Just before the New Year we decided to publicise a vacancy for a Senior PR post in our Dublin office.
We deliberately wanted to leave the job description open so that it would invite interest from a wide range of people leaving us with the opportunity of shaping the role around the successful “right” candidate instead of letting everything be dictated by a very specific role ..it has been an interesting journey with some really good learnings!
- The job vacancy posted on our website and the use of social media alone was enough to generate a huge number of responses and enough quality candidates
- From the minute we tweeted and posted the link for the vacancy we could see huge traffic hitting our website
- People are really happy to retweet and share news about job vacancies
- So many people apply for jobs without reading what the job is about!! – I would say about 40% of the enquiries were totally irrelevant
- The role attracted a lot of attention because of the way we described it – avoid cliches (dynamic person…)!
- People in really good roles are now prepared to move to new jobs – is that recession fear easing off?
- Some people are caught in “fur lined” mouse traps – they are getting no satisfaction from their jobs but are stuck because their packages are too good to leave. We met a few of these!
- Many people have taken roles in the recession because they needed the money – most are really unfulfilled now, which is bad for them and their employers.
- There are a lot of really talented, hard working people out there – the quality of the people we met was amazing
- Employment agencies – I can’t see us ever having to use one..
After just one week of searching we found more than one ideal candidate for the role but we also met a number of quite diverse people all with something unique to offer who we know we will stay in touch with and work together in some way on various projects..
The game of recruiting is changing, the game of looking for a job is changing and hopefully this simple interview process could turn out to be a valuable “game changer” for us.
Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion
Fuzion are a Marketing & PR firm with offices in Dublin and Cork
Tags: Fuzion, Greg Canty, jobs, PR
Greg Canty Fuzion Blog 
February 5, 2013 at 12:09 pm |
Interesting article Greg. I often think its lovely to see #jobfairy trending on social media- a positive sign of the times that people are so keen to help each other find work
February 5, 2013 at 12:13 pm |
Times are a changing …Bob Dylan !
February 6, 2013 at 10:27 am |
Greg – Great to see you had such a strong response to recruitment for the role and it sounds like you’ve had a successful outcome.
I was very interested to read your observations on the state of the job market and I liked the description of ‘fur-lined mousetraps’. It’s very evocative.
Also, wasn’t surprised to see you received lots of irrelevant applications. Sounds familiar from my time in recruitment!
Re agencies, a lot of businesses can avoid using them if they’re prepared to put the time into getting details of their jobs out there in the right places and in filtering the responses. Part of the agency fee is in doing this for you, of course.
You’re right when you say that the practice of recruitment is changing. I dip into recruitment discussion groups on Linkedin and there’s a common theme that recruitment agencies that are able to offer a true consultative service will be better placed to prosper in the years ahead. On the other hand, those that are just about sourcing candidates from job boards and firing CVs across are going to struggle.