The Irish Cyber Sleuth Blog

My blog has moved over to Irishrecruiters.com

2012-01-09T19:40:00.000Z

Hi everyone - I've decided to move my blog over to a new site called IrishRecruiters.com I hope you can continue to follow some of the blog posts I write from over there! Talk soon!

Declan
www.irishrecruiters.com

Latest social media stats and more

2011-11-29T15:12:00.001Z

Check out this latest video on the growing momentum around social media

Tonight at Irish Recruiters we have a new "speed presentation" format for some of the biggest and well know software providers in Ireland: 1intlliegence, Zartis, Candidate Manager, Arithion, E-cute, Caliber and Kala Technologies. Should be a fascinating night.

Other things catching my eye:

Intel is beginning to invest heavily in recruitment apps and social recruitment. What really caught my attention is when you check out their student lounge concept and new IPad app - to learn more go here
Also, a new kid on the block worth checking out is Talent Bin - "social recruiting, evolved"!!!
10 presentations for using social media in HR and Recruitment, here

New Google Analytics

2011-11-18T10:47:00.000Z

Hi All - I don't know how many of you are using Google Analytics on your blog or web site. I use it a lot and I'm delighted to see the new upgrade to it coming out today. With this and the recent improvements in Google Reader it's great to see some of the feature rich innovation coming out of Big G and her busy hive of engineers. You can check some of the changes in this video:

The three main enhancements are:

A redesigned Google Analytics platform to enable major functionality
A streamlined interface to make it easier to get to the information you want
Improved report performance for faster reports

I also really like the real time analytics that also recently came out that allows you track your social media activity. You can learn more here.

And let's not forget the excellent mobile analytics that are now also available, here

See you all on the 29th for the next Tuesday Club

LinkedIn launches new CRM for passive candidates: Talent Pipeline

2011-10-18T16:30:00.000Z

At LinkedIn's Talent Connect conference in Las Vegas today LinkedIn launched LinkedIn Talent Pipeline to allow you have a central database on LinkedIn to store passive candidates that are not even on LinkedIn. It's their version of a passive candidate CRM system. This is going to help them create a passive candidate hub for recruiters and will certainly propel the company to getting the magic 640 million professionals around the world they feel should be on LinkedIn.

Some of the problems they say this solves are:

Recruiters can import leads and resumes found from other sources into Recruiter. These records can be searched, tagged with additional information, and shared across the team just like any profile sourced on LinkedIn. With new tools for adding a lead’s source and status, recruiters will be able to report on and improve the efficiency of their pipeline activities.

Stale leads are transformed into up-to-date records with deeper insights by being connected to LinkedIn. When new leads are imported, they are connected to their LinkedIn profile, which members keep updating even when they aren’t looking for a job. Recruiters are better positioned to evaluate and build relationships with leads, based on the insights provided by the LinkedIn profile, including shared connections, activity updates, recommendations and shared groups.

Because it is LinkedIn, it is an easy extension of the sourcing that recruiting teams already do on the professional network today. More than 75 of the Fortune 100 and another 6,000 companies use LinkedIn Hiring Solutions as a resource for finding, contacting, evaluating and staying in touch with leads, since they know most of their leads have profiles on LinkedIn.

It is only available for their chartered strategic consultants and will be more available next year to the wider public.

The product will be free for those who have Recruiter accounts!

You can learn more on the LinkedIn blog here

LinkedIn let's companies post status updates

2011-10-10T08:22:00.001Z

This is a big move by LinkedIn to compete more with Facebook Pages but also to try become a credible alternative site for company's career pages, which the company would love to see a trending towards.

Up until last Thursday users could follow companies but now more than 2 million businesses with company pages can post status updates to followers.

Company status updates will also appear in a page follower’s LinkedIn homepage news feed. And any LinkedIn member can see, like and comment on status updates, or share an update with friends, from the company page.

Companies interested in the new feature can turn it on here.

Here are some FAQs you need to be aware of.

Who will see my Company Status Updates?
Followers of your Company will see the Status Updates on their homepage (when they login to LinkedIn) or by going to your Company’s “Overview” tab. Each Follower’s network will also have an opportunity to see the posts- as long as the follower comments, likes, or shares.

Who can post a Company Status Update?
In order to post a Company Status Update, you must be an Administrator of your Company Page, and your Company Page must be set to “Designated Admins only”.

How can I add Administrators?
From the “Overview” tab, click on the dropdown “admin tools” and select “edit”. In “edit” mode, select “Designated users only” and type in the names of the people who should have Administrative rights. Click “Publish” to save.

How can a Company post a Status Update?
Anyone who has Administrator rights and whose Company Page is set to “Designated Admins only” will be able to post a Status Update on the “Overview” tab.

Who can comment/like a Company Status Update?
Any LinkedIn Member can comment on, like or share a Company Status Update.

Will Company Status Updates support URLs?
Yes, it will support text and URLs (website, image, YouTube video). URLs will be automatically shortened with the LinkedIn URL shortener.

Will Company Status Updates support Images?
Yes, it will support URL links that are images. The Administrator will be able to preview the image thumbnail and associate a Title and Description to it. Posts can be up to 500 characters (including spaces) and Title can be up to 250 characters (including spaces). URLs will be automatically shortened with the LinkedIn URL shortener.

Will Company Status Updates support Video?
Yes, it will support URL links that are YouTube Videos. The Company will be able to preview the status update and associate a Title and Description to it. Posts can be up to 500 characters (including spaces) and Title can be up to 250 characters (including spaces). The videos will be able to be played inline. URLs will be shortened automatically with the LinkedIn URL shortener.

How long can a Company Status Update be?
Posts can be up to 500 characters (including spaces).

Is there any tracking & reporting for Company Status Updates?
You will be able to see impressions and engagement on each Company Status Update. An impression = views of the status update. Engagement = total interactions (comments, likes, clicks, shares)/total impressions. This data appears approximately 24 hours after an update is published and will continue to update on a daily basis.

How long will Status Updates appear on the Overview tab?
At this time, the Overview tab is restricted to showing the most recent 20 posts. This will include status updates, any job opportunity, new hires etc…Once a status update becomes the 21st post, it will be removed from the feed.

How can I see a history of posts?
Presently, there is no ability to go back to old posts or the metrics related to those posts.

How can I control comments made?
Administrators have the ability to delete inappropriate comments. Simply go to the upper right corner of the comment and click on the “x”.

Is there a limit to how often a business can post?
No. However, business’ that post an excessive amount are subject to review by LinkedIn and could risk having their page deleted.

Identified - Eric Schmidt invests in social recruitment

2011-09-25T14:04:00.001Z

When Eric Schmidt, the ex-CEO of Google invests in recruitment software it's worth investigating. This week I caught a glimpse of a new company called Identified.com which I think has a real chance to do very well in the recruitment landscape. I spent a couple of hours this weekend reviewing it and I was very impressed. Check it out here.

What Identified does is offer a new professional networking play in a gender that is growing ever competitive.We are only beginning to explore the power of data analytics in recruitment and it is very very early days. In my time in LinkedIn I got the chance to work with some of the finest data scientists in the world who are working closely on a variety of algorithms, mashups and tools that will bring to reality the ability of recruiters to read a wide range of data sets to extrapolate new insights to information to make them more competitive. Identify brings us one step forward to a more complete job ubiquitous recommendation searchable skills index. We live in a professionally networked world where the talent economy is unfolding in new and exciting ways. Professional skills graphs are a hot topic at the moment as are the current API wars taking place. What Identified tries to do is offer a professional job search engine in a clever new way. It does this by trying to offer a 0 to 100 scale for particpants using three key criteria:

professional career
education background and
social network.

The index ranks top candidates on various skills by using a combination of your Facebook data and data you have put in manual. Interestingly, another professional network in Ireland, SkillPages, is actually operating in the same space trying to offer a network purely focused on the skills component of a person's profiles. It currently is based in Blackrock and has approx 20 staff already and is growing quickly! We wish them well and hope they continue to expand quickly. LinkedIn has also been focused on skills with their skills tags and skills pages which are growing quickly. The approach from each company is different though and that's where it get's very interesting, especially when you factor in the race to bring their products to new languages and cultures that haven't been tapped into yet and can offer quick hit loyalty for first mover advantage. This is how Identified have done it!

What I don't like about this approach however, is if you don't have a strong education you score low. I'm not sure that is necessarily the right approach to take but I completely understand it is hard to index potential and passion for those entrepreneurs who either didn't go on to pursue further education or left mid way. Also, there are some other serious flaws when it comes to the focus just on your network, experience and education. Surely, there should be more factors involved when indexing an individual's score: creativity, leadership, intellectual curiosity, etc. It's crude but it's a fascinating entry into the market.

To join and use the site you need to allow Identified access to your social graph on Facebook. Once that is done you get quickly ranked against your friends and you get prompted to add more detail to improve your ranking. I started with a score of 45.

One excellent feature that the site explores is the wonderful world of analtyics which I will be writing about lot more in the future.If you want a glimpse into some of the data analytic offerings that LinkedIn could offer in the future, set up a profile in Identified and you'll get to see what type of analytics potentially can be shared about individuals and their networks. On your personal page, Identified lists the most common job titles, most common companies, most common universities. Powerful information.

Here is my search for recruiters. Unfortunately, no Irish Recruiters come up in the first page but I hope that changes soon. Identify has been added as a topic of discussion on the certified social media course and advanced certified internet recruiter course where I will be teaching a lot of new techniques for recruiters to rank higher in their Identified ranking and how to search for new pools of talent using this new professional network.

To date, Identified has scored and indexed over 40 million professionals, 60,000 companies and over 8,000 universities. This is explosive growth and I look forward to seeing Identified spreading quickly across the US and then more into the international sphere. 40 million profiles is a lot! Google plus doesn't even have 30 million yet. While BeKnown, BranchOut and Google + have been getting a lot of attention of late it looks like the team behind Identified have been quietly putting their robots and crawlers to work.

Twitter Analytics and some excellent social media stats

2011-09-14T22:54:00.003Z

Twitter for quite some time have had a hard time getting business advertisment spend over on their site. They've tried a bunch of things with marginal success. At tech crunch this week it was announced that they are working on a new Twiitter Analytics tool... this is going to help those advertising budget owners to understand where to lay their chips, and when they splice the data using this new analytics tool it may just shift some advertising dollars Twitter's way. Smart move. I'm looking forward to testing it on my Irishrecruiters handle.

Also, check out this very cool PPT on some of the latest stats on social media around the world in 2011!

Awareness of Facebook is close to 100%
More than 1 billion people (>70% of internet population) use social networks.
People use more than Facebook. In Europe, people join on average 1,9 social networks. In USA it’s 2,1; Brazil 3,1 and India 3,9.
Average Facebook session lasts 37 minutes, Twitter 23 minutes. More than 400 million people use Facebook daily.
There is a big Twitter paradox:80% is aware of Twitter, only 16% is using it.
Vkontakte is big in Eastern Europe: 55% awareness, 39% penetration.
Difficult for new social networks to succeed. 60% does not want any new social networks. 93% is happy with what they have and won’t in- or decrease. Big social networks will get bigger and small ones will get smaller.
People connect online with their offline friends. People love to connect to people.
>50% of social network users are connected to brands.
Offline brand experiences are the main online conversation starters.
People become a fan on Facebook because they like the product, not because of advertising.
36% posted content about a brand on social networks.
Consumers want to be in the boardroom. 44% is asking to take part in co-creation of products & advertising.
Positive experiences are bigger conversation starters than negative experiences. People like positive stuff.
Consumers prefer e-mail over social networks to ask questions to brands.
2 out of 3 employees is proud about their employer, but only 19% shares stories on social media: unused conversation potential!
38% of internet users has a smart phone. They are more intensive users of social networks than people without a smartphone.
On average, people install 25 apps on their smartphone, but only use 12. Most used apps are social network apps.
12% of smartphone owners is using location based services. 4% of smartphone users are familiar with augmented reality.
20%of location-basedusers checks in daily

Social media around the world 2011

View more presentations from steven van belleghem

A busy few days

2011-09-11T21:02:00.002Z

It's been a busy few days for me with setting up my new company and transitioning away from LinkedIn. It feels great to be working for myself and I'm looking forward to a completely new set of challenges. Thanks to all of you that have sent me so many positive messages. It is much appreciated. I look forward to catching up with you all in the coming weeks to discuss some of the services I will be offering. Also, thanks to you who are also agreeing to some consultancy work. I didn't think some job offers would come in so quickly!

