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

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!

I don’t know if it was youthful enthusiasm or the effect of free red bull, fortune cookies, pick ‘n’ mix and candy floss, but there was a great buzz at the gradireland fair in the RDS yesterday. I was there at around 2pm and it was clear, from the slightly frazzled looking door staff through to the occasional manic look in exhibitor’s eyes, that it had been a tough morning. At that stage the organiser’s estimated that some 4,000 visitors had already come through the doors and with 5,300 pre-registered students it was looking like they would be well ahead of last year’s attendance figures of 6,000.

Between Career Zoo and the graduate fair in the last three weeks it has been hugely refreshing to see confident Irish and multi-national companies, both big and small, actively recruiting. Whilst many commentators seem to delight in pointing out the requirement to seek some of the skills overseas it is, to my mind, missing the point. As organisations grow and create opportunity this feeds out through the society, creating additional opportunities at all levels and in a range of industries.

But what a week it has been. Kerry Group announced it is to create 900 jobs at a new facility near Naas, Co Kildare. While most of the jobs will be in the field of food science and technology, a number of support functions will also be located at the new site. A further 400 construction jobs will be generated during the construction of the innovation centre, which is expected to commence next year. It was hardly surprising that the queue at the Kerry Group stand at the graduate fair was one of the longer ones!

The Morgan McKinley Irish Employment Monitor for September 2012, which was released this week, reported an increase of 6pc in Q3 2012 against the same period in 2011 for Professional jobs.  Although there was a small, 2%, decrease over recorded vacancies in Q2 2012 they reported that the year-on-year increase shows a wider picture of gradual improvement.

Back to the graduate fair and prize for the tallest stand, and also one of the busiest, goes to Paddy Power.  Clearly this is a reflection of the announcement of a further 600 jobs today by the Taoiseach at the opening of the bookmaker’s new headquarters in Clonskeagh in Dublin.

At the other end of the size scale, companies supported by the state-funded National Digital Research Centre in Dublin are expected to create 70 new jobs over the next six months. The NDRC, which is funded by the Department of Communications and partners with universities to commercialise their research, said the companies it supports currently employ 250 people.

Why this trumpeting of good news? Driving home last night I caught the back end of a discussion on Newstalk. George Hook was talking to a guy who moved abroad 8 years ago and returned in July. He therefore missed not only the fall but also much of the rise of the Tiger. He made a financial sacrifice to return but wanted to get back to friends and family. He pointed to many of the small but significant improvements in society (NOT the ECONOMY) since he had moved, such as kids playgrounds in many public spaces, disabled access at rail stations and the regeneration, albeit slightly stalled, of the docklands in Dublin. Maybe it takes a degree of separation to truly appreciate what we have?

I am one of the 766,770 Irish residents born outside Ireland. I discovered this when digging around the CSO website yesterday. I must admit that I am not usually a keen reader of CSO stats however, as an Englishman and cricket fan, I found it riveting. The reason I was digging around on the CSO site was to try and find any information on language skills in Ireland. It all started earlier this week when I was listening to the Newstalk breakfast show whilst driving in. They reported on the news that 500 jobs in PayPal’s Dundalk Operations Centre are being recruited elsewhere and I decided I wanted to know more about our language capabilities.

According to the CSO report we ARE a multi-lingual country. A question on foreign languages was asked for the first time in census 2011. The results show that over half a million (514,068) Irish residents spoke a foreign language at home and that, unsurprisingly, Polish was by far the most common, followed by French, Lithuanian and German. So 11% of Irish residents speak a language other than English or Irish at home.

How, I asked myself, would I target and recruit foreign language employees in Ireland? You see whilst I accept that organisations like PayPal are finding it difficult to find multi-lingual specialists I also believe that many of the language and skill combinations are available in Ireland. These highly prized candidates simply don’t realise that there are vacancies out there because many recruitment strategies ignore the possibilities of advertising as a sourcing tool. We have clients who target these audiences to sell mobile phone deals and money transfer services so why not recruitment?

The obvious starting point is digital. Using fairly standard ad serving technology and targeting we can identify Irish users of key overseas websites. For instance we could serve advertising at any Irish user visiting the major news sites in Sweden – logically this allows us to target Swedish speakers in Ireland. Flipping this approach on its head we could also serve advertising on Irish sites to overseas users which should logically mean that the people we are targeting are either interested in Ireland or are Irish and living in that country.

