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Saturday, February 27, 2010

Activity of Popular Indian Job Boards on Twitter

Recently I was checking the presence of Popular Indian Job Boards  on Twitter and their activity. 

Here is what I found:

Presence of Indian Job Boards in Twitter

Clearly you can see, Naukri has been the most active among among all the job boards in terms of using twitter as a branding tool as well as in terms of spreading information about new jobs. They have created 5 twitter channels based on different skill sets ie@naukri_java, @naukri_mktg, @naukri_online, @naukri_hr, @naukri_it  .Whenever a job is posted in Naukri, they share the link in related twitter channel.A java engineer can follow their @naukri_java channel and be updated about all the java related openings posted in Naukri. Apart from this they have their corporate account @naukri also where they share new information about their company.This account is basically for  their branding purpose.Interestengly they are organizing contests in twitter for their followers too! 

Talking about other Job boards, Times Jobs has an official account@times_jobs where they share link of their official blog's new posts, which I think is very limited use of the medium.

Coming to Monster, I dont think Monster India has any official twitter account(they have their international account of course). I found one Monster India account(@monsterindia) in Twitter, but looking at the passiveness there, I am not sure whether it is authentic or not.

Jobs Ahead and  Shine.com don't have any Twitter account.


With advent and spread of new media entities like Facebook and Twitter, organizations are more open to using social media for their hiring needs and thus reducing dependency on job boards.
In India however, not many companies have Job channels in twitter till now.

But before it's late,Job Boards should pull up their socks.There are many twitter specific job sites in the market and they are doing pretty well.So I think, Job boards should also start their Job channels and spread their jobs through Twitter. This way they can do the job posting for their client on twitter apart from their own site which will give the jobs more visibility and thus they can serve the clients better.Client will also be happy! 

Naukri has already started on this line. Lets see when others follow the suit.

Friday, February 19, 2010

How to use Twitter for Recruitment (Recruit with Twitter)

How to use Twitter for Recruitment

Rise of social networking sites have changed the technology space completely. The latest blockbuster in this space is Twitter- a micro blogging site which enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. It has grown up very differently from its initial purpose- updating what you are doing currently. Now people follow each other, share information and important links, have healthy discussions here. It allows you to stay connected in real-time. It is estimated that currently twitter has a user base of more then 7 Million. 



From initial days networking has been an important part of recruitment.  So now it is time to use social and professional networking tools like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook to help us in recruitment process.

How social networking sites can be used for recruitment:
  • Increase your network.
  • Publish your jobs.
  • Dig out good candidates.
  • Share good info about your company and build brand.

Here I will discuss how we can use Twitter for recruitment.

  1) Make an official twitter account (It’s free!!)- be it an individual, company or consulting.

  2) Follow potential candidates.
  3) Engage in useful conversation.
  4) Share information about latest happenings about your company. It will help in brand building.
  
  5) Post open jobs from your twitter account.
 a)    You can’t post the whole JD in Twitter (Remember 140 character limitation). So I suggest posting the whole JD in your website and adding its link on your twitter job post. Candidates will go to the website and post their resume there. Then you can call them and get more information.
b)    Please remember- make a specific protocol for your job postings like: Java Dev, 3-5 Yrs, Bangalore(………link………..)
c)    Use # tags along with important keywords, which will help candidates search it in twitter search easily like: #ITJOB Java Dev, 3-5 Yrs, Bangalore(………link………..).

d)    Reply to all the responses and queries and interact with the responders.
Ideal job posting in Twitter

  6) One of the best features of twitter is retweet. Candidates can retweet any job if they like and it will be circulated among their followers. So a good attractive job posting can attract very good responses.
  7) You either use same account for corporate information and job posting purpose or you can have a separate account for job postings.

Job Search result in Twitter


There has been many discussions regarding the effectiveness of recruitment related efforts in twitter. Some feel these mediums are over hyped and don’t give much result. While, there is a league of recruiters who believe in social media tools for recruitment.

I believe every new source to find good candidate is helpful for recruitment process. Again the rapidly growing user base of twitter is its strong point. You just can't ignore it anymore. Only you need to learn how to use it suitably to help your recruitment needs.
Now-a-days there are many twitter-related job sites  like Twitmyjobs,Tweetajob,Twitjobsearch etc  who tweet jobs on behalf of you and give many customized services to job seekers and recruiters. You can try them out too.

So, enjoy recruiting through Twitter and please give me your feedback.


#Some more useful resources on same topic:[1], [2], [3],[4],[5]

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Google Buzz and the Buzz Around it!

 Google unveiled its new social networking feature Google Buzz recently and it has already taken the web by storm. Whole WWW is filled with 1st person experiences, reviews, apprehensions, admirations and predictions. Buzz is a social feature which is integrated with Gmail.So you will find a tab called Buzz below inbox in your Gmail account, where you can share photos,links, messages or any other update with all your followers or some selected people. One advantage that Google has here is the already established user base of Gmail. As buzz is integrated in Gmail, the Gmail-users will automatically use it. So it will also include the not techie types into the social wave who were not kicked enough to log into a separate Twitter and other social networking sites, but have a Gmail account.

Buzz is easy to use and not complex like Google’s earlier social offering Wave.

