Conduct an online job search these days and you’re soon confronted with lots of ads, many suggesting, without actually saying it of course, that each day spent working with them will be just like dying and going to heaven, only better. But should they be taken at face value?  Is your workplace heaven? Or is it more like hell, despite what that ever so enticing advertisement that lured you there in the first place suggested? Here I take a lighthearted look at what job ads say and what they…

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I’ve had a few run ins, albeit friendly exchanges of banter, of late with a few pro social recruiting types. Obviously it’s difficult to explain ones self fully in 140 characters or less so I thought I would take a bit longer to explain my stance.

 

I make no bones about it – I like social media. I said as much over 2 years ago in a blog that picked up on Ricky Gervais’s flounce (he’s since come back as we all know). Indeed I have gained business I would never have otherwise…

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Freelance copywriter Alasdair Murray on how some recruiters could gain a competitive edge over their rivals if only they thought a bit more about the messages they put out into the public domain.

 

They are there for all to see – the ‘new year, new career’ job ads that get wheeled out at the beginning of each new year. Someone somewhere clearly still thinks it’s original and a bit clever. Trust me, it’s not, nor has it been for many years. In fact, it’s become…

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...for crying out loud make the content you reach me with worth reading!

 

Seriously, the more technology advances and, as a result, the easier it becomes for any old Joe to upload content onto a website, the more creativity seems to be going out of the window, particularly in recruitment.

 

What sparked my latest rant? I read somewhere today that as there are 5 billion mobile phone users in the world it follows that many  more people in the coming months and…

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An interesting debate emerged today when it was revealed that the UK has more jobless teenagers than Slovenia.

Straight away of course there were the usual "well what do you expect with all the foreigners coming over here" type comments and others blaming the generation before them for voting for this, that and the other, but it got me thinking (always a dangerous thing) - would it be silly to suggest that it's nothing to do with immigration, baby boomers, Generation X or indeed Gen Y…

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Not a single day passes by of late without hearing the dreaded words 'global talent pool', but what does that phrase actually mean in practice, if anything at all?

Consider a typical recruiting scenario. You're looking for a mid-career engineer for a specific location. There is no relocation package on offer so straight away it would be fair to assume that 99 times out of a hundred your likely candidate is going to come from a 30 or 40 mile radius of wherever the business is situated.…

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Browsing Twitter recently I came across a pretty senior level role for a prominent UK organisation. Nothing unusual there. But, upon reading through the job advertisement it soon became apparent that no thought whatsoever had gone into its make-up. Indeed, this job post was over 200 lines long and consisted purely of dull cut and pasted content taken straight from a job description.

 

I decided to ask the advertiser why, as a leading light in their field, they saw fit to post…

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Today I am going to demonstrate two different ways of posting the same job on the web. The first way is the all too common lazy one where a recruiter simply cuts and pastes the job description and top and tails it with a bit about the client and a response mechanism. The other way is the right way, and that is, instead of cut and pasting it, to take the information from the job description and craft it into a bit of copy that not only flows, but reaches out…

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...when you're in a pharmacy, do you have a sudden urge to purchase a shovel? No, of course you don't. But hang on a minute, there's a method to what seem a couple of mad and random questions, and it's this...



Everywhere you look these days there is always someone who is happy to preach about how social recruiting is where it's at. Encourage people to be fans on Facebook they say. Establish an online community for your company where everyone… Continue

Do you see writing job ad copy as a bit of a chore? Something that you put off until the last possible minute and then hastily throw together with more than a little apprehension or doubt? Use this simple nine step guide and you’ll soon get used to a formulaic running order that will make writing copy that much easier in the future.



1) THE JOB TITLE – Start off by asking yourself is the job title an industry recognised standard or something… Continue

Way back when, my since dear departed brother and I worked together in the classified advertising department of one of the UK’s leading quality newspapers. No big deal – except that we were the only two men in a team of twenty. Were we tempted? Read on.

You would think perhaps that faced with such odds it would be hard to resist or avoid some kind of romantic liaison with one of our female colleagues. Indeed the guys from next door in production used to… Continue

Life has been very hard for many people over the past 18 months, me included. The credit crunch, the recession, call it what you will, has certainly hit home. And, working in a recruitment related role, it’s been all the more apparent that these have indeed been tough times.



One week I would be reasonably busy, the next, hardly, the following, not a bean. One minute an agency would be my biggest client, the next it would suddenly put a freeze on using freelancers and I would get no… Continue

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Let's face it, we've never before lived in an age where such a plethora of job opportunities are accessible to us at the mere touch of a button. But is this instantaneous solution really all it's cracked up to be? Is the constant search for new and supposedly better ways to reach the job seeker really an advance, or merely adding to the woes of the already stressed out candidate who, when faced with a huge list of all too often bland and uninspiring job posts, struggles to separate the wheat… Continue

All the recent furore about the alleged bullying culture at No. 10, coupled with statistics that say that 14 % of the UK’s workforce are bullied at work and 21% aware of bullying going on at their workplace, reminded me of a few encounters with office bullies and how I dealt with them.



My first encounter with an office bully happened when I was working as part of a sales team and this new guy joined as Director. From day one we didn’t really… Continue