Recruiter - June 2016 by Redactive Media Group

Business intelligence for recruitment and resourcing professionals

June 2016

INCORPORATING Recruitment Matters

HEART AND SOUL www.recruiter.co.uk

Sue Cooper leads Morgan Hun nt to o large Recruitm men nt Agency of the e Year 2016 hon nours

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DATA DEMANDS Information is so passé... BEN HOWLETT MP The Tory MP’s brilliant career in recruitment

RECRUITER AWARDS 2016 Thoughts and images from the night

11/05/2016 10:55

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C R ONT ENT S

ING PORAT INCOR itment Recru ers Matt

COV ER IMAG E | PA L H ANSEN

NEWS

05 No ivory tower for me, says Recruitment Agency Leader of the Year Hallam Medical’s Scott Davies on what it takes to be a leader 06 Recruiter Awards 2016 Thoughts from… Winners, judges and guests spoke to Recruiter about their wins, their past successes and what they thought about the evening

07 Star recruit: Andrew Travers, ex-CEO Barnet Council 08 This was the month that was... 10 Contracts & Deals

TRENDS

12 Insight Will the M&A bang carry on through 2016?

16 17 17

FEATURES

18 THE BIG STORY Sue Cooper, Morgan Hunt The CEO of the doubleRecruiter Award winning firm gives her heart and soul to the business

24 Recruiter Awards 2016 A few snapshots of last month’s gala evening

32 Data demands How recruiters can use data and information more effectively

E COMMUNITY 37 Social Network 38 Careers Agency/In-house 41 My brilliant recruitment career: Ben Howlett MP 42 Employability 44 Business Advice 48 Movers & Shakers 49 Recruiter Contacts 50 The Last Word: Gregory Allen

Tech & Tools Landing page or career page?

INTERACTION Supplier View: Dan Collier Web chat Soundbites

41 I M AG E S | C A R M EN VALIN O / P ETER SEAR LE

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W E LCO M E

UPDATE

WE LCO M E

LEADER

he ‘star force’ that swept through our Recruiter Awards on 4 May was palpable. A galaxy of recruiting stars – past, present, returning and rising – won and were shortlisted for honours this year, glowing in the glory of achievement and professionalism. How exciting it is to be able to put the best centre stage and say: “Well done!” The certainty of 2015 business success for many recruiters is matched by the uncertainty of the upcoming UK vote on Brexit and the UK’s possible exit from “Discussion around Brexit the European is far too similar Union. A dramatic vote it is indeed. to weather Sadly, the rhetoric forecasting – and how often around the pros are the forecasts and cons of the choices is pure off centre?” drama with too little focus on the facts. At a time when the value of data is being recognised in business, it is particularly jarring that there seems to be so little data available about precisely the steps that must occur if UK voters opt out of the EU, the length of time these steps are likely to take and what meaning does each have. Discussion around Brexit is far too similar to forecasting the weather – and how often are the forecasts wildly off centre? In the closing weeks before the 23 June vote, UK voters need facts not fearmongering – on both sides – to make their decisions on one of the most signiﬁcant votes that will ever take place in our lifetimes.

Scott Davies: no ivory tower for me BY COLIN COTTELL

ANYONE CAN BE a leader, according to Scott Davies, Recruitment Agency Leader of the Year at the Recruiter Awards 2016. Speaking to Recruiter after he picked up his award, the chief executive of fast-growing medical recruiter Hallam Medical said: “I think anybody can be a leader. Almost certainly you have got to have the desire and the ability, but I don’t think it is insurmountable if you have all of those things. Don’t doubt yourself. Just go out be passionate, and you can do it. Why not?” Since co-founding Hallam Medical in 2007, the company, which employs 58 staff has shown impressive growth. Turnover increased from £13.3m in 2014 to £20.3m in 2015, with proﬁt before tax rising by £400k. Davies said for him, leadership was “all about people and engaging with them on whatever level they happen to be”, whether that be consultants, or external shareholders on the company’s board. “Dictatorships do not work in my experience. You have to give people ownership and responsibility, and support them and develop them and then you will get the best out of your recruitment team.” “The classic CEO job description is to create shareholder value, but you can’t create shareholder value unless you invest in your people. I very much see my role as helping people and facilitating them through their careers, and that drives shareholder value ultimately.” Davies said he operated an open door policy, which encouraged interaction between himself and staff. “We aim for a very relaxed, very open, very transparent culture and atmosphere. There is no ivory tower for me that is for sure.” ●

DeeDee Doke, Editor WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK 5

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UPDATE

30,738 FOLLOWERS AS OF 11 MAY 2016

THOUGHTS FROM… Where were you on 4 May? It was a night to remember, with recruitment’s stars out in force to celebrate the past year’s successes at the Recruiter Awards 2016. Attendees – winners, judges and guests – shared their thoughts on their 2016 wins, past wins and on the evening itself

AWARDS PHOTOGRAPHY | CARM EN VAL I N O

RUS S EL L T H OMP S O N , G RO U P MA N AG IN G D I REC TO R , L M A RECRUI T MEN T – WI N N E R , RECRUI T MEN T AG E N CY O F T H E Y EA R ( UP TO 75 EM PLOY E E S )

“This is our seventh year of entering and we have been shortlisted seven times. To win is unbelievable – I’m over the moon.”

E D VO K E S, D IRE C TOR , EVOLVE HOSPITA LITY – WINNER , BEST NEW AG E NCY

“We try and do everything to the best of our abilities. We look after our people. We just try and be as good as we possibly can.”

JA M E S B A LLARD, PARTNER , A NNAPURNA RE CRU ITMENT

“To have won three awards last year is probably the biggest accolade we have ever received as a recruitment agency, and in terms of being able to acquire great people – it’s made a massive difference. We have been riding on a high for a year. Sounds a bit cheesy but it was 6 RECRUITER

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probably the best night of my life, as well as the birth of my two babies.”

SAKSHI MU NGLAN I, L EA D – LATER AL HIRIN G , TATA CONSULTANCY SE RV ICES – WINNER , BEST GR A D UAT E RECRU ITMENT STR AT EGY

“Awesome. We worked very hard towards it.”

RICHARD WAITE, TA L EN T & RESOU RCING SEN IOR MA N AG ER , GR ANT THORNTON – W I N N ER (WITH THE PROJE C T BOX ) BEST CANDIDATE EXPERIEN CE

“We’re really, really pleased to have won the Best Candidate Experience award. We’re in a really noisy and competitive marketplace, with some really big players competing

for talent. I think by nailing candidate experience it means we’re able to hire great people and it’s a true differentiator.”

K AT E N I CH OL L S , S CH OOL L EAV ER P ROG R A MME MA N AG ER , P RET A MA N G ER – W IN N ER , BEST A P P REN T I CE/S CH OOL L EAV ER RECRUIT MEN T ST R AT EGY

“I’m quite shocked but delighted.”

ROB AY LWA RD, H EAD O F RECRUI T MEN T, G RE AT W E ST E R N R A ILWAY – W IN N ER , I N - H O U S E RECRUI T MEN T T EAM O F T H E Y E A R

“We have been on a big journey for probably 1824 months. We brought in a lot of people into the team, a lot of direct sourcing and we put in a lot of controls and processes. How does it feel to win? It’s fantastic – it’s testament to the work that we’ve done. Probably the most prestigious awards that

A N D REW P IRI E, MA RK ET I N G D I REC TOR , S A N C T UA RY P ERS ON N EL – W IN N ER , BEST CA N D IDAT E CA RE

“Very proud to win this award. Happy to support our candidates and clients with the work that we do with them every day.”

Find more daily news stories at recruiter.co.uk/news 12/05/2016 14:11

Comedian Romesh Ranganathan entertained the revellers at the Awards ceremony

it in such a glorious fashion.”

H EL EN S CH OF IEL D, D IREC TOR , P ERMA N EN T RECRUI T MEN T AT T T M H EA LT H CA RE – W I N N ER , BEST P UBL IC S EC TOR RECRUIT MEN T AG EN CY

we can be in and so great to be around peers and recognised for the work we have done.”

RO M E SH R ANGANATHAN, CO M E DIA N AND HOST OF THE AWARDS (PICTURED ABOVE)

“Holy sh*t mate – the Recruiter Awards. I’ve been waiting for this one! Oh my God!... This is what it’s been building up for.”

MATTHEW JEF F ERY, V P, H EA D OF GLOBAL S OURCI N G A N D EMPLOYMENT BR A N D I N G S A P – WINNER , MOST EF F EC T IV E EMPLOYER BR A N D D EV ELOP MEN T

“I am really delighted for the whole team that we have won this award. It’s great to have been recognised for our work on employer brand that is an important area for us as a B2B company. This was the award we really wanted to win.”

BARRY ROBAC K , D I REC TOR , ANDERSON GROUP

“We are proud to be associated with such a prestigious event that celebrates the integrity and the professionalism of the recruitment sector and showcases

STA R RECRUIT

STAR RECRUIT – EX-CEO OF BARNET COUNCIL, ANDREW TRAVERS George Alderman, recruitment consultant at hospitality recruiter Alexander Lucey, offers insight into a potential new career for Andrew Travers, ex-chief executive of Barnet Council. His local authority turned voters away at the doors when they went to their local polling stations to vote in May’s mayoral and London elections. “Always smartly dressed, highly organised and with his background in public service he’d be ideally suited to a maître d’ position.

“To have won this award as an Irish business that has only been in business for ﬁve years is amazing.”

industry is alive and buoyant and to do that with your team and celebrate their hard work.”

DAV I D P OT T ER , D I REC TOR , EVOL UT I ON RECRUI T MEN T S OL UT I ON S – W I N N ER , BEST I T RECRUI T MEN T AG EN CY

H A R A L D ACK E R S C H OT T, ACK ERS CH OT T A N D A S S O C I AT E S

“From the top down, our staff are outstanding. We invest quite a lot in our staff and it’s what makes our people successful. Another reason is because we are specialists in what we do.”

“It is a great platform of exchange, dialogue and feedback, and thinking in a condensed way, because I don’t think there is any other occasion when you get so many recruiters in the same place. But it goes beyond conversation, and into learning from each other.”

G REG L AT H A M, MA N AG IN G D IREC TOR , EN CORE P ERS ON N EL

“It’s a great way to celebrate that the

“Adept at managing a guest list, no one will be turned away from any restaurant when he is on the door – as long as he’s remembered to get you on the list. “His skills could easily transfer to a role as a doorman or a bouncer. But he would need to bulk up and develop skills in crowd management and dealing with potentially confrontational situations in a calm way. “He would be well suited to a role in London, where he’s been serving the public for many years. He’s built strong relationships with businesses, especially

in the Barnet area, and is keen to support local sports teams through his work. “He is certainly full of confidence despite his latest setback and he also believes that the changes he implemented in his last job will allow them to ‘continue to thrive’ in his absence. “He also comes highly recommended from his previous employers as he was praised for his ‘valuable contribution during his three and half years’ with them. “He can also start straight away, having left his last role by mutual agreement.”

S A MA N T H A H U R L E Y, O PE R AT I O N S D IREC TOR , A P S CO

“It’s a great night, and I think we should keep on celebrating the best.”

TON Y G OODW I N , G RO U P CEO A N D CH AI R M A N , A N TA L IN T ERN AT I O N A L A N D RECRUI T MEN T E N T R E PR E N E U R O F T H E Y EA R

“I have been wanting to win this award for the last 10 years. It’s the Champions League of recruitment awards.” WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK 7

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THIS WAS THE MONTH THAT WAS… Here is a round-up of some of the most popular news stories we have brought you on recruiter.co.uk since the May issue of Recruiter was published A P R I L •‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒→ T U E , 1 2 A P R 2 0 1 6

GOVERNMENT PLANS NEW IR35 TESTS HM Revenue & Customs plans to introduce new tests – including a new digital tool to determine whether workers fall within or outside IR35. Julie De Brito, senior policy lead at HMRC, told a seminar in London that the government planned to introduce the new tests as well as a new digital tool for workers working through their own limited companies (personal service companies or PSCs) in the public sector in April 2017. “We are going to be consulting on simpler tests and developing an online tool,” said De Brito. “The whole point is that the engager wants clarity at the point of hiring. It is no good having to wait three months.” The digital tool would consist of a series of questions, which would determine whether a PSC worker was genuinely self-employed (outside IR35) and could therefore continue to be paid off the books in the public sector, or caught by IR35. More: http://bit.ly/277WPcd

FRI, 29 APR 2016

BBC TO EXPAND DIVERSITY TRAINING FOR RECRUITERS FRI, 15 APR 2016

PURR-FECT NEW RECRUIT FOR FOREIGN OFFICE Background checks on one of the Foreign & Commonwealth office’s latest recruits is proving a tad tricky. This is because this latest hire is a black and white cat by the name of Palmerston, named after former prime minister and foreign secretary, Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston. Palmerston (pictured looking up at his namesake above), a former resident of Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, took up his position at the Foreign & Commonwealth offices in Whitehall as ‘chief mouser’. Elaborating on the recruitment of the chief mouser, a spokesperson for Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, who managed the hiring process, told Recruiter it has proven difficult to collect background information on the former stray. “We don’t know about Palmerston’s track record for sniffing out mice (he was a stray so we have no background information on him and cats are kept indoors at Battersea so he couldn’t utilise any mouser-abilities!). However, he was selected because of his conﬁdence and play-drive, but he’s also a companion cat for those at the Foreign Office due to his affectionate personality.” The new recruit already has nearly 6,000 followers on Twitter. Follow the moggy’s musings at twitter.com/DiploMog – if you’re feline up to it. More: http://bit.ly/23BZard