With passing time, people will discover Buzz more and more and with it they will find good uses of it.


Can anybody suggest how candidates can use it effectively during his job finding process?? 

I can think of one use as of now:

# Form a Gmail group with your friends who are looking for similar opportunities. Ask them to do so, too. When ever anyone of you finds any good job related link, share it here.Easy and targeted! It will remain shared with in the group and not to all. This way you can help each other. What say? 



I know we can do it through mail also. But buzz is new and in fashion my friend!

Here we have an advantage over Twitter: When you share any link in twitter it comes in stream of all your followers, right. In most of the cases the link may not be useful for everybody. So it is up to the user to click on the links he wants to follow. In Buzz you can chose people whom you want to share the info or update.

Explore the Buzz and please share the new and useful usages you find.

Monday, February 8, 2010

Monster Acquires Yahoo HotJobs for $225M Cash

Recently USA's premier job-site Monster acquired another popular job-site Yahoo Hotjobs for a deal of $225 Million  cash. As part of the deal Monster will power Job listings of Yahoo for three years.



I feel it is a win-win deal for both the companies. Because Yahoo had been trying to concentrate on its main business i.e: internet products for sometime and in the process they are trying to offload businesses that are not aligned with their primary business.So this is a good deal for them.

On the other hand Hotjobs being a part of Yahoo had the benefit of Yahoo brand-name. Thus it was a very popular job-site. Now Monster can leverage from its traffic.This deal will increase Monster's market share significantly.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Happy Days Are Here Again!!

By citing a survey by international recruitment firm Antal International, Times of India has recently posted an article which says that Indian Inc is hiring very aggressively.Among the surveyed firms 71% said they are hiring now.

"Manufacturing & auto sectors along with the traditional IT, FMCG, pharma companies have ramped up hiring, against what we witnessed in our previous survey. Increased hiring indicates that the need for exceptional talent is now ever more," Devasia added.- Source



 
Well, it is a very good news for recruitment industry.No one can forget the difficulty recruitment industry faced during recent recession. Most of companies across all sectors had stopped hiring. IT and some other sectors were directly affected by US financial meltdown and didn't have much projects. But firms in other sectors also stopped hiring as a precautionary measure.No one was sure how long it was going to stretch.

No hiring means no business for recruitment firms.Many consultings could not survive the storm and shut down.Arranging operating cost became difficult.Different cost cutting measures were taken. Some had to take hard steps like salary cut and in worst cases lay offs.

But now things are getting better. Storm has passed by. Market is optimistic. Most of the companies are hiring and of course thay need recruiters help. :)

I am sure we all have learnt our lessons from the recession. Lets start again- this time with more vigor, equipped with new skills!


(I had not noticed that Achyut Menon of Options  had posted a similar-themed nice post with the same title before me. Pls go through that also.)

Monday, February 1, 2010

Indian Recruitment Industry - An Overview

Indian recruitment companies can be divided into 5 types:
  • Recruitment Consultings (Permanent)
  • Staffing companies(Contract)
  • Executive search firms
  • Software companies also sending employees on contract
  • Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) companies
Recruitment Consultings: If you search in any metro city in India you find thousands of small consultancies who work on lateral reqs. In most of the cases they operate in small officies with employee strength of 5-15. Such consultancies are generally dependent on some specific big MNCs, who dont care where the resumes are coming from. Whoever closes the position gets the commission. Now the sources of resumes are same for all ie: Job boards and service is also similar- which increases the compitition further.And due to too much of compitition consultancies agree to work for very less commission- in some cases 4-5 % also. As they are playing in very less margin, they can't hire good recruiters and neither they can aford to pay recruiters well.Recruiters dont get proper training, which affects performance and their service to candidates.No surprises that many candidates complain of bad service from consultants.

Apart from these There are few 100+ strength professionally managed recruitment firms, who maintain quality in terms of service to clients and candidates and create a brand for themselves. Even they manage to get premuim commission due to their service.

Staffing Companies: Staffing companies basically keep people in their payroll and let them work with client for specific contract. Here the company charges some specific amount every month for the candidate frm the client. Due to volatile market scenario especially after recession Indian companies are getting more and more eager to hire people in contract through some third party vendors. This is  helping in booming of such contract staffing companies. Salary standards for recruiters are not very great here also. But this trend is going to pick strongly in future because it suits to market situations. Contract staffing is very popular in manufactoring and services sector.

Executive Search Firms: Again in india executive search firms have generally a strength of 5-15 people. But in this case they hire for very high level candidates ie: CEO, Marketing head etc , so revenue is quite premium. Basically experienced people from diverse sectors join executive search firms and use their network to close positions.Their compensation is best when compared to  recruiters in other types of recruitment companies.

Software companies also sending employees in contract: In bangalore especially you will find many companies where they have their software devision where they work on client projects, At the same time they send employees to client place as contract employee. There are many small and big companies in this field.

RPO companies: There are not many companies in india which works exclusively on RPOs. Mostly big consultancies take it up as another practice only. RPO is also another sector which is  picking up fast in India.


Whatever may be the type of offering, We want more big size professionally managed recruitment firms in India, which can help in building standard practices, set new benchmark in terms of service, bring in new innovation in recruitment processes and can attract good candidates to join recruitment industry by offering good career prospect.

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