Once again the Oracle Australia Graduate Program will be running in 2010.

The Oracle Australia Graduate Development Program is a 1-year program consisting of orientation, formal training, and project rotations in the 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.

The Australian Graduate Program is open to Australian Residents and Citizens who are either in the final year of their studies or have Graduated the previous year.

To express your interest mail your resume to CAMPUSRELATIONS_AU@ORACLE.COM.

Please view our Graduate Recruitment Website for more details on our Graduate Program.

We will also be attending a number of Universities in Melbourne and Sydney for Oracle Information Sessions, dates, times and locations can be found on the Oracle Graduate Website. Please liaise with your University Graduate Recruitment Coordinator or Office to register your interest early to secure seating.

The past few weeks I have been helping to grow our North American Enterprise Solutions Group here at Oracle and it has been both exciting and challenging.

The Enterprise Solutions Group, Enterprise Architecture team is chartered with leading the Enterprise Architecture Program for North America Sales and Consulting. They provide North American Sales Consulting with experienced enterprise architects and strategists to drive growth of enterprise solutions sales.

Members of our Enterprise Architecture team are the best and the brightest. Our Enterprise Architects are high-level, seasoned professionals with experience in many industry verticals including, but not limited to, information technology, covering industry verticals of automotive, banking, securities, finance, manufacturing, government, chemical, agriculture, higher education, and healthcare.

These types of professionals are unique and very rare in the industry and I was quick to realize that finding this kind of rare talent with the "right stuff" would prove to be quite a challenging task.

An Enterprise Architect in the Enterprise Solutions Group at Oracle has a variety of roles. They are pre-sales consultants, working with clients and sales people to identify ways that the company can provide support to large scale clients who are looking at making significant investments in Oracle technologies and to assist with transforming their business. The Enterprise Architect supports the sale and then continues into a post-sale capacity supporting the client.

In a post-sale role, these Enterprise Architects provide coaching and guidance to clients who will be executing the Oracle Architecture Development Process (OADP). They work intensely with them to create the initial deliverables and a roadmap for use in executing their business and IT strategies. Then, over time, they engage at periodic checkpoints to provide an external review of the execution. The Enterprise Architects may also be engaged in executing specific services such as Application Portfolio Rationalization, IT Consolidation, or Business Process Optimization.

When our Enterprise Architects are not engaged with clients, they develop tools and processes for use by the organization. These areas include developing and delivering enablement training, enhancing Oracle models and tools, and providing support to our certifications processes. The Enterprise Architects also expand their knowledge with internal and external training.

Our Enterprise Architects consult with senior industry leaders, becoming their trusted advisors and developing business-driven strategies and leading the delivery of complex solutions that allow those strategies to be realized.

We are currently hiring highly qualified, seasoned Enterprise Architects to join our Enterprise Solutions Group. Candidates can be located anywhere US Nationwide, as long as they can travel.

If you would like to be considered for one of these prestigious career opportunities, please send word document version of resume with full contact details, saved backwards compatible, to mc.didone@oracle.com

This article was written by MC Didone (Senior Recruiter) and Ross Emerton (Director, Enterprise Architect)

I have been a fan of Kevin Wheeler's ever since I saw him present here at a conference in Melbourne Australia back in late 2007. He has just written one of those "here are my predictions for 2010" posts that I recently mentioned in my last blog post. The link can be found here. It is a good article and what I like about Kevin's posts is I find that they are based not only on just recruitment principles and operations but also on larger demographic and sociological trends. Yes there is lots written about Generation Y, but it is quality writing.

Anyway in his blog post, Kevin mentions one of the things he thinks we will see more of in 2010 is the "Virtual Recruiter and the Virtual Employee". That is Recruiters will use the technology available to them to source, attract and hire candidates for roles in countries/cities outside of their location. Kevin writes that Recruiters will find jobs for people and hiring managers they may have never physically met.

I agree with Kevin, I think the use of the virtual employee will increase. As technology continues to develop to allow us to do many of the things we used to have to do in an office and with a mindset shift in what is a "workplace" is, I think we will see more people working in virtual teams and offices.

