Company introduces unique on-demand talent development platform with a free to use version.

Today sees the official launch of Juice, a game changing cloud-based Talent Development Platform (TDP) aimed at recruiters worldwide. The Juice TDP offers on-demand video learning featuring how to guides, comedic drama and practical exercises to make learning easy and fun as well as utilising online quizzes to test individual knowledge retention.

The TDP, which can be rolled out on the same day as purchase, is easy for users to understand and they can be trained on how to use it in five minutes.

Steve Carter, CEO of Morgan McKinley, the first company to implement the Juice TDP said: “Juice has transformed how we nurture our talent. It’s relevant, innovative and fun. Traditional training doesn’t always inspire or excite so combining it with a product like Juice gave it an identity within the business where people see it as an investment and not a chore.”

“We wanted to create a learning environment where employees at all levels could log on and get instant access to relevant content that not only supported them in their day-to-day role but also offered them continuous development. After all, good people with the right skills are at the heart of our commercial success. The result is that people want to learn. We were able to tailor a lot of the content to be specific to our business. This is really important in helping staff to understand our corporate vision and drive the adoption of best practices across the organisation,” Carter said.

By delivering bite sized learning that can be accessed anytime by employees, Juice creates a continuous and consistent learning environment that leads to stronger and faster results than traditional ad hoc training methods.  Clients can work with Juice to create bespoke content for them featuring their own employees just as Morgan McKinley has done.

The startup has attracted investment from entrepreneur Dan McGuire, formerly of Broadbean, who joins the board as Chairman and Graham Palfery-Smith who joins as Non-Executive Director. The company will be headed up in the UK and Europe by industry stalwart Roy Ripper and in Asia Pacific by Matt Trott.

Roy Ripper, MD, Juice said: “Progressive organisations realise that if they don’t develop their talent they risk losing their best staff and their competitive edge. The most successful people never stop learning and developing. Our view is that giving recruiters access to entertaining and engaging content when they want it will encourage people to improve and refine their skills. We all pick up bad habits and the best way to counteract that and operate at the top of our game is to continuously and consistently improve ourselves.”

Anyone can use the Lite version for free for an unlimited amount of time. It gives access to the first two chapters of episodes and is available at www.juicetdp.com.

Cash Simply set to celebrate new corporate brand and unveil expansion plans with high flying industry event

Evening with recruitment sector pioneer John O’Sullivan set to challenge industry leaders on best practice and market opportunities

Cash Simply – one of the recruitment industry’s leading providers of outsourced back office services – is set to unveil plans for expansion under the new name Simplicity in a high-profile launch event at London’s prestigious Vinopolis on Thursday 26 May.

Following an extensive review and development of the products and services, Cash Simply – now repositioned as TempSimply – will sit under the new group brand Simplicity.

The specially organised event has been designed to provide a networking forum where industry leaders will be invited to share in the celebrations with a special keynote address from pioneering recruitment industry entrepreneur John O’Sullivan.

David Thornhill, Cash Simply’s managing director, said: “We are very encouraged by the growth and new starts that we are seeing across the industry, and we want to make a strong statement that we have the capacity and the ability to serve any business that needs a versatile and accomplished partner for anything from administrative services to financing and payroll.

“We are perfectly positioned, with an enviable track record in the sector, to partner many of the businesses which make up the dynamic UK recruitment industry valued at around £24 billion.

“The new brand structure and redesigned website will offer a robust platform for future growth, both for us and for our customers, so the re-launch is a major milestone for us,” Thornhill added. “What’s more, we are very proud to be able to celebrate alongside a successful and much-respected industry leader.”

At the evening event, managing director of peer-to-peer learning forum Elite Leaders John O’Sullivan will address invited business leaders on the challenges facing the sector, drawing upon his own experiences as one of the recruitment industry’s most successful entrepreneurs.

O’Sullivan came to prominence as a true industry leader when he founded the Best International Group, which he took from ground zero to over £100m turnover in less than two years. Since he sold Best to Spring Group in 2003, John has helped numerous recruitment firms to take their businesses to the next level as a highly experienced non-executive director.

Today, John O’Sullivan is widely recognised as not only one of the industry’s most successful entrepreneurs and business leaders, but as a champion of best practice and development for likeminded and ambitious recruitment consultancies.

“As we emerge from a tough few years,” explains O’Sullivan, “it is important that recruitment firms recognise where money needs to be invested to ensure the longevity and successful development of not only their own businesses, but of the industry as a whole.

“Every company, from brand new start-ups to the biggest players in the industry, need to understand how they should be investing in things like training and staff development,” added O’Sullivan, “and it is great to see companies like Simplicity offering tangible, proven-successful ways for them to do so.”