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The BBC is to train its recruiters in unconscious bias and disability awareness as part of a raft of measures aimed at boosting diversity at the corporation. The BBC revealed a new diversity strategy that will involve extending its use of ‘name-blind’ CVs from graduate recruitment to all core roles. The strategy will also see the BBC remove the university attended from applications in a bid to improve social mobility among recruits. The use of name-blind CVs recently came under fire from Dr Louise Ashley of Royal Holloway, University of London, who claimed removing educational requirements from the recruitment process and using name-blind CVs will not stop interviewers looking for other indicators of a privileged background. Last summer, Ashley led a research project for government to assess social mobility at top accountancy and financial services firms. More: http://bit.ly/1TOCwJj

PALMERSTON HAS

6,000

FOLLOWERS ON TWITTER →‒‒‒‒‒•

Find more daily news stories at recruiter.co.uk/news 12/05/2016 16:07

MON, 9 MAY 2016

Prince Harry: One wants to work! d suitable It seems wanting to work but not being able to ﬁnd employment can afﬂict anyone – including Royal princes. In an interview with the Sunday Times, Prince Harry complained after a decade’s service in the military, he found most jobs he looked at “were not going to work” combined with royal duties, while other jobs were “not even on the table”. He told the ST: “I don’t get any satisfaction from sitting at home on my a***.” p Any recruiters offering to help him out?! More: http://bit.ly/1T6Rspp

DAYS

←‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒• M A Y

TUE, 3 MAY 2016

‘TOWIE LANGUAGE’ BANNED IN ESSEX SCHOOL

TUE, 3 MAY 2016

POST-BREXIT IMMIGRATION POLICY WOULD LOOK VERY DIFFERENT Brexit from the European Union (EU) would result in significant changes to where employers get their workers from, according to a business immigration lawyer. Kate Gamester, a specialist in business immigration at law firm Squire Patton Boggs, was speaking at a members’ meeting of APSCo (Association of Professional Staffing Companies). If the UK decided to leave the European single market after the referendum on 23 June, “post-Brexit UK immigration policy would look very different”, said Gamester. She said the likelihood was that we would see “an equally restrictive visa regime for EEA (European Economic Area) and non-EEA nationals”. In a debate on the referendum, Alex Story, a member of the Grassroots Out/Leave.eu campaign, said that the free movement of workers would survive post-Brexit “simply because there is a need for it”, adding “I think most people would accept that we need to attract workers into the UK.” Commenting from the floor, Richard Herring, managing director and senior vice president at life sciences recruiter Volt, which has two offices in Continental Europe, said that any post-Brexit quota system “would require a lot of negotiation” between the UK and other countries. More: http://bit.ly/1s7Nhhk

I M AG E S | A L A M Y / G ETTY / R EX / C AR MEN VALIN O

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A school in Essex has banned pupils from using language associated with reality TV show The Only Way is Essex (commonly [excuse the pun] known as TOWIE) in a bid to improve pupils’ future job prospects. The Essex Chronicle reports that Chelmsford’s Ongar Academy launched the crackdown due to fears that overuse of terms ‘emosh’, ‘geezer’, as well as excessive use of the words ‘like’ and ‘literally’, would damage pupils’ prospects when they enter the world of work. The paper reports that around 100 pupils in Year 7 aged 11 will take part in the pilot scheme, which will see a different phrase targeted each fortnight. Banned words will be displayed on posters around the schools with teachers encouraged to crack down on their use. Quite frankly, Recruiter can’t, like, believe it. Literally, innit? More: http://bit.ly/1WjnDCf

T H U, 5 M AY 2 0 1 6

DOUBLE WIN FOR FIRST POINT GROUP AND ALL THE WINNERS AT THE AWARDS The ability to serve clients across an array of offices, as well as excellence of execution in serving those clients, was behind First Point Group’s double win at this year’s Recruiter Awards, in association with Anderson Group. First Point Group director David Taylor cited these reasons as to why the global telecoms staffing specialist won in both the Best Client Service and Best International Recruitment Agency categories at the glittering event, hosted by comedian Romesh Ranganathan, at Grosvenor House Hotel in London’s Mayfair. The full list of winners is online at the link below (and of course further coverage of the Awards is covered in this issue on pp18-27). More: http://bit.ly/1Yi0bmZ

100

PUPILS IN YEAR 7 AGED 11 WILL TAKE PART IN THE PILOT SCHEME WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK 9

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£72m

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CONTRACTS

CONTRACT & DEALS Assystem Technical recruiter Assystem has agreed a deal to provide training for car maker Jaguar Land Rover. Under the deal Assystem will provide Jaguar Land Roverendorsed geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) fundamentals training courses and application workshops.

Capita Debenhams Retail has chosen to extend its existing customer services partnership with business outsourcing provider Capita’s customer management division. The contract, which began in June 2012, is being extended to 1 September 2022 and is valued at £72m. Under the terms of the extension, Capita will continue to deliver customer services on behalf of Debenhams and manage its online and retail store ordering and delivery.

Empresaria Group International staffing specialist Empresaria Group has completed its takeover of marketing recruiter Ball and Hoolahan. Following December 2014’s announcement when Empresaria acquired a 75% interest in Ball and Hoolahan, the group has now purchased the remaining 25% of shares from Roy Hoolahan as part of a planned succession.

Eximius Energy, finance and legal staffing specialist Eximius’ financial services and legal recruitment teams, based in London and Hong Kong, have undergone a management buyout. Meanwhile, Eximius’ energy team was sold to energy recruiter AVA Energy for an undisclosed sum. Nick Harrington, previously managing director of Eximius’ financial and legal teams, led the MBO and will now serve as Eximius chief executive, while Nick and Ed Stevens retain non-executive director roles at Eximius. But Ed Stevens is to return the world of recruitment with the launch of a new professional services recruitment agency this autumn.

Green Lantern Umbrella company Green Lantern Group has partnered with employee and customer engagement platform Perkbox to launch an incentives, wellness, rewards and engagement programme for its contractors. Benefits include up to 6% off at 20k retail stores and 50 nationwide brands, including Tesco, Amazon and Marks & Spencer, money-off purchase in various pubs, bars and coffee shops, discounted theatre tickets and attraction day passes, corporate rates in gym chains and half-price MOTs. New benefits will be added to the platform regularly and will be redeemable for members via their Perkbox’s online account and smartphone app. Green Lantern staff will also have access to an employee engagement platform designed to enhance financial, emotional and physical wellbeing. The platform offers online classes in yoga, healthy cooking and meditation, as well as financial help and advice.

DEAL OF THE MONTH

WCN Independent pharmacy chain Well Pharmacy has signed a three-year deal to use e-recruitment system WCN’s online technology for its branch manager and colleague, head office, warehouse and pharmacy summer placement hires. The company, which has more than 7,000 employees based in 780

IS THE VALUATION OF CAPITA’S NEW CONTRACT EXTENSION WITH DEBENHAMS RETAIL

pharmacies across the UK, will begin using the new system from June 2016. Well, formerly the Co-operative Pharmacy, adds it is aiming to use WCN to make its recruitment process more efficient by improving quality of hire, reducing staff attrition and supporting hiring managers across their branch chain.

People Force HR, recruitment and immigration consultancy People Force International (PFI) has acquired Exeter-based recruiter UK Staffing for an undisclosed sum. PFI will now launch a new temporary staffing division led by UK Staffing founder Jon Rye, who becomes temporary staffing division director. Both UK Staffing’s Exeter and Stafford office will become People Force International offices with immediate effect.

Phaidon Global recruiter Phaidon International has raised £18m from investment firm Muzinich & Co and HSBC Bank. Phaidon said the investment will help it continue its global expansion and diversify into new markets and offices. Phaidon is headquartered in London and has operations in the US and Asia. As part of the deal, Stuart Batchelor, a former director at executive search firm CDI, joins the board as chief strategy officer.

Sidekicks Recruiter Sidekicks London has joined forces with Free Me, a charity that provides care to women recovering from addictions and eating disorders, to launch employment scheme Work to Recover. The scheme aims to help women suffering from eating disorders and addictions get back into work.

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TRE NDS

INSIGHT

WILL THE M&A BANG CARRY ON THROUGH 2016? The rest of the year and beyond is set to be an interesting period for recruitment mergers & acquisitions, but potential headwinds on the horizon may dampen activity, says Mark Maunsell

he fragmented nature of the recruitment sector and the record levels of profit generated in the last few years have been a catalyst for high levels of mergers & acquisitions (M&A) activity. As one would expect, the vast majority of these deals have been relatively small, yet the really surprising factor is the absence of any large-scale deals and the limited role the global consolidators have played in driving this activity. The world’s largest staffing firms – Adecco, Randstad and Manpower – have primarily opted to return surplus cash to shareholders or pay down debt. However, this all changed in January when Randstad announced the purchase of Swedish multi-sector recruiter Proffice, and later in March Adecco acquired AIM-listed Penna Consulting. Randstad, which curbed its M&A efforts following the purchase of Dutch peer Vedior in 2007, has clearly stated its intention to use acquisitions to increase leverage, and is estimated to have £700m excess capital to deploy by the end of 2016. Its acquisition of Proffice helps fulfil this strategy and positions Randstad as the third largest staffing firm in the Nordic region. However, at an estimated enterprise value of 12 RECRUITER

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£145m and an EV/EBITDA [enterprise value/earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation] multiple of 12.8x, the transaction is valued towards the top end of the range given the limited potential synergies due to Randstad’s current sub-scale offering in the region. In March, Adecco, the world’s largest HR services firm, announced the acquisition of Penna Consulting for £105m. Penna, whose divisions span career transition, talent development and recruitment solutions, claims a 30% share of the UK outplacement market and already had an established alliance with Adecco’s Lee Hecht Harrison [LHH] unit since 2004. The deal comes at a time when Adecco’s growth in the UK has been fairly stagnant and fits with the group’s strategy of moving up the value curve. Furthermore, reported at an approximate EV/EBITDA multiple of 13.0x for FY March 2016, the deal looks to be fair value given future synergies. US-based Manpower Group has also been active in the M&A market and significantly bolstered its presence across Germany through the acquisition of temporary staffing specialist 7S Group last September. The deal, reported at a value of around £100m, will help Manpower become the third largest staffing firm in the heavily regulated German market.

Large-scale deal activity has not just been limited to the ‘big three’. In fact, the most active acquirer of recruitment firms has been Japanese listed Recruit Co. The company, which successfully raised £1.3bn on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 2014, has been aggressively putting its cash to work as it looks to develop its international footprint. After a number of high-profile deals, including job search engine Indeed, Advantage Resourcing and Chandler Macleod, Recruit Co announced its largest deal to date as it purchased USG People in December last year. The £1.3bn deal will provide Recruit Co with entry to the attractive EU staffing market, particularly the Netherlands where USG generates 43% of its revenue, and in doing so will assume the position as the fourth largest staffing firm in the world, displacing privately owned Allegis Group. While the above deals are either focused on providing improved geographic coverage or, in Adecco’s case, access to higher margin services, the all-stock merger between leading energy recruiters Air Energi Group and Swift Worldwide Resources in January was for other reasons. The newly formed company, known as Airswift and headed by former Adecco UK & Ireland chief executive Peter Searle, is currently operating in a challenging market with IM AGE | ISTOCK

12/05/2016 11:07

Brent crude oil prices coming close to historic lows and the market in a state of glut. Recruitment firms are feeling the effects as global producers, like BP, make large-scale job cuts and terminate contracts. Private equity continues to be a key contributor to deal activity in the recruitment sector, particularly as the economy has returned to growth and the debt markets have remained buoyant. Recruitment firms backed by private equity often have significant firepower to fund further bolt-on transactions. A number of good examples can be found in niche sectors like education, IT and healthcare. These include: TES Global, owned by US fund TPG Capital; Synarbor, which was recently acquired by buy-and-build specialist Sovereign Capital; and Nigel Frank, backed by Living Bridge. Both Synarbor and TES Global have recently completed bolt-on deals, with Synarbor purchasing Just Teachers in February and TES buying ABC Teachers in April. Other private equity-backed assets seeking bolt-on transactions include nGAGE, which was acquired by seasoned recruitment investor Graphite Capital in December 2014. Private equity groups also drive deal flow through exiting

current portfolio companies, and with a typical investment cycle of three to five years and a very high number of private equity transactions reported in 2012-13, a number of recruitment assets will be coming to market in the next 12 months. M&A activity in the recruitment sector tends to be dominated by domestic corporates either looking to expand geographically or enter new verticals. Over the last five years this has represented around 80% of deal flow. However, we are increasingly seeing growing appetite for crossborder deals as leading players look to internationalise operations and reduce over-reliance on less favourable domestic markets. A good example is the highly consolidated French market, where collectively Manpower, Adecco and Randstad control 65% of the market, and domestic peers Groupe Crit and Synergie also have significant market shares. These market trends encouraged privately-owned industrial staffing firm Proman to enter the UK market through the purchase of HEADS Recruitment in September last year. Other countries with leading players targeting the UK market include Ireland, the US and Japan. The coming 12 months is certainly set to be an interesting period for the sector. Leading corporates are still sat on huge sums of surplus cash, pent-up capital from private equity is at record levels, and buyer and seller appetite continues to be strong. However, there are potential headwinds with the overhanging uncertainty in the form of Brexit, the introduction of the first stage of the National Living Wage increment and a cautionary note about the slowing in the economy. ●

POWER POINTS

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The ‘big three’ and other consolidators are still being selective about M&A, but are back in the market looking at opportunities and are prepared to pay strategic prices for attractive assets that increase geographic reach, industry specific solutions or margin enhancing businesses Private equity will continue to play a key role in driving deal activity, whether that be through selling existing recruitment assets, making further platform investments or bolt-on deals to existing portfolio companies Sectors that will continue to be particularly active will be the education market, where there is a high level of private equity involvement, and healthcare and IT The recruitment sector will continue to be very active over the coming 18 months, although there are some potential headwinds on the horizon

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“The coming 12 months is certainly set to be an interesting period for the M&A sector”

MARK MAUNSELL is associate director at Clearwater International

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itris.co.uk/playgame can you be the top scorer?

