Well well well, what a disastrous week the troops had this week - for those of you who didn't see the show, a quick synopsis. Each team had to select 3 Garmin products and sell 600 units in total over a Saturday and Sunday, whoever got the most profit won!

The team leaders were Nicky and Sarah - the first mistake they both made was deciding to keep the seed money rather than spending it. Bill has pulled them up on this before and it was an elementary mistake to elect to ignore his advice and not buy any marketing material.

Nicky and Brenda sold their first unit to a bicycle shop on Day 1, then Day 2 headed for Croker and the All-Ireland final where they sold a second, then to Grafton St, Stuart went to Fairyhouse Market, then the airport to target the taxi drivers. They sold a total of 4 units.

Sarah gave Orla the task of researching events that might be on over the weekend, to be honest I'm not sure if she came up with anything and the All-Ireland Final didn't even enter her radar. They had the fantastic idea of targeting orienteering clubs but when told they weren't allowed to sell in the car parks of Glendalough they gave up on the idea which was to be their downfall. Shane headed for the Ilac centre where he secured a spot to sell and managed to sell 1 unit and the girls set their sights on Dun Laoghaire where they sold 1 unit. So a total of 2 units and a fail for Sarah's team.

To say Bill was unhappy would be the understatement of the century, he was furious, neither team deserved to win in his eyes and I'd say given half a chance he would have fired more than one but he was restricted to one and Sarah was his target. I think though the task to be fair was a bit of a farce, to be tasked with selling that many units over a Saturday and Sunday just wasn't feasible, having said that they seriously could have done with some inspiration - how many people are circling the M50 with no clue how to get to their destination or navigate the Red Cow Roundabout, that folks is a target market if ever I saw one!!  ;-)

What did you think?

'Tissss the seaaaason tooo be jollyyyy, tra la la la laaaaaaaaaa 

Yes folks, like it or loath it it's that time of year again, and every year around this time we run a survey to discover what you do for your Christmas party, what your New Year resolutions are and then we ask if you have done anything embarrassing at the Christmas party, not because its particularly newsworthy, mainly because we get a great laugh in the Recruit office. Mwa ha ha!

This year with all the doom and gloom we want to know what your company is planning on doing. Is you boss still splashing out on the party or is it cancelled? How do you feel about it if it is? What is the likelyhood of you getting a wage rise or a bonus in '09? Go on,  take the survey, let us know. Start the survey here.

PS If you have done anything embarrassing, tell us in the comment box- go on, share the mirth.

Well, come on all you recruiters and HR people - it does what it says on the tin, if you have not used our service before but would like to give it a shot and see what it's all about then give us a call and we will give you a free 7 day trial of the advertising service.

Those of you who have used us before know that it's not rocket science, we will give you a username and password and show you exactly what to do I promise!!

And for those cynics among you, no there is no catch - if it works for you and you find the right person for your vacancy, great, we will be just as thrilled as you no doubt will be and there won't be any charge or cost.

So what's the benefit for us I hear you asking? Well you get to see how easy and useful we are and then next time you are recruiting you might think of us and give us a call and take a monthly ad or maybe longer depending on how busy you are...

If this sounds like something you want to try then give our sales team a call on 1890 450 750 and be sure and mention you saw it here!

Week 8 of The Apprentice and I must say the teams are starting to look pretty small now that we’re down to 7 candidates (6 after last night’s show). I’m still trying to pick a winner but again this week the candidates failed to shine.I thought the task was a bit all over the place and the candidates weren’t given clear objectives but in any case the results were less than impressive. 

There are some particular low points worth mentioning here. Paddy standing in his empty store trying to tell the team’s graphic designer his vision for the store and causing the camera crew to laugh uncontrollably at how stupid he sounded. Brenda’s airplane painting might have been a good idea if the team hadn’t decided to paint it themselves with the end result looking like a team of 4 year olds let loose in art class. Stuart’s scanner idea also could have been more impressive had he not chosen to illustrate it by simply putting a branded sticker over a sky digital remote. But worst of all was the simple mistake made by Orla, when she forgot to check if her team’s brand name was not already an existing brand. 

This ultimately left Orla’s team in the boardroom and by now the candidates really must realise that Bill wants people who will speak up for themselves. Unfortunately, Paddy was the one who didn’t speak enough and was sent packing. While I don’t think Paddy was all that bad, I don’t think he was ever all that good either. 

So only 6 candidates remain and I think it’s time we all pick our favourite. Personally at this point the only candidate I see as a potential winner is Shane, my fellow blog poster Vicki has already given an early prediction that Brenda will win, what do you think?

Hi folks,

Well today was my 9th Birthday- RecruitIreland that is. 9 short years ago I was just a glimmer in the eye of Tom Crosbie. Tom faithfully got a load of people together, gave them jobs and voila, a recruitment website was born.

I've seen the good times and I've seen some very bad times. I emerged though, tattered, bruised but fighting. Onwards and upwards I fought growing ever stronger and now they talk of a crunch, but I'm not worried, takes more than that to beat me! Don't get me wrong, I don't feel old, maybe just "mature".

