23.12.09

Introducing the FY10 Irish Recruiters Think Tank

To help me plan and cater for the variety of viewpoints now in the Irish Recruiters membership I have created the Irish Recruiters “Think Tank”. These are very passionate recruitment professionals that I have met for the first time in the Irish Recruiters events during FY09. They are from different segments of the industry and share my passion for technology and recruitment. I look forward to working with them and thank them for agreeing to give their time to help me prepare for more community, education and debate for the year ahead.

Roderick Smyth – Founder and CEO of Arithon


With a background in software development, Roderick founded web design company NSP in 1997 which was subsequently sold in June 2000. Following this, he co-founded Arithon, becoming CEO in 2005. The online Recruitment Software system is now used by almost 200 agencies across Europe, Middle East and Americas. Roderick is an avid technologist who has been immersed in recruitment technology for almost 10 years and has a keen interest in how technology affects recruitment. Roderick is also Managing Director to manufacturing group CSC (family owned) since 2007.

“I’m very excited to have an opportunity to participate in the direction of Irish Recruiters as I’ve been very impressed with Declan and the ethos on which he founded the group. It’s no surprise that membership has grown to over 1,000 members and I look forward to adding to the community to learning from the other members.”

Michael Wallace: - Commercial Director, Loadszajobs 

Educated at WIT, Michael’s publishing career started in London where he worked for one of Europe’s most successful b2b and b2c publishers, EMAP. During his four years at EMAP he was part of the team that launched the UK’s first Internet Magazine appropriately named, Internet Magazine and the UK’s first Weekly computing title ‘Network Week’. Network week tapped into the growing community of Technical professionals in the UK and was an obvious vehicle for recruitment advertising, here began his interest in the recruitment market which led him to online recruitment soon afterwards.

In 1997 he started and set up the first international office of the UK Recruitment Website TopJobs which he managed successfully until 2001 when the Irish Business was purchased by Denis O Brien. Ireland was an ideal test market for their expanding business and was quickly one of Europe’s most advanced internet recruitment markets with all the global recruitment websites competing in Europe’s fastest growing economy. As part of a management team that rolled out a business model across 14 countries Topjobs became the first internet recruitment site to float on Nasdaq. Michael has experiencing the Dotcom boom and bust era which was an invaluable learning experience and he witnessed the changing face of recruitment as it moved online at such lightning pace.

With over 15 years in publishing and more than 7 years in online recruitment he believes the best has yet to come in the online Recruitment Sector. "Innovation is being driven by the emerging challenge of social media and the increasing expectations of advertisers and job seekers. Online recruitment advertising is still evolving and most of the job boards are bracing themselves for huge change which is overdue and inevitable.The Irish Recruiters group is a perfect example of how users and industry innovators can drive change in a sector or marketplace and I look forward to being part of the Think Tank that will strive to improve the quality of services provided within the Irish recruitment Market in the coming years.”

Jonathan Campbell – Co- Founder and Director of Select People

A career recruiter, Jonathan holds a Bachelor of Commerce from UCD and remembers the days when CVs came in the post and you faxed them to your clients! In 2006, having spent 8 years recruiting accountants in Dublin, Jonathan relocated to the Cayman Islands with his wife and two dogs. There he managed the island’s largest Recruitment & Immigration Company, using his first hand experience of life off-shore to help hundreds of other like minded professionals to realise their career ambitions overseas. He returned to Ireland in early 2008 and established Select People, a specialist reinsurance and banking sourcing firm that finds talented people globally for international clients. Jonathan is passionate about technology, a gadget freak and a serial Facebooker and tweeter.

His clients are primarily overseas and his company competes against recruiters in some of the most advanced markets in the world. Select People have positioned themselves as internet recruiters and Jonathan and his partner Vincent were quick to embrace the power of cloud computing, social networking and Boolean searching. He is a firm supporter of the Irish Recruiters Club and was honored to be invited to participate as a member of the Think Tank:

"The Irish recruitment industry is currently lagging behind our international peers and the only way that we are going to be able to compete in the next phase of global growth is by being ahead of our international competition. As a small island, we need to band together and share our collective ideas and experience to ensure that Ireland becomes a global leader and innovator in recruitment techniques. By participating as a member of the Think Tank I hope to be able to share the experience of Select People with my peers in Ireland and also to learn from the many talented individuals out there in the Irish market."

18.12.09

Premier November Irish Employment Monitor

Read the full report here - these are the main highlights:
  • During November 09, the number of professional job vacancies in Ireland increased by 2%, compared to October 09
  • The year-on-year monthly comparison registered 27% fewer new professional job vacancies, comparing November 09 to November 08
  • The number of professionals beginning their search for a new role during November 09 held steady compared to October 09, showing a slight 1.5% decrease
  • Year-on-year 6% fewer professionals entered the new jobs market in November 09 compared to November 08
 Also, O2 launches Twitter SMS, here

10.12.09

Ever heard of "in memory" analytics?

The possibilities of "real time recruiting" is becoming ever more transparent. It'a topic I am planning to discuss in more detail in FY10 Irish Recruiter conferences and a newsletter I will be launching for members next year. The world of real time computing is hugely exciting and the cloud is only getting smarter.

New Facebook Stats

Company Figures:
More than 350 million active users
50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
More than 35 million users update their status each day
More than 55 million status updates posted each day
More than 2.5 billion photos uploaded to the site each month
More than 3.5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week
More than 3.5 million events created each month
More than 1.6 million active Pages on Facebook
More than 700,000 local businesses have active Pages on Facebook
Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans

Average User Figures
Average user has 130 friends on the site
Average user sends 8 friend requests per month
Average user spends more than 55 minutes per day on Facebook
Average user clicks the Like button on 9 pieces of content each month
Average user writes 25 comments on Facebook content each month
Average user becomes a fan of 2 Pages each month
Average user is invited to 3 events per month
Average user is a member of 12 groups

International Growth
More than 70 translations available on the site
About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States
Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations application

Platform
More than one million developers and entrepreneurs from more than 180 countries
Every month, more than 70% of Facebook users engage with Platform applications
More than 350,000 active applications currently on Facebook Platform
More than 250 applications have more than one million monthly active users
More than 80,000 websites, devices and other services have implemented Facebook Connect since its general availability in December 2008
More than 60 million Facebook users engage with Facebook Connect on external services every month
Two-thirds of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites have implemented Facebook Connect

Mobile
There are more than 65 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are almost 50% more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
There are more than 180 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products

You can get the stats straight from Facebook, here. Some amazing stats!!! Some of the stand out ones for me are: "half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites have implemented Facebook Connect" and "There are more than 180 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products"! Will be interesting to see if they break through the 1/2 billion members mark in the next 24 months. I wouldn't bet against it. Expect a lot more Orkut users in Brazil and India to catch onto the Facebook craze in the near future.

3.12.09

The Irish Recruiters "Hat Tip" Awards are here!

This year has seen some really great innovation and creativity on the recruitment front especially with the evolution of cloud recruitment, social media, deeper internet sourcing techniques and tools.

To recognise some of the great work in the industry I want to ask you all to consider sending me a mail at declanfi@microsoft.com with the nominations for the following categories with an explanation of why you think the nominee should win! I’ll have a look at these and write a blog post saying who the winners are referencing their work so that the entire Irish Recruiters membership can see it. I’ll be the soul judge, won't be included in the nominations and I’ll be as objective as possible. There is no trophies for winners or even bottles of wine simply a cyber “hat tip” and some industry recognition.

The nominees can be companies or individuals. All should be for companies or recruiters based in Ireland or Irish recruiters living abroad. Examples of work for campaigns in or outside of Ireland may be included. Clear examples should be listed of the work that is being nominated and the reasons why you think they should win. There are two categories for the awards: (1) companies and (2) individuals

Please provide a maximum of one nomination per category and provide links or images where possible. All nominations should be received by 5pm the 18th of December.

