jobs, careers and recruitment

As some of you may have already noticed on our homepage, reed.co.uk has recently expanded, with the introduction of a new sister site - reedjobs.com. This is a completely new job site, offering job search tools for those looking for work outside of the UK.

The site is a natural progression of the massive growth of our UK site, which already offers over 300,000 vacancies - more than twice as many any other UK job site. We're hoping that this will offer a more comprehensive service for our current base of UK jobseekers looking to work abroad as well for non-UK jobseekers looking to move jobs.

The reedjobs.com site currently offers a job search for Poland, Ireland, Malta, Australia, Bulgaria, Romania, New Zealand, Czech Republic, India, China, USA, Qatar and Canada. But we're looking to expand this further in the future to offer a comprehensive platform for jobseekers worldwide.

We'll be continually improving the reedjobs.com site over the coming year to offer a better range of job search tools, as well as providing additional locations for job search. So if you're interested in working outside of the UK, keep checking back on the reedjobs.com site for updates.

Any ideas for additional features to improve our international job search are also welcome, so feel free to comment on this post with your suggestions.

The world’s top earning trader, hedge fund manager and founder of US-based Centaurus Energy, John Arnold, made a nearly £1bn last year – that’s a staggering £2.7m a day – according to new research reported by The Guardian.

Hedge Fund Managers made up 93 of Trader Monthly’s 100 Highest Earning Traders, 27 of whom are based in London. Britain’s top hedge fund managers last year made between £200m and £250m each.

Whilst the world of hedge funds remains mysterious to many, the vast sums being invested, not to mention the rewards being reaped by the fund managers and their employers, means there are a growing number of opportunities to become involved in the industry.

And whilst you may only dream of earning a salary like those of the world’s top ‘hedgies’, why not console yourself by negotiating yourself a raise. Find out what you could be earning with reed.co.uk’s Salary Calculator.

reed.co.uk's Head of Technology, Mark Ridley, has been talking databases with Cliff Saran of ComputerWeekly.com.

As well as discussing reed.co.uk's groundbreaking adoption of Microsoft's SQL Server 2005, Mark talks about reed.co.uk's comprehensive evaluation and appraisal process to determine how SQL Server stacks up against open source alternative, MySql.

Hear the full interview now by downloading ComputerWeekly's latest podcast.

Having looked at the latest Hitwise statistics relating to reed.co.uk, one stands out as particularly interesting:

The average time spent on reed.co.uk for each visit last week was 10 minutes and 43 seconds, comparing very favourably to the Employment and Training industry average of 7 minutes and 47 seconds.

This means that in the last week, visitors to reed.co.uk spent more than 8 million minutes browsing the latest jobs and viewing our career tools and advice – that’s the equivalent of one person browsing reed.co.uk non-stop for over 15 years!

Ever considered reed.co.uk as a specialist job site? Perhaps you should.

To highlight how specialist reed.co.uk is, today we released a range of new sector and job role categories on reed.co.uk - with over 700 job roles now being available for you to choose from.

This is something the website team review regularly to ensure we offer our jobseekers the best possible job search system, and allow recruiters to target their job vacancies to the most relevant jobseekers.

As the number of jobs on reed.co.uk increases, it is increasingly important to categorise our online vacancies in more specific areas, allowing our users to find the best specialist jobs more quickly.

Whilst niche job sites catering for just one site may argue that they offer a more tailored service, we maintain that generalist job sites like ourselves are able to offer a more specialist service by offering a better range of jobs in every sector.

And by allowing our users to drill down more effectively with the release of new sector and job role categories, users can more easily find vacancies tailored to their needs.

This means that reed.co.uk is effectively a specialist job site.

Ever wondered what recruiters really want from an interview?

A recent reed.co.uk survey of over 200 recruiters highlights some notable examples of how not to go about conducting yourself in a job interview. It includes the story of one jobseeker who arrived for interview without having ever seen his CV - ‘because his sister had written it for him’.

An applicant’s lack of preparation is the biggest barrier to interview success – and this includes knowing your own CV back to front. Arriving late and talking too much also feature high on the list of things to avoid.

But if you do manage to arrive well prepared and on time, make sure you look smart too: over 17% of recruiters won’t even consider an applicant who gives a bad first impression.

You’ll also need to be prepared for the unexpected, as recruiters are likely to ask some more unconventional interview questions, such as:

• When did you last lose your temper at work? What happened?
• How would your current boss describe you to me?
• If I was in a room with your best friends and family without you there, they would all say you were a great person - but what would the "buts" be?

For tips and guidance, read our interview advice page and for sample interview questions of a more conventional nature, why not try reed.co.uk’s interview questions quiz.