It’s easy to get caught up in the world of social media. It might seem like everyone is telling you that you need 75 different social media profiles and all sorts of other things to “ENGAGE ONLINE”. It’s important to do what works for your business, or at least to choose which mediums work best for the time you have- and we would recommend blogging as one of them. Don’t believe us? Here’s seven great reasons to start a blog for your business:

1. It get helps to get your business known.

A good company blog that provides news and insights will be linked to by other blogs and websites as well as being linked to on Social sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Regular blogging has the inevitable result of putting your brand in front of more people and building visible presence on the web. This helps you foster relationships with new customers and potential candidates.

2. It increases your credibility

If people feel like they know you, they’re more likely to want to be involved with you, either as a customer, a collaborator or a colleague. Having a blog gives your business a “face” so readers can feel like they know you and trust in what you do, building your relationships with potential customers. A blog is one of the simplest ways for customers to contact you, for you to reach out to them and to keep people up to date with updates, new products or services and other happenings from your business. A blog positions your company and attracts the right type of leads as it develops and publishes content for the market you want to attract.

3. It establishes your business as “an expert”.

After you start to become known, a blog helps you become known as an expert in your field. To establish and then reinforce this idea that you’re an expert in your field, you obviously need to update your blog regularly with content that proves you are. This could be new innovations from you and your industry, your opinion on topical subjects or how to do something, or even lessons you’ve learned. Not only does this all show you know what you’re talking about, it also establishes you as a go to person in your niche, which is great for attracting customers and candidates. If you’re passionate and know what you’re doing, people will want to work with you and learn from you.

4. It increases traffic and subscribers

There will always be a direct correlation between how much traffic your website gets and how many sales you make. Visits to a company blog inevitably increase traffic to the rest of your site (your blog should be integrated to to your site and linked to your social media profiles too). And more traffic to the rest of your site means people can find out more about what you do – and your blog has already shown them you know what you’re doing! This again makes you attractive to customers and candidates.

5. It improves Search Rankings

Google and other search engines take note of when your websites updates – regularly updated sites will be better tracked and picked up by search engines. By having a consistently updated blog, you will come up higher in search rankings than you did before. Google and other search engines are increasing the value and the priority of blogs and social media assets such as Facebook and Twitter in their search results.

6. It helps you manage your reputation

As we’ve mentioned already, a blog is a really easy way to give your business an online “face”. Keep in mind that these days, anyone can post anything on the web about a company and it can be good or bad. By starting a blog for your business, you can help manage your reputation, talk about what you do, share your knowledge and even answer questions from fans and critics alike.

7. It Allows for Better Customer Service

A blog allows customers to find information about your business that might not be in your FAQ’s. Customers can find information about news and updates at anytime of day or night, they can contact you through the comments and ask questions, that you can respond to quickly and more efficiently, and you can gain valuable feedback from your readership – readers can tell you what they like and don’t like via their comments and feedback – while using that feedback to make improvements and build a better business, as well as business relationships, with your client base.

And a bonus point? A blog can reduce overall marketing expenses.

A recent US survey showed blogs can reduce costs per lead by 62% over traditional marketing. If you’re already going to blog for the great reasons we’ve listed, saving money and generating great leads sounds like a good bonus, to us!

So there you have the reasons why we think your business should have a blog. If you haven’t started a blog for your business yet, you definitely should – it’s a cost effective, easy way to interact with your existing customer base, gaining new customers and establishing your expertise. And if you’re convinced by the why, but want to know the how, now? Don’t worry – we’ll follow this up with a post of blogging tips, too.

If you’ve heard people talk about Social Media for recruitment, job hunting or business, but are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information that gets shared on sites like Twitter and Facebook everyday and what you’re supposed to do with it, you’re not alone. So we’ve decided to help you make social media work for you! This case study is the first in a series to teach you how to narrow down the potential information overload to the things you’re looking for. First up – the #NZJobs Twitter hashtag.

So, what’s a hashtag?

Hashtags are simply keywords preceded by a hash symbol (“#”) that makes them both searchable and linkable on Twitter. Hashtags like #followfriday (or #FF) help spread information on Twitter while also helping to organise it. If people agree to add a certain hashtag to tweets about a topic, it becomes easier to find that topic in search, and creates communities of people interested in the same topic who can share information related to it. This is a powerful tool because it allows your tweets to be seen by people who don’t even follow you.