If you have any questions drop me a mail.

Company Awards:
Most creative use of technology award - Employers, Job Boards, Agencies, Recruiters, Others

Individual Awards:
Best LinkedIn Group?
Best LinkedIn Profile?
Best Twitter?
Best Tweet?
Most creative use of Twitter?
Best Facebook Page?
Best Irish Recruiters Blog?
Best Irish Recruiters Blog Post?
Best Irish Recruiters Blog Newcomer?
Most interesting Irish Recruiters discussion post?
Quickest response to technology?
Best use of mobile or cloud recruitment techniques?
Most creative online ad campaign?

2.12.09

A letter from Mark Zuckerberg

Interesting article, here, on privacy in Facebook. Great to see some admission around not providing proper privacy which was a big problem for a lot of people, for a long time. Great to hear Facebook taking feedback and worked hard to improve their platform. In this new world of social profiles, real time aggregation and location based GPS advances expect the public to demand far more secure networks with huge levels of tailorisation in their privacy settings. Also, expect governments and the EU to follow suit.

"Somehow we missed this point with News Feed and Mini-Feed and we didn't build in the proper privacy controls right away. This was a big mistake on our part, and I'm sorry for it. But apologizing isn't enough. I wanted to make sure we did something about it, and quickly. So we have been coding nonstop for two days to get you better privacy controls. This new privacy page will allow you to choose which types of stories go into your Mini-Feed and your friends' News Feeds, and it also lists the type of actions Facebook will never let any other person know about. If you have more comments, please send them over."

30.11.09

Irish Recruiters Toolbar Update

Also, to the 45 users of the Irish Recruiters Toolbar I've added 3 new Irish Recruitment bloggers to the RSS feed.

If you simply go to the left hand side of your toolbar >click on the Irish Recruiters logo > scroll down and hit "refresh toolbar" they should then populate when next you open the broswer.

The toolbar is also now available in Safari as well as Explorer and Firefox!

For those who want to try it just check out the right hand side of the blog for the necessary information.

#irishrecruiters

Google Alerts meets Twitter Lists

Today I started playing around a bit with Listi Monkey. Very cool!

To learn more check out my #irishrecruiters hastag.

27.11.09

Working for Monkeys!

Hays produces interesting "Tough Choices" surveys

Just had a read of Hay's "Tough Choices" surveys which were completed in October, makes for an interesting read - you can get it here. The sample pool was 853 employees and 608 employers from all over Ireland in a wide range of industries and sectors.

23.11.09

LinkedIn *finally* opens its Apps Platform

I've been banging on about this for sometime so it came as no suprise to me when like, Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn have decided to create a development platform. Expect lots of amazing cool new apps to appear.  In Facebook's case we got FarmVille and Facebook Connect. I've lost count of the number of Twitter Apps out there - it seems to be well into the thousands.

LinkedIn is clearly trying to recreate their success. Their launch today of LinkedIn Platform, marks a watershed in the company's development. They now have opened up external applications to use LinkedIn's data.  TweetDeck have been super quick to the game and will be launching LinkedIn integration this week which I'm looking forward to playing with.

I'm delighted to see this happen!!! With social media now permeating most businesses, and having waited the extra year to make this announcement, it  seems to have been a very good position to hold back. LinkedIn this time last year may have alienated their business customers with such an announcment. With social media now increasing in omnipotency in all facets of business it's probably less the case and great timing.

I think this positions the company very well for IPO which will probably happen in the next 6 months. We'll have to wait and see.  Hopefully, we can get them over to one of the future Irish Recruiters events to learn all about it and how they expect this to change the recruitment industry. This is a big step forward for cloud recruitment. I wonder when Monster will open up their platform with an API?

You can learn more here.


19.11.09

Outlook 2010 with Social Connector including LinkedIn

Yesterday Microsoft made a very cool announcment about the new social connector functionality that will be coming out in Outlook. I'm excited about this as it's Outlooks first move into the social arena and the opportunity it offers in terms of sheers numbers is very compelling. Imagine, all the Outlook users in the world, integrating their social media feeds into Outlook!

The Outlook Social Connector is a set of new features to help keep track of your friends and colleagues while enabling you to grow your professional network. The Outlook Social Connector is available now as part of the Microsoft Office 2010 Beta.

LinkedIn will be the first networking site to support the Outlook Social Connector. The LinkedIn functionality will be available in early 2010. To learn what LinkedIn have to say about it go here

Office 2010 is looking great and I think it is going to enhance recruiters productivity. I know it has mine. 

Going back to some of my final comments and the Future of Recruitment - Part 2, conference in October get ready in 2010 for "Integration, Integration, Integration"!

18.11.09

Premier Group Irish Employment Monitor for the month of October

You can read the report here

Highlights are:

-During October 09, the number of professional job vacancies in Ireland fell by 9% compared to September 09, ending two consecutive months of increases. The year-on-year monthly comparison registered 50% fewer professional job vacancies in October 09 versus October 08

-The number of professionals who began their search for a new role during October 09 remained largely unchanged compared to September 09; registering a 1% drop.

-This figure was also a decrease of 24% in the number of new candidates entering the professional jobs market in October 09 compared to October 08.

Future of Search

From Search Engines Strategies New York 2009

10.11.09

LinkedIn signs deal with Twitter

The idea is simple: When you set your status on LinkedIn you can now tweet it as well, amplifying it to your followers and real-time search services like Twitter Search and Bing. And when you tweet, you can send that message to your LinkedIn connections as well, from any Twitter service or tool.

The feature will roll out to everyone over the next couple of days. Great deal for both companies but especially for LinkedIn.

Check out the video to learn more:

CPL predicts 31% increase in profit

In the Independant today some news from CPL on their most recent profit forecast. You can learn more here.

Shares in CPL inched 1.5pc higher yesterday in Dublin to close at €2.05. The company will release interim results at the end of January.

9.11.09

Cool one tap search and apply iPhone recruitment app launched

While on my travels in the Middle East last week and learning all about the 30% nationalisation quota's that multi-nationals have to live by when hiring in  Saudi Arabia and the 50% quota that is applied by the Angolan government I got a mail from Bill Fischer. Bill for those of you that didn't see his excellent presentation at the last Irish Recrutiers conference is one of the co-foundes of Twitter Job Search. While in transit I missed a lot of news from the world of recrutiment and I also missed Bill's mail to me telling me about their new iPhone app. I'm glad to say I'm back on terra firma in Dublin, and it's good to be home.

There are a lot of apps out there that allow you search for jobs but what's cool about Twitter Job Search's is that it allows individuals to find and apply for these jobs with a single tap. Very cool!

To download the app you can follow the download link on their homepage: (www.TwitterJobSearch.com). Try it for yourself, it's worth checking out. 

6.11.09

LinkedIn launch new recruitment product for recruitment agencies and executive search recruiters

Signaling its ever increasing shift from social network to being the Monster of "passive candidates" LinkedIn is now targeting the recruitment agency and executive search industry with a new offering. As far as I know 40% of all LinkedIn's revenues comes from the recruitment industry this should increase this percentage to closer the 50% market or more in the next 6 months.

You can learn more about the product here.

Will be interesting to see how many agencies in Ireland and around the world purchase the product and if so what kind of other recruitment products/services they decide not to pay for as a result. My guess is a lot of recruitment agencies in FY10 may decide to increase their spend on LinkedIn and reduce their spend on job boards. Would be interested to hear what others think.

