CareerHub Central Blog

Oracle is the world's largest business software company, with more than 320,000 customers including 100 of the Fortune 100 and representing a variety of sizes and industries in more than 145 countries around the globe. Oracle's Global Team of Recruiters is responsible for sourcing, identifying and attracting talented individuals into the company of which David Talamelli is a key part. David talks with CareerHub about Oracle's approach to turning graduates into respected IT professionals into a market full of promise and opportunity.

Convey a strong, genuine message to graduates

With his work varying a great deal and no two days being the same, he normally splits his time working with the various business groups and liaising with candidates at all levels (from C-level or Graduate level) regarding opportunities in the organisation, "I recruit for Oracle and have brought a number of people into our business. When I talk about opportunities at Oracle and people ask me what it is like to work here, I let them know that I truly believe Oracle is a great place to work. This is a strong message to convey to people and when the message is genuine it is that much more powerful a statement. From a recruitment perspective I enjoy the challenges of searching for, identifying and talking to the talented people who may potentially work here. It is always interesting to talk to people with such a range of skills and experience.

Once again Oracle's Australia Graduate Program will be running in 2010. The Oracle Australia Graduate Development Program is a one-year program consisting of orientation, formal training, and project rotations in one of core lines of business, and finally job placement. The formal training is a combination of structured development programs on soft skills and functional competencies via various delivery formats. Graduates are also expected to work in a team environment and complete multiple projects addressing real business challenges and at the time gaining a broad business understanding. For our Australian Graduate Program we are hiring in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth.

Graduates have more choices and opportunities for themselves now than at any time before

Choices could range from joining a formal graduate program, to setting up their own business, or doing something entirely different. The great thing about having so many choices is that people who put their hands up to work at Oracle generally have an idea of who we are and what we do, so we are often talking to graduates who genuinely are interested in working here.

I think one of the great things about Oracle's Graduate Program is that graduates can apply to work in the Line of Business in Oracle that they are interested in. For some people this may mean working in one of our Consulting Groups or maybe our Pre-Sales Business, or even one of our Sales Teams. Graduates who join our Graduate Program not only participate in structured training but they also get to work on real business challenges - all designed to help our graduates become respected IT professionals.

Use of social media tools as an everyday part of work life

This could be anything from talking to potential candidates on Twitter, to conducting a search on LinkedIn, to writing Oracle's latest recruitment blog entry. Over the past number of years we have seen an increased take up of companies utilising various Web 2.0 and social media strategies to attract talented individuals into their business. I am a social media enthusiast and I think the advantages of using various social media tools far outweighs the perceived disadvantages/negatives of social media.

Additionally, using CareerHub Central, for me, is a great way to advertise our Graduate Recruitment Program onto numerous university job boards with one simple process. Rather than having to contact each university individually and post a separate job advertisement on each individual job board, CareerHub Central saves me time and money because I only have to post one job ad on CareerHub Central that is then automatically sent to a number of universities.

Graduate recruitment has a bright future for those companies who can provide a real value added service to their business and for those who can offer graduates an interesting career path

I think in recruitment we are seeing the following changes taking place which applies to graduate recruitment as well:

• Web 2.0 technologies will continue to gain acceptance and usage in the recruitment industry - we will increasingly use these tools to reach out to and stay connected to graduating students.
• Graduates will make decisions about joining your company based on information from multiple sources.
• Recruitment is becoming a much more transparent function than it has been in the past.
• Recruitment is no longer just about recruiting; it is increasingly taking on marketing/branding responsibility.
• There is less reliance on reactive candidate sourcing strategies and greater use of proactive recruitment practices.

Having said that, at Oracle we have all the resources of a large company. Yet we've managed to retain the creativity, agility and entrepreneurial spirit of a start-up. It's what makes Oracle such an exciting place to work. It's also why we're still one of the most innovative and profitable companies in the industry. We are constantly looking for top university graduates, bringing ideas and motivation to our business. In return, we provide the challenge of a dynamic, fast-paced environment, plus all the resources a university professional needs to launch a successful career."

David Talamelli is a Principal Recruiter for Oracle Corporation in the APAC Region based in Melbourne. He is responsible for end to end recruitment for Oracle across Australia, New Zealand and Philippines with exposure across other APAC countries as needed.  David has been with Oracle in their APAC Recruitment Division since early 2006 and has in excess of 11 years IT Recruitment experience with previous roles onsite at Hewlett-Packard and also at GAP IT Consulting. A link to the corporate profile can be found at http://www.oracle.com/corporate/information-powers-profitability.pdf .

