Hire Strategies Blog

Mr Ted Smartrecruiters - mad or magic?

I spoke with Jérôme Ternynck, CEO of Mr Ted earlier this week about his latest venture smartrecruiters which is a FREE Applicant Tracking System.  So is this a last gasp effort for survival or has he out-smarted his competitors and will be adding some serious profits to the bottom line?

Social Tentacles

How many social networks, profiles, friends do we need? 

Although those of us who 'get excited' by social media go off and try pretty much any new idea, the norm's of this world struggle with Facebook let alone Twitter.

So yet again, less is more but where should you start?

Why British business will exploit web 2.0 in 2009.

There is one compelling event already of this year that will result in British businesses utilising web 2.0 and social media technologies.

Is this how you use Twitter?

Watching the video begs the question.  I wonder how many people still see it like this?  Not that it really matters - or does it?  Tweet your thoughts!

Fantastic Common Craft video as ever.

Social media on Radio 4

I was going to blog about the Radio 4 discussion yesterday but Matt Rhodes has already written a great post so why re-invent the wheel!

Freshnetworks: Discussing customers in social networks - BBC Radio 4 interview.

Employees have to let off steam somewhere so give them somewhere to do it and avoid the Facebook situation!

Blogging on its way out - maybe!

I thought the view on blogs being on their way out would not really last but it seems not!  Whilst this may or may not be correct and has probably been fuelled by the same people that predicted the death of recruitment agencies due to job boards, the point of the article I read was that brands will leave the blogoshpere.  The article in New Media Age included:

"Dela Quist, CEO of e-mail company Alchemyworx (not a bit of conflict there then! PG) believes that brands will eventually leave the blogosphere and head for other channels, (what, like e-mail? PG) having been been pulled into blogging for the wrong reasons in the first place.  A blog is a personal thing, it's not an effective marketing tool."

The article goes on about twitter and social networks saying that blogs have been replaced by these new tools!  I think the point of any of the platforms is missed in the article.  They are all communication tools.  Blogs are becoming more 'social' with new features being added all the time but that is not the point.  It is about different communication tools.  I use a blog, social networks, twitter, e-mail etc as do many others.  OK, so Jason Calacanis may have stopped blogging but does that change the world overnight?  His 'blog' is pretty cool mind; if I can call it a blog!

So, it's not about the death or maturing of any particular platform, it is about how we communicate.  We and the technology will continually evolve.  Who knows what will be next. 

Maybe Enhance Media can tell you in their web 3.0 presentation. 

Maybe Tim Forster will be telling you the secret about having blogs with no regular content? 

Maybe we can have one interface to all of our different communication channels. 

Maybe Broadbean could take their multi-job posting approach to 'communication'. 

Maybe I'd better run off to Google Labs and ask them.

Future of job search

Is this new employer/job match/search idea from www.jiibe.com the future for how people find the right job/employer?  Or is it just a bit to idealistic?

Job boards or job networks

Jobsite are advertising on TV, Monster are 'investing' $130m to relaunch their sites.  Will this be enough for either of them?  Have Monster gone off on a wild job chase or are they on the right track?

According to Hitwise traffic for January 2009 across some of the 'job sites' was as follows:

1. JobCentre Plus: 9.76%.
2. Linkedin: 4.02%.
3. NHS Careers: 3.83%.
4. Reed: 3.58%.
5. Totaljobs: 2.82%.
6. Jobsite UK: 2.72%.
7. Monster: 3.06%.
8. Guardian Jobs: 1.93%.
9. TES Jobs: 1.77%.

So, a few comments around the above.

• Government 5. Private Sector 1.  No extra time.
• TJ and Monster down on previous year.
• Linkedin more than doubled on previous year.

Based on the growth for Linkedin maybe Monster are actually on the right track but if they execute their plans in their normal way they'll just walk on by without stopping and miss out.  Plenty of other comments can be taken from the above but if I was a job board I'd be thinking hard about where next.

ASICS | Proud to wear them | Proud to work there

How does this corporate video make you feel?  As a runner makes me happy to run in their shoes!

Origami In the Pursuit of Perfection from MABONA ORIGAMI on Vimeo.

Twitter is evolving but are Twitter keeping up?

The way a lot of the people that I follow/tweet are using Twitter more as a marketing and direct communication tool.  No longer is the What are you doing? tagline relevant to a lot of us.  This may only appear to be a minor point but in fact I think it could be a lot more significant than we think.

Users are adapting the tool to suit their needs and maybe Twitter could take this point to:

1. Give us more functionality?
2. Create a business model that we may just pay for?

Or maybe they should just change the tagline to What do you want to say?  Of course I don't have the answer, Twiiter are smarter than me and they haven't figured it out yet!!