5.11.09

Free Job Board Posting with Jobs Online Group and New Recruiter Role from AMS

The Jobs Online Group today announced the launch of their free advertising campaign. Niche Job boards www.AdminJobs.ie and www.AccountantJobs.ie are offering employers and agencies free advertising for the next 3 months. To learn more contact: Denise Tanham on 01 236 6636 or e-mail info@jobsonlinegroup.ie

Also, Alexander Mann Solutions have new role open... here is what they had to say...

The role is for a Principal Resource Specialist (Senior Recruiter). The role of the 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 PRS 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

To learn more contact Garreth at: garreth.woods@citi.com

27.10.09

Facebook officially opens today and getting ready to double employee numbers in Ireland

Facebook announced a doubling of its staff in Ireland today.

It now has 1 million +  users in Ireland at present. Huge number.

Currently it has 70 employees. Here's the roles they have open, vacancies

In the mix they have interesting recruiter and recruitment coordinator positions.

Anroid 2.0 Video


    For users, some of the new Android 2.0 features include:

    • Multiple accounts per-device
    • Exchange Support
    • An improved virtual keyboard
    • Support for flash, digital zoom and white balance on the camera (provided your camera has a built-in flash)
    • Improved web browser with HTML-5 support and better search and navigation
    • Improved calendar

    The first phone that will feature Android 2.0 is the upcoming Droid from Verizon and Motorola.

    Google Social Search Explained

    Here's the latest Google Lab experiment. I like this a lot and see it as a natural extension from their custom search technology. Search is moving into a mesh type quasi personal quasi standard index hybrid search.  Looking forward to seeing the same with Bing and added Twitter feeds very soon.



    To learn how it works behind the scenes check watch the following:

    22.10.09

    Google Announce Social Search

    How the search engine worlds changes. First it was universal search, then it was semantic search, now it's social search! At Web 2.0 Expo yesterday VP of search, Marissa Mayer, gave the surprise announcement.

    So far all I know about it is:
    • The bottom of search results will soon have social networking information from your friends, like their Flickr photos or their status updates. It’s a blended search integration, similar to seeing news or image results
    • These are pulled from social networks connected to your Google Profile. The more that are connected, the more social information that will appear in search results.
    • They have also improved searching for images using social networks. Images become more relevant using social networking data.
     I'll track what is happening and report back soon. Rumour has it that it will launch in Google labs real soon.

    21.10.09

    Google deal with Twitter too!

    Just out on their blog a few hours after the Microsoft announcement:

    “Given this new type of information and its value to search, we are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results. We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you’ll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.”

    Interestingly, with two large partnerships in place this probably proves that Twitter are in it for the long haul and won't be selling anytime soon!

    Microsoft lands Twitter and new Facebook Deals - Bing Mark 2

    You can learn more here and here. The world of search has just got a lot more interesting.

    Here's what it may look like when launched, here.

     

    How will WiMax change recruitment in Ireland

    Good article out today, here, from Silicon Republic on WiMax and the the looming "Battle Royale" between wireless-broadband standards (and I thought the App wars or the war for "mobile O/Ss were bad enough)

    There are some obvious cloud recruitment advantages to having speeds of 8 to 50mbps for your wire-less connection. We're still a bit away from the magic 50 mbps but when that does come along with more sensor recognition and proximity technologies using GPS we might just be a little closer to talking ads as you walk down Grafton street "hello Mr Fitzgerald we have a job we think you would be interested in" greetings, ala Minority Report. I'm looking forward to seeing just how quickly we can achieve these speeds and when how affordable it becomes. If we have it in 3 years I'd be delighted.

    Shaping Ireland's Future - Does the Irish Recruitment Industry have a part to play?

    Today I took some time out to study Chris Horn's (CEO of Iona) excellent presentation "Shaping Ireland's Future - Communication for a Smart Economy" that he posted on his blog this Saturday. You can find it here. It's an excellent report and one of the things that caught my eye was on slide 24 bullet point 2 he calls out as one of the country's basic challenges as the "need to attract overseas innovators to add to our own". I couldn't agree more. Not only do we need to grow, foster and cultivate our own indigenous innovators but we also need to be able to find the best talent the world has to offer and bring them to these shores. I believe the Irish HR and Recrutiment industry has its part to play in this particular piece of the economic rebuilding jigsaw. We need to learn how to raise the level of recruitment sophistication in particular so that we can identify where talent globally exists. It is the "identification" and "sourcing" of this talent that I think we can have a tangible impact in as an industry. By creating and supporting a culture of recruitment innovation we can try improve ourselves. Just as Google have Google Labs and Microsoft have Live Labs we should have our own "recruitment labs" in Ireland to fine tune our skills, get better at what we do as a collective, and help bring innovators and talent to this country not just to take jobs which we are predominately focused on but also to create jobs. I sometimes wonder with the recent TCD and UCD R&D Innovation Academy (launched last March) do they have a centre of sourcing excellence in their HR departments focused on these issues. Likewise what is the capability of the enterprise Ireland or the department of enterprise and trade to do likewise. I hope we have people in both "experimenting" with technology to understand how best to leverage it to help us source Phd students in gaming, bi-technology, green technology, ecetra. Likewise have any of our employment related government bodies developed their social media recruitment strategy to let the world know we want to tell them about some of the excellent innovation that is already taken place using the latest and most leading edge channels and tools available. -?-

    19.10.09

    New team lead recruitment job and Sonru win award

    Joe in State Street has been in contact about a new role they have open. You can learn more below. To apply contact Joe.Hendry [@] imsi.com

    It's a Team Lead / Management contract opportunity and pays a standard competitive salary at this level.

    See below main bullets in terms of requirements;

    • Essential to have in house recruitment experience
    • Team and people management experience in busy environment
    • Financial Services environment exposure (in house or agency)
    • Proven track record of sourcing candidates directly
    • Ability to deal with rapidly changing priorities
    • Excellent ability to deal with people at all levels – internal and external stakeholders
    • Excellent customer services skills
    • Target driven and ability to meet key deadlines
    • Ability to source directly from multiple channels and recruit at all levels

    Also, onwards and upwards for Sonru who have been announced as the winner of the Bank of Ireland/South East BIC Bright Ideas Challenge held on the 14th of October. You can read more about it and the press release here.

    Don't forget if you want to follow some of my thinking on cloud recruitment you can do some with some of my tweet updates at #irishrecruiters

    17.10.09

    Coke, recruitment and Seattle!

    Just had a great week of learning and brainstorming in Seattle. It's always a worthwhile trip to Redmond but always a little strange to see Microsoft's huge campuses with over 140 buildings housing approx 35,000 employees! It's like UCD campus multiplied by 5. This week I took part in some great discussion around where Microsoft is going to place some bets on their social media recruitment strategy. Exciting, innovative stuff! And big bold challenges ahead. Scalability, globalisation and localisation are all meaty topics that bring with them real challenges that we will need to think through carefully. More about all that in the future.

    I'm now sitting in the British Airways lounge on the way home, sipping a coke, stairing at rain, reading some feeds, thinking about microchips being embedded in contact lenses, pondering on the "experience economy"  and burning some time. Here's some of the latest that has caught my attention.

    Twitter about to hit 5bn tweets, here

    Layar’s Reality Browser for the iPhone is finally available, here

    Monster a bit late to the game but building social media presence, hiring using twitter @monsterhires

     Tweetdeck releases new functionality





    13.10.09

    Crowdsourcing and letting the community build your JD

    I'm back in Seattle and just come back from a walk to the famous Pike Market. The salmon run from Alaska has just come in and the Seattle folk are all talk about the latest seasonal salmon receipes they can throw their hat at!

    Speaking of receipes I read a very interesting article today about a firm that cleverly decided to let their community cook up their job description for a recent advetisment they had. Over in this part of their world the mentality around recruitment innovation and creatively is still light years ahead of our own industry. I'm hoping we'll see many other examples of this both in the US and in Ireland. It's exactly because of this forward thinking that I am a big believer in wiki-nomics and crowd sourcing. You can catch it here. Looking forward to seeing which company is brave enough to give it a go back home.

