15 Career Transitions Blogs to Investigate

There are many career-related blogs being written by recruiters, careers advisers, branding experts, job seekers, journalists and others.

Some of these focus on a particular aspect of career transitions such as CVs or presentation skills whilst others are more general.   I’ve been following a few of these blogs for some time now.

The list below is a very tiny selection of blogs which may be of interest to people changing jobs or considering a career change.

Blue Sky Resumes  -The blog of Louise Fletcher who runs her own CV writing business (in the US). Content is particularly focused on personal marketing and branding via the CV but there are also posts on related areas such as interviewing and job searching in general.

Career Rocketeer  - Blog covering job search, career development and personal branding.

Careerealism  - Blog covering all aspects of job search and career change with articles, news items, videos, advice and guidance. Careerealism also provides daily advice on career questions via its Twitter feed.

Careershifters  - Careershifters is an online community aiming to provide inspiration to people going through, or contemplating, career change. Posts include news items as well as more general job search and career change topics.

Chris Brogan  - Chris Brogan is a social media and social networking expert so this blog is not explicitly career or job related. However, he posts interesting, practical and very useful articles on how to make the most of social media.

Glassdoor Blog  - Glassdoor’s main website provides information about salaries, interview questions and reviews relating to major companies. The blog covers general career related posts, particularly interview and salary topics, but also includes general topics and the wider work environment.

Guardian Careers Blog  - The Guardian newspaper’s careers blog, featuring articles about the job market generally plus specific advice and guidance from journalists and guest contributors.

Laidoff and Looking  - Wall Street Journal blog following the personal experiences of job-seeking professionals. Includes weekly input and advice from career management and other professionals.

LinkedIn Blog  - Official blog of the business networking site with posts relating to new features and developments, success stories plus tips and advice on getting the most out of LinkedIn, including using the site for job search.

Making Research Work  - Career Workshop’s own blog, focusing mainly on research sources for job search and other aspects of career transitions information.

Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist  - Penelope Trunk’s business is Brazen Careerist, a social network business helping young people manage their careers. Her blog contains career advice from an unconventional point of view. Strong language and adult topics – not for the easily offended.

Personal Branding Blog  - The blog of Dan Schawbel, an expert in person branding. Advice from Dan and other commentators in text and other formats. Relevant to career development, management and networking. Although aimed at generation Y, the advice is relevant to everyone in the marketplace.

Sirona Says  - The blog of Andy Headworth, recruitment strategy specialist and commentator on the use of social media in recruiting. Andy includes plenty of advice and comment of relevance to job seekers, from the recruiters point of view.

The Job Lounge   – Career transitions blog with a focus on CVs (it’s a US site though, so make that resumes).

The Work Buzz  - The blog of CareerBuilder, the job search website. Focused on the US so some of the job opportunity information is not relevant, but the tips and advice can be interesting.

Keeping up to date with blog updates and comments

When you find blogs that you like, you can keep up-to-date with new postings on the blog using RSS feeds. We’ve got information on how to do that – click here to download our RSS guide.

Like this information?  Want a copy for future reference?

You can download this information as a PDF from our website. 

Do you know any good career-related blogs? 

Please let us know via comments or through the website.  Thanks!

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I want to claim Career Workshop’s page name but can’t do that without 100 fans. At the moment I am somewhat short of that number!

If you would consider becoming a fan, even temporarily, it would be much appreciated!

Click here to visit Career Workshop’s Facebook page.

Thanks!

Job search sources for the sports industry

Last month our newsletter looked at a range of sources for current awareness and background research for the sports industry including government agencies, trade associations and professional bodies, journals, job vacancy sites and recruiters.

I thought it would be useful to post these on the blog as well.

Government departments and agencies

Department for Culture, Media and Sport – Government department responsible for cultural and sporting activities and supporting the tourism, creative and leisure industries.

SkillsActive – Employer-led body (Sector Skills Council) focusing on the skills required in the sport and recreation, health and fitness, outdoors, playwork and caravan industries.

