Morning everyone

I wanted to update you all regarding progress in the "Get Ireland Working" Campaign - we launched about 2 months ish ago now and are almost at 550 new employers posting jobs and almost 1300 new jobs.

We now have more employer jobs advertised than any other Irish recruitment website which we are just thrilled with. Feedback from candidates has also been really positive with lots of feedback applauding the campaign and this one in particular started our week off with a smile;

Well folks, I know blogposts have been a bit thin on the ground over the last few weeks but we have been waiting for some good news. So we have 2 things to tell you now - firstly RecruitIreland.com has more employer jobs than any other Irish Jobsite. You can find the list of employers and agencies currently recruiting here. We are really pleased with the progress of the "Get Ireland Working" campaign and now have over 450 companies supporting us.

Secondly RTE have a new series in the pipeline which should offer jobseekers some invaluable career coaching and advice. The show will be called "The Career Coach" and will follow 6 people as they are coached to find a new career by John Fitzgerald of Harmonics Career Crafting Ltd.

Sounds like one for everyone to watch and will no doubt prove of interest to students in school and college as well. So if you want to be one of the lucky 6 you can apply for the show here.

Best of Luck

Another Friday has befallen us people - are the weeks just flying by or is it just me?

Anyway as the title says we added a new category to the site today - "Franchise" - we had a few requests and I guess this sector is a popular one in the current times with people looking for new careers and directions to take in their lives. For some redundancy can be that opportunity to set up the business you have always dreamed of and Franchising is certainly a viable way of doing this. It's a bit devoid of opportunities at the moment but I'm sure this will all change soon enough!

We have a guest post from Aaron Downes today - thanks Aaron for taking the time to let us know some more about this initiative.

So what happens at a Job Club?

When I first envisaged the Executive Job Club, the main focus was to provide a support network for those recently made redundant and the unemployed. Job club is not a new idea, nor is it mine: Nathan Azrin started the concept with a number of friends in a coffee shop in the US many years ago.

I believe that problems can never be solved at the level at which they are created. With this in mind, at each meeting we set out a desired outcome from the meeting both for the group as well as for each individual. This helps us to remain focussed and to make the most of the time we have together.

When redundancy or unemployment knocks on our door, we sometimes don't know what to do next. If you find yourself in that situation, then the best thing to do is to get together with others in a similar experience. We can help one another by providing access to valuable resources, leads, contacts and ideas. 

David Jones , who joined us at our first meeting, has written a book called "Oh no I've lost my job what do I do now". This is a useful resource for anyone experiencing unemployment. We have also spent time reviewing each other's CV's, discussed the best recruitment agencies, interview preparation and techniques and most importantly, we share the understanding that we are not alone in this, that it's not our fault. We recognise that we all have valuable skills and talents to offer future employers and encourage one another.

We have had some great guest speakers visit us. To date, Yvonne Farrell from Peak Achievement provided excellent interview technique advice, Maria Lynch from Motivated Joyful Living got us all ship-shape with her image consulting and life-coaching expertise, Stuart Mc Laughlin from Business to Arts inspired us with his creative approach to life and business and Miriam Ahearn from Align Management Solutions provided an insight into networking. 

We started out back in February 2009 with a group of eight people, out of the original group of eight, four have secured permanent full time employment and two have started their own business, we now have some "newbies" and a few of the old gang calling back each week. The Digital Hub on Thomas Street are supporting us with a venue every second Friday, on the alternate Friday's we may end up in the National Gallery or if the weather is fine a park somewhere in the city, however sometimes we just fancy a coffee in Kylemore. 

If you are wondering how it works, what goes on, or whether this is for you, please come along and see for yourself, the only cost is tea or coffee. Keep an eye on our blog www.dublinjobclub.blogspot.com for the next meeting time and venue.

Saw this ad last night on the TV and thought it was very clever - another way to get the job.

This is just going to be a quick wee blogpost folks - something occurred to me this morning so I wanted to share it with you in case you maybe weren't aware.

Clearly lots of people are looking for jobs at the moment, we have lots of jobs at the moment and the job count is increasing daily with almost 140 new companies signed up to our "Get Ireland Working" campaign.

Should you come across a job which you think would be perfect for a friend of yours who is job hunting as well you can opt to send the job to them by clicking on the "Mail a friend" tool on the top right hand side of the full job description. You can also use this to mail a job to yourself if you wanted to have a proper look at it when you have more time.

As I said just a short post but a good tip nevertheless and something everyone can use to help a friend in need.

Hope everyone is well rested after a nice long leisurely weekend.

This week we launched a new campaign offering free advertising to employers in Ireland - the aim of this campaign is to provide support to businesses at a time when they most need it and also to be a "one stop shop" as such for jobseekers. We want to offer you a complete service whereby when you log onto the website you will find all vacancies in Ireland in the one place - we hope by offering free advertising to employers we will facilitate this.

So if you know anyone who is recruiting at the moment feel free to pass on our locall number 1890 450 750 or email address (info@recruitireland.com) and someone from our sales team would be happy to set them up to advertise.

An interesting role was added to the site earlier today which I thought I would let you all know about - here's a link;

http://www.recruitireland.com/job/tv-presenter-wanted-dublin/12919170/ 

Maybe you know someone who would be interested?

The new series kicked off with Alan’s tried and tested “Job Interview from Hell” speech and 15 new victi….eh, candidates. 8 girls representing team “Ignite” and 7 boys representing team “Empire”.

Why only 7 boys this year? Well according to Sir Alan, one of the candidates had already “bottled it” and bowed out before the very first show. Something to do with his family yada yada yada. Unfortunately, the potential candidate didn’t remember his family commitments until after he was picked and left it too late for the  show to replace him and therefore deprived another candidate of an opportunity. But I digress….

As this is series 5, you’d expect the candidates to have a pretty good idea of what to expect and it was clear when the teams came to pick their team leaders that nobody wanted to stick their head above the water. Names were simply thrown out at random and the role of Project Manager was thrust upon two unsuspecting candidates who couldn’t say no.

In any case, it’s too early to really pick any stand out candidates but as always it will be interesting to see what Sir Alan has in store and once again he has issued the stern warning that he should never be underestimated.

What did everyone else think of the first episode?

Social media is infiltrating everyone’s life in some way however some recent events on Twitter have shown us that the phenomenon clearly has pros and cons.

The Good
Ashton Kutcher decided to make men everywhere jealous by posting a pic of his wife’s bikini clad bottom along with the tweet  "Shhh!, don't tell wifey." 

Thanks Ashton and I’m sure I speak for all the males in your 513920 followers when I say that!!!!!

The Bad
It’s difficult enough to find a job these days as thousands can confirm, so when a candidate in the States decided to tweet about a recent job offer little did he realise the effects it could have. Tweeting:

"Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.”

He unfortunately caught the attention of Tim Levad, a "channel partner advocate" for Cisco Alert who quickly shot back:

"Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.’’

This was followed by YouTube videos, websites and I’d guess a withdrawal of the aforementioned job offer.

Helen A.S. Popkin covers it nicely for msnbc if you want to read more.

The Ugly 
Personal abuse levelled at former premier league star Stan Collymore led him to closing his account down. Collymore decided that jokes referring to depression which he has suffered with were a step too far and tweeted

"As depression is an illness that affects 1 in 4 of us at some time, making flippant comments on twitter I’m afraid isn't funny to me."

Fair enough I say but unfortunately flippant comments on twitter are funny to some people.

So there we go three recent events which ended up in the media and should serve as a warning to all newbie tweeters – Big Brother is watching and if he doesn’t see, be sure one of the millions on twitter will and they mightn’t let you forget it either!!!