Simplicity is the new group brand for six key business units: TempSimply, PermSimply, PayrollSimply, BackofficeSimply, GainSimply and VATSimply, which provide a range of services from funding through to back office management and administration.

OK so what is an “augmented reality CV”, well I have to admit I wasn’t sure what augmented meant to start with, so I checked out the definition in the dictionary and came up with “to make larger; enlarge in size, number, strength, or extent; increase”. I not sure if it is the best way to describe this CV, but it certainly makes you want to find out more!

From what I can make out this isn’t really for the mainstream, as I suspect for one it will be expensive and secondly I suspect it will be more relevant to graphics or IT industry professionals, wanting to show off their skills in a more dynamic way.

Which is why the first Augmented CV was put together by cw jobs for David Wood the co-founder of Symbian, who I cannot believe even needs a cv!!

Still you have to say it is impressive and if you want to catch the eye of a employer, you can be sure it will and whether David likes it or not he will get some very interesting offers.

Below is a video of his cv in action:

Now if you think you have the personality or the ability to show off, then CW Jobs are offering a competion for your chance to WIN your own AR CV plus £500 worth of Amazon vouchers, by telling them why you should have your CV converted into augmented reality.

So as to get some idea what goes into putting such a sophisticate cv together then you will get a clue from the following video put together by Jason Badbury:

One thing for sure this takes your cv into the next realm, a little more creative than the ones you highlighted Andy!

I have to admit I do not read the Sun although with a readership of 3 million and 20 million unique user visits to their website, it was with some surprise to find that after they launched their free to advertise job board, that there are actually very few jobs advertised.

Mind you it did take a little effort to find their site after the announcement from Recruiter, because as usual recruiter are not keen on giving the reader a good user experience, by not including a link to the job site. What are Recruiter so scared of, I can only assume they just do not understand social networking or web 2.0!

So if you are looking for some free recruitment advertising pop along to The Sun Employment site, to take advantage of this offer. Obviously the site demographics will not suit everyone, but at least you are not going to get lost in the thousands of jobs advertised on the likes of Monster or Jobsite.

As job boards go, the Sun’s is very simple to navigate which fundamentally is more important than anything, the only negative is that they seem to have been hi jacked by a few get rich and commission only jobs, they need to be careful of these as again it will effect the user experience. Most importantly it is free and I am sure they will drive some candidates over to prospective agencies and employers.

Doesn’t it just P*** you off when corporate companies have a complete disregard to their clients. Here we have the perfect example of “biting off the hand that feeds you”, except in this case the Guardian are trying to keep it quiet, because they are placing our candidates to our competitors.

Fortunately John Reilly the MD of Reilly People spotted this and has brought it to my attention, and rightly so he is very annoyed!
For some reason the Guardian thinks it is ethical to set up their own recruitment company, using all the candidates that where generated from the revenues, artwork and creativity supplied by us the recruiter.

Obviously as John is a customer of the Guardian it makes more sense to get his take on the situation, which is below:

The Guardian job board competing with recruiters with the help of our money

It has emerged that five months ago The Guardian set up an ‘Emerging Revenues’ group, which pitches out candidates from its database, the database that we pay to attract candidates to, and arranges interviews for a fee, effectively acting as a recruitment agency and thereby competing against its clients.

When I, as a recruitment agent, pay to advertise a job on Guardian.co.uk and a candidate responds, they are invited to post their CV on the Guardian database as well as send it to me, the advertiser. Since approx five months ago, these CVs have been used as a basis for The Guardian’s own recruitment ‘agency’ unbeknownst to many of their advertisers. So although I’ve paid to attract the candidate, they are now not only replying to me but also to a competitor. I have been paying to load a competitor’s database and the CVs my ads have attracted can be potentially pitched to my clients and potential clients.

This has implications for direct advertisers also. They may get a response from an ideal candidate only to find he or she may have alternative job opportunities presented to them also.

I am very disappointed by this and feel that a moral line has been crossed. The Guardian has continued to take my money without letting me know that their business model had changed and they would use the CVs I paid to attract to compete against me.

I agreed to pay The Guardian on the basis it is a job board and not a recruitment agency. Reed.co.uk has always done this of course but we all know they are recruiters and their site has been free of charge. The Guardian is charging us and then competing against us, so the terms ‘cake’ and ‘eat it’ come to mind. Recruiters like me have paid very significant sums to help launch and support the Guardian internet job board and to get it to this point. To have that board now bite, rather than support the recruitment industry in very tough times smacks of sharp practice to me and is capitalism of the most ruthless sort. How exactly does that chime with the Guardian’s editorial stance and brand image?

