Ivan Stojanovic on Jobs Market

I got a long list of a really good questions after the Lecture about SEO and Social Media Marketing on the University of Osijek. The lecture wouldn’t have been half as interesting if not fuelled by the challenging questions from the audience. The students and graduates of Faculty of Economics and Business Informatics showed deep understanding of the topics, and engaged in discussions on various topics.


I was really surprised by the quality of the questions, and the discussion that the same created during the official presentation and later on in the ‘unofficial’ chats later on.

When afterwards I found out that majority of them struggle to find a job, I simply couldn’t believe it. Some questions revealed some niche expertise like in depth understanding on Facebook marketing, that I thought must be a sought for skill. IN the same time I am told  the same person will find it really hard to get a marketing role since she has just finished her Masters degree, and has a very little work experience. By looking at her online activity on the social media networks – her reach is enormous.

The students will say that they are overeducated. The Employers will say that they are under experienced.

But what it seems to me is that employers actually need to understand the change in business better, and accept that there is more or less no experienced social media marketing manager in this world jet. Simply since the whole marketing aspect of the social media sites is only being commercialised recently, and there is no one with X years’ experience in it.

Perhaps there is another view on the current skills in demand and on offer mismatch. Perhaps it is not that the schools and universities are not producing what is actually needed for the industries. Perhaps the potential employers need to understand how to hire the talent in all this new industries, that didn’t even existed a few short years age when current graduates have ben choosing topics they will study.

I was talking to the group of recruiters in Galway a lot about all different industries niches where it is really hard to find candidates to fill the jobs. Recruiters are in general happy when candidates are hard to find, since if it wouldn't be hard, no one would use a recruitment agency anyway, but just advertise directly on any Irish jobs board, or search some CV database. But some jobs are getting really hard to fill lately. You can see those job types by extremely hue marketing budgets for jobs in those industries. One such example are Java Jobs in Galway.

Java Jobs in Galway

What makes it so hard to find a java developer in Galway today? The questions asked have all been on if there are (and we all know that there are!) java developers in Galway today at all? Are they all employed? They obviously are since no one is really applying for jobs in java development in Galway today. Regardless of where you advertise, regardless how much you spend on promotion.

I suggested talking to the already placed candidates for java jobs recently, regardless of the location of work. What made them choose the current employer, and what made (if it was a choice) them choose the current work location – especially if it was Galway. I also called a few people I know and results are actually quite unexpected, at least to me. But first things first…

Graduate java Developer gets almost the double salary offered than a school teacher. Experienced java developer gets more than a school principal! And this experience required is no longer than 5 years – since in the software development world, the ‘old’ experience becomes irrelevant soon because of fast paced technology change.

Although it was a small sample (statistically) of the people I spoke to there have been two reasons almost every java developer mentioned:

1. Salary
2. Company stability and future growth prospect.

What does this really mean to the employer today – and how will you fill your java jobs?

1. If you are a start up – present yourself as a future Facebook or Google to the candidate. Only if they buy into your idea will you ever hire them.
2. If you are the SME – Salary is what you will have to boost through the roof.
3. If you are Google or Facebook – have a nice brand like that – just boost your career growth opportunities.

I hope this little recruitment cookbook helps you filing your java jobs in Galway!

Geraldine past:
 
Career start> Grafton > NRF > Director! Fast track success.

How did you manage to do it so fast?
 
Geraldine started her career in the Electronic Industry where she worked for three of the major multinationals in various supervisory and management roles in the technical and quality disciplines; but predominantly as a classroom and online trainer delivering anything from company induction to component recognition and ESD training. She was recruited by Solectron Ireland in 2000 to help set up their training department when they expanded into the SMT business. When she was made redundant, Geraldine was offered a job with Grafton Recruitment. It was totally different for her being on the other side of the recruitment fence. But having been the client for many years, it gave her a good inside into what clients want. One major thing she learned from experience of using agencies was not to waste the client’s time.  During her seven years with Grafton, she managed three of their offices on the east cover, covering both North Dublin and Co. Louth. She was actively involved in a lot of projects, one of them being part of a team of twelve who were selected to re-align the business from a regular agency provider to an employment solution provider. When Geraldine left Grafton, she took six months extended holiday and then a part time role came up in the National Recruitment Federation. This role was to manage member services and part of this incorporated the education programme co ordination role. She was there for three months when the opportunity of the Directors role was presented.


 
Geraldine in NRF:

How do you become a member of the NRF? What would the benefit be of being a member?

