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 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!

Check out the small update from the Irish times here

Check out the small update from the Irish times here

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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