If you are one of these people (like me) who is constantly Tweeting or Facebooking or lurking on some social media or professional networking site our survey results will be of interest.

It revealed that nearly half of all recruiters check their applicants online before hiring them. To be a bit more precise, 46% of recruiters surveyed check up on their candidates, so that means they Google your name and see what comes back, they check your Facebook page, your tweets and your blogs. They also cross check your LinkedIn page with your CV so make sure you are being honest in both places.

What it boils down to is this, if you do tweet or Facebook or whatever and don't protect your updates then at least make sure that anything you do post isn't likely to put off a potential employer or you are ruling out 46% of your applications before you even get to interview stage. A bit of advice, go and Google your name and see what comes back.

Read the full survey results here

ooops almost forgot Good News Friday this week...

First off my good news is that I'm getting a new phone on Monday, after mucho trouble with my current one I cant wait and neither can everyone else here I reckon, no more ranting from me... well about phones anyways.

We had cake today for Tom's birthday - always good news in my mind - here's what's left

Good news on the job front for teachers

And more from Merck

and Bord Gais

Good news for us in here, we ran a survey with some candidates and 85% would recommend us to a friend. Oh and we hit 400 friends on Facebook - yippeeee

Morning all

Thanks to @darraghdoyle on Twitter this morning I came across this pic he took in Dublin last night - as you can see jobseekers are finding new and innovative ways to source jobs all the time.

I was at Salesforum.ie last week and there were some jobseekers there networking with sales managers and prospective companies they wanted to work for, again thinking outside the box. One candidate gave me a business card with his contact details on one side and 10 words used to describe his skills on the other side which I thought was another different way to get your name and skills noticed by a prospective recruiter. I think networking events are invaluable if you are jobseeking, try to find something in your area which means you get to meet other people in your industry sector and network with them over coffee or a discussion. This can be offline or online, Linkedin have lots of discussion groups, Twitter is another one where you can connect with people and if you are a "techie" there are tonnes of forums where you can showcase your skills.

A blog is another way of becoming an expert of sorts in your chosen career or industry, check out this guy for a good example of a blogger who used his blog to find a new job.

There's always the sandwich board CV - I dont know if anyone in Ireland has tried this yet but it worked for this guy back in 2008.

What "outside the box" thinking are you using to jobsearch? Better still if you found a job using some alternative method why not let us know? 

Over the last few weeks I noticed a few articles about the web and papers about new and different ways of finding a job, I suppose thinking outside the box a bit and supplementing the traditional methods like online and newspapers with other things such as LinkedIn.

As you no doubt know from the developments on the site over the last 12 months we are big advocators of web 2.0 and of making life easier for our candidates by giving you ways to search for jobs outside of RecruitIreland.com, for example you can search for jobs from your Facebook profile.

Another thing we have become involved with (addicted to) over the last few months is Twitter, I explained a while back what it was all about but earlier I got to thinking how you could use Twitter to source a new job or help you find career advice. First off there are lots of great sources of advice on Twitter, we regularly offer tips and there are other users such as @krishnade and @CV_cafe who also regularly offer tips and will also give advice if you ask it of them.

Secondly it's a great way of keeping in touch with what's happening in the world news wise with @breakingnews and many others.

Thirdly you can connect with other job seekers and create a bit of a community feel to your jobhunt, interact with other candidates who are in the same boat and learn from one another. You can also connect with industry leaders, professionals in your industry and recruiters and in some cases you can connect directly with companies.

All in all, it's an excellent source of information, it's another tool to source jobs or contacts and it's a great way to touch base with people and build relationships. And it's fun - did you know lots of famous people are on Twitter these days including @Stephenfry and @wossy (Jonathan Ross)?

I have noticed while researching this that some jobsites have a direct feed of jobs pouring into Twitter, we didn't want to go down this route with our account because I think it's quite impersonal but on the other hand maybe it's something that would be of value to you the jobseeker, pop a comment below and let me know what you think?

