jobs, careers and recruitment

We’ve recently made some changes to reed.co.uk to enable recruiters to add their jobs to a host of global locations.

Although reed.co.uk is primarily a UK-focused site, recruiters increasingly turn to us to help fill skilled roles in all four corners of the planet. As well as more likely destinations, such as Australia and Saudi Arabia, jobs as far afield as the Turks & Caicos Islands, Bermuda and other exotic locations have recently been added to the site.

As well as offering jobseekers an even wider choice of roles, this is more clear evidence of reed.co.uk’s ‘multi-specialist’ approach, offering an increasingly long tail of job opportunities in niche industries and in ever more far flung locations.

We’ve recently asked jobseekers using reed.co.uk to tell us about their top three priorities when looking for a job.

Whilst perhaps unsurprisingly the most popular selections were “money” (60% rated it among their top three), “personal interest” (50%) and “progression prospects” (47%), our survey revealed some interesting results lower down the scale.

As few as 8% of respondents identified “employer brand” as one of the three most important factors for them when seeking a new job. Given the amount of money spent by companies to raise awareness about their brands and to be seen as employers of choice, perhaps they'd be better off diverting more of these funds towards paying higher salaries if they want to secure the best talent?

Ethical considerations, such as whether a company is Carbon Neutral or makes charitable donations, appear to be of little importance to jobseekers: only 21% of respondents considered “working for an ethical or socially responsible company” as one of their top three priorities when looking for their next job.

Similarly, work life balance, another topical feature of apparently progressive employers, seems to be low down the list of priorities for most. Only 17% selected “flexible working” as being a top three priority.

The bottom line appears to be that jobseekers will, at heart, respond more readily to the basic temptations of more money and personal interest than anything else that a company may offer or represent.

If you have any thoughts on these findings then please feel free to post a comment below.

This week we launched a new Australian job site, as we continue to expand our services for UK and non-UK based jobseekers looking to change roles.

reedjobs.com.au is the sixth country site we’ve released and sits alongside recently launched sites for Poland, Malta and Qatar. We’ve also developed an international portal, reedjobs.com.

We’ll continue to develop our international sites throughout the coming year, so keep checking back for the latest global job opportunities.

Our commitment to developing market-leading online recruitment products at reed.co.uk means we’re now looking for new talent to join our London-based development team.

To help us achieve our ambitious goals, we’re currently recruiting a Web Programmer to join our vibrant and enthusiastic team, developing leading edge web applications. As well as being involved in the full development life cycle, this is an outstanding opportunity to learn and use the latest technologies, including C# 2.0, .NET 2.0, Windows 2003 and webservices.

If you have experience of web development using Microsoft Visual Studio, and you think this sounds like you (or anyone you know), find out more and apply now.

And if SQL’s your thing, we’re also recruiting a Junior Database Administrator to work alongside our Database Administrator and developers, assisting with query development, reporting and database administration tasks. You might not have commercial experience of SQL Server, but you will have at least some academic or personal experience (not to mention a real motivation to develop your skills further).

If this is you (or one of your friends), find out more and apply now.

And don’t forget that as part of marketing leading recruitment specialist, Reed, reed.co.uk staff are entitled to a wide range of excellent benefits and rewards.

This week, reed.co.uk reached a huge 350,000 jobs online for the first time

This milestone further cements reed.co.uk’s position as the UK’s biggest job site (with more than twice the number of jobs as its nearest competitor).

Vacancies on reed.co.uk are posted across 38 industry sectors and in more than 700 job roles.

As well as providing jobseekers with a vast range of opportunities, the volume of vacancies currently on offer also provides a valuable insight into recruitment market trends. Find out more about salaries and industry developments with reed.co.uk’s Salary Calculator and Market Index tools.

James Reed, Chairman of Reed Executive PLC, has been giving his thoughts on talent acquisition and retention in response to recently published research into workplace productivity.

The research was carried out by Durham Business School and management consultancy, JBA, and was commissioned by office management firm, Regus. It recently featured in Randall Northam’s article in The Times about the need for employers to become more flexible in order to encourage productivity.

James was asked by Mark Dixon, CEO of the Regus Group, to share his thoughts for a ‘two minute expert opinion’ feature. You can watch the video and access the full report on the Regus corporate website.

May 24th is National Learning at Work Day and Reed Learning are working in conjunction with organisers, Campaign for Learning, to provide a range of resources to employers and their employees.

Amongst the free resources is a range exclusive of MP3 training sessions, so you can listen to expert trainers give advice on a range of common workplace topics. The bite-size modules include ‘Dealing with change’, ‘Managing office politics’ and ‘Thinking on your feet’.

Why not improve your prospects now at reedlearning.co.uk/takepart.