And how do they work?

For example, if you search on #GoGirls (in any correctly spelt variation – it’s not case-sensitive), you’ll get a list of tweets related to the TV show. What you won’t get are tweets that say “you go girls!” because “go girls” isn’t preceded by the hash tag or all one word. Even if the tweet itself doesn’t mention Go Girls, as long as the hashtag is added, it will still show up in search. And if you click any instance of the #GoGirls hashtag, you’ll see all the results related to it. You can save a hashtag search in your Twitter client of choice so you’re always up to date.

Tell me about #NZJobs?

The #NZJobs hashtag was established to narrow down all the tweets that were about jobs available in New Zealand and, to a lesser extent, for job hunters to add to their own tweets if they’re openly looking. There are several people who’ve successfully used the #nzjobs hashtag to find candidates for New Zealand jobs; recruiter Steven Kempton (@StevenKempton) is one of those people.

Having worked in recruitment for 15 years and now running his own company, Search Niche, Steven has seen a lot when it comes to recruitment. He started his recruitment career in Silicon Valley when job boards like Monster and Dice had just started and were rapidly gaining momentum and he agrees that social media sites like Twitter have made job searching so much easier on local and global levels. And he’s got quite the Social Media pedigree himself, having blogged for 8 years and being one of the first 50,000 members of LinkedIn and first million users of Twitter. He currently uses Twitter for both personal and professional use.

He’s made 2 placements through Twitter – one with the jobs hashtag which he found through friend of jobs.co.nz, Justin Flitter. He thought it sounded good so gave it a try.

“I tweeted a job with the hashtag and someone replied to it, who was also following the hashtag. He put me on to someone he thought would be good for the position. It turned out this person wasn’t exactly suited to the role, but I actually had another client who needed someone with his skills. I put him forward and he got the job, he’s working there now.”

Steven will keep using the hashtag, but he’s quick to point out that it’s just another good way to network, it’s not the only or even best tool for recruiters. And it hasn’t changed the basis of what he does – its a good way to find names, but you still have to do the work from there, calling them, following up.

“So the hashtag is valuable to someone who watches it. You have to think of Twitter, and social media in general, as noise. The #nzjobs hashtag cuts down the noise and makes it easier to find what you’re looking for.”

He makes a good point about why you need to cut down that noise, “I think if you have a brand that’s already attractive, that already has a massive following, then it’s easier to blast your jobs out there and people will respond, because they’re already following you and they like you. You don’t need a hashtag or anything targeted. But if you’re just starting out, or you’re putting out something really specific, like jobs in NZ, hashtags are a great way to help people narrow down that information or find you, even if they’re not following you.”

So it’s worth trying?

“Using Twitter hashtags is worth a try – you never know what you’ll find. Even I didn’t find exactly what I was looking for, but I still got a placement out of it, and that made it worthwhile,” says Steven.

He also cautions about how you use Twitter if you’re recruiting,

“don’t waste too much time on Twitter or any social media site thinking of them as the next revolution in recruitment. You can let Twitter or LinkedIn become massive time sinks if you’re playing on them all day. Use them to build your network, chat to people. And on the plus side, social sites are a great way to cut down the amount of research you have to do about someone. And using hashtags like #NZjobs make finding people a lot easier.”

Questions / Comments ? Post them below!
The Jobs.co.nz team

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The Jobs.co.nz blog is a little different this week – we were pretty low key about it but we’ve just passed our 2nd birthday! We think it’s a pretty key milestone for our little business and decided we would celebrate in style. Last year we went to our Facebook Page to ask our fans which charities to donate some fantastic ‘Chocolate Cake Company’ Cakes to – and you picked The SPCA, Life Flight Trust, Cancer Society and Wellington Free Ambulance. It was a great day and we had the chance to give back to some awesome people making a difference! If you haven’t seen the photos – check them out here.

This year we thought we might change it up a bit and instead of treating others to celebrate our birthday, we would treat you, our Facebook fans. Many of you who are job hunters and have had interesting tales to tell – whether you’ve been made redundant from a company you’ve worked at for years, or maybe you’re a graduate who has struggled from the first day out of University to secure your dream job.

As far as your job hunt goes we will try to help you as best we can, but in the meantime we thought we could give you the opportunity to win a prize that will help you take a break and enjoy life in the classic Kiwiana style.