UK Sport – Accountable to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, UK Sport works in partnership with the four home country sports councils and other agencies to lead sport in the UK to world-class success. They are responsible for managing public investment and distributing National Lottery funding in sport.

Sport England – Government body charged with creating opportunities for people of all ages and abilities to play sport in England.

Sport Northern Ireland – Government body charged with creating opportunities for people of all ages and abilities to play sport in Northern Ireland.

Sport Scotland – Government body charged with creating opportunities for people of all ages and abilities to play sport in Scotland.

Sports Council for Wales – Government body charged with creating opportunities for people of all ages and abilities to play sport in Wales.

London 2012 / Olympic Delivery Authority – Website covering all aspects of the London 2012 Olympics including information about the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) and the Olympic Delivery Authority.

Trade and professional associations

Association for Physical Education – Membership body for professionals or companies delivering or supporting physical education in schools and communities.

British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences – Professional body for sport and exercise sciences.

British Olympic Association – Independent organisation which selects the team for the winter and summer olympic games and provides support services to the governing bodies of the sports represented at the games.

British Paralympic Association – Charitable organisation responsible for selecting, preparing and managing the team for the summer and winter paralympic games.

British Universities and Colleges Sport – National organisation for higher education sport with the aim to increase and enhance participation, performance and competition.

Business in Sport and Leisure – Membership lobbying and promotional organisation representing private sector companies in the sports, leisure, hospitality and tourism sectors.

CCPR – National alliance of the governing and representative bodies of sport and recreation. The membership section contains links to the websites of the member governing bodies.

Commonwealth Games Federation – Organisation responsible for the planning and direction of the Commonwealth Games and assisting in education through sport development and physical recreation.

English Institute of Sport – Organisation providing a nationwide network of sport science and sports medical support services for elite athletes.

European Health and Fitness Association – Non-profit organisation based in Brussels which aims to raise standards within the European health and fitness industry and to promote best practice in instruction and training.

European Sponsorship Association – Membership association for the sponsorship industry covering sponsorship in sport, broadcasting, the arts, music, environment and charity.

Federation of Sports and Play Associations – Umbrella organisation representing trade associations in the sports, play, golf and angling industries.

Institute of Sport and Recreation Management – Membership body for professionals engaged in providing, managing, operating and developing sport and recreation services.

ISPAL – Institute for Sport, Parks and Leisure – Professional body for people working in the sport, parks and leisure industries.

National Council for School Sport – A national forum body for school sport associations and other parties with an interest in competitive school sport.

Sports Coach UK – Charitable organisation focusing on the development of the coaching system in UK sports.

Executive Recruitment

Nolan Partners – Search and selection company specialising in the sports industry.

Sports Recruitment International – Executive search consultancy specialising the sports industry.

Journals

Leisure Management – Trade journal covering news, profiles, interviews and product information for the leisure sector.

Sports Management – Trade journal covering news, features, product information and a supplier directory.

Job vacancy sites

Leisure Jobs – Job vacancy site for the leisure industry including fitness, sports, spas, tourism, travel, catering and hospitality. Search by type, title, location and keyword. Alerts by email.

Leisure Opportunities – Job vacancy site for the leisure, tourism and sports sectors. Search by sector, region and salary band. Alerts by email and RSS.

Anything else?

Do you work in the sports industry?  Is there a source that we missed or which you think we should include?  Please let us know  via the website – we offer prizes and your odds of winning are high because we rarely get any suggestions.  

You can download a PDF list of all the sources listed from the Career Workshop website.

Career transitions, job search and recruitment blogs

I’m starting to compile a list of blogs covering the subjects of:

• career transitions and change
• recruitment
• interim management

Any sugggestions would be welcome – feel free to use our suggestion form or comment on this post.  I’ll write up and publish the list later in the summer.

