Digital Recruiting

Mobile site or Mobile app?- Neither. Be Responsive in Recruitment

2013-03-27T22:58:17+00:00

With mobile being well and truly here and an increasing amount of website traffic (25%+) coming from mobile devices - having a mobile solution is critical for all brands. So far, so obvious. Everyone has probably accepted that getting a mobile enabled site is fundamental and will be or should be on everyone's development roadmap. Some brands may ask themselves should we develop an app? Accepted wisdom will be: well, if you have the budget and if the role of the app is to either save time (Trainline/Googlemaps) or waste time (Angry Birds) for the consumer/candidate then go for it - BUT ONLY if you have a mobile enabled site in place. Today my team and agency attended a Google workshop of YouTube, where they shared (amongst lots of other cool stuff) how YouTube is now a site designed in 'Responsive DesignWeb ' i.e. websites that respond to their environment,...

You gave me a Job - I love you.

2012-03-21T17:19:43+00:00

Really good article in the Drum on The new era of emotive advertising This notes the growing trend for successful marketing campaigns that pull at the heart strings and make us wipe away a tear. The recent John Lewis Christmas TV ad campaign, being a fantastic example of how emotionally connecting with the British public during a time of economic hardship, pays bumper rewards in terms of sales. We now seem to aspire to emotional well being and happiness rather than designer clothes and brands. We perhaps realise the shallow pre-credit crunch daysnever made us particularly happy anyway. I cant think of anything more fundamental than getting a job - it comes in pretty handy for paying the bills and if you can work with some great people and love what you do then life is pretty good. Interestingly a lot of employer branding has always been about, not just...

'I got my Job via Siri on my iPhone'......

2012-03-20T01:10:14+00:00

The latest developments in the world of search and SEO with Google taking semantic search up a gear, helped by Google+ (overlaying its social user data) and Apple and its voiced-activated, artificial intelligence query tool Siri, make for exciting times in the battle for real-time search and SEO dominance. As The article says 'Google still rules search but Siri is coming' What is increasingly key is 'Social signals (via social media) becoming increasingly important for determining relevance in search. With Googles' Twitter partnership having come to an end and Bing's social search partnership with Facebook, providing it with the ultimate social data layering to help improve relevance of a users search, things are a changing. Google+ whilst adding a valuable social layer for Google, isnt gaining as much traction as anticipated and added to this is Apple's entry into the market with voice activated search with Siri. Basically, Siri will...

Is Pinterest right for you?

2012-03-19T23:30:10+00:00

Nice infographic from folks over at www.intuit.com http://blog.intuit.com/trends/should-your-business-be-on-pinterest-find-out-infographic/ via: Should Your Business Be on Pinterest? Find Out [INFOGRAPHIC]

Career Timeline or Career Board; Pinterest or Timeline the new CV ?

2012-02-28T00:21:46+00:00

I wrote a while back about a real-time, digital career portfolio, that would chart your resume, noting experience and bringing to life the highlights of your Career to date. With the facebook timeline technology and the Pinterest phenonomen, where I can do my own Career 'board', should I wish, are we now ready to start cooking on gas? Is this something LinkedIn or job boards could capitalise on? Yup, I think so.

2011-06-21T12:45:04+01:00

Looking to recruit a strong Account Manager, with excellent project management and digital skills to join the MediaCom team. If interested or know someone who is please email; sinead.bunting@mediacom.com for futher details. thanks.

Technically white-noising out that negative Social Media buzz about you

2011-03-13T22:18:08+00:00

An interesting piece of spam popped into my inbox over the weekend. It was particularly ineffective because there was no link to click through to (stupid is as stupid does), but still the subject caught my eye because it was something I've not heard anyone talk about but was surely a natural technological solution to what has become, for many, a headache in the interweb space - namely the Social Media catalysed phenomena that is amplified negative brand reach. The email was as follows: "I’ll bet those negative remarks are coming from angry ex-employees, crazy customers or maybe even your competition. But they’re still hurting your sales and reputation, aren’t they? My company can “erase” those negative reviews and replace them with positive ones. And it’s all totally legal and legitimate, even if our approach is a little high-tech. Let me tell you about our “Reputation Protection” program with no...

