Employers can now register with Search.co.uk/Jobs and post their job adverts by choosing any one of 3 easy ways to pay, including a new £49 for 30 day ‘job credit’ offer.

You can also choose our industry-first ‘pay per application’ option or discuss a single monthly fee for unlimited vacancies.

Either go to our Employer Section now to register and post your vacancies for only £49 via this limited time offer, or call us on 0845-026-2026 for more information on ‘pay per application’ or ‘unlimited job advertising’.

This means doing more than simply finding the right employer. Never has it been clearer that the “jobs for life” culture doesn’t exist any more, explains Peter Gillespie, Managing Director of Search.co.uk, the leading jobs website.

“Many jobs which seemed rock solid ten years ago have disappeared. Who would have thought, for instance, that working for a Scottish bank could turn out to be a risky business?

“But rapid change in employment is now a fact of life. What job seekers have to consider is how they can develop the skills to help them to adapt and even benefit from regular career moves,” says Gillespie.

It is impossible to predict precisely which skills will be in demand at the end of the decade. But there are patterns which have continued for many years.

There have not, for instance, been enough school leavers going into technical education and training which has created a skills shortage in the oil industry in Aberdeen and Dundee. Okay, it is possible that environmental concerns will reduce employment prospects in the oil business, but higher-level technical skills can be transferred to other industries, for instance developing renewable energy sources.

“It is these adaptable skills that young job seekers need to develop,” says Gillespie. “For example at Search.co.uk we’re hearing from a growing number of employers who are seeking recruits with language skills. This demand can only grow as the economy becomes increasingly global.”

Employers also say it can be difficult to find applicants with so-called “soft skills” such as customer handling, planning and organising and problem-solving. Employees with these abilities are the ones who can benefit from on-going training so they can develop their skills to match the requirements of the organisation.

For many people higher education will be the best way to “learn to learn” new skills. Some strictly vocational training creates inflexible workers who get left behind the pace of change.

But Gillespie stresses that a degree isn’t the only path for job seekers. “It is impossible to predict exactly what skills and qualifications will be required by employers offering jobs in Scotland in 2020. But I bet there’ll still be shortages of plumbers, electricians and other qualified trades people. Those with the right qualifications will be making a very comfortable living.”

Useful links: Jobs in Glasgow, Jobs in Edinburgh, Jobs in Aberdeen, Engineering Jobs.

“For several months employers I’ve been talking to in cities like Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee have been increasingly optimistic about jobs,” says Peter Gillespie, Managing Director of Search.co.uk.

“Their feelings were confirmed in the middle of December by figures from the Office of National Statistics showing that unemployment fell in Scotland by 2,000 in the three months from August to October – despite the jobless figures continuing to rise for the rest of the UK.”

Gillespie says that while this does not represent a boom in Scottish jobs, it does seem to suggest that a recovery in demand for staff – although fragile – is on its way. Also that there are some areas of the Scottish economy where there are definite grounds for optimism.

The financial services sector, which a year ago appeared to be in meltdown, is quietly recovering. The large banks did shed staff and, while there may be more redundancies to come, there was also considerable growth in the form of Tesco Bank, Virgin Money, BN Paribas and Esure insurance.

“Although some major institutions suffered catastrophic problems with the credit crunch, the need for financial services in general hasn’t disappeared. Individuals and companies still need insurance, banking, loans, pensions, savings and investment services. The institutions may have changed but the accountancy & finance jobs are still there,” says Gillespie.

The strength of the Scottish manufacturing sector has also surprised many commentators. As early as July firms in CBI Scotland’s quarterly survey were bullish about their prospects, while by October they were talking about their order books filling up.

This resurgence in manufacturing appears to be largely driven by overseas sales. The latest Lloyds TSB Scotland Business Monitor, which surveys over 400 companies, found expectations for export activity rising to their highest level for four and a half years. Manufacturers are benefiting from the weakness of the pound which helps make Scottish products very competitive in overseas markets, and it’s helping other parts of the economy too.

Tourists from overseas are discovering their Euros, dollars and yen go much further, while visitors from south of the Border find their spending isn’t quite as squeezed as it is when they take their holidays in Continental Europe and the USA.

