idealpeople blog

We were delighted to be invited to speak to a group of final-year students at the University of Northampton’s Business Schoolearlier this week, on the subject of Careers in Recruitment.
We’ve recently been on a one-company mission (particularly in the absence of much help from the industry’s, ahem, “Regulator”) to change the way Recruitment as a […]

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We’ve talked before about the scary stuff that can happen if you employ a weak or flawed hiring strategy, and we’d be nuts not to suggest that bolting in third party support from a trusted, reputable talent broker is the best solution. But sometimes really crazy stuff supporting this case plays out in the real […]

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This morning, we spoke to a client who have been struggling to hire an Executive Assistant to the CEO. It’s rare for us to be working on a pure soft skills position such as this to be honest, but this is a special client, so we said we wouldn’t mind working to try and get […]

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We frequently get enquires from IT professionals who are considering ditching the permanent job and going Contracting. Just last week, we were asked to draw up a list of pro’s and cons for one particular individual, so we thought we’d share our advice to the wider community. So over to our Head of […]

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Recently, we’ve had a fair few candidates asking us about the effects of having had quite a few jobs over a short period of time on a CV.
This is an interesting question.
So here’s the quandry: you’re currently in a job you hate. Getting up in the mornings fills you with dread. […]

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We came across an interesting article on how to deal with Recruiters when you’re looking for a job on CFO.com earlier in the week.
It’s interesting partly because most of the advice is pretty poor stuff, but also because of the viewpoints offered towards contigency recruiters.
In case the word contingency leaves you scrabbling for the close […]

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What’s a boomerang anyway? We’re not talking about a wooden artefact with Australian/Aboriginal/Indian roots which is used for sport, hunting, war or just for fun.
No, “Boomerang” means a ‘returnee’, a former employee, your ‘alumni’ – someone who used to work with you, and for whatever reason – now they don’t.
We’ve come across the […]

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Following on from our recent look at which programming languages are the most sought-after, the next thing on our minds is to the enter the great debate on Operating Systems.
Linux (and indeed the ofther UNIX flavours) evangelists and Windows evangelists don’t get on, or so it seems. A quick search of Google […]

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社交网络服务（Social Networking Service) 简称SNS。最初的网路社交用于交友，但随着Linkedin, Xing.com( 原OpenBC）等社交网络的发展， 越来越多的商务人士开始使用这些资源为自己的求职以及招聘打开了一扇方便之门。在此我们不谈Facecbook及Myspace这类主要偏重于个人交友娱乐的社交网络，更多同大家分享下商务用的网络工具。
在此我想大力推崇下Linkedin(www.linkedin.com)与Xing(www.xing.com)。如果你是求职者试问下哪些是自己最衷爱的求职途径？很多人会告诉我：招聘求职网站，企业招聘主页，大型招聘活动，猎头服务等等…在华人求职者的圈子里，想到用Linkedin与Xing并不常见。这里给大家提供个链接http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/01/ten_ways_to_use.html 主要是讲使用Linkedin的十大益处。文中提到Linkedin的网络上有全部的财富500强的企业，其中你可以看到499个企业的总裁级别人士的相关资料。这无疑增加了你与很多成功商务人士的联系机会。但显而易见，成功主动与他们联系并得到职位机会的几率并不是乐观。但是，为什么不反其道而行之？－让机会主动找到你。
首先建立一个出色的个人资料，很多人只是在Linkedin上挂个名字，没有详细个人资料。其实这样是大大浪费了Lindedin的优势。做自己的个人资料就像在Linkedin上公开自己的求职简历。出众的Profile会吸引很多专业人士以及猎头的眼光。
其次不妨公开自己的联系方式。试想如果企业或猎头非常欣赏你的背景，如何同你联系呢？当然Linkedin上有Inmail等服务，但是很多人青睐高效的生活，一个可公开的Email地址是非常简单明了的信息传递。如果不想自己的私人生活受到打扰，不妨设置一个专门接受Linkedin邮件的邮箱。如果有猎头对你感兴趣，这将是一个很好的开始。
另外，设置Interested in－Career Opportunities. 在Linkedin中的个人设置中有个选项Contact Settings。其中有Opportunity Preferences，如果你有意得到招聘消息，不妨点上Career Opportunities。这样猎头才可以主动和你联系-如果他们看到你有选这个意向。
最后，记得利用这些社交网络同猎头建立关系。有时猎头会针对一些适合的工作机会联系你，有意与否，不妨给联系你的人一个礼貌的回复，互相加对方为第一级直接联系人。这样不但扩大了你的network，将来如果有合适的机会，寻访专家也会在第一时间想到你。

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A few days back, we released the relatively unamazing news that the most high-demand job position within the technology industry was in fact that of Software Engineering. Armed with this information, we thought it might be an interesting idea to work out which particular Software Development skills were in high demand last year. […]

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