Twitter Analytics and some excellent social media stats

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!

1. Awareness of Facebook is close to 100%
2. More than 1 billion people (>70% of internet population) use social networks.
3. 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.
4. Average Facebook session lasts 37 minutes, Twitter 23 minutes. More than 400 million people use Facebook daily.
5. There is a big Twitter paradox:80% is aware of Twitter, only 16% is using it.
6. Vkontakte is big in Eastern Europe: 55% awareness, 39% penetration.
7. 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.
8. People connect online with their offline friends. People love to connect to people.
9. >50% of social network users are connected to brands.
10. Offline brand experiences are the main online conversation starters.
11. People become a fan on Facebook because they like the product, not because of advertising.
12. 36% posted content about a brand on social networks.
13. Consumers want to be in the boardroom. 44% is asking to take part in co-creation of products & advertising.
14. Positive experiences are bigger conversation starters than negative experiences. People like positive stuff.
15. Consumers prefer e-mail over social networks to ask questions to brands.
16. 2 out of 3 employees is proud about their employer, but only 19% shares stories on social media: unused conversation potential!
17. 38% of internet users has a smart phone. They are more intensive users of social networks than people without a smartphone.
18. On average, people install 25 apps on their smartphone, but only use 12. Most used apps are social network apps.
19. 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

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

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….

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

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

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!

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

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

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?

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

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

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

The current state of social media in Ireland

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

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

LinkedIn Skills

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

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

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

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

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

LinkedIn launches very cool new resume builder

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!

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

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

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

Rockmelt Social Browser

LinkedIn is recruiting recruiters!

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

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

The Augmented Reality CV

and here is the magic:

Some mobile design innovations

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.