie

100

http://www.careerwise.ie

86

http://www.EdenRecruitment.ie

77

http://www.peoplegroup.ie

70

http://www.frsrecruitment.com

68

http://www.Vantage.ie

65

http://www.icds.ie

55

http://www.Sigmar.ie

51

http://www.3qrecruitment.ie

46

http://www.rftgroup.ie

44

http://www.Stelfox.ie

34

http://www.recruitmentplus.ie

32

http://www.accountancysolutions.ie

26

http://www.Recruiters.ie

19

http://www.MatrixRecruitment.ie

14

http://www.harmonics.ie

14

http://www.hudson.ie

13

http://www.gempool.ie

9

http://www.qedrecruitment.ie

7

http://www.Brompton.ie

5

http://www.placeme.ie

5

http://www.enterprisepeople.ie

5

http://www.solasconsulting.ie

4

The results show that only 5 Irish Recruitment agencies have more web sites linking to them than this blog. If you want your jobs to be seen by as many possible job seekers and as many possible clients (employers) it would be natural to want to bring visitors from as many sites to your site. Therefore having as many web sites linking to your site would help you get more candidates and clients. As simple as that. The above table show how good are you at that particular task. If your site is not on the list, you can get this figure for your site and compare yourself with the competition.

Even more important than this direct traffic of visitors that you get from other sites is the fact that from the perspective of the search engines like Google, your site the more “important” the more web sites link to your site. So the more links you have to your site – the more likely is that Google will display any content on your site above the similar content on any other web site. This is extremely important for the ranking of your jobs. When a similar job is advertised on many job boards and recruitment agency web sites, the site that will get listed on top is very often the one that has the most links from other web sites.

How to get more links to your web site?

Submitting your site to an online directory? – that is the most common answer I get when I do the Recruitment SEO Training. Unfortunately, the answer is always – no. Why not? The practise was abused and Google decides to in most cases ignore it, and in some cases even penalize it.

Just do not buy links. Please. – That is what Google would say, and in my experience, this is the best advice possible in most cases.

Spamming social media with your links. – Will make sure you get ignored, not followed by anyone but bots. Again the time and money the drain.

SO WHAT THEN?

Think about what links do you click at on the web.

You might click on a link in the article you are reading on some site. If you are reading a review on some blog, about the new tool the LinkedIn has launched, and there is a link to that tool within the article – you might click it. Ask yourself how did that article ended up on a publication you are reading? Can you submit your content there? With a link to something new and cool on your web site? If you are thinking of PR submissions at this stage, I can tell you, you are on the wrong track. Think of guest blog posts. Think of the places where different people publish content. You are probably getting where I am going with this… yes the combined name of all such sites is Social Media.

Categories
Blogs Recruitment Recruitment Agency Search Engine SEO SERP

Recruitment SEO: Googoe Index Saturaton

Imagine the following scenario:

First in Google for your keyword!
Your web site has one page, and the site is with that page linked first for your main keyword. One would say this is the search engine optimisation done very well. The site is first for its keyword. What else can one ask for?

First in Google for all your keywords!
When will realise there are multiple keywords your site need to be first for in Google searches. One page will not make it easier. You will create one page for each keyword. It usually starts with the page for ‘Clients’ and ‘Job Seekers’. You will optimise each of those pages to get on top of Google searches for your search keyword of the search phrase. Most recruitment agencies would naturally want to be ranked on top for the phrase “Recruitment Agency” – to attract Clients. Then there are similar keywords targeted to Job Seekers like “Jobs in IT”, or whatever your agency specialises in. If you get first for those search keywords – have you done your SEO good? Of course, you are first in Google for all your main keywords.

Highly ranked in Google for every single one of your jobs, pages and blog posts (and having tons of them!)
In this scenario, you are not really first for search phrases like the usual hot one “Recruitment Agency”. Instead, all your jobs are on top or close to the top for ANY relevant keyword to that job. You cannot really define what keywords you are highly ranked for since it depends on what jobs you have advertised on your site at that time.

If you don’t have jobs in a particular industry, or for some reason, they don’t rank as well as your competition, you write blogs about those industries. In essence, what you are doing is you are creating more content and publishing it on more pages on your web site. Those new pages then start ranking for the keywords you are writing about. What you are doing is you are saturation Google index and the Google search results pages with your entries. This enables you to capture traffic for any search phrase you are interested in. Your web site becomes an inbound marketing platform that is quite simple to use. Need some Java developers? Just write about the Java development on your site. Get that content in Google index, and anyone searching for Java Development will see your site listed in the Google search results. If you write interesting articles and they are nicely presented in the search results – anyone looking for a Java development will come to your site!