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T R E N DS

TECH & TOOLS

Landing page or career page? Attract the best candidates with a concise, focused online page SUE WEEKES

DEFINED Heatmaps: a traditional heatmap is a visual representation of data in which the values are denoted by colours. Developers have now taken this idea and created software that uses colourful heatmaps to show which area of your site is or isn’t working. This could be a button, image, text, link or other element on the site. The heatmaps appear in seconds and constantly change so you can gain a near real-time view of how people are experiencing the site.

Landing pages allow recruiters to create a stand-alone web page outside their main site for a speciﬁc purpose. Whereas a careers site has many aims, a landing page should only have one objective. Typically, it could be dedicated to a particular campaign or position and used to target a speciﬁc group, such as graduates. “The biggest advantage of landing pages is that they enable you to speak to a particular audience or candidate persona,” says Ben Slater, vice president of growth at Beamery, developer of the sourcing, candidate relationship management (CRM) and employer-branding platform of the same name. “Using them in this way is likely to be far more effective in terms of conversion.” Landing pages offer a chance to do something different from your main site but demand careful thought.

F IVE KEY POINTS

➊ MARKETING HAT

➋ LESS IS MORE

➌ COMMON MISTAKES

➍ WHERE NEXT?

➎ TEST, MONITOR

Landing pages are used extensively in marketing to collect visitor information via a lead form. Recruiters need to think like a marketer when creating their page and ensure its content makes the visitor take action. “Address every element of the candidate decision-making process,” advises Slater. “There should be information about the role or roles you’re hiring for, content on your company culture and an easy way for a candidate to ‘take action’.” While this call to action will often be to apply for the position, it doesn’t have to be. “It can be more effective to invite candidates to join a talent community and become hiring leads,” he says.

Avoid overloading the landing page with too many design elements. Ensure the text is concise and focused. And keep in mind that the page is there to do one thing. Mike Wedge, director of web design and digital marketing specialist, Fifteen Ten, says recruiters often unwittingly create too many distractions and add too many links to elsewhere. “At most, you’ll need key headlines, the most compelling job features, light supporting content, a quick and succinct application method and one or two visuals,” he explains. “Strip out unnecessary features, links and elements, often even the main navigation and footer links. We want to narrow the user journey.”

Recruiters only have one chance to impress a potential candidate with their landing page, so make it count. While cluttering the page with too much content is off-putting, Slater reckons the biggest mistake recruiters make is failing to provide enough information about why a candidate should apply. “This could be anything from career progression to perks, but it needs to be clear,” he says. Make sure the content gives a clear indication of the type of person required for the role so the candidate can self-select in or out. Uninspiring visual content is also a big turn-off. “Don’t just use a stock image of a generic smiling model,” Slater says. “Visuals must be compelling and enticing.”

Consider where the visitor information should be channelled. It can go via a link into the application tracking system (ATS), and Wedge says it can help to have a gateway before reaching the ATS to help track, test and tweak the landing pages for maximum effectiveness. The page could link to something as simple as a spreadsheet, Slater adds, but it is more effective to link it to a recruiting CRM system. “That gives you a lot more power over the candidate management and engagement process than an ATS,” he says.

Test your page from the perspective of a potential candidate, and monitor and measure the effectiveness of the landing page from the outset. Don’t wait until the closing date of the campaign to do this. Analytics, heatmaps and other visitor–recording features are a must for attracting the greatest number of applications, says Wedge, who adds that monitoring behaviour on landing pages can highlight “user experience tweaks” that could influence the number of applications and conversion. “And learn from this experience when considering a new website or digital marketing material as a whole.”

I L L UST RAT I O N | ISTO C K

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AND TWEAK

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INTE R AC TIO N

AGENCY VIEW

Rise of the Roborecruiter? Time to trust data over guesswork BY DAN COLLIER

sking recruiters to celebrate the fact that computer technology is on the verge of being able to make hiring decisions is much like inviting turkeys to vote for Christmas. For a profession that prides itself on its people skills, the idea that such a fundamentally human judgement – matching a person to a role – could be made by a piece of software is borderline heresy.

Into orbit with a slide rule However, both the internet and social media have revolutionised the way recruiters target and reach candidates. The likes of LinkedIn and Indeed can get your vacancy seen by thousands of the right people, and generate hundreds of applications. Yet these platforms have made the next stage of the conventional recruitment process – manual shortlisting – more laborious, not less, thanks to the volume of applications they generate.

Rise of the machines Huge advances in data science mean that computers could soon move to actually choosing staff themselves.

These intelligent machines use predictive analytics – complex algorithms that deconstruct the characteristics and experience the employer says they’re looking for, as well as analysing who the company has hired before and noting which recruits have gone on to be star performers. As the applications come in, the system assesses the suitability of each candidate, scoring them on their previous employment and education, building up a detailed picture of their character and rating their chances of thriving in the role they’re applying for. In other words, the technology ‘learns’ which are the best types of people for any given company to hire, and uses data from multiple sources – CVs, social media and personality tests if available – to give a highly accurate ranking of applicants.

Artificial vs emotional intelligence

+ DAN COLLIER is chief executive of recruitment platform Elevate

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Soon, algorithms will be able to make better recruitment decisions than bosses. That’s not to say the final decision should rest with the machines. The idea of supercomputers as arbiters of a person’s career progression is a touch creepy; all sensible employers would want to review the software’s recommendations before offering anyone a job or contract. For now, the algorithms are better suited to the recruitment of contractors rather than permanent employees. Such hires tend to be more transactional, with the employer usually seeking someone with specific skills to complete a specific project – and this clarity of brief sits well with the software’s analytical approach. But the technology is steadily transforming the way many companies hire – and dragging the recruitment industry into the data science era. Recruiters needn’t see it as a threat. Rather, it’s a powerful tool that improves and automates the most laborious parts of the recruitment process, leaving the recruiter to focus on the crucial human contact. The software’s ability to learn which candidates will perform best in any role in any company allows it to apply the same decision-making criteria as the hiring manager, but better – as its decisions are backed up by data rather than guesswork. And as someone who founded a tech company – and needed to recruit the right team to get my product to market before someone else did – I choose data over guesswork any day. ● IM AGE | ISTOCK

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T WEET I N T E R AC T I O N

SOUNDBITES S OA P BOX / W EB CHAT

GADZOOKS, SIRS! Are you writing this article from Victorian England? (‘Interviewers will search for middle-class indicators on name-blind CVs’, recruiter.co.uk, 22 April.) Exposure to foreign travel? I’m proudly working class and myself and my esteemed peers have all had years out and travelled the world. That is a ridiculous point considering the modern internationally mobile society we live in. I have dozens of working class friends living across the world including New York, Sydney, Dubai etc. Good luck with that sifting policy. DANNY CRAIGIE

POST-BREXIT? MORE LIKE POSTBREZHNEV In response to your article ‘Post-Brexit immigration policy would look very different’ (recruiter.co.uk, 3 May), more scaremongering. The problem in the UK is the so-called uncontrolled ‘EEA’ immigration. Anyone outside the EU getting a work permit hardly exists unless one is a doctor etc. We have over a million unemployed 18-30-year-olds, yet people are still claiming there will be a shortage of unskilled workers. Close the doors and then the employers will have no choice but to give the British people at least a chance to work. Until employers have a choice to exploit and push British people to the end of the list, they will continue to do it. Bring on Brexit, let’s get our youths working and stop these companies from using non-English speaking health & safety hazard former USSR citizens. JOHN REYNOLDS

CCS: TALK TO THE AGENCIES Perhaps if the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) had appointed not just Capita – who haven’t come up with the goods (despite being able to use 20% of their own contractors!!) – for the Contingent Labour 1 contract, which most of these posts are, they wouldn’t be in such a mess. (‘Public sector recruiters could be “frozen out” of government procurement’, recruiter.co.uk, 27 April.) And surprise: they are bringing out a new contract for this. When will CCS learn and talk to the agencies that have the expertise before they start a new procurement? They come out with all these money-saving figures, which are very dubious.

Which way do you think the vote will go in June’s referendum and how do you anticipate the results affecting your business? GETHIN ROBERTS MA N AG IN G D I REC TOR , D RIV ERS D I REC T

“My gut feeling is it will be very, very close. I think we will stay in because people don’t particularly like uncertainty. As much as we want to come out of the EU, the reality is we don’t really know what it’s going to be like if we do. We know what we have now so, businesswise, we are certainly better off – the more certainty we have, the better it is for business. Things won’t change that much because we will stay in and things will continue as they are now.”

RICHARD COLLINS EX ECUT I V E D IREC TOR & H EA D OF COMMERCIA L CON S U LT I N G , I N S I G H T EX ECUT I V E G ROUP

“If the predicted economic instability happens, then a recession would lead to a reduction in permanent recruitment and an increase in interims, as organisations will be hesitant to recruit perms. In a change management-focused recruitment business, leaving the EU will likely increase demand as government bodies and government-contracting companies implement the effects of changes and new legislation. In public sector procurement (our specialism), removing EU contract regulations could have a big effect on how the government buys. If legislation is scaled down or removed, candidates from the private sector will ﬁnd it easier to work in government roles.”

JOHN MORTIMER CH I EF EX ECUT IV E, A N G EL A MORT I MER

“The correct vote is to vote out. That will ensure a renegotiation of real meaning, which will result in some serious, long-overdue changes in the EU set-up. The probable result will be to remain, though. There is a risk that the inability of the EU (and the UK government) to sensibly deal with anything more serious than bent bananas, could leave us with sclerosis on an ‘out’ vote, and a poor situation would have to visibly die before anything was done. This might take 10 years, and there may be a bit of a fuss during that time. Either way, it will make no difference to the UK agency business, even for those that have operations in Europe mainland. All agencies in Europe work to local law, which is still local.”

ANGELA BROOK

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TH E B IG STO RY SU E COOPER

G H PHOTOGRAPHY: PAL HANSEN

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GIVING HER HEART AND SOUL Three decades or so ago, Sue Cooper successfully managed to lose what she imagined was “one the safest jobs in the country”. “I managed to get made redundant at the Bank of England, when the government abolished my department,” she says. Now chief executive of public sector recruiter Morgan Hunt, her stellar career has propelled her to a top position in the recruitment agency sector. When she departs next time, the indications are it will be very much on her own terms. “I want to create a legacy business that lives on beyond me, and for me that’s what success looks like. A successful business is one that is not reliant on the leader and that is strong enough to continue into perpetuity. “I know that is a long time,” she laughs. “I want to leave a business that will remember me fondly and as a successful leader, but is not seen as dependent on me.” WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK 19

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TH E B IG STO RY SUE COOPER

“I couldn’t believe I had found a job where they paid me to talk all day, having been told off for talking all my life”

Cooper is speaking to Recruiter two days after Morgan Hunt was named Recruitment Agency of the Year (201+ employees) at the 2016 Recruiter Awards, held at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel. The agency also picked up the honour of Most Effective Back Office Operation on the night. Never mind Cooper’s long-term legacy; for now she is still bathing in the warm afterglow of this double accolade. “It gives the business a very positive ‘I work for a good company’ feel about it, and it is also a validation to our clients that they are working 20 RECRUITER

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with a good, reputable business,” she says After being made redundant at the Bank of England, and taking a career break to have a family, Cooper joined Hays and has hardly looked back since. “I fell in love with it and I never wanted to do anything else. I couldn’t believe I had found a job where they paid me to talk all day, having been told off for talking all my life.” Various increasingly important managerial roles followed, ﬁrst at Hays and then at Page Group, where she rose to regional director.

Cooper was then approached by ex-CEO of Michael Page Terry Benson, who was at that point CEO at Morgan Hunt. She remembers the occasion well. “I went along and I thought I really like this place, it’s buzzing and I’ll get the opportunity to inﬂuence. That was really attractive and I felt that in the last phase of my career I wanted to be somewhere where I had a legacy that I had personally inﬂuenced.” Cooper joined Morgan Hunt as board director responsible for the education, housing/community services/NHS division. This was soon followed by

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W H O I S SH E?