    6.10.09

    Microsoft Unveils New Window Phones Worldwide

    Here's the press release:

    REDMOND, Wash. — Oct. 6, 2009 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the availability of a new line of Windows® phones around the world that are available in a broad range of styles and prices. With a Windows phone, people can navigate their phone easily with the touch of a finger and browse the Internet on a great mobile browser. People can also connect to two new services that allow them to back up and share data from their phone to the Web and buy a variety of useful applications from the Windows Marketplace for Mobile. Microsoft expects partners to deliver more than 30 new phones in more than 20 countries by the end of 2009.

    “We all want to connect quickly to the people and information that’s important to us from across our lives at work and at home,” said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. “A Windows phone lets people take their entire world of digital information, communications, applications and entertainment with them wherever they go.”

    One Phone for Work and Play

    With a Windows phone, people can rely on their phone to balance their lives, from work to home to play. Whether it’s editing a document or sharing several vacation updates through a social networking application, Windows phones help people stay connected to the people and information they care about most. Because people’s phones often match their personality and unique needs, Microsoft now offers the Windows phone Custom Theme Creator. People can create personalized themes for their Windows phone by choosing the color and design that suits their style at http://www.windowsphone.com/theme.

    With a Windows phone, people will have familiar work and play experiences right from their Start button, including these:

    • A new enhanced Windows Live experience with What’s New feeds and improved Windows Live photo sharing across major social networking sites (such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and Flickr)

    • A best-in-class e-mail experience and the ability to manage multiple accounts right from their phone with Outlook Mobile and Exchange Server synchronization

    • The ability to use PowerPoint and open and edit Word and Excel documents from their phone with Microsoft Office Mobile

    • The power to sync files on the phone through Windows Live Media Manager and play media files seamlessly with Windows Media Player

    • A redesigned Windows Internet Explorer mobile browser with Adobe Flash Lite2 that brings the mobile Web browsing experience closer to what people have come to expect from their PC

    Powerful Mobile Services

    With the launch of these new Windows phones, Microsoft debuts new services that bring added value to people.

    My Phone is a free service that helps people manage and back up the invaluable information stored on their phone and provides peace of mind and an easy restore option in the event of a lost or damaged phone. My Phone automatically synchronizes the specific types of a phone’s content the user chooses — from contacts and appointments to texts, photos and more — to a password-protected Web site. People can also publish their photos from the My Phone Web site or their phone directly to Windows Live, Facebook, MySpace and Flickr. As part of the free service, people can go online and map the last known location of their phone from when it was last synchronized. In addition, a set of more advanced “lost phone” features are being offered as a premium package that people can activate as needed. The My Phone Premium package includes the ability to immediately locate the phone’s current location on a map (in the U.S. only); remotely lock a phone and post an “if found” message to its screen; loudly ring the phone even if it is set to vibrate or silent mode; and ultimately, if needed, completely erase the phone to protect personal data from falling into the wrong hands. People using My Phone on their phone running either Windows Mobile 6.0, 6.1 or 6.5 can access the premium package free of charge until Nov. 30, 2009. After that date, seven-day access to the premium package will be available for purchase for $4.99 in the U.S.

    Also launching today is Windows Marketplace for Mobile, which offers people an easy way to find and purchase high-quality mobile applications for both work and play, while creating a new opportunity for developers to reach millions of people using Windows phones worldwide. Microsoft is pleased today to introduce 246 quality mobile applications initially in Windows Marketplace for work and play, with more than 753 ISVs worldwide on board to continue building out the catalog. People will have access to not only important line-of-business applications for work, but also popular mobile applications for play such as Facebook, MySpace, Netflix, Twikini, WunderRadio and ZAGAT, as well as leading game titles including Sudoku, “Guitar Hero World Tour” and the “PAC-MAN” series, all of which can be easily purchased and installed directly on a Windows phone. All purchased applications are certified by Microsoft to run on Windows phones and are backed by a simple return policy. Over the next few months, Microsoft will continue to evolve Windows Marketplace for Mobile to bring to market a fresh take on the app store that delivers strong value for developers and a great shopping experience for people.

    Choice and Availability: A Phone for Everyone

    Windows phones give people the power to choose the phone that best fits their style and budget by offering phones with a full physical QWERTY keyboard, others with just a large touch screen, and some with both touch screen and keyboard. Microsoft and its partners now deliver a variety of Windows phones for people to choose from in several regions:

    In North America:
    • HTC Pure from AT&T
    • HTC Imagio from Verizon Wireless
    • Samsung Intrepid from Sprint, available Oct. 11, 2009
    • HTC Tilt 2 from AT&T, available in the coming weeks

    In Latin America:
    • Samsung Omnia II available in the coming weeks from TIM Brasil

    In Europe:
    • MDA Vario V, MDA Compact V and HTC Touch2 and the Samsung Omnia II from Deutsche Telekom in select European markets
    • HTC HD2 from Orange, available in the coming weeks in France
    • HTC Touch2 from Orange, available in the coming weeks in France, Spain, Switzerland and Romania
    • A software update for the HTC Touch Pro2 from Orange, available in the coming weeks in France, U.K. and Romania
    • Samsung Omnia II from Orange, available in the coming weeks in Poland, Switzerland and Slovakia and from early December in France
    • Samsung Omnia LITE from Orange, available in the coming weeks in France and Spain
    • Samsung Omnia PRO B7320 from Orange, available in the coming weeks in France and the U.K.
    • Toshiba TG01 W from Orange, available as an update to the TG01 in the coming weeks in France, the U.K., Switzerland and Romania
    • LG GM750 and Samsung Omnia II from SFR in France
    • TMN Bluebelt 2 and TMN Silverbelt, made by ZTE Corp., from TMN in Portugal
    • Samsung Omnia II and Omnia LITE from TMN in Portugal
    • HTC Touch Diamond2 from Vodafone in Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Australia, South Africa and Central Europe
    • HTC Touch Pro2 from Vodafone in the U.K. and Switzerland
    • LG GM750 from Vodafone in Germany, the U.K., Spain and the Netherlands
    The following phones are available on the open market in Europe:
    • Samsung Omnia II, Omnia LITE, Omnia PRO B7320, Omnia PRO B7330 and Omnia PRO B7610 available in October

    In Asia:
    • ZTE X60 from China Unicom
    • HTC Touch Diamond2 from Telstra
    The following phones are available on the open market in Asia:
    • Acer beTouch E100, beTouch E101, beTouch E200 and Acer neoTouch
    • Garmin-Asus nüvifone M20
    • HTC Snap, HTC Touch Pro2, HTC Touch Diamond2 and HTC Touch2
    • LG GM730 and LG GM550
    • Samsung Omnia II and Samsung Omnia PRO B7320, Omnia PRO B7330

    Information about the latest updates and new Windows phones is available at http://www.windowsphone.com/

    Additional information about Windows phones and on companies bringing the new Windows phones to market can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/newsroom/mobile/default.mspx

    The Google Real-Time Search Tip

    The race for real-time search is gathering pace and Google for quite some time have been very worried about the dominance that Twitter have been making in this space.

    Google introduced in May a change to their "Search Options" and amongst others one of the things they offer was the ability to search within 24 hours. This is a nice addition but far off real-time search.

    However, there is a hack around this that can let you search in the past minute or event the past second.

    The trick is to know how to understand what constitutes the parameters in a URL. A topic very rarely discussed in recruitment circles. Most search engines use different priority parameters as well as sometimes different operators and modifiers to search their index. The tilde search being a good example in Google.