This is what I call Google Saturation. It is a process of submitting the content on your web site to Google, for various search phrases you are interested in. Notice the difference between the top two scenarios. We don’t have the ”Main Keyword(s)” we want to rank for on top of the search engines.

The table below shows the Google Saturation of 29 recruitment agency web sites and www.JobsBlog.ie as a marker. The number next to each web site shows the total number of pages Google has from each web site.

Note that this table is the first on in this Recruitment SEO series that show really drastic differences between the 29 randomly chosen recruitment agency web sites.

URL Google Index
http://www.cpl.ie  496000
http://www.morganmckinley.ie  291000
http://www.hays.ie  184000
http://www.eolas.ie  10700
http://www.collinsmcnicholas.ie  7580
http://www.icds.ie  6980
http://www.brightwater.ie  5680
http://www.peoplegroup.ie  5490
http://www.rftgroup.ie  4810
http://www.Vantage.ie  4660
http://www.jobsblog.ie  4430
http://www.frsrecruitment.com  2390
http://www.hrm.ie  783
http://www.qedrecruitment.ie  610
http://www.careerwise.ie  602
http://www.Stelfox.ie  601
http://www.recruitmentplus.ie  533
http://www.3qrecruitment.ie  528
http://www.EdenRecruitment.ie  471
http://www.accountancysolutions.ie  446
http://www.MatrixRecruitment.ie  302
http://www.gempool.ie  190
http://www.Recruiters.ie  189
http://www.placeme.ie  145
http://www.hudson.ie  138
http://www.harmonics.ie  100
http://www.Brompton.ie  62
http://www.enterprisepeople.ie  37
http://www.solasconsulting.ie  5
http://www.Sigmar.ie  n/f

By looking at your web site visitors logs in a program like Google Analytics you will notice that even linked first for your most important keyword it still delivers traffic that is a very small percentage of your total visitor’s traffic from Google for all the other keywords combined. If you have a high Google Saturation – meaning hundreds of thousands of pages featured in the Google search results, the traffic for your main 10 most important keywords brings less than 1% of your total traffic! And as such, the ranking for one individual keyword becomes irrelevant to the overall traffic of the whole site. If you want to make a success in capturing the largest possible amount of free traffic, this is definitely the route to go. Think big! THINK BIG!

Google Saturation is one of the key factors of SEO. It is also the most often ignored one.

Categories
Internet Recruitment Recruitment Agency Search Engine SEO

Recruitment SEO: Alexa traffic ranking

After ranking the Irish recruitment agency web sites based on the Google PageRank and less known SEOmoz rank here is the one most marketers are familiar with: Alexa. What Alexa does exactly and how does it do it was a topic of a debate from the day Alexa have started publishing the traffic ranking scores. Some people like it, and some don’t. As with most of the ranking algorithms, it is usually the people featured on top that agree with Alexa’s results, and the ones ranked towards the bottom would have a different opinion. But that is the nature of every semi obscure ranking system. And in the world of SEO, nothing is really that straight forward!

What does Alexa web site ranking number mean?

What does Alexa say about their ranking number? They say that the Alexa number associated with each web site is its ranking in the overall global web traffic. So a site with the Alexa’s No. 1 is the web site with the most visitors, and as the ranking number grows the lower you are on the list of the sites based on the number of visitors. So the smaller the Alexa ranking score, the more traffic your web site has (according to Alexa).

So here is the same list of the 29 Irish recruitment agencies and the www.JobsBlog.ie within them so you can use it as a benchmark. There are some results that are just “screaming out” in this Alexa web site traffic ranking list. I’ll let you be the judge of it yourself:

