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What is The Recruitment Unconference?

What is a recruitment conference? We all know the answer to that. It is a large meeting where a number of people (one by one) speak to the group. There are short breaks in between speakers, for the people get a coffee and network.

Who comes to the conference?

Speakers – are people presenting. Salespeople presenting how their solutions, products or services changed the industry for the better.

Delegates – people who sit, listen, take notes and have coffee in the breaks. Delegates are quite often people who are looking for a new job. They look around what else is there. Some attendees are there because they are sent there by their employers. They have to attend one or two of those a year. You can see them leaving quickly after the last presentation, to catch some time off for an afternoon shopping or something alike.

What is Recruitment Unconference?

Recruitment Unconference is a gathering of recruiters with the social media rules applied. There are no speakers. There are no delegates. Just recruiters who can behave as they do in the social media: lead conversations, contribute, listen, move to another room/topic, network or just have a coffee. Yes, there is a coffee here as well!

It is list Facebook or Twitter really. Everyone can talk about anything they want to really. Everyone can listen (follow/connect) whoever they choose. Anyone can comment, contribute and even ‘take over’ the conversation. Anyone can change the topic. Anyone can. And everyone is invited to do exactly that! Everyone is asked to contribute. Everyone’s opinion is asked for in a discussion on every topic he is physically present at.

Now that we know what the Recruitment Unconference is, let’s check on how the most popular one actually functions in the recruitment industry. This brings us to its founder @BillBoorman and his unconference events taking place around the globe. They are called TRU for The Recruitment Unconference. After the three characters, there is a name of the city or country the event is in. So you have TRULondon, TRUDublin and similar. If an event is held multiple times in the same city the name also gets a number Like TruDublin4. This is to form a hashtag for Twiter. Why is Twitter important? Well, the usual ways of communication like email and phone are one to one or one to many (mailing lists). The Unconference is different because everyone is welcomed to contribute. So social media is a place to look for any info (or post any info!) about the recruitment unconference.

Since the recruiters who attend the unconference are (in most cases) the natural users of the social media, they post their thoughts especially on the Twitter, as it is the fastest channel, in real-time during the unconference. They all use the hashtag so it is really simple to follow what anyone is tweeting about. That usually is a reflection on what is spoken about. You can usually follow multiple discussions from the same conference at the same time. What is the best about it is that anyone on Twitter can contribute to those discussions by using the same unconference hashtag. This makes the discussions leave the room and go out to social media. There the discussions get the life of their own.

The format that Bill has made for this TRU events is the following. There is a quick opening. The bigger the conference the quicker it is, since the larger the crowd is the harder it is to keep them quiet. Remember those are not your Delegates. These people are here to participate.

Tracks

Bill usually announces the tracks (topics) that will be discussed in different rooms. He also announces who is the track leader for each topic. That is usually an expert in that field. Or a recruiter who wants to share the recent experience with some new tool used for the recruitment, and ask for feedback. Depending on the size of the unconference there are usually 3 tracks running in parallel. They are held in separate rooms. Anyone can choose any track and even move to another track whenever they choose. Bill himself would for example move quite often from a track to track, hopping from a conversation to another and contributing to each one he hops in. Sometimes he would also bring the relevant points being made in another track that is happening in parallel.

As social media is not for everyone, the recruitment unconference is not for everyone as well. Some people prefer to be delegates rather than to participate. Social is not for everyone. The anti-social or traditional conference is not for everyone as well. People discovered they can apply the social media rules to the conference and that some types of conferences the social conference or the unconference is a much better format. Hence the recruitment unconference TRU that @BillBoorman started 5 years ago in London has spread to a long list of counties on different continents. Recruiters themselves found the unconference format to work better than the speaker-delegate format. Not all of the recruiters that is. But the recruiters that understood the social media and found the way how to use it for recruitment.

The #TRU in the City near YOU!

The recruitment unconference, the #TRU will come to the city near you if it didn’t already. You will not find a flyer in your post with a list of fabulous speakers. There is not even a list of delegates. To be honest not even flashing your own business card is a welcome gesture. Connection on LinkedIn and Facebook or Follow on Twitter is on the other hand. If you are a delegate type, trust me, it’s not for you. Where you will find about #TRU is in the social media channels, and there only. On Bill’s Blog as well. And from there to hashtags on Twitter. While I am writing this the #TruHelsinki is on right now. Guess what it is all on social media in real-time as well. You can follow it here: https://twitter.com/#!/search/?q=%23TruHelsinki&src=hash.

If you like what you see there we will see you soon at #TRU. If not, that’s OK too.

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Career Internet Interview Job Site Recruitment Social Networks Social Recruitment

Interview with Cameron Worth

Cameron is the organiser of the International Recruitment Conference that is taking place this Friday in Dublin. He is really passionate about organising it and really a pleasure to deal with. Here is a short ‘Interview’ we had a few days ago with the upcoming International Recruitment Conference as a topic.

Q. Tell us about yourself and your company

A. My main background is in organising Recruitment Fairs and also heading up the business development team for a network of Multilingual Job Boards. Having organised Conferences in previous companies I am now offering the International Recruitment market something different.

Q. Explain to me what the IRC is about in 20 words

A Conference for International Corporate Recruiters to connect, learn and respond to industry changes. 2011 is focused on Social Media Recruiting.

Q. What is the speakers line-up looking like?

A. Fantastic if I may say so myself. As well as yourself speaking we have the likes of Bill Boorman, who is just an absolute fountain of Social Media knowledge. We also have Data Protection expert Rob Corbet from Arthur Cox, Niamh Hall as well who is a Trademark attorney and is going to be looking at how brands can be protected on-line. LinkedIn are doing a 30 minute Q&A with the audience and to finish off we have the EMEA Recruitment Director from Oracle, a man by the name of Kevin Blair who is an excellent speaker.