Bubbletastic

2011-02-18T13:49:35+00:00

if anyone's in any doubt that we're once again living through a bubble being inflated as fast as the last dot com one then you don't have to look too far. There are a plethora of articles written by people far cleverer than I that demonstrate this with proper examples and historic data and graphs n stuff (e.g. "all bubbles begin with a pyramid, end with a pop" - post by broadstuff), but I got passed an email the other day that had been recieved from a recruitment consultant. I started in Recruitment Advertising towards the end of the 90s and remember the times of VC fuelled excess and tales of boardrooms with real grass on the floor and the like. I remember working on the Vizzavi account where it seemed, to even a junior account manager, that WAP games would never be able to generate returns that would ever...

Buying an Audience not Media

2010-11-05T17:28:27+00:00

7 predictions from Google about where display advertising will be in 2015 1. 50 percent of ad campaigns will include video ads bought on a cost-per-view basis (that means that the user will choose whether to watch the ad or not, and the advertiser will only pay if the user watches). That’s up from very little today. 2. Today, advertisers are starting to deliver ads that are tailored to particular audiences. Many are using real-time bidding technology, so that they can bid on the ad space that they think is most valuable. In 2015, 50 percent of these ads will be bought using this real-time technology. 3. With smartphone growth skyrocketing, mobile is going be the number one screen through which users engage with advertisers’ digital brands. 4. Today, the “click” is the most important way that advertisers measure their display ad campaigns, but it’s not always the best measure—especially...

A brilliant example of "The Long Tail" on t'web

2010-10-08T10:16:50+01:00

If you've been a long time reader of this 'ere blog then you'll recall previous posts where people (certainly John Whitehurst from very early days) have been telling us about the Long Tail of the internet. Generally they've also gone the step further to make it Recruitment related - which is nice, because this is after all a blog ostensibly about things recruitment in the digital arena (the clue's in the URL). Anyway - I'm not going to do that, but I did want to share this article from the BBC I was pointed to. I've cropped it a bit, but you can read it all (and view a video interview with Martin Mcnulty) on the BBC site Searching the internet's long tail and finding parrot cages What do you do if you're a successful search marketing agency, running global paid ad campaigns for high-profile clients such as the Hilton...

Dilbert nails Social Media Marketing for many Corporates

2010-09-13T10:38:47+01:00

Location, Location, Location - Facebook Local

2010-08-20T15:38:09+01:00

I love Kirsty and Phil from Location, Location, Location, I was watching it last night, they have such a great working rapport. Banter but mutual respect..perfect working relationship. Anyway, seamless and completely tenuous link out of the way. I saw this news article the other day and it reminded of the key topic in the future of the web - the Local Web. AOL are investing $50 million in 500 new local sites in the USA, with plans to follow suit in the UK. The importance of locality and geo targeting services was reinforced by Alex's blog post below on Foursquare and the news of Facebook Local and their foray into geo targeting services. Will Facebook becomes Workbook? Geo location services are about adding value and enriching a users locality experience. In the UK, the local press really missed a trick, coming too late to the web party to provide...

Is Foursquare the Mayor of Hype Bubble Central?

2010-08-17T09:41:56+01:00

A little while back there was a bit of a heated debate in the ole twittosphere. You see foursquare, it would seem, is one of those things that’s a bit like marmite – and I’m not exactly in the “love it” camp. I personally find it annoying. Well not it of course, it's just a platform. It's just the way people use it to constantly announce where they are having a meeting, cup of tea or stopping for a poo - and that pollutes my personal online space. Now of course I hear shouts of “get a life” – and you’re absolutely right. I also know where the “unfollow” button is & I’m certainly not afraid to use it (I prefer to try and skew my tweet stream towards quality rather than quantity), but it’s the bubble of hype that surrounds foursquare that annoys me more than anything. It’s like...

