Some of you may be familiar with our weekly Twitter Chat which we run on #JobAdviceSA. If you are not, here is some information about myself and my co-hosts, Wesley Madziva and Tim Barry. I will also give you some insight into why we give up a few hours of our precious time every week in order to help anyone who is looking for some career advice or simply, just looking for some recruitment/work related assistance.
Let me start with how myself and my co-hosts met. Wesley and I have known each other for years as we have ‘bumped’ into each other at many APSO or Recruitment Conferences. We have always shared a good laugh, mostly via Social Media! Tim and I met through Social Media too. Tim is an Englishman who relocated to Cape Town with his South African wife four years ago. We also met via Social Media and only actually met ‘in the flesh’, for the first time, last month at a conference here in Jozi. Here is some more information about us from our LinkedIn profiles:
Tim: I am an English-born business consultant with an African Heart and Celtic Soul who was has worked with companies in SA, the UK and US ranging from start-ups to global brands implementing and training them to use technology to assist them in hiring, managing, retaining and training staff. I am passionate about the integration of cloud, mobile, social media and video solutions to enable businesses to attract the best talent, improve their candidate and customer experience, enhance their corporate and employer brand and develop their employees, especially sales staff, to reach their full potential. I organise and speak at events on the topics of recruitment technology and social recruiting. I believe that HR and recruitment technology can help companies to identify and hire untapped pools of talent, thereby addressing the problem of unemployment amongst young people, and am founder and co-host of #JobAdviceSA, a weekly Twitter chat connecting jobseekers and recruiters.
Wesley: I am passionate about Social Media Management & Training | HR & Recruitment Industry | Latest Technology | Blogger | Building Websites | Twitter @WeszMadz | #WesleySocial | Love camping | Hiking Sales and Marketing in Recruitment Tendering and Presentation Recruitment Business Costing and Negotiations Social Media in Recruitment Sales Training E-Recruitment Business Process Outsourcing IT Support Social Media Management
Vanessa: I am passionate about taking people out of boring jobs and ‘Blinging up their Careers’. In my opinion, life is far too short to work in dull jobs. I have ten years’ experience in the Recruitment Industry and have done both external and internal recruitment.
Before I ‘fell into’ recruitment, I taught unruly school children in London; operated a Chair Ski Lift in Colorado, USA and taught people how to Scuba Dive in the Far East. Life has certainly not be boring for me as I have always worked in people centric jobs. I currently specialise in IT Recruitment, mainly on the Microsoft platform. I love my job and get great satisfaction knowing that I can change people’s lives for the better every day.
So why do we give so much of our precious free time to #JobAdviceSA?
The answer is simple really – we love to help people. We realise that there are heaps of talented people in South Africa who just needing some advice on how to take the next, or first step, of their careers. We post our questions on our website before our weekly chat so people can see what topics we are covering for the week. For example, last week we chatted about our Youth and employment to tie in with National Youth Day.
We ask 4 questions a session, at 15 minute intervals. We often go a bit off topic so it’s good to have these questions on hand to keep us on track. We also get asked lots of other questions by our participants so it can be quite hectic at times.
We only relaunched #JobAdviceSA 5 weeks ago and our Social Media stats are already quite impressive. We already have 124 members on our FB page and 913 followers on Twitter. Not bad for three people trying to make a positive difference on South Africa’s economy? Every person we help is small victory for us.
Join us for our next #JobAdviceSA chat on Monday from 16h00 to 17h00. You can also follow us on @JobAdviceSA on Twitter or on our Facebook Page: Job Advice SA. Oh, and we also have a website: http://jobadvicesa.co.za/