I've decided that I am going to base myself in the Guinness Enterprise Centre with another 57 entrepreneurs who are working hard to build their businesses. I met some of the entrepreneurs hard at work there and it was inspiring learning about their determination and optimism as they face the challenges that lay ahead. Companies like Statcounter, Datakraft, Content Kings and Dove Tail are doing amazing work which I am looking forward to learning about. A huge thanks to Eamonn Sayers for all the tax, finance, logistical and strategy advice. I owe you one!

I've also as usual being paying close attention to the recruitment industry. Here are some of the things that this week have caught my eye.

Looks like Facebook are rolling out circles soon! You either love it or hate the way they copy so many ideas from their competitors but either way it makes a lot of sense to let the market test what is working and then simply copy.

LinkedIn now allows you include voulunteer experience in your profile. You can learn more here.

Also BranchOut is rumored to be launching something called "Recruiter Connect" which will be very similar to LinkedIn's Recruiter product. It will interface with ATSs and allow you search through millons of people on BranchOut. This Thursday at the Irish Recruiters conference we be discussing the latest from BranchOut and discussing what this may been for LinkedIn. If you want to come to the conference you can still get your tickets here.

Also big shout out to the organisers of CareerZoo this weekend for an excellent event!

Skype launches new app directory

2011-08-30T10:05:00.001Z

Skype appears to have launched a new app directory in the cloud, allowing users to access all the third-party apps for both consumers and businesses built on top of Skype’s API.

Very cool! At launch, Skype has 23 apps featured as soft-launch partners, expect this to grow quickly!

Guest Blog Post - Recruiting the Candidate – Five things many employers do not do well….

2011-08-16T13:51:00.003Z

Thanks to Peter Cosgrove, Director CPL for this blog post!

For certain skill-sets there is a lack of supply of good people, here are 5 things that employers regularly fall foul of, so even when they have the candidates they often cannot find the right person.

Job specification: All jobs require there to be some sort of a job specification as this is what helps the prospective candidates understand the role. Many job specs are out of date, do not really highlight what the job entails and are often written by someone who is not close enough to want the job is – line managers should sign off on all their own job specifications as they truly know what they need,. A line manager needs to be fully involved in the hiring process and not leave it to the HR Department.

References – the amount of times I receive a reference check and it is a tick-box exercise where you can hear the other person who is regularly not the prospective boss asking standard questions. It amazes me that one of the best ways to find about a person is the three year interview they just did at their last company. Despite the fact that more companies are not giving references, it is critical to find out as much as you can about the person at their last job – this is information you cannot easily gauge at interview .

Lack of awareness of the company brand – interviewing a candidate is not all about your company. Guess what - just because you believe you are a great company to work for does not mean everyone else does. What will help is a strong first impression, a passionate interviewer, a company that seems to care about the person they are interviewing and one who actually interviews that candidate. Good candidates want to be interviewed and challenged, they want to feel they earned the job so give them a strong interview and a great first impression.

Wanting a replica of the person who has just left – “We want someone like Bob” is a well heard phrase. Try to think about your vacancy, what you really want is Bob from three years ago, as Bob today knows everything about the job and is leaving, so you will not get someone like him. If the person can already do the job, then they should not and most likely won’t want it.

Assessing the candidate: Interviews are poor indicators of the quality of the hire, a Belgian survey highlighted that an interview had about a 25-30% success rate whereas an assessment centre brought his up to 63%. It makes sense that if you test someone through psychometrics, see how they perform in a group, give them a task to perform in a live environment and also interview them , you are more likely to get the person you want – but only if you know how to set these assessments up fairly and appropriately,

Great people are very hard to find – don’t make it harder by not doing the basics right.

Download the new LinkedIn App

2011-08-16T13:37:00.003Z

How many folk out there in Irish Recruiters have downloaded the LinkedIn app for their Iphone, blackberry, Android enabled phone or iPad. Please leave a comments if you have!

Did you know we just launched some new apps! For the first time, we’ll be providing that experience not only in our iPhone and Android applications, but also in a brand new HTML5 experience for use in any modern mobile web browser. You can get the apps here:

Get the iPhone app now | Get the Android app now

The coolest thing for me is you can now access groups with this release! This has been the number one feature request and it a real godsend! You can learn a lot more here.

Changes in the search engine world recruiters need to know

2011-08-13T10:56:00.003Z

Did you know that Microsoft made an announcment last month that Bing will now power the English language queries for Baidu, China's number one search engine. This is a big step forward for Bing and if the team at Microsoft continue to integrate social search using Facebook's data and do a similar deal with RenRen China's biggest social network the search engine industry in China could start to get a lot more interesting.

Also, Yahoo converted the organic results for its European properties to Bing’s search directory. Now, Yahoo US, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain, UK, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, New Zealand, Peru, and Venezuela are now all powered by Bing.

What this translates into is the commands that used to work for Yahoo's European index are now the same as the commands recognised by Bing. For those who want more detail go to Microsoft and Yahoo!'s search alliance site: www.searchalliance.com/

If you want to learn more about search engines and how to use them properly for recruitment you should check out the Irish Recruiters in association with the CIPD's certified internet recruiter course.

Here's some of the content on the course:

What are search engines and what is Boolean searching with clear examples included
How to flip search and x-ray servers and peel back URLs
The important anatomy of a URL
You’ll learn how to use field commands and wild card searches
What is our philosophy on passive candidates and why we think they increase quality of hire
How to tailor your search to international recruitment assignments so that you can carefully craft Boolean strings for the European and Asian markets
How to do time machine searching, code language searching and quick competitive analysis tag sourcing

Contact me or the CIPD if you want to learn more. The next course is Tuesday the 6th of September.

On the topic of search in my up and coming presentation at the Irish Recruiters annual conference on the 15th of September I'll be talking about how LinkedIn's Paid Recruiter product allows my recruitment team at LinkedIn search and will be showing how the amazing "Similar Profiles" feature has helped to speed up our time to hire.

If you want to know more about LinkedIn's Recruiter Product and a host of other LinkedIn corporate solutions go here.

Innovation at LinkedIn you don't want to miss and the financials!

2011-08-13T10:34:00.003Z

Some things catching my eye at the moment at LinkedIn.

LinkedIn now has a new profile makeover to help you enhance your professional identity, learn more about it here. It's worth 3 or 4 minutes of your time.

Check out the company's impressive latest financial statements here . Some of the highlights that caught my eye were:

Members grew to 115.8 million, an increase of 61% from the second quarter of 2010
Unique visitors of 81.8 million per month, an increase of 83% from the second quarter of 2010
Page views of 7.1 billion, an increase of 80% from the second quarter of 2010

Also the creative energy of some of the brighest interns in America particpated in LinkedIn's first intern hack day! This signifies the innovative culture permeating through LinkedIn. You can check out more in the video. Some of the results were amazing. My favourite being LinkedInOut! Very very cool! Also was great to see James Gosling the founder of Java being on the adjudication panel!

Did you miss "Apply with LinkedIn"! This for me is one of the very biggest innovations ever at LinkedIn. Over time a bit like PayPal's payment button I think will become a world wide recognised internet standard. In this case the ability to apply for a job with your LinkedIn profile.

Monster launches new semantic search service in the cloud

2011-07-26T11:42:00.003Z

To learn more go here.The software is in beta at the moment and will be only available to US and UK customers for the moment.

BeKnown and Google + - Are we at the end of Social 1.0

2011-06-28T21:39:00.012Z

Monster have entered the professional networking world with a quasi LinkedIn Branch Out facebook app.

Here's some interesting commentarty from John Bersin.

Check out the videos!

I wonder how many people will give it go!?! Get ready for Google's Plus in the social world in the coming hours!?! I'm on the white list for their new Google Plus one offering and I'm looking forward to playing with it. The social netowork era is firmly upon us, just in case any of you doubted it! Who can create the glue though - who can create social 2.0! Who will provide insights to the new data curves and graphs being compiled? Will we see an Irish job board come out with a similar facebook app to create an Irish professional network of choice on the FB platform?! What about more specific skill set variants. You should come to the next Irish Recruiters Tuesday Club on the 26th of July where we will discuss all the above?

Do you know what a LinkedIn Hack Day is?

2011-06-03T07:56:00.002Z

As you can imagine there is a lot of exciting innovation taking place in LinkedIn on a daily basis! There is constant improvements and new functionality being released from our "pod" teams working on a rich variety of roadmap initiatives. A good way for you to get a glimpse into the culture and passion of the people at the company is to check out our Hack Days! This will give you an idea of some of the amazing work some of our engineers and product folk produce typically in one day!

If any of you have any cool ideas how LinkedIn can improve their products or create a "hack" :) for our platform, drop me a mail declan.fitzgerald@gmail.com and don't forget to check out LinkedIn Labs which I'll be talking more about at our next Tuesday Club in a few weeks!

Job Posting Analytics

2011-05-15T19:27:00.003Z

I've always wanted to have a version of Google Analytics for every job post that my team is using... Imagine having detailed analytics around how effective the title you are using on your job description is and if it is attracting the right audience you want. Imagine knowing the terms that visitors are using to get to your job description and how many have applied and from what companies. These powerful analytics are now available in LinkedIn jobs. This is a huge advancement in innovation and providing insights into datasets that will power recruitment departments to more efficient job posting and much quicker results.

Check out the following job post and especially the virtual tour at the end to learn more, here.

If you click on the following image you'll see some of the live data from a role I am helping to recruit for today.

It is innovation like this that is exciting me inside LinkedIn. Our product managers and carefully thinking about how data and insights into data sets around recruiters actions. Recruitment Analytics is a fascinating topic. What does it mean? What would a data scientist in a recruitment department do if they could track the effectiveness of all the activity that is taking place around your job descriptions in real time. How would they advise your team to edit your job descriptions to make it more appealing to your target audience. When are we going to see the first Recruitment Analytics conference? Would you go?

National Roadshow to Help Jobseekers through hard times

2011-05-08T22:41:00.001Z

Just arrived back into the country after another work trip to San Fran and it's good to be home on Irish soil. Last week was all about management meetings in LinkedIn and also planning for a new recruitment training series for all our recruiters and members of our hiring solutions and recruitment product consultancy departments.

Something I wanted to draw your attention to was a new roadshow that CPL are running designed to assist thousands of job seekers throughout Ireland. It will take place from Friday the 13th of May until Monday the 23rd of May and it will be a free of charge series of talks around the country where job seekers can learn how to prepare a great CV.

To learn more go to here

Also, I am currently searching for a world class full-time recruiter to join my European recruitment team, based out of London, here's the spec for the role if you know of anyone interested.

Tweetdeck for Chrome

2011-04-10T12:10:00.001Z

The current state of social media in Ireland

2011-03-22T14:07:00.006Z

Interest use by Salesforce of video JDs to hire social media professionals

2011-02-15T20:04:00.002Z

Thanks to Noel Reidy from Google for sharing this one with me.

LinkedIn Skills

2011-02-10T19:38:00.000Z

This is only the start... more to come on skills and skills graphs. We now firmly live in a talent economy where professional networking is at the center of its ebbs and flows.

Check out your InMap

2011-01-24T21:40:00.002Z

Some more innovation from the people at LinkedIn... create a visualisation of your own social graph. It's called an InMap and you can check it out here.

Also some new ads from Yahoo and some bus stops in San Fran.

Any idea what is the Twitter clone in China. Sina Weibo is growing fast in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. It currently has over 50 million users and is expecting to hit 100 million by the end of 2011. Gaofei Wang, Vice President of Sina Weibo shared with Mobile World Live in an Interview on its growth phase and briefly on its monetization plan.

And if that wasn't enough for one blog post check out thesocialcv.com

Looking forward to 2011 and some of the things on my mind

2011-01-02T13:50:00.019Z

I hope you’re all feeling well fed and watered after the break. I know I am and I’m looking forward to loads of innovation evolving the recruitment industry this year. Here are some of the things I have my eye on.