As many employers and recruiters are already aware, CareerHub Central's job distribution service is the preferred and most efficient vehicle to reach students and graduates to advertise graduate and cadet programmes.  Additionally, vacancies outside the official graduate program intake will often arise, so there will be times when you need to distribute other job information into the CareerHub university network.

Careerhub Central is pleased to announce new job distribution package prices enabling employers and recruiters to better manage a higher volume of advertising to the universities:

• 20 jobs for $3,000
• 50 jobs for $6,000
• 100 jobs for $10,000

Apart from the obvious savings as compared with the individual distribution rate of $180 per job, once your employer account is activated with a package purchase, you won't have to enter credit card details each time you post a job making it even more convenient to publish job information.  Contact CareerHub on 1300 852 112 if you'd like to further simplify your recruitment efforts.

There's a lot of buzz at the moment around using social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook to recruit job candidates. Success stories are available (if not all that convincing) and proponents are hailing it as a revolution in recruitment.

And at first glance it seems to make sense. After all, isn't it just like the good old-fashioned method of asking your friends if they can recommend someone for a job? It's tried and true: candidates automatically come with recommendations and references from people you know, and their distance from you in your network of friends gives you an indication (perceived or real) of how reliable they are.

Social recruitment using modern technologies is the same thing, but multiplied by 1000s because of the way these technologies allow you to expand your reach to a much wider audience. Right?

Well, not exactly. Putting aside the difficulty of growing an active and engaged social network, one problem with using only this approach is the huge effort required of candidates. I mean, how many hundreds of twitter accounts, blogs and Facebook groups would a candidate have to follow and process in order to hear about the positions they're interested in? It's a lot of work, multiplied by the number of candidates trying to keep up with all this information.

So how can we make modern-style social recruiting work? The solution is a relatively small number of trusted aggregators that collect the massive amounts of real-time recruitment data, filter it and direct it to the candidates it's relevant to. Candidates are then left with the much more achievable task of checking a few 2nd-degree sources rather than hundreds or thousands of 1st-degree sources.

If it sounds familiar, it's because this solution already exists in the form of job boards. The reason we have them is that we've faced the problem of disseminating relevant job information to a wide audience before. Social recruiting (traditional and Web 2.0-style) is great and feels more personal, but it just doesn't scale up very well: as the social network grows there's too much information for job hunters to process.

If using job boards feels a bit backwards and last-millennium, just think of it as making use of an existing "social" network, only you can be sure that it's a network of only active and engaged job-hunters.

Sure, recruiting isn't just about making first-contact with candidates, it's also about keeping their attention. And this is where social networking tools really show their potential. Just make sure you take the social recruiting hype with a grain of salt and be careful not to throw out the stuff that works at the same time.

CareerHub Central has made things even easier for employers*.

Many universities are now utilising CareerHub technology to handle their careers fair registrations.  You can now register for each of these university's careers fairs quickly and conveniently via CareerHub Central rather than having to log into each individual local CareerHub site.

How does this work?

By logging into CareerHub Central, you are simultaneously logged in to all local university CareerHub sites where you have distributed jobs. 

To get your company into next year's university careers fairs:

Step 1. Log into your CareerHub Central employer account in the usual way

Step 2. Double check your details; ensure everything is up to date

Step 3. Access each university's careers fair registration form via the following links. 

• QUT
• Macquarie
• LaTrobe
• UNSW
• RMIT
• Curtin - Bently Careers Fair, Health Sciences Careers Fair, Community Careers and Volunteers Fair, Kalgoorlie Careers Fair, Education Careers Fair

To make it even easier we will soon have a page on the CareerHub Central site with these links available permanently. And we will offer the ability for you to register for fairs even if you haven't distributed jobs to this university.

* If you have yet to distribute a job to any of the universities above, you will not to be granted automatic access via your CareerHub Central account.  You will need to log in using a local account.

We are reminded daily about the economic 'doom and gloom' we're currently in. Many of us are unaffected, but for some it is a time to re-evaluate our careers and take the opportunity to re-skill. 

Over the last two years university enrollments have risen dramatically. The charge back to education is led by mature age students - people who already have experience and skills, and are now acting positively to improve them further. 

Interestingly, we have also noticed a rising demand from employers using CareerHub to target this group. While I have no researched evidence of this, I suspect that SME's are considering this group to have a faster uptake time to be productive staff members. They are already work-ready, skilled and often available for quality part-time or casual employment while they undertake their studies.

Graduates from previous years are also adding to the growing pool of talent with experience in the work force. University Careers Services are generally one of the few parts of the university that continues to provide services to students for some significant time after they graduate. Students are never removed from their university's CareerHub and can continue to access the services and offerings available. These graduates make a large proportion of CareerHub users and are of increasing interest to employers.