There are also a range of less formal channels. My Dutch colleague highlighted a special Facebook page set up for Dutch people in Dublin and Ireland. She also mentioned an informal network operating through the embassy, a notice board at the hostel she first stayed in when arriving in Ireland and a Dutch government site that posts jobs and info about finding work in Ireland.

At a more traditional level there are a number of print titles covering the Polish, Chinese, South East Asian, Pakistani and Filipino communities, advertisers have also used a range of posters sites targeting public transport. Other suggestions included targeting sports bars and pubs specialising in overseas events. There is even a network of over 100 poster sites in ethnic food stores across Dublin.

Obviously I have just skimmed the surface of what is possible but, if the reports on the PayPal situation are correct, then hiring language specialists in Ireland offers a considerable cost saving over hiring abroad and on that basis alone recruiters should be looking at their options or better still, asking us to do it for them!

Finally, I did investigate if my own specialist language skills are valued in the market. Sadly I can report that nobody seems to be targeting the “Sarf Lahnden” dialect.

Would you be a graduate right now?

This week has seen the release of two new pieces of research on graduate careers, one in the UK and one here in Ireland. They offer a fascinating insight into what must be a scary jobs market as seen by the average student.

According to the latest Career Confidence Report from Milkround, less than one in five graduates had thought about their career before starting college. The survey, of over 1,700 students and graduates in the UK undertaken in January 2012, reveals that just 19% had considered the kind of job they wanted before starting their university course.

The report also found that 42% of respondents thought the media had made them believe they wouldn’t be able to find a job after graduating. Respondents’ main concerns around looking for graduate job roles were ‘too much competition’ (69%) and ‘not enough jobs’ (55%).

It’s also interesting to note that roughly a quarter of students and graduates apparently think the criteria for jobs have been set too high. Just one in four 2012 graduates are optimistic about getting a graduate job after college and over 40% are positively pessimistic about their chances of landing a graduate job.

The latest research from gradireland shows a continuing contraction in the Irish graduate jobs market with the median number of vacancies across all employers falling by one hire per employer from 2011 to 2012. Most graduate starting salaries are in the €24,000–€26,000 range, pretty much unchanged for the last three years and down from a high in 2008, tracking the Irish economy in general.

Reflecting the reduced number of vacancies and greater competition there has been a 20% jump in only 2 years in the number of recruiters demanding a 2:1. A third of recruiters also indicated that relevant work experience was more valuable than post graduate study, with only 10% of recruiters giving greater weight to post-grad study.

It is, however, good to see that these trends are being replicated in recruiter behaviour with 80 per cent of graduate recruiters offering internships and nearly half of recruiters intending to increase the number of internships offered during 2012.

And finally, whilst 49 per cent of all graduate employers surveyed cite a skills gap in IT and technology as their main impediment to graduate recruitment. There are some very positive signs ahead. Commenting on the latest World Competitiveness Rankings, released today, the IDA stated that greater availability of computer and software personnel will be a key feature for investors in Ireland over the coming years. This is due to the increase in the numbers enrolling in computer, software courses and conversion courses in Universities and Institutes of Technology across the country. Uptake of undergraduate computer courses has experienced a 40% increase in the last four years, with the first of these additional students, at honours degree level, coming into the employment market this summer.

Totally googled out after yesterday’s Immersion Day and less than an hour until I am due back for the next round – looking at all things mobile this afternoon. Lots of crazy numbers and stats but at the heart of it all is the user and how to engage with them.

It’s great to get the opportunity to look at a medium and imagine what you could achieve without worrying about budget, client considerations, creative constraints or anything else that would normally be filling the back of your mind. Our Google Immersion day had us looking at search for planners, the branding opportunities within search and online video. There were some really great ideas about using ad words to build a campaign rather than just direct response to your web site.

What I’m really looking forward to is talking to clients about the possible uses of search in the recruitment field and linking their advertising to some really unexpected search terms.

If the numbers around Google are big then YouTube is simply mind blowing. 4 Billion videos watched on YouTube every day! 150 years of YouTube video consumed on Facebook every day! 500 tweets a minute with a YouTube link in them.