It’s impossible to exaggerate the importance of tourism to the Scottish economy. It brings in around £4 billion a year and creates around 200,000 jobs in Scotland .

Much of the growth in the Scottish hospitality industry has been at the upper end of the market. Five-star visitors expect professional service and the pay, training and standard of staff reflects this.

Finally, if proof were needed of the resilience of the Scottish economy, the whisky industry was reporting growth at the end of 2009 with over 800 million bottles being shipped abroad between January and September. Bringing in well over £2 billion this represents about 20% of Scotland’s manufactured exports. There’s a success everybody can drink to.

“A group of Scottish job seekers told me recently that they don’t expect a response any more when they apply for job vacancies advertised on most job advertising websites and most of their past applications weren’t even acknowledged. In fact, on average only 1 in 5 of recent online job applications resulted in any type of response.

That is a pretty sad indictment of those employer advertisers and their attitude to applicants. There is no excuse for not acknowledging job applications and keeping applicants informed at the key stages of the recruitment process,” says Peter Gillespie, Managing Director of Search.co.uk.

”With all the recent discussion about employer branding, it makes even less sense to create a group of disaffected applicants with a poor impression of your process and your regard for their effort in applying to them. People place more value on what employers do rather than what they say, and so ultimately employers get the reputation they deserve.”

“There’s no excuse as current online response management tools mean it can be as easy as clicking a button for an employer to acknowledge and respond appropriately to an application. So, why don’t more employers do it?

We’ve built openness, ease of use and transparency into all our own online response management processes for advertisers on Search.co.uk. To do otherwise is unfair on job seekers and reflects badly on the employers.”

Gillespie says that most organisations will tell you that their employees are their most important asset. If that’s the case, shouldn’t they be treated accordingly right from the very start?

“Job descriptions in many advertisements are also poorly worded. This leads both to applications from people who are not appropriate for vacancies and to well-qualified candidates deciding not to apply because they don’t understand the job requirements,” says Gillespie.

He recognises that some of the problems arise from the current strain on HR departments which are often being squeezed at the same time as they have additional pressure arising from cutbacks in other areas of the business. Bad recruitment procedures, however, can only add to the strain on an organisation.

In the current economic climate ‘running lean’ is the secret of success. That means every employee and, therefore, every new recruit has to have not just the capability and skills but the motivation to maximise their performance within the organisation.

Recruitment processes should focus on more than just simple selection. They should be seen as a way to communicate with candidates.

Every job applicant should know:

* Any information they provide is kept secure and confidential.

* What will happen next in the recruitment process.

* When they will learn the outcome.

* What the outcome is.

Search.co.uk has these steps built in to their online service for advertisers so every job seeker can be saved, initially assessed, acknowledged and responded to with a couple of ‘clicks’. There is no reason why other organisations should not offer the same, Gillespie explains.

“Quite apart from any poor experiences suffered by job applicants to any job vacancy being bad for an organisation’s reputation, it can start any subsequent new employees off on the wrong foot.

“Organisations which follow best practice, treating future potential employees fairly, will ultimately benefit from a more loyal and committed future workforce. And, they’ll enhance rather than damage that much talked about ‘employer brand’ and make it easier to attract future talent. That is the simple message we want to communicate,” concludes Gillespie.

“Our model was designed to answer one simple question: Why should employers pay for job advertising unless it can be shown to attract genuine high-quality potential recruits?” says Peter Gillespie, Managing Director of Search.co.uk.

“We launched Search.co.uk because we believed job seekers weren’t receiving the best service possible and employers were frequently getting poor value for money from their campaigns. Recruitment was clearly lagging behind other forms of advertising.”

When selling products companies used to complain that only perhaps 10-50 per cent of their advertising was effective. What they couldn’t tell was which was the 10 per cent that worked and which was the 50 – 90 per cent that represented money down the drain.

Then the internet changed everything. ‘Pay per click’ epitomised by Google’s AdWords has become the norm. Companies now don’t pay for advertisements, but for results. The return on investment is measurable in terms of the customers who come to their sites and make purchases.

