CPL picks up more distressed assets at bargin prices

CPL yesterday once again went on the acquisition trail by taking advantage ofrivals’ problems as it bought two further units of Newcourt, the collapsed business support services provider. To learn more read the article here. Something tells me this is not the end of the bargain hunting and you can expect the company to also look for opportunities not only to diversify its portfolio but also expand its market reach into Europe.

Microsoft launches new career web site

Microsoft last Monday united over 150 career web sites, dozens of applicant tracking systems, and a lot of microsites that organically formed by businesses that felt the career site in the past wasn’t telling their story as well as they wanted to. You can check it out here.

This is the culmination of two years work where we decided back then to re-invest in our talent management systems and update our Applicant Tracking System to a new SAP platform. The logical step after deciding to invest in a new ATS was to also invest in a new career site platform which is what we did. Over 10 full-time people worked on this project in addition to a validation team that was set up for project management and quality control. Margie Medd, Microsoft’s director of employment branding, spearheaded the project aided by one of our finest Recruitment Marketing Managers, Liz Frideman, and both have done a terrific job.  At Microsoft, in my opinion we have under invested across our businesses’ portfolios including recruitment at telling our story. This is a great step forward in the right direction creating a one message platform that allows for more built in social media inclusion and tailorisation at the country level.

When we started our focus groups two years ago it became obvious that three things were critical for success: search and apply for jobs was number one. Knowing what to apply for in a company with 100,000 employees was next on the list and third was specific information on the company and the job.

That’s why the job search is ubiquitous on the site and that’s why the navigation bar is super simple with only three main channels: Apply Now, Find Your Fit, and Meet Microsoft. The content for the latter two channels will grow over the next several months, although the core pieces are in place. Microsoft’s most popular recruiting features – Hey Genius, View, and Microspotting — will stay and retain their own separate identification, though one or two might be folded into the career site over time. The irreverent “Day of Microsoft Perks” video was preserved and is a part of the channel that talks about the company’s benefits package.

We are already planning for more social media integration and more story telling in the coming months which should be exciting when launched. On the topic of media, also check out our Office 2010 trailer. There is a lot of cool things happening in Microsoft at the moment and its great to work with so many creative people now more than ever who are getting an opportunity to express themselves much more in the ideas they have and in the way they work. The future of recruitment is in the cloud!

IrishJobs says recruitment market more stable

Check out the small update from the Irish times here

IrishJobs says recruitment market more stable

Check out the small update from the Irish times here

CPL in the black and on the acquisition trail

I’m only catching up on my CPL news now but in a note last week Goodbody analyst Dan Cavanagh said he was expecting operating profit of €4.9m for CPL in the year to June 30.

CPL Resources,has warned in a trading statement that the outlook for the group for the remainder of 2009 remains uncertain.”It is impossible to predict with any accuracy whether the markets in which the group operates will experience any significant improvement in the foreseeable future,” the company said yesterday. Shares in CPL finished down over 2pc at €1.35 yesterday.

Also, the company has been on the acquisition trail by agreeing to buy the business and assets of Kenny Whelan & Associates from the receiver of Newcourt, David Carson of Deloitte. To learn more go here, and here.

Nice! Bing Tweet Integration

Microsoft’s new Bing search engine was the first of the big search engines to integrate Twitter into results. Yesterday, Microsoft’s fledgling search tool has gone one step further with Twitter launching BingTweets, a separate site that combines Bing search with Twitter search and trending topics.

There will be more from the Bing team in terms of Twitter integration in the future, however. The Bing team writes, “many people share their thoughts on Twitter, and search engines don’t currently do a great job of capturing that real-time content. We designed Bing to help you make faster, more informed decisions, and, since people often turn to real-time content to help them make decisions, BingTweets was a logical next step.”

HireLabs – Next generation employment testing

TwittAround and Augmented Reality (AR)

A lot of people are calling Augmented Reality AR) the new mobile killer app. Certainly there has been a lot of debate about it of late and how it will revolutionising the way we live. Even Twitterland has caught onto this new emerging field and now there is a new beta augmented reality out for the new iPhone called TwittAround. Interessting to see that Apple has not opened up there full SDK for augmented reality yet, but there is plenty of folk petitioning them to do so. When this happens expect a flood of new AR apps on the market.

