Category Archives: Weblogs

November 15, 2007 · 11:13 am

Bloggers – we need you!

I must apologise. I have dropped off of the blogosphere for a while as I haven’t even had time to read any, let alone write any. I have joined a new venture, Unicornjobs.com, and as we head towards our soft launch time seems to be one of those things I just don’t have any more. However, I feel a virtual slapped wrist coming my way and so as my teacher friends keep telling me – I must try harder.

Anyway, I don’t want to talk about my part in Unicorn Jobs for a while – there will be much to reveal but all in good time.

In the meantime, we are on the hunt for some bloggers and where better to find bloggers than on the blogsphere?

Here’s the details…. drop me a line if you’re interested.

Unicorn Blogs

unicornjobs.com is a new graduate careers website – the one-stop guide for students and recent graduates looking for advice on how to choose, pursue and succeed in their chosen career.

With a ‘soft launch’ in November 2007, unicornjobs.com will include articles on all key job sectors, with guides on how they function and how you can get into them, plus interviews with people working in those sectors, and those who recruit for them.

In addition to news stories and articles, unicornjobs.com will also include a blogs section where readers will be able to read the opinions and about experiences of various people involved in the website, including our editor, publisher and recruiter.

We will also include blogs from people embarking on their chosen careers – either final year students currently going through the ‘milk round’, or recent graduates starting their first jobs.

We are currently looking to recruit:

• someone who started work this year on a formal graduate recruitment programme – ie some who has started work as a graduate trainee.

• someone who has recently started their first job after graduation, but who isn’t on a formal graduate recruitment programme.

If that sounds like you, read on…

What we require

Our bloggers will:

• write honestly and entertainingly about their experiences of their first job after graduation.
• identify interesting topics to write about.
• blog at least twice a week on relevant topics, writing between 100 and 300 words each time.
• submit coherent spell-checked copy.
• write within unicornjobs.com style guidelines (these will be very flexible for bloggers).

You will email your blog entries to our operations manager, who will arrange for them to be uploaded to our site.

What we offer

Blogging on unicornjobs.com is a great opportunity for anyone looking to develop their journalistic skills. You will have your work published on a high profile new careers website, plus receive ongoing feedback from our experienced editorial team, and direct access to our career advisers. We pay each blogger a fee of £25 a month. Our bloggers write under a pseudonym allowing them to be honest about their experiences in working life.

How to apply

If you are interested in becoming a blogger for unicornjobs.com email your name and CV plus a first blog entry to [email protected], telling us which blogging spot you are applying for.

From time to time we will recruit other bloggers. If you have an idea for a blog which thing will interest our audience of graduate jobs seekers, please get in touch, ideally with a sample blog.

VlogYourJob goes live!!

Here at Indigo Red, we’re passionate about being innovative. Speak to any recruiter, in almost any industry, and they will tell you that finding great candidates is the hardest part of their job and it takes every trick in the book to find the right people to fill the job.

Well, we agree! It’s a candidate short market and we’re always keen to explore new avenues to find new talent.

VlogYourJob is a new recruitment tool which allows candidates to see employers talking about the jobs they are recruiting for – in a video clip. No more boring A4 job specs and job ads that all sound the same. It’s a fantastic way to differentiate yourself as an employer and stand out in the recruitment market. It’s also a great little marketing tool – and it’s not going to cost you an arm and a leg.

Anyway, enough of the sales pitch from me, you can see our MD talking about it here:

http://wedlog.typepad.com/wedlog/files/vlogjob2.wmv

Fullrun’s Blogger Roundtable

I went off to the swish Soho Hotel last night as we sponsored Fullrun’s Consumer Blogger Roundtable. The boss is always up for sticking a bit of money behind a bar.

The event kicked off with a panel of five, Michael Parsons from CNET, Chris Price and Katie Lee of Shiny Media, Mat Toor of Dennis Publishing and James Rivington from Tech.co.uk, and was hosted by Peter Kirwin of Fullrun.

There was a run down on how each of the sites likes to be pitched to (send an email, don’t phone them – especially if it’s just a standard pitch, include quotes and unique pictures, use an interesting subject header), followed by a lively discussion on whether there is a difference between bloggers and journos (some of the panel felt bloggers had more principles than journos…. they shall remain nameless) and how the immediacy of blogging requires a good wireless connection and the press releases to be held off until after a press launch. Don’t forget to provide some food at a launch either, Michael Parsons is particularly keen to fill his tummy and stop that free champagne from sloshing around his insides. His poor liver is suffering. Of course, that’s assuming that you can get a blogger to a launch in the first place – they are self confessed un-socialites.