Search technology continues to fascinate. Serendipity search is going to be a hot topic. The ability for Google to take your location, a piece of information about you (context) and then serve you up relevant results without you searching for anything (serendipity) is going to open up a world of new search potential. It will take a lot of time for this to seep into relevant recruitment examples. To learn more read how to build a serendipity engine and Google creating a serendipity engine. As well as contextual search instant search is something I’m watching closely as well as the continued excellence being paved with companies like Siri (which Apple recently bought)and Google with voice recognition which is improving in leaps and bounds on the Android platform

Social Ads are a very interesting topic. Expect Facebook to lauch their competitors to AdSense soon. I’m still surprised that more recruiters in Ireland aren’t advertising via LinkedIn and Facebook rather that Google’s AdSense. I’m expecting more to shift some of their advertisement budget over to these mediums. I’ve been using LinkedIn’s DirectAds for the last year, and they are a simply excellent in terms of the high response rates a recruiter can get for targeted passive candidates. You can learn more here

Apps are all the go. I've found that these days you are more than likely getting the lads in the pub speaking about their apps rather then the week’s heroics of their favourite soccer, rugby or GAA superheros. This wasn't so much the case last year, but it was very noticeable this year. App mania has caught hold. This Christmas I spent a lot of time, playing around with Iphone, Ipad and Android apps. The ones that I’ve been enjoying the most are: Live Tracking for family members flight details, IST for speed traps on the road, Bump for sharing details, heart rate, just because it’s so cool, but also handy after a work out and then Instagram for photo sharing which I’m beginning to enjoy a lot.

2011 will also see some interesting entrants into the Irish market. The one I have ear marked for success is Social Talent from Jonathan Campbell. This company offers a number of services worth investigating but one service they will have a lot of success with in 2011 will be consultancy and development of social media recruitment strategies. If you want someone else to manage your entire social media recruitment strategy and don’t want to go through the trouble of setting up the strategy, the platforms, the content calendar, the analytics then they may be able to help. Check out their site here. They have 4/5 clients already in just a few weeks and I expect this to grow quickly. I’m also expecting to see the job boards to try something this year, we might see some basic social networking integration into their platforms, maybe even allowing you login to certain sections of your site using Facebook connect, we’ll also more than likely see some partnerships with the likes of Careerbuilder and others to provide more coverage.

The latest edition of the Irish Recruiters and CIPD social media recruiter course (CSMR) is finsihed – there’s lot’s of rich content in it worth exploring. If you want to get a quick 6/7 hour update on the basics of social media recruitment this could be the one course you want to do in 2011. The course costs 499 euros for non annual members of Irish Recruiters, and 399 for members. It is run over 2 evenings with 3 hours training on each night. Here’s the course content:

Understanding the importance of social media with examples of best case scenarios from world class brands
A deep dive into the world of social networking and the variety of networks that exist around the world
How to create a social media recruitment strategy that scales. This section will dive into the main considerations that need to be taken into account before you build your strategy.
A deep dive into LinkedIn and the plethora of tools and techniques that can be deployed on the site to drive your social media recruitment strategy. We’ll take a close look at some of the more advanced features that most people do not pay close attention to but offer huge advantages when deployed properly. We’ll also look at managing groups and communities.
A deep dive into Facebook and how it can be used to build brand. At this part of the course we’ll dive into some world and Irish examples of Fan Pages in the recruitment industry worth reviewing
The course also takes a close look at using Twitter and picks a small number of recommended apps to be aware of.
We’ll also look at the power of using YouTube to build brand and we’ll take a close look at how building your own YouTube channel into your social media strategy is worth considering
We’ll look at the interesting topic of widgets and buttons and why they are so important
The important topic of metrics will be carefully analysed with recommendations given for free and paid tools that can help you understand your ROI on investment.
We’ll then look at the innovation that is currently taking part in the world of social media with plenty of time spent reviewing apps, blogs and other social tools and sources that every recruiter in Ireland interested in the world of social media recruitment should be aware of.
Finally, we’ll talk about the future of social media recruitment and some of the trends and technologies that will shape the industry in the coming years.

There are so many social media tools to use out there but for those already deeply ingrained in the management of their social media recruitment strategy one that you may want to review is Hootsuite that hit the 1 million user mark in December 2010.

QR codes continue to be all the rage in the east and are slowly continuing to appear in Ireland. Check out Audi's latest use of QR Codes:

Just like we are seeing people "Liking" things on Facebook and "Recommending" things on LinkedIn... tagging is going to become more important for products and people in 2011. This will open up a whole new world of micro-social graphs. More on that in future posts.

Wishing you all a very successful 2011.

Happy Hunting!

Irish Recruiters Hat Tip Awards 2010, Winter Presentation and Glimpse at 2011

2010-12-18T01:17:00.004Z

You can find in the below presentation:

1. Some of the social media approaches catching my eye with Facebook, Twitter, Starbucks and Microsoft
2. You'll get some future social media and technology trends for 2011
3. Well deserved Hat Tip Awards for 2010
4. Information on Irish Recruiters for 2011

You can see it a clearer at:here Click the "Full Screen" icon on the bottom right after you follow the link.

Happy Christmas to one and all!

Irish Recruiters Survey 2010

2010-12-18T00:50:00.001Z

Thanks to all that took the Irish Recruiters Survey in 2010. Here is the results. Just click on each image to see it in larger format.

2010 the year mobile social media came of age

2010-12-13T23:06:00.000Z

LinkedIn launches very cool new resume builder

2010-12-10T13:39:00.001Z

Part of the fun of working in LinkedIn is getting to play around and tinker with lots of cool things... one of the latest innovations to come out of the company is Resume Builder. Effectively what it does is create your profile into a traditional resume with a couple of quick clicks...

Check it out here.

Chrome Deck - the New Tweetdeck!

2010-12-08T17:21:00.000Z

Apologies everyone for the drop off in blogging of late. I'm working hard to build a global recruitment strategy for LinkedIn. I've also went into over-drive to hire a world class team of recruiters in Dublin, London, Mumbai and Sydney (to start!)to help develop and execute on the strategy!

In the meantime here's a little something to try out:

Storify

2010-12-06T23:34:00.003Z

How to use Facebook Places anywhere in the world and LlinkedIn share buttons

2010-11-30T23:16:00.000Z

Also, some more innovation out of LinkedIn, check it out here!

Rockmelt Social Browser

2010-11-09T18:55:00.000Z

LinkedIn is recruiting recruiters!

2010-10-21T15:03:00.002Z

LinkedIn is recruiting recruiters!

I’m a week into my new job in LinkedIn and I’ve been amazed at the energy and creativity in the company. Lots of exciting products, services and iterative innovation on the way.

I wanted to let the folk of Irish Recruiters know that I am currently building out an international recruitment organisation and as such there are 4 recruitment opportunities on offer at the moment, and there will be more to come:

Full –Time Recruiter role based out of Dublin (Sales and Marketing)
Full-Time Recruitment Coordinator based out of Dublin
Contract Recruiter role in Dublin, 11 months (Sales and Marketing)
Contract Recruiter role in London, 11 months (Sales and Marketing)

Full-Time and Contractor Recruiter Roles

At LinkedIn we are looking for incredibly passionate recruiters who don’t want to just recruit, but also want to take on some interesting high-impact project work as well as come to a company and culture where we will expect you to contribute heavily to come up with ideas of how we can develop new world class recruitment products and services

Skills needed are:

5+ years in-house sourcing experience in a IT/Online Media/Traditional Media multi-national, with experience recruiting for sales, marketing and operation divisions across Europe (at this time no agency recruiters need apply).
2+ direct sourcing experience with strong knowledge of Boolean logic and data mining techniques.
Huge passion for social media and feel at home talking about walls, tweets, hashtags and updates.
Experience using LinkedIn Recruiter or LinkedIn as a recruiting tool.
Be client focused and sales oriented with excellent relationship management skills.
Strong project management skills (experience running Europen wide projects a plus).
Knowledge of online media and traditional media industries is a huge plus.

Recruitment Coordinator

At LinkedIn we are looking for a Recruitment Coordinator with multiple language skills who has huge passion for social networking and has flexible skills which allows the candidate take part in a number of areas in the recruitment function

Skills/Responsibilities needed are:

2+ years experience supporting an in-house recruitment function in an IT/Online Media/Traditional Media multi-national.
Strong coordination skills organizing interview schedules between applicants, hiring managers and the recruitment team.
Experience conducting reference checks for all candidates at offer and accept stage.
Help to maintain an up-to-date recruitment database.
Follow up with applicants in collaboration with recruiters.
Help create and manage departmental documentation.
Conducting sourcing work occasionally for junior open roles.
Ideal candidate will have fluent English (written and oral) plus one of the following (French, Spanish, German, Dutch)
Other duties as assigned.

Please send your CV to me answering the following questions:

Why do you want to join LinkedIn?
Why should LinkedIn recruit you?
What experience do you have with deploying social media technology to recruit candidates?
How do you think location based technologies such as Foursquare or Gowalla can be used to recruit or brand open requisitions at LinkedIn?
What is your salary expectations?
And if successful what is your available start date?

These roles are not open to agencies, please do not forward any applications, all applications should be sent to dfitzgerald@linkedin.com

Bing Facebook social search and LinkedIn Labs

2010-10-13T23:22:00.003Z

And if that is not enough we now also have LinkedIn Labs!

The Augmented Reality CV

2010-10-13T07:16:00.000Z

and here is the magic:

Some mobile design innovations

2010-10-04T19:55:00.002Z

We've mentioned Fennec Firefox's web browser for mobile devices on this blog before but Mozilla Labs community member Billy May's concept of what an “Open Web” mobile phone could look like, dubbed Seabord" really sets the mark... I'd bet we'll see some of this in a iPhone 6 or 7 version.

LinkedIn makes its second acquisition: Choice Vendor

2010-09-24T10:47:00.002Z

Yesterday, LinkedIn acquired ChoiceVendor, a start-up that provides real-world ratings and reviews of business-to-business service providers in more than 70 categories across the United States.

Here's what they had to say on the ChoiceVendor website:

"Today, LinkedIn announced that it has completed its acquisition of ChoiceVendor.

The ChoiceVendor and LinkedIn teams are equally passionate about helping professionals make the best decisions. As part of LinkedIn, we’ll contribute our knowledge and ideas to the products and services that reach LinkedIn’s network of more than 75 million professionals.

Effective immediately, we’ll be ceasing operations at choicevendor.com. We’re very grateful for your support, and we look forward to connecting with you on LinkedIn!"

ChoiceVendor is a San Francisco Bay-based startup company that launched just months ago, in May of 2010. They are described as a Yelp-like review service aimed at the B2B space.

In addition, Garret Kearney of GKR wanted me to let you know he is looking for an internal recruitment manager: http://www.gkr.ie/JobDetails.aspx?JobID=36024 garretk@gkr.ie

Twitter launches new web site and some new recruitment jobs

2010-09-15T17:01:00.007Z

It's been a very busy few days with lots of recruitment conferences taking place around the world with my own team in the US presenting at SocialRecruitingSummit and then a number of announcements from the world of tech. The one that caught my attention was the launch of Twitter's new web site last night.

While a lot of us use shiny tools to use Twitter the vast majority of people access Twitter through ww.twitter.com. The new site is rolling out to users all over the world over the next couple of weeks and although Twitter are dressing this up as some sort of great new user it experience (it will improve things). It seems like this is a big play to support the company's revenue generating model.

Here is some of the commentary from the web on what some people think: TechBytes here and TechCrunch and here.

Hays are recruiting recruiters in Ireland and all over the world. To learn more cantact Richard.Eardley@hays.com

Philip Finane also has a recruitment manager role open in Saudi Arabia -

http://directsourcenetwork.blogspot.com/2010/08/expat-jb-opportunity-recruitment.html

Hope to see you at the next Tuesday Club on the 26th of October.

As ever thanks to the annual sponsors of Irish Recruiters: Prima.ie, Loadzabjobs.ie, Arithon.com and Hays.ie!

Some new recruitment opportunities and and impressive free social media analytics tool

2010-08-30T10:28:00.000Z

What social media analytic tools do you use? One of the main ones we use in Microsoft is Radion 6 which I have talked about before at some of the Irish Recruiter conferences. This is one of the more costly approaches to take and a number of free analytical tools exist in the market depending on what you are tying to do: Bit.ly, Feedburner, Xefer, Twittercounter.com, etc

One that has caught my attention from a recent blog post on their site on the 26th of August from the ShareThis team was there new Social Reach and Indexing tool, you can learn more here. You've probably seen the ubiquitous ShareThis logo everywhere but what is nice about this new tool is there is also share buttons in Social Reach that give a score for each location the buttons are presented and clicked on. Definintely worth investigating for those who are paying close attention to their analytics.

Here are some of the new recruitment roles out there at the moment:

Microsoft is looking for a technical recruiter on a 6 to 9 month contract with a view to extension. If interested contact Victoria on v-voddy@microsoft.com to learn more. The job is geared to hiring for the European Development Center which I worked on before, and the hiring managers are great to work for!

VM Ware in Cork are looking for a campus recruiter based in Cork for hiring from US universities and they are also looking for an in-house technical recruiter. To learn more contact Joe Hendry jhendry@vmware.com

Facebook continues to hire contract recruiters. If interested visit their JDs here: http://www.facebook.com/careers/#!/careers/department.php?dept=hr&req=145909365208 you need a Facebook account to access the role.