TwitterJobSearch.com Adds Video CV Functionality

Looks like Bill Fischer and his team have been very busy of late one of the products of which is TwitterJobSearch has added support for Video CVs to its product. This enables job seekers to attach a Video CV or even a “personal video elevator pitch” to job offers that have been posted to Twitter with a single click.

The new service allows individuals to quickly record a Video CV and then attach that Video to a job that has been posted in Twitter. By simplifying the process of creating the video and by developing a single-click way to get that Video CV in front of the hiring manager, they’re hoping to make that functionality more widely available.

“Recruiters are now faced with the challenge of having to quickly evaluate multiple candidates, and video can help in these assessments,” commented Bill Fischer, Co-Founder of TwitterJobSearch. “We’re tracking and/or working with companies in 17 countries that are using Twitter as part of their recruitment efforts. Our products build a layer of services on the Twitter infrastructure that connects job seekers and employers.”

Bill is going to be presenting at Part 2 of the Future of Recruitment conference. I’m looking forward to hearing what he has to say on the day and to get his perspective on what the future of micro-blogging holds for the recruitment industry, should be a very interesting presentation.

Google Chrome OS on the way

Check out what Google had to say about it on the offical Google blog, here.

“It’s been an exciting nine months since we launched the Google Chrome browser. Already, over 30 million people use it regularly. We designed Google Chrome for people who live on the web — searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends. However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we’re announcing a new project that’s a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.” Sundar Pichai, VP Product Management and Linus Upson, Engineering Director

Job Search Engine Simply Hired launches in Ireland but do they have an unfair advantage and should they be allowed to scrape others jobs?

Does Ireland need a job search engine entry into the market. Simply Hired thinks so and I can see why! Last week they  launched into five new markets including our own, the list of locations goes as follows: Italy (www.simplyhired.it), Ireland (www.simplyhired.ie), Belgium (www.simplyhired.be), the Netherlands (www.simplyhired.nl) and Brazil (www.simplyhired.com.br).

Having indexed more than five million jobs worldwide, Simply Hired’s country-specific destination websites in Italy, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Brazil now enable job seekers to search from the leading job boards, content websites, newspapers, and company career pages in each country—providing a simple online job search experience. Through its international partnership with LinkedIn, Simply Hired’s local websites will also allow job seekers to discover connections at companies, providing them the inside track on the hiring process. Without requiring membership, Simply Hired immediately shows returning users which new listings have been added since their last visit and offers an advanced search option to return job listings that match specific criteria, all in the users’ native language.

“Simply Hired is proud to offer localized job search engines in Europe, Asia, North America, South America and Australia,” said Sachin Shah, Director of International, Simply Hired. “Our recent expansion to Italy, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Brazil is a testament of our commitment to helping job seekers around the world.”

“As Simply Hired continues to grow and expand globally, localizing our job search services is crucial to ensuring successful market entry,” said Gautam Godhwani, Co-founder and CEO, Simply Hired. “Localized Simply Hired sites in the U.S., Australia, Canada, India, the U.K., Germany, Spain and France are already providing job seekers in these countries the best opportunity possible to discover their dream job. By expanding our services to Italy, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Brazil, Simply Hired is demonstrating a strong commitment to the worldwide job search market.”

What Simply Hired is doing is worth digging deeper.

Let’s do a search: 

I logged onto their site today and conducted a very simple search for “recruiter” under the keyword search prompt, pulling up 98 results. The engine produced roles posted on Stelfox’s web site, IrishJobs, LoadzaJobs, Gumtree and also Recruit Ireland’s to name but a few. Very nice!  However, one thing I was disssappointed with was the number of duplicate jobs that were aggregated which is typically the major failings of all aggregators that are not smart enough to allow for semantic or intelligent search features. But still, I was impressed. What I also liked was the advanced search feature which allows Boolean syntax.

A simple search for – recruiter (waterford OR cork) NOT cpl – pulled up a very focused 12 results which allows me extra functionality to pin point the type of roles I am searching for and in some cases gives me the ability to reduce the duplications myself with even more targeted strings.

 
Very interestingly in the results page that it turned back you see a little LinkedIn icon that prompts you for access to your account. This is the first time that I have seen LinkedIn integration with a jobs search engine and it is an extremely clever way to find contacts that might be able to give you information from withn the company the job exists.