In my role, I work in a virtual team - my colleagues are based around the world and I liaise with people in APAC, EMEA and North America regularly. We all know what we have to do and work together with a common goal of finding the best people for Oracle. I am based in Melbourne Australia and have successfully placed candidates into roles here at Oracle across Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, India and Singapore. There have been times where I have worked with Managers and Candidates who I have never physically met - the relationships I have with some of my online networks is stronger I would suggest than what some people have with their real world contacts.

With the use of many online tools, soft phones and collaborative products the world is quickly becoming a much smaller place than it use to be. Employees are no longer limited by their physical location, they can work on projects with team members in different time zones or locations.

From my own personal experience workplace flexibility works very well. I enjoy working across different cultures, I have expanded my skills and capabilities and have provided my clients with a value added service. Not every organisation can offer this type of role, but if companies want to attract the best staff they will have to start making their working more flexible to a changing workforce that expects flexibility or risk getting left behind by quality candidates.

I know that there is a common perception that online networks are somehow not as strong as real life relationships and that unless you meet someone for a coffee you can only develop a relationship so far. I do agree with that thinking to some degree, however that gap is quickly closing as 1) the technology continues to develop to make us more connected and 2) the growing acceptance that your online networks are just as real and valuable as the relationships that you have with your in person networks.

This article was originally posted on David Talamelli's Blog - David's Journal on Tap

It is that time of year where everyone writes a "my predictions for [insert niche area here] 2010" story. These articles and blog posts are great but rather than write up another list about the same things many of us have already heard or written about (eg. More about social media, mobile is coming, etc....) I wanted to reflect on something different (I sense a theme for my blog posts this year developing - updates next post). Whether you are in a company that employs 1 or 100 000 people, as professionals we all have certain tasks that we need to do to be successful in our jobs. The jobs we have have their ups and downs but they make up a large portion of our day, our time and our energy. Ideally we should enjoy what we do and if you are in a job to just "pay the bills" it does not have to necessarily be a bad thing.

If you are doing the same task day in and day out, it runs the risk of becoming monotonous. Yes you will become an "expert" in what you do because you do it day in and day out, but there is the inherent risk of losing your passion for what you do - I am not sure but if I had to do the same thing every day it would likely damper my creative thinking and spirit. But wait a second, in my role I do have similar tasks that I complete each day - work out our resourcing needs, search for and identify candidates, lots of search, lots of talking to people, the list goes on. Even though I do the same tasks I have not lost any passion or want to do my role.

I love what I do and I am successful at what I do. Since I started recruiting in 1999 I have seen many Recruiters just going through the motions, but that does not have to be the case, I think we can all add our own individuality to our jobs in some form. I think one of the reasons I enjoy my role as much as I do here at Oracle is because my management team has allowed me the flexibility to be creative in my role. I invest a large portion of my day doing the core things that I have to do to get my job done, but I also have outlets that let me not only be creative but also help the company by finding new answers and ways of doing things.

It does not matter what your outlet is - but if you can find one that helps both you and the company at the same time I think that creates a great energy. It could be tweeting a message or posting a blog article. For me writing is a great outlet. There have been times when I have been stuck on a problem with no answer in sight, looking at my laptop for ages - what I have done is put on my running shoes, turned up my iPod and in that run when I step away from the problem more often than not the solution has 'popped' into my head. When an idea hits you, go with it, if you can't attend to that thought straight away - write it down and come back to it. Your idea may not be the traditional way you do things, but look into it - you may have something.

Candidates have access to more opportunities now than ever before. To attract and retain the top levels of candidates I think companies and managers need to embrace the individuality of each person (within reason). I think the days of managing teams with a 'it's my way or the highway' approach are on their way out. Yes there are guidelines/ processes in most companies and yes employees need to work within these guidelines, but being in the corporate world does not mean you cannot express your individuality and let that flow through in your job.

This blog entry was originally published on David Talamelli's Blog - David's Journal on Tap.

Ok let's not include R2D2 or C3P0 or any of the other memorable Movie Robots - for the most part Robots can be pretty boring.