We are stoked to announce our giveaway of the ultimate Jobs.co.nz Kiwi BBQ Package! The package includes an awesome classic Webber BBQ, (in blue!) a full meat pack, 2 cases of Epic Brewing Co. beer and all the condiments to go with. We bet you could just see yourself outside on a sunny day, (Well, with the summer we’ve had – that might be stretching it) cooking up some sausages with a cold brew in your hand. Not too shabby right?

To enter, all you need to do is go to our Facebook page, become a fan, then click on the ‘Promos Tab’. Enter your details then invite at least 5 of your friends to enter! And that’s it. Pretty much. Nothing else we need from you!

Oh, we almost forgot – you also get a pair of these sweet Jobs.co.nz stubbies so you can look the part like we did last week. (Check out all of our BBQ photos here) Goodluck!

The Jobs.co.nz team

A few weeks ago we gave job seekers a few resolutions for this year, including the (always important) CV update. This week, we’re showing you just how to do that, with 5 pieces of crucial advice to make your CV stand out – including some you might not have heard before.

1. Your CV should be telling a story.

Ramit Sethi, the New York Time’s best-selling author who runs popular blog “I will teach you to be rich” recently ran a live webcast where he showed viewers the CV that got him offered jobs at Google, Intuit and more. If you expected it to look different, you’d be disappointed; it was a standard template in a standard font. No coloured paper, no crazy layout, no design gimmicks. Sethi’s message was clear – it’s about the content.

His two non-negotiable points for successful CV writing are that every word needs to earn its way on to the page, and that your CV must tell the story of you – succinctly and convincingly. His CV, for example, told the story of “the technology and psychology guy”. Every skill or achievement listed must directly hark back to that central theme – otherwise, it hasn’t earned its place on the page.

Think of it this way – if hundreds of people apply for a job and your CV will get about 15 seconds from a hiring manager – why would you want to waste any of those 15 seconds showing skills or attributes that won’t help you in the job or don’t contribute to the story of you? And if they use ranking software as a way to filter CV’s when they receive them, that compares your listed skills to those required in the job – well, you can see how important listing only relevant details becomes. (You can see more of his tips here)

If you’re changing jobs types, for example, you might not have the exact job history they want, but you have the skills they need – so you just have to start telling the story of yourself as an account manager, instead of what your your previous position was.

2. Your CV should tell a different story for every job.

Once you’ve got your head around telling the story of you, make sure it’s a story that matches the job you’re applying for. Consider the job description your cheat sheet. For example – if you have a history that could show you as a project manager or a writer, and you’re applying for a project management job, you want to emphasise the project management skills instead of presenting a CV that shows you as a writer. (If you have a generic CV or a LinkedIn profile that shows you as a writing project manager, that’s fine. This CV is job application specific.)

It sounds obvious, but many people just submit the same CV over and over, without any regard to what the employer wants, expecting a hiring manager to pick out the bits that are relevant to them. It’s not their job to do that – it’s yours to put those skills they want in front of them.

3. Make it measurable.

You’ve heard this before, I’m sure, but it’s better to show measured accomplishments. Anyone can do a job, but showing measurable achievements shows just how well you did a job. What has more impact: writing that you sold shoes, or that you consistently sold over 120% of your $1000 daily allocated budget for said shoes?

If you just list your achievements without providing metrics, you’re not showing how you excel, you’re not proving you didn’t just show up and go through the motions at your previous jobs. It can be hard to see what you’re achieving when you’re working at something every day, so start keeping a record of your achievements. Once a week, take some time to reflect on what you accomplished in the past week, and what you learned. (It’s a great confidence boosting exercise, as well.) Talking your achievements through with a friend can also help you work out how to frame them in a measurable way.

4. Get rid of “references on request”.

Everyone presumes you have references. So if you’re not going to provide the names and details of references in your CV, you shouldn’t waste valuable space with “references available on request”. Space where you could be listing more relevant skills or achievements. Again, if you only get 15 seconds of a hiring manager’s reading time, do you really want them to waste any of it reading “references available on request”? Besides, you’re not actually helping anyone – either way they still have to ask you for your references.