    However, something I've learnt about this week is the Query Date Range or qdr:d parameter.

    All you have to do to search for the query in the past minute is to change the parameter to qdr:n, and for the past second to qdr:s.

    For example, this weekend I was searching for real-time Lisbon treaty information.

    http://www.google.ie/search?q=%22lisbon%20treaty%22&hl=en&sa=G&tbo=1&tbs=qdr:d

    Take the end of the URL and the qdr:d parameter and change the d for a n and you then get the engine to display in minutes not just within 24 hours.

    http://www.google.ie/search?q=%22lisbon%20treaty%22&hl=en&sa=G&tbo=1&tbs=qdr:n

    Big difference in what the index returned and much closer to real time.

    If used properly could be used to help study the market you operate in with all the breaking news indexed by Google's search engine as soon as possible. Helped me greatly this weekendto study what was being posted about the Lisbon treaty and proved much quicker than Google news and other news aggregators for certain themes I was searching.

    Real-time search will be discussed at the Future of Recruitment conference this week when Bill Fischer gives his presentation on Twitter Jobs Search.

    Hope to see you there. Happy Hunting!

    PS - To hear more about tips and industry news you can follow my #irishrecruiters hashtag on Twitter

    Alexander Mann holding breakfast meeting for corporate recruiters 9th of October

    Martin Cerullo, Director, Resourcing Communications, Alexander Mann Solutions, will be hosting a breakfast seminar on Friday the 9th of October, for in-house corporate recruiters only. At it he will be:
     
    "focsuing on the business case for building a strong employer brand and will share thinking around how to encourage your broader business to buy in to the concept. Detailed analysis of management information will be presented to help build the argument".

    You can learn more and register for it at:
    http://www.alexandermannsolutions.com/news-and-insights/ams-events/employer-branding---dublin.aspx

    This is a free event and is from 8.30am to 10.30am in the Penthouse Suite at the Morgan Hotel, 7-12 Fleet Street,

    Microsoft has contract technical sourcer role open

    Microsoft currently has a contract sourcing role open until the end of June 10. If you have proven technical sourcing experience and are interested please apply to Deirdre Moran at demoran[at]microsoft.comcc-ing Mary at marydo[at]microsoft.com

    Role Purpose

    The Talent Sourcer/Recruiter is tasked with developing innovative and proactive methods to source, evaluate, and pipeline candidates for Microsoft. Talent Sourcers should foster and cultivate relationships with key candidates and develop large-scale talent pools to deliver upon both immediate short-term and strategic long-term needs.

    Job Responsibilities (all areas)
    • Implement a variety of candidate generation techniques, strategies, and programs and stay ahead of new innovation
    • Gain a deep understanding of the talent landscape in your area; build a competitive intelligence knowledge base of companies and candidates residing within those companies
    • Engage with hiring managers, to understand fully the role or business that you are sourcing for and build relationship.
    • Use your market knowledge and sourcing skills to engage with active and non – active applicants
    • Cultivate relationships with key candidate and specific talent pools, defined according to long-term initiatives and direction of the organization - turn applicants from non active to active by developing strong candidate relationships
    • Build and engage with a talent community that includes a high volume of targeted candidates
    • Utilize NGS (e-recruitment system) to store talent pools of appropriate candidates
    • Actively source Diverse candidates from a variety of sources. Meet team Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as reduction in agency usage, % female hires etc
    • Screen candidates that you have identified if you are sourcing for a specific role
    • Evaluation of your own productivity and effectiveness of methods used to deliver results. Talent Sourcers who are tasked with req based sourcing will be set specific productivity targets
    • Deliver requisite volume of candidates that flow through to interview and offer stage
    • Staying within budget, maximizing utilization of sourcing resources
    • Interview/Screen relevant candidates
    • Phone Screen (Technical, HR)—when required
    • Propose and Recommend competitive compensation packages for preferred candidates to Hiring Manager and Lead Recruiter for approval
    • Extend , Influence , Sell and Close agreed offers to preferred candidates in order to receive Candidate acceptance
    • Provide direction to Recruitment Admin
      • Inception of new vacancies to upload
      • Interviews to be arranged
      • Flights/Visas to be arranged, when necessary
      • References to be confirmed
      • Contracts to be posted
      • New Hires to process

    Essential Skills and Experience (Qualifications)

    • 4+ year recruiting experience demonstrating capability in creative sourcing techniques
    • Effective strategic thinking and problem solving
    • Deep knowledge regarding specific disciplines and technologies
    • Passion for and significant experience identifying and screening candidates
    • Ability to understand, articulate and sell Microsoft culture and business initiatives
    • Track record of innovation and creativity
    • Evidence of building candidate relationships and managing a network of talent
    • Demonstrates ability for effective cross group collaboration
    • Active participation in a positive teamwork environment
    • Strong oral and written communication skills
    • Ability to deliver results with little supervision, and to effectively manage multiple projects and candidates
    • Ability to meet standard measurements of success for staffing such as interview to offer ratios, meeting annual hiring plan and cost per hire targets
    • Successful Project Management abilities, delivering upon work streams within high priority projects with both short and long-term deliverables
    • Proficiency in Microsoft Office applications, social media and web2.0 tools and techniques
    Desirable
    • BA/BS degree in business, communications, human resources or related discipline

      2.10.09

      CWJobs to sponsor the Future of Recruitment Conference

      In addition to Sonru and Prima.ie I'm glad to report that CWJobs have kindly agreed to sponor the Irish Recruiters Conference on the 7th of October. Here's a little about the company and what they offer...

      CWJobs.co.uk is the leading specialist IT recruitment website enabling both permanent and contract IT jobseekers to search and apply for jobs across all skills and industry sectors throughout the UK and Ireland, and offering hiring employers a fast and effective recruitment solution.

      Each month the site draws over 320,000* IT candidates attracted by the opportunity to search thousands of IT jobs from the UK and Ireland’s leading employers and generating more than 340,000* job applications.

      Hundreds of companies and recruitment consultancies advertise their IT vacancies on CWJobs.co.uk and access CWJobs’ CV database of over 240,000 IT professionals. CWJobs.co.uk has offices in London, Manchester and Ireland-based sales representatives.

      Check out their site here to learn more about them. There much much bigger than you probably thought.

      To advertise, trial or access our comprehensive CV database, email us at Deirdre.Maloney@cwjobs.co.uk or call us today on 00353 87 7927479.

      *Independently audited by ABC Electronic, October 2008

      1.10.09

      Could all recruiters end up in the SMAA :)

      Could this possibly be the future...



      I hope not!

      LinkedIn's new Profile Organiser

      Ever come across a LinkedIn profile and wanted to save it to a location to review afterwards. I used to just use the built in pdf function when I wanted to save a profile but now LinkedIn is offering a new feature that lets you save profiles, organize them into folders, and add notes. Anytime you find an interesting profile, simply click “Save Profile” and the profile is bookmarked for you within LinkedIn.

      You can learn more here.

      Vodaphone joins the War of the App Stores

      At the Future of Recruitment Conference on the 7th I'll be giving my thoughts on the frantic rise of the app wars. There has been a huge amount happening. Since July 08, mobile apps have become a huge business and I'm not at all suprised to see that Vodafone has decided to enter the market with a huge partnership with China Mobile and Verizon. Learn more here. Will be interesting to see how long it takes for them to bring our their own jobs app to recruit for their own company's roles.

      New agency recruiter position in Dublin

      Hays Specialist Recruitment contacted me today about a new recruiter role they have open that they wanted advertised.