Look at your work - now back at this work - now back at your work

2010-08-11T12:43:27+01:00

Don't you wish your work was a good as this work?! I do. ;) Great Casestudy from the OldSpice creative people. Really recommend grabbing a coffee and watching this. If nothing else it'll give you a head start on formulating a response for your next brief from a client that will go something like: "we have a very modest and limited budget, with no brand to speak off in a particularly unsexy industry - but we'd really like to do something like the Old Spice you-google social media thing. So we'd like to see what you might do for us that would be "viral" please."

The Future of Work

2010-08-02T23:21:43+01:00

We held our first MediaCom Career conference last week, on 'The Future of Work'. The line-up included Navi Singh at Shell, Mairi Healy from RBS, Martin Tiplady from the Met Police, Luke McKend from Google, Rhys McLachlan our Head of Futures at MediaCom, Sue Unerman our Chief Strategy Officer and myself and MD of Career; Aki Mandhar. Our headline speaker was the worldwide best selling writer/philosopher, Alain De Botton, which was an absolute coup. (there's nothing more surreal than having a 10am conference call on a Friday morning, leading up to the conference with Alain, one of our favourite writers in the whole world!). Alain was as philosophical and eloquent as always, putting the pressures we place on ourselves when it comes to our careers and work into a much more resonable, rationale context. It was a good day all round with great content and really positive feedback from our...

Lies, damned lies & Adobe surveys

2010-07-08T15:11:45+01:00

This came up today in a little back and forth on Twitter & got me so agitated that I wanted to air it here too. The micro debate centred around the use of Flash (or at least the exclusive use of flash) in website builds. Now firstly let me say that I'm a Flash fan and for a long time have been in awe of the experience you can get through flash sites. It annoys me that I can't see them on my iPhone (nor could I if I had an iPad - but I don't, so "whatever"), but at the same time I understand that we can't always have everything on every platform (until HTML5 is here and everyone moves to that of course ;) In my day I have produced and overseen my fair share of Flash site builds - even Flash exclusive sites (about 8years ago I...

The Google Commute

2010-06-21T01:06:01+01:00

So, you may have seen on Friday the news that Google has continued its plans to enter the property market, allowing UK users to search for property on Google maps. We are able to drill down on the overlay icon and search by property type, number of bedrooms etc. The first thought of many recruitment types will have been, is this an indication of future Google plans for another major classified area: jobs? A Google spokesman stated that the property market made sense as half of all search queries have a geographical component. The location of where we work is of course important to us. We know spending too much of your day getting to and from work is a major pain and it has an impact on our work life balance. Research I recall, from a few years ago (maybe from The Newspaper Society) showed that a significant proportion...

Why?

2010-05-25T23:04:36+01:00

As children, we constantly asked the rather inquisitive question to our parents; 'but why mummy?' We wanted to understand why things, situations or people were the way they were. It was a natural fundamental need to help us understand the ways of the world. After a while my exasperated mummy would respond 'Because, I said so!' ..'oh, ok..hmmn..' Whilst I may have learnt to just accept certain things, I still want to know why I do the things I do and of course I'm not alone. We all want to know why. I watched the following talk on TED recently and it made me think about why people, leaders and organisations are successful and inspiring. Why do people never get Sunday night blues or dread getting up to go to work in the morning? Probably because they believe in what they are doing, because they know why they are doing...

Is this the future of mobile?

2010-05-19T09:50:23+01:00

hilarious piece from The Onion ("America's finest news source") - and clearly demonstrates a recruitment use too (wonder if Monster paid for inclusion in this? ;) New Google Phone Service Whispers Targeted Ads Directly Into Users' Ears

The Flat Fee Debate - follow up, live example & reposing of the question

2010-04-30T01:40:47+01:00

After the debate the “flat fee” question caused last week (and thanks to all the people from across the spectrum who came and input) I just wanted to add a follow up post from some experiences of this week pertinent to that. We’ve built/are hosting an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) for a client. It's new to them – so there’ll be a period of learning that will need to spread across the company, and meanwhile various Managers and HR representatives will get caught between old practises and the new facility. So things won’t be perfect, but I found this activity particularly enlightening. The hiring HR Manager engaged a company who aren’t “… a recruitment agency…” but offer a “fixed fee recruitment” service. Now I appreciate where there wasn’t an ATS before then the application process would have been simpler, but let me take you through the candidate journey as I...

