Holyrood launch a new approach to recruitment for the public and third sector

Press launch, Tuesday 4th March, 11.15am, The Macdonald Holyrood Hotel

Holyrood Communications invite you to the launch of their free recruitment site Holyrood jobs www.holyrood.com/jobs

The site will offer a new approach to public sector recruitment. It contains no advertising, sponsorship or banners and no data will be sold to third parties.

Employers can post their vacancies and search for candidates free of charge.

It is a straightforward, free, public service.

Websites such as Wikipedia, Google, You Tube and the many social networking sites were conceived as a way of making simple to use but deceptively powerful web applications achieve non-commercial and often socially driven objectives.

This reflects an expectation that information in the public domain should be made available free of charge for the betterment of society at large.

Public sector recruitment is poorly served in this respect; it does not have a single focus and online visibility is muddied by numerous commercial jobs boards claiming to offer public sector jobs, usually without substance.

A simple to use web based application with a national focus on public sector recruitment is a straightforward application to deploy, and Holyrood Communications are uniquely placed to make this available. Our online and offline products already provide a focal point for reporting of, discussion and debate around Scottish Politics and Policy. Our new websites have accumulated in excess of 2,000,000 unique visits since their launch last year.

We have developed an Open Source job board application which will allow qualifying employers with the minimum of effort to post jobs, and job seekers to access employment opportunities in one location online. Finding public sector jobs currently requires a massive undertaking: SHOW for NHS jobs, each individual council website for local vacancies, Scottish Government and Scottish Parliament websites, the national daily newspapers; Herald, Scotsman, Press & Journal and The Courier in addition to the many local newspapers.

We at Holyrood believe we can make a significant contribution to Civic Society in Scotland by making this free of charge, straightforward web application available. It will be successful only with user participation and support. Holyrood will provide ongoing development, hosting, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and promotion of this single site with users providing the Jobs and CVs. With support we have an opportunity to lead the way in contributing to the success of this Scottish public sector job board, the first of its kind in the world.