Following on from my conversation with Sarah from Carve Consulting the other week we briefly touched on what we think may happen next year as all these companies and people jump on the social media wave. It is great that new users are joining these online communities and sharing content with everyone. However one thing I think we will see happen is that companies in an attempt to make sure they have a blog or FB page may have people writing for them who aren't natural writers or people writing for them who really aren't passionate about their product/service.

Writing is based on emotion, it cannot be automated even though I am sure there are people who would disagree with this.

Blogging is not new it has been around for years, there are many great bloggers out there and information I imagine on any topic you are looking for. I have been blogging for about 2 years now and for me blogging is a way to express and share my thoughts and ideas with our readers and hopefully provide some information that helps someone (I believe in the sayings "what goes around comes around and also "do good things and good things will happen to you, do bad things and...."). When I write it is natural, I find my blog entries are not forced writing they just kind of flow similar to when you have a conversation when you catch up with someone for a coffee.

I think though what we will see (and there already are examples of this out there) is companies set up corporate blogs written by people who are not passionate about their topic or not 100% engaged in what they want to say. I have seen corporate blogs that do not hold my attention at all. The reason they don't hold my attention is that they do not seem genuine - if you are going to write a corporate blog, don't feel you have to put on your sales hat and sell your product/service to us - if we are interested we will get in touch with you. Corporate blog entries that have no heart or passion in the writing come off to me as something I can just read off the company website or marketing promotion - where is the value?? I want to read what a writer thinks and feels and get a perspective from a real person not from a robot being told to write something about "how great product X is" - unless the writer actually tried product X and loved it!

The other thing that I am noticing more lately is people who are taking previously written content and claiming it as their own. As more people start blogging and writing about topics there is naturally going to be some overlap of content which is understandable however isn't there some sort of unwritten bloggers code about stealing content. Again it comes down to value to the reader, what value does it do to post content that is already available on the internet (unless you are trying to claim credit for something you did not do - again this comes back to karma). If you want to use someone else's content ask them, more often than not they will say yes and make sure to give credit back to the original post - give credit where credit is due.

Here is a great example of how cutting and pasting someone else's content can backfire. Thomas Shaw found a great example of this the other day, here is his Twitter post below letting the guys from Hippo.com.au know where their blog post originally came from. (notice the #fail hashtag at the end).

@ThomasShaw: @hippo_com_au guys you have copied the the article http://bit.ly/59Be2M from here http://bit.ly/7lLJiT #fail11:31 AM Dec 15th from TweetDeck in reply to hippo_com_au

I am sure corporate bloggers have policies and guidelines they must work within, but it doesn't mean your blog posts can't be original or funny or honest, etc.... If you are going to write, write about the things that you think and believe - your readers will be much more engaged with you and much more appreciative to you for sharing your thoughts.

This article was originally published on the blog David's Journal on Tap.

It has been a while since my last blog post - at first I was thinking that it must just be a case of writers block, which sometimes happens. Yesterday though, I had the chance to meet with @sarahatcarve while she was in Melbourne and after talking to her I started to think maybe it is not a case of writers block but maybe we (general online community) have said all there is to say about social media for the moment.

Sarah and I have been talking to each other on Twitter for a while and it was great to finally get the chance to meet her. Sarah runs Carve Consulting in Australia which is a consulting firm that helps organisations realise value from corporate social networks. (taken from webpage). It was great to talk to someone who gets social media/networks and sees the value they provide in a business capacity. As Sarah and I were talking I found myself answering my own questions about why it has been a while since my last blog post. A few things that I mentioned when I met with Sarah:

• I think there is too much hype around Social Media/Networking at the moment - it is great everyone is finally coming around to using these tools, but there are too many "experts" saying the same thing as each other which I think is taking away some of value of what the real enthusiasts are using these tools for. How many webinars can I be invited to about using LinkedIn/Twitter for Recruiting - especially by those "experts" who have just signed up to these sites.
• I think there is too much white noise on some networks - I always feel a bit dirty when I get those LinkedIn invitations to connect with me like this one below that I received recently:

"If we are not already directly connected and you are open to being a 1st degree connection with me on LinkedIn, then please know that I am an open networker, I will accept your invitation and I will not IDK you [insert: if you press I do not know this person on an invite - LinkedIn views the person as spamming you and may cancel their account]

My LinkedIn profile is: www.linkedin.com/in/xxx
My LinkedIn email address is: xxx@gmail.com .
Look forward to connecting with you on LinkedIn. JT "

These people remind me of travelling salesman but instead of going from city to city they are going from network to network. They are not adding value to online networks, they are just building up numbers of connections for their own sales reason. I think it is great people use these networks to build business but be open about it. I have over 2500 connections on LinkedIn, but I only invite people I have spoken to or have some connection with.



• A lot of people are starting to use Social networks (this is good) but many businesses or individuals haven't thought about why they are going online (this is bad). Is to find a job, build a brand, increase sales, increase revenue, etc.... .

  It reminds me of a conversation I had with my sister a while back (she is in marketing) she mentioned that many of her clients always jumped up and down and said they had to create a facebook page as part of their marketing plan. When she asked them why they thought that - they never had an answer, the standard response was always "because it is what everyone else is doing" - it kind of reminds me of when your parents would ask you if your friends jumped off a cliff would you?? People should do what works for them, it is great to try new ways to do things, but think about what you want to achieve before blindly following a trend.

Looking back on the year I think the main focus of many of my blog posts has been focused on using Social Media Tools in Recruitment which makes sense as I am an experienced Recruiter and a Social Media enthusiast. I would like to think that some of the information I have written has helped somebody in their job search.

For those of you who have read enough of my posts talking about the latest and greatest social media tools, next year I am aiming to have fewer blog posts based around Social Media Tools - yes Twitter that includes you!

The feeling I have lately is that there is more than enough talk happening online about these tools. Don't get me wrong I love using social networks and social media tools - they have helped me in my success here at Oracle, but there is already plenty of information available to help anyone navigate through the world of social media - from the first day novice to the seasoned enthusiast - we do not all have to fill up our social networks saying the same thing over and over about how to use social networks :)

In my next blog post I want to follow up with a few more things Sarah and I spoke about and talk about some of the things I think will happen in the Social Media space next year once the hype dies down.

Over the weekend I again had the opportunity to compete in the Australian Corporate Games which were held here in Melbourne, Australia. This is the 4th year in a row that I have competed in the Corporate Games and I think it is great that Oracle continues to support and encourage us to participate in these types of events.

Overall Event Place Name Organisation Time Event

The first team we came up against (Aussie Post) I get the funny feeling have played together before. I think they had about three 7'0 footers in the team and they could all could shoot the lights out. Anyway we got destroyed in that game and lost to what turned out to be the eventual winner of our pool, but I did hit a 3-pointer which surprised me as my shooting is really not that great. The next two games were a lot closer and we had a bit of fun at the end, even though we didn't win any of our 3 games, we put up a good fight. We also had two mixed basketball teams and Megan's Team did much better as they came third overall which is a great result.

I forgot to bring my camera this year, so I didn't get any pictures but if I can find any I will post them up. Thanks again to Megan and Kate for organising everything for the Basketball and Running events.

This blog post was originally published at David Talamelli's Blog - David's Journal on Tap

Development & Support Engineer(s) - Oracle Financial Services - Bangalore, India

Multiple Roles

At Oracle, you make the difference

Oracle Corporation is the world's leading supplier of software for information management, and the world's second largest independent software company. With annual revenues of more than $US 18 billion, the company offers its database, tools and application products, along with related consulting, education, and support services.

We currently have multiple opportunities for Development and Support Engineers working with Oracle Financial Software Solutions. These roles are based out of our Bangalore India offices. As part of this team you will be working on client based projects and be responsible for:

Role: Team member - Development / Maintenance & Support

Role Description:

-2-6 years experience

-Primary Skills: COBOL/AS400

-Secondary Skills: Banking domain knowledge is desirable, SDLC knowledge and Testing.

