Recruiter - October 2017 by Redactive Media Group

Business intelligence for recruitment and resourcing professionals

October 2017

INCORPORATING Recruitment Matters

SOCIAL PROFILING How to transform volume recruitment PROGRAMMATIC The black art of advertising?

www.recruiter.co.uk

THE RULE OF 40 When staffing levels reach the magic number

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NEW WAVE When recruiters turn investors

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C R ONT ENT S 44

INCORPORATING Recruitment Matters

COVER IM AG E | SH UT T E R STO C K

NEWS

05 Innovative data use drives future talent hunting Deep intelligence will be key to identifying talent 06 How to make your employer brand stand out Employer brands are pulling in many directions to try and attract talent against ever-fiercer competition

FEATURES

22 THE BIG STORY Second wind

The recruiters who use the money gained from selling their businesses to invest in other companies

32 Candidate feedback

Asking candidates what they think of you can benefit hiring – and brand

07 FAST 5O on the horizon Recruiter’s FAST 5O league table is quickly approaching

07 Start-up of the Month: Daniel Lewis Law The eponymous exdirector of Longbridge Law on his new venture 08 This was the month that was... 10 Contracts & Deals

TRENDS

12 Insight Profiling promises to transform recruiting

Tech & Tools Programmatic advertising: Black art or a recruiter’s saviour?

E COMMUNITY 37 Social Network 38 Community Careers: The Workplace 39 Community Careers: Agency careers 41 Business Advice 42 Employability 44 My brilliant recruitment career: Hannah Thomson, Ashmore Stark 46 Recruitment Advertising 48 Movers & Shakers 49 Recruiter Contacts 50 The Last Word: Alan Furley, ISL Recruitment

INTERACTION

18 Viewpoint James Johnson, Nicoll Curtin Technology 19 Soundbites

I M AG E S | SH UT T ER STO C K / ISTO C K

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17 WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK 3

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UPDATE

New data use drives finding future talent

WE LCO M E

LEADER

hanges in how recruiters identify and communicate with potential candidates and clients often emerge as the major examples of how the industry and practice of recruitment have evolved over the

last decade. Quieter, but signiﬁcantly profound evolution has also occurred in how recruiters develop their own careers. Our Big Story this month looks at the ‘What now?’ factor in the lives of some of the industry’s most successful recruitment business owners who have experienced the big payday, and face

“Join us at our Investing in Talent Awards on 4 October, with our brilliant speaker, trainer and author Robbie Steinhouse”

the future with an unwavering need to build something else. So they’re doing it, and loving it. See our story on p22. We all know about using professional online networks to seek out and recruit specialists. However, social media also has

its uses to recruit volume hires. Learn from Dr Paul Barrett this month in our Insight article on p12 about how social networks can help you harvest those quantity hires for a variety of different kinds of jobs. And have you heard of The Rule of 40? In our Last Word this month, hear from Alan Furley who talks through this concept with humour and insight. Join us at our Investing in Talent Awards on 4 October at The Brewery in London, with our brilliant speaker Robbie Steinhouse – who just happens to be launching his new business leadership book that day!

DeeDee Doke, Editor

BY COLIN COTTELL

IDENTIFYING TALENT will increasingly be driven by using data in innovative and intelligent ways, according to David Rowan (below), co-founder and editor at large of technology publication Wired’s UK edition. In his keynote address at CEB now Gartner’s ReimagineHR conference in London, Rowan said that innovative tech companies were already taking advantage of the public’s willingness to provide “unprecedented access to our data”. This was opening up the possibility “to bypass the existing friction-led processes of getting people to apply”, said Rowan. Rowan highlighted how one company uses data about how much a candidate uses the backspace key in ﬁlling in an online application form to help its clients with their staff selection. “Use of the backspace has been shown to correlate with somebody not telling the truth,” Rowan explained. “The ability to understand that person is becoming more and more transparent – whatever they are saying – because you can look at the data and correlate that with a loyal, motivated, hard-working employee,” he continued. Rowan highlighted how face recognition technology could not only identify the names of people in a crowd, giving a short biography of each, but could also understand what they are feeling – something that could potentially be used in identifying and selecting talent. “We’re at the beginning of the empathetic machine, but we aren’t there yet,” said Rowan. He said worrying about the effects of technology on jobs was not a new phenomenon. While an AI (artiﬁcial intelligence) robot could now write newspaper articles – a robot in China took just a second to write one earlier this year, potentially threatening the jobs of journalists – technology also had the ability “to free individuals to do those creative things that humans are good at”, said Rowan. To the evident relief of those in the room, he added: “There is a still a role for humans.” ●

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UPDATE



35,858 FOLLOWERS AS OF 14 SEPTEMBER 2017

Effective employer brand must stand out in crowded marketplace BY COLIN COTTELL

RECRUITERS ARE FACING A COCKTAIL OF PRESSURES that makes an effective employer brand increasingly important. Thomas Handcock (pictured), practice leader at the Recruiting Leadership Council at CEB now Gartner, told an audience at the organisation’s ReimagineHR conference in London that it was hard for employers to stand out. Not only were employers operating in an “information-rich era”, but a number of other factors highlighted why the ability for organisations to differentiate themselves through their employer brand was vital. Handcock said that an analysis of FTSE company job vacancies in 2016, showing that 37% were in just 19 roles – many in IT and technology – added to the pressure on employment branding to lead the way in attracting talent against increasingly ﬁerce competition. “Employment brands are straining in multiple directions,” said Handcock. “Not only do you have to compete with your traditional competitors in your own industry but [you] also have to differentiate against that technology company or this start-up.”

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Handcock said that research indicating that around 80% of candidate decision-making about whether to apply to an organisation was based on what their peers said about that organisation on employer review platforms such as Glassdoor and other “unofficial sources”, raised the question of how employers influence those conversations. In a panel session that followed, HR and talent professionals discussed the best ways to navigate this challenging landscape. Anuradha Razdan, vice president HR, Home Care and Unilever Prestige at Unilever, said that such platforms had a role to play. “We like the transparency. We want to hear what people are saying about us and what action we should take,” said Razdan. Razdan highlighted the importance of measuring the impact and effectiveness of employment branding. “We measure our employment brand externally, and we measure individual campaigns,” she said. Bianca Choudhary, talent acquisition director – employer brand and onboarding at AstraZeneca, said that the first step when building an employer brand was to look at what the organisation looks like from the outside. One successful initiative at AstraZeneca had been to build up the social profiles of hiring managers and then leverage them to attract candidates. David Hindle, recruitment strategy and policy lead at Lloyds Banking Group, highlighted the importance of partnerships between HR/recruitment and other functions, such as PR, social responsibility, corporate communications and diversity. “This also allows you to leverage their content,” he said. Marcus Body, senior consultant at employer branding and marketing firm ThirtyThree, said it was vital to speak to the people at the top of the organisation to define the employment brand, before testing it with the staff internally and going out to the external marketplace. “Go high and go simple,” suggested Body. “Rather than a 50-page document, just ask the CEO ‘How much difference would it make to your business if we could hire staff better?’ CEOs like simple questions, in my personal experience,” added Body. “The drive must come from the boardroom,” agreed Simon Wright, managing partner, TMP Worldwide. ●

Find more daily news stories at recruiter.co.uk/news

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THOUGHTS FROM…

UPDATE

BRIAN KROPP E XECU TIVE DIREC TOR , CEB NOW GARTNER

“There is no ‘right’ culture. There is no culture type that consistently outperforms the others”

ZACK FEATHER O N LIFE AFTER SELLING YOUR RECRUITMENT B US I N ES S

IM AGE | GET T Y

“The only people who want to know you are the wealth management people. The banks and ﬁnance houses stop taking you out. It’s a different mind set”

SIR BR ADLEY WIGGINS REC TO

“Most people in Kilburn probably thought the Tour de France was a dodgy nightclub in Soho”

Fast approaching FAST 50 RECRUITER’S ANNUAL FAST 50, THE AUTHORITATIVE RANKING OF UK’S FASTEST-GROWING, INDEPENDENTLY OWNED RECRUITMENT COMPANIES, IS APPROACHING FAST. The annual listing, launched in 2009, is again being overseen by corporate finance house Clearwater International in partnership with Recruiter. Mark Maunsell, associate director, business services market intelligence at Clearwater International, told Recruiter: “The FAST 50 is recognition and acknowledgement of the fastestgrowing independent recruitment companies in the UK – the ‘best in breed’ recruitment firms that have recorded very positive revenue growth, and are doing something perhaps a little bit different.” Maunsell says while predictions are always difficult, he expects to see revenue growth similar to last year, when construction recruiter Falcon Green Personnel came out on top with a compound annual growth rate of 76%. To be considered in Recruiter’s 2018 FAST 50, companies must have achieved a minimum of £5m in sales in each of the last three years, based on their audited accounts. Qualifying companies are identified thorough a range of research sources. However, anyone who believes they may not be included automatically – “particularly those who file abbreviated accounts” – should contact Maunsell at mark. maunsell@cwicf.com by the end of October to discuss further, and ensure they are included. ●

STA RT-UP OF THE MONTH

DANIEL LEWIS, PREVIOUSLY MANAGING DIRECTOR OF LONGBRIDGE LAW, HAS SET UP DANIEL LEWIS LAW, AN AGENCY THAT HELPS CLIENTS BOTH RECRUIT AND RETAIN CLINICAL NEGLIGENCE AND PERSONAL INJURY LAWYERS. Lewis feels he is offering something new by highlighting retention. “What I’m trying to do differently is I’m focusing on two areas – recruitment and retention. I know that sounds

strange – most recruiters won’t want firms to retain their staff because they want to headhunt them and they want vacancies. However, I think retention is an important part of recruitment, so I’m going to be running roundtable seminars for clients who want it on how to keep your staff,” he says. It’s vital to spot signs of discontent in a member of staff early, he says. “It’s so important when someone comes to you

and says ‘Look, I’m afraid I’m resigning’, because you’ve already lost them. You want to get to people before that happens.” Lewis’s agency is a one-man band at present, but he is looking to expand. “It’s just me at the moment. I want to grow to three of us at least,” he says. “I believe that if you help firms with retaining their good staff, they will remember that you’re not just after money.” 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 September issue of Recruiter was published A U G U S T •‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒→

TUE, 22 AUGUST 2017

LOVEWOO SEEKS REVIEWER FOR ITS ‘ADULT PRODUCTS’

TUE, 15 AUGUST 2017

LINKEDIN LAUNCHES PIPELINE BUILDER AND CAREER PAGES LinkedIn has launched Pipeline Builder and Career Pages – two new product features aimed at helping recruiters engage more productively with candidates. Recruiter spoke to product leader Elizabeth Faralli and senior product marketing manager Renata Bell about how the new tools will help recruiters achieve these objectives. Faralli told Recruiter Pipeline Builder aims to help talent acquisition professionals and recruitment consultants build a pool of “warm” leads through enabling candidates to respond to a job advert on LinkedIn. They do this by clicking on the ad, which takes them through to a personalised landing page that has information about the hirer and the role in which they can register their interest to the hirer. Bell revealed new modules would be added in Career Pages. These will enable recruiters to engage in different ways with the separate audiences they have through different page views and testimonials tailored to various groups, whether that be a client, candidate or internal recruiter.