Well I avoided it for long enough I guess so here are some completely useless snippets of info about me;

1. Full Name?  Victoria Anne O Callaghan (HATE IT)
2. Nickname?  Vic, Vicks, Bicki (kids), Victore, Victoria Beckham and The Voc (Thanks Lorraine and Laura)
3. Birthplace? Cork (eh would anyone wanna be born anywhere else??)
4. Eye colour? Blue usually (Red when hungover)
5. Hair colour? Blonde
6. Marital status? Single single single
7. Children? None yet, I have two godchildren though who are great!
8. What do you do in RecruitIreland.com and how long have you been there? I am the Website Development Manager, sounds makey uppey I know and have been here since day one, 9 years!
9. What would be your last meal if on death row? This is a tough one, my Dad’s Spaghetti Milana (old family recipe), chicken wings from the Elephant and Castle and ohhhhhhh this is really difficult, a roast lamb with all the trimmings including garlic cheesy potato! Anything bad for me basically!
10. What is your drink of choice? Diet coke if a soft drink, Lukozade if hungover, vodka and cranberry/diet 7up if out, a good cosmo has to be the best cocktail or a jaegerbomb if it’s a shot (which it usually is!).
11. Favourite sweets/chocolate/dessert? Not a huge sweet lover but if I had to choose then a crème egg or a wispa. Love Lindt chocolate as well. Dessert, sticky toffee pudding or bread and butter pudding.
12. What food do you dislike? Pineapple, sweetcorn, celery, peas, beans, coconut or anything with sweet and sour mixed.
13. Favourite TV show? Drama - Greys Anatomy or any kind of American slush really. Reality - Love Dragons Den or any kindof cookery/food programme. Comedy - Gavin and Stacey is hilarious.
14. Favourite Movie? Too many to list here, I love old Audrey Hepburn movies in particular or The way we were is a fave.
15. Favourite CD at the moment? Viva La Vida - Coldplay
16. Favourite sport to watch? Tennis if I was pushed to pick…
17. Most overused phrase? Usually a form of expletive (for **** sake like) but when not its either “Ah I do need a new pair of (insert colour) shoes!” or “Am I not always right?”
18. Favourite restaurant? The Market Bar in Dublin, Man Fridays in Cork
19. Favourite website(s)? Far too many to list but I have to log on to these every day beaut.ie, Facebook.com, twitter.com (via twirl)
20. What is your least favourite trait in others? People who lie or over-exaggerate and people who are late for everything (except work Tom)!
21. What time do you get up for work? 7.24 ish – after snoozing about 6 times
22. Where do you want to retire to? Anywhere that’s sunny and has friends/family nearby (ahhhhhhhhhh)
23. Who was the first person you spoke to today on the phone? Sinead (who sits at the other end of the office)
24. Best/favourite holiday? New York for city/shopping holiday, Iceland for madness and surrealism or Zakynthos for sun and relaxation last year, despite being abandoned by XL.com
25. Favourite toy as a child? I had a doll who used to exercise, she had a pink and white stripy leotard and leg warmers or I had a petite 990 I loved.
26. What three luxury items would you want if on a desert island? Laptop (with internet access), sunscreen and a griddle pan
27. Your dream/fantasy job? To own my own internet business – a new idea every day!
28. Something people don’t know about RecruitIreland.com? 2 things, I get to work with my baby brother every day (lucky me eh) and they call me the RecruitIreland twit (nice that isn’t it?) because I am www.twitter.com/recruitireland

I was reading an article earlier in yesterday's Evening Echo about Facebook and how detrimental it can be to your career. The article explained how 13 flight attendants were fired recently for talking about customers online and discussing how they claimed Virgin flights (their own airline I hasten to add) have cockroaches on board - nice! 

The article went on to say how one in five employers admit to researching employees online with two thirds admitting the info they found online influenced their decision.