Universities also recognise the value of relationships with their graduates and are increasingly realising that the highest interaction with their graduates may be through CareerHub. As a result many universities have added the category of 'Experienced/  Professional employment' into their CareerHub systems. 

In recognition of this growing interest and the high usage volume from these individuals, we have also added this category to our CareerHub Central system so you can actively target this group in your job postings.

CSIRO, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, is Australia's national science agency and one of the largest and most diverse research agencies in the world, employing around 6,500 staff.

As the largest employer of scientists in Australia, CSIRO is committed to increasing the understanding and appreciation of science in the community.

Jess Booth, Senior HR Advisor at the CSIRO, is responsible for over 130 scientists, managers and support staff in Sydney and tells CareerHub a little about her HR engine room and her thoughts about recruitment in the future.

Every day is different

CSIRO is a fantastic place to work because it's all about great science, great people and great impact for Australia. It's exciting to work around a diverse group of experts both in science and support functions such as HR.

I manage a number of people by coaching managers and leaders, mediating for conflict resolution and providing advice to staff. The thing I enjoy most about my role is the people I work with and the projects I work on. My manager, team and the wider HR community are really supportive and there is great freedom to take the initiative to explore projects of interest. Whatever initiatives I can think of, I'm allowed to pursue!

The pace of change is rapidly accelerating

Major external forces such as the global financial crisis mean huge organisational change. The major challenge for HR professionals is helping employees deal with this change.

At the moment competing for university vacation students to complete internships is a challenge as the economy is starting to bounce back. CSIRO has a strong brand in Australia so we are still finding that we are able to attract great candidates. The experience they receive here is invaluable, so the challenge is to give graduates an insight into our world.

It's also about ensuring that people behave appropriately in the workplace (such as adhering to the code of conduct and organisational values) and that they perform by achieving their objectives. Changing behaviour is difficult, but really worthwhile.

Build a community that is excited about what you do, how you impact them and let them join the conversation

Part of my role is to reach students in a simple and effective way, and I am able to do this using the CSIRO careers site, social media and sites like CareerHub.

CSIRO engages with students at all levels because we're passionate about Australian Careers in Science. At the moment my division, Materials Science and Engineering, is gearing up for the Undergraduate Vacation Scholarships Program where university students and graduates have the opportunity to come in and work on real-world projects in our labs, with our scientists, and get paid for it. We then hire a number of post-docs each year (university graduates who have completed their PhD) and also students who are currently completing Masters or PhDs in relevant fields.

2009 has been about trying new things. We partnered with GradConnection; essentially graduates log on, identify what's important and have appropriate jobs ranked for them.

We launched into the world of social media, not only to attract the best students for our scholarships, but to share the experience with the rest of the community. It's exciting and we are learning new things. We have attracted more than double the candidates we did last year with thousands logging online to look at our positions.

I'm Gen Y and highly involved in using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and blogging. I've met so many fantastic people who have helped me with ideas. It's all about being part of a community and that's why I think it's a great avenue for businesses to get involved.

Deacons' Social Networking Survey 2008 research suggests that 16 per cent of those surveyed indicated that an employer's policy regarding online social networking would influence their decision to join one employer over another. Unsurprisingly, this was most prominent in the 16-24 year old age group, and it's so true. Everyone is increasingly connected via their mobiles so we can tweet what we are up to or share photos. If graduate recruitment doesn't reach out into this world, it will be left behind.

Looking forward, social media will be crucial as I'm not sure that future graduates will trawl traditional job boards if better alternatives are available that truly interact with them.

CSIRO is developing and improving new and existing technologies in Australia and overseas. Our research helps to create innovative and competitive industries, ensure the growth of a technologically advanced society and maintain healthy environments and lifestyles. Given that graduates will gain greater influence in the next few years as the power shifts back to those searching for work, sites which connect will be the way of the future. They'll encourage graduates to think carefully about what they value in a job, and the sort of environment they would like to work in. Tailoring their job search, rather than just encouraging them to apply for everything, will mean better job fit, and happier graduates in the long run.

Jess Booth holds a Bachelor of Business (Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations) from University of Western Sydney where she was a Vice Chancellor's Leadership Scholarship Recipient, and a Masters in Education (Adult Education) from University of Technology Sydney graduating with distinction. She is a member of the Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI) and Golden Key International Honour Society. Jess is also a finalist in the AHRI 'HR Rising Star' Awards with winners announced in November 2009.

I just noticed that CareerHub Central is listed as the 14th most popular website in Australia, according to Web Ranking Australia. Not only that, we're listed as number 1 for employment in Australia, above Seek. Impressive!