5. If your interests aren’t relevant to the job, they’re not relevant to your CV.

Remember the advice about every word earning its way on to the page? This includes your interests. If they don’t show skills that are relevant to the job you’re applying for, or the story you’re telling about yourself, they don’t need to be there. Interests should reveal a quality that will help you meet the employer’s needs. If you were a World Champion Chess player, put it down – it shows focus, intelligence, strategic abilities and achievement. But as for your random hobbies (‘Plays guitar, likes sport’) – they’re not helpful and waste even more of your 15 seconds.

A final note; one or two pages is good. If you’re writing three or more pages, your words aren’t earning their place, and you’re not being specific enough.

Have you ever been given great CV advice that helped you get an interview? Let us know in the comments.

Twitter has become a great tool for both job hunters and companies looking for candidates. Whichever camp you’re in, Twitter allows you to directly interact with your target audience and build new networks, in real time. But the success you get from using Twitter can be directly correlated to how you use it, especially when it comes to the tools you use. With hundreds of followers to watch, Twitter trends to track, hashtags to follow, and a frequent need for continuously updating search results, getting by on the limited feature set available on Twitter.com is difficult at best. Enter the Twitter client.

What’s a Twitter client?

Twitter clients are third-party tools for using Twitter – and unlike Twitter itself, they can have several features that make it simple to organise the huge amount of information you can every day get from Twitter. They allow you to track keywords, hashtags, users, lists and more.

Twitter clients can be web-based, installed on your computer, or running on your mobile phone. Our favourite clients are Hootsuite and Tweetdeck – they’re free, very easy to use and make constant tweaks to how they work based on user feedback. They’re also both available on the web and as Iphone apps. Tweetdeck is also available to download to your computer.

A preview of what your Tweetdeck may look like

Why you should use a Twitter client to look for candidates.

Both Hootsuite and Tweetdeck allow you to track statistics on your tweets, by telling you how many people clicked on a link, replied to or retweeted your tweets. This can teach you a lot about the sort of tweets that your followers like, and the ones they don’t. Then you can adjust accordingly to provide the types of content your followers want, which leads to better interaction, more leads and more suitable candidates.

It makes sense that you would want to tweet when you know your followers are online, right? Well sometimes this is when you’re in a meeting, have left work for the day or other times you’re not sitting at your desk eagerly awaiting responses from followers and potential candidates. Some Twitter clients (yup, including Tweetdeck and Hootsuite) allow you to schedule tweets, something you can’t do from the Twitter website.

Overwhelming your followers social streams to the point of annoyance should be a concern for any company. This approach of honing in on how to better target your audience without, frankly, spamming them is a great way to make sure you’re on their radar for the right reasons. Frustrating your followers with too many updates will mean they will unfollow you and probably won’t be that keen to work for you either.

This approach takes two steps: First, find out exactly when the best times for you to tweet are, by using a website that can track your audience. Mashable offers a few options here with “Five tools to better time your tweets”

Next, schedule tweets for those times about job vacancies, cool things your company is doing and all the other things you’ve just found out your followers like, that will attract candidates to your company. Be aware though, that scheduling is about putting content out at the best times, not just about when you’re not available. So it’s important that even if you’re not available right then you, or someone in your team, should respond to any replies in a timely manner – say a couple of hours or if it’s late at night, first thing in morning.

While this post is primarily about using Twitter, you can actually manage other social media accounts from a Twitter client. Both Tweetdeck and Hootsuite let you add your company Facebook account and manage posts and replies from the interface. Hootsuite also lets you add your LinkedIn, WordPress and Google+ accounts.

Why you should use a Twitter client to find a job.

Most job hunters using Twitter for job-finding-purposes are doing so from their personal accounts. This can make it tricky to keep track of all your potential networking contacts, what jobs are being tweeted about and what’s happening in your industry.

Twitter clients allow you to add columns to your view that can track all the tweets from lists of people you’re following – like contacts, potential employers, industry peers – as well as keywords and job-search-related hashtags (like, say, the #NZJobs hashtag).

This means you can just follow these columns when you’re wanting to concentrate on job seeking. You can add columns for lists of personal things too and both Hootsuite and Tweetdeck let you drag and drop new people into any list, making it really easy to manage your lists, and columns, from one place.

Preview of Hootsuite and how it can be arranged

Like the point we made above for companies, you can control your Facebook activity from either of our recommended Twitter clients. Because you’re able to separate the job-finding elements of Facebook too, you can use the client at times as an exclusive ‘social job seeking portal’, saving you time and sanity during your job search.