Facebook Places

2010-08-20T15:13:00.002Z

Tweet Button arrives

2010-08-13T15:18:00.002Z

Buttons and Aardvarks

2010-08-12T09:56:00.010Z

A few months ago I stayed up late past 2am to watch the Facebook F8 conference and was awed by the simplicity of the idea around creating a social semantic web with an open graph and easily distributable buttons across the web to usurp links on web pages as the defacto sentinels of the web. I wondered at the time how easy the implication would be and at what rate this new index could be created. The answer to that seems “much much quicker” than was first taught looking at some of the latest adoption numbers.

Buttons are very much en vogue and we are set to see a lot more. After an internal leak this week from Twitter it looks like they are going to launch soon they’re very own set of “buttons” as early as today, see here to learn more.

“Google Me” , Google's next attempt at a global social networking platform, seems to very much also a reality after an internal presentation from a Google engineer also got on the web exposing some of the opportunities in social networking for Google to capitalise. Only time will tell if Google Me is a real project, which it probably is, and what type of buttons Google is going to unleash on the world. Google Profiles will be central to whatever they do and it will be interesting to see what percentage of their time they dedicate to getting into a friends and influencers arms' race with Facebook to create a recommendation index versus creating a business social graph to create a business recommendation index which LinkedIn are probably much more poised to capitalise on considering the wealth of data they currently have, the recent acquisition of Mspoke that brings in some recommendation index and data analytic skills in house. The race for buttons has only started.

So how could all of this affect the recruitment industry here in Ireland. Let’s look at at a scenario.

Say I am culchie Ciaran from Carlow (btw: I love Carlow) just made redundant and am searching for a “software developer” job in Dublin and want to make the move up to the big smoke for some capital punishment. Some of the things I would consider are: searching some job boards; studing the press; getting in contact with some agencies; maybe going into PaddyTech in LinkedIn and seeing what jobs are there and possibly even updating my profile in LinkedIn and posting on my Facebook wall to say I’m looking for a job, ecetra, ecetra. I’d probably then set a few hours aside to get in front of a browser and start searching for a job using Google. Let’s say I type in [ “software engineer” jobs Dublin ] to see what gets coughed up, which will be an agency and job boards results:

http://www.eolas.ie/software-engineer-jobs-ireland.php
http://www.computerjobs.ie/
http://www.simplyhired.ie/a/jobs/list/q-senior+java+software+engineer/l-dublin,+dublin

All these are the highest ranking organic listings from Google’s index for the keyword search I did. But to what degree do they go to solving my job hunt and what other information would I like to know that the search engine can't provide me with. Now how about instead of typing into a search engine, I went out an asked the question to my friends in Facebook, and colleagues in my first degree network in LinkedIn. How would I begin to even do that. Well I could post the question on my Facebook wall, or on my LinkedIn profile or even in a LinkedIn group possibly. What I would get is a few reposts or comments from some close friends and colleagues. Which in itself could be very useful information. But let’s imagine I could get a glimpse of what everyone in my networks was reading, or commenting on, or posting questions to or “liking”. Now let’s say for a moment the “like” button, evolves and people in my network could tag the type of likes they like! The good folks who create buttons may come up with some functionality which allows me like a computer related topic. Maybe these button makers have just created a whole new data construct with recommendations or likes with tags for a whole plethora of services and a plenitude of products. All becoming nicely categoriesed. Maybe then it evolves a little more and geo-coordinates are added, so I can like a product, service, etc to a location… it’s now getting a lot more interesting. Maybe if culchie Ciaran asked the question and this time, if the people in his network, adjust their privacy setting to allow him to, he could see other software engineers in his network who have job hunting related information, he might be able to see what books they were looking at, what agencies they liked or job boards, who or the major jobs bloggers for IT in Ireland, what jobs his network find interesting! Bingo – culchie Ciaran may have hit the jackpot!

This naturally brings up all types of privacy and competition and even pure self-preservation debates but these are the type of discussions we are going to be having this decade. These are the conversations Mark Zuckenberg is having internally with his development teams in Facebook in San Fran. All over the dinner tables in Ireland a lot of us will be having similar debates during the coming years. We are very much in the decade of connectiveness and the biggest debate of the decade could well be privacy and who knows maybe buttons and strange animals like aardvark?!

To learn more you should think about coming to one of the up and coming Irish Recruiter's events.

Cool recruitment video from Twitter @jointheflock

2010-08-05T15:09:00.003Z

When you hear the word "talent" which company do you immediately think of?

2010-08-03T20:03:00.004Z

When you think of search you naturally think Google. When you think of coffee, Starbucks rolls off the tongue. When you think of stout it's Arthur but when it comes to talent, who is the company that you automatically tassociate the word with??? That's the answer Jeff Weiner, the young talented CEO of LinkedIn tries to answer.

Ever have too many tabs in your life

2010-07-28T12:03:00.006Z

I'm constantly looking for ways to speed up my productivity - anything no matter how big or small. It could be a new macro that you write in Bing to automate a search, a new alert you create to track a certain feed or hastag, it could be how I take advantage of the new 10gb email attachement functionality in the new windows live hotmail client to share files with friends or member of Irish Recruiters, or, it could be as simple as how I manage my tabs in my broswers more effectively on Firefox.

That's where Tab Candy comes in. This reminds me a little like the new bunching functionality for apps on the the new iPhone O/S that saves me a lot of time scrolling from page to page. Like that Tab Candy allows you cluster your tabs and then place them in easily accessible locations. Just one of many extensions that is helping me win the race for inches and seconds and helps me get out of the office that little bit earlier and off the grid that little more often.

Im looking forward to learning more about the next release of the project with co-browsing and extensibility high on the development teams functionality road map.

I really dig Flipboard...definitely one of my favourite apps

2010-07-22T13:35:00.002Z

If any of you have an iPad and your tired of looking at static feeds that come into your RSS reader all looking the same size and dimensions the folk at Flipboard have come out with a brillant idea that is catching a lot of people's attention. The software allows you build your own magazine which allows you to flip through it with a simple swipe of a finger. This is a revolutionary new UI Reader that already has brought down the company's servers with the demand it has seen in the last 3 days. It's free from the iTunes app store and for the moment only available for the iPad. I really love this app and looking forward to a version 2 that allows me a lot more customisation and also allows me bring in my LinkedIn feeds as well as the standard Twitter and Facebook ones it currently is set up for.

Check out their video:

New Facebook SEO tool and 4 new recruitment jobs to check out

2010-07-17T11:08:00.002Z

I recently played around with Facebook Ads and placed a few ads for a friends business I was helping out with. Up until now Facebook has been lacking a tool of the quality of Google Keywords's Tool. However, I just heard about a new tool called Cash Keywords Pro that looks like it is now the first Facebook keyword tool that does a really good job. Using both tools I was able to get a much better data set of words to chose from to purchase. Check out the video to learn more.

On the job front:

Hays are hiring people in Australia (Perth and Melbourne) here

Principal HR have an IT recruiter position open here.

Salesforce also looking for a recruiter: here

Accenture also hiring experienced recruiter to work with its Management and Technology Consulting practices. To apply you can contact: Jean.m.flavin@accenture.com

Interesting video on social media from Jobvite on their recent annual social media survey

2010-07-15T13:25:00.000Z

You can get more comprehensive details from the survey here. I'd recommend having a look at it.

When I get more time I'll get an Irish Recrutiers Social Recruiting Survey out to see what the state of play is here in Ireland.

New Irish and Australian recruitment roles

2010-07-08T13:50:00.000Z

I've been contacted by quite a few folk to get out the message around some new recruitment roles:

1. Stacey Taylor in othe Adelaide office of Hudson is trying to find some Irish recruiters who want to go and work in Perth. She can be contacted at: stacey.taylor@hudson.com

2. Ciara Williams of Sales Force is looking for a Senior Recruiter to join Salesforce.com on a contract basis in Dublin, she can be contacted at: cwilliams@salesforce.com

3. CPL's Judith Moffett, Science & Engineering Manager also has a role open at: http://www.cplscience.ie/Jobs/Detail/323484/Recruitment_Consultant she can be contacted at: Judith.moffett@cpl.ie

Facebook pushes search further ahead - has "Like" replaced the "Link"???

2010-06-29T13:20:00.002Z

I don't know how many of you stayed up and watched the Facebook F8 developer conference at 2am recently but I did. I wrote about it in this blog and it for me marked the start of a whole new web called the "Social Semantic Web". While the company was vague about a lot of details the company has confirmed that “all Open Graph-enabled web pages will show up in search when a user likes them”. This is huge and could mark the start of some new forms of machine learning. Google are rumoured to be bringing out their own new search engine "Google Me" and what it means has been doing the rounds on the Internet of late. This is going to be healthy competition as ever for the user.

To all the SEO heads out there this now poses the question what is Facebook SEO and what is possible via the Open Graph. What is clear now though is this marks the start of the beginning of Facebook's internet strategy.

At the technical level interesting questions that pop to mind are given that all of the OGP metadata is basically RDFa - theycould index the same info if it supported the OGP schema/namespace. The good news is FB is open to changing the OGP spec to better support the standardised version of RDFa http://groups.google.com/group/open-graph-protocol/browse_thread/thread/cc03368ef0d12c1a

As one commentator I read in a forum highlighted " What we really need is for Google Snippets to better support RDFa and also a standardised version. As does Yahoo (Search Monkey) Twitter (Annotations/Search) and eventually Bing. That way every website can add in a standard set of RDFa metadata to create semantic search engines which also creates better SEO for every website. My big fear right now is that each company will split RDFa efforts (now part of HTML5) and create their own namespaces."

It's got very interesting all of a sudden. What a day! I wonder what else is to come... it's hard to keep up with it all!!! :)

Vantage launch Ireland's first IT recruitment iPhone app!

2010-06-29T12:36:00.002Z

Vantage Resources has come out today with some excellent innovation around the launch of their new iPhone app. Here's what they had to say:

"The Vantage Resources App is now available to download free of charge from the iTunes store. Our App allows the user to create and manage their own profile allowing them to tailor the job information they want to receive based on their specific skill set, location and job requirement. Once a job matching the individuals’ details comes available the Vantage recruiters will update the candidate by sending text and video clip details to the candidate’s iPhone. "

Simon Martin, MD of Vantage Resources says” The iPhone has created a big buzz in the world of mobile phones and technology. Vantage specializes in IT Recruitment and our customer base is at the forefront of today’s technology. We wanted to design an iPhone app that puts the personal touch back into recruitment and is easy and exciting to use! This is just one of the many steps we are taking to be prepared for the recovery in the jobs market when the economy picks up in 2011. We believe this will play a key role in our online marketing strategy and will be a vital medium for Vantage to keep in touch with all active and prospective candidates. Our aim is to satisfy our client’s vacancy requirements quickly and ahead of our competitors.”

The app can be downloaded here.

Ireland is moving ever closer to the new world of cloud recruitment. Congrats to Simon and team on a job well done!

LinkedIn Groups have additional functionality

2010-06-29T07:57:00.000Z

Following on from the recent video posted by LinkedIn below here is a little more detail on the changes:

LinkedIn Groups allow you to:

* Quickly discover the most popular discussions in your professional groups.
* Have an active part in determining the top discussions by liking and commenting.
* Follow the most influential people in your groups by checking the Top Influencers board or clicking their profile image to see all their group activity.
* See both member-generated discussions and news in one setting.
* Easily browse previews of the last three comments in a discussion.
* Find interesting discussions by seeing who liked a discussion and how many people commented.

Group Managers

Manage your Group with new moderation tools.

LinkedIn’s new moderation toolkit helps you keep the quality level high within group discussions.

* Managers and moderators can now delete inappropriate posts right from their email box using the new option “Send me an email for each new discussion” in More > My Settings.
* Managers and moderators can now delete inappropriate comments right from their email box by clicking “Delete” within any followed-discussion email alert.
* We are introducing the ability for members to flag items as inappropriate – initially this is a way for us to gather important data and in a few weeks, this capability will enable members to flag items into the moderation queue or, if you choose, delete the content outright after an adjustable number of flags.
* The moderation queue will allow group managers to decide how many member flags can delete a thread or a comment.
* Managers can now restrict the move-to-Jobs capability to themselves. Users still will be able to “Flag-as-job” to move an item into the moderation queue.
* Very-low-connection users will now be flagged as such in groups’ request-to-join queues.
* Very-low-connection users will no longer be admitted directly to open-access groups but routed to the groups’ request-to-join queues.