Sue Cooper March 2016- present Chief executive, Morgan Hunt November 2013- present Managing director, Morgan Hunt 2011-13 Board director for Education, Housing/ Community Services/NHS divisions, Morgan Hunt 1992-2011 Regional director, Michael Page (now Page Group) 1984-91 Regional manager, Hays 1980-84 Career break 1975-80 Team leader, Bank of England C O M PANY

Morgan Hunt ▶ 1994 – Founded by Rupert and Stephen Fordham ▶ 260 staff in Birmingham, London and Manchester ▶ 2015 turnover – £92.8m ▶ 74% public sector

promotion ﬁrst to managing director, and then to CEO in March this year, roles Cooper manages to combine. So after three years at Morgan Hunt, where does she think her inﬂuence has been felt? “I have corporatised the business, because while there was a very good entrepreneurial young culture when I joined, I think it needed some processes, discipline and structure. That’s what I think I have done. I have kept the entrepreneurial spirit but put processes and the corporate governance behind it.” Surprisingly, Cooper says she never had her eyes on the top job. “In fact when Rupert [Fordham, chairman and co-founder of Morgan Hunt] asked me to become MD, which was two-and-a-half years ago, I said to him ‘Are you sure you want me? You don’t want a young buck?’ and he said ‘No, I want you to do it’.” 22 RECRUITER

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Cooper continues: “I thought it was a role I could do and could do well at, and actually, why not? I also felt that I had a responsibility towards the individuals in the business and that actually they trusted me. The third reason was being a female MD, as I was then. I was a role model to the generation coming through and there’s not that many females who are CEOs in recruitment businesses, so it was actually that aspect too. “It’s always been the role not the job title that has been important,” she explains. “I loved my previous job, so I never ever at any point thought my career was all about the top job. It was always about getting results and enjoying what I was doing.” However, while seeing herself as a role model for other women in the recruitment agency sector, Cooper gives a more nuanced response when

asked why it is important for women to be in the top jobs in recruitment. “Actually, I don’t think it is important. I am not a huge believer in women being in the job because they are women. I think it is important that we have the right people running the business.” She adds: “The fact the 50:50 gender split on Morgan Hunt’s board is the same as its workforce as a whole is coincidence rather than deliberate.” Asked whether she has experienced sexism during her career, Cooper’s response is a perfect example of saying nothing while doing nothing to hide the truth. “I have worked in less culturally diverse organisations,” she says. “So is that a yes, then?” she is asked. “Yes,” she laughs. “I was being diplomatic. I have worked in previous employments where the malefemale director ratio was less fairly

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T H E BI G STO RY S U E CO O PE R

represented, and that was reflected in the way that the business was run.” While not wishing to go into specific details on any sexism she encountered, Cooper has clearly analysed how she so successfully navigated around the issue. “I think I was just true to myself,” she says. “Ultimately I didn’t wear pinstripe suits and shirts and double cuffs. I carried on wearing the clothes I wanted to wear. I didn’t talk about my family… I think it was being true to myself and not thinking I have to go drinking with the boys to achieve what I wanted to achieve.” Cooper says sexism remains an issue in the recruitment industry, though more so “in the boardroom rather than on the shop floor”. But while a lot is being done, with mentoring schemes for example, Cooper says women “have to help themselves a bit more”. “They have to believe that anything is possible,” she continues. “That is how I brought up my kids, to believe that anything is possible. You just have to try hard and work hard and be true to yourself. Don’t try to be what somebody else wants you to be. Be yourself.” Despite combining the dual roles of MD and CEO, Cooper is undaunted. “No, it’s not an issue,” she says, though she admits, “it’s quite tiring”. “It’s a responsibility. I believe very strongly that it’s my role to support the business not the business’ role to support me, and that is what leadership is about. I think if I do my job well my staff will thrive and their careers will thrive, and if I don’t put my heart and soul into the business they suffer. So I take not just corporate responsibility but personal responsibility to make sure those in my charge are looked after. “I expect them to work hard but I also believe they have lives and families and other responsibilities in their lives, and we need to respect that.” Although Cooper is very aware of her responsibilities to Morgan Hunt’s 260 staff, spread across its three UK offices, she is also keenly aware of the commercial aspects of her role to run a successful and profitable business. Cooper admits that the squeeze on public spending during the past few years has been tough for Morgan Hunt. However, despite this the company has

continued to grow. Its £90m annual turnover is 40% higher than three years ago, while headcount grew by 25% in the past year. Cooper says a key aspect of its strategy has been to reduce its reliance on the temporary market. It has also moved into new areas that are aligned to its core public sector market, opening two new divisions in teaching and qualiﬁed social care. Cooper has a circumspect and targeted strategy for business development. “We make sure we go for opportunities where we can deliver so we don’t grab hold of every

“It’s always been the role not the job title that has been important”

opportunity, but keep tight to our brief. I have been quite strict about what we do and don’t tender for.” Repeat business is a priority, she says. “Anyone can win business once, but they will only come back if you have done a good job. So my vision is very much around doing a good job because clients and candidates will only come back to use you if they have had a good experience.” Asked what makes Morgan Hunt stand out from its competitors, Cooper’s response might well sound contrived and shallow coming from someone else. But backed up by glowing testimonials in its Award submissions, and all she has said earlier in the interview, it has the ring of truth. “It’s very difficult to say this without sounding very cheesy but we genuinely do care about our clients, our candidates and our consultants. We are a commercial organisation, and being privately owned our primary job is to deliver proﬁtability to the shareholders. “But I don’t think you can work in the sectors we work in without having genuine care for the individuals. So it’s about having the balance between commercial responsibility and having a conscience and integrity about the way that we do business.” One suspects that when it comes to Cooper’s legacy, it will be this aspect in particular that she will most want carried forward into recruitment perpetuity. ●

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AWARDS PHOTOGRAPHY: CARMEN VALINO

COLIN COTTELL AND GRAHAM SIMONS REPORT

Recruitment professionals from across the UK, Europe and as far aﬁeld as India gathered at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London’s Mayfair to celebrate an outstanding year in the industry. Hosted by comedian Romesh Ranganathan, who did a splendid job in presenting 29 awards accompanied by a thumping rock & roll soundtrack, the event was hailed as the best yet. Here are just a few snapshots of the evening’s winners

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FIRST POINT GROUP: WINNING UNDER FIRE “WHAT IS THAT banging? Are you on site?” “No!” came the answer from the Filipino contractor – “That’s machine gun fire – I’m being airlifted to Ethiopia in the next 20 minutes – I thought I’d let you know.” This is just one example of challenges contended with by David Taylor, managing director of the global telecoms recruiter that won the awards for Best Client Service and Best International Recruitment Agency. Other examples First Point Group’s Taylor told Recruiter included a Madagascar-based contractor falling in the street, which led to being airlifted out to Sweden within 24 hours, while Taylor himself has found himself treated to a trip in a bomb-proof van, escorted by cars armed with machine guns during a client visit to Nigeria. But contending with contractors facing machinegun fire or travelling through war-torn countries are not the only considerations successful recruiters face when expanding into challenging environments. Taylor says his firm always looks into three factors: the local legislative environment of that country, how easy it is do business there and also how easy it is to move money out of the country. Having funds in reserve is crucial as agencies must be able to commit to a location for the long haul – at least three years in order to evolve. The company must also be prepared to take losses in this initial period. Taylor explains the firm’s business in the US is the biggest example of this process. “You have to have faith and stick with it. Otherwise you can flip flop which is a bit of a waste of money,” he says. For Taylor, the group’s double award win is proof of that commitment to locations paying off. Consequently clients are aware that FPG’s 12 years of highly profitable growth and

experience proves turning to them is not a “stab in the dark”, or based upon a “gut feeling”. The ﬁrm has seen international sales rise 36% between 2014 and 2015, while the group’s international sales made up 82% of turnover during that period. “We have had an exceptionally strong ﬁnancial performance. It’s not just what you’re saying but what you are delivering on the bottom line.” Taylor added a strong performance allied with winning awards is it demonstrates to clients the success

A RARE WINNER IN INNOVATION THE WINNER of the Innovation in Recruitment Award at the Recruiter Awards 2016 is not resting on its laurels, but continues to innovate, according to its founder and managing director. Rare Recruitment picked up the award for its contextual recruitment system (CRS), which identiﬁes individuals with potential by comparing their academic performance with the academic results at their school, and combining this with social and

FPG has had in locations around the world. And Recruiter’s 2016 Best International recruitment ﬁrm’s immediate future is one of further international experience, Taylor adds. “We will carry on expanding internationally. We have earmarked up to 20 locations that are possibles for the future. “We will also continue to expand our verticals across in the technology space to continue to give us a more diverse client base as well.”

economic factors indicating social disadvantage. Raphael Mokades, founder and managing director of Rare Recruitment, told Recruiter that to date 54,000 candidates have made applications to 11 ﬁrms using the system, resulting in 50% more candidates from disadvantaged backgrounds being hired. However, Mokades said that to stay ahead of the competition, Rare was continuing to innovate. This included an important tweak to Rare’s CRS algorithm. Previously, having received free school meals and being the ﬁrst in one’s family to go to university had been given the same weighting in Rare’s CRS when determining social disadvantage. However, deeper analysis of WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK 25

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Above centre: Erin Hwang, Rare’s marketing and business development co-ordinator Rare’s candidate database subsequently revealed a different issue. Mokades told Recruiter: “This showed that 56% of those who were the first in their family to attend university did not suffer from any other form of social disadvantage, such as receiving free school meals, or anything else. “A lot of people are first generation at university,” Mokades said. On Rare’s database alone, that figure amounts to nearly 8,000 candidates. As a result of this discovery, Mokades said CRS’s algorithm had been tweaked to reduce

the weight of ﬁrst generation to attend university in determining a candidate’s social disadvantage. Mokades said Rare has also launched a white label product that allows organisations without an applicant tracking system (ATS) to use the system. This would particularly appeal to small or medium-sized organisations rather than the big graduate employers who have been the CRS’s typical early adopters, he said. This had been adopted by Hanover, a 60-strong communications company. Asked how big he saw the market for Rare’s CRS, Mokades said: “I am not sure how big it could be.”

office and accountancy recruiter Parkside Recruitment. Internationally, Antal International opened 19 new franchised offices across its global network, entered into a joint venture in China, and agreed a strategic partnership with Worldbridge Partners, which gave Antal access to the US and a number of Central American markets. Goodwin said while there was a tendency for entrepreneurs to want to keep control, it was vital for them to know when to bring in people with the skills they don’t have themselves. He cited Mike Ryall, managing consultant at Parkside Recruitment, as a great example of someone with skills that complement his own. “He has got more patience and dedication to detail than I have.” He continued: “It is all about the team. You cannot do all that we have done and have all of the hundreds of people around the world as we have, if it is ‘the Tony Goodwin Show’.” Goodwin said a factor in his success was: “I always look for the opportunity to get good people to join the business. I have survived a lot of difficult times, and that’s one of the reasons I have continued to look for good people when times are bad. Good people are going to get you out of the situation you are in. You have to take the risk of trusting people and sometimes you get it wrong.”

GOOD YEAR FOR GOODWIN KNOWING WHEN to delegate and step back is “one of the most difficult things for entrepreneurs to gauge”, according to Tony Goodwin, founder and chief executive of Antal International and winner of the Recruitment Entrepreneur of the Year Award at the 2016 Recruiter Awards. 2015 was a busy year for Goodwin and Antal International. It included the acquisition of Milton Keynes-based professional recruiter Smart Moves and continuing to grow office professionals, 26 RECRUITER

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W I NNE R S AT TH E 20 16 R E C R U I TE R AWA R D S BEST NEW AGENCY Evolve Hospitality HIGHLY COMMENDED Primary Care People BEST JOBS/CAREERS BOARD myjobscotland.gov.uk in partnership with Spider Online HIGHLY COMMENDED LoveLocalJobs.com BEST EMBEDDED RECRUITMENT TEAM Single Resource in partnership with Greencore Group UK (Northampton)

TTM: BEYOND THE CALL OF DUTY PROVIDING HEALTH and medical professionals with a level of support that “goes well beyond finding them a job” is a key factor in the success of double-Recruiter Award winner TTM Healthcare, according to its group managing director. The international recruitment company won Best Professional Services Recruitment Agency and Best Public Sector Recruitment Agency on the night. With the UK’s severe shortage of nursing, medical and health professionals, TTM Healthcare specialises in large scale international recruitment drives from countries such as Romania, India and the Philippines, recruiting one in five overseas hired by the NHS. Barry Pactor, group managing director of TTM Healthcare, told Recruiter a big factor in its success in recruiting overseas staff was taking care of them. “This is an enormous step and a life-changing experience for many of them. It’s not a question of simply jumping on a plane and turning up for work the next day.” The range of support that TTM Healthcare staff provides to overseas candidates is comprehensive. It includes giving them a named account manager, sorting out their accommodation, identifying schools, working with the client to find a buddy, and helping them to build a network in the UK. Staff have occasionally put up candidates in their own homes, Pactor said, and driven them to the hospital the next day to make sure they got to work on time. “The guys just go beyond the call of duty, time and time again,” he said. Pactor said the company’s permanent and locum retention rates both over 90% were testament to its approach. “We work really hard to understand what the individual is looking for and match that against the needs of the clients.”