Do you currently use a Twitter client? Will you use one to help your job or candidate search now? Let us know in the comments!

Check out Jobs.co.nz on our Twitter and Facebook page!

Salary Negotiation. It’s one of the most difficult parts of the job search – because so many people are unsure when to do it, what to say and even, sometimes, when to walk away. Every interview, and interviewer, is different, but there are some strategies you can use in any negotiation, to help you get the salary you want.

Try your hardest not to give a number.

There’s no way to sugar-coat this – whoever names a number first loses the upper hand. You can risk selling yourself short several thousand if you name a number first. Anna, who works in project management, recently negotiated her salary at a new job.

“When they asked me what my salary range was, I hedged and said I’d like to know what they’d budgeted for the position and we could go from there. They told me the budget was $95,000. I was going to say my range was $80-85,000! I’m now getting paid so much more than if they’d known I was happy with far less.”

Conversely, naming a range that’s way out of their budget could exclude you from a job you’re really eager for, and would potentially accept less for.

Get to know the market rate for your job.

It can be very helpful to search online job boards for similar positions that you’re applying for and having a look at the jobs that list a salary to find what are the market rates are. Or you can attempt to find out what salary your colleagues and peers are on – Depending on your current job or situation you may find it easy and appropriate to talk to your peers about their pay, but this won’t always work in your favour though so be prepared for that. Knowing your market rate is important so that you don’t get lowballed, and so you can also decide where on that scale you sit, and how much you should be getting at a minimum.

Be prepared to negotiate with the other perks you want.

Not getting the salary you want isn’t always a cause for despair. It’s possible to negotiate other perks. Perhaps they’ll agree to pay for training or job-related training for you, let you work from home for a certain amount of hours, pay for a carpark or cover your health insurance.

Graphic designer Roseanne recently negotiated working from home two days a week and a car park for herself in exchange for being paid $5,000 less than she originally wanted. And she swears she’s happier with this arrangement rather than the extra money –

“I get more done in less time because there are less people distracting me, so I finish earlier and I don’t have to take the bus anymore to save on parking. Both of those things make my life better than the extra money would have.”

Know your bottom line.

If someone is offering you thousands less than you know you’re worth, and you’re not getting anything in exchange, in the form of training, reduced hours or other perks, you should question whether you really want this job and if you really want to work for a company that would under-value you by so much.

Every situation is different, I know, but give it some serious thought. There are lots of jobs out there – don’t indulge in everyone else’s “it’s a recession, take what you can get” fear automatically – several large New Zealand companies still reported big profits last year.

And not to get all touchy-feely on you, but if you let a potential employer undervalue you so much from the outset, it’s really hard to recover from that when you start working for them.

Practice negotiating before you get there. On almost everything.

Most people feel “weird” negotiating. Which means they have little practice at it. Which means when it comes to negotiating anything for a new job, they feel uncomfortable and have no idea what they’re doing. So, how can you expect a decent result for yourself in salary negotiations, against someone who does it all the time? Practice! Remember that negotiating is just getting the best deal for you. The other party has every right to say no if it doesn’t work for them.

Start off with small things, like at a local market, or even your favourite clothing store. When I worked at a well known NZ shoe store, we gave discounts to people who bought 2 pairs of shoes if they asked for it. And only if they asked for it. Get comfortable with negotiating. You won’t get what you ask for each time. In some of these scenarios you might not get anything. But you’ll be much more comfortable when you come to salary negotiation – an area where both sides usually expect to haggle a little.

Are you a master negotiator? Or is it something you could work on? Let us know of any tricks you’ve got for getting a salary you’re happy with.

Happy New Year and welcome back to the Jobs.co.nz blog! Every new year brings with it new year’s resolutions, so to help you start the year right, we’ve compiled the top three resolutions for both those of you recruiting and also those looking for jobs. They’re heavily social media focused, and they’re all simple ways to get the most out of your search for candidates or jobs this year.

To kick it off, here are three easy resolutions if you’re recruiting:

Recruitment Resolution One: Make Social Media part of your process.