URL

Alexa Rank

http://www.cpl.ie

291100

http://www.morganmckinley.ie

336866

http://www.hays.ie

803824

http://www.brightwater.ie

874987

http://www.peoplegroup.ie

1274311

http://www.Vantage.ie

1441180

http://www.eolas.ie

1769945

http://www.jobsblog.ie

1817137

http://www.icds.ie

1854172

http://www.frsrecruitment.com

1997184

http://www.EdenRecruitment.ie

2428334

http://www.collinsmcnicholas.ie

2595232

http://www.hrm.ie

2811817

http://www.recruitmentplus.ie

3457055

http://www.careerwise.ie

4564311

http://www.Stelfox.ie

4828821

http://www.Recruiters.ie

4831059

http://www.rftgroup.ie

5312061

http://www.3qrecruitment.ie

6804532

http://www.MatrixRecruitment.ie

8119435

http://www.accountancysolutions.ie

8669731

http://www.gempool.ie

8720144

http://www.solasconsulting.ie

9507536

http://www.hudson.ie

12469855

http://www.enterprisepeople.ie

12578768

http://www.placeme.ie

17197072

http://www.qedrecruitment.ie

18446204

http://www.harmonics.ie

18661080

http://www.Sigmar.ie n/f
http://www.Brompton.ie n/f

Why are there two web sites that have no data in Alexa? I have absolutely no clue.

Now, if you compare the Alexa ranking above and the two lists we have looked at before: The Google PageRank and SEOmoz MozRank, there are some obvious similarities. It is especially obvious towards the tops of the lists. The same recruitment agency web sites feature the top spots, and there are no “Big Surprises” there. If your site is high in one listing, it is high in the other two as well.

Categories
Internet Job Site Recruitment Recruitment Agency SEO

Recruitment SEO: 29 Irish recruitment web sites SEO Ranking by mozRank

102 people have visited the Recruitment SEO: Google PR yesterday, where I listed the 29 recruitment agency web sites based on their Google PageRank. It even stirred some comments and discussions in social media. Mostly on LinkedIn as it is expected since the recruitment social network LinkedIn is a “natural habitat” for an average recruiter.

Google PR has its quirkiness. It is fantastic and horrible at the same time. It needs to be looked at relative to each web site as opposed to the absolute ranking number. That makes it almost useless to the people outside of the search engine optimisation industry. This is why so many people dismiss Google PageRank. It is not the easiest to “get” actually.

Today we will look at the same group of the 29 recruitment agency web sites and this blog www.JobsBlog.ie and compare them a different by third party ranking mechanism. We will look at the ranking by the SEOmoz: MozRank. Here is what the SEOmoz site says about the MozRank:

What is MozRank?

MozRank represents a link popularity score. It reflects the importance of any given web page on the Internet. Pages earn MozRank by the number and quality of other pages that link to them. The higher the quality of the incoming links, the higher the MozRank.

How is MozRank Scored?

We calculate this score on a logarithmic scale between 1 and 10. Thus, it’s much easier to improve from a MozRank of 3 to 4 than it is to improve from 8 to 9. An “average” MozRank of what most people think of a normal page on the Internet is around 3.

How can MozRank be improved?

A web page’s mozRank can be improved by getting lots of links from semi-popular pages or a few links from very popular pages.

Note that MozRank is all about links. The number of links to your web site and their link quality. It is very safe to assume that a higher MozRank results in the larger amount of the referral traffic – from the web sites linking to your site.

Recruitment   Agency mozRank
http://www.morganmckinley.ie 6.22
http://www.cpl.ie 6.17
http://www.hays.ie 6.11
http://www.Vantage.ie 5.84
http://www.eolas.ie 5.62
http://www.brightwater.ie 5.49
http://www.hudson.ie 5.42
http://www.gempool.ie 5.04
http://www.jobsblog.ie 5.01
http://www.peoplegroup.ie 4.95
http://www.3qrecruitment.ie 4.93
http://www.hrm.ie 4.92
http://www.frsrecruitment.com 4.84
http://www.placeme.ie 4.74
http://www.harmonics.ie 4.56
http://www.Sigmar.ie 4.34
http://www.rftgroup.ie 4.33
http://www.collinsmcnicholas.ie 4.29
http://www.careerwise.ie 4.15
http://www.icds.ie 4.09
http://www.EdenRecruitment.ie 4.08
http://www.Brompton.ie 3.9
http://www.qedrecruitment.ie 3.75
http://www.Recruiters.ie 3.69
http://www.accountancysolutions.ie 3.68
http://www.recruitmentplus.ie 3.63
http://www.Stelfox.ie 3.55
http://www.MatrixRecruitment.ie 3.43
http://www.enterprisepeople.ie 2.71
http://www.solasconsulting.ie 2.67

Notice the difference and the similarity of the SEOmoz MozRank ranking of the 29 recruitment agencies above and the Google PageRank ranking from the blog post yesterday. How to judge if your MozRank is good compared to the other recruitment agencies? This blog http://www.jobsblog.ie/ has a MozRank of 5.01. The general rule you can adopt is – if your company web site is below a personal blog, you might want to do something about it.