But, although recruiters embraced the internet quickly and wholeheartedly, job advertising charges stayed firmly stuck in the bygone age of print. Companies were expected to pay every time an advertisement appeared even if it didn’t produce a single genuine job applicant.

That was the case until Search.co.uk revolutionised the face of online recruitment with pay per response advertising. Employers are only charged for real, high-quality applicants. Advertisements are effectively free.

As Search.co.uk’s competitors have found out, this model is not as simple to set up as it might seem. Given the current state of the job market, for instance, generating large numbers of responses is often not too difficult. Many of those candidates, however, will not be appropriate for the position advertised.

To avoid employers having to pay for unsuitable applicants, search.co.uk developed a collection of sophisticated built-in online tools that guarantee candidates will be appropriate for the role. It also allows employers to put a cap on the number of applicants so they only have to pay for the first 20 even if they receive 100 responses.

In addition, with old-fashioned charging, companies had to pay every week or every month for advertising if they wanted to maintain a recruitment campaign. With Search.co.uk there’s no time limit. It doesn’t cost a penny to keep on advertising.

“It’s obvious to us that pay per response offers the best deal for job seekers and recruiters. So we’re delighted to see some of our competitors are beginning to provide something similar although they don’t all match our guarantees on quality,” concludes Gillespie.

Scotland’s number one commercial radio station recently teamed up with the country’s leading jobs website search.co.uk to launch a dynamic new recruitment service for listeners.

Initially around 1500 Scottish jobs were listed on Real Radio Scotland’s website and the new service has been promoted online and on-air on Real Radio, part of Guardian Media Group (GMG).

Regional managing director of GMG Radio Scotland and the north east Billy Anderson says the partnership with search.co.uk has allowed the station to create an “instant jobs resource” for listeners. It means we can add to what we already offer to include: “first-class career vacancies across the whole spectrum of the Scottish population that we serve”.

Real Radio Scotland broadcasts across the densely populated Central Belt including the cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow where it is now the most popular station. It has been one of the great growth stories of commercial radio in recent years.

Peter Gillespie, managing director of Search.co.uk, says the new recruitment service perfectly illustrates the benefits of collaboration, for both parties: “We’re delighted bring our expertise and thousands of client job vacancies to this partnership with Scotland’s most successful commercial radio station. This collaboration provides an innovative way of providing listeners with a new added-value service, providing access to high-quality job vacancies across Scotland.”

These are offered through the Real Jobs website, at www.realradio.co.uk/jobs. There are over 1,000 Scottish vacancies across a very wide spectrum of industries, services and the public sector, from relief janitor to finance director and almost everything in between.

Gillespie says the partnership between Search.co.uk and Real Radio Scotland shows the way that what were single-media businesses can take advantage of their evolution into fully-fledged multimedia organisations: “Real Radio Scotland the broadcaster cannot be separated from Real Radio Scotland the website. The audience expects the highest quality from both.

“Our recruitment platform provides them with great functionality and user experience and our employer advertisers benefit from access to an additional pool of skilled local talent. Everybody wins.

“Other beneficiaries could be the people who listen to Real Radio Scotland through the website’s streaming service because they are outside the transmission area. Many of those will be homesick, but the Real Jobs service could put them just a click away from a paid return to the Central Belt.”

Search.co.uk has welcomed continued moves by UK government bodies to step into the 21st century with the adoption of online recruitment procedures.

Recent months have seen several government agencies switch from traditional newspaper advertising to listing available scottish jobs online, with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) being at the forefront following the creation of the ‘myjobscotland‘ portal and trial advertising agreements with leading Scottish recruitment websites, including Search.co.uk/Jobs . Praising the Convention for responding to a fundamental shift in recruitment practices, Scotland’s leading jobs site believes that the move will deliver a number of key advantages.

“Recruitment is not a science, it’s an objective and logical process when done properly and is all about matching jobseekers with the right skills to the right jobs. Entering into the digital age can, however, make the process smoother and easier, attracting a wider selection of jobseekers and improving candidate selection processes and timescales,” said Peter Gillespie, Managing Director of Search.co.uk.