What I particularly like:

1. It’s clever technology: Aggregaton by its nature is efficient and that’s why search engine aggregators like Dogpile have been holding their own and doing well. The basic premsise of one location to go and get your jobs from still is a powerful pulling point. Most job seekers don’t care what job board they visit to get their jobs. There is very little loyalty involved. If they could go to one location to get them all they probably would. I know I would.  What is particularly impressive is when you return to the site it remembers your previous searches and in a simple dashboard like feature at the front of the site refreshes your search and tells you how many matches it has and provides then a list of RSS feeds for each search you made for you to subscribe to. Very well thought UI concept with the job seeker very firmly being taught about as being in the driving seat of their own search.

2. Clever partnership deals. Simply Hired is only a 4 year old company  but already it is in the top75 web sites in the US for a reason. It powers 30,000 local job portals and is part of a network of more than 5,000 sites. They also power the international job channel for MySpace U.K. and supplement LinkedIn’s job board with millions of job listings from Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, India, France, Germany and Spain. They have also created partnerships with BusinessWeek, US News & World Report, Workforce Management, CNN Money and most recently, The Washington Post. They will try replicate this platform abroad.  The LinkedIn and MySpace deals are good news for the company. Watch out for more in the future on their various country platforms. Expect to see integration with Wer-Kennet-Wen or Xing in Germany and the likes of  Orkut in Brazil.

Check out Lucian Beebe, Director of Product Management at LinkedIn, walks through the LinkedIn API implementation on the SimplyHired site.

3. Google Monetisation functionality is both at the top, side and bottom of all searches. While some Irish job boards have integrated this feature and done an “ok” job at doing so they should pay attention to the prevalence and positioning of the ads on Simply Hired platform.

Simply Hired’s entry into Ireland for me raises the entire discussion again that has been raging in the US for quite some time on the vaildity of “job aggregators” – but this time brings the topic to our own door steps.  Just a few short years ago sales reps for some of the major job boards in the US were outraged at aggregators bold enough to scrape postings without permission from job boards or corporate career sites and some companies like Craig’s list went as far as to ban them from spidering their site entirely.Others believe they are a positive force in the recruitment industry that won’t be going away any time soon and if used properly can help with your search engine optimisatoin strategies and get more people to your own site. I wonder what the Irish recruitment industry thinks?

While Simply Hired have not entered Ireland with trumpets blowing and huge marketing budgets at the ready it will be interesting to see if they do decide to splash out with some advertising and if so how and when and whether or not job seekers in large numbers begin to avail of their service in any kind of sizeable numbers.

This is a very good example of  recruitment innovation in the job board market that is pushing the boundaries of the industry in a new direction. It will be very interesting to watch where Simply Hired goes from here, especially with their integration and apps strategy. I’ll be watching closely.

Job Search Engine Simply Hired launches in Ireland but do they have an unfair advantage and should they be allowed to scrape others jobs?

Does Ireland need a job search engine entry into the market. Simply Hired thinks so and I can see why! Last week they  launched into five new markets including our own, the list of locations goes as follows: Italy (www.simplyhired.it), Ireland (www.simplyhired.ie), Belgium (www.simplyhired.be), the Netherlands (www.simplyhired.nl) and Brazil (www.simplyhired.com.br).

Having indexed more than five million jobs worldwide, Simply Hired’s country-specific destination websites in Italy, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Brazil now enable job seekers to search from the leading job boards, content websites, newspapers, and company career pages in each country—providing a simple online job search experience. Through its international partnership with LinkedIn, Simply Hired’s local websites will also allow job seekers to discover connections at companies, providing them the inside track on the hiring process. Without requiring membership, Simply Hired immediately shows returning users which new listings have been added since their last visit and offers an advanced search option to return job listings that match specific criteria, all in the users’ native language.

“Simply Hired is proud to offer localized job search engines in Europe, Asia, North America, South America and Australia,” said Sachin Shah, Director of International, Simply Hired. “Our recent expansion to Italy, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Brazil is a testament of our commitment to helping job seekers around the world.”

“As Simply Hired continues to grow and expand globally, localizing our job search services is crucial to ensuring successful market entry,” said Gautam Godhwani, Co-founder and CEO, Simply Hired. “Localized Simply Hired sites in the U.S., Australia, Canada, India, the U.K., Germany, Spain and France are already providing job seekers in these countries the best opportunity possible to discover their dream job. By expanding our services to Italy, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Brazil, Simply Hired is demonstrating a strong commitment to the worldwide job search market.”

What Simply Hired is doing is worth digging deeper.