A purveyor of – ahem, shall we say ‘adult products’? – is recruiting for a reviewer of its wares. The Mirror reports that the company in question, LoveWoo, is seeking someone to test “a variety” of sex toys, lingerie and other products that they will get to keep, and then produce video reviews – outside the bedroom – and online guides for the company’s customers. The £28k role requires the successful applicant to work from home two days a week and spend three days in an office in London, and offers uncapped holiday leave, a day off on their birthday, private healthcare and other perks...  More: http://bit.ly/2gYuepf

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UNITE URGES NHS TO BAN UMBRELLA COMPANIES Trade union Unite has called on the NHS to outlaw umbrella companies operating throughout the service, labelling these organisations “parasites feasting off workers’ wages”. In a statement, the union claimed that new laws brought in in April, affecting all pay grades within the NHS and effectively outlawing agency workers operating in the public sector from being paid on a non-PAYE basis, have meant some agencies operating within the NHS have begun to force workers to be paid via umbrella company contracts. The union claimed this means if a worker is employed via an umbrella company, they lose 46p in the pound of eligible earnings, through National Insurance and income tax. After being contacted by several members working within the NHS, Unite revealed it has contacted the NHS and urged the organisation to stamp out the use of umbrella companies but that NHS Improvement, the body responsible for overseeing foundation and NHS trusts, has refused to do so. NHSI pointed out they don’t have the power to ban umbrella organisations operating in the NHS.  More: http://bit.ly/2xraGku

 More: http://bit.ly/2wVv23N 8 RECRUITER

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IMAGES | ISTOCK

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FRI, 1 SEPTEMBER 2017

MARK OF THE RED EAGLE Continuing the trend of recruitment consultants tattooing their company name about their personage are Andrew Martyn and Lewis Farnham of Kent-based recruiter Red Eagle, who have branded their bodies with their company logo after a “mad dare”. Managing director Wayne Hodgson doesn’t seem to mind, adding: “This is like something you see on one of those teenage holiday programmes. Fortunately I have a great working relationship with these guys – let’s hope it lasts.”  More: http://bit.ly/2ffLVwR

DAYS

←‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒• S E P T E M B E R

MON, 4 SEPTEMBER 2017

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IR35 TAX REFORM CAUSES MASS EXODUS OF PUBLIC SECTOR CONTRACTORS

RANDSTAD STEERS ITS BRAND ON A NEW COURSE

GOVERNMENT DROPS PARTPRIVATISATION PLANS FOR NHS PROFESSIONALS

April’s IR35 tax reform is causing a mass exodus of public sector contractor talent and delays to projects agencies are recruiting for, according to research from contracting site ContractorCalculator. The findings of their survey of 1,500 contractors reveals 76% of public sector departments have lost top talent due to the reforms, with the talent drain causing 71% of projects to be delayed or cancelled. The research, which follows on from anecdotal evidence that contractors had been leaving the public sector in droves in the month after the introduction of the new rules, also shows: • 27% of public sector contractors surveyed have left the public sector • 47% of public sector projects lost at least a quarter of their contractors • 61% of contractors left due to their refusal to work under new IR35 rules • 52% of contractors of those leaving the public sector are yet to be replaced • 50% of contractors say they will now never work in the public sector if caught by IR35 and 46% will only do so if the government effectively pays the extra tax. But in a statement an HMRC spokesperson claimed ContractorCalculator’s findings were based on an “unrepresentative” sample. “There is no evidence of a drift from the public sector and there have been no delays to IT projects due to the new rules. There is no change to contractor pay other than to make sure the correct tax is paid,” the spokesperson added.  More: http://bit.ly/2xIXLY7

Randstad is spearheading the refreshing of its brand with a series of events, including the appearance of a 19th century clipper ship. Human Forward is Randstad’s promise to put people ﬁrst while recognising the role technology plays in modern recruitment practice. The company says the evolution of the Randstad brand represents the optimum combination of

‘tech and touch’ in helping people and organisations to realise their potential. The UK is one of the ﬁrst countries in which Randstad operates to launch the revised brand. Among the events were Randstad’s sponsorship of the Great North Run, Europe’s biggest half-marathon, and the Great North CityGames. Randstad’s sponsorship was given an extra boost by the presence of the Stad Amsterdam. Modelled on a 19th century clipper ship, the 66m vessel was built in 2000 to help the unemployed develop new skills. The tall ship docked on the Tyne following a short visit to London (above).

The UK government has abandoned plans for the part privatisation of NHS Professionals. In a written ministerial statement, health minister Philip Dunne revealed NHSP, the government’s own recruitment agency responsible for supplying 88,000 doctors and nurses to UK hospitals, will remain publicly owned, after offers to acquire a majority stake in the company “undervalued its growing potential”. Government added that since its decision to seek bidders for NHSP, the agency’s performance had “significantly” improved, with profits for the year ended 31 March 2017 up 44% on the previous year. This improved performance has meant NHSP can invest in improved IT infrastructure, while expanding its services and become a “world class” provider of flexible staff, while remaining publicly owned. Recruiter contacted outsourcing, training and employability organisation Staffline, who confirmed they had bid for NHSP in July, for comment but nobody was available.  More: http://bit.ly/2gYrAjp

 More: http://bit.ly/2w8gj6T

Find more daily news stories at recruiter.co.uk/news

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CONTRACTS

CONTRACTS & DEALS Sheffield Haworth Global executive search, interim consulting and talent advisory firm Sheffield Haworth has acquired nbi Consulting, a specialist global executive search and talent management firm operating in the business & professional services sector. As part of the acquisition, nbi will become part of Sheffield Haworth’s global business and professional services practice.

Kelly Services Recruitment giant Kelly Services has acquired teaching staffing specialist Teachers On Call in the US. Teachers On Call will operate under its own brand with its current staff. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

RGP US-based consultancy company RGP has acquired German interim management provider taskforce. In a statement, taskforce revealed it would continue to operate independently in the market under its current brand name with the strapline ‘an RGP company’ added to its name. The current management team will stay on with the business.

Syft On-demand temporary staffing app Syft has attracted a further £6.1m in funding. This latest funding round, led by Spotify’s first investors Creandum, also includes backing from PROfounders Capital and Colle Capital, alongside existing angel investors such as former heavyweight boxing champion David Haye and Lord Young. This has taken Syft to an overall £8.7m total funding in 20 months.

Cammach Recruitment Aberdeen-based recruiter Cammach Recruitment has acquired local rival Bryant Group for an undisclosed sum. Bryant Group will continue to trade under its current name, though founder Brenda Bryant has retired from the business after 37 years in the recruitment sector.

Harvey Nash Global technology recruitment and outsourcing group Harvey Nash has acquired IT solutions and recruitment company Crimson in a £15m deal. Crimson, founded in 2000, specialises in digital and technology transformation solutions, as well as offering a range of IT recruitment services, both permanent and contract.

Bullhorn International Cloud computing company Bullhorn International has acquired Connexys, a provider of recruitment solutions for mainland Europe. Connexys’s flagship product is an applicant tracking system (ATS) built on the Salesforce platform, while its solutions are used by 300 customers and 20,000 recruitment professionals across the Netherlands, Germany, France and Belgium.

Morson Group International engineering and design recruiter Morson Group has acquired IT recruiter The Bridge. The Leeds-based recruiter will become a wholly owned subsidiary within Morson Group but will retain its brand and contracts following the deal.

DEAL OF T HE MONT H

PMP Recruitment PMP Recruitment, part of Cordant Group, has been awarded a five-year contract to provide integrated managed services for Ideal Shopping Direct across the multichannel retailer’s two sites in

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OCTOBER 2017

Peterborough, Cambridgeshire. The deal will see the logistics, industrial, warehouse, manufacturing and food processing staffing specialist deliver a range of security, cleaning, waste management, catering and reception services

at Ideal Shopping Direct’s premises in Newark Road, which includes a contact centre, offices and a fulfilment centre, as well as at its premises in Sabre Way. The firm will also provide on-site technical services, with

staff constructing different sets in the retailer’s production studio ahead of filming in Newark Road, delivering traditional maintenance services across both sites and providing temporary labour as required.

More contract news at recruiter.co.uk/news

14/09/2017 15:50

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INSIGHT

PROFILING PROMISES TO TRANSFORM VOLUME RECRUITMENT A new model based on social media data should make it far easier to recruit retail sales staff, airline cabin crew, and entertainment and hospitality workers

POWERPOINTS

1 2

Social media profiling is convenient, accurate and tipped to become the next big frontier for recruiters tasked with volume recruitment

3 4

Just 30 ‘likes’ is enough to provide a quick appraisal as input; with 300+ likes, more accurate behavioural predictions can be made

Candidates are selected based on a match with the personality traits desired for a job role – such as openness, conscientiousness or extroversion

6 7

Volume recruitment for retail sales staff, airline cabin staff, entertainment or hospitality industry workers is likely to benefit most

BY DR PAUL BARRETT

hese days, you can’t get very far without a social media account. At some sports activity centres, you even need to check in via Facebook to access the free wifi, while trying to get certain types of job role without a well managed LinkedIn profile is becoming nigh on impossible. No wonder, then, that the next big frontier for recruiters is social media data profiling. Apart from the obvious convenience factor, it’s actually pretty accurate. Michal Kosinski, an assistant professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business in the US and one of the leaders in personality assessment, uses what he describes as “social network activity linguistic analysis”. His model, which uses, for example, 30 ‘likes’ as input, can appraise a candidate’s personality better than friends and co-workers can. With 300 likes, it can make more accurate predictions about behaviour than a partner could and with 1,000 or more likes, the model apparently knows an individual even better than they actually know themselves. Such new tools, which effectively categorise candidates according to common personality traits – such as how open, conscientious, compliant, extrovert, agreeable and obsessive or anxious they are – offer huge potential benefits to recruiters tasked with sourcing and shortlisting large volumes of employees. Think retail sales staff, 12 RECRUITER

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airline cabin staff, entertainment or hospitality industry workers. The system works by collecting data from an individual’s social media footprint, matching this against other data available in different external databases and psychometry, to map their personality according to published proﬁles based on OCEAN criteria: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. By triangulating all this information, the system creates a psychological proﬁle of the individual to predict their potential suitability for a particular job role.

Using data scraped from social media profiles and matching this against other data available from external databases and psychometry, recruiters can avoid the need for selfreport personality profiles

Research has demonstrated that social media profiling is equivalent in accuracy to selfreport questionnaires, but since it can be automated, significantly reduces associated administrative costs

Cognitive and psychometric profiling of candidates will continue to be required for high-autonomy roles

OCTOBER 2017

14/09/2017 11:42

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INSIGHT

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“You may be wondering whether you will still have a job by the time you finish reading this” financial and logistical benefit to an organisation. The advantages for recruiters looking to maximise profits are that these systems can provide a seamless and totally automated ‘pre-screening’ process. Although applicant tracking systems are already widely used, they still require significant human intervention. But by using data scraped from social media activity, high-volume recruiting can be fully automated from end to end. You may be wondering whether you will still have a job by the time you finish reading this. Actually, it’s more complex than that. Having access to insights

such as these will mean recruiters can provide better candidates for a role, and will have more time left to focus on higher-value applicants. What’s also interesting is the implication that a move towards social media analysis for recruitment has for those candidates who deliberately chose not to have a social media proﬁle, or who have limited digital footprints. Are they going to be excluded from segments of the job market in the future? Will there be recruiters who specialise in placing these otherwise marginalised people into specialised job roles – ones that are better suited to their more private personalities? In addition, there will still be a demand for more traditional cognitive and psychological assessments when hiring for high-stakes employees, such as high-autonomy, leadership roles. These roles are becoming more scarce in workplaces, and require far more detailed and powerful information about a candidate’s psychology than even 10,000 ‘likes’ can extrapolate.