All Guardian advertisers, agency and direct, need to raise concerns about this. Response to ads we pay for ought to be private.

I am sure there are a few who will agree with John´s sentiments and if so feel free to comment.

Well it seems that the failed chief executive of Woolworths has finally launched his recruitment job board mypeoplebiz.com, contrary to the seething advice from Andy of Sirona Says. I have to admit that I was about to lay into Trevor too, because at the end of the day we recruiters have seen it all before when someone without recruitment experience thinks they can do a better job!

I cannot criticise too much because at the end of the day if we do not change or adapt nothing would evolve and if you had to pick the biggest grave yard it has to be the dot.coms and in particular the job boards. So for Trevor to attempt this, it has to be a huge risk on an already dented profile.

So hearing of the launch I was looking to see if I could pick holes in their attempt to take on the likes of Monster and Linkedin, but at the end of the day I have to admit I really like the site, it has the potential to do really well, because the have understood what is missing from the referral websites Zubka and Jobtonic and has a clean and simple layout.

Unfortunately though by trying to be different their site could be open to abuse from candidates applying to the same job online, which the agency had already submitted then to and on top of this don’t forget companies use agencies to cut out the thousands of cvs they would need to scan, from every Tom Dick and Harry.

So do I think mypeoplebiz.com will succeed, my gut feeling is no because in truth it is just another job board in a crowded market, but I have to say the idea is innovative and with good investment they have the potential to break out of the crowd.

Still one thing Andy didn’t know is that Trevor is no fool, because he is in partnership with a sound recruiter in Frank Varela, whom I am sure can steer the company to success with his accute knowledge of the recruitment industry.

As I slowly empty my in box I finally get  a chance to answer Paul’s request to give tribehq a mention. He in actual fact sent me a press release, which is below if you wish to read it, but if I was you I would just jump straight in and have a play.

To date there have been far too many web application aimed at the jobs market, in truth it is over crowded which can mean that a genuine contender could get lost with all the competition. Therefore when you come across a real gem it is important to get the word out and I think tribehq will be one of them.

Having had a quick play myself it became instantly obvious why it should succeed, because they have taken the best bits of twitter and Linkedin and combined them. The idea is the simplicity of Twitter but with the ability to connect quickly with people within your industry or as they put it tribe. A tribe could be made up of doctors, recruiters or even a Amusement and Recreation Attendants tribe!

Although it may be a great idea, but without good marketing or momentum they may not survive, still they have started with an excellent produced video, but they will need to up the viral effect as they have only 33 in the recruiter tribe at the moment.

What is TribeHQ http://www.TribeHQ.com from TribeHQ on Vimeo.

Press release (24 April 2009):

With Twitter rapidly morphing into a mainstream, mass media, celebrity sensation, a new micro-blogging platform with a professional twist has launched.

TribeHQ http://www.tribehq.com is the world’s first purpose-built “micro-jobbing” / ‘social recruiting’ platform for people within the same occupational tribe (eg IT professionals, nurses, teachers, engineers, recruiters). Tribe members form alliances, share ideas and knowledge, and get close to the current issues and tribal buzz in their profession, both locally and globally. Members can converse directly with employers and ask questions about their work culture and job vacancies prior to applying.

TribeHQ is breaking new ground and challenging a number of long-standing recruitment conventions, effectively re-engineering the online job search model.  Instead of a job seeker going to a directory-based job board or putting their career credentials on a social networking platform, TribeHQ uses job-matching algorithms to automatically align tribe members seeking a new job with opportunities that meet their career preferences. Companies can promote their employer brand and tap directly into a targeted community of talent, ensuring they reach the right tribes and tribe members. Tribe members can enter into a real-time conversation with employers, asking questions about the job or the company. This conversation encourages applications from better informed candidates and ultimately maximizes the candidate-job-employer fit.

“We developed TribeHQ to combine the concept of niche talent communities with micro-blogging,” say founders Paul Jacobs and Tim de Jardine, who have recruitment technology and employment communication backgrounds.

“We’ve noticed over the years a lot of clutter on job boards and we didn’t believe that merely listing job vacancies on a social networking platform and hoping someone will find you using a hash-tag was the way to go,” says de Jardine.

“Our goal is to humanize recruitment.  We believe recruitment should be conversational. The top employers are realizing this and are engaging with their target audiences in their own territory,” says Jacobs.

The founders also see TribeHQ as a very real opportunity to reach occupational groups, some containing many millions of professionals worldwide, who have not traditionally involved themselves in other networks such as LinkedIn and Twitter.

The TribeHQ platform continues to be developed with a number of core features and innovations soon to be released. Job listings are free for a limited time.