Getting started with LinkedIn

What is LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is a social networking site for business people and professionals, established in 2003.  It currently has over 43 million users in 200 countries.  The headquarters of the company are in California with a European head office in London.

To use LinkedIn you need to set up an account on the site.  Basic accounts are free to set up and run.  You can also subscribe to gain access to ‘premium’ features but a basic account is fine for most people.

Using LinkedIn for job search

LinkedIn offers two main opportunities for job seekers:

• using your network and its connections to access people, information and companies of interest
• making yourself visible to recruiters and potential employers

It’s also an important way of controlling your personal brand online.

Building your connections and network

LinkedIn makes it easy for you to find other people you know who are already on LinkedIn.  There is a general search function on the home page but you can also automatically check for contacts via the webmail importer (which covers WindowsLive, Yahoo, Gmail, AOL and a few others) or via Outlook or Apple Mail.  You can also search for colleagues from companies you have worked at, or universities or schools attended. 

Make sure that you choose contacts who you have worked with or done business with.  Similarly you should consider only accepting connection requests from people you know.  Your online network should mirror your offline one.

As you begin to add connections, you will see on the home page how your network grows.  So for instance you may start with only 10 connections in your contacts (1st level), but this immediately gives you access to a further 5,000 contacts for instance (2nd level) and then a further 500,000 (3rd level).

Make your profile work for you

Your profile is your showcase and your key opportunity to promote yourself on LinkedIn and as such you should make sure that you complete as much of it as possible.    Add as much detail as you can, because the more complete your profile is the more likely you are to feature in search results.

To make your profile 100 per cent complete you will need to:

• add a photo – make sure that this is a recent, professional picture.  It doesn’t have to be taken by a professional photographer but it needs to look businesslike.  Remember, this isn’t Facebook!
• add details of your current position and your most recent two positions.  If you don’t have a current position that’s ok – it just means your profile won’t be 100 per cent complete
• add details of your education, qualifications and professional training
• add a summary of your skills and experience – make the most of this section to promote the key information from your work history and professional background
• summarise your specialities – similar to the profile you might have written on your CV
• get some recommendations – you need three recommendations for a full profile.  A LinkedIn recommendation can be from a colleague, former employer, academic tutor, employee – in fact, anyone who you are connected to.  Recommendations should be brief and factual.  You can request recommendations from anyone in your connections list.

You should also spend time creating your “professional headline” – this is the subtitle below your name.  Make it interesting and descriptive.   LinkedIn also allows you to post status updates.  If you use these, keep them relevant and update regularly if the post is time-sensitive.  You can use status updates to let people know that you are actively job seeking.  However, again, this isn’t Facebook so keep them business related.

LinkedIn job search

LinkedIn has its own Jobs section (find it along the top menu) where members and recruiters can post vacancies.  Some, but not all, vacancies are exclusive to LinkedIn.

Use the advanced search features to search for roles within a certain proximity of a selected postcode (defaulting to your registered address). You can also search by keyword, experience level, date posted, job title, company, function and industry.

If the recruiter or hiring manager is in your network, the details are provided in the results table.

LinkedIn groups

LinkedIn has many groups related to companies, membership organisations, professional interests, career topics, academic institutions and so on.  Some are open to anyone whilst others have membership criteria.  Groups enable you to network and collaborate with likeminded professionals.  The discussions area enables you to contribute and offer opinions and answers to questions posed by other group members, thereby building your reputation.

Find relevant groups using the tab on the left navigation where you can either search by keyword or via the category menu. 

Questions and answers

Answers is another section on LinkedIn where you can increase your visibility and build your reputation by answering others’ questions and offering opinions.  Answering questions is flagged up on your home page, and on the notifications sent to your connections.  The people who ask questions can also rate the answers that they receive – if yours is rated as the best answer you gain a point of expertise.  Building up points of expertise raises your profile on LinkedIn’s expert list.

Browse questions and answers by category from the Answers tab on the top navigation.