Any surprises in the recruitment agency web sites ranking by SEOmoz MozRank above? Do you find it more or less relevant than the Google PR ranking?

Categories
Job Site Recruitment Recruitment Agency SEO

Recruitment SEO: Google PR

Working on the search engine optimization of the recruitment agency web site, the first thing one should look at is the competition. What other agencies are competing for the same keywords. One could widen the analysis further, and look at what other sites like job boards, recruitment social media sites, employer career pages or blogs are competing for the same keywords. The first task is checking your direct competitors. The quickest way to check ‘Who is Who’ in your industry is to check the Google PageRank (Google PR). There are million other things you should measure, but Google has done its best to measure it all for you, and give you a very simple score. Google PR number. From 0 to 10 (where 10 is the best).

Here is a list of randomly picked largest recruitment agencies in Ireland and their web site Google PR score.

Web Site

Google PR

http://www.cpl.ie

6

http://www.hudson.ie

6

http://www.brightwater.ie

5

http://www.hays.ie

5

http://www.Sigmar.ie

5

http://www.collinsmcnicholas.ie

5

http://www.eolas.ie

5

http://www.accountancysolutions.ie

5

http://www.morganmckinley.ie

4

http://www.hrm.ie

4

http://www.EdenRecruitment.ie

4

http://www.frsrecruitment.com

4

http://www.rftgroup.ie

4

http://www.recruitmentplus.ie

4

http://www.icds.ie

4

http://www.Vantage.ie

4

http://www.Brompton.ie

4

http://www.careerwise.ie

4

http://www.jobsblog.ie

4

http://www.Stelfox.ie

3

http://www.MatrixRecruitment.ie

3

http://www.gempool.ie

3

http://www.Recruiters.ie

3

http://www.qedrecruitment.ie

3

http://www.3qrecruitment.ie

3

http://www.placeme.ie

3

http://www.peoplegroup.ie

3

http://www.harmonics.ie

3

http://www.solasconsulting.ie

2

http://www.enterprisepeople.ie

2

Note I have also put this blog here in the mix. It is a benchmark really more than anything else. The rule of thumb could be here if you are above JobsBlog.ie you are OK. If you are below you should look into it since your SEO is obviously not really done right, hence no job applicants on your company web site.

Categories
Recruitment Recruitment Agency

National Recruitment Federation Conference 2011

Jonathan Campbell at NRF 2011The Conference entitled ‘Recruitment 2011 – The Way Forward” in City West Hotel on Thursday 12th of May focused on the dynamic tools and skill sets the industry needs to embrace in order to approach the coming year with confidence. With a line up of excellent speakers from around the globe, a full schedule has been designed to arm the delegates with training, advice, and tips to enhance their business skills well into the future.

NRF President Colin Donnery said, ”The Irish economy has probably had its most challenging 12 months ever but there is an optimism returning to businesses in most sectors. The recruitment sector has proven its resilience during this period with agencies providing the flexible staffing solutions that have helped our clients get through the worst and grow into the future. Impending changes in legislation this year will have an impact on how we do business in our temporary labour markets so it is vital we are ready for all eventualities. With this in mind we have chosen a strong line up of Global expert speakers who will impart information on trends, legislation and what the future holds for the Recruitment Industry in Ireland.

With the new impending legislation for Agency workers coming into effect in December this year the Federation invited the NRF members to bring along their HR Clients. It resulted in the probably largest attendance of any NRF Conference lately.

Speakers:
Mr John Perry TD at National Recruitment Federation Conference 2011Mr, John Perry TD

Wikipedia: John Perry (born 15 August 1956) is an Irish Fine Gael politician. He is currently a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Sligo–North Leitrim constituency,[1] and the Minister of State for Small Business.

Perry was born in Ballymote, County Sligo. He was educated at Ballymote National School and Corran College, Ballymote. Perry was first elected to Dáil Éireann at the 1997 general election for the constituency and has retained his seat since.[2] In 1997, he became Fine Gael spokesperson on Science, Technology, Small Business and Enterprise, and the Border Counties. In June 2000, he was appointed Assistant Director of Organisation and Deputy spokesperson with special responsibility for Border Issues. He held this post until February 2001.

