Why we love Recruitment!

Posted by socialtalent on Wednesday, May 16, 2012 in Latest, Video | 0 comments

We were filming at last week’s NRF Annual Conference 2012 in Dublin’s CityWest Hotel and caught up with a bunch of great folk from the recruitment industry who shared with us why the love our industry so much:

Thanks to James Mailey from Monster, Peter Cosgrove from CPL, Mairead Fleming from Brightwater, Fiona Lander from Lander & Associates and Niall Harris from Grafton Recruitment.

Funniest Recruitment Video of 2012

Posted by socialtalent on Tuesday, May 15, 2012 in Video | 0 comments

Cancel that interview: How tech is changing how we assess talent

Posted by Holly Fawcett on Monday, May 14, 2012 in Assessment, Latest, Technology, Tips | 0 comments

Technology is a great thing, and the more it evolves, the more it gradually takes over the most urbane of tasks (remembering your friend’s birthdays, your appointments, your credit card details, the page number of the book you’re reading…). Necessity is the mother of invention, and corporate solutions for the recruitment and selection process is certainly a necessity in this day and age. Time is of the essence, as is legal certainty, and making sure we hire the best fit for the job to ensure our company’s success.

Interview assessments are costly in time and money. They’re hugely important, but they’re inconvenient for both the interviewer (who needs to take time out from their busy schedule to dedicate their time to interviewing candidates and then afterwards in narrowing down their selection) and the interviewee (who may have to take time off work to interview for the new position or travel). Considering the volume of applications companies receive for each vacancy with a much larger active-jobseeker pool, the HR team’s job is only getting harder in making time to assess each applicant.

The Candidate Experience: Why The Recruitment Process is Failing Jobseekers

Posted by Holly Fawcett on Friday, May 11, 2012 in Assessment, Job Seekers, Latest, Recruitment News | 6 comments

Live Register figures are high worldwide, and with entire industries dying a death, structural unemployment is becoming a problem that few economies know how to fix. Returning to education, emigrating to construction-focused economies thousands of miles away, or just hoping for the best are some of the methods that redundant jobseekers are using to remain employed or find work.

Every recruiter on the ground knows that there’s a two-tier system in the labour market at present. In-demand skills, like accountancy/finance, IT, life-sciences and marketing are like hen’s teeth, and companies are fighting amongst themselves for their share of the talent pool worldwide. Those outside of these markets that are unemployed, especially for 3 months to a year or more, are left listlessly applying for jobs that hundreds of thousands of other unemployed jobseekers are fighting for too. No one wins.

As recruiters, we are in the People Business. We trade in talent, and sell skills. People trust and expect certain things from us people in the People Business. The expectations of us are not lofty or over-reaching, they are simple demands and common courtesy. And yet, as recruiters, our processes are failing jobseekers. Their disappointment is our fault, and ours to fix.

In an interview on TodayFM’s The Last Word yesterday evening, Jane Downes, career coach and author of “The Career Book: Help For The Restless Realist” gave the results of a recent survey of jobseekers and their experience of the recruitment process. The survey revealed areas where both the jobseeker and the hiring organisations/recruiters can do better. The recommendations for jobseekers is for another blog, this one is a cold hard look at ourselves, the recruiters, in the mirror.

The Church of Pod: Memories of my first job: what was yours?

Posted by socialtalent on Thursday, May 10, 2012 in Social Media | 0 comments

9pm: Clock in, start sweeping up, clear and mop the dancefloor, say hello to the floor staff. Re-arrange the furniture, take out the Mr.Sheen to polish the tables, a little bit of Windowlene for the glass shelves near the member’s bar door, say hello to Mick as he arrives to get the bathrooms ready, check the fire exits are clear. Make sure the heating is on.

10pm: Time to check the bar is fully stocked, make sure all the kegs are connected and running fine. Chopping board out, lemons and limes sliced and diced for the clear spirits. Speed rail full, ice bins full, make sure there are empty bin bags in the bottle bin, rinse out the bottle top catchers. Bar is ready.

10:30pm: Dim the lights, turn the outside sign on, make sure the cloak room is ready to go. Paddy and Robbie arrive to set up in the DJ box; how’ya lads! Get the bar floats from the safe and make sure each till is ready to go. Change the receipt rolls, make sure each bar has enough credit card slips. Robbie fills the club with dry ice as he starts to program the lighting rig for the evening. The sound of staff preparing the club begins to fade as Paddy puts needle to vinyl and the deep bass of Gat Decor’s Passion slowly fills the room. The doormen arrive and begin to take their stations. Time to get the float to the box office and make sure everyone is at their post and ready to go.