Privacy and information sharing

You need to be aware of how much of the data you are entering into LinkedIn is available to others and how your profile looks to other people.  There are numerous places where you can view your profile, but doing a search on your name from the home page (when you are not logged in) is a good start. 

You can access your privacy settings via the Accounts and Settings option on the top navigation.

The main areas that you can control the settings on are:

• profile photo – who can see it
• elements of your profile – control which details you want others to see
• status visibility – set to just your connections, your network or everyone
• member feed directory – this covers the information that people in your network are informed about in the weekly update, eg your new connections, questions you have answered etc
• survey settings – if you want to participate in market research
• connections list – allowing your connections to see your other connections
• profile views – control how much information is shown to people whose profile you view
• profile and status updates

The amount of information you choose to share can also affect the amount of information you can see about others.  There’s very little point in using LinkedIn for job search if you close down all the information and don’t allow people to find out about you.  However, you do need to feel comfortable with the amount of information you are sharing – which may be more to do with the information you include on the site than the privacy options you select.  Sometimes you will also need to consider client and company confidentiality and competitors when selecting privacy options.

Further support for using LinkedIn

The LinkedIn Learning Centre has a lot of useful background information to help you get to grips with the site and to learn more about its uses.  There are a variety of learning methods including e-modules, webinars and subject guides.

Download a formatted version of this LinkedIn guide

We have produced a PDF version of this guide with illustrative screen shots.  This is free to download from the Career Workshop website.  The information is also online for registered users of the site.

Glassdoor adds new section for interviews

Glassdoor is an online community where people can post reviews and share salaries at companies they are working for, or have previously worked for. It was founded in 2008 to “bring transparency to the workplace so that everyone has the information needed to make better career decisions”. 

The site has three sections: salaries, reviews and interviews.  The interview section is new this month and currently has about 2000 questions from 1000 companies. 

a) Salaries

There are currently 126,000 salaries listed in the GlassDoor database.  Of these, 3,500 are in the UK and the majority of the others are in the United States.  You can search by location (eg US or international) then by all UK or UK city.  You can also search the database by occupation, industry or company.  For instance, searching on IBM in the UK brings back 95 individual salaries for 32 job titles.

b) Reviews

Search by company and location to find what present and past employees think of a company.  For each company there is an overall employer rating and a localised CEO approval statistic.  Each individual review includes pros, cons and advice to senior management.  Reviews are moderated to ensure that each one is objective and not highly biased or retaliatory.

c)  Interviews

This is the most recent section and includes search options for job title, company and a tag cloud of topics (eg ethics, behavioural).  So for instance, a search on Accenture brings up 42 interview reviews which have been posted by people who have interviewed at Accenture.  You can view all reviews or further refine the search by location.  The details of each “interview” include questions asked, techniques, duration, style and feedback.  Many people leave very detailed reviews which can be very helpful for preparation for a specific company or role.  However, it’s also useful simply to browse the questions or tags to test yourself with live questions.

Glassdoor is free to access but to view all the content you need to contribute. For salaries you simply need to share a salary (current or historic) and for interviews and reviews you need to submit a review.  These are completely anonymous and you do not need to give enough information to be personally identified.

Job search sources for the marketing profession

Last month we looked at research sources for the charity sector and it was very, very popular, so we’re following the same theme again and looking at resources for the marketing profession.

The areas we looked at were general sources, trade associations and professional bodies, professional journals, job vacancy sites, league tables and salary surveys.  The links are below, in an alphabetical list.  If you want them in a nice organised format, you can view them in the newsletter. Alternatively download the list as a PDF.

ABC Marketing Jobs – Job search engine focusing on vacancies in marketing, sales, advertising, direct marketing and PR. Browse by keywords and refine with location, keyword and similar jobs. Alerts by email and RSS.

Brand Republic Jobs – Job vacancy site for the advertising, marketing, media and communications industries. Search by discipline, sector, salary and location (region). Alerts by email and RSS.