↗

This process removes the need for the notoriously inaccurate personality questionnaire assessments and for wading through the output. Instead, candidates simply have to provide sufficient information to enable their digital footprint to be uniquely identified. Then once identified, the tool would ‘score’ the personality attributes for a candidate against pre-set job-role target profiles and flag the candidates who pass the screening process. For all those who aren’t suitable, the system simply says ‘thanks, but no’ and moves on. The profiling concept is similar to the approach that the Trump administration and Brexit campaigners have allegedly used, to target specific campaign messages at individuals they identified as sharing a particular sentiment or values. But recruiters are stopping short of any communications activity, and simply matching a personality against the requirements of a job. What’s noteworthy about this method is its comparative accuracy. Statistically, tests have shown that ‘social media scraping’ is equivalent in utility to the personality tests now used, but only for initial candidate pre-screening purposes. Even so, this benefit is still massively significant for recruiters focused on volume recruiting. For instance, some airlines process more than 15,000 applications for cabin crew positions each month. Reducing that number to a more manageable quantity with less initial effort is of huge

DR PAUL BARRETT is chief research scientist at Cognadev, specialising in the dynamic assessment of psychological attributes www.cognadev.com

OCTOBER 2017

14/09/2017 11:42

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13/09/2017 11:00

T R E N DS

TECH & TOOLS

Programmatic advertising Black art or a recruiter’s saviour? SUE WEEKES

Programmatic advertising is where a machine buys online advertisements rather than a human. The recruiter can define the profile of person they are looking for in terms of what they do and where they live, and extremely clever computer algorithms work out where and when to find them and send ads out to the right channel at the right time. For those recruiters who haven’t made use of it, it can seem like the latest black art; it is certainly a complex area. Programmatic can be extremely effective though and early adopters in the sector such as Chris Wray, head of recruitment at care home and residential property provider the Anchor Trust, have not only reduced cost-per-applicant and cost-perhire but used it as a valuable tool to engage with potential candidates. “It’s about reaching people, telling your story, engaging and then converting them,” he says. “You are going to make mistakes, but so is everyone.”

HOW DOES IT WORK?

FINDING A PARTNER

The world of programmatic features trading desks, advert exchanges and real-time bidding, with impressions auctioned to the highest bidder in the blink of an eye. The two machines involved are a demand-side platform (DSP), which works out which impressions to buy, and a supply-side platform (SSP), which sells the space. The price is agreed before an impression appears on a website or channel. Programmatic advertising doesn’t just exist in the moment though, and can also make use of automated buying for targeted campaigns in non-real time. There is a lot to learn and agency or in-house recruiters should partner with a marketing or digital agency to educate themselves in this area. “I’ve seen examples where it has been done badly and you can end up burning through budget by targeting incorrectly,” warns Andy Drinkwater, founder of iQSEO, an intelligent marketing solutions company.

Ask a lot of questions. Drinkwater stresses the importance of an agency having a track record in recruitment, as well as an understanding of the recruiter’s specific market. “Both parties need to fully understand who they are trying to target,” he says. Gareth Neville, head of new business and data activation at Hitwise, which provides insight for marketers, agencies and brands to track website behaviour, says it is important to ask questions about the supplier’s overall targeting strategy. “How do they score their data to imply a user is in-market for a new opportunity? How do they ensure the ads are placed in front of the right audience?” he says. “And what transparency do they offer around campaign performance and cost?”

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DARE TO BE DIFFERENT As consumers themselves, recruiters will be well-

aware of the volume of ads and material thrown at candidates in the online world. It is important to work as hard on the messaging of a programmatic campaign as you would any other. In some ways, it demands more creativity as it has to cut through a lot of the ‘noise’ that exists in the online world. “Audiences are getting savvy and skipping messages, so you need ‘thumb-stoppers’. We have all become scrollers so recruiters need to find ways to stand out,” says Wray. “We work hard on the messaging and photography. For instance, I don’t use models but real people as there needs to be a story behind the ads. You are trying to attract that passive candidate who may be enjoying their place of work but if they keep seeing great content from you they will start to engage.”

DO THE GROUNDWORK The programmatic world may be about real-time actions and purchasing decisions made in nanoseconds by machines but recruiters need to

spend time considering who they want to target, and also preparing their campaigns. Wray explains that his team pre-built a number of campaigns that sat in the background ready to be activated when the recruitment need arose. “We decided to create an infrastructure around the locations of the 121 care homes and came up with more than 54,000 ad sets, which we could switch on at the touch of a button when we wanted to run a campaign. It’s about being proactive, as well as reactive.”

campaign. “Most job ads will click through to a job board that may not allow tracking pixels,” he says. Meanwhile, Drinkwater alerts recruiters to reports in the press about advertisers’ brands appearing on hate sites or next to extremist videos on online sites. “Not knowing exactly where an ad is being placed can be a daunting prospect,” he says. “It is certainly a point I would consider bringing up at a meeting with any marketing agency I was engaging with.”

JARGONBUSTER ARE THERE ANY PITFALLS? While programmatic will work well for a broad range of recruitment advertising, bear in mind that it is still relatively new to the sector. It is also continually evolving. “Recruitment advertising is becoming more intelligent all the time so the education piece is key,” says Wray. Neville adds that recruiters must ensure they can measure the performance of the

Adsets: a group of ads that belong in the same campaign and have the same budget, target, bid information and other common characteristics. Impressions: the term used when an ad is displayed or viewed once. Tracking pixels: tiny pixels that allow a recruiter to keep track of visitors to their website or advertisement.

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14/09/2017 11:43

INTE R AC TIO N

VIEWPOINT

Breaking down barriers Diversity and inclusion goals can help find the best people BY JAMES JOHNSON

iversity and inclusion (D&I) are topics we are all aware of. Studies repeatedly prove that organisations committed to these objectives achieve better results. But they seem to come with a lot of ‘shoulds’ and risks attached. In many conversations with company CEOs over the past few years, the same concerns repeatedly come up. Do these policies mean we should hire this person despite being the weaker candidate? Should we promote this person to meet a target? Should 30% of our company be ‘X’ characteristic? It’s a conversation that is approached tentatively. We’ve been working on these concerns since 2014, after realising we had a persistent female talent drain, with a lack of any senior female role models. We now have a 42% female management mix, with representation at all levels of the business and strong age, religious and ethnicity diversity, too. While we still have more work to do, I wanted to share the top three lessons I’ve learnt so far.

Talent, not morality When we ﬁrst started talking about these topics internally, I thought they could be a distraction. From a moral perspective, I didn’t want to discriminate, but I wanted everyone focused on our three key areas – people, delivery and customer experience.

“It was clear there were actually numerous subtle barriers to promotion” But what I came to realise is that D&I is central to having the best people. It’s purely about attracting and retaining the best talent. I’d be annoyed if we lost someone for reasons other than performance or behaviour. And this is no different.

CEO, not HR D&I measures will meet with internal resistance, as everyone has the same reservations. The initiative must be led from the top, with visible commitment and belief, a clear target, clear communication on the beneﬁts, dedicated training and regular reinforcement. If you don’t believe that it’s going to lead to better performance, don’t do it. If you’re not willing to lose people over it, don’t do it. If you’re going to delegate to HR and hope it happens, don’t do it. You need to be all in.

Removing barriers, not a helping hand

JAMES JOHNSON is group CEO of Nicoll Curtin Technology

When I ﬁrst announced a 30% female management target, it got a lot of pushback, and from a surprising source: our potential next generation of female leaders. They felt that the goal would devalue their accomplishments if they were promoted. However, as we talked it through, it was clear there were actually numerous subtle barriers to promotion. We wanted to identify and remove them so advancement was fair. It isn’t about male or female. It’s about majority or minority, and the majority rarely realise their impact on the minority. So D&I is not about hiring weaker candidates or promoting for reasons other than performance, such as quota-ﬁlling or coerced decisions. We’ve never hired or promoted on the basis of any of the nine protected characteristics. We always choose the best person for the job. D&I is about attracting and retaining the best talent, being fair and rewarding performance. That’s got to be a good thing, for you, your team and your business.

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14/09/2017 11:44

I N T ER AC T I O N

SOUNDBITES

L ET T ER S

IR35? IT’S A TOTAL MESS I read your story ‘IR35 tax reform causes mass exodus of public sector contractors’ (recruiter.co.uk, 4 September) in despair. Why, oh why, as a very experienced senior manager who has been brought in by the public sector to consult in areas where they have little or no knowledge, would you wish to work for the fees they are willing to pay and to add to that within IR35? It’s a total insult to those who do it, never mind that anyone self-employed or contracting has to pay for holidays, sickness et al. I would also point out that there is a difference between contractors and consultants. There is absolutely no point in working therefore for the NHS – it is a complete nightmare if you run your limited company as a business working with other clients who may be in the private sector. IR35 was in place years ago but this makes a mockery of the whole thing. The question of running your business becomes far too complicated and the NHS is in a bad enough state as it is, with some pretty poor management – “if you pay peanuts then sadly you will get monkeys”. I am one of the percentage who will never work within IR35. After hearing someone tell me that a business development project manager would be getting £200 an hour and would only be working from 9am – 5pm on a huge community services bid, my thoughts were “exactly who are you kidding?”. This basically means you are being paid the same salary as someone employed with no benefits whatsoever and often working longer hours. I can’t work out how that can even be legal. It’s a total mess. CAROLINE GILES

A London ﬁrm recently introduced hangover days – like duvet days – for their workers. Could this idea work in recruitment? LEASA CLARKE D IREC TOR A N D L EA D ERS H IP CON S ULTA N T, S LT ED UCAT I O N R E C RU I T M E N T

“I think hangover/duvet days are a great incentive and in moderation do work in recruitment. Smile Education introduced duvet days last year as an incentive for employees who had 100% attendance the previous year. This incentive was a very successful and a much coveted prize. As a result the company reduced their absence record considerably. Providing the days offered are limited and the absence doesn’t have too much impact on the rest of the team, then I believe they can be really effective.”

VIC TORIA DAVID FOUN D ER , BOF F I N RECRUIT MEN T

“Hangover days and other initiatives such as ‘down time’ can be useful in attracting and retaining talent. However, being one down at short notice can stretch resources for smaller ﬁrms. As Boffin is structured to allow our selfemployed consultants to work autonomously, perks like this are redundant. If our Boffins don’t want to work on any given day, we trust them to make that decision, and consider any impact it will have on their desk.”

WAYNE HODGSON MA N AG IN G D I REC TOR , RED EAG L E

“I’m usually the instigator of the hangovers in the office, due to our regular team bonding events throughout the year. If I’m not behind it and one of my team has ‘one too many’ the night before, they phone in and are honest with me. I respect that and request them to contribute to our chosen charity, Donations with a Difference.”

TOBY SPEKE, MA N AG IN G D I REC TOR , H A N N IN G RECRUIT MEN T

“I think there can be a place for this but only to those who have achieved their goals. Otherwise, it is another excuse to have a day off. I would rather someone be honest and admit to having a ‘hangover day’, than lie and pretend to be ill. Let’s face it, we’ve all been there. At Hanning Recruitment, we want to work with honest colleagues.” WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK 19

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RE C RUITE R - O FF ICIAL MEDIA PARTNER

AFFINITY LEARNING CONTACT DETAILS

David Curtis E: info@affinitylearning.co.uk W: www.affinitylearning.co.uk Stand Number: F28

Affinity Learning is a learning & development consultancy that enables organisations to remain competitive and grow their business to achieve the commercial goals. We specialise in working with both companies and individuals to improve their strategic and operational skills to support them in being more effective. We do this by working in partnership with our clients to help them to form and execute on a learning & development strategy that is aligned to their business strategy. Our learning transformation programme (ALTP) offers clients the support to achieve its commercial goals through the development of its people. Our consultants work with you to devise the best learning & development strategy and then execute using the most up to date techniques. The ALTP gives our clients the opportunity to outsource their learning and development function and have access to some of the highest performing learning and development consultants in the industry.

E N GAG E CONTACT DETAILS

Drey Francis E: drey.francis@engagetech.com T: 020 8068 2900 W: www.engagetech.com

Engage is the powerful new platform that is changing the way hirers and recruitment agencies work. It is the first universal solution to provide everything that a recruiter needs and to change the habits of the recruitment industry. Engages platform releases consultants from most operational and administrative tasks by connecting all users in the supply chain, reducing costs, improving compliance and eliminates duplicated administration for all users. It is a simple to use, holistic solution that coordinates all groups in the staffing supply chain taking the place of conventional VMS and back office solutions. End-hirers, recruitment agencies, payroll companies, and workers all enjoy an improvement in the recruitment process.

IDIBU CONTACT DETAILS

T: (0)800 3112750 E: hello@idibu.com W: www.idibu.com Stand Number: G19

A modern way of engaging with candidates Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time to move to a modern, flexible way of recruiting: Listening, understanding, engaging and supporting. Building trust and relationships with the people that matter. Idibu is a full candidate sourcing platform allowing you to attract and engage the best talent. Build vibrant talent pools and remove admin tasks, giving you time to build relationships with candidates and hiring managers. We help recruitment teams get tremendous results by sourcing talent, building champions and maximising the ROI in your talent pools. If you want to improve your sourcing capabilities, better engage with candidates and build vibrant talent pools then book a call to find out how we can help.