-Special Requirements (e.g. in case of Production Support, would shift timings be required)

Responsibilities: involved in coding, testing, writing program specifications.

This is an excellent opportunity to join Oracle Corporation in our Bangalore offices. If you are interested mail your resume to david.talamelli@oracle.com or contact David Talamelli on +61 3 8616 3364 to discuss further.

Note: CV's will not be accepted/acknowledged by agencies.

David Talamelli
Oracle Corporation
Email - david.talamelli@oracle.com
Twitter ID: http://twitter.com/DavidTalamelli

I am sure many of you of you know the drill: log onto email [check], log onto Twitter [check], log onto Facebook [check], log onto LinkedIn [check], log onto another social network and another one, etc..... Why hasn't someone come up with an easier way to manage our social networks and aggregate them into one application.

Wait, not all hope is lost!

Over the past few weeks, I have been seeing many more tools offering social networking aggregation or mash up services. I think this will be one of the next 'big things' that we see in the social media/networking space.

It made sense that sooner or later we were going to require these services and I think it is great that this need has been addressed. With so many social networks that have been created to communicate with each other, it was becoming time consuming and ineffective to log onto each network individually and check to see who is saying what and where.

These SNS (social network services) mash up sites basically aggregate many of your social networks onto one application or web browser. I have had the chance to try a few of these apps and I think we are still at early adoption stage to say that any one application has it right. Some are too slow, some don't have access to enough networks, some are not available for mac (disgby.com - hope you see this), etc....

Anyway, here are my thoughts on a few of the Social Networking Aggregate site that I have used or seen available:

Orsiso: http://orsiso.com/ - I downloaded Orsiso this week and have started to use it. My first impression is that I like it, it has a nice user interface that allows me to check and see what is happening on my various social networks. It also has a nice feature where you can group your various contacts into 1st Level through to 4th Level contacts - allowing you to keep track of the people you talk to regularly or want to hear from. On the downside - I find that the service is slow, many updates either do not show up on Orsiso or show up much later then when they are actually posted. Out of the 5 SNS Aggregators listed I would say it is my 2nd favorite at the moment.

Google Wave: http://www.google.com/ - I am waiting on a few invitations to come through before I can actually start using Wave - my initial thought from what I have seen is that you can only communicate with other Google Wave users - the tools look great, but it will be a long time before everyone is using wave. Out of the 5 SNS Aggregators listed I have to give it a NA score as I have not actually used this tool yet.

Digsby: http://www.digsby.com - The first thing that comes to mind is frustration! Digsby is not yet available on Mac so when I tried to use it on my home laptop - no luck. Ok the next day I downloaded it onto my work laptop, but because of my firewall protections I can not use it at work. It is too bad, it looks like a good tool, but in this competitive environment, you have to make things easy for people to use - my initial exposure to Digsby has been difficult and I am not sure I will go back unless it becomes easier to use. Out of the 5 SNS Aggregators listed this was my least favorite out of the 5 listed.

Flock.com: http://flock.com/ - This was interesting, Flock is a web browser which integrates your social networking profiles into your web browser. I only had a quick play with it, but didn't immediately see the value add in it. It was good you could log onto Twitter or Facebook and have that information on a sidebar, but it seemed to defeat the purpose because it opened up a new webpage with every social network you joined. I was thinking if this is the case why can't I just do this in Chrome or IE or any other Web Browser. Out of the 5 SNS Aggregators listed this was just ahead of Digsby and well below Orsiso.

Tweetdeck: http://tweetdeck.com/ - I have been using Tweetdeck ever since I started using Twitter over 18 months ago. Tweetdeck is getting better as it now has Facebook and Myspace integration. I like how you can create columns to follow the people or keywords you want to and the results come into Tweetdeck in real time without the same delay that happens with Orsiso. Out of the 5 SNS Aggregators listed this is the original one I used and is still my favorite, it is number 1 for me in the list.