MOST EFFECTIVE BACK OFFICE OPERATION Morgan Hunt MOST EFFECTIVE RECRUITMENT MARKETING CAMPAIGN Pink Squid in partnership with Jaguar Land Rover HIGHLY COMMENDED Chatter Communications and Cielo in partnership with O2; Penna/ Mediacom in partnership with Metropolitan Police Service BEST RECRUITMENT AGENCY MARKETING TEAM InterQuest Group BEST PUBLIC SECTOR RECRUITMENT AGENCY TTM Healthcare HIGHLY COMMENDED Sanctuary Personnel BEST GRADUATE RECRUITMENT STRATEGY Tata Consultancy Services BEST APPRENTICE/SCHOOL LEAVER RECRUITMENT STRATEGY Pret A Manger BEST CANDIDATE CARE Sanctuary Personnel BEST CLIENT SERVICE First Point Group HIGHLY COMMENDED Macildowie; Penta Consulting BEST CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE Grant Thornton in partnership with The Project Box HIGHLY COMMENDED Autism at Work Program – SAP BEST BANKING/FINANCIAL SERVICES RECRUITMENT AGENCY Kite Consulting Group HIGHLY COMMENDED Empiric BEST CONSTRUCTION & ENGINEERING RECRUITMENT AGENCY Carbon60

BEST IT RECRUITMENT AGENCY Evolution Recruitment Solutions BEST PROFESSIONAL SERVICES RECRUITMENT AGENCY TTM Healthcare BEST TEMPORARY RECRUITMENT AGENCY HCL Workforce Solutions MOST EFFECTIVE EMPLOYER BRAND DEVELOPMENT SAP HIGHLY COMMENDED Co-operative Bank in partnership with SMRS; VSO in partnership with Equilibrium Consulting and Collaboration Studio RECRUITMENT TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION OF THE YEAR TempBuddy HIGHLY COMMENDED Dice in partnership with DHI; Firefish Software INNOVATION IN RECRUITMENT Rare’s Contextual Recruitment System HIGHLY COMMENDED Autism at Work Program – SAP OUTSTANDING OUTSOURCED RECRUITMENT ORGANISATION Amberjack HIGHLY COMMENDED NHS Professionals RECRUITMENT AGENCY OF THE YEAR (UP TO 75 EMPLOYEES) LMA Recruitment HIGHLY COMMENDED Hallam Medical RECRUITMENT AGENCY OF THE YEAR (UP TO 76-200 EMPLOYEES) Goodman Masson RECRUITMENT AGENCY OF THE YEAR (UP TO 201+ EMPLOYEES) Morgan Hunt UK IN-HOUSE RECRUITMENT LEADER OF THE YEAR David McArthur – Department for Work & Pensions/Jobcentre Plus RECRUITMENT AGENCY LEADER OF THE YEAR Scott Davies – Hallam Medical HIGHLY COMMENDED Matthew Churchward – The Asoria Group IN-HOUSE RECRUITMENT TEAM OF THE YEAR Great Western Railway HIGHLY COMMENDED Thales UK RECRUITMENT INDUSTRY ENTREPRENEUR OF THE YEAR Tony Goodwin – Antal International

BEST INTERNATIONAL RECRUITMENT AGENCY First Point Group HIGHLY COMMENDED Tangent International

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Risk Free

AN UNRIVALL

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ED OPPORTUNITY

UNIQUE COMMERCIAL BENEFITS: • &ƵůůǇ ĐŽŵƉůŝĂŶƚ ƉƌŽĚƵĐƚ ĞŵďƌĂĐĞĚ ďǇ ŝŶĚƵƐƚƌǇ ĞǆƉĞƌƚƐ ͻ ŽŶĨŽƌŵƐ ƚŽ dΘ^͕ /Zϯϱ Θ D^ ůĞŐŝƐůĂƟŽŶ ͻ E Ž ƌŝƐŬ ŽĨ ůŝĂďŝůŝƚǇ Žƌ ĚĞďƚͲƚƌĂŶƐĨĞƌ ƚŽ ĂŶǇ ƉĂƌƚǇ ŝŶ ƚŚĞ ƐƵƉƉůǇ ĐŚĂŝŶ ͻ ŽŵŵĞƌĐŝĂůůǇ ĂĚǀĂŶƚĂŐĞŽƵƐ ƚŽ ŝŶƚĞƌŵĞĚŝĂƌŝĞƐ͕ ĂŐĞŶĐŝĞƐ Θ ĐŽŶƚƌĂĐƚŽƌƐ

ͻ / ŶƚĞŐƌĂƚĞĚ ƐŽŌǁĂƌĞ ƉůĂƞŽƌŵ ƉƌŽǀŝĚĞĚ ǁŝƚŚ ŽŶŐŽŝŶŐ ƐƵƉƉŽƌƚ ͻ ŵďƌĂĐĞĚ ďǇ ŽǀĞƌ ϱϬϬϬ ĐŽŶƚƌĂĐƚŽƌƐ ƚŽ ĚĂƚĞ ;DĂǇ ϮϬϭϲͿ ͻ ƉƉƌŽǀĞĚ ďǇ ŶƵŵĞƌŽƵƐ ĂŐĞŶĐŝĞƐ ŝŶĐůƵĚŝŶŐ ŐůŽďĂů ďƌĂŶĚƐ Θ ŝŶĚĞƉĞŶĚĞŶƚƐ ͻ ƌĂŶĚĞĚ ŽƉƟŽŶ ĂǀĂŝůĂďůĞ͕ ƉůƵƐ ƚŽƚĂů ŵĂƌŬĞƟŶŐ ƐƵƉƉŽƌƚ

&Žƌ ŵŽƌĞ ŝŶĨŽƌŵĂƟŽŶ ƉůĞĂƐĞ ĞŵĂŝů dĞƌƌǇ ,ŝůůŝĞƌ ŝŶ ƚŚĞ ƐƚƌŝĐƚĞƐƚ ĐŽŶĮĚĞŶĐĞ͗

terry.hillier@racsgroup.com | 0345 604 0571 | racsgroup.com

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Issue 38 June 2016

RECRUITMENT MATTERS The View and The Intelligence

The Big Issue

TREC and Eurociett

Business mentoring

p2-3

Legal update and the IRP

Events and Training

Legislative changes coming up p6-7

TREC 2016 – Conference Agenda

REC GEARS UP FOR TREC 2016 The REC’s annual Talent, Recruitment and Employment Conference (TREC) returns to London on 22 June. The conference brings the HR and recruitment community together to discuss issues around candidate experience and talent attraction. This year’s conference features a keynote address from Times sports journalist and Commonwealth Games gold medallist Matthew Syed. Other speakers include Graeme Johnson, head of resourcing, Virgin Media; Katherine Lamb, talent acquisition lead - Europe,

@RECPress RM_JUN_16_a.indd 1

Kellogg’s; and Gerard Murnaghan, vice president of sales EMEA, Indeed. REC head of HR and projects Steve Othen says this year’s conference will continue shining a light on candidate experience. “For our members, it’s two-fold. Not only will they hear from some top notch speakers about things like candidate experience and

employer brand, but they will also be able to network with some great brands,” he says. “We have already having bookings from 200 individuals in the HR and in-house recruitment communities, so it’s a great opportunity to hear and network with those people. They will be able to hear about how these things affect both them and their clients.”

97% of previous attendeess would recommend attending TREC

Othen says the conference will take a close look at how recruiters and HR staff can improve their business straight away. “TREC 2016 will be focusing more on the practical side of things, looking at the nuts and bolts of building a great HR experience,” he says. You can find a full TREC agenda on p8, and book online at rec.uk.com/trec

www.rec.uk.com 10/05/2016 17:06

Leading the Industry

THE VIEW

The European recruitment market is strong, says Tom Hadley, REC director of policy and professional services

TREC 2016 offers a great chance for recruiters to think about candidate experience says Kevin Green, REC chief executive For many years the call from recruiters to the REC has been: let’s educate our clients about good recruitment practice. Well, in the middle of 2014 we took up the challenge – following six months spent engaging employers, we launched the Good Recruitment Campaign. At the centre of the campaign is an aspirational charter which organisations sign up to adhere to. We’re pleased to say that over 110 employers have become advocates of the campaign. They include PepsiCo, Land Rover, Jaguar, Santander, Morrisons, EY and Wincanton just to name a few. These organisations employ well over a million people in the UK. The campaign is also supported by business bodies such as the CBI, CIPD, FSB and CIPS. To you, our members, we are saying: promote this campaign to your clients. This is a fantastic way to add value to your client relationship. The benefit to your client is that by signing up they can get access to top-notch research from the REC and from our supporters such as CEB and Indeed. The ability to network with peers and subgroups on subjects such as employer branding, candidate experience and diversity is another key benefit. And don’t

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MARKET VIEWS IN DOWNTOWN VIENNA worry – we have made sure that recruiters can’t access any client contact details, so there’s no risk of your clients being wooed by competitors. Two of the charter’s principles are about only using recruitment partners that are signed up to our Code of Practice, and that actively develop their consultants to professional standards. This reinforces to clients that they should only use REC members to ensure they are working with the best. We are delighted to say that over 200 employers are committed to attending TREC, the REC’s annual conference and the Good Recruitment Campaign’s flagship event. We would love you to join us to hear about what clients are doing in relation to talent acquisition and world-class resourcing. You can register now at www.rec.uk.com/trec I am around the country over the next few months – you can join me at our Scale Up in the Round events in Belfast on 3rd June, Glasgow on the 9th or Edinburgh on the 10th June. If you want to keep abreast of all that’s new about employment and recruitment why not follow me on twitter at @kevingreenrec

It was good to catch up with other national federations and global industry leaders last month over Tafelspitz and trimmings in downtown Vienna. We were in town for the latest Eurociett Board meeting, which provided a lively insight into overseas market trends. Ciett’s latest Economic Report shows that the global recruitment industry now has an annual turnover €450bn (£355bn) and helped 71.9m people across the world get into work. That’s worth raising a chilled glass of Grüner Veltliner to! In Europe, the sector grew 7.7% last year and regulatory barriers are gradually being dismantled in countries such as Italy. That’s the good news. The less good news is that pressing legislative challenges threaten to hit hard-won recognition for the positive role of agency work in many other countries. In Holland new regulations on self-employment could place more onus and risk on end-users. In Belgium, restrictions prohibit the supply of temporary staff into specific sectors. There is a renewed focus on civil contracts in Poland and a huge drive to increase barriers in Sweden. In France, employment will be a major topic ahead of the presidential elections in 2017 but proposals to increase labour market flexibility have unleashed a predictable backlash driven by the trade unions. In Germany, Chancellor Merkel recently confirmed that proposed new regulations on outsourcing and agency work would pass through to the next stage of the legislative process. The regulatory challenges listed above are all driven by national governments. The EU requirement (under Article 4 of our old friend the Agency Workers Directive) that barriers to agency work must be justifiable represents a positive ‘hook’ for our industry’s arguments. Talking up the benefits the recruitment sector brings for jobseekers as well as for business was a core theme of the REC’s Flex Appeal report and is a key way forward in EU countries facing a regulatory squeeze. As a member of Eurociett, the REC’s mission is to support other national federations and ensure a strong collective voice. Pushing back on current legislative challenges is key to facilitating industry growth and enhancing overseas opportunities for UK recruiters. You can follow Tom on Twitterr ment @hadleyscomment

www.rec.uk.com

10/05/2016 17:06

THE INTELLIGENCE DIANA BEECH, REC SENIOR RESEARCHER, ALLAYS FEARS AROUND RECENT ECONOMIC UNCERTAINTY The UK’s referendum on its continued membership of the European Union is now less than a month away. Since the referendum was announced, officials have warned that the UK economy is showing signs of weakening amidst a climate of political uncertainty. Most notably, in April, the Bank of England held interest rates at 0.5%, warning that the referendum could hurt the UK’s economic growth. Bank of England governor Mark Carney hailed the referendum, scheduled for 23 June, as the UK’s “biggest domestic risk to financial stability”. Recent business surveys have also been reporting a “softening” in hiring and

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investment intentions across the country. Data from the REC’s own monthly JobsOutlook survey, which tracks the hiring intentions of 600 UK employers, has already seen the net balance of employers planning to increase their permanent workforce drop 10 percentage points in four months – from 80% in December 2015 to 70% in March 2016. Yet, as historical data from the survey shows, this is not the first time political uncertainty has impacted employers’ hiring strategies in the run-up to a major election. In the six months prior to the 2015 General Election, for example, the net balance of employers expecting their permanent workforce to increase dropped 18 percentage points from 77% in December 2014 to 59% in May 2015. So the hesitation we are witnessing at the moment is nothing new and, perhaps, also not something to be overly worried about, considering that immediately after the General Election

0.5% BANK OF ENGLAND HELD INTEREST RATES AT 0.5%, WARNING THAT THE REFERENDUM COULD HURT THE UK’S ECONOMIC GROWTH

OUT

IN THE SIX MONTHS PRIOR TO THE 2015 GENERAL ELECTION THE NET BALANCE OF EMPLOYERS EXPECTING THEIR PERMANENT WORKFORCE TO INCREASE DROPPED

PERCENTAGE POINTS

IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE GENERAL ELECTION HIRING INTENTIONS ROSE RAPIDLY AGAIN BY

PERCENTAGE POINTS

hiring intentions rose rapidly again by 20 percentage points in just three months – reaching 79% in August 2015. In April, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) reported the UK’s first rise in unemployment since mid-2015 and also the slowest rise in employment. Although some commentators were quick to link this to the threat of a possible ‘Brexit’, we should keep in mind that the figures are based on the three months to February 2016. The date

for the referendum was announced on 20 February, so it’s problematic to attribute the slowdown in employment growth to the EU question based on the ONS data. Other factors must, therefore, be considered before blaming the recent labour market slowdowns purely on the pending referendum. Employers have long been feeling the burdens of the National Living Wage and pension autoenrolment, for example, not to mention the forthcoming Apprenticeship Levy. The uncertainty around the referendum, then, is just one of many challenges facing UK businesses at present.

RECRUITMENT MATTERS JUNE 2016 3

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The Big Talking Point

BUSINESS MENTORING For 11 years Midge Bennett was a director at Rethink Recruitment. Now he’s part of the REC’s new business mentoring programme. He tells Recruitment Matters about the transition

A MENTOR NAMED MIDGE Recruitment Matters: What prompted you to step back from Rethink?

Midge Bennett: I’ve stepped back, but I’m still working two days a week on a consultancy basis for them. My focus there is integrating our new acquisition Digital Gurus, who are a specialist digital recruitment agency. My goal is to bring them into the fold as effectively as possible without damaging their brand. They have a fantastic client base and we want that transition to seamless. So really, I’m still a stakeholder with Rethink, still talking to clients, but it’s a nice transition

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for me. It’s given me time to secure other opportunities in the recruitment sector, and I’ve been looking for a new challenge.

a strong relationship with the REC over the past three years, it seemed logical that I was a part of their business mentoring programme.

