ERE Exchange Recruitment conference

Just in case any of you want to learn a little more about international recruitment from some of the best and biggest in the business this conference in Amsterdam may interest you: read more here. See you there!

Yahoo Invites Us Into it's new social network Mash!

So here we go again...this time it's Yahoo’s new social network: Mash.

Mash includes features common to Facebook, MySpace, and My Yahoo. You can load a set of modules onto your profile page and move them around drag-and-drop style. The modules include Flickr RSS, Ego Boost, Common Friends, MyMoshLog2, Blog Module (RSS 2.0), Asteroids, Astrology, PimpMyPet, Hover, Kaleidescope, Guestbook, and My Stuff. Mash also has something called Pulse, which is very similar to Facebook’s news feed. The Pulse page shows “updates from your friends” that are basically Twitter-like messages reporting all of your friends’ activity on Mash. The modules gallery also states that “in the coming months we’re going to open up our module development platform to 3rd party developers.” The site is an invitation only application at the moment... so expect some requests to join from your friends in the future...

Google updates its search functionality on Advanced Search Page

The advanced search page has been upgraded and now you can search pages in the last 24 hours and 2 months... in additional to the usual 1,3,6 and 12 month options. Pretty cool functionailty if you want to search for CVs that are only 24 hours old!

And here is for the hack for the URL which I learned about from the excellent Tara Calishan. The syntax for the date seach is:&as_qdr=. The variables are d (day), w (week), m (month) and y (year). So the way this works is if you try a search and added &as_qdr=d to the end, you'd get only results from those pages added to the Google index in the last 24 hours.

So the examples would be:2 days is &as_qdr=d2. Searching 3 weeks is &as_qdr=w3, and so on. Now when you start goofing around with the result URLs, odd things can happen.

Yahoo getting into the LinkedIn game

It's a bit late and they'll certianly be chasing their tail but Yahoo have decided to try get deeper into the social networking job connection game providing a LinkedIn like service to connect colleage students with employeesa at companies whom are recruting. It's called Yahoo KickStart. It's still in concept phase but we'll probably see it soon. Learn more here.

Monster hacked for the 2nd time

As if one time isn't enough now Monster has been hit twice and millions of people's personal data has been compromised. Read more here.

Vlog your Job and Facebook indexing in Google

For those who don't know I am working from Barcelona these days and am settling into life in the very nice Microsoft sales sub based down in the very trendy Daigonal Del Mar on the sea front.I've been 10 days here and have settled in sufficiently enough to start catching up on my neglected stream of recruitment blog updates and newsbytes... here's two of the things out there are the moment that caught my eye:

1. Video Blogs: Somthing that caught my attention straight off the bath that I wanted to share was a new UK company that has come on the scene called Vlog Your Job. It's a WordPress blog masked as a professional site. While I like it's something we have been doing in Microsoft for some time now. It's not rocket science simply record a video of a hiring manager discussing their opportunity talking about their culture, benfits, etc. When I went on the site I tried to open a video and got tired of waiting so I left, I also tried to leave an encouraging comment on the site but I was brought to the WordPress username and password section which meant having to login in which I wasn't prepare to hang around for. Check it out and see what you think. It might encourage to finally get out the camcorder and start advertising some of your own jobs. And as I said it's not a new idea. Check out Jobs2view for another slant on the offering.

2. Facebook thinking of embedding in Google.It seems like Facebook is going from strength to strength and it is quickly gathering loyal followers away from MySpace, Orkut, LinkedIn and the rest. Last month 3 high profile Google engineers who had realised their magic 4 years stock options and made a fortune left and joined FaceBook which is a sign of real potential and a sign of a potential flotation in my mind. Anyhow last week facebook conducted a poll asking 'Would you care if someone could search Google and find a Facebook page with your name and a small profile photo?' This ads some more interesting spice to whether a recruiter would use social networks to fing d qualify a candidates suitability to a role based on their social network profile and what they have been saying in some of their scraps. I wonder has anyone in Ireland been disqualified for a role based on what their social footprint looks like on the Internet? But let's have a reality check here about FaceBook before you all start racing off into the sun set and start hunting candidates on it. LinkedIn is still my number one choice. It has by far for me much more relevant European profiles. If you are looking to hire from the US i'd probably go for Facebook but on the internation scene LinkedIn is still number 1.

Depending on which survey you read, 40 to 60 percent of the workforce is just waiting for you to call them with a great job

I read Kathy Barton's article on dissaction within the workforce in the US today and it sited some very interesting facts from CareerBuilder's 2007 'Dream Job' survey and also from the Department of Labour Statistics: You can read the article here on Alder concepts.

80-90% of the US labour force is not in their dream job and overall annual U.S. voluntary turnover increased to 23.4% in the year ending in August, 2006, up from 22.7% the previous year! I wonder what the stats are for Ireland?