Hire Strategies Blog

HirePad: a new beginning #in #itsajobslife

After almost 10 years of advising on, integrating with and criticising recruitment technologies I have come back into the game myself. In 2002 I sold my ATS business. It was a complete disaster but I learnt a lot; hell of a lot! So I'm back but this time it's even more serious. I'm now putting my money in front of my mouth but will be just as critical about my own product as anyone else ever will be.

Oracle buy Taleo; my ten penneth!

The general opinion of many of the comments I have seen on this one are not of surprise that Oracle made this move. However, my question is more about what this offers the customer.

For me, there are two key points of view on this one; best-of-breed vs. single platform/vendor/code base. But in reality what the customer wants may not be what the technology provides.

Global Management opportunity; office politics, loads of pressure, operational crap, unhappy customers. But the money's great!

OK there's no job; or is there? Imagine if all jobs stated the reality of the position! Would anyone take a look? You did. Can't see it happening any day soon but imagine it did.

TRU London 2012: Should the online job application be mobile?

Click the TRU image to buy a ticket

I didn't attend the first TRU London but have attended them ever since and this year will be my third. TRU events have been memorable for me and I am hoping this year will be even better again; two years on there has been a lot of change! I also intend to turn up this time to run my track on the second day! So if you have some views on mobile job applications be there on Thursday 23rd February 2012. In usual TRU style no one knows what time the track will be!

Is Linkedin really as good as we "think" or is it already an urban myth?

This question has been nagging me for a while. So many recruiters have claimed that they get all their hires from the job boards they use yet in reality they have no decent tracking to know where their hires really come from. Now Linkedin is flavour of the month but is it really just a load of hocus pocus? Has anyone got any real decent stats to prove their claims? I wanted to find out first hand so started digging with a Linkedin poll. 

Job boards vs. social networks. #in

The job boards pretty much took the entire job advertising market from print in around 10 years. The social networks could take the market from the job boards in maybe half that time; so it is now the job boards market to lose. Here's a few things they could try to save it.

Pages, pages everywhere so where does my career site fit?

(Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/patrick-smith-photography)

As a recruiter you have your coveted career site but you also have Pages; Facebook, Linkedin, Google+ and no doubt there will be more incarnations to follow. But as more "brands" push people to their Pages rather than their website (X-Factor is a typical example) where does that leave your own site? Redundant or different? The road ahead is daunting.

Facebook, Twitter, Google and even Talent Communities; it's all about the data!

Thing is, we probably all know this yet, when we talk talent communities of any kind we get all hot under the collar about the conversations, engagement, employer brand blah blah blah. But, we do actually need all these conversations to take place, photos to be uploaded, friends to be found because every action, every conversation, every like - counts. It counts for advertisers which is where Facebook make (some of) their money. But there will be a bigger picture as to how Facebook monetise all of this information; but that's nothing new. For talent communities we need to be thinking much further ahead about the real goal.

Talent community or field of dreams?

Build it and they'll come. Will they? Will it work? Will anyone really care?

The candidate experience

Probably one of the most heard phrases but what do people really mean by this? I have two recent experiences that highlight this to me.