RM: What are you moving into?

RM: What can you tell

MB: I’ve set up a consultancy

me about the mentoring programme?

business – Rethink are still important to me, but I’m looking to work with smaller recruitment companies through the REC’s mentoring programme. I’ll be advising businesses on how to grow, changing their business model, strategy, and brand – that sort of thing. I wanted to share my years of knowledge and experience, and having such

MB: It’s about giving small businesses access to people with the experience and expertise who have been through similar challenges around growth, setting a business strategy and sticking to it. Small business owners are very engaged with their business, and it’s common for people not to step back

and take a look at the big picture. The team of business mentors at the REC have huge experience and have worked in big and small companies. You need to find someone who you can work closely with – they won’t be your best friend because they will ask some tough questions, but you do need to gel with them.

RM: What are some common issues small recruitment companies face?

MB: There are issues that crop up all the time – questions about growing a business and selling it, questions about finding and www.rec.uk.com

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“YOU’VE GOT TO BE TIGHT ON CASHFLOW IN YOUR EARLY BUSINESS SETUP. THERE IS SUCH A THING AS BUSINESSES THAT SELL WELL AND GO BUST”

developing good staff. There’s also a growing interest in client acquisitions since the business model in the UK is changing considerably: it’s about being a specialist or offering outsourced recruitment. It’s ultimately about working with them on what they want to achieve and putting a plan in place on how to get there.

RM: What are some common mistakes recruitment companies make?

companies also think they can hire people and become productive quickly, but that’s not the case.

MB: Yeah – setting up a business means there’s a lot of dull admin work, but you have to do it.

RM: Finance plays a role here

RM: It all comes down

too, doesn’t it?

to hard work and hustle, doesn’t it?

MB: Yes – you’ve got to be tight on cashflow in your early business set up. There is such a thing as businesses that sell well and go bust. Getting senior finance skills in early is vital, even to handle things like banking relationships.

MB: Based on my personal experience, it’s about expectations being set too high and not planning enough. Many

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MB: Absolutely. You should be the hardest worker in your business, out visiting clients and seeing how their business operates. RM: Where do you think the recruitment industry is placed right now?

RM: There’s also a lot of humdrum things to consider too, right?

MB: I think we’re strong. Despite nervousness about

Brexit, I think things are looking good. The REC is forecasting 8-10% growth in the next two years and we’re getting more respect from clients thanks to things like the Good Recruitment Campaign. The perception of our industry is changing, but we’ve got a long way to go. One of the big challenges is getting talent into recruitment and keeping it there, but a lot of work is being done making recruitment a career of choice. The sector is set to be very positive for the next few years, hoping the economy doesn’t tank.

RECRUITMENT MATTERS JUNE 2016 5

11/05/2016 09:20

Legal update

REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL… By Lewina Farrell, solicitor and head of professional services at the REC It’s hard to believe we are already almost half way through 2016. So it’s worth seeing what else is in store for recruiters in 2016. • We can’t avoid mentioning tax. Specifically, on 6 April travel & subsistence expenses relief was removed from temporary workers working under (or subject to the right of) supervision, direction or control. Alternative supply models have emerged – some legitimate, others very questionable, with potential risks for the temporary workers and employment businesses alike. The REC has updated its model contracts and produced new intermediary due diligence checklists to help members navigate the changes. We continue to advise members through sector meetings and our legal helpline (tax remains firmly in the Top 5 queries so far in 2016). • IR35 – at the time of writing we are still awaiting

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publication of the IR35 consultation. Proposals published by HMRC in March suggested some fundamental changes including recruitment businesses being required to deduct PAYE tax and NICs from those paid via personal service companies but operating inside IR35. The changes are expected to come into effect in April 2017. Initially these will apply in the public sector, potentially being rolled out into the private sector in 2018. • NLW – on 1 April the new National Living Wage for those aged 25 and over came into effect. We have seen various stories about how some household names have responded to the new rate and certainly recruitment businesses also have challenges, including avoiding age discriminatory instructions by clients and increasing their charges. • The apprenticeship levy – sticking with the financial theme, the apprenticeship

levy will come into effect in April 2017 and will have a disproportionate effect on recruitment businesses because of the size of their pay bills. Questions remain about how recruitment businesses and their temporary workers can avail of the apprenticeships the levy will fund. Questions also remain about how the apprenticeship levy will work with the CITB levy. We know the CITB levy process will be simplified from 2017 though again, it will cost some recruitment businesses who might previously not have been in scope. Interestingly Hudson recently lost a judicial review challenging the simplified regime. • In January 2016 the Government announced the creation of a new Directorate of Labour Market Enforcement. This will be established via the new Immigration Bill, expected to come into effect by 18 May 2016. The

Directorate will co-ordinate the skills and resources of a strengthened GLA (which will become the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority), HMRC, BIS and others to look at worker exploitation and labour market issues in a holistic way. • A new General Data Protection Regulation has been agreed by the EU and will come into effect two years after it is published in the Official Journal (expected summer 2016). The changes are far reaching and will require significant investment in training and processes by all organisations. Recruiters hold significant amounts of personal data, including sensitive personal data. REC will keep members updated but in the meantime see our most recent Legal bulletin for more detail. REC Legal will keep its members updated on all of these issues throughout 2016 and 2017.

www.rec.uk.com

10/05/2016 17:07

Inspiration

BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE INSTITUTE OF RECRUITMENT PROFESSIONALS

The View

Ashleigh Wright ht is business anager development manager at Westray Recruitment Consultants

Graeme Wolf is director at Hexa Services

AUDITED MEMBER WHAT I KNOW What is your job? I’m the business development manager at Westray Recruitment Consultants, so I’m focused 100% on sales. I started in the industrial sector before moving on to the commercial desk and eventually full time business development. Why the move into business development? We realised the business needed someone full time to focus on business development. With my experience across a number of different market sectors and a keen interest in sales, I suggested I take on the role and I have never looked back. How has 2016 been? 2016 has been great so far. We’ve had an absolutely fantastic start to the new financial year, due mainly to the change in our business development strategy. We’ve secured a number of new contracts, including a client we’ve been courting for three years. We’ve also recruited a new executive director who has more than 15 years’ experience working in domestic and global markets, which means that the business can now branch out in to international markets. How has being an REC Audited member worked for you? There are more than 200 agencies in the North East, so we speak to clients who are inundated with requests from recruiters. It’s great to say that we have REC Audited Status as it demonstrates our commitment to exceptional service delivery. We have to make sure we’re at the top of our game at all times and the accreditation definitely helps attract new clients. What is the most important thing a recruiter should know? Knowing their market sector is important, together with a good understanding of their client’s business and the challenges they face. It’s also crucial to know what makes you different and why clients would want to work with you.

Referendum worries The EU referendum is causing a lot of doubt within our sector. Clients seem to be holding their budgets until the outcome is out, but we’ve still had a good year. The skill shortage is proving a hindrance in the construction and education side. We’re worried a leave vote would exacerbate the situation more. Market still strong I think it’s buoyant. A lot of clients are still desperate for the skills, they’ve got perm, temp and contract vacancies. Should a good candidate come available, it’s very easy to place them – even the same day. We’re 17% up from where we were in 2015. It’s nice up North There’s a lot of investment in infrastructure in the North West. George Osborne’s plan for the northern powerhouse is starting to develop. It’s an exciting time to be in Manchester. Future challenges I spend a lot of time thinking about how the industry will look in five to 10 years’ time. I think more needs to be done to bring people into the construction industry, in whatever capacity. We need to emphasise the benefits of the industry and what a rewarding career being in construction can be. There will be demand for new kinds of skills with technology and engineering so the productivity of the industry is kept to the max. Recruiters need to be at the forefront of finding that talent. Smarter recruiters The advent of smart phones has changed the industry. It’s made things a lot more efficient, and it will continue to do so with the increased use of apps and cameras. It will make the candidate experience better – gone are the days where candidates are left waiting on hold. Recruiters can get through to them straight away. It should help us get better feedback, ensuring we do better.

To keep up to date with everything the Institute of Recruitment Professionals is doing, please visit www.rec-irp.uk.com

www.rec.uk.com

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RECRUITMENT MATTERS JUNE 2016 7

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Events and training

TREC

TREC 2016 – CONFERENCE AGENDA THE REC’S TALENT, RECRUITMENT AND EMPLOYMENT CONFERENCE IS ON 22 JUNE IN LONDON. THERE ARE STILL SPACES AVAILABLE – BOOK NOW AT REC.UK.COM/TREC 8.30am

Registration, coffee and exhibition open

12.40pm

Lunch - buffet lunch in networking and exhibition area

9.15am

Welcome and introduction: Kevin Green, CEO, the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) and Neil Morrison, Group HR Director, Penguin Random House

1.35pm

10.00am

Panel 1: Attract: How to make sure your employer brand is authentic Chair - Johnny Campbell, CEO, Social Talent • Kevin Hough, Head of Resourcing, LV= • Charu Malhotra, Global Digital Channels & Employer Brand Lead, Ferrero • Dominic Redfearn, Global Brand & Communications Director, Diageo

Welcome back and introduction for the afternoon Open floor round table feedback session Each round table leader to feedback to the audience one interesting point/question which has arisen from each of their groups

2.00pm

Keynote address: Baroness Ruby McGregorSmith, CEO, Mitie

2.25pm

Panel 2: Recruit - The candidate experience getting it right every time Chair - Dave Hazelhurst, Partner, Ph.Creative • Graeme Johnson, Head of Resourcing, Virgin Media • Katherine Lamb, Talent Acquisition Lead Europe, Kellogg’s • Gerard Murnaghan, Vice President of Sales EMEA, Indeed

2.55pm

Coffee break, networking and exhibition

3.35pm

Panel 3: Retain - how to get line managers to play their role in engaging and retaining talent? Chair - Katie Jacobs, Editor, HR Magazine • Val Dale, HR Director, Aggreko • Adrian Wightman, Head of Resourcing, RWE • John Whelan, HR Director, BAE Systems

4.20pm

Keynote address: Matthew Syed, Columnist for The Times, bestselling Author, and three-times Commonwealth Champion

4.50pm

Closing remarks

5.15pm

Post event drinks

6.30pm

Close of event

10.45am

Coffee break, networking and exhibition

11.20am

Round tables Each delegate will have the opportunity to select two round tables - pre-event sign up required. Delegates will be sent joining instructions prior to the event via the REC events team. 1. Attract - What are employers doing to attract young talent 2. Attract - How to attract diverse talent to your business? 3. Attract - Social sourcing – Why, where, how? 4. Recruit - Lean recruitment – adding value 5. Recruit - Selection approaches – What’s new and what works? 6. Retain - Succession planning – making it work 7. Retain - How can we develop tomorrow’s super recruiters? 8. The forgotten art of workforce planning

RECRUITMENT MATTERS

Membership Department: Membership: 020 7009 2100, Customer Services: 020 7009 2100 Publishers: Redactive Publishing Ltd, 17 Britton Street, London EC1M 5TP. Tel: 020 7880 6200. www.redactive.co.uk Editorial: Editor Michael Oliver michael.oliver@redactive.co.uk. Production Editor: Vanessa Townsend Production: Production Executive: Rachel Young rachel.young@redactive.co.uk Tel: 020 7880 6209 Printing: Printed by Precision Colour Printing

The official magazine of The Recruitment & Employment Confederation Dorset House, 1st Floor, 27-45 Stamford Street, London SE1 9NT Tel: 020 7009 2100 www.rec.uk.com

© 2016 Recruitment Matters. Although every effort is made to ensure accuracy, neither REC, Redactive Publishing Ltd nor the authors can accept liability for errors or omissions. Views expressed in the magazine are not necessarily those of the REC or Redactive Publishing Ltd. No responsibility can be accepted for unsolicited manuscripts or transparencies. No reproduction in whole or part without written permission.

8 RECRUITMENT MATTERS JUNE 2016

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www.rec.uk.com

10/05/2016 17:07

A DV E RT O R I A L S E L E C T A P P O I N T M E N T S

Select the best odds for your business

The Personal Approach to Franchising & Recruitment

Select Appointments has an incredibly rich heritage. Established in 1980, the brand has gone through quite a spectacular journey, accumulating 36 years of knowledge and expertise that its franchise owners get to draw upon every day.

• • • •

Part of that journey was the Select Appointments franchise network becoming a division of UK recruitment giant Staffline Group Plc in 2012.

Compared with the often low survival rates of independent start ups, clearly, franchising -- in the right hands -- really can work.

Today Select has 37 franchised territories across the UK, and has identified sufficient additional high-potential territories to take that number up to around 100.

Select Appointments is amongst an elite group of franchisors accredited with a membership of the British Franchise Association. This means we have been independently assessed as having not only a viable business model, but also an ethical one.