Forgive us if you’re already all over Social Media for Recruitment. You can skip this point! For those of you not there, or needing help…here’s the thing: despite the protestations of a lot of companies, the social media recruitment revolution is happening. In 2012, job sites like ours are only one part of the formula you should be using find new employees, contractors or collaborators. There are other businesses finding candidates through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and and other social mediums. Better candidates suited for your jobs. Candidates waiting to be found by you.

It doesn’t have to be an Odessey-esque undertaking though. Work out what social media to target and just give it a go. At a minimum we recommend a LinkedIn account and a Twitter or Facebook profile – or both – for your business. (If you need help setting them up, let us know, we’d love to help!) If you don’t have a website, you can make your Facebook page your business’ homepage too. All of these platforms allow you to interact with people who could work for you (or become your customers). It’s the best way to target people who work in your area and aren’t actively looking for new jobs, but are open to new opportunities. Check out this great post by Greg Savage – ‘Recruiters – everyone is a candidate, all the time’

Recruitment Resolution Two: Get involved online in your business space.

Great candidates are attracted to companies that are experts in their industry. It’s simple to show people you have the expertise by commenting on industry-relevant websites and blogs or offering to guest post on those sites. You can also give advice in 140 characters on Twitter, or through Facebook status updates. If you generate conversation on topics related to your company (ie for recruiters, you would discuss recruitment trends – check out Jonathan Rice’s Recruitment Blog), you never know who will follow you to ask advice…or tell you they’re interested in becoming part of what you do.

Recruitment Resolution Three: Get innovative with how you’re finding candidates

Instead of only using online jobs boards to publish your jobs, why not increase your exposure to a wider audience? A great way to capture candidates’ attention is via the sites they spend the majority of their time – for example, social media sites or lifestyle sites. One idea is to utilise the paid for Ads section on Facebook and LinkedIn. Using Ads on these sites allows you to target specific audiences and cuts through to the applicants you’re after. For example, Facebook Ads can target age, sex, what pages a person likes, people who like your page and friends of people who like your page. On LinkedIn you can take it a step further and target users with specific job titles. So if you only wanted to advertise to Senior Project Managers? No problem – LinkedIn will suggest relevant titles that can help you find someone with the right experience. And voilà – you know who is looking at your ad’s and are cutting down a lot of the time it takes to read unwanted CV’s.

Resolutions are just as important for those who are looking for jobs. Whether you’re actively seeking a new position or just interested in what’s out there, here are three easy things you can do to stay on top of the job-search game:

Job-seeker Resolution One: Update your social networks.

Having active, up-to-date social media profiles work for job-seekers in a couple of ways. First, they’ll be very high up in search engine results for your name, which is always good when a prospective employer searches you online – provided they’re current and you keep them work-appropriate, which, in the age of google, they really should be anyway.

Second, they’re a great way to network with people you already know, and people you want to know – whether they’re recruiters, the CEO of your dream company or peers in your industry. It’s estimated more than 70% of jobs aren’t advertised, so it’s all about who you know…so get to know the right people!

Job-seeker Resolution Two: Update your CV, too.

We know, we know, redoing your C.V. can be a bit painful. But if you’re looking for a new job this year, or even just want to be ready for new opportunities that come your way, then you’ll need a C.V. that’s always up to date, that you can send out at a moment’s notice.

Start now by dedicating time over the next week to getting it up to date. Next, to make keeping it up to date far less painful, keep a record of all the awesome things you achieve at work and any new skills you learn (an email in draft form works well for this), and add them to your CV on a regular basis, like the first day of each month. That way it doesn’t feel like it needs a complete overhaul every time you need to use it.

And since you’re updating your C.V. anyway, make sure you explore some different formats, like an infographic version. Sounds hard? It’s not – sites like visualize.me do all the hard work for you by pulling information from your LinkedIn profile. You can even operate with both a traditional and infographic version if you want, like this US reporter: http://cjspurlock.squarespace.com/resume-cv/

Job-seeker Resolution Three: Make some dates.

Once your profiles and CV are updated and you’re following those people you want to get to know…get in touch with them. Resolve to make contact with at least one person a week, minimum, in a company or industry you’re interested in. If this makes you go cold with fear, start small: start with people you already know – friends, old colleagues etc. – and ask them for contacts. It’s much less scary to approach people if you’ve been given an introduction through someone you already know. This way of introduction automatically recommends you to a new contact, too.