T O B E F E AT U R E D I N T H E R E C R U I T M E N T AG E N C Y E X P O S P O T L I G H T P L E A S E C O N TAC T J O S H . H A N N AG A N @ R E C R U I T E R .C O.U K 20 RECRUITER

OCTOBER 2017

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RECRUIT ER - OF F IC I A L M E D I A PA RT N E R

T O B E F E AT U R E D I N T H E R E C R U I T M E N T AG E N C Y E X P O S P O T L I G H T P L E A S E C O N TAC T J O S H . H A N N AG A N @ R E C R U I T E R .C O.U K

ITRIS CONTACT DETAILS

Paul Sangster E: Paul.Sangster@itris.co.uk W: www.itris.co.uk Stand G3

itris is the benchmark for recruitment software, providing recruitment consultancies of all sizes with the optimum tools and features to manage their businesses. Since 1998, itris have built a reputation for enhancing business growth and profitability throughout the UK and global staffing industry. By being both fully configurable to clients’ specific requirements and one of the most feature rich systems on the market, itris contains all the functionality you need, regardless of the type of recruitment or sector you recruit into. We understand the need for flexibility, so the ability to tailor the system and functionality to your business’ needs is offered as standard at itris. You will be able to create unique fields and templates whilst automating key business processes which saves time and reduce administrative tasks. Seamless integrations with accounting and payroll software, multi-job posting and CV parsing services, SMS providers and social media sites means itris is suitable for all your recruitment needs.

O U T S AU C E CONTACT DETAILS

Darren Levers T: 0330 100 8695 E: Darren.levers@outsauce.net newbusiness@outsauce.net W: www.outsauce.net Stand F27

Outsauce provide Invoice Finance, Payroll, Credit Control and other compliant solutions for your Recruitment business. Outsauce’s services are tailored to suit your business’s needs and will scale to grow with you. If you are already trading but feel you may benefit from one or more of Outsauce’s solutions then we will work with other providers to ensure a smooth transition. If you are in the early stages or starting up then Outsauce’s knowledge and expertise can guide you through many of the challenges, helping you avoid common pitfalls and allow you to do what you do best to grow your business safely and compliantly. Make Outsauce (stand F27) your first stop this year and get your hands on an exclusive offer, say hi to our friendly team or take your chance at winning a great prize in one of Outsauce’s competitions.

WAV E G R O U P CONTACT DETAILS

David Jenkins T: 0118 986 8900 E: david.jenkins@wave-group.co.uk W: www.wave-group.co.uk Stand Number: C28

Wave specialise in helping consultancies attract more candidates and has been working within the recruitment marketing and media buying industry for nearly 20 years. Our core offering comprises: • Recruitment website builds • Media buying on all job boards • Multi-posting and advertising analytics We take a holistic approach to your digital attraction, from building an effective website that will attract candidates, purchasing media at the best possible rates, and then posting, analysing and tracking your advertising. We are the only agency to offer this ‘Build, Buy and Post’ approach. We will take the guesswork out of your recruitment marketing. You want to attract the best talent in the most efficient means possible. This is what we do best, and we’d love to do it with you. Come and see us!

T O B E F E AT U R E D I N T H E R E C R U I T M E N T AG E N C Y E X P O S P O T L I G H T P L E A S E C O N TAC T J O S H . H A N N AG A N @ R E C R U I T E R .C O.U K WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK 21

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14/09/2017 15:29

TH E B IG STO RY RECRUITERS TURNED INVESTORS

SECOND WIND Most top recruiters who end up making a lot of money from the profession would choose to take it easy, but a few then decide to apply the passion and drive that took them there to a different sphere â&#x20AC;&#x201C; investment. Colin Cottell reports

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T H E BIG ST T OR R Y RECRUI T ERS T U R N E D I N V E STO R S

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TH E B IG STO RY RECRU ITERS TURNED INVESTORS

When Mark Znowski, co-founder of Staffgroup, sold the business to Cordant Group in 2015, he realised an eightfigure sum. It was enough money to let him put his feet up and enjoy the fruits of his success. So why didn’t he just retire? “The short answer is I am not done yet. I am still hungry – I’ve just turned 42 years of age. I didn’t want my then five-year-old son spending most of his adult life thinking ‘what does my dad do? He does nothing’. So it was important for me as a role model to keep going for him.” Znowski is one of a new wave of recruiters who made it big in recruitment during a period in which industry turnover more than tripled from £10bn at the turn of the century to a record £35.1bn in 2015/16. Beginning his recruitment career in the late 1990s, he is typical of this group of ambitious recruiters, who rose rapidly to the top of a fiercely competitive industry – building businesses, doing multimillion pound deals and profiting handsomely along the way. Having this type of career might be sufficient for the vast majority of recruiters. But these driven individuals have not been content just to sit back and bathe in the glory of their past success. Rather than retreating from the world of business, they have shown

24 RECRUITER

that success hasn’t sated them, and that the entrepreneurial ﬁre in their bellies burns as brightly as ever, as they turn their hand to another facet of business – investing. “I want to be busy. I love chaos and having lots of different things on the go. I am not doing it for the money, absolutely not. It’s the desire to continue to be successful,” says Znowski, whose investments “across the board”, including in the stock market, are “probably north of £10m”. While, as you might expect, many of this group invest in recruitment companies, their investments encompass a wide range of sectors, including virtual reality,

“I want to be busy. I love chaos and having lots of things on the go”

healthcare, property, data analytics, an Instagram company and even fashion. Zack Feather, former owner and managing director of international healthcare recruiter Asclepius Global, sold his stake in that business to private equity firm Blackstone in 2013. With investments in eight different businesses, including healthcare analytics, life sciences and fashion, as well as four in recruitment, he admits he is “as busy as ever – crazily so”. “No rest for the wicked,” he jokes, although you sense he would not have it any other way. Feather, who has an advisory board role in many of the companies in which he has invested, admits he gets a lot of pleasure from this new chapter in his life. “Yes, there is the financial reward, but the real reward is that someone you have taken on a fiveyear journey has become a great leader, and you have created great value in that business,” he says.

Branching ou ut Adam Buck, executive chairman at Phaidon International, says his decision to step back from his role as CEO into an advisory role a year-and-a-half ago was the spur that prompted him to pursue his interest in business outside recruitment. After building up Phaidon from its humble beginnings as bedroombased business Selby Jennings into a 500-strong international recruitment powerhouse, Buck says his new role at Phaidon helped him realise “that I was trusting managers to get on with the day-to-day running of the business, and that there were opportunities outside of recruitment to adopt a similar role and to become an investor”. Paul Flynn co-founded Staffgroup with Znowski. Describing himself today as “a businessman with interests in recruitment, healthcare and technology”, Flynn says anyone considering following in his footsteps needs ﬁrst to decide what sort of investor they want to be. A passive investor, “who just provides capital, or an active investor, where you

AUGUST 2017

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T H E BIG ST T O R Y RECRUI T ERS T U R N E D I N V E STO R S

are in a board position, or even to the point where you are the entrepreneur and it is your business”. He says his own temperament makes him “more suited to being an active investor”. Dean Kelly, who as CEO of Synarbor was at the helm when the company was taken over by Sovereign Capital Partners in 2015 in an £18.4m deal, says he is ﬁrmly in the active investor camp. “Don’t invest and walk away – be hands-on,” he advises. While this doesn’t mean micromanagement, he says it has on occasion meant “going out and selling” alongside his investees. Indeed, for Kelly, it is a matter of common sense to use his experience of founding, building, listing, scaling and selling businesses. “If you have got a background such as mine, why wouldn’t you put that up for offer along with your investment?” he says. At the other extreme of the investor spectrum is Buck. “For me, it’s a lot more about partnering in the background, acting as a silent adviser rather than having my name above the door. I am not looking for the limelight,” he says.

Compatibility y ma atters Kelly says the first thing he looks for when considering whether or not to invest is the owner or owners. He believes the strength of the recruitment market in recent years has flattered many recruiters, so for him the acid test is how they would fare if the market turned down. “We are looking for people who are prepared to give up good to be great. So are they resilient, and do they appreciate the amount of hard work that goes into making a great business and not just a lifestyle business?” Nick Hall-Palmer, investment partner at Orchard Joint Ventures, which invests in recruitment start-ups, and a former finance director at Empresaria, says he is picky about the people in whom he looks to invest, with only around 5% of those considered passing muster. He tends to avoid “very salesy people” and focus on those with whom there is “a personal chemistry and compatibility”. He says

“For me, it’s a lot more about partnering in the background, acting as a silent adviser rather than having my name above the door” it is important investees put enough of their own money in “to hurt if it fails”. Flynn says he has no rule of thumb as to how much he is prepared to put into any one business, preferring the discipline of “a walk-away ﬁgure”. Referring to one of the businesses in which he has invested, he says: “If it doesn’t break even next year, there is a high likelihood I will close it down.” Overall, he says he has put aside 25% of his personal wealth to invest.

Never perfec ct Although he has yet to walk away from any of his investments, Flynn admits he has made mistakes along the way. “Lots of them,” he says. In particular, he says “being bought into the person without necessarily understanding what their company was offering in terms of a service”. Kelly, too, admits he hasn’t always got it right, allowing himself to be swayed by others. “If it feels wrong, and you have doubts about the individual or the marketplace, then don’t do it. It is your money, and you need to be careful with it.” That said, when he decides to back someone, Kelly is typically prepared to invest between £250k and £500k. He says his sourcing and matching platform SourceBreaker “will probably absorb £500k by the end of year two”. Buck accepts that, as an investor, there is always a risk of losing your money: “You need to take a balanced view and recognise that not all businesses you invest in will succeed. If you invest in 10, potentially two or

three will do very well, half will do OK, and the rest won’t be there in ﬁve or 10 years’ time,” he says. For this reason, “you shouldn’t have all your eggs in one basket, and should spread your risk across different sectors”, he advises. Buck has certainly followed his own advice, investing in companies as diverse as Yourfeed, a career platform for millennials; education technology venture Pobble Education; property marketplace Property.Works; and Pricesearcher, a search engine for prices. Kelly has adopted a similar approach, with investments not only in recruitment businesses, sometimes alongside co-founder of the Recruitment Directors Lunch Club – also known as the Pirates – Gary Goldsmith, but also in tech recruitment, including SourceBreaker. “My rule to myself is only work with what you know,” he says. “I know recruitment, I know recruitment tech and I know behavioural science.”

High-risk inve estm men ntss Kelly accepts that tech investments are high-risk, but against that the potential gains provide ample compensation, particularly when he argues “it is harder to create a growth recruitment business than in the past”. He says investing in recruitment technology represents a potent and potentially lucrative combination. “It helps you recruit better, faster and sharper, so your multiples of sale will be far higher than a bog-standard, high full-time earnings, recruitment business that just depends on individuals,” he says.

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TH E B IG STO RY RECRUITERS TURNED INVESTORS

Flynn has ventured even further afield from his roots, investing in what he describes as “two very ‘of the moment’ topics”. The first, Addcounsel, provides one-to-one bespoke multi-disciplinary healthcare, while BilateralVR is a virtual reality start-up within healthcare. He has also invested in Pricesearcher, alongside Buck and Kelly. Rhys Jones, who sold his recruitment business Elliot Marsh in 2014, now runs Davidson Gray, which invests in recruitment start-ups. He admits he is in the fortunate position that he is “not doing this for a big cash-out, because I have kind of been there”. He says his main interest is to pass on the benefits of his experience to others through coaching and mentoring the owners. Jones says he is relaxed about how long he is prepared to wait until he sees a return on his investment. He typically takes 25% equity. “It depends on how long they want me and what they want to achieve, so it’s a bit of a moving target.” Buck is equally sanguine, extolling the virtues of a patient approach. “One thing I’ve learned from Phaidon is that it takes

26 RECRUITER

“I am not doing this for a big cash-out, because I have kind of been there” a long time to make a good business but even longer to build a great one.” Not that he is prepared to wait indeﬁnitely. “I hope my children, as opposed to my grandchildren, will beneﬁt from my current investments,” he says.