Featured Discussions

Feature your top discussions as a Manager’s Choice

LinkedIn’s new Groups introduces the first of several changes to featured discussions:

* “Featured Discussions” are now called “Manager’s Choice” in response to user confusion about whether group managers or LinkedIn featured the discussion.
* Original user discussions, user-submitted articles, and RSS items can all be featured by clicking “Add to Manager’s Choice” from the top of any item’s detail page.
* The top Manager’s Choice will be visible in a module on the right side of the most visited page within groups: the discussion detail page.
* The top Manager’s Choice, rather than the top five, appears on the group homepage in a module on the right side of the page.
* Managers can re-order up to 10 Manager’s Choice discussions from the “See All” link in the Manager’s Choice module.
* Manager’s Choice discussions will soon see top billing in the group digest email.

The Social Network - Facebook film out in October - Check out the trailer

2010-06-28T14:50:00.004Z

Rumour has it that Google are planning a Facebook killer called "Google Me", learn more here.

Judith Moffett of CPL Science is hiring a recruiter here If interested contact her on Judith.moffett@cpl.ie or 01 6146132

LinkedIn brings out new group functionality and adopts the Facebook Like Button

2010-06-22T21:38:00.003Z

New Job: We're hiring a Staffing Admin/Junior Recruiter in Microsoft

2010-06-22T15:34:00.001Z

This is a role working through our vendor CPL. Duration: July 1st 2010 – June 30th 2011 with possible extension

Job Description: Outstanding learning opportunity to be part of Microsoft’s world-class recruitment organization as a Recruitment Administrator working in a combined Administrative and Recruitment role supporting Microsoft Ireland’s Graduate Placement and Graduate Programmes. The primary objectives of this role will include providing day to day administrative support of the Graduate & Intern hiring process as well as recruitment responsibilities such as candidate selection, attending career events, and conducing HR Interviews. Administrative support will include applicant tracking, coordination of events, email communication with candidates, status updates, applicant tracking system updates, and various other administrative tasks related to University recruitment. This role provides a great opportunity for a talented Administrator to learn about Microsoft’s Business, hiring Graduate talent, and gain recruiting experience for broad Business and Software Engineering/Technical positions.

Requirements:
•Minimum 3+ years of experience working in administrative roles with a high level of attention to detail
•Exposure to recruiting/staffing including candidate selection/CV evaluation, interviewing, and client management.
•Excellent computer skills (Outlook, Excel, etc.) and ability to learn new tools quickly
•Good written and verbal communication skills with a passion for excellent customer service
•Ability to work in an ambiguous environment and problem solve under pressure
•Full-life cycle recruitment experience desired
•Previous experience supporting University/College recruitment activities desired
•Experience in providing Event Coordination/Logistics desired

To Apply: Please send your CV with a Cover Letter outlining how you map to these requirements and why you would be interested in this role to brynam@microsoft.com .

New Job: Digitial Group Recruitment Manager

2010-06-21T12:00:00.000Z

Digicel's goal is to provide our customers with affordable and innovative mobile communications that fosters personal and professional connections between nations and people. Since our launch in 2001, Digicel has become the largest mobile telecommunications operator in the Caribbean and a recent new entrant to the Central American and Pacific mobile markets.

We are renowned amongst our customers for competitive rates, unbeatable coverage, superior customer care, a wide variety of products and services, innovative new technology and state-of-the-art handsets as well as community support and development.

On March 31, 2009 Digicel finished its last fiscal year with 8.2 million customers. We have operations in 26 markets in the Caribbean and Central America and Digicel Pacific Ltd, has operations in Papua New Guinea, Nauru, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji and Vanuatu. Digicel is present in 32 markets world-wide. We have recently been awarded a license in French Polynesia and the company is continually seeking new opportunities in the Pacific.
Digicel directly employs more than 6,000 people. We are the lead sponsor of Caribbean sports teams including the West Indies cricket team, Special Olympics teams across the Caribbean, the Haitian and El Salvador Football Federations amongst others. We are also the title sponsor of the Digicel Caribbean Championships and the Central American equivalent, Copa de Naciones Digicel, which are both important qualifiers towards the CONCACAF Gold Cup. Digicel is proud sponsor of rugby across the South Pacific including; Fiji Rugby, Digicel Fiji 7's, the Digicel Cup, Manu Samoa and the Digicel Suva Rugby Festival.

For more information please visit www.digicelgroup.com/ or www.digicelpacific.com/

The Digicel Recruitment Manager will work as part of a team to handle all aspects of the recruitment cycle for Digicel Group Headquarters in Jamaica as well as 32 markets across the Caribbean, Central America and South Pacific. This role reports directly to the Group Head of Recruitment and will be based in Kingston, Jamaica.

Main responsibilities will include:
•Building relationships with business and HR to understand business objectives to inform recruitment objectives.
•Modelling customer service approach to business relationships.
•Filling vacancies against rigorous time, quality and service demands, prioritising critical and "difficult to fill" roles – ensuring all work is delivered to acceptable and agreed time cost and quality measures.
•Partnering with the business to source, screen and select talent for current and future opportunities in Digicel.
•Utilising and developing innovative sourcing strategies to attract high quality applications from a wide range of sources – both locally and internationally where required
•Driving use of e-recruitment methodologies to achieve best practice to recruitment team.
•Providing quality screening and selection service to hiring managers – including CV screening, telephone screening, shortlisting and behavioural based interviewing.
•Acting as a subject matter expert of industry market and
•Handling salary negotiations and job offers that involve selling the candidate.
•Managing agreed KPIs for own area(s) of responsibility.

You will have a Degree-level education, excellent customer focus skills, with a proven ability to build strong relationships and influence decisions. A passion for recruiting and knowledge of a wide variety of direct sourcing methodologies is important combined with excellent interviewing and assessment skills. As a collaborative team member, you will identify opportunities – and contribute new and innovative ideas - to improve the efficiency of the Digicel talent acquisition process. You must be results focused, with a commitment to measuring progress through agreed KPIs and recruiting metrics. With at least 5 years recruiting experience, including executive recruitment, and a track record for delivering results, you are ready to broaden your horizons internationally. Fluency in French and/or Spanish would be beneficial.

In return, you will have the opportunity to work in a fast-paced, enterprising environment, where your skills will be valued and rewarded. Digicel recognizes our staff and management team are largely responsible for our success to date. Digicel's unique culture is driven by an entrepreneurial style encapsulated by our Chairman, board of directors and management, all seasoned telecom executives and industry experts with vast experience in building, expanding and marketing mobile services globally.

If interested contact Colette Feeney: colette.feeney [@] digicelgroup.com

Google TV

2010-06-17T00:43:00.001Z

LinkUp and iPads

2010-06-09T15:45:00.002Z

LinkUp, the job search engine that specialises in serving up “hidden” corporate jobs now has an iPad version of the site. The free app that launched last week is available on iTunes or via http://itunes.com/apps/jobsearchxl.

LinkUp’s iPad website says the app has the following features:
# Search job listings found only on company websites
# Basic and advanced search functionality
# Search jobs by keyword, location, company, or category
# Save jobs to Favorites and access Favorites via browser or feed reader
# View and reuse previous searches
# Receive email alerts when Favorite jobs are closed by the employer
# Create email alerts and get notifications when new jobs are posted
# Apply to job openings straight through the iPad
# Instantly email relevant jobs to yourself or friends
# Fluid interface that’s optimized for both portrait and landscape modes

iPhone 4 and iAD

2010-06-09T04:49:00.004Z

I'm in San Fran today and passed the building where the Apple conference was on. I would have loved to been one of the lucky ones to get in to watch it live but alas it will have to be another time. As well as debuting the iPhone 4 which I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on the news that the iAd platform has got off to such a good start without officially launching yet is amazing. 60 million already!

This marks some clear lines between the iPhone and Google's Sprint EVO or Verizon’s Incredible (the two best Android-based phones out there).

iPhone is a head in a lot of categories when it comes to screen quality, battery life, sexiness, application choice, etc. However, when it comes to tethering the Evo let's you share your phone as a wifi hotspot and let's other devices use its data plans to surf the web. This is very cool for if I wanted to use my iPad for example on the train coming up from Waterford. Apple didn't mention tethering once. Also synch and is much better on Android. The iPhone has to be physically plugged in to sync the EVO does it wirelessly. No doubt, we'll see some of this come out from Apple soon and visa versa.

Irish Recruiters to try unlock the Swarm Badge

2010-06-05T10:50:00.007Z

For those of you that haven't heard of Foursquare - you should check it out! It's the next Twitter a lot of folk are claiming. A big part of using Foursquare is unlocking badges and Irish Recruiters during its 29th of July Tweet Up is going to audaciously attempt to get 50 recruiters in the one location logging in at the same time to unlock the swarm! Who knows we might even get the prestigious super swarm badge some day!

To learn more and reserve a place go here to my Tweet Up page.

Reduce your phone calls with Skype using their iPhone and 3G

2010-06-01T17:30:00.001Z

You can download it here. They're offering free Skype to Skype calls over 3G until the end of 2010. After that there'll be a small monthly charge.

Recruitment Job: In-house Recruitment Manager - Retail & Leisure Sector - Dublin

2010-06-01T15:03:00.000Z

A new job in from Osborne Recruitment. Please contact Nikki.Waller@Osborne.ie if anyone interested or call 01-6384400. If anyone else has any other jobs they want to post let me know. Here is the information:

This international Retail & Leisure brand, undergoing significant international growth, currently requires an experienced Recruitment Manager to join their HR function. Initially, this is a six month contract which will entail an element of foreign travel.

As a project lead, you will provide expertise in ensuring proactive talent attraction to achieve the company’s growth objectives, with a particular emphasis on their Buying Department.

As Recruitment Manager you will manage all new positions within the Buying Dept, design and implement a campaign strategy, manage the resourcing budget, and manage the whole recruitment cycle through to offer stage. This will include conducting first line interviews, designing assessment days, providing accurate data on time/cost per hire and also continuously reviewing and improving the recruitment process. With an emphasis on direct sourcing, you will be proactive and innovative in your approach in sourcing talent in the market, whilst displaying true drive and enthusiasm. With strong candidate management skills you will have previous in-house recruitment in managing new openings and campaign management including volume recruitment. It will be highly beneficial if your previous experience has come from the Retail sector or a fast-paced customer focused environment. International Recruitment experience is also highly beneficial.

A strong market related package will be offered to the successful candidate, who must meet the selection criteria listed here.

New survery from TMP on how the recession has affecrted recruiters in Ireland

2010-05-28T12:38:00.000Z

TMP Worldwide are currently carrying out a piece of research across Ireland & the UK to look at how the recession has affected recruiters and what organisations are doing to ensure they are ready for the predicted upturn.

The results will allow organisations to benchmark how they have fared in the downturn and where they stand in relation to future hiring needs. It is a telephone based interview that takes about 5 minutes and they will supply the white paper results to all participants around the end of July.

If you would like to take part please contact Dave Griffin at TMP Worldwide and they will call you back to run through the survey – dave.griffin@tmpw.ie

Also, Oracle currently have a vacancy for a contract recruiter - to learn more please contact Siobhan Corcoran at siobhan.corcoran@oracle.com

LinkedIn Deepens Integration with Twitter

2010-05-26T19:55:00.001Z

It's been on the cards for a while that LinkedIn has been steadily trying to make its platform more social and interactive with users. LinkedIn integrated with Twitter a few months ago, allowing users to Tweet from the platform and pull Tweets into the network with a #in hashtag. In fact, over 1,000,000 users have tied their LinkedIn and Twitter accounts. And this year the network added the ability to “follow” companies, taking a page from both Twitter and Facebook. Today, LinkedIn is furthering its Twitter integration by allowing members to easily find and keep track of their LinkedIn connections on Twitter and more, essentially becoming a full-fledged client

Install the app here.

New Tweetdeck Version

2010-05-21T20:53:00.002Z

The King and Queen of Location Based Services

2010-05-19T21:05:00.000Z

First fully functional ATS on the iPhone

2010-05-19T20:36:00.001Z

Jobscience doing a great job and bringing us all one step closer to the cloud.

TwitJobSearch integrates video interviewing with Skype

2010-05-19T17:11:00.001Z

With over 400 million individuals engaging with social media and over 500 million Skype users, TwitJobSearch has just introduced a product that facilitates the linking of Skype IDs to Twitter accounts and then allows them to be attached to job offers in Twitter.