Campaign – Campaign is a weekly news-led journal for creative, advertising, media and marketing communications. It has news, features, jobs and regular league tables.

Chartered Institute of Marketing – The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) is the professional body for marketers in the UK, and sets professional standards and encourages best practice.

CIM Jobs – Job vacancy site of the Marketer (journal of the Chartered Institute of Marketing). Covers roles in marketing, branding, communications, creative and design, digital, direct marketing, event management, product marketing, market research and media. Alerts by email or RSS.

Creative Match – Job vacancy site covering roles in design, advertising, marketing, PR, film, illustration, photography, packaging and new media. Search by category, location (region) and keyword.

Data Strategy – Data Strategy is a monthly journal which covers all aspects of data management and direct marketing with emphasis on the commercial, legal and technical aspects.

Direct Marketing Association – The Direct Marketing Association is a trade association representing companies operating in the marketing and communications sectors.

Guardian Jobs – Job vacancy site for a wide range of sectors, particularly strong for marketing, media, PR, creative, education, public sector, charity, housing, regeneration, arts, environment and health. Search by keyword, detailed industry categories (eg within a category there are further functional specialisms), location (proximity to postcode or region and county), salary range and job type (eg full time, contract). Alerts by email and RSS.

Institute of Direct Marketing – The Institute of Direct Marketing is an organisation for the professional development of people in the data, digital and direct marketing sectors. They publish a quarterly journal, the Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice, which is available to members or on a pay-as-you-go basis via their website.

Institute of Sales Promotion – The Institute of Sales Promotion is a trade association for marketing promotions companies and a professional body for individual promotional marketers.

International Journal of Market Research – Professional journal covering all aspects of research including applications, methodologies, new technologies, technology transfer from related areas, solutions, strategic and management issues.

Just Sales and Marketing – Job vacancy site for sales and marketing appointments. Search by sector, location, keyword and title. Alerts by email and RSS.

Mad.co.uk Jobs – MAD covers jobs in advertising, new media, media, design, digital, creative, PR and direct marketing. Search by function, sector, job type, location (region), salary range, employer type and keyword. Alerts by email and RSS.

Market Research Society – Professional body for researchers working in market, social and opinion research, and in business intelligence, market analysis, customer insight and consultancy.

Marketing – Marketing is a weekly publication aimed at marketing professionals containing news articles on company and industry developments, product launches, pitches, campaigns and business news.

Marketing Communications Consultants Association – Trade association for marketing communications companies.

Marketing Direct – Marketing Direct is a monthly journal containing news, features, analysis and reports for direct marketers. It covers all aspects of direct marketing including email and mobile marketing, customer relationship management and database management.

Marketing Week – A weekly journal for the industry including company and industry news, product news, new campaigns, people news, special reports, profiles and trends.

Marketing Week / Ball and Hoolahan Marketing Salary Survey – Annual marketing salary survey. Tables cover average salaries by gender, job title, marketing spend and industry sector, mean salary rises and expected rises and average bonuses.

Marketing Week Jobs – Job vacancy site containing roles in advertising, PR, new media and online marketing, CRM and direct marketing and market research. Search by job type (title), sector, salary, region and keyword. Alerts by email and RSS.

Media Week – Media Week is a weekly journal for all aspects of the media industry and covers company news, industry developments, contracts, launches, profiles, analysis, in depth articles and a careers/jobs section.

New Media Age – New Media Age is a weekly printed publication for the interactive media, advertising, internet, social media and marketing sectors. It covers news, features, campaigns and company information.

New Media Age Jobs – The NMA website provides details of jobs in the new media sector, including design, technical, content, sales and account management roles. There are good search options, including function, sector, position type, location, salary band and keyword. Alerts by email and RSS.

Research – Research is a monthly journal for market research professionals covering news and analysis for practitioners and buyers. The website includes a jobs database.

Research Jobs – Job vacancy site specialising in market research appointments. Search by keyword, region, salary, sector and level. Alerts by email.

