Ocassio

Wayne Rooney’s “player only” meetings – Should employees in the recruitment/business world carry out similar meetings?

Posted on September 26, 2014 by ocassio1

Rooney, Rooney, Rooney…..

The England football team, Rooney, Gerrard, Sturridge and the gang, underachieved at yet another major tournament bowling out of the group stages of the Brazil world cup group stages, losing to Italy and Uruguay and drawing with Costa Rica. The World Cup in Brazil back in June was meant to be the year for us to at least get to the semi’s!

It must be tough though. Not only are the team up against players like Pirlo, Balotteli and Saurez, but also have the high expectations of 50 million plus supporters all hoping and expecting their team to repeat the glory of 66’. Myself, I didn’t expect much, but I was absolutely torn apart when Suarez scored his 2nd to knock us out. (after Rooney setting up an equaliser. )

The fans, we wont forget, we’ll get over it though. But how did Rooney and the gang? A majority of the players would have been given 3-4 weeks off before having to join back with their clubs for pre-season. I’m sure some of them would have gone on a nice sun holiday, somewhere exotic. (Rooney’s, Coleen wouldn’t mind a couple of weeks in the Caribbean). I’m sure others would have booked in session’s with their sports therapists and Psychologists’. With Euro 2016 just around the corner mental recovery is crucial.

The “assumptive close” of a Coconut lady.

Posted on September 18, 2014 by ocassio1

Now..in your Thickest Female Spanish accent ….”come get your coconut, your banana, your Pineapppppllllllllleeeeeeeeee……”

We heard the tune slowly getting closer . “Great, another salesperson..” I muttered to myself. But there was something so powerful about this women’s tone. She was selling fruit.

The voice got closer and closer and before you knew it she had pitched her wheel barrow at our feet. We were on a weeks holiday in the south and went to the local beach. She continued to belt out the same sentence, almost at the top of her voice. It was like some sort of tribal calling. I found myself standing up with one thing on my mind ,coconuts. As I stood up, I noticed that I wasn’t the only one lured in by coconut lady, At this stage there were 3-4 others zombie-ing their way over to her to purchase some fruit. Its like she had cast a spell over us.

4 things bad recruiters do to P!ss people off

Posted on September 1, 2014 by ocassio1

When I am sitting down for a coffee with candidates or clients I always try to find out how I should behave when dealing with them. Just because my method and way suits one client, doesn’t mean its going to suit everyone. Ideally, and out of curiosity, I try to find out about the problems they encountered with other agencies , find out what they do good, bad or maybe where they would like to see improvements when engaging with agents. Here are some of the repeated things I hear about bad recruiters.

Lesson’s learnt from the Ice Bucket Challenge

Posted on August 23, 2014 by ocassio1

Yesterday I was nominated to do the latest “nomination” craze, The Ice Bucket Challenge. If you don’t know what it is yet, I ask, where have you been hiding??
This follows on from recent trends such as neknominate, where you had to neck/skull/sink a beer and nominate someone else to do the same and there was the “no make up” nominate where women, for a good cause(Breast cancer Association), would post pictures of themselves with no makeup, (how brave).

The latest trend is an activity involving dumping a bucket of ice water on one’s head to promote awareness of the disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and encouraging donations to research.
You take a video of yourself being drenched with ice cold water and at the end of the video you nominate 3 lucky people to do do the challenge. You post your video on your preferred social media platform, tagging the nominated. The nominee’s then have 24 hours to complete the challenge.

The Idea is you use a bucket of ice cold water, but in true fashion we’ve seen it taken to the extreme. One post even had a builder on a building site had 2 tractors and a big industrial bucket involved. Its all for a good cause.
We’ve see some of the worlds biggest stars get involved. David Beckham, Bill Gates, Mike Tyson to name a few, have all done the bucket challenge. Even business’ are getting there buckets out to raise awareness.

If the “The Inbetweeners” lads were Recruitment Consultants..

Posted on August 21, 2014 by ocassio1

One of my favourite shows over recent years has to be The Inbetweeners. I’ve seen the shows on TV and repeatedly watch them on Netflix. I’ve seen the Inbetweeners movie, which isn’t quite as funny as the TV series but still an easy and enjoyable watch and I can’t wait to see the new movie which is out at the cinema at the moment.

The Inbetweeners is off the wall, absolutely nuts at times, with the lads Will, Neil, Simon and of course Jay get up to all sorts of wacky and completely stupid stuff, the show is very funny.