Between September 2002 and October 2004 he was Vice-Chairman of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications and Natural Resources. He has also served as Chairman of the Dáil Public Accounts Committee. In October 2004, he was appointed to the position as party spokesperson for the Marine, in Enda Kenny’s Front Bench. He was demoted from the Front Bench after a reshuffle following the 2007 general election. He was a member of Sligo County Council from 1999 to 2004, representing the Sligo–Strandhill electoral area.

In July 2010, he was appointed as party spokesperson on Small Business.[3] On 10 March 2011, he was appointed as Minister of State for Small Business.

Peter Cosgrove at National Recruitment Federation Conference 2011Chairperson: Peter Cosgrove, Vice President NRF
Peter joined the NRF committee in July 2009 and was elected to the role of Vice President in October 2010. Peter started his career in banking with JP Morgan before working with PWC in London as a management consultant. He began his career in recruitment in 2000 with Robert Walters, subsequently with Hudson in 2003 and currently is a Director with CPL. Peter has a strong background in running a sales business as well as turning businesses around through strategic and operational initiatives demonstrated in recruitment roles and previously in his PWC career. Peter is a regular contributor to the national media on areas of recruitment, assessment and retention as well as a speaker at industry events. Peter is also a Board member of the not for profit organisation Junior Achievement an organisation targeted at keeping students in schools to improve their education.

Colin Donnery President National Recruitment Federation Conference 2011Colin Donnery, NRF President
Colin has been working in the recruitment industry since 1998. Initially working with an international IT consultancy he has also managed agencies in the Sales and Marketing, Hospitality, Engineering, construction and scientific sectors. Colin has been working with FRS Recruitment since 2003 as general manager , FRS specialise in the provision of bespoke labour supply and permanent recruitment solutions across all sectors in Ireland and internationally.

Frank Collins at National Recruitment Federation Conference 2011Frank Collins, NRF Legislation expert
Director of Compliance and Regulatory Affairs at Parc Aviation Limited.
Frank is a Fellow of the Chartered Accountants in Ireland and has a Bachelor of Business Studies Degree from Trinity College. He also lectures in Trinity College on the Business and Information Technology Degree course.

Tony Goodwig at National Recruitment Federation Conference 2011Tony Goodwin, Antal International
Tony Goodwin is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Antal International, a global management and executive recruitment company and one of the fastest growing business services organisations in emerging markets such as China, Eastern Europe and India. Antal now has 92 offices in 32 countries around the world. A graduate of Middlesex University, Tony trained as a Chartered Accountant before moving into financial recruitment where he ran operations for HW Group (now part of Hudson). In 1993, spotting the potential of the new professional employment markets in the former Warsaw Pact countries, he set up his own business with an office in Budapest in Hungary and named the company Antal – Hungarian for ‘Tony’. Since then Tony and his team have developed substantial businesses in highly challenging environments across the globe, including both Russia and China. Tony has completed a book ‘How They Blew It’ which was published in July 2010. In June 2010, Tony was named as one of the country’s top businessmen after being awarded a prize at the Ernst & Young London & South Entrepreneur of the Year Awards 2010.

Ann Swain, APSCO
Ann Swain is the Chief Executive of The Association of Professional Staffing Companies, formed by the merger of the Association of Technology Staffing Companies and the Forum of Professional Recruiters in January 2009. APSCo provides a strong and united voice for those recruitment firms involved in the acquisition of business professionals on behalf of their clients on a permanent or flexible basis. Ann has a wealth of experience in the professional recruitment market as a recruiter, manager, trainer, sales director, managing director and spent a few years on the client side of the fence as an HR Manager. She was the founder, in 1988 of Learning Curve, the specialist recruitment industry training company which was acquired by the Delphi Group in 1997. Ann’s first, very successful, business book ‘The Professional Recruiter’s Handbook’ was published by Kogan Page in 2009 and has become a business best seller. Ann is a well-respected authority in our industry, a hugely popular international speaker and a passionate advocate for the UK Recruitment Profession.

Jonathan Campbell at NRF 2011Jonathan Campbell, Social Talent
Jonathan has worked as a Recruiter in Ireland and the Caribbean for the last 13 years but now runs Social Talent, a talent acquisition consultancy and agency that specialises in providing technology and social media services to recruiters. The team at Social Talent build talent communities; develop employer branding strategies, train internet recruiters & source recruitment staff for clients globally. Since forming late in 2010 they have worked with most of the leading recruitment agencies in Ireland and also work with corporates in the legal, technology and financial services sectors.

