Normally we are the ones feeding information out, now we need some of your insight and views.

The recruitment market has been expanding in terms of avenues available to employers to meet their recruitment requirements. Many have said that the market is shrinking in terms of revenues, but is this the case?

The main recruitment market sectors we have identified are Advertising (print and online), Recruitment services (agencies and head hunters) and lastly technology (social media, ATS, RMS etc)

We welcome your comments and insights into this changing market landscape and really interested to hear if anyone has any real values to attach to these segments.

Feel free to connect with us via twitter @Thirst4work

This may be simple for many of you, but for the rest, here is a quick tutorial on creating your very own twitter account.  We’ll tell you how to use it in the coming posts.

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a micro-blogging platform that is growing in user numbers and uses each day.

The next steps are a quick guide to creating your very own personal or business Twitter account

STEP 1

Enter www.twitter.com into your browser and hit enter

STEP 2

Now that you are on the site, Click on the big Sign Up button on the site. Example below

STEP 3

You will be displayed with the registration page, example below.  If you are creating this for yourself, enter your full name and then choose a username.  The username becomes the name people will search for you by or enable them to easily follow you.  If you are a company creating an account, use your company name instead of personal name.  (You can create 2 twitter accounts, one personal and one company).  Complete all relevant details and click CREATE MY ACCOUNT

STEP 4

Your Account has been created already, but to start benefitting, start searching for topics of interest.  In this example, we have searched for Thirst4work, results displayed below

the results are displayed.  To follow this user, click the follow button and start receiving all the useful advice straight into your twitter feed.  You can repeat this for as many interests as you have.

Click on the Twitter icon at the top of the website and get taken to your twitter stream.  Explore and learn.

The current global financial crisis is making many South Africans living abroad, wonder what the opportunities are like back home. Many more are seriously looking for job opportunities in the SA market.

We recently did a short article for the South African newspaper in London.   Get your ads posted today to ensure you are getting them infront of skilled South Africans abroad.

Read it from the link below

The South African

Just launched today and already have our first client using our free plugin to display job openings on their site.  Check it out here.  http://www.safindit.co.za/careers

SA Find It has recently re-launched and is a site to check out.  www.safindit.co.za If you have a business, you should register on the site.

A bit about SAfindIT.co.za

About:

We aim to connect people with their local businesses, service providers, organisations and groups!

Safindit Locl started out as a web-based business directory that was founded in 2004 to help South Africans find contact details for businesses of all descriptions throughout the country.

As of November 2010, the site has been relaunched in a new format that aims to be at the forefront of online technology. This is no longer a business directory as you have come to know them! This is a place for businesses to get the most out of a free online platform that exposes their company to their local community and the rest of South Africa.

But it’s not just for businesses! In addition to browsing our comprehensive business listings, users who sign in can also use SAFindit Locl to find events, special offers, read stories on their favourite suppliers and interact through various functions, supplying feedback and reviews, which can be shared with other users!

We want you to tell us about your experiences and feelings about organisations in your area and we want you to share your love for the local products and people that drive your life.

Business owners, or people involved in an organisation, such as a charity or social club can easily create a free listing where they can add and edit information, pictures, links and videos relating to their business.

We will continue to add businesses along the way, so you may find a listing already exists for your business. People unaffiliated with a business can also add a listing if they feel it should be included and we will verify that all information is correct before publishing the listing.

Features:
Each business listing gets a unique URL which they can send to other people so they can admire it or add the link to their emails or website, Facebook page or other profiles.

Some of the cool features on the business listings include:

-          There is a full gallery of pictures relating to the business

-          There is a Google Streetview map that takes the viewer to your door

-          There are links to Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and other social media platforms

-          A QR Code allows viewers to upload the business info directly to their Smartphone

-          We can also load videos and PDF files of Menu’s Price lists or catalogues onto listings so that people can view them.

-              Each listing has a section below it where users of the site can review that business/ organisation, so they can interact directly with their customers.

We are adding new and exciting interactive features daily and eventually there will be paid features and businesses will be able to ‘own’ their listing and use it to promote their specials, events and promotions.

Aside from the actual listings, Safindit also has an Events diary where users can add or browse upcoming and past events from concerts and gigs to expos and conferences.

The Collections feature is really exciting! By grouping listings into Collections users can find specific listings easily and effectively. For example, if you’re looking for an awesome Bunny Chow in Durban, you can just look in the ‘Klup a Durban Bunny’ collection. If you were getting married in KZN and were looking for venues, you could just browse the ‘KZN Nuptials’ collection.

We are also adding celebrity collections where celebs and well-known South Africans give us their favourite places and businesses and we put them in a collection. For instance, ‘Ryan Sandes’ Cape Town’ or John Ellis’s Durban’.

We also have a blog that is updates daily with interesting stories unique to South Africa and we are now running bi-monthly competitions where users can win fantastic prizes sponsored by businesses on the site.

The majority of recruiters will spend most of their working week reviewing and reading CV’s. What are the absolute must haves on a CV, what formats do you prefer and what is your pet hate when it comes to a bad CV. Please share your thoughts

The year is has just begun and many new students have enrolled with colleges and universities to gain a better education which will help them secure a good job in the future….or will it??

Let’s place ourselves in the shoes of an employer for just a moment. They have a vacancy, which actually translates to “they have a need for an individual to add value to their business to help it grow.” You place a job ad and start sorting through the applicants.

Before we go any further, who would you choose?

A person with experience for the role that can hit the ground running, or a person with no experience that you have to train?

I’m sure we will all arrive at the same answer, we would rather hire an individual with experience.

Back to the here and now. Many of you have just enrolled in your new courses, have big dreams for the future and expect to land your dream job at the end of your qualification…but as we’ve just explored, it is not that likely.

So what should you do?

My suggestion is that you start today contacting companies or businesses in your chosen profession and try and secure part time work or even offer your services for free to gain experience.  This serves a number of purposes, firstly you now have contacts in a company that should you succeed, may offer you a paid job when you graduate.  Secondly, you are gaining valuable experience that is relevant to your course and qualification.  You will get more out of your studies as you can equate it to real life work experience.  Thirdly, your CV now has experience and will soon have a qualification to go with it.

By doing this, you have greatly enhanced your chances of landing the first key role when graduating.

The alternative is you can sit back, study and have an easy year and the struggle to find a job when you graduate.

The choice is yours, make the right one.

Pic by

Do you respond to every applicant who applies to you?

With the world of social networking steam rolling ahead (some predict Facebook will top 1 Billion users this year) how does a bad experience translate and impact on your business?  I’ve given talks before about this and what we fail to realise is that a clients bad experience may be tweeted, posted on facebook or vented verbally to friends and colleagues.   With the power of social media, these messages can be spread like a virus…which quite simply equates to bad press for your business or brand.  On the flipside, a wonderful experience can have the same effect and greatly enhance your business.

As I am sure many of you have experienced in the past, we have all been in the job market and we have all applied for a job.  How many of you have not received any answer or response to your application, how did it make you feel?

We live in a very verbal world and you need to ensure that every one of your applicants are responded to in a timely fashion.

Check back soon for our next post on what you can do to minimize your exposure and maximise your employer brand

Happy new year to all of our clients and readers!

Thanks for the support over the last 8 months and glad you have joined us for the journey.  As the title eludes to, Thirst4work has gone FREE.  It has to date been free for job seekers, however we thought that 2011 should offer something special to all of those companies and recruiters looking for top talent.  If you LIKE Free jobs, click here

So what does the Free service provide…

Well a whole lot actually.  There can be multiple users relating to each company, we provide tools to manage your applicants, a vastly improved job ad creation tool which is quick and easy as well as all jobs being tweeted to the right people.  Exciting stuff!

There is a whole lot more, so if you are looking for staff, get your company or agency to join and start advertising….It’s FREE and thats the price we like

JOIN HERE AS AN EMPLOYER

JOIN HERE AS A JOBSEEKER

Talent for your organisation is your most valuable asset.  So how do you go about attracting the best talent to help grow your business or organisation?  This is a question that is debated on a regular basis as to what the most effective methods are.

This article aims to introduce some new concepts to  employers who are not using online recruitment, right through to those that are utilising the medium, but could be getting more out of this hugely powerful and yet under utilised tool.

For the “newbies”, what is online recruitment?  In a nutshell, it is the advertising and processing of job vacancies in the online environment (the Web).  Traditionally, businesses have been placing ads in the local paper.  This approach, although delivering high volumes of applicants, is not neccessarily delivering the right candidates for your vacancies.  It is costly, lacks all the required information and the reach is only localised.  Further more, your fax machine or inbox is flooded and you need to respond to all applicants in a timely fashion (failure to do this portrays a poor image of your company).  This is hugely inefficient and wastes your valuable time.

So what alternatives  are there?  The Internet!  The internet/web/online space is changing the way our world operates in terms of business and social interaction.  The benefits are numerous,  the main one being the breaking down of barriers which provides a wider reach, in a more efficient manner all at a lower cost.  The positives for you are less spend, better prospects and time saved in your recruitment process.  By posting a job online (a job portal like www.thirst4work.com can help you with this) your vacancy is now posted and is accessible to prospective employees nationwide or even globally…all for a fraction of the cost of traditional mediums.

For the more experienced online advertisers.  How do you take your recruitment strategy to the next level?  Currently, many job portals on the market merely replicate what the newspapers did…that is, create an ad, and post it online.  Boring?  Yes, we agree.

So what can be done?

The internet develops and advances on a daily basis, people interact with the web and socially on a whole new level, Twitter, Facebook, Blogs etc.  Are you using these avenues to engage and attract the leading talent, which may not be looking at a job portal?  We assume you are not…and frankly why should you!  Thirst4work.com is leading the way in exploiting these mediums on your behalf so you don’t have to.  By advertising your vacancies on our career and job portal, our leading systems and services exploit Social media on your behalf, maximising your reach of your job ad and engaging talent and quality candidates that may not actively be looking.

If you are not using this service, we think you should re-evaluate your strategy and speak with us to guide you along the way.

Thirst4work.com – Refreshing recruitment solutions