Revolution – Monthly magazine focusing on digital marketing and containing news, features, showcases and opinion.

Simply Marketing Jobs – Job vacancy website covering roles in direct marketing, research, analysis, communications, branding and field marketing. Search by discipline, sector, location and keyword. Alerts by email.

The Marketer – Monthly journal of the Chartered Institute of Marketing containing news, case studies, interviews and reports for marketing professionals.

What have we missed?

Do you work in marketing?  Is there a source that we missed or which you think we should include?  Please let us know via the website – we offer prizes and your odds of winning are high because we rarely get any suggestions.

Job search sources for the charity sector

There are about 170,000 charities in the UK employing 634,000 people in paid positions and a further 13 million volunteers*.  It’s a big sector and one which many of our clients investigate as an option. 

As with any sector, there are specialist recruiters and niche job vacancy sites serving the needs of people working in the sector. 

* Data source – National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO)

We’ve pulled together a list of recruiters and vacancy sites which will be a helpful starting point for anyone looking to move within, or to, the sector.

Aquilas – Recruiters focusing on the appointment of fundraisers to the not-for-profit sector.

CF Appointments – Search and selection company focusing on the appointment of senior executives and trustees in the charity and not-for-profit sectors.

Charity Action Recruitment – Recruitment company specialising in appointments in the not-for-profit sector.

Charity Careers – Job vacancy site for the charity and fundraising sectors. Search by date posted, location (free text), type (eg contract, permanent) and keyword. Alerts by email.

Charity Connections – Recruiters specialising in the voluntary and not-for-profit sectors.

Charity Job – Job vacancy site for the charity sector. Search by keyword, category (eg HR, trustees, fundraiser), sector (eg arts, animals, disability), salary range, location (region) and job type (eg contract, permanent). Fundraising jobs have additional search categories to refine further. Alerts by email.

CR Search and Selection – Search and selection recruiters specialising in appointments for the not-for-profit sector.

Eardley Wilmot – Search and selection company focusing on fundraising appointments in the charity, arts, health, education and not-for-profit sectors.

Eden Brown – Recruiters specialising in technical appointments and the public sector. The technical division covers architecture, construction, facilities management, rail, engineering and surveying roles. The public sector division includes appointments in housing, social care, local government and charities.

Execucare – Search and selection company specialising in marketing, communications and fundraising roles in the not-for-profit sector.

Fletcher Jones – Search and selection company with expertise in consumer industries, financial services, energy, industrial, not-for-profit, professional services, public sector and technology, media and telecoms.

Flow Caritas – Recruiters specialising in the charity sector with particular focus on fundraising, marketing and PR roles.

Forum 3 Jobs – Job vacancy site for the charity sector. Search by keyword, sector (eg children, disability, elderly), role (eg education, finance, graduate, HR), status (eg full time, contract, voluntary), location (region) and date posted. Alerts by email.

GBR Search – Search company focusing on Chief Executive, Director and Senior Management level in Commerce, Industry and Not-for-Profit. The company also has a specialist practice for Security, Intelligence and Defence.

Goodmoves – Job vacancy site for the charity and voluntary sectors in Scotland, Wales and England. Search by sector (eg housing, health) or type (eg administration, finance, management). Alerts by email.

Guardian Jobs – Job vacancy site for a wide range of sectors, particularly strong for marketing, media, PR, creative, education, public sector, charity, housing, regeneration, arts, environment and health. Search by keyword, detailed industry categories (eg within a category there are further functional specialisms), location (proximity to postcode or region and county), salary range and job type (eg full time, contract). Alerts by email and RSS.

Harris Hill – Search and selection company focusing on appointments in the charity sector.

JMR Consultants – Search and selection company specialising in the appointment of board and senior roles in the not-for-profit sector.

Jobs in Charities – Job vacancy site for the charity and voluntary sectors. Search by category (eg arts, finance, housing) and location (region). Alerts by email.