Hard or soft apprroach h? However, Znowski’s approach is unashamedly hard-headed. “Businesses have to articulate where and when there will be a return for their investors. If I am to invest £100k or £200k in a start-up, then I need to be making 10 times my money in less than ﬁve years. It is high-risk, so you have to generate that level of return,” he says. Flynn takes a more nuanced approach. “For me as an active investor, it’s three years, whereas as a passive investor you have just got to sit and hold

tight.” He says the big question for a passive investor is whether they are prepared to put money in at the second round of funding. Should Pricesearcher do well, he says he will probably invest further in it. He adds that with some companies, the question is not when or indeed if it makes a proﬁt, “but whether someone else wants to buy it”. While this new wave of recruiterscome-investors clearly have different views on how and when they expect to be rewarded for the ﬁnancial risks they take, it is clear they have much more in common. “Today, I have eight investments. By the end of 2018 I want to have 15 to 20. I will keep growing and exiting, growing and exiting,” says Feather. It’s a vivid demonstration that, albeit it in a different guise, the same passion and relentless drive, that took Feather and the others to the top of the recruitment industry shows no sign of diminishing any time soon.

OCTOBER 2017

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11 am: # e r t S ay t on P

Know every link in your supply chain PSL From September 2017 it became an offence for agencies (under the CFA2017) to fail to prevent tax evasion. So itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s becoming increasingly important for agencies to fully understand their supply chain. As a leading provider of umbrella and accountancy services, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been advising agencies to operate Preferred Supplier Lists for a while now. We have robust processes and controls, audited by a strong internal compliance team and we invite external companies in to audit our audits.

When it comes to assessing your suppliersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; compliance, there are a number of things you can do: 1. Send out compliance questionnaires 2. Check actual payslip calculations 3. Review third party audits 4. Carry out your own site visit For the best assessment of your key suppliers, we recommend that you use all of the above.

Call 0800 197 6516 e: info@paystream.co.uk or visit www.paystream.co.uk

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ADVERTISING FEATURE

A breath of fresh air in “Employment Solutions, without doubt, has been the most influential recruitment company WFEL has ever dealt with. Their knowledge, engineering expertise and general understanding of our business have been paramount in our success. There is a pride of quality throughout the company.” WFEL Ltd The Company today

The year is 1996 when the Spice Girl's hit the scene, and Trainspotting was the film everyone raved about (literally). The then Carolyn Briggs (pictured centre above) headed back into the Stockport office of Kinetic after a two-year break, bringing with her, her stamp on girl power and play hard work hard mentality that caught the eye of a young welsh lad called Neil Davies (pictured far right above). A few years down the line, Neil took his recruitment expertise and 10th September 2001 saw the birth of Employment Solutions. Carolyn, (now Frodsham) joined Neil in August 2003, bringing her passion and no-nonsense approach to recruitment that Neil admired, and so a longstanding and formidable partnership for the future of recruitment began. Fast forward to 2007 when things changed again as Carolyn, Neil Davies, and Ian Pilkington (Financial Director) undertook a management buyout (MBO) of the business, which incorporated the already established First Logistics and Employment Solutions. Carolyn & Neil (affectionately known as the silver fox of the office), which he may argue is a result of working with Carolyn over the years are a force to be reckoned with. As a partnership, they care passionately about the team and the business which has resulted in longstanding alliances with clients since the beginning while continuing to attract new business - things are looking good indeed.

The ever growing team under the guidance of Carolyn and Neil understand that finding someone a new job or career can change a person's life in a heartbeat, and this is what drives the company - this is what makes them stand out from the crowd. How many recruiters do you know get to know their candidates personally? How many understand the roles inside out?. This team does, which results in happy clients too.

Investment The offices have also taken on a new lease of life. In 2015, a decision was made to buy the building - The Old Courthouse in Bury, which has just gone through a £200,000 refit to make it a more attractive and enjoyable place to work. The office officially opened by Antony Cotton (Sean Tully) from the cobbles of Coronation Street, was thrilled to be back in Bury.

“The Office wasn't fit for purpose; it wasn't fit for the talent we wanted to bring into the business. We wanted to build an office to engage with the best talent in our market, and it’s important to us to show our clients what we do on a daily basis. The future for Employment Solutions is inspiring.” Carolyn

Both Carolyn and Neil got into recruitment out of love for building relationships and working with people, bringing a breath of fresh air to the recruitment sector. Centred around a shared internal mindset of loving recruitment, but hating how recruitment can often be perceived. Simply put, Employment Solutions is a different breed of recruitment company, with unrivaled expertise and hard earned long standing relationships, managing some of the largest contracts, some for 20 years, such as WFEL Ltd, Streetcrane Ltd, NIS Ltd and NSG Environmental Ltd how refreshing is that.

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recruitment “Our brand is unique, and our ethics and moral fibre behind our business I feel is imperative and sets us aside from our competitors. We're now looking at expanding into new markets within our core areas of engineering and manufacturing. We have already grown significantly and are looking for exceptional people to join our team.” Neil

Lisa Kitt

John Rose

“What a tremendous year this has been

In between the daily throng of the business, they have somehow managed to fit in the release of a vibrant new brand and website through recruitment web specialists; Volcanic. Alongside the brand and marketing plans, headed by Marketing Manager - Louise Egan, another route to success has been the substantial investment in a CRM (Bullhorn) and Management Information System (Insight Squared). The team has an understanding that too many recruitment companies fail to deliver on their growth plans as a result of a lack of investment in these areas, and Employment Solutions are determined to avoid this mistake, coupled with the right people to operate them and take them forward. The appointment of an experienced Non-Executive Director, John Rose with over 30 years in the recruitment sector, including 12 years as a CEO, means they are armed with further expertise and knowledge to assist in successfully managing the journey and to help double turnover over the next three years. The new Sales Director, Lisa Kitt has also taken control of the day to day responsibility for the revenue, profitability, and growth of the business with a key focus on increasing permanent revenue. Also, the hiring of new team members means things are gathering momentum even faster.

for Employment Solutions. The office refurb; Neil and I working together for 21 years. Bringing in a Sales Director and seeing the technical business flourish. Ten years ago we were drinking Dom Perignon in Manchester celebrating the deal. Ten years on and I’m sitting with one of the most talented teams I’ve ever worked with drinking champagne and enjoying the moment. This moment is to share, not one to sit in a plush city hotel. I am looking forward to taking the business to the next level over the following three years. These are exciting times. Employment Solutions is here, and open for business.” Carolyn So, with all that in mind, Employment Solutions are all set for another successful ten years. However, this journey would not exist without the dedication of the team, the loyalty of the candidates and clients, and for that, they would like to say a big thank you. If you are looking for a Technical role or need to fill a vacancy, please get in touch. The team loves to talk, or if you're in Bury, pop in for a coffee!

emp-sol.com Find a job you enjoy, they say. But you can’t Google that. No LinkedIn search is going to give you that, no matter how many connections you have. Engineers, builders and manufacturers, you know what you want, so let us find it for you. Employment Solutions

Contact Employment Solutions: 0161 839 5353

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Issue 54 October 2017

RECRUITMENT MATTERS The View and The Intelligence Future of Jobs

p2-3

Big Talking Point

Legal Update

GDPR

Masterclass: More Savage Truths p4

Tribunal fees

What’s in the new law? p8

p6-7

THE REC GU

IDE

IS THE

www.rec.u k.com

Is the recr

uitment in

dustry regu

The UK recru regulated. itment industry is heav The main ily statutory governing rules recruiters are:

RECRUITMENT INDUSTRY REGULATED?

The Employme nt Agencies Act 1973 Conduct of Employme nt Employme nt Businesses Agencies and (Conduct Regul Regulation s 2003 ations) Employme nt (Miscellane (Northern Ireland) Orde ous Provisions) r 1981 Conduct of Employme nt Employme nt Businesses Agencies and (Northern Regulation Ireland) 2005 s

According to these regu recruiters lations, must: provide writte workers, includn contracts for their agency ing terms and conditions not charge a fee to anyon temporary or permanent e seeking a job

not withhold

payments

not make unlaw

from pay

not stop some one from worki ng elsewhere not supply an someone takinagency worker to replac e g part in indus trial action .

Recruiters must also follow othe legislation r to workers are: ensure that agency paid holiday

not forced to work longe hours a week r than 48 paid at least the National Minimum Wage protected under healt h and safety laws.

t agency is a member Recruitmen of the t & Employme nt Confederat it must adher e to ion (REC), Practice, which the REC Code of Profe ssional goes beyon d the statu For example, tory rules. the code requi res members to:

be honest and agency work transparent with ers and clien ts agree writt en contracts clients for all placemen with ts safeguard

against discr

imination

comply with all relevant statutory and non-statu legislation, tory guida nce.

or wages due

ful deductions

lated?

THE REC CO PROFESSIO DE OF NAL PRACTI If a recruitmen CE

To become a REC mem ber, agencies must pass a test to prove they meet and they must these standards, pass again every two years to retain mem bership. The REC can inves potential breac tigate hes of the code when a complaint is made to us, or when allega are made in tions the public domain. Investigati ons can result in disciplinary sanct expulsion from ions, such as REC membersh This mean ip. s that agenc y workers have recou and employers rse if some thing goes wrong.

For full deta ils see www .rec.uk.com/co or to ﬁnd a REC member de in your area www.rec.uk.co visit m/memberdir ectory

NEW FACTSHEET REFUTES CLAIMS The Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) is pushing back against claims the recruitment industry in the UK is unregulated. It has released a factsheet that details the laws and standards the industry must adhere to. The factsheet also refutes any comparison with the unregulated ‘gig economy’. The REC says as the Matthew Taylor review recognises, the recruitment industry is properly regulated and covered by a substantial legislative framework. “REC members have

@RECPress RM_OCT_17.indd 1

committed to uploading the highest operational and ethical standards, and we want to raise awareness of what the REC badge represents,” it says. “The recruitment industry is

covered by various legislation, and is enforced by several different enforcement bodies. This can make it difficult to understand how the recruitment industry differs from gig economy platforms

WHAT YOU CAN DO WITH THIS FACTSHEET REC members are committed to uploading the highest operational and ethical standards. We want to raise awareness of what the REC badge represents. • Share this factsheet with clients and demonstrate your expertise and status as an REC member. • Promote your knowledge of the law covering recruitment. • Demonstrate that the recruitment industry is regulated by a substantial legislative framework.

such as Uber, TaskRabbit and UpWork.” The REC is also calling upon members to use the factsheet with clients and candidates. “REC members have committed to uploading the highest operational and ethical standards, and we want to raise awareness of what the REC badge represents.” “We want your clients and candidates to appreciate that as an REC member you follow a professional code that goes beyond the legislation,” it says. The factsheet is available for download at www.rec.uk.com/regulation

www.rec.uk.com 13/09/2017 12:18

Leading the Industry

THE VIEW

Will we become an automation nation? asks Tom Hadley, REC director of policy and professional services

Here are four areas of focus heading into autumn, says Kevin Green, REC chief executive The summer is a distant memory as we enter the hectic autumn period. The good news is the jobs market remains strong, with growing employment and declining unemployment. In fact the major issue for business is finding quality candidates for the jobs available. This shows what a dynamic, agile and flexible jobs market can deliver in the face of political turmoil and economic uncertainty. As I travel the UK talking to recruiters the key question for many business leaders is: how can we continue to grow? My advice is simple – focus on four areas to achieve more. 1. Seek to differentiate your organisation in the minds of your clients, and do that by exceeding their expectations every day. For starters, you need to deliver good candidates, great service and an organisation which cares about helping clients achieve more. However, the best agencies go way beyond this. Clients expect more from their recruitment partner nowadays – they’re looking to you for expert advice and insight about the jobs market, knowledge about what their competitors are doing, and to help them answer the fundamental question: how can we get better at attracting the people we need? 2. Remember we’re all in human capital businesses – the only real asset we have

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LATEST VIBES FROM THE FUTURE OF JOBS is the people we employ. To get the best out of your team, you have to be prepared to invest in them. That means constantly developing the skills of your consultants to make sure they are the best they can be. It also means ensuring that your team leaders are fantastic coaches who can provide feedback every day, which helps your people improve. 3. Provide a great candidate experience. In the REC’s 2015 report, ‘The candidate strikes back’, we revealed that over 80% of candidates are not asked for feedback about the hiring process. This is astounding – if the customer of the recruitment process is the candidate, how can we possibly get better without this feedback? Provide a quality process, and develop metrics to help you improve. 4. Demonstrate to staff, candidates and clients that great systems, processes and above all professionalism matter to you. Be robust on how you do things and hold your people to account. Cutting corners just doesn’t work in the long term. If you focus your efforts on these four drivers of performance you won’t go far wrong. Follow me on Twitter @kevingreenrec for all things recruitment.