Let us know if you’ve already started on any of these, or if you have other resolutions up your sleeve! And if you have topics you’d like us to cover on the blog this year, let us know in the comments.

The end of the year is traditionally the time you recognise what you’ve accomplished in the past year and plan where you’re heading for the next year and beyond. If you’re looking for a new job, whether it’s another role within your current industry or a new challenge altogether, the upcoming holidays are a great time to start your search and get applying. So, today we’d like to bust some of the myths you’ve been told about job hunting post Christmas and offer some holiday networking tips.

First up, some lies you may have heard:

“A companies budget for new hires is spent by the end of the year”

Many people believe that at the end of the year a companies budget to hire new talent is all dried up. But, most companies don’t work on a calendar year, instead they work on the standard New Zealand financial year, ending in March. Others started in July, or October…you get the picture. And even if they do work on a financial year they could review and find a surplus. Even if budget is slim, if they need someone to do what you do, it’s likely they’ll try to make it happen. No one wants a good hiring opportunity to slip them by!

“Businesses aren’t working between Christmas and the end of January.”

Almost every business has to keep running over this period. The “holiday period” is a great time for businesses and management to reassess their needs, and decide what the larger changes in the new year will be. This often means hiring new staff – that includes finding a superstar in {insert your job field here}!

“The holidays are when you should plan your search, and you should start talking to people in late January.”

The holidays are a great time for planning. But you should plan and search – the Christmas and New Year period is definitely more relaxed than the rest of the year – you can take advantage of the festive mood and start engaging with the companies you are interested in before things start getting crazy in the New Year. Besides, if other job seekers believe these same job-hunting myths then you’ll be at even more of an advantage with less competition.

“Maybe they have a job going…but everyone’s tied up with deadlines and family stuff.”

Deadlines and family obligations are much more in effect before Christmas, with parties, Christmas shopping and spending time with family more pressing then. After Christmas is a prime time to talk to companies, when work loads are decreased and “holiday mode” makes everyone more amenable to starting the year off right – by which we mean, hiring you – obviously.

Now that the you’re more convinced now is a great time to continue job-hunting and contacting potential employers, here are a few tips to help your search:

Use your Christmas Day party to network. Yes, with your family.

Your immediate family might know about your job hunt, but do your cousins? Aunts? Close family friends? They’ll all have as many contacts as strangers or business associates and chances are they’ll be even more willing to help you, as well as already being big fans of your talents. (Ok, ok, we know this won’t go for all of your family, like your crazy cousin Andrew maybe, but there’s probably quite a few of them willing and able to help.) If you’re still not convinced, it’s estimated that one of the highest company job placement techniques is via referral, and in a study by JobVite (US), job placements via referral came up as the top choice for best quality candidate placements.

And when you think you’ve networked enough… network some more.

The holiday’s are a great, relaxed time to have conversations with peers, mentors, friends and even strangers you meet at the pub about what kind of job you’re looking for and what skills you have. Think we’re being too pushy on the networking? Experts estimate around 75% of jobs are found as a result of it.

Use your social networks too.

If you don’t have a LinkedIn profile, use your downtime to make one. For a few hours of your time (at the most!) it’s a great way to show off your skills and past experience. And it will be one of the top results when a potential employer searches for you online. Why wouldn’t you want to give yourself such a great advantage for a minimal amount of effort? Once it’s up and running, you can start connecting to all those new people you might have met through networking. Check out how to ask for referrals on your social media pages such as LinkedIn on our blog here too.

Be proactive – have your CV ready and call your ideal companies.

This might seem obvious, but bear with us. A lot of people leave jobs before Christmas or in the early new year so there’s often a chance that jobs you want could be open and not yet advertised. Cold calling can be daunting but if it gets you in the door with a company you really want to work for, it’s got to be worth it!

If you apply for a job and get an “out-of-office”, then get in touch with the person again the afternoon of the day they’re back.
This gives them time to go through their emails, get a handle on their work load and by the afternoon they’ll be ready welcome an opportunity to chat to you about current or potential job openings, instead of staring at another spreadsheet with a post-holiday brain.

Remember to relax and let other people do the legwork for you.

Or rather, let us do the work for you. (What, you thought we’d make it all the way through without some shameless self-promotion? It is our blog after all…) You can set up alerts on Jobs.co.nz that will email you jobs in your chosen field. Click here to set up your own alerts.