Value of a BSI Kite mark for UK Online Recruitment?

2010-04-27T22:50:41+01:00

[by Derek Pilcher - Managing Director -TheLadders] As an organisation we've been involved in the early stage talks with the BSI around the introduction of a kite mark for the UK Job Board industry. It appears that they have reached out to the Govt Dept (BIS) for funding to support this process. Notable UK online recruitment luminaries are involved on the BSI Steering Committee, none other than Chairman David Hurst of onrec.com. Nevertheless with all the good intent of this process, I'm a little confused as to the benefits. UK regulations around the jobseeker remain totally in the dark - governed by legislation dating back to 1973. Job Boards are still governed by the Employment Act of 1973 which classifies job boards as Employment Agencies under the guise of providing 'work finding' services and outlining that access to job vacancies has to be provided free. A mute point in today's...

Flat Fee recruitment – a direct question to main player job boards

2010-04-16T16:00:30+01:00

I’m intrigued about something (as first posted about on this blog: "Are job boards ruining what could have been a beautiful thing")– so want to ask a direct and genuine question to any senior job board types out there on twitter or stumbling across this 'ere blog. Flat fee recruitment agencies are undercutting your business model by selling space on your site to direct clients at less than 10% of what you would charge if they came to you directly – therefore losing you revenue hand over fist on a daily basis. With new proponents of this model jumping into the mix on a weekly basis have you perhaps created a monster or is there a particular reason (that I can’t fathom) that you are willing to see your brand being lined up alongside (and therefore valued comparably to), let’s be honest, non-entity job boards? I am genuinely intrigued and...

A better, more grown up future for online advertising? I think / hope so

2010-03-17T12:24:12+00:00

The web is a wonderful wonderful place. But, as we all know, good god it’s crowded and cluttered. Which is where strong brands come in. I’ve long berated the obsession with blatant short termism from any sector – but not least from web publishers who have a knack for panicking about all the cheap knock-off's taking traffic away from them. If you play the long game and stay true to quality and being true to your visitors / readers then the more rubbish that the web hosts, the more people will look for "beacon destinations" (not sure if I've just made that up - but probably not as I think it's quite catchy) . Publishers get caught into thinking they want volume volume volume, not caring whether it’s transient or not. But where the real value comes in any open market is in establishing a brand that resonates with a...

Are Job Boards ruining what could have been a beatiful thing?

2010-03-12T11:55:44+00:00

Jamie Leonard recently wrote a great post on "Recruitment Relationships: It's not me, it's you" where he took a tongue in cheek look at the various advertising / engagement channels open to recruiters. The bit that really jumped out at me was the piece on Job Boards: "Job Boards Now 5 or so years into their married , the job board and recruiters are still very much going strong. Their relationship is one based on trust, equality and understanding, but how long will this marriage last? Well that really depends on both parties. Relationships relying on honesty and with the market now picking up, the job board market are certainly the one “trying to make it work”. The market is over crowded, to say the least, and recruiters have a lot of other options available. New and appealing alternatives are appearing on the horizon and things could get rocky for...

Buntika Social Media Policy

2010-03-10T19:54:50+00:00

So, you've realised that your employees are among the best resources to manage your online reputation but also potentially can damage your brand reputation if not guided correctly. What to do? Worry not, by answering twelve simple questions in sequence here at Policy Tool, http://socialmedia.policytool.net/ you will have a full and legally sound, company social media policy to circulate to employees in a matter of moments. Yay! Whats more, I got to make up a name for my make-believe company - Buntika - sounds like a fun place to work. Nice article at mashable on why your company should have a social media policy.

Three years later is this still the worst recruitment video ever?

2010-03-08T20:29:37+00:00

It's now three years since I posted what I considered at the time to be the worst recruitment video I'd ever seen to Digital Recruiting. As it is also a year since I last reposted it, I thought it was high time we all took another look. Now interestingly as I re-watched this, it didn't seem quite as bad as I remembered! With sites like Animoto offering easy to use software which anyone can use to replicate the photo montage style, this kind of rough and ready promo has actually become quite common. It wasn't long though before I realised that I was viewing it with the sound turned off......it only took a few seconds of reacquainting myself with the song to be sure that it is still the worst recruitment video ever! Matt

LinkedIn discussion - "Measuring Job Boards traffic - which one do you believe?"

2010-03-05T12:46:11+00:00

Tony Harding started a discission on the Recruitment Futurology group on LinkedIn He asked "Having worked as a media professional for 20 years it amazes me that their are so many different ways in which recruitment job boards measure their own traffic and as such it means that the only way you can really judge is by actual applications. NORAS, ABC, Comscore , Google - in other words pick the one which works best for your stats - you cant buy media on the back of different scales of traffic as you will never know the correct figure. I would say that applications are the only worthwhile judge, and in short what then happens to them wastage/interview/offer - as clients we really need to savvy up on knowing what these stats are - what do you think?" Quite a few comments ensued (go have a look if you have access...

The truth is, nobody knows anything.

2010-02-25T10:08:24+00:00

By Chris Muktar (Founder - Wikijob.co.uk) Let me start by saying I'm a guest writer, so please be nice! One of the things I have noticed lately is how the recruitment industry has changed not recently but over centuries. In biblical times, I imagine jobs were advertised by word of mouth, then signs for the literate, likely followed by job noticeboards and then local press, finally culminating with the internet in the last decade and a half, and moving towards social media in the next. One of the most interesting problems we face when trying to sell social media is selling the concept. It's rare that a client actually expects that their social media campaign will generate any applications. Many are just sticking their toes in the water and seeing what happens. We tend to find that companies spend only 5-10% of their budget on new or innovative media, while...

The September Issue - on iPad

2010-02-09T15:07:53+00:00

So, on Sunday night, I watched the TV premiere of The September Issue -a behind the scenes documentary on US Vogue magazine's Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour. Wow! - it was compulsive viewing - I watched it initially thinking of a very stylish friend of mine who I knew would be ideal to work at Vogue. By the end of it, despite not having a stylish, fashionable bone in my body, I was wishing I had a job there myself! This was pretty much due to me loving Anna Wintour's right hand woman - Grace Coddington - the Creative Director, who was such a fantastic, talented person, who did these amazingly creative fashion shoots. They were like modern art...am I gushing? yes, I am..see... I belong in the world of fashion. I loved Coddington and Wintour's relationship of begrudging admiration and respect mixed with wanting to give each other a good slap,...

What do you think Social Media is about?

2010-02-01T18:06:39+00:00

I was recently asked by a journalist/publisher for my input (along with probably everyone else on this blog and 5 of our regular readers - the 6th reader being my mum, and in the nicest possible way they're right not to ask her) about "social media, fad or future?". I can't decide whether it's cheeky to pre-publish here or not. I'm sure the final article they pull together will still make an interesting read irrespective of me pre-empting, but I'll probably forget to post this if I don't do it now. The thing I really wanted to do though was ask any of you who haven't been asked to contribute what you reckon? Kinda in a more crowd sourced / Social Media engaged sort of way, which is probably, given the subject, what I should have done in the first place ;) Anyway - publish and be damned I say...

The iPad - a Friday kinda look

2010-01-29T08:00:48+00:00

You may have noticed a little buzz this week just past about a certain Apple release. What? You missed it? Well don't worry - I'm sure it'll be beamed to the space station you must be on someday soon. There's been plenty written about it already - from people who would love it because it has an apple logo on it to people who hate it because it has an apple logo on it and from developers who hate the fact that Apple operates a very closed development environment to those who really believe that apple have once again (as they did with the iPhone) significantly raised the bar. It's not perfect, no, but then neither was the iPhone 1.0. Anyway, as I say - plenty written, and for my money Mr Fry, who got to be at the launch event, nailed it (as usual) in his blog post -...

