Generation X vs. Generation Y on the financial recruitment circuit

With the current job market in absolute and utter disarray, where the unemployment rate is now 7.8%- 2.47 million, things aren’t looking too shiny.

Tags: finance, Generation X, Generation Y, job, Robert Half, unemployment rate

Twitter CV competition: who can come up with the most compelling, non-formulaic, attention grabbing, radical ‘CV’ in just 140 characters?…Yep, that was bang on 140 characters.

So, Myjobgroup.co.uk has created a CV-based competition aptly named TwiCV-of course-where users have to submit their CV in the now well-noted 140-character limit set by Twitter.

Over Talented Rebel or Squeaky Clean Run of the Mill?

From blogger David Gaines http://davidgaines.com/nucleus/itsjobvious.php?itemid=425

The continuing conundrum over whether super-skilled candidates, or the more commonly used term ‘overqualified’ candidates should have to go through that initial screening process is still a source of active debate. Often that process ends in an unsuccessful application for them.

Tags: candidates, hiring manager, OQs, overqualified, Recruiter, screening

The Social Media Spider/Web

From Samuel Zschokke

The thing with social media is that it’s always active and on the move. It’s constantly weaving its way into businesses and new pockets of communities and has really developed into its own entity-an entity that has stormed the online world as well as one that is defining a valuable existence and precursor to the offline world.

Tags: avatars, communities, corporate bloggers, niche, offline word, online journalism, online world, PR and marketing, publications, social and digital media desk, social media, spider

Content Wears a Crown

This phrase might seem clichéd and perhaps a little trite, but it’s expressed over and over again for a reason. It’s true. Any content that you produce has to be of a high standard. Ok, well that’s a give-in, I’m sure you’re thinking.

The Good, the Bad and the Socially Inept…

As more and more companies start to integrate social media into their every day business operations, it’s only too understandable that some are doing it better than others. This can mean the way in which companies interact with their customers and involve them in the brand’s growth and also the way in which they respond to situations. We’ve picked three mini case studies on companies going about their social media ventures in very different ways to each other.

Success Stories-Social Media in Recruitment Conference

In April Mike Taylor from Web Based Recruitment organised a conference in London highlighting how social media works in recruitment and how previous attendees have been making it work for them.

The Two-Edged Search Sword

The importance and awareness of online traffic is becoming much more of an essential aspect to consider when making your organisation-and your personal profile- more visible. Social media optimisation (SMO) and SEO acts as a two-edged sword with a powerful and prominent strike. Both do tend to blend into one, where social media tools can really pave the way to an increased and healthy amount of traffic running through your website and into the heart of your company.

Tags: Adwords, candidates, forum, hashtags, job boards, key words, LinkedIn, metadata, microblogging, search engines, SEO, SMO, social media tools, traffic

Online to Offline: Relationship Building & Facebook

As by now you are already familiar, online communication and presence plays a major role in today’s business activities. Our personal and social sphere of existence is an obvious and easily swayed target of the World Wide Web and its ability to reel us in, which it has done superbly, and we like it. But what happens when we suddenly realise that we are now amassing two generations of screen-gawping, keyboard banging geeks who don’t leave the safety and comfort of their desk?! How depressing, how dull, how…inhuman?

Mighty Multi-Media Take 2

Producing great content needs to be considered carefully and it needs to be varied. Text heavy blogs (a bit like my last one!) can be a bit of an over-kill at times, so you need to mix it up a bit. Keeping your audience engaged is what you should always be aiming for.

So before this becomes another epic post check out some of these visual messages. They come in the form of SlideShares (essentially a slideshow) and a photo montage that hopefully demonstrate the different ways you can communicate your business message. Ordinarily these examples of content would be uploaded to your website or your blog, which I will go into more detail next week. One bit at a time!

An effective photo montage:

Check out this colourful SlideShare presentation from one recruiter on twitter.

More content

Still images, photos, diagrams, cartoons and sketches are crucial bits of content that must be woven into your communication strategy. After all, people tend to respond better to visual messages, especially during their busy work days, when reading a long post isn’t always possible.

Short, snappy and attention grabbing visual content is a great way to get your candidates and clients involved in your brand and to make sure that they remember you and what you’re about.

Social image sites, such as Flickr and PicApp are good places to sign up to search for relevant images and build your own library. You can share images with other members by just sending them a short message asking for permission to use their picture and vice versa. PicApp also has an embedded SEO booster where the images contain the right meta-data for search engines to pick them up. I’ll reference this again when I talk about blogs.

The links below are examples of some fun and engaging ways companies have used images and diagrams on varying levels of design sophistication to get their messages across:

http://blog.sironaconsulting.com/.a/6a00d8341c761a53ef0133ef9e9c56970b-pi

http://www.datadial.net/blog_content/uploads/2010/04/DD_DigitalPR.png

http://www.datadial.net/blog/index.php/2010/04/13/seo-in-pictures-our-seo-infographic/

http://www.slideshare.net/kimuh72/google-facts-216737?type=powerpoint

Audio is another leading contender in the multi-media arena and podcasts formulate it perfectly. Podcasts are often created in series, where each one is about 10-20 minutes long discussing a particular topic that gets expanded on as the series goes on. However, some podcasts are something of a marathon and can go on for longer than 20 minutes. We suggest this is not a good look for your company, as people simply do not have the time or attention to stay tuned for that long. Treat them just like you would visual content: short, to the point, interesting dialogue that will make your audience’s ears prick up.

Tags: audio, blogs, content, diagrams, Flickr, photo montage, PicApp, podcasts, SEO, SlideShares, slideshow