Recent news that driverless trucks could be trialled on our roads as early as next year have brought to light the potential of artificial intelligence (AI). This is happening! The long-term implications for skills and employment is just one of the areas being covered in our Future of Jobs commission. Speakers at a recent commission meeting argued that we are likely to exponential growth in AI capability and that the vast majority of people and institutions are underestimating the impact this will have. It was also argued that this is not necessarily a bad thing; one possible outcome being that jobs and careers as we know them will disappear, which will free people up for other pursuits. Driverless vehicles are the canary in the coalmine when it comes to the impact of AI. The fact that the car industry has invested billions gives a strong indication that it is simply a question of “when?” This will put 1 million driving jobs are at risk but might well enhance road safety. Massive changes are already occurring in the banking sector where thousands of back-office jobs are being replaced. The same is true in other service sector industries – including recruitment. High-skilled sectors like law and healthcare will also be disrupted as AI capability improves and provides more reliable diagnostics than any human can. Jobs requiring empathy – such as care – are often thought be safe. However, even this is open to challenge. For example, trials in Japan have shown that older people preferred being looked after by robots! The fundamental changes that AI will engender will drive demand for other roles. We will be looking at this in more detail when our commission presents its findings in the autumn. But one initial conclusion is that government and business need to do more to plan for different scenarios – including some of the more extreme predictions. Representative bodies like REC have a key role to play in fuelling future-facing reflections on these seismic changes and on what kind of jobs market we want to see emerge. This is the core aim of the whole Future of Jobs project.

You can follow Tom on Twitter @hadleyscomment nt

www.rec.uk.com

13/09/2017 12:18

THE INTELLIGENCE WITH REC SENIOR RESEARCHER, THALIA IOANNIDOU Tense Brexit negotiations and declining staff availability put a strain on businesses In the face of ongoing uncertainty relating to the negotiations around the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, business confidence in economic conditions has deteriorated. According to the REC’s latest survey of employers (JobsOutlook, September 2017), sentiment across the last quarter of June to August has fallen markedly, with confidence in economic conditions at the worst level since the EU referendum in June 2016. Specifically, 7% more employers thought economic conditions were worsening rather than improving, a complete reverse of the figures in the same period in 2016. Ongoing political and economic instability appears to have particularly hit the

smallest employers, which form the backbone of UK plc. Despite employers’ deteriorating economic outlook, confidence in making hiring and investment decisions remains stable. However, employers are increasingly concerned over candidate supply to meet their needs, as staff availability in many areas of the jobs market declines at quicker pace. Particularly, the availability of candidates to fulfil permanent job roles continued to decline sharply in August, with the rate of deterioration slightly quicker than seen in the previous month. Meanwhile, supply of temporary staff fell to the greatest extent in 20 months. As such, employers are increasingly turning to recruitment agencies as it becomes harder to find the people they need. As September’s Report on Jobs report shows, there are two distinct trends at play. Businesses need people with the capability to steer a

7% MORE EMPLOYERS THOUGHT ECONOMIC CONDITIONS WERE WORSENING RATHER THAN IMPROVING, A COMPLETE REVERSE OF THE FIGURES IN THE SAME PERIOD IN 2016. ONGOING POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC INSTABILITY APPEARS TO HAVE PARTICULARLY HIT THE SMALLEST EMPLOYERS, WHICH FORM THE BACKBONE OF UK PLC.

course amid ongoing political and economic instability, which is creating high demand for roles like financial directors, analysts and professionals in compliance and HR. Meanwhile, there is a well-documented shortage of people to fill blue-collar roles such as drivers, electricians and construction, and this being exacerbated by a fall in net migration from the EU. With a scarcity of candidates and existing skills shortages being exacerbated by Brexit, it is unsurprising that employers are having to offer more money to secure the people with the skills and talent they need. Growth of permanent starting salaries

DEBTOR DAYS CONTINUE TO INCREASE

Figure 1. Median debtor days – quarterly average

The latest information from the RIB Index, sponsored by Bluestones Group, shows that the median industry recruiter is still experiencing a rise in the average number of debtor days. Set into historical context, the average median number of debtor days across 2014 was 40.2, rising to 42.4 across 2015 and 44.8 in 2016. The sharp increase since Q4 2016, when it stood at 45.9, may be attributable

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50 49.3

44.3

42.9

WITH A SCARCITY OF CANDIDATES AND EXISTING SKILLS SHORTAGES BEING EXACERBATED BY BREXIT, IT IS UNSURPRISING THAT EMPLOYERS ARE HAVING TO OFFER MORE MONEY TO SECURE THE PEOPLE WITH THE SKILLS AND TALENT THEY NEED.

accelerated for the fourth month running in August. Notably, it was the quickest rate of pay inflation seen since October 2015. Pay for temporary staff also increased at a faster pace, rising at the steepest rate for 16 months in August. While the working population in general has experienced a pay squeeze since the EU referendum owing to rising inflation and slower economic growth, there are clearly opportunities now for those with particular skills to earn more by moving jobs. For employers, however, the sustainability of this trend is of increasing concern particularly given the declining productivity and the uncertainty around labour arrangements and the trading relationship with the EU. is set fair to continue, the importance of benchmarking performance against other recruiters to maximise performance cannot be underestimated.

42 40 38 Median debtor days - quarterly average 36

Q1 2015

to the significant recent increase in the number of clients invoiced by the median recruiter. It billed 11.0% more clients in Q1 2017 and 13.8% more in Q2 2017 than in the

Q1 2016

Q1 2017

same periods last year. A notable 34.4% of clients were new in Q2 2017, compared to 32.1% in Q1 and 30.1% across 2016. As market uncertainty

Belinda Johnson runs employment research consultancy Worklab, and is associate knowledge & insight director of Recruitment Industry Benchmarking (RIB) – part of the Bluestones Group. The RIB Index provides bespoke confidential reports on industry benchmarks and trends. See www.ribindex. com; info@ribindex.com: 020 8544 9807. The RIB is a strategic partner of the REC.

RECRUITMENT MATTERS OCTOBER 2017 3

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The Big Talking Point

MASTERCLASS

MORE SAVAGE TRUTHS They’ve sold out venues across Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Now the Savage Brothers are bringing their SPRINT Tour to the UK. Recruitment Matters editor Michael Oliver caught up with Greg Savage to find out why only some recruiters are ready for the future

Michael Oliver: Two years ago when you last held an event with the REC, the UK recruitment industry was worth more than £30 billion, economic growth was high and the idea of leaving the EU seemed farfetched. Things have changed significantly since – is it still the golden age of recruitment? Greg Savage: Globally, the predictions I made about the market splitting into winners and losers has come to pass. The golden age is still there, but for fewer and fewer players. I see a large group of recruiters chasing each other to the bottom because they

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MO: How is that playing out in the UK market?

You’ve got a very big recruitment market, massive skill shortages plus the double-whammy of Brexit and a very uncertain political environment. That’s thrown a little curry into the mixture, adding fear into the mindset of recruitment business owners. It will be harder to become more future-fit, because when under pressure many recruitment owners retreat to what they know. In fact, now is the time to disrupt and try new tactics. Those who do will be served well.

GS: I think the UK is in the midst of a perfect storm.

MO: That race to the bottom idea is interesting – what

have not changed their talent acquisition tactics.

MO: What does that mean? GS: It means they’ve churned out the same tactics, competing on price and speed. All that will do is speed up the demise of a lot of recruitment businesses. Machines will do resumé (CV) spamming cheaper and faster. We have to get much smarter. Much more consultative

mistakes are UK recruitment businesses making?

GS: They’re making a wide litany of mistakes: they are hiring the wrong sorts of people, namely those who are considered ‘good on the phones’. It’s an obsession with the UK industry – smashing the phones. Don’t get me wrong, you need those skills, but it’s a much more sophisticated job than that. Recruitment companies are not investing in coaching structures – it’s a command structure driven by KPIs. They’re important, yes, but that’s not enough to differentiate the offering. www.rec.uk.com

13/09/2017 12:42

candidates has changed. They’re treating jobs the way they treat buying cars or phones. They want an image of an organisation and they want to be drawn to it. So, recruiters have got to start using consumer tactics. Recruitment is merging with marketing. If you have six members of staff, your seventh should be a digital marketing expert whose job it is to build a content marketing strategy. Building a strong brand within a niche is critical.

MO: What’s the first step? GS: We like to say that people GS: It’s

MO: If they’re not investing in their people, what are they doing? GS: They’re still retaining yesterday’s heroes and allowing people to say “Well, I’m an experienced recruiter, I don’t need to use social media” or embrace new technology. Those people are becoming a drag on recruitment businesses. The other big problem in UK recruitment is the lack of training – you either sink or swim, and that seems to be a badge of pride with UK businesses. They live with 50% turnover and that’s treated as normal, and it shouldn’t be.

seen as an expense rather than an opportunity. The reason a company should buy good tech is to find good candidates and improve the candidate experience. I wish it was a rule that when any recruitment business bought a new piece of technology, it was for the benefit of the candidate rather than saving money. We need to think of highly-evolved sourcing tactics – there’s a head-inthe-sand attitude in the UK (and elsewhere, don’t get me wrong!) about social media and building a brand. It’s amazing how many recruiters are reluctant to get on board with those concepts.

MO: What’s precipitated the shift to social?

MO: Why so much reluctance to new technology?

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GS: The behaviour of

have to self-disrupt and question everything they do – slaughter some sacred cows and take some strength and go against the tried and true. And yes, it can be taught, but the pupil has to be willing and not a sceptic.

MO: But there are challenges there too? GS: Yes – in recruitment, being busy is seen as a badge of honour. The way to be ‘busy’ is to throw ads on job boards, send emails and answer calls. We need to teach recruiters the right way to hunt for candidates. Then there’s the seduction part of recruitment, where recruiters need to be taught not to spam but to tell a story and empathise with candidates; to bring previously inaccessible candidates into the recruitment process. That takes significant finesse, which most recruiter’s lack.

MO: Thinking ahead to October and November’s Savage Sprint Tour, what do you want UK recruiters to bear in mind when they attend? GS: They need to come with an open mind and with an attitude that says “I need to get better, reskill and upskill”. They need to want to forge a career in recruitment. A lot of things we talk about is about the next three to five years, so we need career recruiters. The final thing they need to bring is a willingness to execute and take action. I am cynical about training because it’s often left in the room, but the Savage Sprint makes a huge effort to have delegates write down action points about what they are going to do in the marketplace. MO: And the feedback has been popular? GS: The Sprint Tour is a proven product. We’ve delivered it 20 times or more to 3,000 recruiters, and the feedback has been universally popular. This leaves me confident we will hit the mark in the UK. This isn’t just a morning’s training – this is an attempt to recalibrate how recruiters look at their job.