Crowdsourcing Apathy

2010-01-25T18:02:27+00:00

Ah, election year....the prospect of shiny new change or focusing your current leaders to deliver on past promises they have made...how exciting! or really....it used to be, but not so much this year. I don't think I can ever recall being this apathethic about a general election. It's a sad state of affairs to be in, feeling that neither party offers any particular hope. Just as well then, we have something of interest we can watch from our seats of indifference - how each party fayres in their use of social media in helping to get elected. After Obama came to power on the wave of hope and an amazing social media campaign, the bar has been set very high. So, first to have piqued my interest and get off the starting blocks is Labour. Just read that Labour are launching a crowdsourcing campaign Change we See Insead of talking...

RECaid Free Training - 18th February 2010

2010-01-25T16:09:34+00:00

Support for job-seekers in recruitment advertising. For those people in recruitment marketing who aren’t working at the moment but who are keen to keep their skills up-to-date, help is at hand. RECaid, the recruitment advertising charity, is organising a series of free training and development sessions designed to support job-seekers in our industry. The first of these training events will run on the morning of February 18th and will be hosted by Global Radio. This will involve a series of three back-to-back sessions designed to help job seekers improve their interviewing skills, widen their industry knowledge and build their digital design and writing skills. The outline below should help you decide whether they’ll benefit you - or someone you know. Planning Your Job Hunting Process – Frank Hutton The founder and Managing Director of Ad Lib, a specialist marketing, creative and media recruiter, Frank will focus on taking a planned...

The Mobile Age Cometh

2010-01-18T23:14:51+00:00

So, I'm thinking of getting an i-phone..they're pretty cool and being able to access the web wherever I want, whenever I want, is a big attraction, especially since my laptop packed up. Also, being free from the red light of my work blackberry, which doubles as my personal mobile phone will surely be healthy. I'm not alone in my desire for a smart phone, in fact, it would seem at long last, we just may be entering the 'Mobile Age' - the perennial prediction comes to bear.... Mary Meeker in her presentation at the Web 2.0 event- convinced me the mobile is all set to be the main device for web access. What's more from past analysis of technology computing trends, the mobile age is all set to be TEN times more utilised that desktop Internet computing: What does this mean for the world of recruitment? Employers should be considering...

Tuesday 9th of February, we're holding the first annual inter-agency pub quiz to support RECaid at the Hoop & Grapes on Farringdon Road

2010-01-12T18:20:39+00:00

On Tuesday 9th of February, we're holding the first annual inter-agency pub quiz to support RECaid at the Hoop & Grapes on Farringdon Road. Full details will be distributed shortly, but this is to please ask you to sound out people in your agency about getting team together and ask you to publicise the quiz. Agency can have multiple teams and freelance teams can also welcome, so please encourage as many friends and colleagues as possible to be involved. Please let us know if you want to enter a team and for more information you can see the RECaid inter-agency pub quiz on linkedin.

Delicious Ambiguity

2010-01-04T20:44:20+00:00

'...some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.' Gilda Radner I love a good quotation and I think the above is a good way to look at life and all that it presents us with, especially after a year like 2009 and a rather uncertain world in 2010. At this time of year, people tend to make predictions about whats going to happen in the upcoming year. I obviously don't know whats going to happen in the upcoming months, but reading different blogs and research, it would seem a given, that mobile, real-time and social are the key trends in technology, business and communication (more on that to come). Whatever happens, I hope 2010 is a great year and we all appreciate...

Bring on 2010

2009-12-12T10:31:46+00:00

I think 2009 can go down as a very strange year, at times it has been very upsetting to see so many people loosing their jobs. But at the same time I have seen people working together and the industry innovating to move through 2010 and to hopefully change for the better. I have got to say I have been personally amazed how people have worked together to support people and the industry, RECaid are working with NABS to provide training and careers support throughout 2010. You will hear more in the next couple of weeks. Away from the recruitment specific support, anyone can take advantage of the emotional and financial support, as well as professional and practical advice. Check out the personal support and career management services.