I've got some good friends, some of them have been here for the whole 9 years with me.  Today my good friends decided to buy me a cake! But the b*stards ate the whole lot themselves.....

 

Many many many things annoy me, but this morning I’m annoyed by bad spelling. Its two words in particular that are annoying me- CURRICULUM VITAE.

This is the worst spelled word in my world. In case you don’t know, if you have problems uploading your CV to RecruitIreland.com and you are instructed to send it to cv@recruitireland.com it comes to me and I do the sorting out and uploading and I am shocked and hurt at how many CVs I’ve looked at today with horrendous spelling.

Here are a few clangers:

Criculam Vita
Cirriculum
Curiculumn
Cericulum
Curriculum Vitee
Curriculum vitea

(and a young lady from South Dublin who had a huge amount of “enthusiasticness for the job”)

I’d understand if English was not your first language- I myself am Scottish so English wouldn’t be mine either and without the spell checkery thing on Word I wouldn’t be up for any spelling prizes,  but 98% of these CVs would consider English as their first language so why are you people not using the spell check? Don’t get me wrong I’m no genius- I can’t count, ask me to add two numbers together in my head and you’d laugh at how long it takes me to do it but I have a solution to this problem, its called a calculator… My point, my friends is this; there are a number of tools at your disposal to check that this severely important document is tip top.

An employer will spend an average of 10 seconds scanning a CV for suitability. How annoying if yours is binned because of a few spelling errors.

Heed my words people.

Rebecca

PS: A friend of mine uses a dating website and she actually discards any man who can’t spell in their profiles or emails so let this be a warning to you…

Next week- Grammar

Well we are probably the last to blog about it and as the whole world knows by now Barack Obama is the President Elect of the United States of America… Big momentous, historic occasion and not just for the Americans in our midst, for everyone I think.

The word change has been bandied about so much during this campaign which to me seemed to go on forever, that the pressure is really going to be on Obama as he comes into power amid a world recession and with two wars to “sort out” so to speak. He has campaigned on the peace trail and his initial aim was to bring an end to those aforementioned wars as soon as he took office but now it seems a bigger threat is at hand with the recession and Wall Street feeling the heat. 

I think to be fair we are going to see the start of something new and different and hopefully he will live up to the world’s expectations – not something easy to live with no doubt and unfair of everyone to place so much faith in him in my opinion and expect him to resolve every issue in the world, he is after all just one man isn’t he? One man yes but one man who has led his team and his campaign with the kind of traits we would expect of such a superpower and one who hopefully will inspire change in the rest of the world and its leaders. 

Our own president has this morning called Obama a “Beacon of Hope” which I think is an apt and fair description…

Not to mention the people of Offaly who are claiming him as one of their own, a combined superpower, Ireland and the US and both men from Offaly - who knew that would happen?

As for Mr McCain - there's always a better job on RecruitIreland.com so feel free to have a look....

Just got this in (disclosure, we did opt to follow him first)!

BUT STILL;

What an interesting week it promised to be if rumours were to be believed and to be fair it lived up to this expectation for me anyway!

This week in the Apprentice the teams were running a WEEE recycling plant for electrical equipment, whoever collected the most electrical waste would win the task. Joanna was team leader in Naas and Shane was team leader in Maynooth. Now (even though I knew she had been fired) when it mentioned at the beginning that Joanna was a local in Naas you had to wonder what she was going to do to use this to her advantage!

So Joanna sent Nicky and Orla out onto the Naas streets to rally people to bring their goods to the Racecourse while Paddy and Joanna stayed on site directing and organising. Joanna was her usual bossy self but as always was in her element in this role, she hired someone to deliver fliers and to their detriment they decided against a collection service for the housing estates.

Over in Maynooth Shane's team I have to say were completely tuned in, they got the schools to send fliers home with the children and stood outside Tesco talking to people and handing out fliers and they hired a van to collect goods from people's homes which was in the end what won the task for them.

So as we all know by now, Joanna was fired for cheating, she emailed her hubby Ray and asked him to round up the troops which he duly did and ordered them to take goods from another recycling centre and bring them to hers which of course Bill found out and called her up on - it was actually cringe TV and very funny I have to say - her face when he asked her who her husband was, priceless! So Nicky and Orla lived to tell the tale and fight for another week to win the title of Bill Cullen's Apprentice!

But back to Joanna, I have to say, much as she wasn't my favourite (as you all know) and I found her smiley face in the boardroom quite irriatating I found her very funny at the end of last night's episode when she was interviewed leaving, she was the most relaxed she had been throughout the show and some of her statements about herself were just hilarious, ie. "She didn't just think outside the box, she brought the box!". She was just interviewed on the Ray D'Arcy show and again was very funny, her excuse for cheating was that "in Naas they don't have washing machines in their back gardens, they have race horses!!!"

What did you think?

Breaking News Breaking News!

Well not so breaking I guess since I heard it on Friday and the rather non-cryptic ads have been running all weekend but apparently Joanna was fired - and not in relation to the task or how she performed!

According to the radio report I heard last Friday she was fired for sneaking out to see her family which is against the rules...

So tonight's show should be an interesting one folks!