Actually another reason why I’m a fan is I can draw lots of comparisons to me and my friends when we were in 6^th form. Not that we were going up to 60 year old ice cream lady’s and asking them for sexual favours or anything, but alike in a lot of other ways.

I was cycling home the other day and was thinking about the show and some of the funny moments, reciting some of the one liners to myself, and thought to myself; “if these guys were recruitment consultants what would they be like?

Inbetweeners, Recruitment consultant profile….So here it goes….

Examples of how 3 of my clients select and interview Software Engineers

Posted on August 18, 2014 by ocassio1

Who will Benefit from this post:

Talent Acquisition specialists
Internal recruiter
HR managers
HR professionals
In House Recruiter
Agency recruiter

In this blog I’ll be sharing info on how some well established Software houses recruit – some are effective ….some aren’t!!

Recruiting software developers, not just here in Ireland, but on a global basis is one of the hardest skill sets to hire. Finding and identifying these people isn’t the problem, there just isn’t enough of them to go around. I recruit Java developers and in any one month I could have 6 new openings with different clients all asking for the same skills, industry background and level of experience.

Although there is an obvious “skill shortage”(I will try not to say skill shortage in my posts…promise), I believe that my clients could make their lives a easier by thinking smarter when putting interviewing processes/strategy together. Can they do the job? Do they want to do the job? Do they have the potential to do the job? And can you see yourself working with this person? are the questions I feel you should constantly be asking yourself when interviewing people. If companies were to ask these questions more, I strongly believe companies’ would hire more!

“But I have to keep it 2 pages long…?”

Posted on August 16, 2014 by ocassio1

Before getting into recruitment 5 years ago and when applying for jobs myself, the one thing I was always overly cautious about was keeping my CV to 2 pages long – this seemed to be standard. Everyone I asked; “no definitely no longer then 2 pages”

Since stepping over to the recruitment and career coaching world, I’ve realised that it really doesn’t matter especially if you have a career that has spanned over 10 years and you’ve worked in multiple companies and on multiple projects. Every so often I have guys who have been working since the 70’s still trying to get their CV’s on 2 bits of A4. I’m not suggesting you start giving every detail of every single step you made in each of your jobs and telling the employer how you got to work and the colour of the office walls but the point I’m making is; if you need to stretch the CV to three, four or five pages long, then DO IT, but only if you really have to.

The Tweet that tickled me, made me cringe, then made me write this blog..…

Posted on August 15, 2014 by ocassio1

It was only the other day that I was stalking one of my competitors on Twitter, a fellow Dublin based IT recruiter that had re-tweeted the tweet of the founder of a Dublin based tech company.

The Tweet………”Dear Recruiters. Offices in multiple countries, and big banks as clients aren’t an advantage. they’re a reason to avoid you”

Lets break it down

“Dear Recruiters….that’s me

“Offices in Multiple countries…..Big Global Recruitment agency

“Big Banks…..Old technologies, long Process, no imagination?

My first thought was, oh look another person who hates recruiters. Then I thought this guy has some nerve painting all recruiters with the same brush. Then it made me smile, I thought fair play.

I put some thought into what made him tweet this. You don’t have to be Mr big brains to work it out, but I’m guessing he had been receiving lots of calls from Recruitment consultants, who work for large multinational firms (Hays, Hudson, Reed) rambling on about how they work with this bank, that bank and have exclusive relationships providing software development staff – java this java that, and how they have offices all over Europe. It sound great doesn’t it this Recruitment super power working with banks who recruit loads of technical staff with some quite hard to find skills, why wouldn’t that be appealing?!?!

The Start…..

Posted on August 15, 2014 by ocassio1

Welcome to OcassioDirect – your go-to blog for tips, advice, insights to recruiting and sales.

An IT Recruitment and sales professional with over 10 years’ experience working in the Irish Market currently recruiting for Software and Web professionals, will be sharing his thoughts, advice and opinions of “best practice”.

Who will want to read this blog?

Companies who want to get insight on recruitment best practice and to find out about other companies effective recruitment processes
Job seekers who need advice on effective ways of getting the right position and approaching their Job hunt
Recruitment professionals who want to read real life stories and advice from someone who works in a very competitive and agency saturated market
Sales people/Business people who wants to read the blog of someone Raw!
Anyone who wants to be inspired and read a no messing, no BS blog about the reality of dealing with people

OcassioDirect will blog once a week. We hope you enjoy our write-ups and can take away something from this site.

PLEASE NOTE: OcassioDirect likes to be challenged and values honest opinion’s and feedback… after all this is how we improve and become better at what we do.