Kingsley AikinsKingsley Aikins, Networking Matters
Managing Director of Kingsley Aikins and Associates and is also Senior Advisor to The Ireland Funds having served previously as CEO of The Worldwide Ireland Funds. Previously he was Executive Director of the American Ireland Fund and founding Director of both The Australian Ireland Fund and The Ireland Fund of New Zealand. He formerly worked for CTT and the IDA. Kingsley is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin. Since 1976 the Fund has raised over $350 million for philanthropic projects across the island of Ireland and around the world. The fund is driven by members of Ireland’s worldwide Diaspora. Kingsley was also contributor to the Farmleigh Conference in 2009.The presentation covered both diaspora issues and networking: specifically the importance of a comprehensive global strategy that covers trade, investment, tourism, education and philanthropy and will shed light on what other countries are doing in this area. He outlined his four stage approach: Research, Cultivation, Solicitation and Stewardship.

Categories
CV Database Job Site LinkedIN Recruitment Recruitment Agency Social Networks Social Recruitment

LinkedIn Recruiter for Recruitment Agency

Well LinkedIn have decided that the Recruitment Agency market is to big not to service it. The new product called LinkedIn Recruiter is launched that enables Recruitment Agencies to harvest the full power of the LinkedIn Social Network.

Is LinkedIN Recruiter a good or a bad thing for you?

Well, depends from your standpoint. LinkedIn as any other social network is finding hard to monetise it’s service. The subscriptions to Employers aren’t making the desired revenue levels. Advertising Jobs didn’t take up in most of markets. In Ireland for example, there is about 30ish jobs advertised in LinkedIn at one time for the last two years (January 2009: 17 jobs in Ireland advertised in LinkedIN). Obviously not a sustainable business model. Considering and national job board even in the recession times has thousands of jobs advertised.

Therefore from a LinkedIn’s perspective, this is clearly a new revenue stream.

From the Recruitment Agency perspective, this lets them in LinkedIn on a completely different level than before. Built in protection when the staff leaves and being able to share the contacts and the communication is what was always missing element for the recruitment agencies. LinkedIn Recruiter is here to offer all what a recruitment agencies need to use LinkedIn on a larger scale than before.

And then there is a job hunter, the passive job hunter, the ordinary LinkedIn user. How will LinkedIn Recruiter affect him/her?

One thing is for sure – the amount of the job offers sent via LinkedIn InMail is going to increase. In markets where the LinkedIn Recruiter is going to be large, and there is a shortage of certain skills in the workforce, some LinkedIn users will find themselves as a target to job offers. So far it was great – since they wanted Employers to find them when they have a job for them. What happens when the Recruitment Agencies have a capacity to get to them easily is that a great ‘candidate’ will be contacted by every recruitment agency trying to fill the same position. So you might get 5, 10, 20,… InMails from all different Recruitment Agencies who are interested to head hunt you for the same role. If you not like the role – will you respond to all of them saying: ‘No Thanks.’? And when that happens next week when another company has a similar role, and you get XX InMails about it again?

So the success of sales of LinkedIn Recruiter will decrease the quality of the LinkedIn service for the job hunters that have skills that are in demand in their markets.

The trade off that LinkedIn is making with introducing LinkedIn Recruiter is that to increase their profits, they decided that it’s OK to decrease the quality of the service they are providing to their most sought users. The longer term problem for LinkedIn is what if those best users leave, finding they get too much SPAM? And with that crème candidates cut off, LinkedIn all of a sudden becomes not a source of Good passive Candidates, but of just … Passive Candidates? And even those slightly fed up by being hassled by many recruiters for the same job they don’t want in the first place?

Then again, LinkedIn limits the number of InMails that a recruiters can send a month. It is 50 a month (to multiple recipients each). So to reach more candidates and send more InMails a recruitment agency will just by more licenses. That creates more revenue for LinkedIn, so they will turn a blind eye that the top candidates gets bombarded with job offers.

Ireland might be a bit specific in that regard. Ireland is a small country where everyone knows everyone. (Almost) Literally! Online Social Networking take up in Ireland is far lower than in the US (where LinkedIn is from). Ireland is still the country where more people get a job via the traditional Job Boards than via the Social Networks. The ratio is changing, but we are far from the situation currently in US or Far East.

Who will be the first Irish recruitment agency in Ireland to take up the LinkedIn Recruiter offer?

Categories
Internet Job Site Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Work in Ireland (WorkinIreland.ie)

work in irelandWork in Ireland (WorkinIreland.ie) as jet another recruitment job portal. Although it is not really publicised, it is owned by a recruitment agency called Work Direct (WorkDirect.ie). The agency is run by the Directors Philip Beggs and Sabina Frontzek.