Let’s do a search: 

I logged onto their site today and conducted a very simple search for “recruiter” under the keyword search prompt, pulling up 98 results. The engine produced roles posted on Stelfox’s web site, IrishJobs, LoadzaJobs, Gumtree and also Recruit Ireland’s to name but a few. Very nice!  However, one thing I was disssappointed with was the number of duplicate jobs that were aggregated which is typically the major failings of all aggregators that are not smart enough to allow for semantic or intelligent search features. But still, I was impressed. What I also liked was the advanced search feature which allows Boolean syntax.

A simple search for – recruiter (waterford OR cork) NOT cpl – pulled up a very focused 12 results which allows me extra functionality to pin point the type of roles I am searching for and in some cases gives me the ability to reduce the duplications myself with even more targeted strings.

 
Very interestingly in the results page that it turned back you see a little LinkedIn icon that prompts you for access to your account. This is the first time that I have seen LinkedIn integration with a jobs search engine and it is an extremely clever way to find contacts that might be able to give you information from withn the company the job exists.

What I particularly like:

1. It’s clever technology: Aggregaton by its nature is efficient and that’s why search engine aggregators like Dogpile have been holding their own and doing well. The basic premsise of one location to go and get your jobs from still is a powerful pulling point. Most job seekers don’t care what job board they visit to get their jobs. There is very little loyalty involved. If they could go to one location to get them all they probably would. I know I would.  What is particularly impressive is when you return to the site it remembers your previous searches and in a simple dashboard like feature at the front of the site refreshes your search and tells you how many matches it has and provides then a list of RSS feeds for each search you made for you to subscribe to. Very well thought UI concept with the job seeker very firmly being taught about as being in the driving seat of their own search.

2. Clever partnership deals. Simply Hired is only a 4 year old company  but already it is in the top75 web sites in the US for a reason. It powers 30,000 local job portals and is part of a network of more than 5,000 sites. They also power the international job channel for MySpace U.K. and supplement LinkedIn’s job board with millions of job listings from Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, India, France, Germany and Spain. They have also created partnerships with BusinessWeek, US News & World Report, Workforce Management, CNN Money and most recently, The Washington Post. They will try replicate this platform abroad.  The LinkedIn and MySpace deals are good news for the company. Watch out for more in the future on their various country platforms. Expect to see integration with Wer-Kennet-Wen or Xing in Germany and the likes of  Orkut in Brazil.

Check out Lucian Beebe, Director of Product Management at LinkedIn, walks through the LinkedIn API implementation on the SimplyHired site.

3. Google Monetisation functionality is both at the top, side and bottom of all searches. While some Irish job boards have integrated this feature and done an “ok” job at doing so they should pay attention to the prevalence and positioning of the ads on Simply Hired platform.

Simply Hired’s entry into Ireland for me raises the entire discussion again that has been raging in the US for quite some time on the vaildity of “job aggregators” – but this time brings the topic to our own door steps.  Just a few short years ago sales reps for some of the major job boards in the US were outraged at aggregators bold enough to scrape postings without permission from job boards or corporate career sites and some companies like Craig’s list went as far as to ban them from spidering their site entirely.Others believe they are a positive force in the recruitment industry that won’t be going away any time soon and if used properly can help with your search engine optimisatoin strategies and get more people to your own site. I wonder what the Irish recruitment industry thinks?

While Simply Hired have not entered Ireland with trumpets blowing and huge marketing budgets at the ready it will be interesting to see if they do decide to splash out with some advertising and if so how and when and whether or not job seekers in large numbers begin to avail of their service in any kind of sizeable numbers.

This is a very good example of  recruitment innovation in the job board market that is pushing the boundaries of the industry in a new direction. It will be very interesting to watch where Simply Hired goes from here, especially with their integration and apps strategy. I’ll be watching closely.

New Free iPhone Jobs App from 1Jobs’s in UK – How long until the 1st Job App Arrives in Ireland?

Grafton launches new brand!!!

Looks like Jason Kennedy and co have wasted no time in rebranding the Grafton Employment Group. The company has launched a new recruitment outsourcing and HR consultancy brand targeting both Irish and global markets in a move designed to deliver a major long-term expansion of the Irish-based international group.
Grafton ESP – standing for employment solutions portfolio – will be based in Northern Ireland. The RPO market looks like it is going to get evern more competitive than before.

Read here to learn more and check out the Grafton ESP site here which has an interesting blog entry dated the 21st of June stated ” why now is the best time to consider recruitment process outsourcing”!

