Top 5 mistakes the recruiters do in the social media:

• 1. Ignore. It was the most common mistake, but finally people are realising that the social media is not going to “go away”. When other people talk about
  you in the social media – it is ALLWAYS the best to be a part of that communication.
• 2. Publish only jobs in all social media channels. At some stage that did help your SEO. Well, have you not heard of Google Panda and Google Penguin? Those two Google updates have worked hardtop fixing that social media spamming effect on the search engine results. Today it does nothing for you but annoys the people who get bombarded by your jobs postings and are checking the ways how to get rid of you in their social media channels.
• 3. Publish your jobs in the social media and do not check the applications in that same channel? If you tweet your jobs on your jobs are tweeted automatically, jobseekers will apply and ask you questions in twitter. Very few recruiters are actually even aware that they should or could check what people are asking in those channels. If you job is posted on your Facebook wall, one would expect a recruiter will respond on the engagement from the job seeker on that same Facebook wall. The social media is like any other communication channel. Like email or a phone. You send an email with a question (I have a job, do you want to apply?) and a job seeker responds (Yes, please). The worst a recruiter can do is to ignore a job seeker. Why? It is all in public here. You can pretend you have deleted someone’s email, but you can’t hide of someone ‘talking’ to you on your Facebook wall.
• 4. Put the (password protected) link in the tweet or a Facebook & LinkedIn status update like: “Check my cool jobs in the Box https://www.box.com/files#/files” When you click on the link, that site asks you to register first.
• 5. Tweet “Follow me” in twitter. – this one puzzles me completely! Only people who follow you see your tweets in their streams. Why SPAM them with the “Follow me” tweets?

2012 could be the year the economy start coming back actually!

The early signs of uplift ARE here. It could still be seasonal, but the last couple of months have been better for a long list of companies than any single month in the last 3 years. There is an uptake in investments in the future. I see companies looking to go to the new markets, and doing it in the radical ways. Modern and new skills are in demand, and there is plenty of employers super-hungry for the staff. Such was the atmosphere on the recent careers and jobs fair in Dublin: CareerZoo.

Organised by Brian Ó hOisín and Jackie Slattery who do it really, really well the CareerZoo 2012 was a true success over the last two days. On one side there was a long cue to enter that with the great organisation worked quite well so the cue was moving really fast. On the other side there was a long list of companies looking to collect the CVs of the perspective candidates. There have also been some educational institution offering up-skilling as well.

What was different from this careers fair and the last few ones I was invited to was that CareerZoo over the weekend had more positivity than any similar event in a long time. It wasn’t one of those ‘Work in Australia’ type of the events that we keep on hearing about a bit too much lately (for my taste), but a really positive and local recruitment event. With real jobs, and PLENTY of them in all different sectors and what’s even more important different locations in Ireland.

Speaking independently with the HR and staffing managers and job seekers, but have seemed extremely positive after the event. Booth groups actually looked exhausted yesterday. Employers have been very happy with the CVs collected and job seekers all agreed that this was well worth visiting, simple because there is a job for everyone. There have been a lot of IT companies, but the jobs have been offered in a vast range of disciplines and skills required.

I even got some goodies (like it is pre DotCom!) – more about hat on my personal ‘Jobs Blog’. The goodies on the fairs are the sign,… the Doom & Gloom days might be replaced with something completely different in 2012!