If we could take bits and pieces from each of these apps - I think there would be a great all purpose app to use. I think we will see a good app come out that will stand above the rest and become dominant in this space. It will be fun to see who comes up with that app. I think that someone will get it right in the near future and I think it is great because this will certainly make social networking so much easier to manage for many people.

This article was originally published on the blog David's Journal on Tap.

1. Corporate websites and job boards are considered the most useful channels when obtaining information on companies, but;
2. Social networks, professional sites and blogs, like facebook, twitter or linkedin are more realiable source of information. Besides, they are also used to check references once they've got an offer.

Greetings Oracle colleagues, partners, friends. For six years, I have had the privilege of providing recruiting support for Oracle's National Security Group. Because I don't have a background in the military, I feel that this is my way of contributing to National Security. This is a time when lending a hand to our great Nation is so important.

Oracle's National Security Group (NSG) has the single largest group of
cleared Oracle technology engineers in the industry. Our primary mission
is to assist customers in the U.S. intelligence community, military
services, federal/international law enforcement, and homeland security
community to make the best use of the power inherent within Oracle's
database, applications, and other technologies. Drawing on our domain specific
experience, NSG Consulting helps you assess your current and
planned infrastructure, create your mission information management
strategy, and deploy new technology. We specialize in both custom
development of Oracle-based systems and in applying Oracle's large
inventory of ERM, HR, Supply Chain, CRM and other operations support
software to customers' mission problems. No one brings a stronger team
of experienced and dedicated Oracle experts to address your problems.

Are you facing an expanding mission and a shrinking budget?
If so, you are not alone. Many national security agencies are facing the same challenges:
fighting new kinds of enemies and expanding both the amount and type of intelligence
required to prevail. Agency programs are under increasing financial scrutiny and
demands for quick and decisive results. NSG can contribute significantly to the speed,
quality, and effectiveness of custom software development and applications
implementation. We have the senior, experienced engineers needed to help create (or
critically review) program architectures, and we have the talented developers to help bring
them to life.

Will you need to get creative to meet new threats and mission challenges?
NSG has a well-deserved reputation for creativity, both with our customers and within
Oracle. It starts with looking at creative application of the capabilities and power in the
Oracle software you already own and that is on the drawing board within a corporation
expending US$2.4 billion a year on development. We can start from scratch if that is what
is needed, but that is seldom the right answer if what you need is speed and low risk.

Have you seen custom developments or applications implementations fail?
So have we--but fortunately, not ours. We believe that many of the reasons for those
failures are grounded in the inability or unwillingness of project leadership to properly
consider the complexity of enterprise applications. We strongly recommend that you
engage us to review complex Oracle-based architectures near the start of a project and
at critical decision points, when only a few weeks of expert consulting can pay big
dividends in ensuring that your project is on the right path.

If you work with Oracle technology and are in the Intelligence Community, you most likely have worked with one of Oracle's fine consultants.

Oracle' NSG is hiring all over the US for candidates w/ Oracle's core and immerging technology. Due to the nature of the work this group does, a TS/SCI level security clearance is necessary. Kelly is part of our North America Recruitment Team and works with our NSG Group, for any NSG enquiries, Kelly can be contacted at kelly.cushman@oracle.com

I read an article titled "54% of Companies Ban Facebook, Twitter at Work" the other week and was quite surprised to find the number was that high.

Whenever the question comes up of about using social networking tools at work - the common debate tends to be focused around productivity. That is many people from a management perspective take the thinking that using tools like Facebook takes people away from doing the tasks that they are employed to do and ends up costing the company money. Users of Social Networks however counter that with the thought that it is by using tools like Facebook they are actually able to do the job they do and that social networking tools help the company do business and make money.

One point I think many people forget about in this debate is how this affects a companies ability to Recruit and Attract Candidates. The war for talent is becoming increasingly competitive and when I see statistics that companies do not allow Twitter/Facebook at work I wonder if companies are doing all they can to attract and retain top employees in their company.

With an increasingly competitive 'war for talent' candidates have access to more job opportunities now than ever before. In the next 10-15 years we are going to see a shift in the demographics of our workforce. As we see more of Generation Y (and soon Generation Z) enter the workplace - companies are going to have to adapt to the technology the new working population uses or companies may struggle to be seen an 'employer of choice' by top candidates. Social Networking tools are becoming part of our daily lives, similar to the uptake of mobile phones in the 1990's.

