Sirona Says

Wow! My blog was voted as one of the Top 25 Talent Management Blogs!

It is fantastic when you receive some adulation for what you enjoy doing, and this is the case for me and my blog. Yesterday I found out that I had made it into the Fistful of Talent's The Talent Management Blog Power Rankings 2.0.

 It represents the best of the talent/recruiting/HR/human capital blogs - they looked at 115 Talent, HR and Recruiting-related blogs and have compiled a list of the very best, and it isvoted for by an esteemed collection of expert bloggers in this space -  Jessica Lee, Maren Hogan, Kelly Dingee, Jennifer McClure, Jason Pankow, Josh Letourneau, Paul Hebert and Kris Dunn

So I was very pleased indeed to find myself in joint 12th place, out of the Top 25. It really is great to be considered so highly in such a great group of industry bloggers.

Congratulations to Cheezhead for being voted No 1, as it is such a great daily source of content in our sector, especially now that Vanessa Dennis has joined the team and weaned Joel off his Monster bashing  (okay, nearly!!)

Who says there is no money in HR??

 

This advert on the front page of this weeks Sunday Times Appointments answers the question many ask about HR.......How much money can I make working in HR? (Sorry for the quality it is scanned)

Well at current exchange rates, I work the c$750,000 package out to be worth £478,950 !!  Ok, so you have to move to the Middle East........

Google's Barbie Doll recruitment approach.

I read an article today by Matt Asay, which makes me wonder if Google are turning to blatant sexual stereotyping to aid their recruiting? Surely not I hear you cry, Google exploiting certain market sectors to get what they want?
Matt mentions that one of his friends was in San Jose for a corporate event. While waiting at the Marriott, he ran into a "swarm of beautiful young girls" that were "uniform in their good looks" and "Vogue like" beauties, coming out of the nearby Fairmont Hotel.

Bet you can't guess who they worked for? Google of course! And even better when asked what they did at Google the response was, "We're recruiters! Do you know Python?"  So no shallowness there then!! I wonder what the response would have been if he replied yes? Would they have sat him down and given him one of the impossible (and I mean impossible) Google tests (for engineers of course!)?

Using the "attractive young female" recruitment ploy in a male orientated market is nothing new, but with their position and status in the industry, do they really need to lower their standards and 'low-ball' their competition by using real life Barbie dolls to help them recruit staff? Maybe they should try the using the Stepford Wives next?

Can you help me with this definition please!

I believe that this word is the most abused word in the world of recruitment - it is the word, urgent.

The strict definition of this adjective is 'Requiring immediate attention'. Isn't it very strange that this appears lost on both clients and candidates alike!!! (Can you tell this really annoys me?)

So, I would really like to hear from you with any 'recruitment orientated' versions of the word urgent please!

Use this career site with warning - you could end up buying a wedding dress at the same time!!

There is much debate and complaint regarding companies using (or not using) their own websites to recruit staff. Of course there are some very good sites out there, that really do give a great candidate experience such as Mothercare and The Body Shop. But there are times when even experienced recruiters (such as my good self) are dumbstruck with some of the corporate sites out there, and the complete lack of care they show when putting together their career pages.
One such site is for the department store group - Debenhams. Just take a visit to their homepage, and go to the Jobs link at the bottom of the page and click on it.

No it doesn't take you to the Debenhams jobs as you might expect but to a page with a wedding URL!! Even more bizarly, there is a career section there!! And then when you want to return to the career home page (in pink at the top of the page), it takes you then to the weddings home page itself!!  Maybe they think that all new recruits should first buy their wedding attire before they apply for a job at Debenhams!!

Is it any wonder that retailers struggle to attract and recruit high calibre recruits when they are making the most stupid mistakes like this - what impression does that leave with a jobseeker?? It actually gets funnier (in a sad way!), because there is actually a http://www.debenhams-jobs.com/ domain at the same time!!