This got me thinking about another article I read a few weeks ago which was encouraging employers to allow employees to access Facebook in work because it increased productivity and morale in general if employees could take a time-out and social network for a few minutes and by blocking Facebook it was allowing a bad atmosphere to permeate the office culture.

I use Facebook regularly - for research purposes you understand?   So as I said I use it regularly and I have blocked my page from being viewed by anyone except my own friends and I know I'd never (at least I hope I wouldn't be) stupid enough to diss my boss or announce I was taking a sicky on my profile (not that I ever ever do things like that).

So my musing brings me to this - do employers actually use Facebook to research their candidates? Would one drunken picture actually make a difference if you had decided to hire someone? and for you users out there for God sake change your privacy settings for your own sake...

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/16/20081023/ttc-boss-uses-facebook-to-catch-out-staf-6315470.html

Have a look - how funny - I mean in all fairness, number 1 your boss is your friend, number 2 even if he/she isn't they can still see your status! Clearly he was still trashed and not thinking at all...

Obviously we would never condone "pulling a sickie" but I dont think anyone can say they never did it, come on now, remember back in that part-time college job when you were out late on a Tuesday or Thursday night (in Gorby's in my case, good old days!!) and woke up and couldn't move out of bed never mind go and stack shelves or be nice to customers!

The joys of modern technology eh, who knows if we had Facebook back then we could have all been this clueless, I somehow doubt it though....

I was having a chat with a friend last night about work amongst other things and was filling her in on all the exciting exposure we have been getting for the web 2.0 stuff we started doing a while back. Damien Mulley was great to write a blogpost about us and Krishna De interviewed me last week for PodcampIreland's Blogradio show which again was really interesting.

Chatting about all of this and I realised my friend had glazed over and was merely nodding and looking vacantly at me while trying not to yawn. When I asked what she had understood from our (albeit one sided) discussion her response was "Flipping nothing" so I realised just because I find this intriguing and understand the ins and outs of it (eventually) not everyone actually does soooo below is my "Web 2.0 for dummies" - not that any of you are dummies I hasten to add ;-)

Web 2.0 - is basically where websites try to interact more with their users, my understanding is that it's all about creating a community feel and allowing users to interact with one another and share information and for us its been about making the site more "human" and giving it a personality while adding things like this blog to let users interact with us, generate content and make suggestions.

Twitter - is a really simple tool to use to relay to your friends or anyone really what you are doing, be it everyday things like eating or working. It can be used to poll people so for example when this blog went live I asked people to look at it and give me feedback. Its essentially a quick and easy way to maintain contact and get opinions or advice.

A blog - is just the nonsensical raving of people like me - on a serious note its a way to give users relevant and informative content that hopefully they will recommend to other people and come back to check regularly

Social Networking - is websites like Facebook, Myspace or Bebo, you register and interact with friends and for me its great to post photos and keep in touch with people I don't see every other week!

RSS - this one is tricky and to be fair took me months to get the hang of - you will be seeing the little orange logo all over the place online - its so easy believe me - you download whats called a reader, I use feedreader.com because it was recommended to me but there are lots. Then you can add a feed to it so that you don't have to log directly onto a site every day to check it.

If you are anything like me you will love surfing various websites and checking them regularly - my life has not been the same since I discovered RSS, now I just add feeds to my reader and its automatically updated when something new goes onto the website - you can use it for anything from blogs to newspaper websites to our site to collect new jobs for you and just open your feedreader in the morning and flick down through them - it makes the whole process so much easier and faster.

Linked In - This is more of a professional website, similar enough to the whole social networking thing but people use it to network professionally. If you check out someone's LinkedIn profile it reads almost like a CV, you can be recommended by colleagues or clients and it's becoming more and more popular as a way to source jobs or put yourself on the market so to speak! Check out our profile here.

So all in all this web 2.0 stuff just makes your life easier, makes doing everything faster and gives you lots of new ways to keep in contact with people be they work colleagues or friends....

No doubt I have forgotten some vital parts to 2.0 so feel free to comment away below!!

Vic