The National Recruitment Federation is a voluntary organisation set up to establish and maintain standards and codes of practice for the Recruitment Industry in Ireland.
NRF Members aim to communicate their commitment to providing quality service by agreeing to abide by a strict Code of Conduct.
Founded in 1971, the NRF seeks to provide its members with the best possible service in terms of support, communication, advice sharing and problem solving and in doing so to promote professional competence within the industry. It is also widely recognised by most organisations (including the Government) as the foremost representative body for the Recruitment Industry in Ireland. Membership of the NRF is granted only to organisations that meet criteria of excellence (including adherence to the provisions of the Employment Agency Act 1971 and all other relevant Government legislation & amendments) and how agree to abide by the NRF Code of Conduct.

Tell us a bit about the Co-ordinator of Education program for Certificate in Recruitment Practice role? What was your involvement? How many recruiters are certified until today? Is it still available? Who are the trainers? Who are the average students?

As a qualified Trainer and business coach, CERTRP and owner and MD of Kingcomms Training, this area was to be part of my role when I joined the Federation. 
   There are fifteen recruiters certified today, with another fifteen due to be certified by the end of 2010. My involvement in this started two years prior to joining the NRF when I was asked to write on of the Modules. It is uncanny that I should end up in this role. On joining the NRF just after the initial launch it became evident that the programme needed to re-designed and updated to fall in line with the current turbulent and fast changing markets.
  The trainers are Grainne Martin from GMT and Pat Meehan from Invictus management. We are in the process of recruiting a barrister to deliver the Legislation Module. The updated programme is now available, with the November and December classrooms booked out. I must also add we have partnered with the Institute of Learning and Management, and the programme will be endorsed by City and Guilds. All successful recruiters of the program will be certified through ILM and City and Guilds. There is no such thing as the average student. This programme is designed to raise the standards of the Industry, instil confidence in the recruiter whether they have been in the industry for one or twenty years, as a junior RC or a senior manager is a one size fits all. We will build on this program going forward.
 
Your current Director role – what does it entail?

This is a very diverse and multi-faceted role. It comes with the responsibility for all PR & Marketing, event management and internal communications of the NRF; as well as the day-to-day running of the membership office and co-ordination of membership activities and the Education program.

Geraldine on NRF in general:

How is NRF today?

NRF is very busy due to the changing of how we do things both internally and externally. We have installed a new website www.nrf.ie. This new site has a lot more functions, hence, enabling us to communicate more with members, gather and provide more information through the site and generally give a better service. We will be developing a resource page for individual members and hope to have this up and running in the New Year.
 Our main aim is to constantly strive to be “the best that we can be” in order to help our members in any way we can. The success of the recent “Breakfast Briefings” is an indicator that we are going in the right direction. We are listening to our members to see what their needs/wants are, and how, if possible, we can facilitate them. Our main goal is to add value and relevance to our members.

How many members? How many Recruitment Licenses are registered today? How many active agencies (as opposed to dormant licenses) are not members of NRF? What are the most common reasons?

There are currently ninety-seven members. The last licence list we obtained in September from the Department of Enterprise Trade and Innovation stated there were 393 licences issued. Of these, there are 280 which are trading and currently active agencies.
  I cannot generalise as to why non members do not join. There are a variety for reasons for this; for some it is cost though our membership is very small and is based on the number of staff, others because they do not see a benefit for them and that is ok. You cannot force people to join but my aim is to contact them regularly and encourage them to join us, keeping them informed of all the good we are doing and then hopefully, they will see the benefits of being a member.
 

What could the NRF (or we as members) do to get even more agencies on board?

It is the role of all members to lobby on behalf of the NRF to non agencies. When we are dealing with the Governments on issues that affect the industry, we do so on behalf of the industry as a whole and not just for NRF members so everyone is benefiting. More members mean “the bigger we are, the louder the voice”. Use the NRF branding and logos at every opportunity to make sure your clients know you are members.

How can we help the NRF?

One of the new services going forward to conduct surveys through ‘Survey Monkey’ where everyone can help by making sure they respond. If we don’t know what you think or what you want, we cannot do anything about it. We keep the brand alive by promoting the NRF to clients and encourage them to use NRF member agencies.
 
 Geraldine on the Recruitment Industry:

How do you see the industry changing (anything from past/present/future you would to share)?

The industry has changed job wise in the past couple of years and the trend is still leading in the favour of temporary and contract positions rather than permanent.  Social media is playing a big part in how Agencies and Companies alike recruit staff and source candidates.
 The recruitment industry as a whole has grown up a lot. The standards have improved dramatically, and as an industry we are more willing to share information to help the industry grow. The recession has whittled out a lot of non compliant operators.

