As someone who spends an increasing amount of his time helping organisations to recruit people who are considerably younger than me (and the gap is growing…fast!), I’m always keen to learn what young people think but I’ve just realised that writing the intro to this blog makes me sound like my dad!

The reality is, of course, that all of us are getting older and therefore moving further away from the recruits of the future. Throw in the ever increasing pace of change in technology and media (covered last August in our blog) and you swiftly realise why the need for research and understanding is greater than ever.

Operating in 119 countries across 34,000 locations and with 1.8M employees (direct and franchised) McDonald’s are the world’s biggest employer of young people and better placed than most to provide the kind of insight we are all looking for. At the recent CIPD Conference (#cipdireland100) David Fairhurst, Chief People Officer at McDonalds Europe addressed some of the myths and false beliefs about younger workers.

One of the biggest points that resonated with me was their lack of work experience – or more correctly – experience of working. As a fifteen year old I worked in a local tool shop every Saturday, at sixteen I moved to Sainsbury’s to work Saturdays and one evening a week. At college I added to my funds working in pubs and DJ’ing. Over the holiday’s I fried chips, cleaned offices, stocked shelves and cleared driveways. In the last 15 years the percentage of 16-17 year old full-time students in employment has halved. Changes in corporate work practices, the pressure to succeed in education and, until recent years, a relatively wealthy society have all fed the decline.

Responsible for the death of the pub quiz, Google has ensured that nobody need ever be short of the right answer again. How many of us dual screen at home, watching TV whilst tapping a smart phone or tablet? How many goals has he scored? Who is she married to? Is this try for the record? How old is she really? I’m sure we have all done it, but young people are growing up doing it. We have assumed that their quick and clever answers, candour and directness were the signs of incredible confidence and self-assurance – but they aren’t.

Should we be surprised that they are least confident generation in recent memory? Not at all, according to David Fairhurst. In full colour, on ever bigger screens, they have grown up with global terrorism, financial decline, natural catastrophes and man-made disasters. It’s enough to shake anyone’s confidence. Fairhurst makes the point that many of the perceived failings of younger workers in relation to attitude are far more likely to be confidence-based and that the decline in investment in onboarding/induction is a major worry.

The other fascinating area for me was around engagement. Younger people are loyal to family and friends but their engagement with employers must be earned whereas previous generations may have given their respect on a historic or inherited basis. The pillars of respectability have been destroyed in recent years. Whilst corrupt politicians, shady bankers, crooked business people and polluting corporations may have been with us for thousands of year, it’s only now that, in the words of Sybil Fawlty, we’re seeing them on the television.

So not only does their loyalty need to be earned but they base their loyalty on their own experiences. This makes even more sense when considering the ongoing work of the CIPD and Kingston Employee Engagement Consortium. They have looked to identify what makes up employee engagement and found five key components: their job, line manager, colleagues, organisation and external interactions. Of which the biggest factor is the job itself. So engagement should be viewed as a process where the employee engages with their job and immediate colleagues and loyalty to the organisation builds over time.

What I took from the whole presentation – and there was a lot more – is that if we, as employers and recruiters, want to see young people entering the workplace and succeeding then we need to enable that success. Working with younger workers on the technical skills is only part of the challenge, equipping them for the workplace is vital. Clearly internships and work experience need to bridge the gap that has emerged due to the decline of Saturday jobs. All employers need to look at what they can do to help young people gain meaningful work experience.

And one last, completely unrelated point but fantastically well made. In a year, across Ireland and the UK, McDonald’s receive 1 million applications, all of whom are customers – that’s not potential customers but real ones. So as a company they respond to all applications and, whether a successful applicant or not, offer additional career-based advice and guidance. You’ve either got class or you haven’t! Actually it should probably be McClass.

According to IBM’s website each day we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data – I think that’s 2,500,000,000,000,000,000 – and 90% of the data in the world was captured in the last two years alone! We generate data constantly through a huge range of seemingly unrelated activities such as social media usage, climate monitoring, electricity metering and even the couch to 5k app on my phone.

The use of big data is not new but it is how it is being harnessed, and the speed with which this is happening that is changing. For instance try taking a look at the real-time Google Flu Tracker, this uses data generated by people searching for certain symptoms of illness to create a Global Flu Tracker that operates in real time. Compare this to the US Government’s Centre for Disease Control that tracks flu trends based on reports of certain symptoms from 3,000 medical practitioners, compiled on a fortnightly basis.

Some other well-known examples include Sabrematics – the analysis of baseball performance – made famous in the movie Moneyball. The Moneyball approach used statistical analysis to identify the best indicators of likely player success and then mapped the best draft picks and transfer targets based on these parameters enabling the Oakland As to outcompete clubs with far greater financial resources. There is also the example of the retailer who used previous purchase data (that’s why they love loyalty cards) to spot pregnant women in their first trimester based on the purchasing switch to non-perfumed body lotion.

The Economist reported recently that analysis in the US had identified that people who use non-standard installation web browsers offer employers better retention rates and outperform their colleagues. Whether this is purely coincidental or a sign of a deliberate and reasoned decision is impossible to know but basic Google analytics on your careers site identifies the browser being used by candidates completing your online application.

My first thoughts on researching big data were that we would see an explosion of post-campaign analysis and “best-in-class” mapping. Using analysis tools to identify the attributes of your superstars to create a profile of successful candidates and identifying the sources of these candidates but that is clearly a very narrow view of the possibilities. Social media and professional networking sites are big data sources. If 90% of the world’s data was captured in the last two years then YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Instagram, Google+, WordPress, Twitter and Facebook must account for a large percentage of that data. Using these data sources to identify passive candidates will, for some recruiters, become a full-time job.

Of course there are a couple of big non-data factors still involved in this whole process:

1. What are your measures of success: do you want people who stay for a long-time, engage with your ethos, cost less or perform better?
2. What do you say to these passive candidates when you find them? Or worse still, what if these passive candidates don’t know or don’t rate your organisation?

Defining what success looks like is the key to making this work. Take baseball as the example. It is the statistician’s favourite sport, the natural flow; breaks and individual nature of much of the performance lend themselves to in-depth analysis. In fact the original parameters and analysis were created by a cricket fan! Statistical analysis of major league baseball is available back to 1876 when the current leagues were formed yet it was not until this century that the Moneyball process identified the parameters for its success.

As a specialist in branding and communication I am also happy to report that identifying candidates is only part of the process. Getting them to join you is still a whole different ball game. Indeed if all of your efforts revolve around big data mining rather than any form of promotion of your employment brand then finding the ideal candidate may turn out to be especially frustrating – “we know who we want to recruit, we just can’t persuade them to join.”

The reality of big data and the analysis tools that are, and will become, available is that they will allow us to look for insights in existing and new data and explore opportunities that were previously considered impossible.

Download our updated listing of graduate recruitment events and fairs covering the island of Ireland and selected UK events. With many dates still to be agreed we have also included a listing of this years events which we will update as the new dates are confirmed.

Graduate Recruitment – Fairs & Events Guide

Many recruiters will, this week, have received details of the short-listed entries for the upcoming Graduate Recruitment Awards. Operated by gradireland, the awards recognise graduate employers in two ways with some award categories being based on Ireland’s largest survey of students and graduates and other award categories being awarded after judging by a panel of experts.

The survey gathers data on student’s attitudes towards prospective employers and, crucially, which employers they would most like to work for in their chosen sector. 8,128 students took part and Ireland’s most popular graduate employers (by sector and overall) will be revealed at the awards at The Mansion House on 18^th April. For those categories being judged graduate recruiters submitted entries covering graduate recruitment websites, on campus innovation, marketing campaigns, diversity and best internship and graduate training programmes. This year saw the highest ever levels of submissions with 127 entries across 14 categories.

As Ireland leading graduate recruitment specialists, we are pleased to announce that Publicis Engage will this year be a category sponsor at the awards. Our investment in the awards reflects the growth in both volume and importance of the graduate recruitment work within Publicis Engage.

The awards themselves look to be more competitive than ever with the judges praising the exceptional quality of the entries this year. Comments include “The submissions are so difficult to separate, so many of the companies have excellent graduate development programmes in place” ; “The submissions were very good. I found my top three were very close and the accompanying documentation was really excellent to support the criteria”; and “Lots of great things happening in this sector”.

Good luck to the 30+ nominated organisations and we hope to see many of you on the night.

The current negotiations to extend the Croke Park agreement are once again placing public sector careers squarely in the media. In recent years we have all heard the public/private arguments, tried to understand benchmarking, listened to the justifications of reduced packages for new teachers and watched as newly-qualified nurses followed their union advice and failed to apply for the new two-year contracts.

The facts behind the nursing recruitment are particularly stark. It has been at least three years since the last general HSE nurse recruitment campaign. In 2012 there were c.2,000 nursing graduates in Ireland and the HSE were offering 1,000 new posts on a salary c.80% of the current entry grade. By mid-February 84 applications had been received. Interestingly none of the media reporting from the launch of the scheme highlights any benefits to candidates but instead details how this move could save the HSE €10 million. Only in later reports do we see information that details additional training, security in length of contract etc.

If you Google “Why work in the Public Sector?” here are a few of the responses from the first page of results:

1. There is such a variety of careers in the public services that you really could do anything
2. Salaries above the national average, excellent benefits packages
3. Making a positive difference to society
4. Working with people
5. Flexible working practices and emphasis on creating a harmonious work-life balance
6. Public sector careers are back in fashion as new jobseekers seek safer alternatives to corporate uncertainty

Around half of the responses reinforced the public sector as an employer of choice based on a set of benefits and employment practices that either no longer exist (and certainly not for new starters) or are under threat. I’ve told this story many times but in July 1985 I got my final school exam results and they weren’t quite what I expected! At over 6ft tall and around 16 stone (yeah, it was a few years ago) my dad pointed out that the police offered a solid career, job security, decent money, the opportunity for overtime and a pension in my early 50s. Of course the police themselves didn’t really use this as a recruiting strategy. Indeed the wider public service never actually said that they offered job security, great pensions etc. We just all accepted that it was the case.

The reality is that the public sector will, in the near future, reach its new employment ceiling at which point it will have to start general hiring again. The growth of a world class public service will rely on the ability of the public sector to compete for the very best candidates yet the coverage of the government’s attempts to reduce public spending have eroded much of the brand equity that employment in the public sector enjoyed.

Creating and promoting a dynamic and attractive employer brand, or rather brands, will be key in this process. One of the first big shifts required will be the move for both employers and employees away from the idea of a singular public sector. One of the main reasons for joining the public sector – the variety of careers – will in itself drive the requirement for a range of value propositions that are unique, relevant and compelling at a more granular level than is usual – effectively engaging with nurses to join the HSE will require a very different approach to attracting an Economist to the Central Bank.

In the last six months three new websites have launched that aim to bring IT and Software specialists to Ireland. IT’s Happening Here, Make IT in Cork and Make IT in Ireland each have their own unique view and story yet they clearly demonstrate that the IT industry generally has recognised that it is far more effective for Ireland to create a talent pool here first before fighting over who is the most attractive employer.

Determining the size of the skill shortage in the market is a major task in itself. Many of the usual data sources, who would promote Ireland as an investment opportunity or digital hub, would have little to gain in highlighting the extent of any skills shortages; indeed they would probably argue that Ireland’s place in Europe means that we are part of a far larger employment pool.

Most sources agree that the sector currently employs just short of 80,000 people, an increase of 10% in the last 5 years. An article in late 2011 from Silicon Republic estimated 2,500 vacancies with 75% of IT firms reporting vacancies and 50% of them reporting more than 20 vacancies each. The largest of the job boards, Irishjobs (www.irishjobs.ie) currently has 3,500 vacancies under its IT heading and, whilst boasting an impressive client list, does not have a monopoly on the market and some major employers do not use the site. A quick look at Indeed (www.indeed.ie), the aggregator site, shows that they have 10,000 IT jobs currently live, although many will be duplicates.

Clearly there is a requirement to close this skills gap. The IDA (www.idaireland.com) recently reported its most successful net job creation figures for many years and IDA client companies are now back at pre-recession employment levels. Enterprise Ireland (www.enterpriseireland.ie) reported Irish exporting companies increased employment by 3,804 in 2012. In 2012 Enterprise Ireland supported companies crucially added to their employment base and now support more than 300,000 jobs in the Irish economy (15% of total workforce).

The Information & Communications Technology Sector in Ireland attracts global investment with 9 of the top 10 US ICT companies operating here. There are over 200 IDA supported ICT companies, directly employing 35,700 people. Multi-nationals, it could be argued, are only the tip of the iceberg with six hundred small to medium-sized indigenous software companies bringing innovative and creative products to the world.

So what of the three new sites that are tackling this issue? Make IT in Cork (www.makeitincork.com) and Make IT in Ireland (www.makeitinireland.com) use a collective effort from some of the biggest IT employers in the world to demonstrate the range of opportunities available and the work/life balance advantages of working in Cork and Ireland. The names on show read like a who’s who of IT, social media and gaming whilst the collaborative nature of the projects means that all recruiters benefit from the common awareness being created.

If we were all the same the world would be a very boring place. People seek different things in their working lives. For many employees it is the nature of their work that motivates them. IT’s Happening Here (www.itshappeninghere.ie) is about innovative Irish owned software companies. Created by Enterprise Ireland to support the software companies that they partner with, their selling point focuses on the creative and innovative nature of the work in the indigenous sector. We have recently started working with Enterprise Ireland to promote IT’s Happening Here in some of its key target markets across Europe. Initial response from our campaign and the recent careers fair the Enterprise Ireland staged in Madrid have clearly shown the levels of interest in working in Ireland.

Of course the success of these sites is vital in the continuing growth and strength of the Irish ICT sector. Success clearly breeds success and there are always more indigenous businesses to develop and multi-nationals to entice but the financial impact of filling these roles is huge. Estimates of up to 5,000 vacancies are relatively common but based on the job boards a conservative estimate of 4,000 would probably be very close to the true number. At an average salary of Euro 50,000 per vacancy, filling all of these roles would add Euro 250 Million to the Irish economy!

CEOs, graduates, engineers, fundraisers, accountants, developers, retailers, language specialists and elves – getting the perfect employee isn’t easy but I’d like to think that our small but rapidly growing group of clients would agree that working with us has helped them to do just that. We started trading on January 1^st 2012 and here we are on December 21^st contemplating a well-deserved rest over Christmas.

In our first year we have worked with around a dozen clients and are, I hope, establishing a reputation as a results-driven recruitment communications business. Our clients range from multi-national IT businesses to the country’s most high-profile retailer, an indigenous pharmaceutical specialist and a big 4 accountancy firm. We are also proud to be working with some of the country’s leading recruitment consultants and their clients.

Some top line response figures have seen us triple the interest in a client’s graduate scheme whilst reducing overall response and delivering a 10% uplift in the key target group – all within the same budget as last year. Across the board we have driven increased quality and volume within budget using a range of digital and traditional media.

The New Year is already looking bright. Planning for January has been busier than at any time in the last 5 years and we already have activity pencilled in for the whole of the first quarter and into Q2 & Q3 2013.

A big thank you to our clients, our media partners, the creative and production team at Publicis Dublin and the rest of the team at Core Media for their business, help, ideas and support.

Merry Christmas everyone, good luck at Leopardstown, Happy New Year and speak to you in 2013.

Building an employer brand-led social media presence is an essential part of any modern recruitment strategy. It can also be incredibly time consuming, resource draining and is not, generally, a short-term project. The issue is, of course, that you have to build that online community, be it friends, connections or followers, in order to then communicate your brand/vacancies.

But what sometimes gets overlooked is that Facebook, Google and Twitter, indeed most social media, are not only social but also mass media. Take Facebook for instance, in a recent set of comScore figures that crossed my desk they had monthly unique visitors of nearly 2M (c.80% of the Irish online market) and a truly staggering 50M visits whilst YouTube had over 20M visits in Ireland in those same figures.

All of which means that as a recruiter you can use advertising to harness the power of social media when your brand, resources or recruitment project either don’t lend themselves to social interaction or have deadlines that simply don’t allow you the time to build your presence.

We’ve recently completed a campaign to recruit Christmas staff for a retailer in Dublin. Their challenge was to recruit a large number of temporary staff in a very short space of time. We were looking after the online piece only and needed to deliver a highly-targeted direct response campaign that drove traffic to an online assessment. We had a seven day window in which to build awareness and traffic. Our approach was to use a mixture of Google (Search & Contextual targeting), Facebook and specialist fashion/beauty sites.

Our entire campaign was either interest or location based. The specialist sites only targeted people in the fashion, retail and beauty sectors. The search and contextual campaign targeted fashion, retail and beauty, Facebook was geo targeted as well as interest and profile targeted. The campaign delivered over 1.2M ad impressions and led to over 3,200 clicks. In the first three days of the campaign we delivered 200+ applications with over 90% passing the initial online screen.

The idea of using contextual targeting to deliver highly relevant advertising is producing impressive results in a number of areas. We have a campaign currently running for a number of specialist roles in the charity sector and are using a contextual display campaign to position a variety of advertising formats alongside specialised and relevant editorial. The campaign has already driven in excess of 200 clicks to the landing page and delivered over 400,000 impressions across the UK, US & Ireland.

Just imagine how you could be using contextual targeting. This week saw the launch of the new Irish Centre for Cloud Computing and Commerce at DCU. The launch was covered extensively online with reports on sites ranging from Siliconrepublic to IrishHRzone, LinkedIn and the main stream press – I even saw a number of people checking in on Foursquare to the launch event! A contextual display campaign could position your employment brand or specific vacancy advertising alongside this highly relevant editorial – you could literally own the reporting of cloud innovations across the Irish online market.

If you would like some ideas on how you could use social media to drive your recruitment plans in a cost-effective and time-efficient way just get in touch.

How about it being the most important thing your organisation works on this year?

Overdramatic? Possibly, but if it is, it isn’t by very much. That’s because no matter who you are, or where you are based, you are competing in a global market. And that means that your people are being constantly exposed to competitive brands. Here are just a few thoughts, figures and ideas that may help you drive your own employer branding agenda, loosen the budget a little or help you sparkle at the next HR night out!

Last week the Irish Independent ran an article highlighting the fact that some 2,300 people had been hired, by organizations based in Ireland, from outside the EU so far in 2012 (presumably based on the number of visas issued). You can only imagine the numbers of roles that have been filled by EU citizens. The number of work permits issued to Google in the last 6 years has trebled. In the first 9 months of 2012 Facebook was granted over 80 work permits and Dell over 30.

A recent, and pretty substantial, survey by LinkedIn entitled “The State of Employer Branding” found that Eighty-three percent of recruiters viewed employer branding as critical to their ability to hire top talent whilst more than 51 percent of companies reportedly increased their employer brand investment in 2012. But what is that additional budget being spent on? I’d be hard put to identify where these organisations are promoting their employer brand externally.

Numerous articles estimate that there are some 5,000 unfilled IT vacancies in Ireland from the very largest to the very smallest organizations. If the numbers above prove anything it is that regardless of size you probably have something unique that will attract someone – if size was the only factor then Google would not need to hire overseas. The increased spend on Employer Branding certainly seems to be side-stepping the IT industry. Silicon Republic, with ¼ million unique visitors each month, has surely the largest audience of any Irish tech media yet only the Enterprise Ireland campaign “ITs happening here“ has any presence on the site and a total of 140 jobs posted is hardly indicative of the total number of vacancies in the sector.

Investing in your employer brand saves you money – fact. Research in December 2011 by LinkedIn amongst 2,250 corporate recruiters in the US used data on a range of metrics, including time to hire, quality of response and cost to demonstrate that a strong employer brand could halve your cost per hire. Previous research has consistently demonstrated that a strong employer brand enables organisations to offer a reduced premium in overall pay. Finally the LinkedIn research also found that companies with stronger employer brands have 28% lower turnover rates than companies with weaker employer brands.

Clearly your employer brand needs to honestly reflect the reality of working within your organisation but that doesn’t mean you can’t use it in a flexible way. Passive candidates are generally more attracted by opportunities that offer challenges and the ability to make their mark, they place a higher value on company culture and may even put cultural fit above remuneration. Active candidates are, typically, more drawn to companies that offer strong growth prospects and the opportunity to develop their skills.

Once you’ve established your brand and the messages that allow you to promote it then the marketing can begin. Social media can be a fantastically powerful tool in driving awareness of you as an employer. It can also be the biggest waste of time you have ever considered using! If your target markets are online and on social media then it offers the opportunity to promote, explain and reinforce your employment brand. Of course if your target audience works in health, retail, agriculture or construction then it may well be that there are other, far more effective channels available.

As with all forms of marketing, personal recommendation is one of the strongest sales tools available. Empowering current employees as ambassadors not only ensures delivery of the message but also ensures they are networking into their former colleagues and future colleagues whether in your organisation or outside. Word of mouth, at 56%, was considered the second most effective viral channel to communicate an employer brand in the LinkedIn research quoted previously. The number one route to market was a company’s own website with professional networks third and social media fourth.