Digital Dinner Party - WebSquared

2009-12-11T12:31:06+00:00

Every now and then you come across a site, a white paper, a new technology etc that makes you a bit excited and you wonder how you can use it or tailor it for your company and clients. I came across the site http://www.web2summit.com/web2009/ the other week, late in the evening and was on it for a good few hours until I had to go to sleep. The site details the Web 2.0 summit that happened in October in San Francisco. The summit is organised by the guy who coined the web 2.0 term- Tim O'Reilly. Web 2.0 has become Web squared - all about collective intelligence, and the web integrating with the physical world. 'The Web is no longer an industry unto itself – the Web is now the world.' The list of speakers at this conference is like your dream digital dinner party line-up. Pretty impressive. Some great...

LinkedIn Opens up at Last

2009-11-24T14:24:58+00:00

After announcing it would open up its platform ages ago - LinkedIn finally lets outside developers have access. All the pro's and con's are detailed here - including the t & c's that they are imposing which may be a bit stifling and limiting. But nonetheless- really interesting development for our clients. Watch this space.

Mash-Up my Career

2009-11-17T15:30:12+00:00

So, I read this article today about how you can use technology/sites to map your life history. I like this idea - overlay your life on a map of places you have visited, schools you attended, where you have lived etc add relevant content, photo's, links to friends etc Instead of carving your name on a tree (maybe with another name, date and a heart around it) you can create your life history in a dynamic, visual and interactive way - a 3G biography - a personal diary or history. Surely this is the future of logging your career experience? - a digital, real-time, resume: charting your work history, where you have worked, who you have worked with and examples of campaigns, clients, innovations you have worked on etc? An interface that will bring this to life. A digital Career portfolio. Is this the service that job boards can offer...

Twitter & LinkedIn Partnership Merges Professional with Personal

2009-11-10T11:59:15+00:00

One of the best pastimes I've read on a CV from a prospective candidate was; 'reading, socialising and...thinking. In an evening/weekend they liked nothing better, than to sit down and have a good think.........this certainly put some thoughts into my head. It would seem that the anouncement that you can share your Tweets on your LinkedIn profile will also provide employers with an insight into your personality, pastimes and what makes you tick. As Biz Stone, Co-founder of twitter states; people are finding: 'the personna they create for themselves on the web is part of their resume in many ways'. This certainly goes some way to blurring the line between your professional social web presence - LinkedIn and your more personal presence - or 'brand' on the web, on a site such as Twitter. The partnership is great for LinkedIn in terms of making it a more dynamic 'real' time...

Its not Y!ou...it's..er....

2009-11-09T19:38:22+00:00

What's a brand all about? Well,...employer brands, they are a representation and reflection of an existing, living, breathing organisation and its' culture, no? its actual values, it's reality...it's aspirations to an extent. I was in San Francisco on holiday recently and the Yahoo -'It's 'Y!ou' campaign was literally everywhere you went. I thought it was maybe a west coast of America, Silicon Valley-type campaign, but sure enough, when I got back to London and climbed into my cab and had a look around - it was eveywhere to be seen too. I thought...big media budget....hmnn...wonder who has that account...:o) Seemingly the media budget was in the region of a huge $100 million - certainly it got my attention (on two different continents) but what impact did it make? It was interesting to be shown this chart below when I got back to work: It would appear that for all the...

Social Web v. Destination Sites

2009-11-06T12:07:02+00:00

Hey there, I'm back after a bit of a break - on hols and busy busy at work. Here's something I wanted to share which is really interesting - its a post noting how traffic to brands destination sites is declining compared to the rising traffic on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Its all about the content and where its being consumed i.e. in the social web and less so at a brands own website. Is the writing on the wall for a company's website? Maybe not just yet, but it does reinforce the fact that clients should be engaging with their target audience where they are consuming media - on the social web. A considered, well thought-out social media strategy, where a clients site is integrated is key.