Trends?

What are the biggest challenges for the Recruitment agencies today?

The industry has gone through a very tough few years and the NRF has not escaped: there has been many challenges and difficulties for members. For recruitment agencies today, there are so many challengers and one of the biggest is managing both client and candidate expectations. The perception is there is an abundance of people unemployed so how come we cannot fill some roles or provide more CV’s to the client for selection. This will always be an issue in some specialist and niche areas. The people just are not there and if they are they are not moving. Competing with low margins is also challenging for some agencies. Managing the candidates’ expectations in this current climate can be another huge challenge, whilst they may think they are the perfect fit for a role and tick most of the boxes of the JD. Some clients will not settle till they have all the boxes ticked.

What are the best opportunities today?

The best opportunities at the moment seem to be in the Financial and Healthcare and IT sectors, both temporary and permanent employment opportunities are seen in these areas by members who deal in these sectors. In saying that, there is a lot of positivity coming to the forefront, confidence is starting to come back but is still slow in a lot of areas.

Challenges/ opportunities for the future?

What is next for Geraldine?

A holiday hopefully! No seriously, my vision and goal is to grow the Federation and introduce more services for members. Hopefully get every member to sit the Education program as we have introduced individual membership and this is part of the criteria of joining, continue to source experts for seminars and workshops with relevance topics that will be of benefit to all.

How are you going to do this?

The NRF is supported by a core committee and sub committees who work very hard on behalf of all members. These people are amazing they give their time and expertise voluntarily and still have the very busy day job to do. These people are paramount to the future of the federation. With their help, I think we can conquer it all.

The RECRUITMENT INDUSTRY AWARDS initiative is designed to identify and reward excellence in recruitment in Ireland and is open to all members agencies of the NRF.

Judges were:

Angela Carr
Director, Carr McCrea Associates

Tony Lambert
CEO, Fingal Chamber of Commerce

Mark Fielding
CEO of the Irish Small & Medium Enterprises Association, (ISME)

Best Agency Online Service
Sponsored by CVI/Nest Design To present the award we had Ronan O’Tomhnair.

Nominated:
Grafton Recruitment
Robert Walters
Clark

The judges deemed this site to be excellent in every way.  An easy to navigate site that ticked all the boxes.

And the Winner is… Robert Walters

Recruitment consultant of the year
Sponsored by the Sunday Business Post, To present the award we had Advertising Sales Manager Cian O’Mongan

Nominated:
Hazel Whelan of Recruitment Plus
Suzanne Feeney of Robert Walters
Kevin Clarke of Grafton Recruitment
And Kate Kelly also of Grafton Recruitment

The winner of this award stood out strongly for all the judges for their commitment to their role and their all-round professionalism with both candidates and clients alike.

And the winner is… Hazel Whelan (Recruitment Plus)

Best in Practice
For these awards there the judges took account of the size of an agency when making their decision.

Best in Practice – Healthcare
Sponsored by CXC Global. To present the award we had Business Development Executive Olivia Galvin

Nominated:
Locum Link
Servisource
CPL Healthcare

The winner of this category was chosen for their innovation and ability to look into new territories as well as their commitment to standards and the NRF.

And the winner is… Locumlink
 
Best in Practice – Accounting & Finance
Aponsored by Brennan Insurance in association with Hiscox. To present this award we had New Business Manager, Eamonn Doherty

Nominated:
Sigmar
Hays
Robert Walters

The winner was chosen for the wealth achievements over the past year and the very comprehensive submission of information in this category that sold them as an innovative agency in this specialism.

And the winner is……Sigmar
 
Best in Practice – Office & Secretarial
Sponsored by Gary Irwin Solicitors. To present this award we had Gary Irwin

Nominated:
CPL Resources Plc
Brightwater

This winner demonstrated very modern systems in their practice, an admirable commitment to Corporate Responsibility, a clear commitment to industry standards not to mention a very successful innovation in difficult times.

And the winner is ……… CPL Resources Plc

Best in Practice –IT & Telecoms
Sponsored by The Irish Computer Society. To present this award we had Tom O’Sullivan, President of the ICS.

Nominated:
Vantage Resources
CPL Resources Plc
Harvey Nash

This winner stood out for the judges for their very strong business growth and development in recessionary times.
And the winner is ……… Vantage Resources

Best in Practice – Hotel & Catering
Sponsored by Arithon. To present this award we had CEO, Roderick Smith

Nominated:
Noel Recruitment
Step One Staffing Solutions

The judges awarded I this category based on the very high quality of standards and service supplied, a clear industry leadership demonstration and the ability to strive forward with new innovations in hard times.

