Iceland

Some years ago, many firms in Iceland had to watch as the country’s largest banks literally sucked talent from them, with stellar salaries dwarfing those in regular companies.

In recent years, there were even stories of engineering firms having problems recruiting, since all newly graduated engineers were snapped up by the banks.

Today, with the banks considerably smaller than before, knowledge-based companies are again able to tap the talent which Iceland’s highly educated people have to offer.

“Now, all this has changed and regular firms are more competitive. Entrepreneurial companies are even seeing investors again,” says Thrainn Thorvaldsson, CEO of Icelandic biotech firm SagaMedica. His company researches Icelandic medicinal herbs and produces dietary supplements from them. These are used, for example, in cases of frequent urination, asthma and Alzheimer’s disease.

“We now have an online store for the international market and teams of people working all around Iceland, harvesting herbs to keep up with increasing demand,” he adds.

With unemployment on the rise, innovation centres have sprouted in many Icelandic towns. There, entrepreneurial and degree-wielding people come together and work toward forming new companies in Iceland.  Since last fall, publicly run Innovation Center Iceland has overseen the opening of six new incubator centres which have led to the creation of 140 jobs. This may not seem much, but in terms of per capita it would amount to roughly 140,000 jobs in the United States.

“We are seeing tremendous interest in innovation in Iceland. We have had that before, but now external circumstances drive people towards creating their own opportunities. They simply can’t rely on the same things as before,” says Andri Kristinsson, head of Innovit, a privately run entrepreneurial incubator in Reykjavik. “One of the best ways of preventing a brain-drain from Iceland is to give qualified people a platform to use their education to the fullest,” he adds.

With exciting companies being able to compete in salary, one would expect Icelanders to flock into more diverse sectors of the job market.

Who said banking was fun, anyway?

For more information, check out SagaMedica.com and www.innovit.is.

After a great success in France and Belgium, the most comprehensive search engine for jobs is now available in the UK. With a new interface and an improved algorithm, JobiJoba aims at providing the best search experience for job seekers

JobiJoba’s bots crawl the web looking for job listings. They collect them all to find yours, saving you the trouble to visit tens of websites to not miss your next opportunity.

JobiJoba provide the most relevant results for jobs. The algorithm refreshes its accuracy every day regarding the user queries and their profiles. With a real smart agent that is learning as fast as the search engine is used by job seekers and fed by job boards, JobiJoba is providing a new search experience.

When technology makes sense for job seekers

JobiJoba’s search engine analyzes the web in a semantic way, focusing itself on the content of each job offer, and on the resume of its users. “We want to provide the perfect combination between customization and smart search for jobs” says CEO and Co-founder Francois GOUBE.

-The JobiJoba’s algorithm is based on a data understanding approach. That means all the queries are analyzed and treated with intelligent and semantic approach. With this semantic analyze, JobiJoba learn and understand from indexed data. JobiJoba enhance the accuracy of the job search.

-MyJobiJoba gives you a personal dashboard to manage your job search. With your personal dashboard, you can manage your job searches as you like, create your job alerts and manage your searches as you want, receive by mail relevant job opportunities and check your recent searches.

-Job suggestions. JobiJoba is a smart job search engine and automatically suggests you the most relevant jobs opportunities that match your resume.

A new powerful source for job boards

In this economic situation, JobiJoba is the perfect tool for job boards because it charges only on the performance basis (pay per click). JobiJoba is the most cost-effective way to buy qualified and targeted traffic.
JobiJoba has always worked in a hand-in-hand way with the job boards, so that they can release new features based on the up-to-date needs of its clients. “In France and Belgium, we are working closely to our partners. Because of their implication and support we are still improving our services, and UK job boards feedback has yet really helped us a lot” says CTO Thomas ALLAIRE.

About JobiJoba

JobiJoba is developed by ALLGOOB. This start-up is conceiving smart vertical search engines. Founded by Francois GOUBE and Thomas ALLAIRE, in 2007 they have always been focused on providing the most relevant results regarding vertical search.

They are expanding their activities all over in Europe and Northern America. JobiJoba’s teams will release dedicated version to the Spanish market and the US market as well during the summer.

JobiJoba.co.uk
ALLGOOB
1-2 Allée du Doyen Georges Brus Parc Unitec 33600 Pessac France

Communication service: communication@jobijoba.com

Two celebrity favourites stood out when www.employgo.co.uk, the employment experts for young people, asked which celebrities its users would like as a boss.

The survey “Who would be your favourite celebrity boss” commissioned by the web student recruitment company reveals the 16-24 year old jobseekers who use www.employgo.co.uk consider England Manager Fabio Capello the ideal male boss.

The popular 2008 X-factor judge and pop singer, Cheryl Cole was overwhelmingly the top female choice.

Both celebrities are charismatic and have had highly successful careers.

Fabio Capello has got off to a flying start as the England football team manager and is a proven “winner” as his record over the last two decades in football attests.

Cheryl Cole enjoyed a rapid rise to fame when she took part in Pop Stars: The Rivals and has become a role model for young girls who, like her, wish to make the most of the opportunities available to them. There is also evidence that many of the lads voted for Cheryl, we wonder why this is!…

Ed Clothier, the founder of www.employgo.co.uk said: “Results of this investigation show that young people aspire to become leaders and to make the most of themselves in their jobs – both the top celebrities have had incredibly successful careers, reaching the peak of their professions.”

“There is a wealth of ambitious and motivated young talent out there, hence Employgo’s mission: to help them all get great career opportunities”

The www.employgo.co.uk top 10 celebrity bosses is –

1/ Fabio Capello

2/ Cheryl Cole

3/ Gordon Ramsay

4/ Alan Sugar

5/ David Beckham

6/ Simon Cowell

7/ Madonna

8/ Kate Moss

9/ Sarah Jessica Parker

10/ Jamie Oliver

About Employgo.co.uk

Employgo.co.uk is a 100% web-based employment resource aimed at 16-25 year olds looking for temporary, part-time and even full-time jobs.

Registering to use the site is completely free – and more importantly it’s really easy and it’s fun.

Employgo.co.uk has contracts with some of the UK’s biggest and most important names – you will recognise their names when you hear them.

Anyone interested by finding a job through Employgo can also have a look at the Facebook Page of the company or for more general enquiries on www.employgo.co.uk

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