      The role is based in their Dublin office and they are looking for... "an experienced recruiter who has worked in a specialist recruiter previously, ideally in the permanent market. Commercial awareness, professionalism and a strong sense of ethics and team play are vital to succeed in Hays. We have a very experienced team in Ireland and we’re keen to speak to anyone who’d like to be part of this team. Hays is a global organisation with a great reputation and fantastic resources, and the Irish business is constantly promoting innovation and development to stay ahead of the market."

      For more information, please contact Mike McDonagh directly on 086 8112350 or michael.mcdonagh2@hays.com

      29.9.09

      3 new recruitment jobs in recruitment agency

      Recently I was contacted by David Burke, Manager of Harvey Nash Ireland, to advertise 3 new recruitment jobs they have. Any one interested can apply directly to David at: david.burke@harveynash.ie

      They are looking for:

      1 X Experienced Recruiter. Ideally with some experience in contract markets and working IT but these are not mandatory.

      2 X Junior / Trainee recruiters. Ideally some sales / recruitmnt experience but they will also consider strong graduates.

      Integrity, professional approach to work as well as a strong work ethic are the main competencies they are looking for. In addition a high level of business communication skills (written and verbal).

      While looking for young talented recruits they are also searching for proven achievers who maybe find themselves out of work due to company circumstances beyond their control but still retain a passion for best in class recruitment practices and interested in working for a debt free global PLC.

      To learn more about the company check out their site here.

      24.9.09

      Irishjobs.ie Jobs Index in Association with The Last Word

      Each month, Jane Lorigan of Irishjobs.ie and Eoghan McDermott of The Communications Clinic will bring you the latest jobs statistics across the country and advise jobseekers on how to get the interview, and get the job. Excellent initiative and kudos to the folk at IrishJobs.ie.

      Listen to Jane and Eoghan's recent interview on Matt Cooper's Last Word show, here.

      22.9.09

      Chinese government sign huge deal with Mr Ted and embrace cloud recruitment

      Here is the update from the Mr Ted web site.

      Thousands of Recruiters Nationwide Will Leverage MrTed in the Largest-Ever Deployment of Cloud-Based Talent Acquisition Software

      LONDON, September 22, 2009 - MrTed Ltd, the global leader in Talent Acquisition Solutions, today announced it has signed a major contract with the Chinese Talent Association (CTA) of China’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MOHRSS) to build up a nationwide online Talent Acquisition System (TAS) and develop value-added services to help companies throughout the country improve the process by which they attract and hire the right talent, and help millions of talents in China to find the right job.

      CTA is responsible for managing all national talent policies, standards and regulations on behalf of the Chinese Government. The project with MrTed supports an unprecedented nationwide initiative to develop and leverage online talent acquisition services to increase speed and accuracy of hiring for tens of thousands of companies across all industries throughout the country. As the only true provider of on-demand global talent acquisition solution in China, MrTed is ideally positioned to better serve organizations seeking to identify and hire the most coveted talent by providing a solution that is easily configurable, rich in features, easy to implement, and seamlessly integrated to other enterprise-class business systems.

      “The improvement of the national employment situation is one of the key objectives for the MOHRSS in the next 5 years. We are honored that the Chinese government eventually choose MrTed as the long-term and strategic partner for achieving this critical mission,” said Johnny Wang, Managing Director for MrTed China. “We will support CTA to setup the largest Talent Acquisition platform in China, thousands of recruiters in all major cities and districts across China will make use of MrTed’s flagship solution, MrTedTalentLink. As the market leader in China, MrTed was already positioned to serve the needs of leading global companies here, and now MrTedTalentLink is positioned to become the underlying hiring platform for the entire nation.”

      “With China emerging from the global downturn faster than other economies, the need to attract, hire and retain the best talent is expected to increase. That China has elected to centralize and standardize management of this critical process with MrTed clearly demonstrates the government agency’s appreciation for the best global talent acquisition solution. It also underscores MrTed’s unique ability to help the world’s largest organizations to master the complexity of recruiting locally on a global scale,” said Jerome Ternynck, CEO and co-founder of MrTed. “We are very excited to work with the Chinese government on this very important project, and we are proud to be part of the largest-ever deployment of cloud-based talent acquisition software.”

      Monster shares on the rise

      Monster has been on a very aggresive cost cutting excercise of late all around the world. I'm sure the folk at Monster will have welcomed the Barron's report which was followed by an upgrade by UBS that boosted their shares to a year high of  $18.57 which is more than three times the share price, $5.95, was in March this year.

      The optimistic article, “Turning Into A Monster Of A Competitor,” talks about how Monster’s international reach accounts for 45 percent of the company’s revenue and how its acquisition of China.HR and Trovix added to the new emphasis on tools for the passive job seeker is going to help in it in the future.

      These steps, plus a reorganization of its sales force and the improving global economy, says Barron’s, makes Monster “a good long-term bet.”

      Also, Monster has also started to lauch some more commercials for its career tools - check the below one out. Not a big fan of them and much prefer the old stork videos.



      Here's my favourite:

      2 weeks to go the Irish Recruiters Future of Recruitment conference

      It’s only two weeks to go to part 2 of the Irish Recruiters “Future of Recruitment Conference”! Here are some of the things you may learn:

      • What is Photo Bar Code recognition and how it can be used to recruit?
      • What is Augmented Reality and Life Casting and why should recruiters care?
      • What are the Irish made iPhone apps that are out there that make life easier for users and how they can increase your productivity and help you have some fun?
      • What are the other app stores out there and is there any recruitment content on them?
      • What are the recruitment apps that now exist on Facebook in the UK and Ireland?
      • Examples of location based services and how they will evolve recruitment?
      • What advantages does Live Streaming technology offer recruitment?
      • 10 predictions that I will make for the recruitment industry in the next 18 months
      • Learn why micro-blogging can assist your brand and allow you access new channels of information and candidates
      • Hear how to post jobs effectively on Twitter Job Search and open up a new advertisement challenge to reach candidates
      • Understand the challenge and opportunity that EMC saw with a potential cloud ATS offering
      • Learn the power of force.com and how cloud apps can save you time and money
      • Learn how green IT and remote video interviewing can help you cut costs
      • Hear from Fergal O’Byrne, author, ex- CEO of the Irish Internet Association and now new CEO of Sonru his thoughts on the future recruitment
      • Learn how successful companies like Alexander Mann are adding extra value to their clients and adapting to internet recruitment technologies

      That’s not to mention a break out session on “Job Boards Vs Social Media”, plenty of time for networking and building community and much much more.

      The future of recruitment in many ways is in the cloud and the Irish Recruitment industry in many sectors is “rebooting” itself. To learn more, take the rare opportunity to come to an event like this to share your interpretation of the future and learn from others what they think. It is my opinion that the Irish recruitment industry needs to become more sophisticated like our peers in the US. Hopefully, with this type of event we can raise the levels of recruitment sophistication in our industry and learn new techniques, tools and technologies that will help us attract the best and the brightest the world has to offer to our shores.

      More information and ticket purchases can be found here:

      A big thank you to Sonru and Prima.ie for sponsoring the event.

      Tweets: Irish Recruiters conference only two weeks away -  learn more about cloud recruitment  http://bit.ly/12ZGyX http://bit.ly/KDKgr   

      Tweets: Sonru and Prima.ie to sponsor Irish Recruiters Future of Recruitment conference on the 7th of October  http://bit.ly/12ZGyX

      21.9.09

      CPL opens new office in Belfast

      CPL are expanding into the northern market. Here what was in the Irish Times today:

      Ireland’s largest recruitment agency has opened an office in Belfast, indicating confidence that the Northern Ireland economy is on the upturn.

      CPL Resources, which offers recruitment, outsourcing and HR solutions and has offices across the State, eastern Europe and London, decided the time was right for northern expansion in the border city of Newry, it was announced today.

