As a recruiter, have you ever considered what your online influence is? What do clients and candidates think of your online presence? This very hot topic was address at the most recent Social Media Meetup entitled “How to boost your social media influence” with Andrew Grill, CEO of Kred the open standard for measurable influence,…
Category: Timebound
Here’s an interview Jorgen Sundberg of Link Humans did with Bryan Chaney, who is the global social media strategy manager at the global re-insurance company Aon. We discussed the recruitment challenges they are facing and how social media is increasingly helping the company acquire the best talent. From which social networks Bryan finds useful for recruitment…
Here’s a LinkedIn for recruitment agency briefing delivered by Link Humans in London last week at an APSCo and M Squared event. The brief was to talk about the bigger picture as in stats, why people use LinkedIn, the future AND to throw in some tips and tricks there. If you are interested in learning more about…
The best employers to work for in the UK have been revealed by Reed.co.uk and their Employer Brand Index 2012. It reveals the organisations UK employees most want to work for. Over 2,000 workers shared their top employer brand, favourite business personality and the reasons why they mean so much to them. Key takeaways from…
Some social media users argue that LinkedIn in its current form looks very dated compared to Google Plus or Pinterest. What if we rewind 20 years and see what LinkedIn could have looked like in the eighties? Our friends at Squirrel Monkey have dreamt up how LinkedIn would have looked like in the decade of…
Social media is a great leveler and it’s easier than ever to brand yourself a thought leader, publisher or expert online. The trouble is that there are no barriers to entry and anyone can call themselves an expert. Social media ‘experts’ are ten to the penny for sure, not to mention their peers known as…
We all know that the British economy is going through something of a troubled time right now. Unemployment is on the rise, growth prospects are shaky and youth unemployment is a particular concern, with more than 1 million youngsters currently classed as ‘NEET’ (not in education, employment or training).
This is a cause for concern, particularly as a recent survey from the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) found that 31% of private sector firms plan to make cuts to jobs during the current quarter. This is likely to result in the unemployment queues swelling further and, when you add in the public sector redundancies that are currently taking place too, it all adds up to a difficult picture.
But how does this affect job seekers? In many ways, it is easy to see how they are affected by redundancies due to business cut backs and slow industry growth. There are more people chasing after the jobs that are out there, meaning that competition can be fierce, particularly for the very best jobs or in very competitive industries. Another worry is the north-south divide: the CIPD study found that job prospects in the south are much better than they are in the north.
We also have to take into account issues such as apprenticeships, but we have yet to see whether the challenge will be met.
There are also recruitment challenges involved in all of this: some recruiters are finding it harder to get work themselves as businesses look to cut costs and take recruitment processes back in house. Others are overwhelmed with candidates for vacancies, which in some ways can be seen as a positive thing as it provides more choice, but it can also make it harder to place increasing numbers of unemployed people in jobs.
Overall, even though there are still some excellent employment and training opportunities out there, it seems as though the challenging conditions for job seekers and recruiters alike are set to continue for some time yet.
Related: Salary Trends for UK Start-Up and Tech Jobs (Infographic).
How often do you get to chat with someone who’s a true pioneer? We just had a chat with the first (we think) personal branding consultant in Japan, our great friend Peter Sterlacci who is based in Kyoto, Japan.
Peter is an American based in Japan for over ten years and he is quickly becoming that country’s go-to guy for personal branding. Being a long-term resident in a country where ‘fitting in’ is the cultural norm, Peter understands the challenges facing Japanese professionals to ‘stand-out’. He is dedicated to empowering on-the-move careerists in global companies in Japan to ‘break away’ from the pack and ride to success.
As you can tell by the picture above he loves his bicycling and nicely embeds this passion into his own brand. See what he had to say here and be sure to check out his guest post How Personal Branding is Just Like Riding a Bike.
Another interview covering personal branding is with Joshua Waldman, see more at .
LinkedIn now has 150+ million users. But how are those users really using the world largest professional networking site? Good question which this infographic will try to answer. Here are some of the highlights of the study.
First off, most users (90.9%) use the free version of LinkedIn and the rest have an upgraded paid account. Probably the way it should be, paid accounts are typically only useful for people using LinkedIn for recruitment or business development.
Most users (51%) have between 0-500 first degree connections on LinkedIn. Compare that to recruiters using LinkedIn, they have an average of 616 first degree connections (more at How Recruiters use Social Networks).
This is interesting: only 50.5% of users have ‘complete profiles’ as defined by LinkedIn. Getting a complete profile is really simple so wonder why so few people have done this?
The majority of LinkedIn users are in 10 or more groups. 10.4% of users are a member of the maximum 50 groups. Being in more groups gives users more visibility and ability to search for others, something only one in ten users have clocked on to.
How must time are users investing in LinkedIn? No surprise here that the biggest group (47.6%) only spend between 0 and 2 hours on the network per week. Only 10.5% of users spend more than 8 hours on LinkedIn per week, probably the same users that are members of 50 groups!
What do people like about LinkedIn? Most users say they like Groups, people searching, finding people they might know, seeing who’s viewed your profile and looking up company information. No mention of snooping on competitors or looking up ex-girlfriends.
Related reading: Global LinkedIn Demographics and Statistics 2012
Source: Power Formula