“It’s not simply about making savings on advertising budgets. There are greater benefits to be gained; notably changes to working practices which will free up staff and allow them to focus on more value adding work whilst also enabling local government to compete with the private sector for quality staff, particularly in sectors where there are skills shortages.”

The progress made by COSLA’s launch of the myjobscotland portal and the trial deal to post all Cosla member vacancies across 6 leading Scottish job sites, including Search.co.uk/Jobs, means that local governments can measure and implement a more effective use of their resources to deliver improved performance, by reducing advertising costs and competing more effectively for the right candidates. The all-council recruitment website, seeks to maximise the benefits of both online advertising and technology to improve the quality of responsesreceived by the 32 councils offering jobs in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Inverness and the rest of Scotland.

Improved efficiency is one of the driving forces behind the newly created application and online advertising trial. Cosla’s new online recruitment function will reduce the costly, long-winded process of advertising in print outlets, harnessing the latest innovative online technologies to make it a more painless, speedy and cost efficient exercise.

However, if you’re actively seeking a job, now is the perfect time to make sure your job hunt is ready to move into top gear. Although times have been undoubtedly tough and job vacancy numbers are generally still considerably lower than a couple of years ago, January is a key period for recruitment. And, some sectors are showing real healthy signs of growth in terms of job vacancies and recruitment activity for 2010.

So, is your CV in great shape to make the most of you? Are you contacting all the right people now to make sure they have you front of mind when the upturn starts in January? A first step could be to check out our own ‘CV Tips’ and ‘Interview Tips’ on Search.co.uk/Jobs to make sure you are following the basic ‘golden rules’ for success.

Never assume you know everything, as some great candidates make some basic errors at every stage of the process – errors that can seriously affect their chances of getting the right job. So, make sure you are not one of them!

Some other advice may be to contact a career advice company like ‘TCMO’, or ‘the career management organisation’, based in Edinburgh. They are experienced recruitment professionals who offer the ability to help you achieve your potential when looking to change career, find a new job or even just chase promotion more effectively. Visit www.tcmo.co.uk for more information.

In the meantime, check your CV again and follow our own basic ‘golden rules’, then check out almost 4,000 current live job vacancies on Search.co.uk/Jobs today! Or, register your updated CV via ‘My Search’ and create some ‘job agents’ and we’ll email you matching vacancies as they are added to Search.co.uk/Jobs.

We hope you have a great Christmas break and a happy new year and we wish you all the best for your job search in 2010!

Although most industry sectors have suffered as a result of the current recession the demand for foreign language speakers in the business outsourcing sector in Edinburgh and Glasgow has remained strong.

In particular, there has been a consistently strong demand for French, German and Scandinavian language speakers in Edinburgh’s Call & Contact Centre sector. In response to this, Scotland’s largest recruitment business, Search Consultancy, recently established a specialist ‘Language’ division dedicated to offering specialist language based roles with clients with jobs across Scotland.

They are current recruiting for a number of French, German, Finnish, Swedish and Danish speaking jobs in Edinburgh with good basic salaries and benefits packages. To view these roles on Search.co.uk/Jobs simply click on the ‘Search Your Language’ client profile to view all current language jobs in Edinburgh.

‘Bonne chance’ on your job hunt!

As well as record vacancy numbers, we have also just launched our revised site design to improve the design and functionality of our site, in response to user and client feedback. So, quite a bit to celebrate then!

In addition to jobs with over 350 employers and agencies, including Arch Financial Planning, Sky, Tesco Bank, UHI Millennium Institute, Scottish Electronics and almost every single Scottish local authority – we’re also currently carrying thousands of jobs with some of the leading recruitment agencies in the UK. Search Consultancy, Adecco, Office Angels, Xpress Recruitment, Computer People, First Contact Chefs, Global Highland and Pertemps are just a few.

So if your looking for an Administration job, Engineering job, Insurance job, Accountancy job or customer service jobs that need a foreign language, then get searching on Search.co.uk/jobs today!

Happy job hunting.