      Ciaran Murphy, who is manager of the new branch of the agency, said: “It may seem like a strange time to open a new office in Belfast, but actually I believe the timing is perfect as I’m starting to see the recruitment market in Northern Ireland pick up slowly but surely.”

      He said as the company was the largest recruitment agency in the Republic, opening in Belfast was a natural progression.

      “Granted, the province hasn’t had an easy ride through this recession and job losses have been high, but on the whole the figure is lower than the UK average and I see reason to be extremely optimistic that we will see significant changes for the better in the recruiting landscape over the next 12 months.”

      Speaking at the opening of the CPL branch in the city centre, Councillor William Humphrey, chairman of Belfast City Council development committee, said: “Our economy is beginning to show signs of recovery, and we hope that the worst of the recession is now behind us.

      “It is heartening to see a company such as this one making an investment and a commitment to our economy at this time.”

      18.9.09

      Did you know?

      Sonru to sponsor Irish Recruiters conference and Fergal O'Byrne to present!

      Unfortunately, Flexitimers will not be giving a presentation at October's Future of Recruitment conference but I'm very glad to say that one of Ireland's most respected IT professionals, Fergal O'Byrne will be replacing them and giving his views on the future of recruitment and also talking about the new venture Sonru he recently jointed as CEO.

      Here's Fergal's bio and very much looking forward to his presentation:

      Fergal joined Sonru, as Chairman in 2008, having previously been a business mentor to the company. He subsequently became CEO in September 2009, after serving as CEO of the Irish Internet Association for 4 years. He is an internet industry entrepreneur and founded Interactive Return (formerly webBusters) back in 1998. He is on the Board of Directors of IGOpeople.com, WINC, and CCD Ltd. He is also Chair of the Project Advisory Group for Fáilte Ireland's eBusiness Support Initiative.

      He regularly mentors start up and seed capital companies in Ireland and Denmark. In 2004 he was awarded the Microsoft/IIA Net Visionary Internet Marketer of the Year Award. Fergal is a member of the Irish Internet Association, Marketing Institute of Ireland and Engineers Ireland.

      Fergal's most recent book - 10 Online Marketing and Search Engine Essentials was published by Thompson Books. He has been a guest lecturer on the MBA course at the Smurfit School of Business, Dublin. He was part of the original team that helped to set up eircom.net and was Content Development Manager in charge of such projects as the Doras Directory. He holds an Honours Degree in Electronic Engineering from DIT, Kevin Street.


      I'm also glad to say that Sonru will be also one of the sponsors for the event!

      15.9.09

      NRF offering free job seekers workshops for candidates

      The NRF have contacted me to spread the work about a new initiative they want to pilot to assist both agency recruiters and job seekers alike... you can read the update below.

      "The NRF is committed to supporting Recruitment Companies in tough times. One area where recruiters are spending a huge degree of time is dealing with applications from candidates who may not have the fit for the role. However these candidates are often expecting a great deal of advice and counselling from an already stretched recruiter.

      The NRF can help. We have agreed to run a job seekers workshop on September 30th from 6PM to 7.30PM at the Grand Canal Hotel, Dublin 4 and will be presented by NRF Committee member Peter Cosgrove. The goal is to provide insight and support to candidates who are currently in a difficult job market. This is targeted at all levels of candidate, from junior through to senior management. This is an event you can refer candidates to and depending on the success of this pilot event we can run these regionally and on a regular basis. 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

      We appreciate that many organisations do provide the above advice but perhaps could do with some support. We also acknowledge the fact that there is plenty of career management services and career coaching provided by organisations. The NRF will be happy for any literature a company would like to supply to be available to job seekers at this event if they feel the jobseeker may need more detailed support. This is not a replacement for a detailed career management service but may open the job seekers eyes to the services that may be available to them.

      We are asking for a number of recruiters to support us and perhaps give some support on candidates CV in the form of a CV clinic after the event.

      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

      So please send the details onto any candidates who may benefit from this, it is only for a maximum of 100 jobseekers so spaces are limited"

      11.9.09

      Two new recruitment opportunities in Ireland

      This week I have been contacted twice to advertise 2 new recrutiment opportunities in the recruitment industry in Ireland:

      -Joe Henry of State Street Corporation has a contract recruitment role open. He explained that the role is flexible in terms of seniority and has the following requirements:

      - Ability to deal with rapidly changing priorities
      - Excellent ability to deal with people at all levels – internal and external stakeholders
      - Excellent customer services skills
      - Target driven and ability to meet key deadlines
      - Ability to source directly from multiple channels
      - Ability to recruit at all levels

      I don't have anyting else to go with but if interested reach out to Joe at: Ph: 00353 1 6558339 | joe.hendry@ifs.statestreet.com

      Also, StepOne are looking for experienced recruitment consultants looking for a new opportunity. For further information contact Jess on 01-6791000 or 0861921265"

      Here's the detail:

      "Step One is looking to speak with any experienced Recruitment Consultant who is currently in employment or out of work and looking for a new opportunity.

      Specifically we are looking to speak with experienced consultants be they Temp or Perm recruiters who are either fed up with their current situation and the rewards they are getting for their hard work or who are out of work and still have a strong network of clients and contacts but don’t have the expertise or funding to set themselves up.

      Step One can offer you the back up and funding required to set yourself up in a partnership agreement whilst you bring your client contacts.

      The reward and payment structure is totally open to negotiation dependent upon what you can bring to the table but Step One can guarantee that you will take an even slice of your overall billings."

      The gloves are off: Facebook offically takes on Twitter with @mentions

      Looks like the world of Twitter has now got a littler more interesting with Facebook's recent announcment to launch a very similar service itself called @mentions on their own platform.

      Here is Facebook engineer Tom Occhino’s explanation of the new feature:
      Now, when you are writing a status update and want to add a friend’s name to something you are posting, just include the “@” symbol beforehand. As you type the name of what you would like to reference, a drop-down menu will appear that allows you to choose from your list of friends and other connections, including groups, events, applications and Pages. Soon, you’ll be able to tag friends from applications as well. The “@” symbol will not be displayed in the published status update or post after you’ve added your tags.
      Friends you tag in your status updates will receive a notification and a Wall post linking them to your post. They also will have the option to remove tags of themselves from your posts. We hope that tagging your status updates and others posts from the Publisher will enable you to share in a more meaningful and engaging way, and connect with even more people. We’re rolling this feature out over the course of the next few weeks, so you may not see the new feature just yet.
      You can learn more here and here.

      8.9.09

      Try the New Free Irish Recruiters Toolbar!


      Do you use toolbars to help your recruit? I love them and use them every day for various different reasons and see them as being an integral part of being an Internet Recruiter. The main reason I use them is to help me navigate in one or two easy clicks to a given program I want to use thus saving me time. Toolbars are not a new phenomenon they have been around for a long time as far back as the Xerox Alto computer in 1973 but most of us probably first came to use them most with programs like Adobe Photoshop, Word and Netscape.

      When I think toolbars I nearly automatically associated the phrase with browsers like Internet Explorer, Mozilla and Safari, etc. I like to use a variety of toolbars on the multiple computers I use: desktop, laptop and mobile computer, and nearly all of them let me use pop-up blockers, auto fills. translators and email checking to be more productive, etc

      I like toolbars so much I decided to build a toolbar for the Irish Recruiters community! In doing so I designed it thinking about what I would like to see added to my already configured Google and Windows Live toolbars and musing over what I think an Internet Recruiter in Ireland would want to help them keep up to date with some of Ireland's latest recruitment news and help them be more productive in their day job.

      The answer I've come up with is the Irish Recruiters Toolbar!!!

      Maximise and watch the following video to learn more and then give it a go (apologies for the poor zooming but I only got one shot at doing the recording last night!). You can download the toolbar here, It's currently only available on Internet Explorer and Firefox. It's really easy to configure to other setting you may want and also to uninstall if you don't like it.