And the winner is ……… Noel Recruitment

Best in Practice – Light Industrial
Sponsored by Fuzion Communications. To present this award we had partner Greg Ganty

Nominated:
The Logiskills Group
Flexsource Solutions
Noel Recruitment

This winner showed very strong innovative recruitment solutions for this sector.

And the winner is ……… Flexsource

Best in Practice – Sales & Marketing
Sponsored by Ingage Online Marketing. To present this award we had CEO Karl Murray

Nominated:
Recruitment Plus
Sigmar

The judges found this category to be very narrowly contested but the winner scored just a few extra points for their credibility, their efforts towards a struggling market and indeed for their outstanding positivity in the jobs market

And the winner is ……… Sigmar

Best in Practice – Technical Engineering & Science
Sponsored by Cable & Wireless.

Nominated:
Sigmar
CPL Resources plc
Hays

This category again was a close call but the winner’s commitment to best practice for clients in the industry shone out along with their policy of recognising and identifying that the candidates of the future are still in school and working towards nurturing that talent.

And the winner is ……… CPL Resources Plc

Agency of the Year – Small Agency
Presented by Broadbean. To present this award we hadSales Manager, Jack Copeland

Nominated:
Locumlink
Recruitment Plus

This winner of this category impressed the judges very much due to their innovative approach to the business.

And the winner is ……… Recruitment Plus

And last but not least our final award is in the category:
Agency of the year – Large Agency
Sponsored by The Irish Independent. To present this award we had Head of Sales Cliona O’Carroll

Nominated:
CPL
Sigmar
Manpower
Noel Recruitment
Grafton Recruitment
Robert Walters
Parc Aviation

This category drew the largest amount of applications ever in this competition with an unprecedented 15 applications all showcasing fantastic standards.  Unfortunately a smaller selection had to be made based on the applications presented.  The winner quite literally pipped at the post with just 2 points ahead but win they did, based on their demonstration of industry leadership at interview that simply complimented their application.

And the winner is ……… CPL Resources Plc

Last couple of years the number of the various Social Media events has exploded. Go back 5 years ago, and people would not even know the meaning of the phrase Social Media. Is it a printed paper from a Socialist Party? Of course as in any especially new industry there is good and wanabe good. So the quality of this Social Media events vary drastically. In general the more niche ones tend to be far more beneficial to the audience than the generalist ones. If you spend the evening hearing that YouTube has gazillion hours of content uploaded every second,... it is sensational, but with absolutely no value to your business. On the other hand if you her the industry expert of the industry you are in, talking how he utilises the Social Media, and where does it help him (and especially where not!) to do his job more effective – well that is something that WILL help you make you do your job better/ quicker, etc. This is where the value is – in learning about your own niche, and how to utilise Social Media web sites in your industry and geographical region.

Recruiting using Social Media held yesterday in the Science Gallery, Trinity College was for several reasons a very unique event in our recruitment industry in Ireland so far. This was the first time a recruiter spoke to recruiters about how exactly is he doing it. The sourcing via the LinkedIn, Google search and Facebook was shown live (well screenshots really – since you know how internet connections are unpredictable!). It was the first time where a real hands on recruitment and sourcing process what shown and explained in detail.
What makes this different from anything else organised in recruitment in Ireland was that it wasn’t a Sales manager from LinkedIn on the stage pushing his product. It wasn’t a recruitment agency pushing their services. It wasn’t a co called Social Media expert selling his consultancy. There was no selling. There was just a showcase from a recruiter (Peter Costgrove)– on how he uses it and how the Social Media sites benefit him in performing his job – recruiting!
You are going to ask yourself – Why having an event like that really? Why revealing all your techniques? Why helping the people who compete for you for the same talent pool in the same market. To see the answer you can look at the slides – one of the closing slides have the question answered.

For those of you who were with us yesterday thanks for coming. For those who are reading this and wondering how could you miss it – well it wasn’t really advertised so do not blame yourself. There was more interest than the room could cater for so the next one will be some time in January 2011. There is still plenty of seats available for that.