Communicating on Twitter: The Basics for Recruiters

Posted by Holly Fawcett on Wednesday, May 9, 2012 in Social Media, Technology, Tips, Twitter | 0 comments

Twitter’s membership growth over the last two years has been phenomenal, boasting over 200 million members and becoming one of the primary communication tools for everything from presidents and political pundits, journalists, customer service departments and businesses promoting their wares. And Bieber and Kardashian fans, but that’s another story.

As we meet with more and more recruiters, turning them to Twitter is a no-brainer, but it’s funny how similar their concerns about “working twitter” are, many complaining that they can’t get the hang of the lingo, or they think it’s just for following celebrities. So, to resolve all that, here’s the absolute basics on Twitter communication for you as a recruiter.

#truDublin Summer 2012 Schedule Announced

Posted by socialtalent on Tuesday, May 8, 2012 in Latest, Recruitment News, Social Media | 3 comments

truDublin is only one week away and is shaping up to be the largest recruiting un-conference ever held in Ireland with an amazing line-up of track leaders representing all aspects of the staffing & recruiting industry from:

In-House: Google, LinkedIn, Oracle, Zynga Games, Eircom and Version1,

Agency: CPL, Morgan McKinley, Brightwater, Hays and Prosperity,

Vendors: Monster, Sonru, Zartis, Arithon, 1ntelligence and JobsBoard.ie,

Industry Thought Leaders: Bill Boorman (founder of tru), Colin Donnery (NRF President), Steve Ward (CloudNine Recruitment), Johnny Campbell (for what its worth!), James Mayes (formerly of BraveNewTalent), Mitch Sullivan (the Headhunting Guy!) and Ivan Stojanovic (SEO King!),

plus a host of Non-Recruitment Innovators who we are hoping will bring a breath of fresh air to the recruitment debates with insights into start-ups (John Egan, founder of Archie Talks & Archipelago), social media (Ireland’s borrowed social media queen Krishna De), email marketing (Karl Murray from Ingage), university alumni (John Dillon, Trinity College Dublin) and off-line networking (the queen of the professional meet-up, Katharine Crawford from Cosmopolitan Events).

Tickets available here.

5 Great YouTube Channels of Corporate Careers Pages

Posted by Holly Fawcett on Thursday, May 3, 2012 in Latest, Social Media, Technology, Tips | 1 comment

This week as we’re researching the Top Careers pages on Facebook and other social networks, we’ve looked through some excellent examples of careers channels on YouTube too. Taking a mix of content (the videos themselves, links to their other social places and richness of their channel) and the overall look and feel, here’s some great examples of corporate careers channels on YouTube that we think you’ll love.

If I send them an InMail… where does it go?

Posted by Holly Fawcett on Wednesday, May 2, 2012 in Latest, LinkedIn | 0 comments

A question we’re regularly asked by recruiters is about sending InMails in LinkedIn to prospective candidates. Are they useful? What’s the difference between them and an email?

Sometimes approaching a cold candidate via LinkedIn can be daunting, recruiters not wanting to approach someone while at work in case they get mad, or in case the email is intercepted by a nosy boss. Many recruiters are banned from sending connection requests to cold candidates because LinkedIn has discovered they’re breaking the rules by connecting with people they don’t know, and so require you to enter an email address at the time of requesting. This throws many of those recruiters off, so sending the cold candidate a LinkedIn InMail is often resorted to, in the hopes that this in-between medium will both catch their attention and not disrupt them inappropriately.

5 Great Facebook Timeline Covers of Corporate Careers Pages

Posted by Holly Fawcett on Tuesday, May 1, 2012 in Facebook, Latest, Social Media | 13 comments

Back before the Facebook Timeline changeover, we compiled a list of the Top 10 Facebook Timeline Covers of Recruitment Companies that had switched to Timeline before the deadline so as to inspire other companies in their Timeline Covers in time for the compulsory switch to Timeline. Now that a month has passed since all Facebook Pages have had to adopt Timeline, we’ve come across these great Timeline Covers for Corporate careers pages that we think you’ll love.