SCALE UP MASTERCLASS DATES London – 31 October Manchester – 1 November Glasgow – 2 November London – 7 November Visit www.rec.uk.com/ savagetour to book

RECRUITMENT MATTERS OCTOBER 2017 5

13/09/2017 12:42

Legal update

TAX EVASION OFFENCES

THE CRIMINAL FINANCES ACT 2017 – IMPACT ON RECRUITERS (OCT 2017) By Lewina Farrell, solicitor, head of professional services at the REC The Criminal Finances Act 2017 (the Act) will come into effect on 30 September 2017. The Act will make organisations criminally liable for failing to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion offences in the UK or overseas (tax includes Income Tax, National Insurance and VAT). Originally conceived to counteract particular activities within the financial services sector, it has been drafted quite broadly so will impact across all industry sectors including recruitment. The Act will introduce two new offences: 1. The failure to prevent the facilitation of UK tax evasion offences; and 2. The failure to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion overseas where such evasion is criminal under local law. A ‘relevant body’, which is any organisation (whether a company or a partnership), will commit an offence if it fails

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to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion by an ‘associated person’. A person is associated with a relevant body if they are an employee, agent or any person who performs services directly for or on behalf of the relevant body. In recruitment ‘associated person’ could include payment intermediaries such as umbrella companies, CIS intermediaries and similar third parties. Investigatory and recovery powers The Act will enhance the investigatory and recovery powers of the enforcement bodies (including HMRC, the National Crime Agency, Serious Fraud Office and the Director of Public Prosecutions). These include unexplained wealth orders, disclosure orders and further information notices following a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR).

Penalties The penalties for engaging in any facilitation of tax evasion will include: • Unlimited financial penalties; and • Orders such as confiscation order or serious crime prevention orders. Defence to alleged offence An organisation will have a defence if it can show that: 1. it implemented ‘reasonable prevention procedures’ to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion; or 2. it was not reasonable in the circumstances to expect it to put such prevention procedures in place. Prevention procedures are any procedures that are designed to prevent any associated person from committing a tax evasion facilitation offence. HMRC have produced draft guidance on the different

types of procedures that an organisation could implement depending on its size and industry focus. HMRC has also set out six guiding principles to consider when setting up reasonable prevention procedures. These are very similar to the principles relating to bribery offences and include: 1. Risk assessment; 2. Proportionality of risk based prevention procedures; 3. Top level commitment; 4. Due diligence; 5. Communication (including training); and 6. Monitoring. Steps for recruiters to take Recruiters must know who their payroll partners are and how they engage temporary workers/contractors. They will also have to consider if they will allow staff to claim commission for referrals to those companies and if as an organisation they will continue to receive referral payments. So: • Review your current risk assessments; • Conduct appropriate due diligence to identify any risks of an associated person committing a tax evasion facilitation offence; • Deliver training to all staff and ensure that all recruitment consultants understand the new offence; • Update policies, staff handbooks and contracts; • Regularly check implementation of those policies.

www.rec.uk.com

13/09/2017 12:19

Inspiration

BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE INSTITUTE OF RECRUITMENT PROFESSIONALS

The View

Bradley Carton n is a specialist consultant at BPS World

Toni Cocozza is the founder and chairwoman of DP Connect

IRP AWARDS

WHAT I KNOW

What did winning Recruitment Apprentice of the Year mean to you? Just being shortlisted is a big achievement and winning the award is something I’ll never forget, it’s something I’ll always hold with me.

Not for the faint-hearted I think people underestimate how tough this job is. This is one of the toughest jobs you can do. You’re not only responsible for getting the right person in to do a job for someone else, you’re motivating your candidates to be the best they can be. We forget we’re on targets, placements, deals.

What was it like winning in front of 500 of your peers? It was a weird feeling, I remember I had a massive smile on my face. I started getting extremely nervous when I got on stage and saw how many people were out there! It was a really surreal moment. What’s changed for you since your win? I was a resourcer for a bit, and now I’m a consultant with BPS World. Since my win I’ve gained so much more confidence and self-belief that I’ve been taking on bigger challenges. The immediate change was the excitement of my ‘15 minutes of fame’ – I saw my name around LinkedIn a lot more. On a personal level, it helped a lot. I’m thinking bigger now and it’s changed how I look at things. How’s your year been so far? I’ve had a really big year so far. We have a highest billers club each quarter and I’ve made it for both quarters so far in 2017, and I got a promotion as well, which is great. I love the buzz and the excitement when you find a great candidate for a position you’ve been recruiting for. Nothing beats that I think. Also the competition side of recruitment – the KPIs and the thrill of seeing your name at the top of the leader board. What did winning an IRP Award mean to you? Winning at the IRP Awards and being recognised for your hard work by your peers is a feeling you can’t really describe.

A fresh pair of eyes One of the things I’d advise businesses to do is bring help in early. There are a lot of good things available for people to access – groups, non-execs etc. I didn’t have that for 10 years of running DP Connect – I was just making it up as I went along. You don’t need to give away your business, you just need to get out into the industry and mingle with everyone. Gold The key to running a good recruitment business is treating your staff like gold. Your business is your people, and you must do everything in your power to keep them happy and influence them. The best people to look for are those who have the right attributes to do the job – the attitude, the drive, the ambition – rather than the experience. I love working with someone with a big chip on their shoulder. I don’t care if you’re the rich boy who doesn’t want to work for dad’s company, a working mum, or someone with dyslexia. You need a drive and a passion to make this job a success. Equal partnership I believe in an equal partnership between consultant, candidate and client. The candidate is important because I have to do a good job by them, but I always remember that the client pays. But if I do a good job, a candidate will only need to use me once, while a client will use me more than once. On top of that, many candidates have gone onto be clients. Listen to Toni on the Scale Up podcast at www.rec.uk.com

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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Personal data

GDPR – WHAT CHANGES ARE COMING? REC legal services executive Najat Jebari takes a look at the upcoming regulati0ns The processing of personal data is part and parcel of recruitment. Recruiters process candidate and client data on a daily basis. Therefore, it’s essential that recruiters get to grips with the new EU General Data Protection Regulation which will come into effect from 25 May 2018. Data protection law has been around for many years. The first Data Protection Act (DPA) in the UK was introduced in 1984. This was subsequently replaced by the 1998 Act. So, how much of the GDPR is actually new? How does the GDPR compare to the Data Protection Act (1998)? What are the similarities and differences? We outline the key areas of change below.

genetic and biometric data and will omit criminal convictions and offences from its definition of sensitive personal data. 3. Subject Access Requests – changed The rules around Subject Access Requests (SARs) will change in the GDPR. The GDPR will remove the fee that is chargeable under the DPA and will reduce the time limit during which a business must respond to a request to one month, down from the 40 days currently available under the DPA. 4. Right to data portability – new The right to data portability will be a completely new right under the GDPR, allowing

1. Personal data – enhanced The GDPR will enhance the definition of personal data as it will now also include identification numbers, location data and online identifiers to reflect technological advances in society. 2. Sensitive personal data – enhanced The GDPR will now include

individuals to receive their personal data in an organised, machine-readable format. 5. Right to erasure – changed The GDPR will explicitly outline the right to erasure and will no longer require individuals to prove that the processing of their personal data caused them substantial damage or distress, which is currently a requirement under the DPA. 6. Record-keeping requirements – new The GDPR will place a new obligation on organisations to maintain internal records of all data processing activities.

require organisations to adopt measures that adhere to GDPR data protection principles, such as data minimisation and pseudonymisation. 9. Data protection officer – new The GDPR will create a new obligation for some organisations to appoint a data protection officer who will be responsible for ensuring the organisation’s compliance with the GDPR. 10. Penalties – enhanced The GDPR will levy higher fines than the DPA. Monetary fines will increase to €20 million (£18.2 million) or 4% of the annual global turnover of the previous financial year (whichever is higher).

7. Accountability principle – new The GDPR will introduce a new ‘accountability principle’ in an effort to increase accountability What is the REC currently and effective governance in doing? data processing. We have created a GDPR hub for members. It includes 8. Data protection by design FAQs, factsheets, guides and by default – new and webinars developed The GDPR will encourage a by our legal team. We are ‘privacy by design’ approach also in discussions with the to data protection known as Information Commissioner’s data protection by design Office to develop recruitment and by default. This will specific guidance for our members. We will be releasing this in the coming weeks. In addition, we are running a series of GDPR seminars this autumn, which will provide you with a detailed understanding of the GDPR and the business critical steps you need to take to fully prepare Find out more about our GDPR seminars at www.rec.uk.com/gdpr

RECRUITMENT MATTERS

Membership Department: Membership: 020 7009 2100, Customer Services: 020 7009 2100 Publishers: Redactive Publishing Ltd, 78 Chamber Street E1 8BL. 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

© 2017 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.

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13/09/2017 10:22

C A NDIDATE E X PERIENCE

Survey Sponsored by

Increasingly, recruiters and organisations are realising they need feedback from all candidates if they are to improve their hiring – and brand reputation. DeeDee Doke reports RECENT RESEARCH from TMP Worldwide (TMPW) revealed some unhappy ﬁndings with regard to candidate experience. Out of over 1,200 jobseekers, only 5% of candidates regarded their recent experience as excellent, 34% rated their recruitment experience as poor – and perhaps worst of all, 21% of the sample stated that their recruitment experience had put them off ever applying to that organisation again. But there is hope on the horizon to turn that situation around. With candidate care and experience rising in importance for today’s employers, most recruiting organisations today ask candidates for feedback on their experiences – with the majority collecting that feedback through

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OCTOBER 2017

informal testimonials, a Recruiter survey has found. About 88% of respondents to the survey, conducted by Recruiter in late August and early September, reported soliciting candidate feedback. Organisations that are not soliciting the feedback generally blamed lack of resources and their small size for not doing so. “Too much focus is needed to be placed on attracting talent”, one respondent wrote. “Too small”, said one. Another said: “We have never taken the time to set up an organised feedback vehicle – which is shameful… :-( ” Another admitted: “Never really thought about it”. Sponsored by candidate feedback platform Feefo, Recruiter’s survey

focused on the process and methods of collecting insight from applicants and after-action activities. Of the respondents, just over 64% work in recruitment consultancies, while nearly 36% work in in-house recruitment roles. For instance, the survey results revealed that nearly 71% of respondents collect candidate feedback through informal testimonials. The second highest percentage, nearly 49%, gathers it through organisation-generated questionnaires. Another 32% use an externally-provided feedback platform or survey to gauge candidates’ experience. Commercial and ﬁnancial specialist recruiter Brampton Recruitment has been in business for 12 years, and launched its ﬁrst candidate feedback survey last April, in recognition that this insight was necessary to compete effectively in its markets. While the North West-based recruiter has featured testimonials on its website, “we wanted to gain information from people we hadn’t found work for”, explained director Claire Leigh. “There was no point in just sending it to people we’d placed.” The survey was sent to all candidates ILL U STRATI O N S | I STO C K

14/09/2017 14:15

CA N D I DAT E E XPE R I E N C E

Brampton had worked with over the previous year.

Candidate journey Feedback is asked for at various touchpoints in candidates’ journeys, the survey found, with most – nearly 77% – seeking it after a candidate has been placed. However, nearly 67% also ask for feedback after candidate interviews. While the priority for seeking candidate feedback has typically been

with candidates who have progressed down the road in the recruitment process, nearly 46% of respondents are asking candidates for feedback after they have been rejected, respondents said. Nearly 60% of respondents who use solicit candidate feedback use it to promote their service in their recruitment marketing, with one respondent saying: “Positive [feedback] used as a promotional tool” and another noting: “We started using

the feedback for marketing materials far more”. Of those respondents who solicit feedback, 41% do not put the feedback to work for them in their marketing.