If a candidate is deciding whether your company is the right workplace for them what message does a ban on social networks send? Inadvertanltly companies who ban this technology may be giving off signals to candidates that:

• Management does not trust their staff to do their job?
• Management will watch over your shoulder to make sure you are doing only what you have been hired to do?
• Does it promote your company as a forward thinking organisation always looking to improve or as a company stuck in its ways and policies?
• Your company is more concerned about manging risk, than doing new business in new ways?

Yes - I do agree Managers need to make sure that there are boundaries with what employees can and can not do at work and that managers do need to measure productivity - however a Social Media Policy outlining what is acceptable and what is not acceptable use of social networking tools would certainly clear up any confusion instead of just putting a ban on all sites. More often than not if you trust your employees to do their job you will get much better results than if you micro-manage them and watch their every tweet.

Candidates at all levels from Graduates to C- Level Candidates are much more savvy these days about which companies they want to work for. Top Candidates want to work in a working environment that is trustful, built on respect, and allows people to be successful in their roles. By banning these sites at work, you are taking away an Employees tools and you may be closing on the door on some fantastic candidates that use these tools as part of their day. Candidates may decline an offer from your company in favour of a company that has a Social Media Policy and allows online access. Employers give people access to a phone line...these online networks are similar tools to a phone... they give your Employees the ability to talk to your clients and customers.

As far as the productivity debate goes - I think the use of social networking tools in the workplace has far more positives and potential than negatives (as long as you do not spend 8 hrs a day playing mafia wars).

This article was originally published on the Blog - David's Journal on Tap

Yesterday Bill Boorman organised and ran the first Australian Edition of his hugely successful talk back radio show "Ready for Lift Off". It was a great opportunity to talk to Bill and I enjoyed the chance to hear some of his insights into the Recruitment World and hear his thoughts on various recruitment topics. The Recruiter Show brings news and views from around the globe with a special focus on what it means for this region. Expect debate, controversy and enjoyment. Lots of views shared on all things recruiting. The Podcast can be heard either here on this link or below.

Listen to Downunder Recruiting on Blog Talk Radio

The show was titled "The Road to Recovery" the first edition of the new Australasian show, looked at what is happening to the recruitment markets in the region as well as worldwide, the noises that are coming out of the market and looked in to the future to predict what the next 18 months will be like. What's changed with client perception? whats changed with candidate perception? What impact social media? What can you do as a recruiter (corporate or agency) to make the most of it.

One of the things that Bill and I discussed was whether candidates and hiring managers are behaving differently in this downturn market as opposed to the busy markets we have experienced in the past. Besides the fact that some candidates are looking for more security than they may have in the past - for the most part things still seem the same. I don't think it matters necessarily what "the market" is doing, if you are looking for a job make sure sure you are looking for roles that are the ideal next role for you to go into - what are you looking for in your next job: location, money, challenge, etc... your job search should be individual to yourself and reflect what you are looking for - do not get too caught up in the hype of an intangible market that you can not see or touch or feel.

There are always booms and busts in business - recruitment activity will become busy again in the IT world. I know Bill is tipping recruitment activity in general to slowly get busier until early 2010 when things may really take off.

The DownUnder Recruiting Talk Back Radio Show will be held every Monday at 5:00 pm Melbourne Time. I would recommend to any Recruiters that this would certainly be something worth plugging into if you have the opportunity. It is a very interactive way to discuss all things recruitment with your colleagues and peers in the local ANZ region.

Check out the new face of Oracle Global Recruiting. Just click on http://www.facebook.com/CareersAtOracle and become a fan! Learn about Oracle-what we do, how we do it, and why we excel.

You can find out all about our current events throughout the globe and also check out our career opportunities by global region. Learn about our campus programs and some tips on interviewing. See our recruiting blog and other useful links. Connect with us and learn why Oracle is a great place to be!