Jobsgopublic – Job vacancy site for the public sector. Search by salary range, sector (eg central government, charity, police), keyword, working pattern (eg flexible, full time, part time), occupation (eg marketing, management, policy) and location (to borough level).

Kage Partnership – Recruitment company specialising in the appointment of fundraising and PR professionals into the not-for-profit sector.

Macaulay Search – Search and selection company focusing on public sector, charity and not-for-profit appointments.

Morgan Hunt Group – Search and selection company with divisions specialising in housing, finance, regeneration, education, facilities, infrastructure, health, PR, communications, marketing, charities, surveying and construction and executive positions.

Morgan Law – Search and selection company with general focus on public sector, education and not-for-profit sectors. Functional practices cover finance, HR, procurement, PR and executive.

NCVO Job Shop – Job vacancy site for the charity sector run for the NCVO by Third Sector Jobs. Search by sector (eg animal, children, faith, international), function (eg fundraising, marketing, policy), salary band and location (region). Alerts by email and RSS.

People Unlimited – Recruitment company specialising in appointments in the not-for-profit, charity, housing, arts, education and public sectors.

ProspectUs – Search and selection company specialising in appointments in the not-for-profit sector.

Public Jobs Direct – Job vacancy site for the public sector. Search by sector (eg central government, charities, defence, education), keyword, type (permanent, contract, flexible), salary (banding) and location (region and county). Alerts by email, RSS and SMS.

Rockpools – Public sector search and selection specialists. Divisions for central government, education, health, local government, not-for-profit, regeneration, housing and sports.

The Times Jobs – Job vacancy site covering all sectors but particularly strong for public sector, administration, education, legal, sales and marketing, engineering, construction and manufacturing and senior-level roles. Search by keyword, industry (eg consultancy, education, energy), location (region and county) and salary band. Each industry also has detailed sub categories. Alerts by email and RSS.

Third Sector – Job vacancy site for the charity sector. Search by sector (eg animal, children, faith, international), function (eg fundraising, marketing, policy), salary band and location (region). Alerts by email and RSS.

TPP - Recruitment company with divisions covering wide range of sectors including not-for-profit, HR and office support, medical and healthcare, facilities management, education, private banking, fund management, trading and city operations.

Further information

We’ve also put this information on to the Career Workshop website and you can also download the information in a user-friendly PDF format from this page.

Registered users of our Online Transitions Centre can download the full Charity recruiters lists with contact details from the site.  These lists are also available to purchase to non-users in either PDF or Excel format.

A new look for the Career Workshop website

The Career Workshop website has had its facelift revealed today.

Career Workshop home page

 Out have gone the pretty pictures of daisies, seasides and rivers and in has come a fresher, cleaner look.  Removing the pictures has also enabled us to get more text on the screen.  The width of the body text has also increased.

The plain green header has now got a little logo interest in it and we have links from the home page to this blog, our Facebook page and a ShareIt facility.  The menus have been simplified and there’s new content for media organisations and an RSS feed to keep up to date with press releases.

 

In the Online Transitions Centre and other pages on the main site, one of the new additions we are most pleased with is the new dynamic pods for Related Links and Downloads.  These are all different and are contextual to the page you are viewing.  So for instance, if you are viewing a page on Legal Recruiters you will have your list of recruiters on screen plus links to download the full contact data in either PDF or Excel format.  There’s an example below.

New download pod

 

Once again we have worked with Red Ant on the redesign and big thanks go out to Luke and the team down in Kent.

We’ve also got new designs for our two regular newsletters and some new photographs of your writer in the Media section of the website.  Together with the forthcoming marketing materials, these are the work of Paul Clare at vivision.  Thanks Paul!

Do take a look at the new site and let us know what you think about it.  Good or bad!

TwitterJobSearch launched by Workhound

A few weeks ago I referred to the directory of job feeds on Twitter that Workhound had launched … and the new search tools that they were promising.  One of those tools was launched yesterday – the TwitterJobSearch.