The Work in Ireland site is not that bad looking. Certainly not that bad as a FAS Jobs Site I wrote yesterday about. There are also about 20ish jobs advertised between two advertisers Alex Harp and Step One Recruitment.

The site has one sole purpose and that is to create a stream of fresh CV’s for the Work Direct recruitment agency. Therefore he advertisers email address and any contact details are hidden. On the page showing a job details there is also no Apply button, but it is replaced by Register Now button. This is to force job seekers to leave all their personal details, and the copy of the CV to the recruitment agency that runs the site before the application is sent to the advertiser.

I wonder will any recruitment agency, when they decide to make a job board, use their experience and knowledge of the industry and create something new? Something that will improve the process of the online recruitment? When will a single recruitment web site really differ from all the others? All the Irish recruitment agencies have jobs advertised on them, and all the sites are exactly the same. Same features, and quite a few actually look the same (Prosperity.ie being the exception). What happened to creativity? Is there absolutely nothing innovative the Irish recruitment agencies can come up with for more than 10 years now?

(hint: think social media)

Categories
Recruitment Recruitment Agency

CPL profits shrank 92%

Got an interesting tweet from Anne from CPL today. Pointing to the PR about CPL. It basically says that CPL is still in black. Pretax profits dropped 92% to €1.7 million for the 12 months to June, in what it called “better than expected” annual results.

Although he public knows them as the largest recruitment agency, they have actually laid off a lot of staff this year: from 483 to 333 over the year. A few good friends within them.

Irish Times and RTE have their full stories online.

Just one interesting fact. Goodbody analyst Dan Cavanagh said he was expecting operating profit of €4.9m for CPL in the year to June 30.

How wrong was he? :)

Categories
Career Internet Job Site Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Free Jobs (freejobs.ie)

Who says there is no such thing as a free lunch?

free-jobsI call from a client today about their jobs being published to FreeJobs.ie made me thinking. Their jobs published on the Free Jobs web site are about 3 years old. They got an application for a job advertised there yesterday. Since my client is using the multiple job posting service eRecruit, as a part of our Recruitment Marketing Manager product, they assumed that eRecruit is supplying the jobs to the Free Jobs web site, as it does to all the Irish Jobs sites (and news sites, and blogs, and niche web sites, etc…). Well in this case this was not the case. We in eRecruit have actually never even heard about a site called Free Jobs before.

So jobs published on Free Jobs web site are taken from somewhere. And published on the Free Jobs web site, without the owner of the content – the advertiser, in this case a recruitment agency knowing about that fact. Three years after that, the advertiser receives the job application. And un unpleasant situation really – how to explain to the poor job hunter that the recruiter quoted on the Free Jobs web site does not work anymore in that recruitment agency? How to explain that the company that was actually hiring does not even exist anymore? How to explain why is the job advertised, and invites the job seeker to reveal quite a lot of his private data (in the CV) for something that is not there? Quite unpleasant, isn’t it?

Well, that is the problem with the things that are free. No one is really responsible for the maintenance or the quality of their service. Sometimes it seems one would be better of paying 1 Euro, or some minimal fee, and receive a guarantee of a quality of service. This provides some revenue to the service provider as well, that helps funding the project. In the same time it gives the user of the service a level of guarantee that the service provided will work well.

I like free things. We all do. But unfortunately there are inherited problems with free services. Free Jobs web site is not the alone in the scenario where a free service of advertising jobs simply failed because of the unsustainable business model.

Categories
Blogs Career Internet Jobs LinkedIN Microsoft Recruitment Recruitment Agency Twitter

Recruitment Conference

irish-recruitment-conference-2009

Irish Recruiters LinkedIN Group got together in the a form of a Recruitment Conference.

It was great to see so many friends together, thank you all for coming!

We all need to say a BIG: Thank You to Declan Fitzgerald who organised it all again so well!

Pictures? Well this time around I decided I will mail you the pictures – and only the ones you are on! Just put the comment below and I’ll mail you all the photos you are on. I emailed some nice photographs to your mailboxes already, so check there first. This is just out of a respect for all of you who joined us for a pint afterwards. Please no funny faces to the camera anymore! :)

When the world’s largest professional social network is at the same table with the country’s largest jobs site and the largest recruitment agency, all organised by the world’s largest (richest) IT company… it has to be interesting. Even in the extremely sad times like these. 3 out of 2 recruiters have been made redundant in the last 9 months. I guess the room would be fuller if the conference took place a year ago.