Q. What are the intentions of the IRC?

A. A complete Monopoly on Social Media! Every tweet, status update, LinkedIn group, friend request will have to be approved by us. Only joking, we really just want to promote Social Media properly in the context of recruitment. A lot is being done but not a lot of it is done properly (one such exception is Peter Cosgrove’s training sessions which really seem to be very well-received).

Q. What do you want people to go away with?

A. A more informed opinion on Social Media Recruiting, new contacts in the industry, a deeper understanding of the potential issues with Social Media….Also the pen and conference guide as they look great!

Q. Is there plans for the future with your conferences?

There is and there isn’t. There is in terms of ‘Yes we will be doing these conferences in 2012 and beyond’ but there isn’t in terms of Subject Matter for these type of events. What is most important with these conferences, and what really infuriates me sometimes with other conferences, is that relevance is key. 1 year ago the market wouldn’t have been right for a conference like the one we have on Friday, so what is to stop this subject matter being dated and irrelevant in a further 12 months.

What is sure is that the conferences will always be based around the corporate recruitment industry and the current hot topics in the market at the time of the conferences.

When – Friday March 11th
Where – Guinness Storehouse, Dublin 8

More information on the International Recruiters Conference can be found at http://www.bilingualpeople.ie/conference
LinkedIn Group http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=3770622&trk=anet_ug_grppro

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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.

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Recruitment Agency

NRF Awards 2009

The National Recruitment Federation Awards 2009 was really a great night. It was the celebration of the recruitment industry and it was really amazing how positive it all was. Recruitment in Ireland has gone through its worst years for decades. After excellent Recruitment Conference earlier this year, the Awards Ceremony to be even more uplifting, one couldn’t really expect. It is the people in the recruitment industry in Ireland, the National Recruitment Federation members, and all their representatives present last Friday, that made it all as great as it all was.

Elaine Roddy, NRF Director deserves a special thanks for organizing it all (Yes I was there a few hours earlier to check how the things are going with the organization! :)).

Frank Collins, NRF President – made the shortest speech possible, making sure the dinner doesn’t get cold. On a serious side Franks work with the NRF shows outside of the NRF organization, making him a as respected person in the recruitment industry in Ireland as he is.

Mark Fielding, CEO ISME - NRF Awards 2009

The panel of judges were made up of Sean O’Meara, Former Chief Executive of Young Advertising; Kirsty Kirkwood, Former European Head of HR at State Street Ireland and Mark Fielding, CEO of the Irish Small & Medium Enterprises Association, (ISME). Ex-MD of Computer People Ltd, Grainne Martin was a new addition to the panel this year as a recruitment advisor.

Mark Fielding, CEO ISME & Ivan Stojanovic, MD Employ Ireland

Photo by Ian Wortley of Jackie Brown Medical

I spent most of the evening chatting with the judging panel of the NRF. It was interesting to hear their reasoning for awarding each award. Mark Fielding, CEO ISME
Made it the most clear by defining the ‘Passion’ as what made the largest impression on him. He was amazed by the quality of shortlisted companies this year, and admitted it was really hard to choose one in each category.

It was also the eve of the Lisbon Treaty Referendum that night, and we had a chat about that. I was shocked the day later realising that Marks prediction of the outcome of the referendum was absolutely correct – he predicted the percentages exactly as the results published a day later! Well done!!!

NRF 2009 Disco

As a true night out – National Recruitment Federation Awards 2009 ceremony culminated with a live music and dance… With most of the cameras way out of focus to capture any of that!

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Internet Interview Job Site Recruitment Search Engine SEO Social Recruitment Twitter

Bill Fischer, Co-Founder of TwitterJobSearch.com

bill fischerBill Fischer is having a speech in Dublin on the Microsoft’s Future of Recruitment conference later this week. His company in Bill’s own words: TwitterJobSearch.com, is a global search engine for Twitter that uses natural language processing to identify and index offers of employment.

I asked Bill what will he be talking about in the recruitment conference in Dublin. Here is from Bill in his own words:

Bill Fischer: Hi Ivan, Yes, I’ll be discussing some of the challenges and opportunities that the real-time web brings to the recruitment space. There will be some analysis of the current social media landscape, some thoughts on search/cpc approaches to recruitment, and an introduction of some of our new products that sit in the social media/search space.

Bill is the expert in the field, and his latest Twitter Job Search gig raised a lot of dust in the online recruitment world. In the Ireland lagging in Social Media adoption article only a few days ago, I wrote about the Twitter Job Search penetration in Ireland. It will be interesting to see how will Bill’s presentation affect the number of jobs in Ireland in the Twitter Job Search and in the social media in general.

About Bill Fischer
Co-Founder and Director of Workdigital Ltd, the vertical search solutions development company that built workhound.co.uk and twitterjobsearch.com. Co-Founder of DVD Station, Inc., a world-class media/entertainment internet retail systems company. Former VP of marketing for a massively multiplayer online gaming company with over 2.4mm customers in 50+ companies, and builder of marketing systems for a user generated content site acquired by Electronic Arts. Previous marketing and general management experience at more.com, threerings.net and Ebates.com. A frequent speaker, interviewee, and panelist for entertainment trade and classified search and was acknowledged in the editor-in-chief of Wired’s book, The Long Tail, as an expert on collaborative filtering and internet search engines. Twitter: @williamfischer LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/wmfischer

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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!

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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!