Nearly 1 million unique job opportunities have been posted to Twitter in the last 30 days. This makes Twitter the largest job board in the world. TwitJobSearch uses semantic search technology to filter and index these job offers. The new feature allows job seekers to quickly find a job that suits them, attach their Twitter/Skype IDs to the job and to send a tweet to the recruiter notifying them that they've applied. The recruiter then simply clicks on the candidates Skype ID and can instantly be conducting a video interview. A job offer can be tweeted and a video interview commenced in under a minute. That could make TwitJobSearch the "world's fastest job search."

Facebook getting into location based world

2010-05-07T16:29:00.003Z

Social-networking giant Facebook is planning to launch location-based status updates for users to compete with Foursquare, and big brands like McDonalds are queuing up to get involved. This is a direct competitive play on not only FourSquare but on Gowalla and Brightkite as well.

Facebook, which boasts 400m users worldwide, is planning to launch location functionality for its users to compete with Foursquare and it could potentially monetise by allowing brands to put product information related to their venue.

I've been hunting for clear examples around the world as to how companies are using location based technology for recruitment but there is very few good examples on offer. If anyone knows of any please let me know.

Read more here.

Recruit Ireland first job board in Ireland to integrate Facebook's Like Button

2010-05-06T09:52:00.002Z

Recruit Ireland once again showing that they are carefully watching technology's evolution and responding quickly to social media. This time in the form of Facebook's new Like Button feature which is set to change the web towars a new social semantic web. Well done. Early contender for an Irish Recruiters Hat Tip. Learn more in one of their recent blog posts here.

New LinkedIn Features

2010-05-05T19:13:00.003Z

Google buys Bump Top

2010-05-03T10:25:00.002Z

Facebook says "Social is at the center of the web"

2010-04-23T10:03:00.003Z

Facebook is making an audacious ambitious shift on the web. At F8 this week, Mark Zuckerburg went through his vision of where search and the net is going. I've put a condensed version of the video down below. I completely agree. This is just not and over hyped advertising evagelisation. This time Facebook or showing us how they are going to make it a reality. Social will be at the center of the web - simple, get used to it and start thinking of how you can bend your business to it. Facebook is now going to offer a number of multiple connectors and widgets to get a new semantic socially centered new index in place. At the heart of this will be a new open API social graph. This is absolutely brillant. Facebook connecters and social graphs are going to start spreading hugely in the coming months. It's important to know that Facebook are not trying to own the web their cleverlly trying to create a new web that is more personalised, more smarter and more semantically aware. Facebook is begining to grow up. This is brillant and for me a huge shift in the evolution of search and the web.

New iPhone 4.0 - it's time to upgrade

2010-04-20T13:51:00.000Z

It's time to get ready to upgrade your phone to the new iPhone 4.0. I know I'm going to trade up my current iPhone version. Also, who says you need to trade up your iPad for the 3G version. I have the first generation and I reckon I am going to use something like this to connect to the web while on the move.

Check out the following to see the new IPhone hardware.

Arithon becomes annual sponsor of Irish Recruiters

2010-04-19T20:41:00.006Z

A big thanks to Roderick Smyth and Arithon for becoming an annual sponsor of Irish Recruiters. 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. As he kindly said, “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.” Roderick will be presenting at the up and coming Irish Recruiters Spring conference which I'm very much looking forward to. If you haven't already check out Arithon, here.

Win 3000 euro TrailFinders voucher with IE 8! I'd like that myself :)

2010-04-19T11:02:00.000Z

Win a €3,000 Trailfinders vouchers and seven runner-up 53 Degree North vouchers of €500. Make your own IE8 video & upload it to our YouTube channel and the best one wins. Maybe someone out there can show how their using IE8 to recruit in a cool video to win the prize!

Check out the facebook site, here.

Google announces two Twitter updates

2010-04-16T08:38:00.006Z

Yesterday Google came out with two Twitter updates worth checking out.

The first is a “replay” feature for public Twitter posts. Look for it as “Updates” on the left options sidebar. This feature is still rolling out, if you didn't hear about it already check here.

The second Twitter related feature comes out of Google Labs and is called Google Follow Finder; you can use it at http://www.followfinder.googlelabs.com/

Twitter buys Tweetie and iPhone OS 4,0

2010-04-12T15:34:00.001Z

Looks like Twitter are modest enough to realise its failings and have at last gone out and bought Tweetie. Learn more here.

Looking forward to the new iPhone OS 4.0, the new folder functionality, added camera zooming and spell check are going to make my life a lot more easier.

Check out the video review from Cnet here:

And all last week while away I had a chance to play around with the Ipad and I like it alot. Ok, so it doesn't have multi-taking, it still isn't out with 3G functionality, which it will be soon, but it's still great value for 499 dollars for the 16 gig version and very handy on a plane in particular for long haul flights considering the amazing 10 hour battery life. In particular, I really like watching HD YouTube and reading books on it. So far i've downloaded the iBook app and Tweetdeck app built especially for the iPad and am enjoying the easy of use with both.

Check out the video review here:

On another note good to see the Irish econonmy getting some new jobs. Google is currently trying to hire 10 contract recruiters. If any of you out there, especially unemployed recruiters, have 3 years IT recrutiment experience and are interested, check out the roles here: Suitable candidates can contact: stevengrant@google.com

Tweetdeck for the iPad

2010-04-03T17:47:00.002Z

Glove Mouse Recruiting?

2010-04-03T17:35:00.002Z

ComputerJobs.ie optimises site for iPhone

2010-03-29T11:21:00.001Z

Congratulations to Niall Kelly of ComputerJobs.ie who has recently launched a new optimised iPhone mobile version of their site. This is a very good example of a job board in Ireland realising the importance of providing a much cleaner and intuitive UI for mobile users rather than just leaving visitors come to their standard web site through a mobile browser.

What's interesting with the approach that ComputerJobs.ie have taken is to make the dashboard very simpe which I think looks great and they also have created a LinkedIn group which they are driving traffic to in an attempt to create a talent community for the IT Irish industry.

Other news on the hiring front for recruiters, especially those who have recently been made unemployed or will be soon, Google and Facebook are still hiring contracter recruiters. Check out their web site if you are looking for work in this space.

LinkedIn set up European HQ in Dublin and continue to innovate

2010-03-24T11:10:00.002Z

In another coup for Ireland Inc LinkedIn have decided to set up their European HQ in Dublin. See here for more detail. This is great news and is a clear signal of their intent to expand into Europe. More than likely you can expect like Facebook and Google a European Operations/Sales type facility to be its main focus but time will tell.

Also, I see on their blog that they also have released a new version of their Iphone app here as well as new innovatiion with real-time profiling matching now out in beta-format, learn more here.

Any bets on when Twitter will set up their European HQ in Dublin? Anyone take 2 to 1 for a fiver, before 2011? :)

Twitter List for Irish Recruiters - It's time we create one! And don't forget to take the Twitter Poll!

2010-03-19T17:11:00.007Z

In the last few months it looks like there has been an explosion of recruiters in Ireland using Twitter. Here are some of the handles I know of. Please add yours if you aren't on the list already to the discussion I started in the Irish Recruiters LinkedIn Group. Even if you are on the list already but know of handles that are not on it please go in and add them as a comment. Will be interesting to see the category breakdown for example how many or employers versus agencies versus job boards, etc.

@cplhr @cplmarketing @marketingeire @irishrecruit @cplitsupport @CPLMultilingual @careerscoacheu @cplhealtcare @janrosa @RecruitmentSoft @FrankBrown @MedicalJobsIRL @VantageLtd @EDENRecruitment @CareersRegister @medicaljobsguru @permjobs @selectpeople @ScienceIreland @mynewcv @irish_jobs @Jobs2Ireland @Workyworks @jobsdotie @Flexitimer @TalentTank @recruitireland @RecruitDirect

If you are looking for hashtag to discuss all things recruitment in Ireland, feel free to use #irishrecruiters like a lot of us at the moment.

If you get a chance please add yourself to my members list: http://twitter.com/irishrecruiters/members

Once we get a comprehensive list in place I'll try categorise the list, put it in an excel sheet and send it out to those whose handles are on the list. This report will be particularly useful to find out what recruiters are specialising in specific disciplines and will allow you a means to form wider and deeper micro-twitter groups to drive conversation in your own specialism's.

Finally, give me your best guess as to how many recruiters in Ireland have a professional Twitter account by taking the poll http://polls.linkedin.com/p/81625/zkdsr I’ll circle back in a few months with what I think the answer actually is.

Twitter's new @anywhere platform

2010-03-19T12:43:00.002Z

Twitter are taking on Facebook Connect with their own new service called @anywhere. This is another step towards integration with the web and a number of 3rd parties like eBay, Digg, Salesforce.com, Bing and much more are queuing up for a piece of the action.

Basically what is does is when you visit a website that supports @anywhere, you’ll be able to follow any Twitter account associated with that site without navigating away to the profile at Twitter.com. The Twitter blog suggests that the platform will let you follow a participating journalist from his or her byline. It also suggests that you’ll be able to tweet about a YouTube video without interrupting it.

Twitter says the above-mentioned items are are “just the beginning.” Integrating with the rest of the web is a wise move and I'm looking forward to learn more about it in mid April when they say they'll be letting the world know more.

Microsoft Turn Skin Into Touch Screens

2010-03-18T13:50:00.012Z

I'm fascinated with UIs and one that I have been paying close attention to for quite some time is skin-touch-technology. When you think maybe 5 to 10 years out about what kind of devices I could be carrying in my pockets while I walk down Grafton Street after a week's busy work on my way home it quite easily could be something like a small wireless transmitter, maybe in jewelry format, and a small camera and pointer device, like a small plaster on your index finger.

In Microsoft we've been looking at this space very carefully and doing a lot of innovation of our own. We've recently developed a technology to turn your skin into a touch screen and make this once theoretical idea a reality. Users wear the "Skinput" device strapped around the top of the arm which projects a screen onto the hand or forearm.

The technology transforms skin into an input interface by using acoustic signals that travel through the body to track touch and movement. PHD student Chris Harrison developed the technology and believes it could replace touch screen phones in the future. Here's what he had to say in a recent article I read.

"Your palms could do everything an iPhone could do. If you consider your palm and fingers provide about as much surface area as an iPhone screen, you might begin to wonder if we shouldn't just use that as the touch screen surface."

So let's say your doing a recruitment podcast you could just tap your fingers to start recording, change the volume, or pause the set up. Likewise, if you are typing a discussion topic for Irish Recruiters, maybe you just type the words on your arm and push your thumb and index finger together to post it. Although the prototype is still in its testing stage, this technology will probably make it to market some day in the not to distant future.

More to come soon. We are entering the SENSE ECONOMY!

I'll be talking more about what I think the sense econoomy is and why I think it is important to watch in up and coming Irish Recruiters newsletters.

Windows 7 new phone on the way and the App Wars have a new edition

2010-03-10T14:15:00.003Z

Just checked out some of the new features coming in the new Windows 7 phone and they look impressive. You can check out some of what's in store in the video below. More to come soon.

Also as the App Wars raging on, interesting to see Google open up its own market place yesterday. You can learn more here.

First iPhone recruitment app hits the market !!!

2010-03-09T14:40:00.006Z

The last month I've been away getting married and on honeymoon but I'm back now as of Sunday and looking forward to catching up with what has been happening in the world of recruitment and technology in Ireland. From what I can see there has been lots happening!

First off congratulations to txtajob.ie for launching Ireland's first recruitment iPhone app. It's great to see such innovation taking place and I applaud their creativity. I haven't had a chance to download it or play around with it yet but it looks impressive from some of the UI screen shots I've seen so far.Simple, slick and easily navigatable like all good apps should be.

As Derek O'Neill, director of txtajob.ie let me know, "The online and mobile platform, Txtajob.ie, which provides job seekers with relevant job vacancy alerts via mobile phone, has launched Ireland’s first recruitment iPhone application. The txtajob.ie app has been exclusively developed by iMobile and is their second application to launch in the first 8 weeks of operation. The first app for java/symbian phones is compatible with over 92% of all mobile phone handsets currently in use in Ireland.(you can download this one by texting “mobile” to 51000 or by pressing on the green phonie widget on the txtAjob website). Additional features of the new iPhone application are its direct link with txtAjob’s social networking sites including Facebook,Twitter and you tube and a live link to provide up to the minute updates on new job(s) postings. You can down load it here.

Well done Derek and I'm really looking forward to checking it our further. You can get the press release here.

Also, congratulations to Sonru for winning the Bank of Ireland Bright Ideas Challenge Grand Final. You can learn more about what it entails and the prize they won here. Great to see another Irish home grown company constantly pushing the boundaries of recruitment innovation and going from strength to strength.

