'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.

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

So tonight's the night, the National Recruitment Awards are on in the Ballsbridge Court, Dublin. The excitement in the office is palpable, the combination of a rare night out and because this usually turns out to be a brilliant night. This is the second year of the awards and once again Recruit are sponsoring the event and we have our very own Jobseekers Choice Award, this has been voted for by job seekers over the last number of weeks and we had an unbelievable amount of votes this year. So the winner is now picked and only I know who it is... Oh yes, knowledge IS power.

So if you want to see a full list of the winners tune in on Monday for the report, and maybe a few pics of the Recruit team in all our black tie finery!

Rebecca

We had a visitor to the office last week, the latest addition to the RecruitIreland.com team, Conor James, son of our Marketing Manager, Emma. There is a good chance within the next 12 months that the rest of the Recruit girls will be off on maternity leave after an afternoon of cuddles from Conor.....

I’m the first to admit that I suffer from economic dyslexia, or eclexia if you will. But when faced with the fear of more hits on my tiny pocket I decided to pay attention to this year’s budget and find out how the 2009 budget is going to hit us – The Workers.

First things first – how much more or less money will we have in our pay packets?

The standard rate tax band has increased by 1,000 for singles and 2,000 for marrieds. Put simply as a single person you can now earn €35,400 at 20% tax before they slap on 41%. Unfortunately 1% of your salary up to €100,000 has to go back to the Government and 2% for people like myself who earn more than that (!)

Commute:

It’s no surprise that the gas guzzlers got whacked again, 4% increase in road tax for cars lower than 2.5 litre and 5% for those over, yikes. That combined with an 8 cent rise in petrol is going to be a tough one to swallow. Why didn’t I buy a diesel car…..

Similarly company car spaces will be taxed 200 quid per car in major urban areas. No, I don’t know the definition of a major urban area either. I wonder will we get clobbered in the multi-storey?

Leisure:

Holidays are scuppered again, a tenner tax to leave Ireland. Would someone tell them there would be no need to leave if it was sunny …

Smokers got away lightly, 50 cents increase on a packet of fags- they could have gotten away with a much bigger increase than that I’m sure. Nobody is going to be put off smoking by 50cent – increase them by a fiver and you’ll soon see the Nicorette sales go up. But why stop there? Why not add a tax on chips in a similar vein to make the country healthy? Or stop putting Wispa’s beside the cash register in EVERY shop?

Tax on wine has gone up, but I’d love to do a pop quiz on the nation to see who actually knows how much drink costs? I couldn’t tell you for one second how much a pint costs. Anyone else similarly affected?

Pensions have increased by €7 a week- big wow, just goes to show how important it is to have a private pension. Especially when most of us now won’t get a medical card when we reach 70…..

For a more in depth analysis check out www.budgetforum.com or www.budget.gov.ie and let us know how you feel about this years budget in the comments box below.

Rebecca

Today I decided to do something that I don’t indulge in regularly- yes you’ve guessed it, today I decided to clean my desk. Don’t get me wrong; in the Recruit office I pride myself on having the tidiest desk of them all but it is a rare occurrence to get the Domestos out.

You’ll understand my horror when, upon upturning my keyboard a half loaf of crumbs fell out – along with some other unidentified bits which I don’t really want to analyse.  It got me thinking about what could have grown in there had I left it much longer.  

Then I came across an article that basically depicts a horror story of random keyboard swab tests which revealed some peoples keyboards had 5 times more bacteria than the toilet seat. Yum. 

When lunchtime rolls around I am usually only too keen to bolt out the door for an hour but there is the rare occurrence when I do work through lunch and eat at my desk. Working through lunch is something I do if essential, not out of enjoyment and the dangers of mindless desk eating have been well documented, eat while doing something else and you are more likely to eat rubbish and/or eat more than you intended. Also not getting off your seat for 9 hours can’t be good, but now I have to consider bacteria as well I think it’s the perfect excuse to be absent for the hour. 

Another disgusting thought, I sometimes chew my pen, some unnamed robbers like to steal my pens, and then have a chew themselves then I often retrieve them and mindlessly chew once more. YUK. I think I’m going to dip the whole lot in bleach from now on. 

So what about you? We have run surveys in the past and noticed that some of you don’t take your full complement of holidays  but we’ve never asked if people take their full lunch breaks or eat regularly at the desk- would love to hear what you do throw us up a comment below.

Rebecca

Thanks to all of you who answered our Job Satisfaction Survey.  We had a massive response to this years survey and it turns out that at least half of you are satisfied in your job but that 50% also plan on changing jobs in the next 12 months..... 

Here is the full release:

Job Satisfaction Remains High Despite Economic Climate 

·         One in two employees say they are satisfied in their jobs

·         Workers uncertainty in economy shows with 53% admitting to feeling less secure in their jobs

·         Two in every three workers think it would be difficult to find a new job

·         90% of workers will start looking for a new job online 

29:09:08; Although half of Irish workers are satisfied in their jobs, recent research shows employees feel uncertain about the state of the current economic environment. An employee job satisfaction survey carried out by RecruitIreland.com shows that 53% of workers feel less secure in their jobs resulting from recent economic turbulence. However, 50% still say they think they will change jobs in the next 12 months. When workers were asked to describe the current job market 47% said they felt there were not enough jobs in their field while 26% said there are jobs but they feel more secure staying where they are in the present economic climate. Overall 70% workers thought if they had to start looking tomorrow they would find it difficult to find a new job.  

Money remains a main issue for satisfaction in the workplace with 42% of workers claiming more money would make them happier. It is no wonder when 48% of workers say they spend 30% or more of their take home salary on mortgage or rent and another 10% to 20% going on childcare for those who have children. 1 in two employees are also paying in to a pension but interestingly this has not increased since 2006 when 50% then also claimed to be paying in to a pension. Although money would satisfy more people in their current roles career progression was cited as the main reason why people move,75% of workers claimed this to be the most important consideration when looking for a job.

Location was also a key factor in job satisfaction with 20% of workers saying a change of location would give them greater job satisfaction. The majority of workers still use their car to get to work, 19% are using public transport with only 1% saying they cycle to work.  

Rebecca Clark of RecuritIreland.com commenting on the results said “We appreciate that recent economic activity has caused a degree of uncertainty for employees. In the survey, nearly 30% of workers admitted they would like to change role but they don’t feel there are suitable alternatives.  However there are over 30,000 jobs advertised across all industries on RecruitIreland.com so we would encourage workers to check out the job market for themselves. Workers now have the option to upload their CV on to the site and let the employers come to them. Often for workers it can simply be a matter of getting noticed and getting your CV to right people at the right time.” 

And finally the one question that tests workers true dedication to their job, If you won the lotto would you…… and a resounding 47% said they would stay on in work safe in the knowledge they were financially secure while 1 in 5 workers admitted they would be running towards the nearest exit and leaving work immediately.