I know this is completely off topic for a blog about jobs etc but I thought it might be of interest to any Marketing/Brand professionals or Sales professionals out there who are interested in how the power of the internet and social media can influence a brand.

As you will see from the link here, Gavin Duffy showed us how it's done on Beaut.ie recently - online engagement for any brand is really important and especially when most of the time its free - a word we all love given "the current climate"!!

Any thoughts?

This is embarrassingly our first post of the new year, so Happy New Year everyone! Annoyingly as one event is over we're straight into the next, Valentine's Day is everywhere so we've jumped on the bandwagon to launch our Valentine's Survey. We didn't run this survey last year as we were trying to be more intellectual but that was boring so this year it's back.

We want to know if you are going to be cutting back on the gifts this year, if the recession has made you more or less romantic or if it has even caused an improvement in your relationship? We're all a bit divided in the office over Valentine's, the lads think its a bit of a racket, I think its only right to be sent a bouquet and others find that an insane waste, so tell us, what do you think?

Take the survey here.

Morning all

This week I'm doing a lot of work on a plan for 2010 and what we might do with and to the site. It only seems like a month ago I did this plan for 2009 to be honest, I can't believe how quickly the year has flown by.

It's been a mighty busy one for us on the site, we changed our business model and how jobs are listed on the site which was at the request of our candidates and to be fair has improved the site no end, no more old jobs because now all jobs expire automatically after 14 days.

We had a Facebook fan page, a blog and a Facebook group which we set up in 2008 but we've worked a lot on these and have now integrated Twitter with the group and our blog with both so you can see it all from your favourite social networking site now. We plan to do a lot more work on this side of things in 2010 and have some very exciting plans. We teamed up with Red Oak Tax Refunds to bring you some useful calculator tools and the Budget 2010 calculator has been one of our most popular tools this year.

We started a free campaign over the Summer called "Get Ireland Working" where we offered free advertising to Employers and this received lots of feedback and was a really successful campaign, we are now looking at part deux of this campaign which hopefully will launch in January and will be aimed at our Jobseeker users.

Best of all, we turned 10 this year which was a huge achievement given the climate we are all living in, we look forward to turning 20 in 2019.

Now don't say we never ask you - any suggestions about stuff you would like added or changed on the site now is your chance, whether you like it or hate it, comments below please.

Look out for our 2010 Budget Calculator in partnership with Red Oak Tax Refunds, this will be live on the site early this evening after Brian Lenihan's Budget address. Check it out here http://lb2.recruitireland.com/budgetcalculator2010/.

In the mean time BreakingNews.ie have a dedicated Budget 2010 channel with continuous updates and a live Dáil feed.

2008 actually started off with a Christmas party (first of 2 that year), the team descended on the Hardwood Restaurant in Cork where much merriment ensued, in fact so vocal was the merriment that we had to remove ourselves from the premises before dessert (heads hung in shame).

Following that excellent start, 2008 was a very busy year (particularly for me as following one long advertising meeting on the 1st July, I gave birth to my son Conor, it was a wee bit earlier then planned so I’d say Rebecca was a bit surprised when I texted her to say there was no need to pick me up for work the next morning!).

2008 saw lots of new web developments for RecruitIreland.com; we launched our new Career Centre & our Blog as well as developing our Facebook Application and joining the revolution that is Twitter. This meant that Vicki, our web 2.0 evangelist, had to explain to certain people many times that those that twitter are tweeters & not twits.

We posted a job vacancy on the site for Taoiseach when Bertie Ahern handed in his resignation – the job vacancy received almost 200,000 page views and received international acclaim.

The year ended with yet another Christmas Party, this time in Kenmare, where the RecruitIreland.com Oscars took place. Prestigious awards were handed out for Best International Employee (Rebecca), Best Timekeeper (Gill), Discounter of the Year (Elaine), Shopper of The Year (Diarmuid), Talker (Charlie), Messiest Desk (Ronan) and Biggest Surprise (me).