Hays supports Irish Recruiters with Annual Sponsorship

2010-02-01T13:33:00.005Z

Hays are one of the world’s leading experts in recruiting qualified, professional and skilled people across a wide range of industries and sectors. They operate in 27 territories across the globe. Established in Ireland since 1996, they cover the length and breadth of the country through offices in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway. Hays have a real depth of expertise and industry insights and provide a full range of recruitment services from Contingency, Search, Managed Service and full RPO.

The recruitment market is experiencing unprecedented change. The market will always ebb and flow, but it is the changes in technology, and how society uses that technology, that will have the more lasting impact on our sector. For that reason, Hays have agreed a Sponsorship arrangement with Irish Recruiters. Managing Director of Hays, Richard Eardley, “We see clear congruence between our corporate strategy of developing a depth and breadth of expertise in the industry with Irish Recruiters drive to improve skills in the industry, particularly through embracing technology and technological change. We look forward to working with and supporting the group as it grows and develops in the future.”

Interestingly, they also have a new position they are recruiting for: Online Marketing Specialist (based in Dublin city centre). Here's what they had to say about the position:

We’re looking for an Online Marketing Specialist to work for a FTSE 250 global brand in the city centre of Dublin. If you know why we’ve repeated the job title Online Marketing Specialist you sound like the type of person we’re looking for. You’ll get the chance to use your digits to raise their digits online. You must get a kick out of writing content, devising and optimising pages for a site with over a million hits a month.

HTML, PPC, SEO, should have been part of your daily life for two years while you were tweeting, blogging and gaining friends, followers and group members. It might be fun, but it’s serious business as well. We want to see you can do this in a corporate environment and bring a positive return on investment.

If you’re salivating at the thought of the iPad, have thoughts on the future of mobile marketing and basically just love digital marketing, you’ll need to be able to convince senior management of its value.

Please send your CV to stephen.flanagan@hays.com

Tweetdeck and TwitterJobSearch join forces to create JobDeck and new Irish Recruiters Plus Newsletter on the way

2010-01-26T21:25:00.007Z

You can find the update here. The Jobdeck product allows users to:

track recruitment news (via leading bloggers and HR professionals)
access data from the only global real-time job-search engine
integrate LinkedIn for your professional contacts
preview short URLs from the comfort of JobDeck
update their Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn status and track updates from their industry peers
follow real-time updates from leading professional blogs and Twitter accounts
add, create and manage Twitter Lists
avoid Twitter spam with TweetDeck's spam button
make use of dozens of other essential tools all from one simple client

For those "recruitment geeks" that signed up for the Irish Recruiters Plus Newsletter (IR+) i'm working on writing the second edition of IR+ which will be out in the next week and I will be sending you a lot more stuff that I am watching and thinkering around with that hopefully will helping you become more creative and productive. It's a bit like my own personal info stream reguritated from around the world with a little bit of commentary thrown in. It's probably 100s of articles, videos, posts and tweets I read distilled to the best 25/30 that catch my attention.

Some of the things that I have been sharing in this edition of IR+ are:

What is the new people search engine that is catching my attention?
What is the new tool for key word identification to help with PPC and SEO recruitment campaigns?
What's the new way to use Google Reader to track competitive information?
Do you know what .me is all about?
What podcaster who advertises jobs just came out with a new video distribution service?
Want your tweets on Google?
Want to here some of the latest from the mobile technology world?
Find out what point 8 it social Darwinism when setting up an enterprise social media strategy?
Want to know how to search twitter bios with a cool Boolean string?

And there's plenty more... for those who signed up - thanks - and I hope you enjoy the newsletter, all feedback welcome.

Monster launch new iPhone app in UK market and plan for one in Ireland soon

2010-01-21T15:19:00.000Z

I got a mail from one of Monster's directors this morning explaining that their new iPhone app for the UK market is now out. While not disclosing a specific date one will also come out specifically for the Irish market very soon. It could very well be the first recruitment iPhone app in the market! You can learn more here!

Annual Subscription Now Closed and Bose Acoustic Headphones

2010-01-16T02:00:00.004Z

Just back from Microsoft Redmond and a very educational trip! On this occassion it was a bit of an ordeal getting there and back. Instead of the normal flight from London straight to Seattle I had to be redirected to O'Hare and Chicago which added 4 extra hours to my flight. Coming back from London to Dublin was also problematic with a 3 hour delay. However, packed with some Altoids curiously strong cinnamon mints, my new Bose acoustic noise cancelling headphones (which Santa gave me), a copy of the excellent "Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes", by Daniel Everett, ( review and purchase) and last but not least some sleeping pills it all turned out swimmingly in the end.

We all know there is a lot of exciting things happening in the world of recruitment with social media and social computing. On this visit I got to learn about Microsoft's 3 year strategy in this space and how from an enterprise approach how to start planning for the deployment of a very innovative global social recruitment strategy that integrats with some complex internal databases, our career site, and a number of centres of excellences such as work force planning, staffing marketing and central sourcing, not to mention about 70 different recruitment teams around the world! I'll be on point for deploying our solutions in LATAM, MEA and India and am looking forward to getting out to those regions, partnering with our business leaders and recruitment teams and helping to evangelise and educate our partners. It's going to be a very busy 2010.

I've just had a chance to check my Irish Recruiters mail and want to say a big thanks to those who signed up to the subscription program (for those who didn't - who knows maybe you'll take part next year). The one recruiter who got their subscription in at 11pm today; I hope I didn't ruin your evening and you had to run home from the pub :) Thanks again. Your commitment and support will help me a lot as I plan for the year ahead. Now that your part of the program you'll be getting your IR+ newsletters. I intend putting a lot of energy into this so there'll be some great content. It will be focused very much on the true "recruitment geeks" out there!

The First Irish Recruiters Inaugural Tweet Up and a busy week!

2010-01-10T17:35:00.011Z

So this is an important week. The deadline for signing up to the Annual Subscription Program is here. I'm advertising the first Irish Recruiters Inaugural Tweet Up for the 20th. Where I hope to talk to some of you about some of my "Prediction" for the year ahead (go here to learn more about Tweet Ups and what I'm planning and where) and I'm flying to Seattle to spend a week learning all about our global social media recruitment plans for the next two years. I've had a chance to learn some of what'll we and i'll be doing already and it looks great. I especially like the analytic tool. This year i'll be on point for deploying our strategy in Latin America, The Middle East and India. I'll be clocking up the air miles and getting a chance to learn a lot more about the emerging markets. We've been deploying some prototypes over the last 12 months in one of our businesses and now that it has gone so well it's time to roll it out globally which I'm excited about. Creating talent ecosystems with rich functionality and strong rich content calendars and well trained creative and systematic social media savvy audience managers with strong creative writing and advertising skills is going to be an interesting project/role that is created in the industry in the coming years.

New recruitment contract and perm opportunities with Facebook and Robert Half International

2010-01-07T14:41:00.003Z

I've been contacted by Robert Half International (RBI) and Facebook to talk about some opportunities they have open at present.

Facebook have a very interesting contractor role open at the moment which you can learn more about here. You can apply to Orna Holland if interested: orna.holland@facebook.com

RBI are looking for an Admin/Account or IT contract recruiter and they have a permanent financial services and accounting recruiter position open. Here is some information about the company and th roles:

"RHI is the world’s oldest and largest specialist recruiter named “world’s most admired recruitment company” by fortune magazine. We are an ethical, service oriented recruitment leader. We pay up to 40% commission and offer proper multinational benefits – healthcare, pension, 24 days holidays etc. We have a Training, IT, Marketing, PR, HR department etc and an online recruitment university. We offer global incentives trips and consultants can compete against the best in the company (15,000 strong) with our internal league tables. Flexible on Salary depending on experience but we are competitive." If you want to apply please contact Ken Harbourne: ken.harbourne@rhi.net

Irish Recruiters Hat Tip Recruiter Of The Year Award Interview - Jan Rosa

2010-01-06T13:29:00.002Z

Last night I had a lot of fun with Jan Rosa of Harvey Nash discussing technology and recruitment and some of the tools he is using in his daily job. Jan is one of the most technically savvy recruiters I have met in the Irish marketplace. After a quick discussion on technology related topics it's obvious to see that he comes from a technical background. What I like about Jan is his passion for recruitment innovation. He likes to self-learn, tinker and play with technology and is a definite cyber gypsy crafting new sourcing strategies constantly. He understands the software lifecycle in depth and is at home talking about "the stack", mobiles, servers, and a variety of coding languages.

I conducted a quick down an dirty amateur video interview with him and the below video provides some answers to questions such as:

Which he prefers Firefox, Chrome, Explorer or Safari?
Google, Bing or Yahoo?
What is his favourite phone?
Is he a cloud recruitment believer? and,
Why he likes Twitter?

And there was plenty of more that he shared which I'm sure a lot of Irish Recruiters will find very interesting.

Apologies for the poor lightening and terrible camera work but at least the audio is half decent! Tip: don't shoot film in bars at night with dodgy little handcams!

You can expect some more videos from some of the winners in the coming months which the individuals who subscribe to the the new Irish Recruiters newsletter will have access to.

Thank you to Prima.ie "The Contractor Accountants" for their annual sponsorship of Irish Recruiters for 2010

2010-01-04T14:55:00.004Z

A number of companies have agreed to annual sponsorhip deals to support Irish Recruiters events calendar in 2010 and to help the ongoing organisation of more debate, community and education. Over the coming weeks I will be announcing who these are. To start first up is Prima.ie who were the very first sponsors of Irish Recruiters back at our first conference in June last year. There support is very much valued. Thank you to Paraic O'Dowd the MD of the company (here's Paraic's LinkedIn profile). Here is what he had to say:

"As the first official sponsors of the Irish Recruiters Group Conferences in 2009 we are delighted to continue our support of the group, and for 2010 have decided to extend our support to include all the Group’s events in 2010. 2009 has been a tough year for everyone involved in recruitment in Ireland, and the Irish Recruiters Group is an excellent forum for all recruiters to share knowledge with, and learn from, their peers within the industry. At a time when new technologies can be seen as both a threat and an opportunity to recruiters, the information and discussions provided by the Group are essential to all involved in the industry"

If you want to know more about Prima.ie check out this presentation.

Irish Recruiters Hat Tip Awards for 2009

2010-01-03T19:34:00.013Z

Thanks to those who took the time to send in their nominations for the Irish Recruiters “Hat Tip” awards. The “Hat Tip” is all about recognising recruitment innovation – especially, innovation that embraces technology. I hope by recognising some of the examples that caught my attention we can all spend some time looking at some of the winners and hopefully draw inspiration to create new innovation for the year ahead.

The marketplace while receiving a body blow in terms of heavy revenue and job losses continued to innovate last year. FY09 saw the first Irish Tuesday Club, saw the development of Worky.com, the expansion of the innovative Sonru.com, saw a plethora of recruiters rush to set up LinkedIn groups and another huge wave of them do the same with Twitter accounts. The industry also saw the birth of a new recruiter argot. There now exists a host of new vocabulary that probably warrants a phrasebook of its own. Here are a few phrases that caught some of my attention in some of the Irish Recruiters events in FY10.

“What is your Twitter handle”?
“Have you tried to write that string using the wild card or tilde moderators?”
“Which do you prefer WordPress or Type Pad”
“Have you tried the new free cascading style sheet or have your integrated the new automated feed?”
“How many characters can a Bing search take?”
“Have you tried push technology yet?”
“Do you know if Apple’s SDK is the similar to Ovi’s”
“Do you think that candidates should now all have cloud CVs?”

I even heard some recruiters talking about what kind of mobile app should the unions create to recruit new members!

So to the awards! I’ve spent at least 12 hours going through the nominations: reviewing web sites and blog posts, sieving through profiles, examining tweets, and much more. It was a lot of fun and I learnt a lot. Unfortunately, everyone can’t win. Those that don’t get mentioned and there are many can rest assured that these awards are simply one “corporate” recruiters opinion with one particular lens on. I’m sure if I was working for a job board, ATS, agency, etc I possibly would have different selection criteria and the awards could be very much different.