"Is blogging dying?" was a question that reared its ugly head once more. As the panellists work for blog sites, it was unlikely they’d say yes, but there was a general consensus that the blogosphere is platauing (80 million blogs – the vast majority not regularly updated) and as huge amounts of information hit our RSS feeds, as consumers we’ll become more selective about what we’re reading.

There was lots of nodding and muttering among the delegates when the subject of measurement came up. "Clients aren’t convinced by the audience numbers, or how they’re measured" was the cry from the audience. On the contrary, said the panel, metrics are now easier to measure than ever. Unique users and page view stats can be made available to PRs and they can be much more reliable than some of the more measurements used by more traditonal media. Can they be fiddled? Probably. Can traditional media stats be fiddled? Most definitely.

So off we trotted to the fabulous Swirl Room for drinks, courtesy of Indigo Red, and some light banter. I bumped into one of my PR agency clients who is "new to this blogging stuff" and asked me to recommend some PR related blogs to have a look at, so off the top of my head came Drew Benvie, Simon Wakeman, Stephen Davies, The PR Monkey, Strumpette and The World’s Leading. Those are the blogs that are obviously stuck in the forefront of my consciousness, so sod what Technorati says, they rank highest in my little world and don’t look to be dying any time soon.

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Filed under PR, Public Relations, Social Media, Web/Tech, Weblogs

June 3, 2007 · 3:37 pm

Fame at last!

No, I’m not one of the reserve contestants for Big Brother 8. One head hunter on there is enough don’t you think? Instead I’ve been featured on Louise Triance’s blog, of UK Recruiter. Thanks Louise!

Google Gracious Me! Part 3

Google has delivered the goods once more! Another Sarah Hayman has contacted me after finding this blog. Goodness me, how many of us are there? We shall call her Sarah Hayman 3! Sarah 3 has just had a baby boy called Samuel – take my word for it, he’s CUTE! We’ve been chatting on MSN messenger and there are a few spooky parallels in our lives.

I introduced Sarah 2 to Sarah 3 via email. This could get confusing.

So now we have: –

Sarah Hayman – PR Headhunter, frustrated writer, getting married this year, has a dad originally from Devon who now lives in London
Sarah Hayman 2 – lives in Australia
Sarah Hayman 3 – lives in the midlands, has a dad originally from Devon who now lives in London, has two sons, is getting married this year, has an interest in genealogy, been in Panto, now an agony aunt for a teen magazine.

The Sarah Hayman Society – current membership – 3.

4 Comments

Filed under Personal, Weblogs

January 11, 2007 · 10:42 am

Headhunting Social Media Style

I’ve recently decided to take advantage of all the lovely information on the interweb and start networking a bit more proactively with fellow bloggers. Yesterday, I tried a quick experiment of emailing some internal comms bloggers to see whether I could pick their brains on the internal comms market who they rate as the top practitioners. I had varied results.

Marc Wright of www.simply-communicate.com and Charlotte Butler of www.melcrum.com both suggested I use their sites for advertsing – at a price, obviously.

Wayne Clarke called me up and we had a good chat about internal comms and who is doing great things out there – thanks Wayne! His details are firmly in my contact book.

Lee Hopkins came back to me on email and suggested a number of avenues to try. First on the list was to contact Neville Hobson. Your fame is far reaching Neville! I am of course already in touch with Mr Hobson ever since our sponsorship of Delivering the New PR. Watch this space for an innovative use of Second Life that we are partnering with Neville on. Secondly, Lee said I should try Linkedin. Again, I’m already on Linkedin and have in fact made a few contacts that way. I definitely don’t use it to its full potential though so it’s a big kick in the pants for me to do more.

The final two suggestions were the ones that really interested me. Firstly I was directed to JOTW and Ned Lundquist. From a recruiters point of view this is an extremely interesting development in job hunting. Thousands of people worldwide share their knowlege on who is recruiting and what they are looking for. I contacted Ned immediately.

The last idea was to look at IABC and search for UK internal comms professionals, which I did but not with any great results. It’s certainly something I’ll be keeping an eye on though.

Check out Lee’s podcast with Peter Vogt at eBay, it makes for interesting listening for internal comms bods. I’ll be keeping in touch with Lee too!

Social Media networking is one of the ways forward for headhunting I feel. Headhunters have been networking for years. I’ve spent hours trawling through my contact book and asking top level PR people "do you know anyone that could do x, y and z?". Journos also get the odd call, although they’re harder to gleen information from. They’re always keen to know what’s in it for them. My answer to that is, my undying gratitute and help to move into PR when you’re fed up being a hack.

4 Comments

Filed under Internal Comms, Jobs, PR, Public Relations, Recruitment, Social Media, Weblogs

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Category Archives: Weblogs

VlogYourJob goes live!!

Fame at last!

Google Gracious Me! Part 3

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