Also in 2008

• Blockbusters were Mamma Mia, The Dark Knight and Sex & the City
• The Olympic Games took place in China
• Michael Phelps wowed us all with his body, which, we were repeatedly informed, is perfectly proportioned for swimming
• Barack Obama became the President of the United States
• Lehman Brothers collapses
• It was International Year of the Potato – who knew!!
• Brangelina had twins, Knox and Vivienne
• Tyrone were All Ireland Football champions
• Kilkenny won the All Ireland Hurling title

On my first day of work in RecruitIreland.com  I thought I would be very clever and avoid paying for parking by leaving my car at a friend’s house, just a short walk from the city centre. However, the shortcut that existed in mind did not exist in reality and so I ended up sprinting as fast as I could to make it in on time. Falling into the office out of breath was probably not the best first impression to make but apart from that things seemed to run fairly smoothly.

Luckily, soon after I joined the parking issue was sorted because we moved to our new office in Blackpool. Not only were we all more comfortable in the new office but it also helped us stop spending all our wages at lunch time.

Elaine returned from maternity leave so I finally got to meet the famous “Golden Girl” of the office. I was somehow roped into writing the reviews of the Apprentice for the blog which led to me being known as the Sales Assassin. It’s an affectionate term….I think.

We had a thrilling training day in Kilkenny that year. Activities included target shooting, orienteering, sumo wrestling and canoeing. Thankfully it was a gorgeous day as myself and Mags’ boat capsized in the river. Here is a pic of that day while we were still dry.

There was success in the Marketing department too as the “Objects” campaign won more awards, an ICAD award was given for the Tick radio ad, Ink and Line press ads, shown here.

Also this year:

• An Irish General Election took place
• Kerry won the All Ireland Football Championships
• Kilkenny won the All Ireland Hurling Championships
• X-Factor winner Leon took the Christmas number 1

In 2006 Vicki convinced Tom to give her little brother a job, he looks back at his first year with fond memories... 

2006 is a year probably best remembered for some truly great Irish sporting achievements, well that and of course I started working here. I arrived on January 9th, a quiet shy lad hoping to fit into the world of RecruitIreland.com. I was lucky I had been pre-warned by Vicki, who to avoid, who the golden girl was and how important it was to keep on the right side of Sinead!! I was also told there was a very quiet fella called Diarmuid - luckily it turned out he wasn’t that quiet - he was just surrounded by females and had no interest in hair and makeup. Vicki had of course left to work in Dublin at that stage so the guys were spared of any O’Callaghan infighting for a couple of years anyway..

In 2006 our annual surveys revealed loved ones would prefer a little bit of TLC over champagne, chocolates and jewellery on Valentines, one in five workers were afraid to take all their holidays over fears it would ruin their career chances and perhaps most telling our Christmas survey revealed over 44% of employees were receiving Christmas bonuses and four in every five bosses were picking up the tab for fancy Christmas parties. Without having any 2010 surveys to hand I’d imagine it’s fair to predict fancy Christmas parties paid for by the boss will be few and fair between this year.

2006 saw the launch of two of our best remembered award winning advertising campaigns with Beep and Creak hitting the nations TV screens and line, paper and ink in the print media. Here's Beep to jog your memory:

As per usual we had numerous nights out and activities throughout 2006 with the highlight being the Christmas party in Man Fridays in Kinsale, luckily Brendan didn’t go missing on this night out and we finished off the night in ‘ the classic ‘ dancing at the disco as a fella once said!!

Also in that year;

• Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and The Da Vinci Code were the box office favourites
• Gnarls Barkley's single “Crazy” was the best selling single
• Steve Irwin died after a stringray pierced his heart during filming
• Charles Haughey died.
• The GAA, FAI and IRFU announced that a deal had been reached which would allow soccer and rugby to be played in Croke Park.
• Munster won the Heineken cup, beating Biarritz in the final held at Millennium Stadium, Cardiff
• Europe won the 2006 Ryder Cup, held in Kildare Golf and Country Club
• Ireland's Derval O'Rourke wins the women's 60m hurdles at the 2006 IAAF World Indoor Championships
• Kilkenny won the All-Ireland Hurling Title
• Kerry won the All-Ireland Football Title
• Chelsea won the premier league

Thinking back on my first day of work brought back some cringe worthy moments. One that still makes me wince is when I was introduced to a company director and they asked me where I had come from (obviously asking which company I had worked for previously) I replied “Douglas, it’s just a 10 minute walk from here”.