So are we really more popular than Seek for employment? As much as I'd like to believe it, we know that this is not the case. I'm not sure why Web Ranking's statistics seem skewed in our favour, but other traffic analysis websites like Hitwise and Alexa barely register our traffic (at the moment Alexa ranks us 11,669 in Australia).

That's ok though. We wouldn't expect to have the huge number of hits as the big job sites, because the job seekers that see CareerHub Central job ads don't view them on www.careerhub.com.au, they view them at their own university websites; so the traffic is all distributed across each institution in the CareerHub network. We're very happy with our statistics although our distributed setup makes it very difficult for us to show off impressive ranking statistics. We focus on quality rather than quantity. And because every person that accesses jobs via CareerHub is authenticated directly by their university, the stats we have are 100% accurate and not based on 'general public' or social networking visits.

Interestingly Alexa also ranks sub-sites within a domain, which helps indicate the popularity of CareerHub within universities. For example, at Monash University their CareerHub site is the 6th most popular Monash site, even higher than most faculty sites.

As I write this article I can see that over the last month we have an average of about 7,500 students logging in each day across the network: they are reading about 17,000 jobs ads, and there are about 430,000 students/ graduates registered overall, with about 45,000 of them actively searching within the last month.

We think this is pretty impressive given that we know for certain that are stats are not skewed by the general public accessing the site or other web-crawlers ranking with unknown ranking logic. CareerHub is definitely the largest graduate recruitment network in Australia! Will keep you posted on a new exciting initiative that will take these figures significantly higher again into next year - watch this space :)

More students than ever are seeking employment through their university's careers service. Last month (September 2009) there were almost 50,000 university students* actively monitoring CareerHub job websites, compared to around 10,000 at the same time last year.

The increase is partly because 3 new universities have joined the Australian CareerHub network in the last year (bringing the total number to 28) - these unis contributed 6-7,000 extra active job seekers last month. But there's still a large, steady increase in job seekers unaccounted for.

The level of interest is roughly the same as during the the busy recruitment period in March, suggesting that next year's graduate recruitment season will attract an unprecedented level of interest from students. If you want to make sure your graduate opportunities are seen by this audience, CareerHub Central offers a quick and cost-effective way to get your advertisements "inside" the universities.

Interestingly, the number of jobs available across all universities in the Central network seems to be about the same as this time last year, at around 4,500. I'd expect this higher demand for a limited pool of jobs means the competition is heating up for students.

*These numbers are taken from daily statistics from each of the 28 Australian universities in the CareerHub distribution network. Specifically, I used the number of students who had logged in at least once in the last month to determine the number of "active" students.

Hello and welcome to the new blog for CareerHub Central.

We're aiming to build up a resource of interesting and useful information for employers - specifically information related to student employment and graduate recruitment. We'll also be blogging about product news and offerings for Central, but the last thing we want is for this to become just another self-promoting business blog.

If you have any suggestions or feedback, we'd love to get a comment from you on the blog. Or if you prefer you can email us at central@careerhub.com.au. Any ideas, suggestions or criticism will be appreciated.

With that introduction out of the way, I thought for this first post it might be interesting to give a brief overview of the history of CareerHub Central.

How CareerHub Central came to be

Long before CareerHub Central existed, CareerHub was created as a tool to help universities run their careers services. While working at Griffith University, Dee Hughes came up with the idea of a web site where university staff could manage jobs and careers-related resources for their students. He created a website for Griffith called CareerBoard which did just that (Griffith still use the name 'CareerBoard' although the underlying software is now CareerHub).

After realising the potential for this new application, Dee left Griffith to concentrate on the development of CareerHub. He hired a couple of people to help out, and I was one of them. Back then it was just 4 of us, working in a small, hot office room in Brisbane. I remember working one Australia Day alongside Dee so that we could get the first version finished in time for our first presentation. Dee had been invited to present to NSW careers service staff, alongside 'Monster' who were also competing for the university market at the time.

A screenshot of the first version of CareerHub

The first commercial installation of CareerHub followed in 2001, at the University of the Sunshine Coast. Shortly after that CareerHub was installed at Australian National University and then the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. In the next few years we continued to grow and CareerHub won the ANU Vice Chancellors award for "Best use of Technology" in 2004. We were extremely pleased with our progress.

By March 2007, there were 20 universities in Australia using CareerHub which was now in it's second version. Monster had withdrawn from the Australian market and CareerHub was now the most widely-used service of it's kind in Australia and New Zealand. The problem for employers was they now had to visit each university's Careerhub web site individually to list their jobs. After an initial successful implementation in New Zealand (NZUniCareerHub), CareerHub Central was launched in Australia as a way for employers to advertise jobs at all these uni's in one central location. And it's been performing that function for the last couple of years.