What I took from the conference is that the social networks definitely ARE the most important recruitment tools. LinkedIN is the most important although having so slow penetration in Ireland. Less than 150 000 registered, and only a small percentage of that with a useful profile (from the recruitment perspective).

Job Boards still dominating the market but quickly losing their prior historical dominance. Recruitment advertising fees are dropping, and also disappearing with RecruitIreland.com leading that avenue.

Recruitment agencies are changing their offerings and repositioning themselves in the recruitment process. From all we have heard on the recruitment conference and especially on the ‘After Party’ – if you know how to use Twitter to source the candidates, there is a great future for you in recruitment!

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
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
Blogs

National Recruitment Federation 2009

National Recruitment Federation 2009The National Recruitment Federation Conference today was far better than I expected. To be honest I was a bit afraid to go there knowing what the Recruitment Industry is going through in the last months. There are a number of people I have heard assessments quoting more than 60% of the recruitment consultants been made redundant in the last 6 months. The figure of about 5000 to 6000 thousand recruiters being laid off was also mentioned today during the NRF 2009 conference.

The choice of the venue was excellent, the service was really good thanks to the number of sponsors of the event. There was even a draw for a big, big shredder!

The conference itself started with a bit of politics, changes in the legislations, status in Europe and similar topics relevant to the Directors and the Business Owners in the recruitment industry. After the (quite good) coffee, it was all concentrated about positive aspects and actually quite uplifting! One presenter after another, and I actually felt better and better. I am really glad I was a part of it, since I did hear interesting ideas and thoughts today.

Here is what I scribbled on my NRF Annual Conference 2009 Block (I am a freak for freebies!). It is just a random collection of quotes from various speakers:

Recession Trend: Get rid of the middle man! – Recruitment Agency is a middle man!?

National Recruitment Federation will:
Reduce cost
Publish a new web site
Do more PR and Marketing
NRF Certificate will be introduced for each recruitment consultant. Pilot will start in June, and the real recruitment certification program in September 2009.

Recruitment Agency Marketing consists of:
B to B – Pass the Gatekeeper
B to C – Brand yourself as a place for a job hunter to go when looking for a new job

Premier Group – Positive News Monitor (helps staff noticing and concentration on the positive news)

CPL – ‘…We will come out as a different industry…’ – A comment that really made me thinking, especially with the ‘Evolve’ message from The Chairperson: Rowan Manahan

There was also an interesting choice of presenters, since right in the middle of the conference we had a very good Stress Management presentation. I was wondering for some time – what is this doing in a National Recruitment Federation conference? Then again I felt it actually relaxed me, and felt it helped the people sitting around me as well. So good choice of the presentations – well done the organisers! Irish recruiters are stressed these days. Half of the people in the industry has been made redundant in the last half a year? Actually I cannot think of a better therapy than stress and anger management.
keithbohanna LinkedIN
The LinkedIN was mentioned as well. There is still about 40ish jobs in Ireland on LinkedIN (only). 2 of those have been from the people in the NRF 2009 audience. I am guessing Prosperity?

There is no Irish Recruiter utilising YouTube.

The Targeted advertising that Facebook enables was mentioned. Want quality candidates? Well you can filter by sex, age (is that even legal?!), country and guess what? The Employer!

Recruitment is in a forced evolution and it ain’t pretty!

Recruiters should ask themselves and even more their clients: What other services could we do for you?

The last presentation culminated the uplifting session really. We even heard about the clear and undisputable signs of the start of the recovery of the recruitment industry. I do not know if it was a too much coffee but it really made me feel great!

On the way out I got a copy of the Irish Times papers, with the sad face of the Prime Minister. The rain was sipping outside. The water feature looked sad in the rain, and empty golf course looked like it is Autumn. Sky was so gray. Stepping out of the hotel from the National Recruitment Conference 2009 was actually a bit shocking. Kind of like falling back into the reality.

National Recruitment Federation 2009 - Sponsors

Anyway, I did bring my camera, and yes I made a few pictures. Thanks again to both the organisers and the sponsors!
(Vicky sais that I am like a stalker! :))

I hope to have a longer chat published here with Frank Collins, NRF President. We spoke today quickly about the changes the NRF is going through in the last five years, and about the plans for the future web site, the recruitment certification announced, and the role NRF is playing now and will be playing in the future.

Categories
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!