First fully functional ATS on the iPhone

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

TwitJobSearch integrates video interviewing with Skype

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

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

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

Google buys Bump Top

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

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

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

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 :)

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

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

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

Glove Mouse Recruiting?

ComputerJobs.ie optimises site for iPhone

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

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!

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

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

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

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 !!!

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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