Recruitment and Franchising are both thriving industries full of incredible success stories, so combining the two with a Select Appointments recruitment agency franchise could be your perfect route to low-risk business ownership. We know you understand recruitment -- but what do you know about franchising? Franchising is present in almost every business sector imaginable, and it has just had another very successful year. In the most recently published NatWest Bank/ British Franchise Association (bfa) Franchise Survey, findings showed:

Industry annual turnover: £15.1bn Number of franchisee outlets: 44,200 Number of people employed in franchising: 621,000 Percentage profitable (including new businesses): 97%

“The reason that we, and so many other very successful businesses, choose to grow our company through franchising is really very simple; we believe that a local owner, with local roots and a personal financial stake in the company, will out-perform a salaried manager every single time.” -- Suzie McCafferty, Managing Director, Select Appointments

↗

For more information on a Select Appointments franchise email: franchiseteam@select.co.uk, or visit www.selectfranchising.co.uk or call Steve Lampshire on 07585 709136

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10/05/2016 14:21

DATA SO URC ING

Information has always equalled power, but in 2016 it’s more accurate to replace the word ‘information’ with ‘data’. Sue Weekes investigates

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JUNE 2016

12/05/2016 14:13

DATA S O U RC I N G

DEMANDS WHILE DATA IS essentially information, its attributes make it much more powerful. Data is more accessible, searchable and, most importantly, can be far more easily analysed. Thanks to the huge amount of data residing in databases, computer systems and networks around the world, combined with the clever software that makes sense of it all, recruitment professionals in all sectors have access to invaluable insight and intelligence, enabling them to be more effective in their role. Recruiters increasingly rely on data and intelligence to gain competitive

edge. Whether it is real-time access to job leads, market intelligence, hiring trends, information on skills shortages or salary information, the data is out there. “Not using data to inform your recruitment strategy isn’t an option today,” says Dan Dackombe, director, LinkedIn Talent Solutions, EMEA. “The most advanced recruiters stopped simply reacting to the hiring demands of their company some time ago, and instead are proactively using data to map the available talent pool at any one time.”

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DATA SO URC ING

DATA LEADS ecruiters need to be aware of the breadth of data that is available to them and how it can help them be more effective. Vacancy leads bring the most immediate benefit for agency recruiters, of course, and technology is getting this information to them quicker than ever. Mike Lewis, digital marketing manager at Innovantage, which specialises in lead generation, identifying recruitment trends and talent market intelligence, says the real-time nature of the data is most welcomed by recruiters. “They want to be the first person to call and not the 21st,” Lewis says. “This means that when they call a new client the job in question is on topic and at the forefront of the hiring manager’s mind.” Innovantage’s system breaks down jobs into various categories including permanent or temporary, location, name of the advertiser and job title, and in most instances supplies recruiters with a daily calling list of job vacancies. “No matter at what level they are recruiting and regardless of experience, recruiters are turning to data more and more to give them a competitive edge,” adds Lewis. He claims that the data in its system can save recruiters 90 minutes a day in wasted time trawling the web for leads. Another recruitment-focused intelligence tool is Vacancysoft, which picks up job-related information at the point corporate recruiters upload data to a corporate careers site or applicant tracking system (ATS). Vacancysoft founder James Chaplin says agency recruiters use the service rather more subtly than for pure lead generation. “It’s more about managing their clients better,” Chaplin says. “They may have a relationship with that organisation but not be on first-name terms with the business unit director, so it enables them to work that job at the point it is picked up.”

R DATA SOURCE o give some idea of the scale of data available to recruiters, with 414m members, LinkedIn alone is able to generate billions of data points, or single items of information, that can be mapped to identify talent trends and movements and turned into useful information for recruiters. Another source of data used by recruiters is Avention OneSource. Its Global Content Live product covers more than 40m companies around the world, with data including direct phone numbers and email addresses of key executives, as well as financial information, market research and industry reports. Paul Charmatz, senior vice president international at Avention OneSource Solutions, says recruitment firms are moving away from static lists that quickly become outdated towards dynamic data through technology platforms. “These platforms allow users to have live, manageable data at their fingertips, that can be segmented, constantly updated, and lined to outside information triggers,” Charmatz says. “Businesses demand faster, smarter insights to keep pace with increasing customer sophistication and competition, and the staffing industry is no exception.”

34 RECRUITER

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DATA ANALYSIS acancysoft also publishes reports and is currently putting together one on the technology sector, looking at new roles emerging. When Chaplin launched the company in 2006, the stock response from recruiters was ‘why do I need information on jobs? I need candidates’ and it was a struggle to get the early adopters on board. “Now people understand that the better they understand their clients and mirror their clients’ activities, the more proﬁtable they will be as an organisation,” he explains. “An agency’s return on investment comes from being able to pick up roles faster but they have the added beneﬁt of a 360-degree perspective on what their clients are doing.” Best practice insight and technology specialist CEB collects data on both the job demand and candidate supply side and has a vast database going back 10 years. Jean Martin, talent solutions architect at CEB, says this is key in extracting key trends, building data algorithms and helping identify pockets of skills and potential candidates. One of the most popular uses of its

JUNE 2016

12/05/2016 14:44

DATA S O U RC I N G

DATA ADVICE “Recruiters are turning to data more and more to give them a competitive edge”

TalentNeuron tool is to analyse top skills and certifications that are in demand, monitor companies that are hiring in their area or industry, and view trends in labour demand to review and adjust their employment brand. “Talent acquisition or recruiting managers are keen to understand the degree of difficulty to fill a given role or find critical skills,” Martin says. “They also look at historic hiring trends and job indices to detect economic patterns and identify new pockets of talent growth (or decline) by region or industry.” The tool also enables recruiters to monitor competitor hiring activity, site location analysis and longer-term workforce planning. One of Avention’s aims is to help recruiters expand their use of analytics so they can better identify new markets and opportunities. “Typically this includes using data and analysis to look for ‘hot’ industries and to predict where future potential skill gaps might occur,” says Charmatz. Its software also provides ‘business signals’ that alert users to factors such as when an organisation is opening a new office, expanding into new markets or increasing its workforce. “And by comparing client needs with candidate availability, they can then use this data to pinpoint hiring opportunities within the marketplace,” Charmatz says.

he range of data sources available also helps recruiters to evolve their own role. According to research by insight and technology company CEB, only one in seven senior business leaders think their recruitment function provides the proactive advice they need to help shape business strategy. Martin believes the recruiter’s role needs to shift towards that of a talent adviser by applying greater precision to talent acquisition methods and embracing talent market intelligence tools. “High-impact talent advisers bring the voice of talent strategy to hiring decisions,” she says. “They challenge hiring managers and leaders rather than just satisfying their requests. Talent advisers need to leverage new technologies to access deep labour market expertise that will inﬂuence decisions, build targeted pipelines, and convey the business logic of recruiting recommendations; bringing talent strategy in line.”

DATA STRATEGY ackombe agrees that by taking a more “deliberate” approach in their work they can become “strategic advisers” to business leaders. “Rather than just reacting to immediate talent gaps, they can anticipate and plan for future needs and guide the CEO on the likelihood of being able to staff future initiatives, shaping company strategy,” he says. Providers report that agency and in-house recruiters have differing demands of the data they hold. Lewis explains that recruiters are generally interested in who is posting roles right now and how they best use job information to place a candidate, while in-house recruiters are more interested in salary changes within their markets and how they compare to their peers/ competitors. Martin agrees that recruiters tend to be more sales and marketing-focused, and want to see in real-time which companies are posting roles and what their rivals are doing. “On the flip side,” Martin says, “corporate talent acquisition teams can use data and market intelligence tools to bring more of that function in-house.” Ultimately, however, Charmatz believes they are driven by the same motivation when it comes to using data: “What they are both looking for is a way to differentiate themselves in a crowded market, find and retain key talent, and maintain profit margins amid increasingly complex sales processes.” ●

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12/05/2016 14:44

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REC.06.16.044.indd 44

10/05/2016 14:23

CO M M U N I T Y

SOCIAL NETWORK WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN UP TO? GET IN TOUCH!

From getting muddy to a kickabout with Rushy, here’s what you’ve been up to... IAN RUSH JOINS BUSINESS LEADERS FOR WALES’ FIRST CEO KICK-ABOUT VIA Multi-specialist recruiter Acorn and the Football Association of Wales (FAW) Trust celebrated the successful launch of ‘CEO Kick-about’ with Liverpool and ex-Welsh footballing legend Ian Rush. Early in May, Acorn invited nearly 40 company directors and CEOs to the FAW’s National Football Development Centre at Dragon Park, Newport to take part in Wales’ first CEO Kick-about event. Welsh business leaders began the day meeting with the Wales national team manager Chris Coleman and his Euro 2016-bound coaching team, who spoke about the road to the Euros with the successful Wales side and provided detailed insight into the different coaching and leadership techniques used to help get the team in the best shape for the qualifying campaign. The group of company directors was then divided into two teams, with everyone being presented their own Welsh strip for a full-blown 90-minute game of football, each side under the supervision of Osian Roberts and Carl Darlington, Chris Coleman’s senior coaches. One of the key surprises of the day was Ian Rush, FAW elite performance director, and Welsh and Liverpool football legend, who in addition to running a charity penalty shoot-out, also joined the players on the field, making for a truly memorable experience for everyone involved.

, thall, MD n u o S t t a a L-R: M n Rush and D Acorn, Iard, Marketing & Langfo unications comm r, Acorn directo TW I TT E R

MORSON GROUP’S GED GETS HIS GONG VIA Morson Group chief executive Ged Mason has proudly accepted his OBE at Buckingham Palace one day after Her Majesty the Queen’s 90th birthday. Ged received his OBE for services to Engineering and Design. Since 1969, Morson Group has provided global services across engineering recruitment and design. With over 30 years of industry experience in over 40 sectors, the Salfordborn business man is also a keen supporter of many charities, including Seashell Trust and Destination Florida. “Receiving my OBE from Prince William at Buckingham Palace a day after the Queen’s 90th birthday was a moment that I will never forget,” said Ged proudly. “Sharing this moment with my family was a great honour and I have dedicated it to the memory of my late father [Gerry] and to all those who have supported me throughout my life.”

Tony Goodwin@tonygoodwin May 10 Thx for all the support @Antal_Intl @AntalNetwork @RecruiterMag @ APSCo_org @editordeedee @antal_ germany @AntalIndia

MARKS SATTIN PEOPLE GET DOWN AND DIRTY FOR SOLVING KIDS’ CANCER VIA A team from High Holborn-based financial recruitment agency Marks Sattin got muddy for a good cause at the London West ‘Tough Mudder’ event. They battled against mud and obstacles to raise money for Solving Kids’ Cancer. Marks Sattin has already raised £11k for the charity this year. Managing director Matthew Wilcox said: “Everyone at Marks Sattin loves what Solving Kids’ Cancer do to help children with the most dangerous childhood cancers. Getting involved in the Tough Mudder event is our first big fundraising push since we made Solving Kids’ Cancer our Charity of the Year. The fundraising journey has been full of fun and hope, which is everything we wish for the children we’re trying to help.”

TheOceanPartnership@Ocean_UKI May 5 Thank you @RecruiterAwards for a superb evening!#recruitershortlist #TeamO

@RecruiterMag instagram.com/recruitermagazine/ recruitermagazine.tumblr.com/

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12/05/2016 10:01

E CAREERS CO M M UNITY

Mayday, mayday! Your recruiters are drowning

RECRUITMENT JOB ACTIVITY

BY TARA LESCOTT

↗

LEADERS OF RECRUITMENT firms large and small are repeatedly perplexed by the results of their businesses. They might be very profitable, they might be growing, they might have a great brand and a clutch of awards but many share the same issue: if the market is booming and major investment continues into IT, marketing and social media – why are today’s recruiters less productive than before? When I started out as a trainee recruiter in 1998 the minimum expectation was to produce £10k per month. It was the barometer used by most recruitment businesses and on the whole this TARA LESCOTT is managing director worked. Your top performers (£20k+ per month) were paying for of rec-to-rec agency the development time you needed for your trainees who weren’t Recruiter Republic billing yet and it all evened out nicely. Remember those days? Nice and simple wasn’t it? Your key USP [unique selling proposition] was your candidate database. Today, our recruiters are swamped in data, from LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to CV databases, recruitment databases and more. How do you streamline and use this data effectively? How do leaders gain visibility on what their teams are doing? The old database KPI [key performance indicator] search isn’t enough to offer a proper window into the dayto-day activity of a recruiter. And if managers and directors can’t analyse activity, it often results in a complete inability to offer the right advice and support. How can recruiters become effective, organised and productive? There are some quick and easy ways to investigate whether your business is set up to operate at its best. If you identify issues in any of these areas, fix them and fix them quickly.

● Review your CMS/recruitment software. ➊ Can you source candidates from outside the database and import data easily? ➋ Can you identify candidates by location/role function/key skills/qualiﬁcations? ➌ Can you easily contact candidates via the database (formatted emails, texts, mailshots)? ➍ Can your recruiters log key activities easily and are they visible? ➎ Can you manage a vacancy or candidate on your CMS and have total visibility on what your recruiter’s activities have been? ➏ Can you monitor your conversion ratios and predict your fee output?

● Understand social media management ➊ Do you know your speciﬁc ‘go to’ sources of candidates? ➋ Do you have a platform to schedule, post and distribute social media posts across multiple platforms? ➌ Can you search for candidates effectively? Can you monitor your responses, messages and engagement levels? ➍ Do you have individual consultant level strategies, as well as company level accounts and strategies?

● Website Your candidate market is now very similar to a consumer audience. They want to understand what your brand stands for and identify with it. They don’t just want to come to you to ‘buy’ something; they want tools, advice and help. They want this delivered via video and visuals. They want to make decisions based on REAL reviews and as we all know, peer-to-peer recommendation is the Holy Grail. How does your website stack up? If it’s an issue, ﬁx it. ● 38 RECRUITER

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IN-HOUSE RECRUITERS made up a majority of users in April on Recruiter Jobs (Recruiter magazine’s job board), analysis of the site data has revealed.