TribeHQ carves out fresh territory in social networking and recruitment.

For more information, please contact Paul Jacobs, Co-founder, TribeHQ on +64 274-892-662 or paul@tribehq.com

I was forwarded this press release from Enhance Media for their “Year ahead Conference” which should be of interest with some major speakers, in particular Facebook. They were probably the buzz in recruitment this year, with all the application trying to take advantage of social networking and the promise of a new way to get candidates, personally I would be interested if any worked!

Online Recruitment 2009 – The Year Ahead Conference

29th January 2009, Royal Geographical Society
This week Enhance Media announced the date and line up for their annual ‘Online Recruitment 2009 – The Year Ahead Conference’.
Now in its fifth year “Online Recruitment 2009 – The Year Ahead Conference” will be held in central London on 29th January 2009. The event is one of Europe’s largest annual online recruitment conferences and this year’s event will address the key issues that HR professionals, media owners, recruiters and advertising agencies will face in the online recruitment space in 2009.
Attending the event will give anyone involved in recruitment an essential insight into direct recruitment, using the internet to source candidates, how to reduce hiring fees and which channels and technologies can deliver manageable, effective online hiring in 2009. The topics and speakers include:
Facebook – Facebook will show how recruiters can use social networking sites to engage with candidates and how Facebook’s own tools can generate high quality applications for a role.
PricewaterhouseCoopers – PricewaterhouseCoopers will share a practical case study showing how blogging can aid interaction with candidates, promote an organisation and develop a new source of talent.
YouTube – YouTube will demonstrate how online videos can be used to promote and develop employer brands and attract talent. Also, how video CV sourcing has become a credible and effective recruitment channel.
Daxtra – Daxtra will present an overview of recruitment process automation technologies and show how, in a candidate rich market, technology can reduce the administrative burden during hiring.
Workcircle – Workcircle will explain the role of job board aggregators and how they are changing the shape of online recruitment. Essential listening for anyone thinking of using a job board.
Enhance Media – Enhance Media will discuss the future of online recruitment, Web 3.0, talent pooling and what we need to do in 2009 to be positioned for online recruitment success in 2010.
Bracknell Forest Council – will show how a non-consumer brand employer can use the web to successfully attract and on board candidates and engage with Generation Y employees.

The cost is frozen at last year’s price – £349 – and each delegate will take away information and all presentations on a free data stick.
The last Enhance Media Masterclass Conference sold out within weeks of being announced and places on the Year Ahead 2009 are limited.
For more information please contact Thomas Prince on 0207 731 9643 or email thomas.prince@enhancemedia.co.uk.

OK in case you haven’t heard Recruitment Juice are finally moving to their next production and having watched their first series, I for one will be keen to see their second.

If you have not watched their training videos on New Business, I did a review here and if the quality stays the same then I am in no doubt it will be rated as high as the John Cleese training videos, which I watched when I first got into sales.

So rather than re word their press release I have copied it below, but before you budding recruitment comics complete, please take time to do this survey about “what candidate qualities actually matter most in recruitment” and I for one have a few thoughts like most of you recruiters out there.

Recruitment Juice Needs YOU!

Opportunity to make a mark and take part in the funniest industry videos ever made

18^th November 2008, London UK: Recruitment Juice (www.recruitmentjuice.com), producers of the most entertaining training tools for the recruitment industry, is offering YOU the chance to get involved in their new series, the Juicy Bits of the Recruitment Process.

Series 2 is about to be filmed and the company is putting a casting call out for people and businesses who would like to take part. “We’re on the look-out for creative juice;” said Matt Trott, Director of Recruitment Juice.  “There are so many fantastic personalities in our industry, and while Sunshine Recruitment is NOT what the real world is like, the tips, expert input and solutions to common challenges all come from real people doing well in business. So we want to highlight and applaud some of the heroes out there, in classic Recruitment Juice style!”

There are various ways in which you can get involved. Recruitment Juice is looking for a selection of people and items to include in the new series. We want ideas about experts we should be interviewing, people who want their faces on film, un-explored comedic talent, heroes who should be lauded and a whole host of props and products. If your football team mug is crying out for its 15 minutes of fame, your company letterhead has just been redesigned, or your favourite Kermit the frog puppet is being unfairly ridiculed in the office, we can help!

So if there’s someone you think deserves a mention, a funny prop you think we’ll never be able to work into the script, or if you’d like to suggest yourself and grab a permanent spot in recruitment history….