Grafton launches new brand!!!

Looks like Jason Kennedy and co have wasted no time in rebranding the Grafton Employment Group. The company has launched a new recruitment outsourcing and HR consultancy brand targeting both Irish and global markets in a move designed to deliver a major long-term expansion of the Irish-based international group.
Grafton ESP – standing for employment solutions portfolio – will be based in Northern Ireland. The RPO market looks like it is going to get evern more competitive than before.

Read here to learn more and check out the Grafton ESP site here which has an interesting blog entry dated the 21st of June stated ” why now is the best time to consider recruitment process outsourcing”!

Ireland creates ‘Innovation Taskforce’ to make smart economy a reality

Something I am passionate about is Ireland becoming a true “smart economy” fit to compete with the best other “smart economies” the world has to offer. Technology in all its guises will have a huge part to play in how Ireland will consolidate, rebuild and refocus. With that in mind I applaud the recent set up of the Innovation Taskforce. Attracting the best minds the world has to offer to these shores will be a challenge in suceeding with a “smart economy”- that’s where recruiters have a part to play! To learn more go here.

iGoogle for the iPhone

One of the tools I use to automate certain searches I do to map out talent pools around the world or construct a boolean search I want to automate is iGoogle. So far its probably the nearest I’m come to having a recruiter’s personal operating system. Now it’s gone mobile which has saved me some time as I can now access my configuation instead of having to go to multiple sites as before. iGoogle mobile is available for the iPhone and Android.

Here’s what one of the Google representatives had to say about it:
“This new version is faster and easier to use. It supports tabs as well as more of your favorite gadgets, including those built by third-party developers … One of our favorite new features is the in-line display of articles for feed-based gadgets. That means you can read article summaries without leaving the page. You can also rearrange gadget order or keep your favorite gadgets open for your next visit.”

To learn more check out the below videos:

For the first video go to 1 minute 41 seconds to skip the intro.

Get ready to see more YouTube interviews

Mobile uploads to YouTube up 400% after iphone 3GS launch. This trend has been steadily going upwards but this is a signifigant spike that looks set to mark a new platform of growth from which we’ll see YouTube video numbers push much further higher. We are entering the world of the informal, off the cuff, cloud interview. I can see these devices coming in very handy at a graduate conference.  Read more here.

Yahoo’s HotJobs offers new Pay Per Candidate model

Here’s what HotJobs say on their site, here.

“Yahoo! HotJobs Pay Per Candidate is a revolutionary new product never before seen in the online recruitment landscape. It lets recruiters pay per candidate, rather than per job post. You now have the ability to directly tie recruitment dollars to the desired outcome — the candidate’s application or click-through to your site.

Recruiters can choose from two application methods:

a) Candidate completes the entire job application on the HotJobs site, or
b) Candidate clicks-through to your company’s hiring site

With option (a), recruiters have the ability to pay only for pre-screened candidates. You pre-screen candidates by creating a customized questionnaire, so you only pay for candidates that pass the questionnaire.

With option (b), recruiters keep candidates on their career website for the application process.

Pay Per Candidate lets you:

• Closely manage costs for your online recruiting needs.
• Cap the number of Applies per job and re-allocate unused Applies to other jobs throughout the term of your contract.**
• Save time, because when you use the HotJobs application process, you no longer have to evaluate candidates that haven’t been pre-screened by your questionnaire.”

 “Recruiters are being asked to find top talent using fewer resources than ever, and Yahoo!’s Pay Per Candidate model gives them the tools to increase the accountability of their listings,” said Chris Merritt, vice president and general manager, Yahoo! HotJobs. “With recruiters facing resume overload in today’s job market, the Pay Per Candidate solution will allow them to spend their time and budget on only the best candidates.”

Sony/Ericsson get in on the App game

Not wanting to be the last person with out a chair in a game of muscial app chairs Sony/Ericsson have decided to add to their PlayNow arena  where you can already downloadable games, songs, ringtones and wallpapers for its handsets by launching their own App store which with more than likely see a flury of messaging, social networking and productivity apps flowing in. Sony Ericsson has stated that it will be collaborating with independent app store GetJar in order to offer as wide a range of applications as possible. GetJar currently has hundreds of free Java and Symbian-based mobile apps for handsets ranging across Sony Ericsson to the BlackBerry, Palm, HTC and Samsung. The app wars have truely begun!