ACTIVE USE R N UMBERS

This month, we examine active user numbers across several industry sectors and geographies in the UK and abroad in April. Overall, the number of active users was down in the UK, reflecting a ‘stay put’ approach towards work in the face of looming uncertainty surrounding the Brexit vote on 23 June and its potential impact on UK business. In Travel/Leisure/Entertainment, the number of active users was down 20%, a drop that more than doubled at 44% in the HR/Personnel sector. At the same time, the number of HR/Personnel jobs on the site fell by only 1% over the previous month. Jobs for recruiters in Design & Creative increased by 13%, while the number of active users in the sector dropped by 25%. Geographically speaking, the trend in the number of active users was similar. In the UK, Kent saw a fall of 15% in the number of active users. In contrast, the number of active users increased by 30% in Yorkshire & Humber, while the number of recruiter jobs posted in the region fell by 12%. In Australia, a brighter picture emerged. While the number of jobs posted there was down by 4%, the number of active users increased by 44%, paralleled by a 54% uplift in the number of applications.

JUNE 2016

12/05/2016 14:14

CO M M U N I T Y

CAREERS Find your next move in recruitment on jobs.recruiter. co.uk

Turning against the contractors A shift in the market BY ANDREW MOUNTNEY

↗ ANDREW MOUNTNEY is founding partner at in-house recruitment specialist Aspen In-House

20%

DECREASE IN JOBS FOR RECRUITERS IN TRAVEL/ LEISURE/ENTERTAINMENT

13%

INCREASE IN JOBS FOR RECRUITERS IN DESIGN & CREATIVE

15%

KENT

FALL

IN THE NUMBER OF ACTIVE USERS

44% INCREASE

Australia

LARGEST INCREASE IN APPLICATIONS PER JOB

THE LAST SIX MONTHS has a common theme for day-rate contractors: lack of work. Larger teams cut heads, businesses have outsourced recruiting, taking away roles, and many did not extend contractors at year-end. We saw like-for-like candidate registrations up by 88% in Q1, while vacancy volumes were ﬂat. A hirer’s market, with less intent to hire. In our industry, day-rate contract opportunities fell off a cliff as companies looked to engage their recruiting teams as employees. There will be day-raters reading this article who have faced some big decisions in the last six months; many are still out of work three to nine months from ﬁnishing their last gig – not because there are no jobs of interest, but because the engagement and pay of those roles is not feasible. This trend is likely to continue.

The hiring metrics do not make for pretty reading In some ﬁrms recruitment has been a contract gig for a long time, delivery roles going for £300-£350 per day with comfortable role scopes. As companies have used this model they’ve also created more data around recruiting and it’s telling a story heads of recruitment do not like. The simpliﬁed version they tell us is this: we hired experienced ‘hired guns’ on big rates, we asked them to make lots of hires – some did, some didn’t; we gave them freedom due to their experience; they were supposed to hire directly – some did, some didn’t. We got an expensive recruitment bill for agency use and day rates. We are not doing that again.

Changing legislation We are all aware of the current climate around engagement of contractors whether it affects you as the contractor or you are thinking about how your company uses them. A simpliﬁed recruiting model that avoids exposure to risk makes sense, so until a company knows otherwise they shift to on payroll hires.

Brexit anyone? What about the economy? And then there’s that US election If you could get a year that consistently creates abstract reasons to feel nervous about the short-term outlook of a business, 2016 would make the short-list. These things have an impact; collectively it creates an environment where companies want to prove they should hire rather than not.

This isn’t about projects and leadership Those roles will likely still be treated as contractor project roles with appropriate rates but against the backdrop of lower hiring volumes and headcount plans not signed off few are addressing the bigger themes, so these roles have also not come into the market.

The outlook We currently see the extreme version. The combination of all of the above at the same time creates a perfect storm and that’s leaving a lot of contractors frustrated. As people move slowly back into roles these newer conventions will be challenged and no doubt day rate roles will return, but do not expect the conditions of the last few years to return again soon. ● WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK 39

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10/05/2016 14:25

CO M M U N I T Y

CAREERS

‘I always loved art and design’ MY BRILLIANT RECRUITMENT CAREER What was your earliest dream job? An architect. I always loved art and design.

What was your first job in recruitment and how did you come into it? By accident, working

↗

for the Venn Group. There weren’t a lot of jobs in the market in 2008 – it was pretty much the only job that was offered to me.

BEN HOWLETT, Conservative MP for Bath and former recruiter

What do you love most about your current role? It’s very similar

Ben Howlett

to recruitment, which is a service industry. You are constantly servicing your constituents. I don’t know what’s going to come up on a day-to-day basis. I just love the variety – it’s brilliant.

What would you consider to be the most brilliant moment of your career? Being elected as the MP for Bath was the most special in May 2015.

Do you prefer a staycation or a holiday abroad? Staycation. I normally go to my mother and fatherin-law’s holiday cottage in the Isle of Wight. It’s most relaxing.

Where did you like to interview a candidate or be interviewed? One of the worst things a consultant can do is sit behind their desk all day. I would go to coffee shops or bars to build up relationships [with clients] and build the competitive edge to win that business.

What’s your biggest challenge at the moment and how has a career in recruitment helped you rise to that challenge? The biggest challenge is defending some of the government’s more challenging policies – put it that way. One of the best things you learn in recruitment I M AG E S | I STO C K / SH UTTER STO C K

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I sle

ght i W of

is about sales. Sales is so applicable to politics. Ultimately, you are trying to sell a message to the public. I would advise anybody who wants to get into politics to have a recruitment or sales background because it’s so easy to end up selling to people or communicating to people as a result of that job.

Laugh or cry – what did your most memorable candidate make you want to do and why? One of the most important roles I ever recruited for was a health economist – a really rare role. The candidate wanted to come into the health department, work out where the key efficiencies savings were, and produce a huge workstream that enabled patients in

this particular borough to have a much more streamlined access to services. I created the brief in order for her to ﬁll that particular job.

What’s the best or worst interview question you have ever heard? The worst was one of the most discriminatory questions I’ve ever heard related to someone’s race, which I was astonished by and challenged within the NHS. ● WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK 41

12/05/2016 14:15

E EMPLOYABILITY CO M M UNITY

SHINE BRIGHT LIKE A DIAMOND SARAH MARQUET

ocial entrepreneur Stephen Carrick-Davies is a man who wears many hats. These include working within the non-profit sector as a freelance consultant and trainer, helping to run a successful community café – Hill Station – in South-East London, as well as being interim chief executive of the Inclusion Trust, a trust that focuses on young people who have been excluded – ‘pushed out’ – of mainstream education. It was actually through his involvement in Hill Station when he realised there was a huge disconnect between school and work. When he was in the café, many young people would literally beg him for a job. “I would ask these people what they wanted to do and they would reply: ‘anything’,” he told Recruiter. Through Hill Station, Carrick-Davies and business partners tried to give employment to as many as possible. For many, it was their first job; for others, the experience launched careers in the hospitality industry or helped them into further education. So he thought it was time to really consider the root cause, to help people leaving school with few qualifications better prepare for the world of work. “I realised that many people who come out of school haven’t been given confidence and empowerment to problem solve, yet those are among the things employers want,” Carrick-Davies says. Thus the Facework project was born. With backing from social tech investor Nominet Trust, employability education charity Worktree and the Inclusion Trust, for over two years Carrick-Davies ran intense sessions in five pupil referral units (PRUs) across the UK and co-designed a model to help excluded young people face work. The focus was on just five core STEPS to work (see Facework STEPS opposite) – the ‘soft skills’ and attitudes which employers say they want from staff.

42 RECRUITER

Facework aims to answer young people's questions about the world of work in ways that are relevant and meaningful to them

“If it’s true that employers recruit for qualities and train for skill, then helping those young people who, for various complex reasons have been told they don’t matter or who feel rubbish, has to be a priority, because everyone has enormous potential,” Carrick-Davies explains. Launched late last year, Facework speciﬁcally targets marginalised young people – who the Facework team label ‘pushed out’, putting the onus on the education system rather than the individual. Others, who had ﬁrst-hand experience of feeling pushed out of employment, accompanied Carrick-Davies around the PRUs to offer their input into the scheme. Jack Burt was one of those, who heard about the Facework plan after spending four demoralising years trapped in a cycle of unhelpful government-run employability courses. He says those courses only taught the basics, such as how to prepare a CV, which were clearly not working as “the results stay the same [no work] and it’s so degrading… And if there’s one thing I felt the entire way, it was that I wasn’t worth it, I wasn’t worth being recruited for anything… and I don’t want anyone else to feel that way,” Burt says. What became clear in talking to pupils and

JUNE 2016

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FACEWORK STEPS ⦁ S – Selfmanagement: managing time, following instructions and controlling frustrations ⦁ T – Team working: respecting others and agreeing to team goals ⦁ E – Enterprising: customer service and using initiative ⦁ P – Problemsolving: spotting, sharing and solving a problem ⦁ S – Speaking and listening: being confident to share self-interests, understanding body language and making yourself be heard

teachers at the PRUs, which provide education for those unable to attend mainstream school, was that understanding soft skills was especially important for these people most at risk of becoming NEET [not in education, employment or training]. The education system, Carrick-Davies says, measures people by their ability to sit an exam while failing to recognise the skills many young people acquire through growing up in challenging situations – protecting themselves from harm, becoming resilient and even caring for family members, can be transferred into work situations. Although online resources give young people information about jobs, not many sites or resources help people understand what they can bring to an employer. The STEPS mnemonic and skills categorisation helps “demystify the rhetoric and theory about employment”, Carrick-Davies says. Set up as an education resource for teachers working with students aged 14+, Facework uses platforms young people understand – videos, social media, as well as songs, cartoons, specific apps, posters and more. ‘Facework Challenges’ on its website help young people understand skills, challenges, solutions and how to apply them to the world of work. Other Facework resources help people ‘flip their thinking’ – challenging long held ideas, attitudes or behaviours such as ‘I can’t get a job because I’m not confident with people’. Not only does Facework help young people understand what is needed for employment success, it asks them to help pass that on through creating their own videos to share with others seeking Facework’s help. This helps firm up their own learning and development, while passing on valuable information. Carrick-Davies says teachers instinctively know that if they can help shape pupils’ attitudes and behaviours for the adult world, and prepare them for the likes of handling rejection, they can significantly improve those pupils’ future prospects and even their social mobility. Although the focus groups were run initially with PRU pupils, the Facework material is for everyone, Carrick-Davies says. “I wanted to tackle one of the hardest issues, the people that don’t have any qualifications and haven’t done really well in school.” Despite having been launched for a few months, during the creation process about 60 PRU pupils, all of whom had input into the material, were helped in varying ways. Now it is online, the number of people it is helping is unquantifiable, he explains. But with the backing of global accreditation body OCR (Oxford, Cambridge RSA), it will be easier for teachers to cross-reference the Facework curriculum to their OCR employability qualifications. He stresses it is not an ‘off-the-shelf’ product and merely provides the tools from which teachers can develop lessons. ● WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK 43

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E BUSINESS ADVICE CO M M UNITY

MAKE HAY WHILE THE SUN SHINES Economic growth is cyclical and, while good agencies will grow no matter how the wider economy is performing, there can be no doubt that growth is easier and less risky in a buoyant economy. The UK economy is in a phase of economic growth at the moment, so it is currently a good time to accelerate your business’s growth. While cashflow is the greatest risk for recruitment businesses, accelerating your growth (and leveraging available cash as part of the process) ironically mitigates against future cashflow risks. Size can bring efficiencies: it can make it easier to secure loans; successful (growing) agencies find it easier to attract both candidates and clients; and the sooner you invest in growth, the faster you will see a return on your investment and an increase in cashflow. Riding the crest of an economic wave to grow your recruitment business doesn’t just happen though. It requires planning, efficient use of resources and hard work.

Alex Arnot The SME Coach

F IVE T IP S FOR LOW-RISK, ACCELE R ATE D G R O W TH

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Plan – I rarely chair a board meeting or write an article (as regular readers of this column will know) where planning does not feature. I cannot overemphasise how important it is. Your plan must include monthly cashflow projections as these are critical to knowing when you can invest in more staff or technology that will improve productivity, thereby generating more revenues to invest in further growth.

Maximise productivity – all activities should be done by the most junior person who is both capable of doing them well and has the capacity to complete them. This frees more experienced and senior people to focus on more complex aspects of growing the business where they can add more value. Where technology can make staff more efficient and productive, then put together a business case for investing.

Build your internal capabilities – assuming your team is operating at capacity and clients won’t increase rates, growth needs to come from hiring more consultants. Good, experienced recruiters in a buoyant market are like gold dust so, where possible, develop your existing consultants and promote from within, then hire at a more junior level. Training your team will both strengthen your internal talent pipeline and also engage staff, reducing turnover at a time when the cream of your company will be getting unprecedented numbers of calls from headhunters.

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Invest in a recruiter – as the time needed to fill roles starts to interfere with or dominate the day-to-day activities of senior management it is worth investigating a full or part-time internal hiring manager. This person will often be responsible for both developing your internal talent pipeline and developing an external pipeline, ensuring that wherever talent is needed the company will have continuity. Given the time it takes to bring on board external hires, the lag between consultants starting and generating a return, and the importance of continuity, hiring in anticipation of a need (rather than reactively) further accelerates growth.

5 Accelerate cashflow – the more cash that you have at your disposal the faster you can grow. I’ve mentioned how useful invoice discounting and factoring can be in previous articles. Similarly, teaching consultants how to sell retainers (or partial retainers) to clients and incentivising them to do so can bring cash into the business early enabling you to further accelerate your growth.

ALEX ARNOT is a non-executive director to more than 20 fastgrowth recruitment companies 44 RECRUITER

JUNE 2016

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