· Click:  http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=WNjCou_2fW59FHQ8oxmvdcWg_3d_3d

· Answer the easy-peasy qualifier question

· Tell us about your idea

All the winners will have their details included in the credits, giving their business extra visibility to peers, clients and partners all over the world for many years to come. The first Series, The Juicy Bits of New Business – A Recruiter’s Guide, was incredibly well received across all sectors of the industry and has sold thousands of copies into 15 countries so far. The new series, code-named The 12 Steps to Recruitment Heaven, covers all stages of the recruitment process. Following the established Recruitment Juice style, the set of 6 DVDs includes incredibly funny drama skits in the offices of Sunshine Recruitment, Ripper’s Round Up of statistics and lessons learned and vox pops of industry experts giving their professional viewpoint on the different elements.

One lucky entrant will win dinner plus hotel for two in London during the festive season and everyone who enters will go into a draw to win a copy of the new series, launching in January 2009 and priced at RRP £799 + VAT. The second series can currently be pre-ordered at a very special price of just £499 + VAT, but this offer ends on 30^th November so if you’re already planning on making a purchase, you need to act fast.

We’ll include as many ideas as we can, but as you might expect, the judges’ decision is final and incredibly inappropriate entries will be consigned to the bin!  Don’t delay…. click over today!

]]> http://www.recruitment-views.com/recruitment-juice-needs-you/485/feed 0 http://www.recruitment-views.com/company-whistleblowers/484 http://www.recruitment-views.com/company-whistleblowers/484#comments Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:02:27 +0000 Stephen http://www.recruitment-views.com/?p=484

After reading the news on Nevres Kernal in regards to her whistle blowing on Haringey Council, which if acted upon would surely have saved the life of Baby P. As a result I wanted to look a little deeper, with the BBC website lacking in information about the Whistle Blower in question.

What transpires is that Nevres was discredited and suspended at the time when she made her thoughts know, which makes you wonder why anyone would want to be a whistle blower in the first place, with a virtual guarantee of loosing your job or at the very least being ridiculed, and at the very worst “murdered”. When you compound this with the Government bringing in legislation to protect these people you would have thought this kind of thing wouldn’t happen, but she is not the first of course and a few other high profile cases can be found here on Wikipedia. More recently the suspicious death of Barry Jennings, who spoke about the dead bodies and explosions in building 7 of the world trade centre certainly also makes you think.

I digress a little, but I have to wonder how the BBC can be so unattached, when I had to go to the Sun god forbid to get some accurate info, which was a result of reading this article from Community Care I have also copied below.

Social worker in race case claims Haringey ignored children at risk

Posted: 22 February 2007

A senior social worker has claimed Haringey Council left seven children at risk of abuse and then subjected her to racial dis­crimination and hostility for whistleblowing.

Nevres Kemal last week had her claims of racial discrimination and less favourable treatment as a result of whistleblowing accepted by an employment tribunal by default because the council failed to respond to them.

The tribunal, held at Watford, made no findings of fact in the case. This week, Haringey rejected Kemal’s claims and is planning to appeal against the decision.
Article continues below the advertisement

In papers submitted to the tribunal, Kemal said that in October 2004 she reviewed the case of seven children, aged three to 16, where sexual or physical abuse was suspected. She said: “The files I was passed indicated that children had been sexually abused and left in the care of their abusers for nine months.”

Kemal said five of the children were not given a medical examination at the time of the initial allegations, which “lost potentially important forensic evidence”.

But she said, when she reported the claims, managers failed to act.

She then claimed the council suspended her after the parent of a teenage girl made an allegedly false complaint about her acting aggressively, and a final warning was placed on her record.

But Haringey Council this week described Kemal’s allegations as “spurious and incorrect”.

A spokesperson said that “detailed investigations” were carried out after Kemal made a number of allegations, which found that correct procedures were followed and children were not put at risk by any action or inaction by the council.
Article continues below the advertisement

Explaining the council’s failure to respond to the allegations at the tribunal, they said the tribunal papers were never served on the council. “Haringey only became aware of the claim on 16 February 2007,” they added. “Having now seen this claim, we will robustly fight this case. It is very rare for a council to make such an unequivocal rebuttal of an employee’s claims.”

Kemal’s lawyers have written to health secretary Patricia Hewitt calling for a public inquiry.

Contact the author: Mithran Samuel

Further information
Mental Health

After reading the Sun and the article above, you couldn’t help feel that all these political correct recruitment policies we all have to adhere to these days, has back fired almost as though we hide behind the structure rather than use our common sense. And as a result we we now have a death of a poor defenceless baby and someone who gets castigated for having the balls to stand up and criticise her department.

I could go on about recruitment policies, internal management, grievances procedures, HR etc, but in some ways this event has covered it all.

What more can I say apart from just being disgusted!