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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Microsoft. Apple. Google. Coca Cola. Virgin. The BBC. What do they have in common? Each of them could advertise on the back of a cigarette packet, put a card in a shop window or float a message in a bottle out to sea and they would still get a good response to their recruitment campaigns. Indeed all of them receive hundreds of unsolicited applications each and every year.

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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

Honestly, if I had a penny for every time I have read about how the job boards are dying I'd have ooh, let me see now, at least one of the Queen's English pounds sterling. And you know what? they are not dying of old age, they are being poisoned into oblivion by the very people who are meant to make them work - the recruiter.



Yes siree, it doesn't take much figuring out. Social media isn't the holy grail these gurus would have you believe it is. You post the same crap as you've been… 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