Large volume recruitment processed online is relatively unknown term in Ireland lately. With the web traffic falling constantly in the last two years, and numbers of jobs advertised significantly reduced, we lately stopped using the phrases like the ‘Recruitment Drive’ and similar. We kind of just do ‘Recruitment’ now. :)

This makes the new jobs advertised http://terminal2jobs.jobsmarket.ie/ by the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) stand out. Hundreds of jobs in a fancy new airport terminal, of course Ireland went crazy. When you get the Minister to announce it all on TV, and literally all important national media covers it – in the resection times like this – the superb results are imminent.

With the marketing side all organised you get to the other end of the problem – the organisational part. When all the visitors come on the site to go through the pre screening process online, will the servers be able to hold on under the heavy traffic? How do you plan ahead for the volume of traffic you cannot predict? When the minister goes on, the national TV – how many people will come to the web site to apply immediately literally? It doesn’t matter how many applications you can process a month, or a week, or even a day. What matters is how many your server can process when they are there – and they will all go there a minute after the first short TV announcement is made. You are talking about the thousands of visitors within a minute!!!

Becoming the victim of your own success is very likely in such situation. It is quite similar to what become known as a ‘Digg Effect’. Digg is a social bookmarking site, where everyone ccan submit a link, and by crowdsourcing method and a voting system, some 10 links would end up on a home page of Digg.com. Those sites would usually get that much traffic that would in most cases end up overloading he servers, and eventually become inaccessible. Basically you cannot plan, or you do not plan to host thousands of time increased traffic all of the sudden. It was OK with you private blog, but having the eyes of the nation looking at you like the DAA’s Terminal 2 Jobs Site has – you CAN NOT let it become inaccessible. Not for the minute. Not for that first minute after the announcement of new jobs.

Weeks of planning, weeks of testing, and unknown ‘Released Date’,... creates a lot of tension.

Are my servers good enough, fast enough, capable enough (and you do not have a ‘Specifications’ – you have to imagine the numbers!!!???)?

Are the questioners of the filtering process self explanatory?

Are we asking too much? Will people just leave half way through the job application process?

Do we support all the possible browsers?

Legal – can we ask all this at this stage of the recruitment process?

Can the users bypass it all?

What do we tell them if they are NOT eligible?

What support channels to provide?

What if,... one of the servers fail... what if,... electricity, network,...

Yes it was not really that easy.... to put it nicely!

I would like to take this chance to thank everyone involved. The guys in DAA that worked patiently with us in getting it all set up. To Flexsource staff who ran the show, the CPL staff who provided all their expertise and to JobsMarket team who made it all happen. All should be proud since we delivered it all well, while under the microscope of a nation.

• HR / Recruitment Professional (Employer)
• Recruitment Professional (Agency)
• Jobseeker
• None of the above

• I don't think it has any use
• I don't know much about it
• It may have some limited uses
• It is becoming more and more important
• I think its a very useful tool

In Industries:

• Human Resources
• Manufacturing, Supply Chain or Engineering
• Sales & Marketing
• Finance, Accountancy or Legal
• Science, Pharmaceutical or Healthcare
• Information Technology
• Other (please specify)

• 1-5
• 6-10
• 11-50
• 51-250
• over 250

• LinkedIn Company Profile
• Twitter Page
• Facebook Company Page
• Company Blog
• None of the above

• Active resourcing through LinkedIN
• LinkedIn job advertisements
• Posting job ads on Twitter
• Posting job ads to company Facebook page
• Paid advertising on Facebook
• Paid advertising on Google
• None of the above

• Hourly
• Daily
• Weekly
• Monthly
• I haven't used it in a long time
• I don't use LinkedIn

• Hourly
• Daily
• Weekly
• Monthly
• It was set up but isn't updated much anymore
• My organisation does not use Twitter

If your organisation uses Facebook, how often does your organisation post updates to Facebook?

• Hourly
• Daily
• Weekly
• Monthly
• It was setup, but isn't updated that much anymore
• My organisation does not use Facebook

• Daily
• Weekly
• Every 2 weeks
• Monthly
• It was setup, but we haven't posted a blog in a while
• My organisation does not have a company blog

• Facebook
• LinkedIn LinkedIn
• Twitter Twitter
• Company Blogs

The use of Social Media in Recruitment in Ireland

Survey by Cork based RecruitIreland.com has found that close to half of job interviewers have looked up candidates online, with one in five recruiters rejecting a candidate because of the research, which is carried out on Facebook, Twitter, blog posts and LinkedIn profiles. Recruiters said they had uncovered comments that conflict with their business ethos, found evidence of lying on a CV or read offensive comments about existing employers.

So statistically what does it mean to you as a job seeker? Are chances of getting caught for lying on the CV really so small as Recruit Ireland survey says?