I have been looking forward to this.  For a while I have been subscribing to a few job feeds via Twitter to get an idea of the “client experience”.  I have to say, it’s not great.  Almost the Twitter equivalent of spam.  Certainly I have been worried about missing other relevant things due to the volume from certain recruiters and job boards.  So with this in mind, I am interested to know about tools being developed that will enable my clients to search these feeds and extract the jobs that are relevant to them via a third party search function. 

I was also wondering how it was going to be possible to pull together a decent search function on 140 character tweets which frequently do not list key information such as location, salary etc and have no indexing.  I assumed this would be essentially a keyword search.  It isn’t, apparently.  It is a contextual search.  I did a few test searches to test this out and it clearly isn’t just keyword searching.  I presume they are searching on the directory of job feeds and there is some proprietary indexing in place.  When I tested, the database had 28,167 jobs from the last seven days.

Searching

The home page has a simple search box – What do you want to do?  (nice turn on the Twitter tagline of What are you doing?) – and you simply type a few keywords in to the box.  It’s very much in the searching style of the job search engines.  I threw in “HR manager in Manchester”.  This found me 795 jobs – 30 from today, 133 from yesterday and 575 from the rest of the week (the figure for today is low because I am searching at 7am, clearly that will be much higher later).   Not quite sure why those figures don’t add up to 795 though.

Results

Results are presented back in a list, very much like looking at your Twitter home page.  In addition to the original tweet and profile picture you get details of when the tweet was added, a link to view the ad on the recruiter’s website, an option to retweet and a link to follow the recruiter.  The list was presented back in non-chronological order, with some jobs from a week ago whilst other more recent ones were further down.  On closer inspection, I think this is because there is some basic indexing and weighting given to the results – for instance the top two results, although not in Manchester, were in the North West and Beverley.  However there were also other non-HR roles from Manchester towards the top of the list – understandable though in a simple keyword OR search.

So what were the results actually like.  Not bad!  I tried a “HR manager in West London search” and there were two really relevant roles at the top of the search.  This was followed by quite a few irrelevant hits for paralegals, sales managers and marketing roles.  Then it went back into HR and training.

Refining and saving your results

From your results page you can refine your results by date (today, yesterday, older), job title, skills and job type (eg permanent, full time, temporary etc).  Whilst they are still in the beta version, I wouldn’t recommend refining by anything other than date as I got some strange results.  For instance, near the top of my search results was an Interim HR role, but when I refined by contract the job vanished from my list.  And of course in an ideal world, the skills and job titles would be contextual to the keywords I had entered into my search.  But now I’m being picky.

You can save your search and have the results in an RSS feed, although I could only get the feed working when viewing the site in Firefox, not in IE.

Issues

I did find in another search that there were a lot of dubious sounding, home-based-great-income-opportunity type roles coming up but these were more of a problem when searching on certain job functions (eg accountancy was particularly bad).  I followed the link to one Twitter account to see if they were a reputable recruiter or job board and it did seem that they were, albeit with a stream of such roles posted last weekend. 

I only found two non-job tweets in the search results, and there is an option on the right to “de-tweet this job”.  This then gives you further options to delete the tweet based on “it’s not for me” or “it’s not a job”.  Again, not sure how these work and whether the former helps in any way to inform your own preferences and results or how the latter is protected from misuse or competitive sabotage.

The other thing to remember when using TwitterJobSearch, and indeed Twitter itself is to just exercise some caution when clicking on the links.  All are abbreviated with services such as tinyurl so actually you have no idea where you are going through to.

Verdict at this stage

All in all, I am impressed with where Workhound have got to with TwitterJobSearch.  It’s a difficult area to tackle and I think, whilst there’s obviously areas for improvement which I bet they are already working on, they have made a very good job with this beta version.  I will bring it to the attention of clients who are actively job searching and using social media and look forward to seeing how the product refines and develops over the coming months.