Of course the section we all wanted to be there for was “What’s new from Google?” and I am desperately reviewing my notes to see what is covered by the non-disclosure agreement I signed and what isn’t. Eventually I have decided that if I can google it and find an article online then I am free to talk about it! So here goes – check out indoor walking directions – because people are getting lost in big buildings! Also take a look at Google street view – inside. This is basically allowing the 360˚ camera into your business to show the inside of the building. If you are into advertising then take a look at Project re:brief as it looks at how some classic ads of the past would work in the digital age.

My favourite “What’s new” had to be Project Glass. http://youtu.be/9c6W4CCU9M4 take a look at the video showing someone using a pair of augmented reality glasses. Looking forward to getting a pair of them.

The latest figures were released in early May and Newstalk had a very successful year with Newstalk Breakfast growing by a massive 39,000 listeners year on year. The station will be hoping to build on this success but the recent departure of Ivan Yates is problematic and could impact on further growth.

RTÉ Radio 1 experienced its first dip in share among all adults since December 2010. However this was only marginal fall of 0.3 percentage points, the station remains rock solid and saw growth across most programmes.

2FM’s listenership continues to decline with Tubridy seeing a drop of 30,000 listeners year on year. Further to this, Breakfast with Hector experienced a fall-off of 15,000 listeners.

In contrast, Today FM’s key personalities increased their listenership figures. Ian Dempsey gained 17,000 listeners while the Last Word with Matt Cooper gained 2,000 listeners. Ray D’Arcy gained an impressive 31,000 listeners, almost the same number that Tubridy lost during the period.

Full report: April ’11 – March ’12 JNLR Publicis Engage

I work in advertising and I have never watched “Mad Men”. If I want highly strung creative and advertising types I don’t need to watch the telly. For those of you, like me, who don’t know the show, it covers the 1960s when the age of television forever changed the advertising and marketing world.

Go back nearly 600 years and Johannes Gutenberg is credited with printing the first major book, the Gutenberg bible, in around 1450. By 1605 the first news sheets were being printed in Europe and in 1659, the first periodical news-sheet in Ireland, An Account of the Chief Occurrences in Ireland, came off the press. The oldest newspaper on the island of Ireland is The News Letter of Belfast, first published in 1737, which still prints everyday.

The first cinema in Ireland, The Volta, was opened in 1909. Although it must have been a bit quiet as the first film shot here, The Lad from Old Ireland, didn’t start production until 1910. Advertising was available almost immediately and, to show how little things change, one of the earliest ads was “Careless sneezes spread diseases” – yes, it’s the flu pandemic again.

2RN, the first radio station to broadcast in Ireland, was launched in 1926 and is what we now know as RTE Radio 1. The 31^st December 1961 saw the first broadcast of the Irish television service, Telefís Éireann. The first person to address the new television audience was President Eamon de Valera. The President’s speech reflected an uncertainty as to what this new medium might bring. Reports that many of the shows from the launch are due to be repeated in the 2012 summer schedule are, I am sure, exaggerated. Actually some of the shows may well be aired as part of the celebrations of 50 years of broadcasting.

Fifty years ago media planning was far simpler, there were a limited number of formats and you simply had to select the most appropriate newspaper or show for your target audience. In 2012 if I want to watch a film, tune into a radio show, send a text, email or tweet I just need my phone.

So for over 350 years we have had newspapers, cinema has been around for just over a century, radio kicked off in the 1920s and TV in the late 1940s. On the 6^th August 1991 the first web site went live. Pre-dating all of this is outdoor advertising with both commercial and political advertising found on the walls of Pompeii.

Media keeps changing and the speed of change is accelerating. Whilst the delivery channel has changed, the need to engage your audience remains paramount. Whether posting a role on a job board, contacting a candidate via LinkedIn, advertising in press or using radio, you need to sell the job and the organisation.

There are a few simple statements that I try to remember: we like surprises, we crave simple, we want to be involved, I’m curious, great ads demand a response, make me think, let me draw my own conclusion, do the headline and the image tell the story, am I bragging, is it  well executed and am I selling?

Whether you are promoting the baths in Pompeii (Good enough for Venus!) or the latest multi-lingual tech support role in Cork, once you have selected the most appropriate medium it is all down to how you Engage.