      I hope to improve it in the coming months and all you have to do is hit the drop down box at the start of the toolbar near the Irish Recruiters logo and hit "update" to stay on top of any advancements it makes and get the most up to date release. There may be a way to actually auto-update your toolbar as well so watch out for that. I may be able to make changes to the master toolbar and it will automatically populate on your toolbar and you'll see the changes without having to lift a finger.

      Let me know what you think @irishrecruiters. I'd appreciate the feedback. If there other features you'd like on the toolbar which you think I've missed let me know.

      Happy Hunting!

      Disclaimer: Although the author has attempted to find and correct any bugs in the free software program, the author is not responsible for any damage or losses of any kind caused by the use or misuse of the program. That said the software is using etrust technology like thousands of other software programs and so far has been proven to be 100% safe from any form of security threats.  Enjoy!

      4.9.09

      Cloud Recruitment, the Ovi App Store and LiveCasting!

      I'm looking forward to the Irish Recruiters future of recruitment conference-part 2 on the 7th of October. I'm currently researching my 2nd presentation on what cloud recruitment is and what is happening in the current app war that is raging on smart phones. I'm learning loads of new exciting stuff! Some of which I couldn't wait until the conference for and wanted to share now!

      For examples, as part of my presentation I'll be mentioning some of the very futuristic concepts that Nokia are working on to catch up with iPhone and Android. Interestingly, with the scale of their business and the number of customers they currently have on the long tail of the scaling curve for apps on smart phones Nokia could be a serious competitor in the market place if Ovi takes off.

      Check out the following video to see some of the exciting functionality they are planning that will allow you connect with employers and potential job seekers even easier in the cloud.

      2.9.09

      CPL reports 92% fall in pretax profits

      Interesting new results out from CPL for the 12 months to June, here
      and here

      Dissappointing but understanable to see the number of recruiters in the behomoth recruitment company drop from 483 to 333 and to hear Anne Heraty, chief executive painting a gloomy picture for FY10:

      “All our divisions felt the impact, especially in the second half of the year as many of our customers dramatically slowed down hiring on a permanent basis”.

      “Past cycles indicate that we could see a prolonged period of rising unemployment. This suggests that demand for recruitment services will be weak though 2010”.

      The results are probably a fair barometer of the extent of damage that has been caused by the recession in the last year or so. FY10 will be another tough year and also expect this to be exacerbated for agencies and job boards by a lot more social media and direct sourcing being conducted by a potpourri of techniques and creative referral programs.

      LinkedIn to buy Xing

      Fresh off the press it looks like LinkedIn are going to make their play to buy Xing which would give them even further dominance in the international field.

      You can learn more here.

      Irish Jobs offer new sourcing model: Pick, Pay and Go!

      Get ready for a lot of new recruitment business models and sourcing services as we start to head into the last 4 months of the year. Recruitment is rebooting in Ireland and a lot of tech savvy recruiters who were used to 12 months ago paying for a job posting and quite happily sieving through the candidates that came through are now beginning to look to additional or alternative sourcing methods to get faster results with quite often lower expenditure of resources.

      From a lot of recruiters I have talked to in the last few months and especially from those I listened to last week in the Irish Recruiters Tuesday Club as we discussed the topic "managing CV overflow and what happens in the black hole", the majority of recruiters present were exploring new techniques, tools and technologies to leverage the web , especially LinkedIn, to be more efficient in their search and provide less volume and more quality of applications. And most importantly in this recession: save money! Over the last 6 months in particular I've noticed an ostensible shift in how recruiters are now conceptualising their sourcing from the very beginning of when a job req lands on their table. Obviously, it depends on what industry you are sourcing for, and if the candidates in that industry can be found or want to be found using internet technologies, but certainly from what I gleaned from the discussion a lot of recruiters in the IT, pharmaceutical, finance, retail and even in certain circumstances the conservative medical fields are beginning to source more directly first before posting ads on job boards. It's almost as if LinkedIn is now in 4th position after their own databases, own career site and own referral programs. Where traditionally a job post would be posted now a search in LinkedIn is being conducted first and a few passive candidates contacted. Quickly followed by a job posting being posted! I'm sure this is not the case for a huge volume of recruiters throughout the country, especially small SME houses, where resources can be limited and time can be even more aggressive, likewise this is not always the case in the temp or contract worlds, but certainly in the multi-nationals that I have been talking to and in the discussion we had last week when it comes to full-time and contracts over 6 months a clear shift has taken place in the psyche of a lot of multi-national recruiters and hiring managers. Referral recruitment and direct souring are growing steadily stronger as channels.

      Cherry picking is quickly becoming en vogue! And quite often the cherries are falling from the cloud!

      Irish Jobs have grasped the concept of cherry picking with their new resume database offering. I got a mail, as probably a lot of you did today, advertising a new business model being used by the incumbent eponymous job board. This is a welcome evolution in the industry. It will be interesting to see when Monster which has the largest resume database in the world will follow suit and at what price point. A lot has been happening in Monster over the last 6 months in particular and I expect a lot of new services to come from them in fy10 as they fight to maintain their dominance and spread their portfolio of services to their customers with much more tailorised solutions at a variety of new price points.

      Many other job boards are trying to capitalise on the current opportunities to offer new services. For example, JobSearch.ie the free jobs portal for agencies and employers has now built in functionality that allows you tweet about every job on their site and they are soon launching an application which will allow users on Jobsearch.ie to access their contacts lists on Facebook, Linkedin and other social media where they can recommend any Jobsearch.ie job posting to their friend. I'm sure most of the IT teams running the job boards in Ireland are thinking the same. If not, in my opinion they should be.

      Hers is the details from Irish Jobs:

      IrishJobs.ie is proud to launch our brand new 'Pay as you go' CV database system enabling you to cherry pick the candidates you want.

      The IrishJobs.ie CV Database has proven to be a highly successful tool for both jobseekers and recruiters. Over 35,000 high calibre candidates across all industry sectors in Ireland have recently uploaded their CV onto IrishJobs.ie and this database is continually growing.

      With our CV database you can

      -tailor your search requirements by selecting the job category; roles, minimum -experience and salary range, plus include specific keywords.
      qu-ickly identify CVs matching your criteria as search results are displayed as a -snapshot overview including the candidate's objectives
      -search for suitable candidates in complete confidentiality - an excellent tool for times when you do not want to advertise a position

      With our new 'pay as you go' model you only pay for the CVs you pick (Just €15 + VAT per CV).

      Get ahead of the competition by targeting quality candidates instantly and efficiently. Check out our database in RMS today.

      Kindest Regards,
      The IrishJobs.ie Team

      27.8.09

      Experienced Recruitment Manager wanted for temp/contract desk in Dublin City Centre

      An experienced recruitment manager is required to join La Creme recruitment agency. You will manages a team of 3-4 sales consultants and will be very hands on and involved in all day to day activities.

      Roles/Responsibilities

      Management duties:
      * Manage a team of up to 4 consultants (temp/contract consultants)
      * Set, monitor and manages sales targets
      * Ensure all relevant KPIs are being hit
      * Manage performance levels

      You will also be involved in recruiting yourself:
      * Phone screening candidates
      * Liaising with clients
      * Developing new and existing client relationships
      * Filling roles with leading hospitals, GPs & Pharmacies

      Skills/Experience
      * 3 years Recruitment / Divisional managment experience
      * The ideal candidate will be coming from a medical agency background, specialising in temp/contract staff

      Personal Attributes
      * Excellent client development skills
      * Strong Communicator
      * A strong leader & the ability to guide and develop your teams skills

      If interested please contact, Orla Cleary, ocleary@lacreme.ie or 01-4321500