The RECaid Treasure Hunt; Thursday, 12th November, 2009

2009-10-26T23:33:06+00:00

Follow the trail of Farringdon's secrets and watering holes - two hours of light mental and physical exercise with socialising thrown in. Compete for prizes against teams from recruitment comms agencies and media.Help raise money for this worthwhile cause, in support of industry colleagues who have fallen on hard times.Thursday, 12th November, 2009 (from 18:30). £100 per team of 5 (including drinks, refreshments, and treasure).The RECaid Treasure Hunt has been devised by Ri5, and tested and declared fair and fun by experts.To enter please contact Karen Williams (Karen.williams@sabmedia.co.uk) with the name of your team. Your £100 entry fee will be exchanged for further instructions and incentives.The RECaid Treasure Hunt

One day and two events you can’t afford to miss

2009-10-11T23:58:28+01:00

This year has certainly been a memorable one and not often for the right reasons. However, despite times being so tough for our industry, it’s great to see that over the last few months so many people have come together via Twitter to network and collaborate on creating a more positive and innovative future. The point the social media naysayers always seem to miss is how much Twitter and other social media platforms actually enhance face to face interaction rather than stifling it. To prove this there are not one but two face to face events running in London on Thursday 19th November that I believe will prove invaluable to anyone interested in innovating their way out of the recession in 2010. First up during the day we have what I’m pretty sure is the first Recruiting Unconference held in the UK. The legendary @BillBoorman is organising everything and it...

If Architects Had to Work Like Web Designers

2009-09-28T19:13:00+01:00

I came across (well - was pointed to it from twitter) this fantastic piece. I'm sorry to say it struck soooo many chords with me, but at the same time the satisfaction I got from reading someone else conveying a pain and frustration I've all too often felt compelled me to copy and paste it here for our 4 readers to enjoy too (hoping that at least one of them was involved in website project conception -> delivery). You can read the original here on DigitalSurvivors.com enjoy :) If Architects Had to Work Like Web Designers Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to...

Did You Know 4.0 - "Shift Happens" updated for 2009

2009-09-16T18:16:10+01:00

I blogged the original version of this video way back in 2007. Great to see it updated.....well worth watching

Investors in People

2009-09-09T22:07:54+01:00

I saw a really interesting tweet today from one of my favourite blogs READWRITEWEB - a blog I really recommend for the latest news and developments in technology and communications. Jobvite a new start-up venture has secured $8.25m in venture capitalist funding. 'The company pioneered social recruitment with the first on-demand application that enables the whole company to participate in hiring and allows recruiters to tap employees’ existing professional and social networks to increase referral hiring.' “This recession is fundamentally changing recruitment, pushing companies to become more cost-effective, innovative and strategic. Companies are looking to the technology industry to make this possible,” said Dan Finnigan, President and Chief Executive Officer of Jobvite. Technology, social media and a companies best ambassadors - employee's - sounds like a great combination. Speaking of which, I've been pretty busy lately - working on the global social media strategies for one of our global clients...

THEO PAPHITIS: Millionaire, Dragon, rubbish employer, hypocrite & Social Media dufus

2009-09-07T00:32:36+01:00

Last week I read an article from the Daily Mail (a link I followed I don’t hesitate to add) from the inimitable Theo Paphitis entitled “Why ALL bosses should copy me and ban Facebook from the workplace”. I think it’s fair to say that it wound me up. REALLY wound me up. It's true that many articles I happen across from that "journalistic (and I use the expression in it’s loosest sense) stable" do, and that why I try to give it a wide berth – but this one got me fired. His key points were: the internet is responsible for “an orgy of self-indulgence and exhibitionism”. Ryman stopped all time-wasting by imposing a “non-draconian” ban on ALL websites that couldn’t be justified as useful for work. The internet has undermined dialogue in so many ways. Online socialising (unchecked) could cause the end of the world – or something like...

"The ultimate phone is here" - follow up thoughts

2009-08-20T09:24:05+01:00

Dear me - where did that last month go?! Anyway - it was my intention that after posting the original article to follow it up quite quickly with my thoughts on it as a marketing piece, then I looked around and it was Mid August. For anyone who can't be bothered to click through to that original post here's the video: Matt commented: "I'm all for a bit of stealth marketing and this is certainly entertaining but I really don't think it pulls it off. A phone that has everything and Nova Scotia.....I can't really see any kind of link that would make the humour and the surprise reveal resonate in an effective way " And I agree - it's indeed a clever and entertaining piece, and I agree that if you look deep there's no perceptible resonance between what's being sold and the execution. But my biggest frustration/disappointment with...