Friday, October 20, 2006

What do these Yanks know!?

What do these Yanks know!?

To run any small business a broadband connection is ‘always a good thing’. This is why we in Ireland have a numerous broadband providers (stop laughing!). You can choose from a plethora of wired and wireless ones (stop laughing, now!). . Even satellite connections are available. If you recently sold a farm in a south Dublin to the developers, you might actually not feel the monthly charges for the broadband service. The rest of us do.

So when someone from a not so ‘IT Hub’ country comes to Ireland, and tries our magnificent broadband offering, nothing but superlatives comes out as in the Venturing online in Ireland article by Thomas C Greene in Dublin.

Mr Green, you have not tried the lot! There is also a Clearwire in Ireland. Clearwire is also known as a company that got serious money form Intel. Intel presumably pumps money in the companies with te specification of the WiMax that they support, and ClearWire is the number one here. Does ClearWire work in Ireland,… well exactly as thie other Irish Broadbung gangsters. A bit in the city center, and of course not on the ground level but rooftops. No 3D map of was ever made not even for the capital Dublin. So wireless broadband coverage was calculated based on 2D maps, that do not take buildings into the count. The funniest test you can make is to take the ClearWire antenna, plug it in the laptop, and a mobile power supply, and do the Lift Test. Simply go to any fancy office buildings on the river bank, ISFC is a good example. Go to the lift and establish a connection on the top floor. Now as you go down the lift, and go slow, floor by floor, watch the signal weakening, and ultimately disappearing close to the ground floor.

That test shows you that the coverage maps where the WHOLE city centre is well COVERED from multiple stations,… is rubbish. they simply did not have a 3D model of the city.

Viva broadband in Ireland!

Friday!!!!!!! Lets talk about SAILING!!!!



Well, it is Friday...

Lat us not think about work any more. One needs to get some pleasant thoughts in the head on Friday afternoon. A Pint in a pub is always an option. A bit of Tennis or golf if the weather allows. But I just could not get my eyes of the boat on the picture from Sailing Charter Croatia site… When will my dreams come true???

Friday, October 13, 2006

Using Google Adwords to find Candidates

On a Friday morning I found a blog from Stephen Fowler, with a bit of a real life experience with Google AdWords and it's usage in recruitment. Remember a few weeks ago I also wrote about it? Not only wrote but reccomended it? Here is a link ot the full article: Google vs. Irish Job Boards (1:0) .

So here is the Stephens take on it:

Last week I was contacted via Google Adwords in regards to comments I made on ERE, about using Adwords as an alternative to job boards to find candidates. So as to preempt Google’s questions, I thought I would re look at my campaign and fill you in on how it all worked out.
The funny thing was it was just a trial to see if it would work, partly because my normal route via the Job Boards wasn’t working. What did amaze me was not only did it work but how quickly it produced suitable candidates.
Probably first I should explain how Adwords works to help you grasp the concept. Google as I am sure you are aware make’s its money from advertising, by clients paying for links that appear on the right hand side of each search, or they appear on various websites like mine. (If you look to the right of this post, below the title
Ads by Goooooogle you should be able to see them). Now what is clever, is those ads should be relevant to the website or the article such as recruitment or Adwords, the client then only pays if you click on his ad, which then redirects to a web page, in my case it was the vacancy page, simple really!
What makes this so good for recruitment is that for a nominal amount, you get your recruitment ad in front of 100’s or 1000’s of relevant candidates instantly, and you only pay if the candidate is interested. In my case I wanted to find welders, so I wrote a small ad and chose key words, which would prompt my ad to appear, such as "jobs for welders" or "welding". Now what is interesting is this technique finds passive candidates also, to explain a welder may have been searching for a welding technique but my ad would still show in the search result to right or on the page of the article. Now if the welder did click on my ad, it would then redirect to me for a cost of 13 pence or about 25 cents (Please note some key words or phrases can be more expensive).
What is good here, is you can set a daily amount to spend and a maximum bid price thereby keeping costs down. So just to give you some figures, from my campaign I advertised for 2 months and during that time the ad appeared 46,000 times, 3,335 people clicked on the ad and just over 120 people registered. As a result it cost me £3.73 per candidate registered and they all were relevant.
My only word of warning is that if you are not careful you can spend more than you should, so set your daily budget and keep an eye on costs and also be aware you can also target region.