So you can see why the holidays are a great time to go full-speed-ahead in your job search and get a jump on the competition. Good luck!

Today on the Jobs.co.nz blog we’re going to go over how to write the perfect job ad for attracting the candidate that’s right for your job. Job ads will vary from company to company. Some may be designed, some simple but descriptive, some short and to the point.

The key target for any job ad is to reflect your company’s style, culture and attitude – you need to convey this to the job seeker to demonstrate the type of person that would fit the role and your company. It’s all about the content…

The Title:

The job title is one of the most important parts of the job listing. It’s what grabs the job-hunters attention and determines what will be showing in online search results. Think about this wisely – craft the title to be search engine friendly to guarantee the listing will get the best chance of higher views. For example, a title for a ‘Junior Office Executive” should not be described as “Young Bureau Decision Maker”; job-hunters know the accepted titles of the roles they are applying for, and will be searching using the standard terms. It’s also smart to include the company name as this can be a selling point for the job. If that’s not applicable, keep the allusion to the company simple and descriptive, i.e. a “leading bank” as opposed to saying “blue-chip” or “major multi-national”.

Company description:

This comes next because it’s a great idea to give seekers an idea of your company and culture even before they begin to read the job description. Someone who is young and looking for a more relaxed environment is probably going to be turned away from a more professional company description, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Use the company description to attract the candidates you want by envisioning the type of people reading your advert and responding positively. A good example of a company description on Jobs.co.nz can be found by Aurecon here: http://www.jobs.co.nz/jobs/view/id/127822

Job description:

You can take a few different approaches here – some advertisers tend to be very descriptive about the position and others keep it simple and to the point. As long as you are listing key qualification requirements, key experience requirements and any other necessities they will need to have a chance at an interview, you won’t go wrong. If you are cutting it down too fine, and neglecting to include that the applicant needs a BA in English, you will be wasting a lot of time reading extra unwanted CV’s.

Ideal Candidates:

Tailoring your job ad to attract the right candidate can be tricky, but the more information you give the better. It’s best to steer clear of cliché traits such as ‘detail-oriented, team-worker’, as it can be easy for candidates to take down these points and use them without examples in their CV and interview. Instead focus on tangible skills they need to have developed at past jobs – for example, this job advert from @Instagram (An iPhone Application) here http://instagr.am/about/jobs/. As well as describing what experience the candidate needs, they point towards what the candidate should be passionate about:

“We’re looking for people who want to face interesting infrastructure challenges. You should be constantly excited by questions like: How do you tackle increasingly vast amounts of data? You should get a thrill out of processing gigabytes of data to inform product decisions. You should be able to design and implement systems that scale seamlessly with the vast numbers of users that decide to share their lives through images every day.”

After this, they list the relevant qualifications and skills the applicant should have. Sure, this might seem like a big request, but if that’s what you want you need to ask instead of getting applications that are a waste of your time and theirs!

There are a few “non-basics” of job ads that are often over looked. When writing your ad, consider these points too:

Salary:

Salary can be included, but it’s up to your company here. We do recommend listing a salary, therefore targeting hunters that know they are in that range instead of, for example, someone over-qualified applying for a lower-budget role.

Steer clear of Jargon:

Using descriptive terms just for effect, which don’t actually have relevance to the role or company can bog your ad down and make you seem like you’re trying to over-impress. Keep to the point – opt for short sentences or bullet points, especially in job requirements. Avoid terms like “Opening for a very dynamic and energetic executive for a very exciting IT consulting organization with a new and innovative business model” – Instead, you could word it creatively, such as “We have an executive position opening, suited for someone who is motivated by new, exciting technology, whose role won’t fit in a small box”.

Traditional job ads can tend to be boring – and are often skim read by job-hunters, especially when they can have hundreds of job ads to go through. By making sure your job ad is somewhat exciting, different or interesting, it’s much more likely to be read through properly – increasing your chances of finding the right person!

And remember, it’s all about reflecting your company’s culture – if you’re a young start-up overflowing with entrepreneurial spirit, posting a formal and corporate ad probably won’t attract the right people for your job. And even if you’re from a conservative corporate, if you can avoid jargon and capture your audience with great language, you will still find a better, more targeted audience response.

Stuck for ideas? Contact us directly on info@jobs.co.nz, or check out some of the most creative job ads we’ve come across below: