Sirona Says

The 10 worst offenders in the office workplace - guaranteed to hack you off!

If you thought this was just a bit of fun, you would be wrong. The latest Fish4jobs survey on the office environment have highlighted some real irritating behaviours that eats away at office moral, and subsequently job satisfaction. How many of these can you tick off in your office?

1. 1.Not showering – Around two thirds (59%) said poor personal hygiene was the worst sin that colleagues could commit
2. Loud mouth - Shouting in the office and generally making a racket winds almost half of us up (44%)
3. 'Innocent' theft – Over a third (35%) of people surveyed cited stealing stationary as their colleagues most annoying habit
4. Email calamity - Crashing email systems by sending huge attachments around the entire company sent a third of those surveyed running for the door (31%)
5. Stale cooking smells from last night – Insisting on re-heating last night’s smelly dinner annoys almost a quarter of workers (22%)
6. Mess – 15% of people surveyed said colleagues’ messy desks made the whole office look like a dump!
7. Clickety click– Constant pen clicking drives over one in ten of us insane (14%)
8. P*** ***F! – One in ten (10%) of us are seriously put off by foul language
9. Bad habits – Weird personal habits like cracking knuckles and tapping feet infuriate around one in ten (9%) of Brits
10. 'Borrowing food' – Nabbing from the fridge makes 7% of those surveyed very angry

Social networking going mainstream.....right into school!!

A great post on the Utah SEO Pro blog by Jordan Kasteler  has highlighted what is now inevitable - the march of social networking into mainstream society. He found a college in the USA that is now studying social networking and even producing exams in it as well!! Below is an example some of the questions put to the students...(I know you will know the answers but just in case Jason has provided the links!)

COMM 1500

1. A ______ is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, idea, financial exchange, friends, kinship, dislike, conflict, trade, web links, sexual relations, disease transmission, (epidemiology), or airline routes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network
2. What is social networking trying to do? Most of the applications so far offer one or more of eight features or functionalities. http://blog.fastcompany.com/archives/2006/08/15/social_networking_a_status_report.html
3. Lots of people have opinion about Twitter, ranging from a complete waste of time to the indispensable connector with your community. What is Twitter? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter or http://twitter.com/
4. What is an RSS feed? http://www.fastcompany.com/about/rss.html and http://www.whatisrss.com/
5. They use video and paper to make complex ideas easy to understand. They present subjects “in plain English” using short, unique and understandable videos in a format called Paperworks. http://www.commoncraft.com/
6. Be familiar with the following Social Networks:

• iLike - http://ilike.com
• MySpace - http://www.myspace.com
• Facebook - http://www.facebook.com
• YouTube - http://www.youtube.com
• LinkedIn - http://www.linkedin.com

Let's hope that it isn't too long before we see this in the UK soon!!

Japan's idea of a work/life balance

In the western world we are all complaining about talent shortages, and are already starting to plan to recruit the younger Z generations. But in Japan the government are taking their future shrinking workforce to a new level!!

They are trying to convince women that the work/life balance actually involves having more children AND staying at work!!  They have already failed in many attempts to get women to work in the first place, and combined with declining birth numbers and more people retiring  this has contributed to a forecasted shortfall of 20million+ workers in future years. So now they have moved on to try and convince women to have more children and either go to work or stay at work! Baby bonuses will be next, or commission schemes based on the number of babies you have! And what happens if they don't play ball with the government? Let's not go there.........

LinkedIn - the next stage, network expansion

Following my article about LinkedIn for beginners, several people have asked what the next stage is with LinkedIn. Fortunately I don't have to write that one as there is a very good video below by Geoff Peterson - a global Top 150 linker - that explains very well how to further expand your network.

Find more videos like this on RecruitingBlogs.com

Recruitment and Retention has now just got harder!!

While I appreciate that the whole world is having recruitment challenges, I wanted to highlight two problems that I feel are going to impact massively on recruitment and retention. I have actually already experienced both of them with candidates in the last few weeks, and I am sure it will just get worse.

So what am I talking about? Petrol and Houses. The price of petrol is rising higher and higher every week, so obviously your staff (and you of course) will be paying more for their commute into work. With this price estimated to get to £1.50 per litre by the end of the summer, then their commuting costs (by car) have just risen by 50%. How many will be looking to get a job closer to home to cut down traveling? What are you doing about it? Are you encouraging more home working? Are you being flexible with allowing them to come into the office less? Are you actually sharing your concerns with your staff? If you don't they will look for an employer that is doing something about it.

House prices - more importantly the mortgage rate - are stopping people moving. Higher interest rates mean that mortgages have lept up substantially this year, costing people more money. There are two implications from this, 1) they may now not be earning enough money where they currently work, and may have to look at another job and leaving your company or 2) the option of relocating for a new job has suddenly been diminished for the moment, not because they don't want to move, but because they may not sell their house! So recruiting for specific skills in a market where they are absent now becomes a real problem. Whereas, before you could relocate someone with the right skills, now it will become more of a challenge to convince candidates to move. So if this is going to cause you problems, what are you doing about it? Have you even thought of the long term implications? Should you be reconsidering recruiting lower skilled and training them? Should you look at retraining of existing staff? What about ad hoc pay rises?

The one thing that both petrol prices and house prices will definitely test, and that will be how creative a company can be with their creative retention policies!!!!

Stressed after a bad day? - try a Carry On film!!

Ever had a stressful day at work, and looked for a way to unwind after work? Beer, wine or a game on the Nintendo Wii might be the way forward for you normally to unwind (or a 700 mile run if your name is Peter Gold!). But Brian Barwick, the CEO of the Football Association, has a different way of unwinding.......he relaxes in front of the TV watching Carry On Films!! Apparently they have helped him through many a depression, after watching the England football team's bad performances!!

So the next time you have had a bad day, and arrive home stressed, why don't you sit down and watch Carry on Screaming and see if you it helps out your relaxation levels!!

A beginners guide to LinkedIn

I thought I would share an article that I wrote recently for a good B2B website - BusinessZone.co.uk. I was asked to explain how beginners go about using LinkedIn, so for all you experienced hands, go off and make that cup of coffee.

But if you have heard about LinkedIn, wondered what it is and how it can be used to help you grow your network, then read the article  - LinkedIn for beginners - it is very useful. LinkedIn is the best social networking site for business!!  (I look forward to you sending me your LinkedIn invites).

Recruitment the Trinny & Susannah way!

While having breakfast this morning, my local radio show were promoting a recruitment campaign with a difference!! It did stop me eating my toast for minute, as it got my attention! Trinny and Susannah were recruiting volunteers to appear in a naked sculpture in Sussex over this weekend for their latest TV show - 'Great British Body'!!

However there were none of the usual recruitment incentives, no 'stripping off' bonus, no 'retention bonus' (for holding the stomach in!) and no free lunch - just the privilege of being naked on National television! But as I said, it did get my attention, and I listened. Maybe there is something that companies advertising on the radio could tap into - just insert the word naked into their advert maybe??

(Good news is, it will be the hottest day of the year - weather wise of course -  in Sussex this weekend!!)

Blogs ARE here to stay, so get started!

Many companies are still shying away from the power of the blog. But some latest figures released by Comscore show that blogs are what people are reading online. Companies should really start to think about how they can harness this massive trend and use blogs. They could use them for recruitment, retention,product promotion, news and so much more - in fact the list is endless!!  The only advice I would say is to just put some thought into it first.........then blog away!!!

Here are the latest Comscore stats:

The Top 20 UK Blogging Sites had 33.2 million visitors in February (and thats JUST the Top 20!)

The Worlds Top 20 UK Blogging Sites had 822.9 million visitors in February.

So for all you non-believers out there, now is the time to start blogging!! After all it is what everyone else is doing!!!

How to use SEM / SEO Tools to write job adverts

As a recruiter, one key part of your role is writing advert copy for your own online adverts. There will be many recruiters that simply place the 'actual' job title and 'actual' job spec onto their chosen job board or portal such as Broadbean or Conkers, and leave it at that. They then wonder why they get limited response. I have previously posted about writing creative adverts, but my point is this time to for recruiters to actually consider what the job seeker is searching for.
Search engine marketing (SEM)  and search engine optimisation (SEO) consultants use keyword searching tools such as SEO Book, Wordtracker or AdwordsTools to identify keywords people are using when they search online.  But how many of you are doing the same when you write a job advert? After all you are trying to get the same effect - people looking for jobs using keywords to search.