Permalink: http://www.recruitment-views.com/?p=129

Well, I hate to say: I told you so!!! Google AdWords does deliver. In Ireland even more so than in UK. The smaller size of the market, means less bidders, means smaller cost per click. Just imagine your ads showing at the Irish Jobs site.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Where should I advertise my Irish Jobs

Weddle’s Research Factoid

Recently asked visitors to the WEDDLE’s Web-site to tell how they found their last job. A total of 708 people participated in the survey. Here’s what they told were the top ten sources of hire:

31.2% Answered an ad on a job board
10.6% Sent their resume to the company
9.3% Answered an ad in the newspaper
8.5% Responded to a tip from a friend6.
8% Were referred by an employee of the company
6.6% Received a call from a headhunter
5.1% Answered an ad posted on the company’s Web-site
4.9% Attended a career fair
4.8% Used networking at a business event
2.7% Received a call from a staffing firm
2.7% Responded to a tip from a family member

So what does that tell you? Should you stop advertising offline? Well no! You need to catch that slice of the market as well. But this should guide you where to pour the majority of your budget, and how to slice the rest.

'Jobs Ireland’ or ‘Ireland jobs’?

So how do Irish job seekers look for the job online?

What is the phrase they put in Google? Is it ‘jobs Ireland’ or ‘Ireland jobs’?

Or do they put words like ‘Recruitment’, ‘Vacancies’ or ‘Employment’?

I have heard so many opinions on this so far.

A Recruiter will tell you that a word ‘Recruitment’ is what he would use.

A Job hunter will tell you – Hey! It is a Job that I am looking for!

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Maps on recruitmet web sites?

I wonder why no Irish recruitmetn or Irish job site have never implemente a map service on their site. What do Irish jobs sites do? They put together Irish emoployers and not only Irish job hunters but job hunters from all over the world. Would a feature 'Click here to se us on the map' be usefull next to the Employers job post to the job hunters? Would job hunters use it to locate and get directios to the Employer in Ireland?

Or even better,... imagine looking for the job useing a map! If you are looking for a job in Sandyford, there is no Irish job site that will give hte the functionality to search for the job in Sandyford Dublin Ireland. The best you will get ofered is Dublin South. Would it not be nice if one could create a map view of the IT jobs with salaries over 50k and with keyword '.NET'? Google Maps is here, Microsoft Live Maps is here... The technology is all here. I bet people would use it if it would be available.

Windows Live Writer

I have just downloaded the Windows Live Writer Beta to see if I can find something useful to write my blog in. I tried all the tools that I found so far, and non of them was really nice and useful.

This was supposed to check spelling but I can not really see it checking spelling as other MS product I am used to...

Don't you just hate those HTML editors that insert a paragraph when you press enter, and expect the line brake to be entered... Well Windows Live Writer is not the exception. Check this: <enter>

OOPS! A new paragraph!

So how exactly does one enter a line brake using the keyboard???

Let us see how does the Insert Link functionality work: Job Ireland Well, not bad.

There is also and Insert Map link:



Not that bad, seams Microsoft is learning from Google Maps!

Nice zoom in, but pushpin doesn't seam to display... But still a nice feature.

Ping Servers is a nice feature built in. Pity they did not built in some feature to search for the ping servers.

Conclusion (so far): Windows Live Writer is not a bad tool. Map, ping and a lot of settings you can save is really good. Unusual spellings (from a Microsoft Office perspective) and a bit strange WYSIWYG editor is a bit obvious drawbacks. Align JUSTIFY attribute is missing. Good thing again is that you can go to the HTML code and set it up there.

OK, let us see how will the first post look published! PUBLISH!

Heh,... well it didn't work. I got an error message that the Weblog does not support image publishing. It offered me to set up a FTP account details. Since I use blogger, there is no such thing as FTP, so... a big drawback. Perhaps it could have checked my settings while inserting the image, and if Blogger is there - show up a notification that it might not work?

Let me try with no images.

Friday, October 06, 2006

recruitment, employment, vacancy, jobs, job

OK, lets put it in the perspective of the volume of the Google searches for the Irish surfers.

recruitment, employment, vacancy, jobs, job



Conclusion: ‘jobs’ RULEZ!

Jobs Ireland & Ireland Jobs

Looking at the picture in the previous post Irish jobs search trends made me thinking. It made me thinking for a long time actually sine I did not write all the way back from the September 26th.

Why? What is so important about it?

What is important is to read the picture and understand that according to Google the two most used phrases (from about 100 tested) for looking for a job in Ireland are:
Ireland Jobs
Jobs Ireland

Ok there are the single word phrases:
Jobs
Job


Those single word phrases will be used more than any two word phrase, but some might say that it is questionable what the search was about if a single word is used as a phrase. Most of us would tend to agree that if one types ‘job’ in Google, one is looking for employment, a new career.

Anyway, putting aside jobs and job, the two phrases Jobs Ireland and Ireland Jobs are the most used to look for the job in Ireland.

Jobs in Ireland and Irish jobs? Nowhere near it.

Well, that is what I have been thinking about a lot in the last two weeks…