We tried that last year in Australia and found that there had to be far too much education in how to use it and turn it on. Few students utilised it and those who did try, found it frustrating as bluetooth doesn't work with all phones and they have to turn it on in most cases. We still have the units and feel it would be a great excercise in numbers for both students and employers to receive wanted content without having to fight their way through crowds at rush pace, but bluetooth is a bit too old school for our users here.

Any advice on how to increase the benefit without the need for such significant marketing around how to use it - would be greatly appreciated.

Andrea
Unimail
http://www.unimail.com.au/

I don't think this is biased. In my experience it rings true. I'm a teacher. Teaching recruitment consultants are not teachers but sales people. Their main objective is to get 'warm bodies in front of classrooms' regardless of the suitibility of the teacher for the school. They earn commission foreach day they place a teacher in front of the class. This commission is taken out of the teachers award wage !!!!

I like to find my own work but schools increasingly use agencies as they are more 'convenient'. I care about the schools I work in and the children I teach even if just as a CRT. I value the relationship I build with a school on my own.In my experience teaching agencies do not value this relationship and send me wherever is most 'convenient'

I care very much about who stands in front of my daughter's class when her teacher is sick. I warn all schools to not place this important job in the hands of commission hungry teacher recruitment agencies!

I regularly get stats sent to me by both clients are others noting the high percentage of people accessing the web on an iPhone as compared to other devices (i.e. iPhone users want to use apps and mobile services, other devices users don't) . These stats are regularly doing the rounds at the moment and as far as I'm concerned are quite misleading. Whilst right now this may well be the case, a large part of the reason behind this is that the iPhone was one of the first phones on the market that truly centred the interface & experience around online activity, and a great apps market. Every one of the other handset makers have raced to catch up. Although there's still a little way to go now, for the most part the latest round of phones have caught up pretty well, and I fully expect the percentage of mobile web surfing on other devices to steadily rise as a result.

Also it should be noted that the iPhone is usually still the more expensive option when compared to a Nokia or Samsung (or even a Google Android phone in many cases). Therefore when the other makers are starting to offer a similar experience and capabilities to the iPhone, you are left with the "hype" and the very large marketing drive behind the iPhone. The heavy marketing drive often creates an untrue idea that "everyone's using an iPhone".

I also speak from personal experience here - I was considering buying an iPhone when my last Nokia phone came up for upgrade. However when looking at the cost, and seeing that the latest Nokia touchscreen was available on a far cheaper package and at zero upfront cost, it was a no-brainer for me. I don't think I'm alone in following this approach..

To summarise, my advice for companies would be not to try and jump aboard the iPhone bandwagon without a strong reason to - it may well be that for your target demographic, iPhone usage is disproportionately higher and therefore actually worth the cost of targeting separately. It may well also be the case that you wish to take advantage of the current marketing drive behind the iPhone and build a marketing campaign on top of an iPhone app - i.e. "We're cutting edge and cool by association". This can certainly be worth the cost outlay for some, but simply having an iPhone app for the purpose of opening up your site/services to mobile users will not be the better option when compared with a well thought out mobile website.

I am totally agree with you. Those things confuse all the jobseekers.

To me Thomas this looks like the RCSA do not even really know what they are surveying. Calling Twitter a "virtual communication channel" and LinkedIn a "business networking site" seems an artificial not to mention misleading distinction. It all seems to contradict the findings from one case study of a SME in Australia. Interested folk can read more here http://bit.ly/diyr
>http://bit.ly/diyr

I have to stand up for the major job boards here - I think they all have procedures in place to protect job seekers from unscrupulous advertisers. Not sure what the situation is with minor job boards, start-ups and aggregators, but their traffic levels are negligible compared to the likes of Seek.

The only complaint I have with major job boards is that there are too many ads from recruiters - jobseekers would much rather apply for a direct-client ad, and they can be hard to find. Carey - would you back that?

This is great Thomas, congratulations and good to see an Australian making the list.

Hi Thomas - well done. I admire your 'blogging discipline' and seemingly endless list of topics to write about. Keep up the good work.

Clayton Wehner
CapitalJobs.com.au
http://www.capitaljobs.com.au

What is the difference between optimizing your website to be mobile-friendly and an iphone themed web site?

Congrats! Your articles are always informative and eye-opening. Keep up the good work

My experience of recruitment agencies is that it’s hit and miss.

You need to register with as many as possible to whittle it down to 2 or 3 that are any good. They have the ability to make peoples career dreams come true or shatter some ones fragile ego.

Some of the most talented people you can meet work for high profile agencies. At times the training is excellent, work loads can be testing and deadlines tight. Don’t get me wrong. There are some one man bands out there but the same can be said for any line of work.

If you are interested in finding out more please contact me on:
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/deancousin
Or follow me on:
http://twitter.com/deancousin

Personally I don't find too many 'junkie' type ads on SEEK. Carey is right - Australian job boards spend a lot of time and money eliminating ads that do not directly benefit job seekers.

I agree - name and shame! Employment Office application forms definately do not have an email address in the URL. Thanks Thomas for brining it to the attention of candidates.

Thanks Thomas,

Those shorthand tips are great - until now I've been relying on URL shorteners. The ApplyNow Network's Twitter pages (including http://twitter.com/traveljobs_biz) are doing fairly well (considering how new they are), on Tweets alone. Still, how important is Retweeting?

I think it's total unfair for job seekers, where there is thousand of recruitment alternatives!

I have worked in the staffing, recruiting, and the human resources sectors for over 7 years. I help people with their current careers, future career plans, and career transitions.

I created a blog in an effort to pass on my knowledge of the industry, inform professionals of the available resources that provide assistance to job seekers free of charge, provide quality job leads, and much more.

A fiddling beaver... If it's meant to be some kind of sexual innuendo I don't get it.

What's it mean Thomas?

I'm not sure what you think the security risk is. Who are you saying would change the URL? The candidate? Why would they do that? The job board? That seems like a pretty average way to protect your revenue stream.

This is probably one of the best information sources for recruiters. Well done to Recruitment Directory for providing this. I can't wait to see what blog post is next?

Thomas, are you currently working fulltime for a job board or still freelancing? Drop me an email I have some work for you on our job board.

Keep up the good work.

Tony.

What do I think? I think it's a load of balls. It's just some crappy scam artist oriented businesses out to charge what is otherwise a free service. It's the same as if you started charging to make a post on this blog, would it increase the relevancy of the blog? No. It's just that some people will pay for any old crap so these scam artists, and I use the term loosely, will be able to scrape some profits together out of these misguided fools. Dana, whether or not job seekers paid for a paper, they did not pay any clients or recruitment firm for consideration of their application. You have a point, but it's somewhat mis-represented.

If you take the results as being accurate, online job boards are the only medium worth utilizing. "Other events", an incredibly vague and somewhat pointless category scores much better than the much hyped social network sites. For me, I'll stick with SEEK.

Totally agree... confusing for the job seeker and in a primitive form - cheating a bit, if that makes sense?