Quickest Response to Technology
This title has to go to Grafton. It would be remiss of me not to have them in the first Irish Recruiters “Hat Tip” awards for their first recruitment tweet which for me marked the crossing of a Rubicon for the Irish recruitment industry. It marked a clear stake in the ground from when the Irish Recruitment industry began to embrace social media. Even though it was quite some time ago it was good to see them react quickest in the market to the potential that micro-blogging has in recruitment. At least 50 other agencies have followed suit since – the most of which are now hashtaging, retweeting, setting up Twitterlists, and paying around with a variety of Twitter apps. http://twitter.com/graftonrec

Best Use Of Mobile And Cloud Computing Techniques
Despite the promise in FY09 for an Irish recruitment app in one of the app stores – none materialised. At one point Worky said they we’re going to launch one. Grafton said they were working on something as well. Nothing that I know of was launched in the end. Maybe we’ll see something in FY10. One Irish based initiative did catch my attention: http://www.txtajob.ie. Overall though, I decided to give the award to Bill Fischer who presented at the 2nd Irish Recruiters conference and showed us his impressive Twitter Job Search platform. Since then they have launched a new Twitter Job Search iPhone app which has some very slick UI and also some very impressive one tap functionality. www.twitterjobsearch.com

Most Interesting Irish Recruiters Discussion
There was quite a few in this category that got mentioned in the nominations I received. Two that got mentioned heavily were: the post on Recruit Ireland changing their cost/post policy, and the other on “The Apprentice”. However, the one I have decided to go for was Ruadhri McGarry of mynewcv.ie titled “Twitter: Does anyone use it for job or candidate search?”. It was a topic that ended up being one of the Tuesday Club presentations and also saw a lot of sharing of information. It is also a discussion which I’m sure will have more posted added to in the future as Twitter evolves.

Best New Irish Recruitment Blogger
This was unanimous (even though she did vote for herself as well :) !) Lindsay Browning. From a relatively newbie in technology way back in early FY09 to becoming a social media internet advocate in CPL, a power user of LinkedIn and now a confident well read blogger. Lindsay has done a great job with her blog http://lindsaybrowning.wordpress.com/ which has been included on the bloggers list on the Irish Recruiters toolbar. I’d encourage you all to pay it a visit. She also has got a second blog for the Irish gaming industry which is also beginning to grow: www.irishgamingrecruit.wordpress.com. Looking forward to loads of more blog posts in 2010 Lindsay.

Best Irish Recruitment Blog Post
There were quite a varied number of nominations in this category but I have decided to go with Jackie Brown medical’s which highlighted Santa and his swine flu vaccination. http://www.jackiebrownmedical.ie/medical-jobs-blog/2009/11/swine-flu-vaccination-for-santa The blog post was picked up by RTE and The Mail on Sunday at one point and was a clever way to bring traffic to their site. So from a pure marketing innovation point of view they pick up the “hat tip”.

Best Irish Recruitment Blog
Again there were a lot of nominations in this category and as such depending on what you like to get from a recruitment blog I have decided to break it into two categories: employer and other! While I think Microsoft’s blog could have won the employers blog I have decided to award it to Oracle’s EMEA campus recruitment blog http://blogs.oracle.com/campusrecruitment/. Good story telling, use of RSS feeds, video updates, etc were prevalent and any company who are thinking of creating a career’s blog should have a look at it. The other winner is Ivan Stojanovic’s recruitment blog www.jobsblog.ie. Ivan is an incessant blogger and has regularly provided up to date commentary on how the Irish Recruitment industry is changing with special focus on the job board industry. He was also one of the first bloggers to be added to the Irish Recruiters toolbar blog post feed.

Best Facebook Page
For me this goes to one of the Think Tank members: Select People. Jonathan and Vincent have done a very good job of building and consistently putting engaging and educational content on their Facebook page. They have also cleverly taken the opportunity to use the “Facebook Connect” functionality to tie it back to their company web site http://www.selectpeople.ie . With over 400 members, poll functionality, and video integration it sets a high bar for recruitment agencies in Ireland that want to try Facebook to follow. You can get their company page by going to Facebook and simply typing in “Select People” in the search prompt or the following link:

http://www.faceboo k.com/search/?q=select+people&init=quick#/selectpeoplejobs?ref=search&sid=700702447.3458618889..1

Most Creative Use Of Twitter
This goes to @kelloggsjobs. With the arrival of their new European marketing HQ this year in Swords they did a good job of using Twitter to broadcast their growth plans, mix in some job postings as well as using it to share other product information. They also embraced the background tailorisation feature which allows them rebrand the site to their own corporate branding needs.

Best Twitter Award
A true technology advocate with multi-lingual and deep sourcing skills the best twitter I have seen this year is Jan Rosa from Harvey Nash. Go to his page and see for yourself: http://twitter.com/janrosa. He’s done a great job of representing his company on the micro-blogging platform this year. He was one of the first recruiters I know to have embraced Twitter Job Search and he has always a strong viewpoint when it comes to social media, mobile and cloud computing.

Best Tweet
This was a hard one and there were very few nominations in this category. Maybe I’m going to have to take it out of the award categories for next year. What I was looking for in this award was good use of the full functionality of a tweet. Hashtags, retweeting, using tiny url’s, etc. Possibly also the uses of something like Tweetdeck or Bubble Tweet. There were loads of examples to pick from. Jan used all of the above but the one I went for in the end was the simple one where he decided to source on Twitter by advertising to specific hashtags and using the Dublin hashtag instead of simply advertising to #jobs which a lot of recruiters seem to rely on and then posting a link to the job description.

I'm urgently looking for a #Documentum specialist for a 12 months contract in #Dublin #li

This is a simple example but it makes an important point in terms of best practice use of hashtags. I’ve added Jan to my Irish Recruiters member list. You can check out more of his tweets there at: http://twitter.com/irishrecruiters/members. While at the list page if you are and Irish Recruiter with a twitter account please go up and join the list.

Best LinkedIn Profile
There was no unanimous winner in this category. I was unable to find anyone who used the full range of functionality that the profile platform offers when compared to other examples I have seen around the world. However, there were a lot of members of Irish Recruiters that did a great job at using a variety of them and using them creatively. Managing your profile in LinkedIn can take hours. There’s the question of whether or not you place your email in the top of your profile and run the chance of finding yourself on the wrong side of LinkedIn’s wrath that have been known to suspend some repeat offenders for a number of months from using their platform. Then you have to decide what is going to be your “public” profile handle. You need to decide am I going to worry about writing my profile with search engine optimization in mind. You then have the option of using some of the Apps – do I want to embed a presentation, do I want to embed my blog, should I let people know about my travel arrangements. It goes on and on. So instead of naming one profile there is a few that caught my eye and all get a “Hat Tip”.

Niall Kelly for being the first that I saw to use the new Twitter app integrated into his profile: http://ie.linkedin.com/in/salesjobsireland

John Mooney for being one of the first to use to the WordPress integration app and for regularly using the update feature.
http://ie.linkedin.com/in/johnmooney55

Best LinkedIn Group
There was a lot of nominations in this category and there was a couple of enquiries from some companies as whether or not they should be listing what they are doing in this space in these awards, thereby, giving away some of their ideas! So unfortunately, I may have missed some of the creativity that is out there but that said there was a lot to choose from. The one I would like to call out is “Paddy Tech” from Frank Brown in Allen Recruitment. This group has grown from strength to strength and is now one of the most followed LinkedIn groups in Ireland. It has had some very lively honest debate and it also has provided a lot of education for the ICT industry over the course of FY09. www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=35936

Most Creative Ad Online Campaign
This goes to Jackie Brown Medical for their appreciation of the importance that blogging and search engine optimization strategies have when attempting to get and maintain a high organic search listing in search engines to promote your brand. A common trend globally in a lot of companies is now to spend less in traditional ad mediums and channels with increased use of search engine and social media marketing techniques. Jackie Brown Medical has excelled in the blogosphere in 2009 and has excelled at understanding how search engines index and rank.

They have achieved some excellent results by doing some of the following: creating a number of inter-related recruitment blogs that cross reference and link to each other; by regularly posting; by paying special attention to keyword choices for URLs and blog post titles, by front loading key words for their meta tags and blog post tagging; and much more. They have demonstrated best in class examples of how to ensure that the relevant keywords to their business constantly are associated with their brand. Some of the blogs they write are:

http://www.jackiebrownmedical.ie/medical-jobs-blog/
http://www.mysciencejobs.com
http://www.medicalsales.ie
http://www.pharmaceuticalsales.ie
http://www.jobs4nurses.ie
http://www.medicaljobsireland.ie

Also worth a very honourable mention was the “Get Ireland Working” campaign from the RecruitIreland team. It got over 550 employers supporting it which is a notable achievement in itself. Here’s the press release from June last year. It also got advertised in their Twitter feed, Facebook Page and Facebook group. http://www.irishpressreleases.ie/2009/06/26/550-employers-support-recruitirelandcom%E2%80%99s-campaign-to-%E2%80%9Cget-ireland-working%E2%80%9D/

Industry Awards

Other
The clear winner here was Sonru and their remote online automated interviewing technology. The greenest, carbon footprint reducing recruitment technology I know of in Ireland. With the recruitment of a new CEO Fergal O’Bryne I'm are looking forward to seeing the company grow from strength to strength in the years ahead. http://www.sonru.com/

Agency
Select People for the speed at which it consistently embraced the use of technology throughout FY09. Not only did they start their own blog, LinkedIn group and ask a lot of interesting questions in the Irish Recruiters conference around search engine use, the evolution and cloud computing and social media they actually embraced it in their every day recruitment processes *consistently*. If you go to their site you can see clear example of how they have integrated, blogging, micro-blogging and social networking into the core messaging of their brand. This has helped Select People clearly consolidate their place in the international recruitment marketplace where they compete with agencies from around the world. I’m hoping they can tell us more about their philosophy for embracing technology and why they place such a high priority on recruitment innovation in some of the events scheduled for Irish recruiters in FY10. Well done! http://www.selectpeople.ie/

Employer
For me it goes to Oracle. Nearly every recruiter I meet from Oracle has gone through a strong technical recruitment induction program. There use of social media is best in class and they continue to pioneer in direct sourcing techniques. In particular, they have done a great job at blogging and the use of Twitter.

Most Creative Use Of Technology Award
Grafton. Purely for highlighting the use of Twitter in recruiting they deserve it! Well done! Let’s see if you can maintain your “hat tip” award for next year! As Mohammed Ali quite rightly said, “ It’s hard getting to the top. It’s even harder staying there”!

Recruiter
And last but not least, the big one, Irish Recruiter’s recruiter of the year award goes to Jan Rosa of Harvey Nash. This is his third award after gaining the best twitter and tweet awards. Jan has contributed to a lot of ongoing discussions this year on the web, has applied a lot of the most modern social media and sourcing techniques to his own recruitment objectives and has been a great contributor to building community in Irish Recruiters in FY09. He is the consummate open networker and a real passionate and innovative cyber sleuth when it comes from learning from others to better himself. Maybe if we ask nicely he will share some of his learning’s with Irish Recruiters in the years ahead.

Well done to all the winners. I look forward to watching for more innovation from you all next year. A lot of change is afoot in the technology world that will continue to impact the recruitment industry. Expect a lot more integration with social media with enterprises; look to more API and OpenID discussions, watch as the app and browser wars intensify; the crazy world of cross reality and bizarre world of online-offline functionality will increase in pace; the content wars are going to get very interesting, with Rupert Murdoch potentially set to change drastically where, when and how content is consumed, this could be hugely disruptive for Google if he garners more support (see here: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/13/murdoch-google-bing-mexicanstandoff/ );the cloud will become “smarter” watch out for more development with Hybrid SaaS, Thick SaaS, PaaS and also mobile as a service; semantic tagging and real time news will get better and the immersive web will take more strides forward with the ongoing development of proximity warnings and the evolution of the personal and private social media ecosphere; mobile cloud servers may get some air time as well as cross reality and how it is set to develop in the coming years; Apple will probably launch the iSlate tablet PC, Google will launch their own phone, and Microsoft's Windows Phone will get much better, reputation management and privacy will be debated heavily as well as metrics and ROI on social media tactics. There is so much on the horizon I could go on for a long time, I haven’t even mentioned the emerging markets, but let’s just leave it there.

Irish Recruiters is planning to be in the thick of all this. I’m planning an exciting calendar for the year ahead and you can expect more innovation from the Think Tank and I. Expect a few announcements soon on training and education which I hope will be firsts for Ireland and more interesting Tuesday Club and Irish Recruiter conferences. I’m looking forward to it all and hope you can take part!

Happy Hunting! Declan

If you want to congratulate any of the winners please do so by tweeting using the #irishrecruiters hashtag

Introducing the FY10 Irish Recruiters Think Tank

2009-12-23T14:48:00.015Z

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."

Premier November Irish Employment Monitor

2009-12-18T17:24:00.002Z

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

Ever heard of "in memory" analytics?

2009-12-10T14:23:00.003Z

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

2009-12-10T14:14:00.001Z

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.