RecruitIreland.com were instructed to amend their foreign policy which resulted in Rebecca being employed in April, that combined with my appointment in October meant 2005 saw a significant increase in intelligence and beauty in the office.

2005 saw a 35% increase in cosmetic surgery in Ireland, so we decided to book the website in for a face lift and a bit of nip & tuck.

INSENSITIVE HIPPY AD ‘OFFENSIVE TO OLD’

We had some controversy in October which resulted in having to pull our advertisement from the national airwaves after complaints that it was insensitive. The advert featured a small boy saying “When I grow up I would like to be a hippy….I’d like to travel around the world protesting and I’d smell like an old fart.”

We brought out a survey about office parties being a source of embarrassment, and some of the statistics were:

• 69% drank too much alcohol.
• 38% had a romantic encounter with a colleague.
• 20% told the boss what they thought of them.

The Recruit Christmas party was in Greenes Restaurant that year, due to Tom’s flight being delayed in Dublin that afternoon dinner ran late, alcohol was consumed on an empty stomach and all of the above happened…. 

Also that year:

1. Cork City was European Capital of Culture.
2. George W. Bush started his second term in office.
3. Pope John Paul II died.
4. Live 8 concerts, took place around the world.
5. Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, killing thousands.
6. “Revenge of the Sith” topped the box office.
7. Best selling single of 2005 was “Is This the Way to Amarillo”.
8. Tyrone won the All-Ireland Senior Football Final.
9. Cork won the All-Ireland Senior Hurling Final.
10. Donna and Joseph McCaul represented Ireland in the Eurovision with their song called “Love”.

PS It's day 7 of our competition, today you could win a groovy set of Index Chopping Boards, entering is easy just click here!

2004 also saw the famous Pottery team building day, although it was described as “like a scene from Ghost”. Unfortunately we have no pictures. What had been hoped might spawn a new revenue stream for the business failed miserably when you saw what actually emerged from it. There clearly wasn’t a scrap of talent amongst us, and nobody will be threatening Stephen Pierce's business. We had a fun day though and the night out in Kinsale was even more memorable, I think we might still be barred from a few places.

In Marketing, 2004 was a very exciting year for us, we ventured into the world of television advertising. The former radio ads, Fairy and King were brought to life and shown across the networks for the next 18 months. See if you remember Fairy from the link below:

Also this year:

Gmail was launched on 1st April 

Facebook was founded at Cambridge, Massachussetts.

Ireland banned smoking in enclosed workplaces.

Band Aid 20 had the Christmas no. 1 with "Do They Know It's Christmas?"

Well I’ve been racking my brain all morning, believe me that takes a lot of time with the size of my brain – anyways I’ve been trying to think back to 2003 and what happened that year and to be perfectly honest not very much happened…

It was the year when a property buying spree (give me a break I’m trying to make it sound exciting) began with Elaine buying her house. The rest of us or most of the rest of us decided to give education a go again, clearly 2003 was the year when we all lost our minds briefly to study, assignments and exams hence it was a boring year where a severe lack of nights out was evident. Gill went back to study PR and myself and Sinead did the CIPD diploma, all in UCC (lucky UCC)!

On the work side of things we introduced extended credit for our clients by means of a Standing Order system which has since progressed onto a Direct Debit model and has proved hugely popular for obvious reasons.

The ongoing obsession with www.bbc.co.uk/food began, I guess that’s what happens when you have an office full of women (and I’m allowed to make sexist comments as I am female) and house buying and appliance shopping has taken centre stage briefly.

In Marketing we released radio ads for Fairy, King and Elvis, using children's insights to what they wanted to be when they grew up. Fairy and King were later animated for TV.

Also this year:

The Spire on O'Connell Street was completed  

The Special Olympics were held in Dublin

Dolly the Sheep died

Kilkenny beat Cork to win the All Ireland Hurling Final

Tyrone beat Armagh to win the All Ireland Football Final

The Christmas number one was Michael Andrews featuring Gary Jules, Mad World

Now why not go and enter for our 5th Daily Prize?  Today you could win a Cargo Laptop Sleeve, in my opinion this is very handy bit of gear.