M16 using Facebook to recruit!

Looks like her Majesty's British Service is recruiting their next James Bond on Facebook! Check it out here!

This week in recruitment

1. Firms' recruitment falls to 15-year low in London > 2. Indeed expand to India > 3.India's Fastest Growing Online Recruitment Site, Naukri.com, Chooses Akamai to Optimize Performance and Scalability > 4. Is everyone social networking - read what the Synovate survey has to say > 5. LoadzaJobs.ie have 3 week online recruitment fair

Facebook and Careerbuilder join forces

Previously I posted about clever LinkedIn building an API to Facebook's platform and it looks like CareerBuilder are following suit and jumping on the Facebook train. Just in case any of you there out there haven't heard of facebook well shame on you and here is a few stats to peak your interest.

- 4th most trafficked website in the World!
- 80 million active registered users
-Projected to have 200 million users by end of 08
- 45 billion page views per month
-Over 250,000 new active users a day

Here is the link to CareerBuilder's Facebook page and here is another to a clever company page created by Caeerbuilder. Where you can expect Careerbuiler to make it's money will be leveraging the newsfeed functionality in people's profiles for targeting advertisment. Prices are out in the UK and range from a plantnium package for £9k for 1.5 million impressions and a client facebook page to a silver package which is £3k for 500,000 impressions and a client page. For that kind of money maybe worth a try!

What's cool about these options is there is also the ability to purchase some ad space per a number of media options so you can look at what demographic and location you want to target amongst others which allows you control the hit rate a bit better.

To learn more about the partnership and learn about some of Career Builder's aggressive expansion plans read Careerbuilder's CEO, Eric Preseley's interview on CNET.

And not to be out done Monster in the UK also have their own page. Albeit, I haven't heard of any close knit relationship like Careerbuilder's forming yet. Maybe only a matter of time.

Saon Group do it again - but this time in south America

check out the news article here here.

Saongroup.com has expanded its operations to central America with the acquisition of Tecoloco.com. The company operates in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama and plans to open in Costa Rica before Christmas. The company also boasts an impressive client base that is expanding quickly.

The Irish recruiter, which is jointly owned by telecoms entrepreneur Denis O'Brien and Cork businessman Leslie Buckley, is believed to have paid more than $3 million (€2.05 million) to acquire the business although no price was disclosed.

If this spikes the entrepreneur in you what should you do to capitalise on the Latin American jobs board gold rush! Well, if you got some time on your hands and some money to spend and want to follow in the jet stream of Denis and co I'd susggest starting with the language! Learn that Spanish fluency you all dreamed about having. Get over to Central America and start yourself a job board and pay someone to get some clients to use it. Plan your exit to one of the never ending expanding job boards of the world. Career Builder was quite happy to buy 2nd choice and 3rd choice generic job boards all across Europe to expand its global brand. They could be a contender. Likewise Monster has proven that it is prepared to do the same. I reckon if you pick an excellent URL that can rank in organic searches quickly, provide a simple and clean architecture that works and get someone on the ground drumming up some clients with some careful CPC purchases and some consistent blogging you'll have a small business before you know it.

Creo que empersaria en Costa Rica, al menos, las playas son grandes si la empresa fracasa- Hasta pronto!