Feedback works A most positive ﬁnding is that respondents are putting the feedback to work for them. Nearly 96% said they consider feedback as an essential tool to improve their business. And 87% report they have used it to improve

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C A NDIDATE E X PERIENCE

Recruiters are unlikely to change unless they start measuring candidate experience more consistently their service. Asked what actions respondents or their organisations had taken as a result of either positive or negative feedback, some said: ● “Introduction of customer service SLAs” [service level agreements] ● “We have managed expectations better through the process” ● “As an internal recruiter, this helps us do our job better by understanding what the manager is looking for. It also helps us improve the candidate journey” ● “Simple – ensure manager contacts new starter before their ﬁrst day, eg. arrange team lunch or dinner” ● “We hold monthly in-house training sessions within our office and we use the feedback within these training sessions, depending on whether the feedback is subjective or objective” ● “Inform our candidates of their strengths and weaknesses, allowing them to improve in further interviews” ● “Now providing client interview preparation and support by way of an interview kit, pre-interview brieﬁng and post-interview debrief session” ● “Working to look at trends and using this for training and coaching purposes to improve any failings in our service”

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● “Increased the speed of our candidate turnaround to interview and success rates of placements made” ● “Changed the way we deliver aftercare to candidates” ● “Changes to operating model and project on Candidate Experience in scoping stage currently” ● “Action plan created to improve or amend delivery” Other respondents pointed out opportunities to react to feedback more through SMS and online-driven communications but one emphasised, “ensuring this is followed up with in-depth telephone and/or face to face conversations”.

Reputation repercussions Not only does feedback have the potential to help recruiters improve both their own and their organisations’ brand, respondents agreed by a vast majority that it could also help the reputations of recruiters and recruitment agencies alike. Ninetynine per cent of respondents said that displaying genuine feedback helps to combat distrust towards the profession and recruitment businesses. Helping recruiters ﬁght that poor reputation was one of the purposes behind creating a featured ratings and

reviews section on Rated Recruitment, a job board that aids recruitment agencies track and manage their reputation. Not only does the ratings-and-review section feature an email template agencies can send out to solicit candidate feedback, it also provides a ‘resolution centre’ to help the agency resolve issues with disappointed candidates who want to post negative reviews. The agency has 72 hours from the submission of a negative review to respond to the complaint. If the agency is able to work out differences with the candidate, the candidate can then amend the review. But if the candidate remains unhappy, “the review just gets published”, says Paul Dowd, Rated’s creative director. Another aid for recruiters on the Rated site is embedded IP-logging software that can detect if a negative review has come from a competitor in the market. Often, Dowd says, “agencies are terrified initially” at the prospect of having reviews about their service appearing online. However, over time, they see the benefits even of unhappy feedback. For instance, he adds, “it can highlight a problem with a bad egg”. TMPW’s Peasnell points out that recruiters and employers alike “are unlikely to change unless they start measuring candidate experience more consistently”. Fortunately for all, cognisance of the benefits of soliciting candidate feedback is spreading.

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“ We are looking to attract new people to our business” The UK’s largest privately owned agency is getting even bigger! Pertemps Network Group is expanding. Our incredible growth plans have created new career opportunities nationwide. Join a dynamic company and enjoy an advantageous future career. Opportunities are available in our Pertemps ofﬁces operating in areas including commercial, drivers & logistics and industrial. We are also looking for the industry’s best recruitment talent in our Network Group businesses who specialise in areas such as construction, education, healthcare, IT, sales, media & marketing. Pertemps Network Group is the only agency to offer employee share ownership, there’s a Talent Development Programme for managers and consultants (leading to accredited qualiﬁcations), fantastic earning potential and all-expenses-paid holidays for top performers! Find out why we are annually named as one of the Best Companies to Work For. For Pertemps opportunities contact Helen Hibbert Tel: 01676 525000 Email: helen.hibbert@pertemps.co.uk

For Network Group opportunities contact Jon Smith Tel: 01676 526396 Email: jon.smith@networkgroupholdings.co.uk

Find your #PertempsPotential - www.pertemps.co.uk REC.10.17.043.indd 43

13/09/2017 10:23

The challenge ADV E RTO RIAL P E R T E M P S & I S V

Pertemps & ISV: Case study

ertemps Network Group and ISV Software have been working together since 1997 but it’s more than a supplier customer relationship. The leading recruiter and skills testing provider have a true partnership, one that has evolved over the years, keeping pace with the ever-changing world of recruitment.

How did it come about? Pertemps know the value of candidate testing. It is important to them to know they are putting forward the best people who are capable of delivering for their clients. Back in the late ‘90s, the Pertemps team engaged with ISV to look at what could be offered in terms of candidate testing tailored to meet Pertemps’ needs. Of course, at that time, software like this was delivered via CD-Rom. Since the late 90s, the assessments and delivery platform have evolved to meet not just Pertemps’ needs but those of the wider recruitment industry. Designer testing A key driver for Pertemps was the need to customise the testing system. Not just the content of the tests but tailoring the look and feel of the software to reflect the Pertemps brand. As a business built on family values, they are keen to make each candidate feel like they are in good hands. Over the years the ISV team have developed customised testing for Pertemps encompassing a range of tests suitable for Commercial Office Staff, IT support staff, Driving and Warehouse Staff as well as ad hoc bespoke assessments with benchmarks aligned to their clients’ own staff.

IT and Support team leading the first round of feedback, before we rolled out to selected branches, then nationwide. At the time having customised assessments, the Microsoft Office suite of tests, contact centre tests and training were a real innovation. It was only appropriate that the development partnership continued with ISV’s latest iteration of their skills testing platform, new product ISV Online. With a heritage of looking after staff, both companies have many of the same people involved. The cycle of rollout, feedback, upgrades keeps fresh new features coming into the candidate testing on a regular basis with Pertemps having first sight or knowledge of these. The feedback The Branch users have been feeding back positive comments about the speed and flexibility of ISV Online. It’s user-friendly and modern, and still fulfils the overriding goal of supporting the decisions on which candidates to shortlist. Both temp and perm candidates can be tested in branch or remotely -- it’s entirely up to the consultant. Remote testing has the real benefit of the candidate being able to undertake assessments in their own time and out of office hours if needed. The biggest change is on the results side: they are much more meaningful and allow us to set more context with each candidate. Rather than just a global score, candidate comparisons are available along with percentile ranks and relative scores. Changing to ISV Online has been straightforward, the principle of using testing is the same, and it’s a better platform.

All of this was developed via a white label platform that was branded as Pertemps’ own. From registration to placement, every candidate felt valued and knew they were under the Pertemps banner.

Like most successful partnerships, the ISV and Pertemps relationship is built on communication, open feedback, delivering promises and shared values. Factors which go a long way in building successful recruitment businesses.

Through the years With both companies placing an emphasis on innovation and forward thinking, Pertemps were one of ISV’s first partners to adopt a fully online delivery platform. The partnership strengthened with the initial upgrade to online, with Pertemps’

In numbers • 20 years working together. • Nearly 40,000 tests every year. • Four major platform upgrades and development partnerships. • Over 150 branches with access to candidate testing.

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WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE INVOLVED IN THE CHALLENGE? Contact Josh Hannagan at josh.hannagan@recruiter.co.uk

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12/09/2017 13/09/2017 09:28 10:24

CO M M U N I T Y

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

From abseiling off strange structures to cycling from one end of the country to the other, you’ve been busy outside recruiting…

£1,577 WAS RAISED IN AID OF ACTION FOR KIDS

CLASS PEOPLE TAKE ACTION AGAINST CANCER VIA  Employees at education recruitment agency Class People spent the summer fundraising in aid of Action for Charity: Women V Cancer. Staff held a variety of events throughout August to help raise funds for the charity, from bake sales and bike rides to The Cotswolds Creative Market. The events raised £989 for Women V Cancer.

The triumphant – and rather relieved – Rutherford Briant Recruitment team

TW I TT E R

RUTHERFORD BRIANT TEAM DARE TO DANGLE FOR CHARITY VIA  Savannah Group’s Tony Simpson (centre) rode the entire distance

The team at Rutherford Briant Recruitment dared to dangle off The ArcelorMittal Orbit at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park by the London Stadium, in aid of Action for Kids. The team all survived abseiling down the giant helter-skelter and have currently raised over £1,577 for the charity.

AMORIA BOND TRUST COMPLETES HOUSING PLEDGE VIA 

Gattaca Careers @GattacaCareers Sep 6 Replying to @tonygoodwin @RecruiterMag @AntalNetwork Feeling nervous @TonyGoodwin? Brian is trained and ready to go! #BackBrian #greatnorthrun @AntalNetwork @RecruiterMag

The Amoria Bond Charitable Trust has honoured its pledge to build 100 new homes for the people of Las Laderas, Peru. A voluntary team of Amoria Bond staff travelled to Peru to undertake the final leg of home building, working alongside local workers from charity Project Peru charity, local builders and members of the Las Laderas community. This was the third such employee trip Amoria Bond has made over the past six years.

SAVANNAH GROUP COMPLETES LEJOG CYCLE RIDE FOR CHARITY VIA  Staff from global executive search and interim management recruiter Savannah Group cycled just over 1,000 miles from Lands End to John O’Groats (LEJOG) to raise money and awareness for Macmillan, Breast Cancer Now and the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. Tony Simpson, a partner in Savannah’s Media Sport & Entertainment practice, organised the ride to raise money as a ‘thank you’ for the treatment given to a family member. Simpson cycled the entire length of LEJOG, with other Savannah employees supporting him along various sections along the way.

James Staunton @Staunton_James Sep 6 Enjoyed an evening on @Stad_Amsterdam with @RecruiterMag scribe/running buff @shaper13wctweet last night. Many glasses of networking...

 @RecruiterMag  instagram.com/recruitermagazine/  recruitermagazine.tumblr.com/

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E CAREERS CO M M UNITY

The Workplace BY GUY HAYWARD

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strategies and the increasing difficulties of differentiation, a fully invested marketing team is now integral to the infrastructure we provide our people. As it becomes an extension to sales, there’s a real need for marketing to inﬂuence sales – not the other way around. I was once told that you should spend 2% of your net fee income on marketing, and that one person can look after it all. Clearly, this is no longer the case. Companies that have taken full advantage of social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have thrived in the modern market. Just look at Innocent, which made just being seen with their product as important as the juice itself when it curated tailored content for all platforms. Or Dogs Trust, whose ‘Dogs at Polling Stations’ hashtag was trending higher on general election voting day than the political parties themselves. And look at the innovation shown by engineering recruitment company Fircroft, which won this year’s Marketing Team of the Year at the Recruiter Awards – there’s a business that recognises the importance of its approach, as indeed do the major players. LinkedIn as a platform has revolutionised the way recruiters work, with our employees coming to understand the beneﬁts of creating their own personal brand – something they can

“There’s a real need for marketing to inﬂuence sales – not the other way around” do only with the help of a support team. Allowing more interaction with our customers, marketers can feed us information on their likes, dislikes, views and behaviours, so we can avoid sending potential candidates and clients irritating emails about banking when they’re actually in retail. We know the power of building an employer brand and the impact it has on attracting talent and building our businesses – although who really sees this through? The story that research tells us time and time again is that to be successful, marketing should be 80% original content – not possible without the help of our marketing wizards. The

↗

WHY ARE BUSINESS CARDS still used, and why does this outdated form of marketing still exist, along with branded tea mugs? This confuses me. When I trademarked my approach to workplace engagement, it was because of my strong belief that for our people to succeed, they need four things: the promise of professional development; a choice of benefits and rewards; an engaging working environment; and, most importantly, the tools to be able to do a great job. While people are excited by the idea of rewards, promotions and having fun, what is still being sidelined is giving our people the tools to succeed. The latest software, state-of-the-art IT infrastructure, the newest phone systems, contractor care teams, a client-facing finance director – nobody can deny their necessity, yet as an industry we’re inconsistent in our emotional and financial investment in making them happen. As for marketing, it’s something we often still don’t attach enough importance to. This is surprising, when the modern workplace demands a significant investment in our brand, both from a clientcandidate perspective and in our employer brand to attract talent. Whereas once marketing was the black sheep in the recruitment family, with the rise of social media

GUY HAYWARD – redefining the modern workplace CEO, Goodman Masson

days of searching through random applicable articles to post should be gone. Sophistication in using a brand to support our people and inﬂuence what they do should be an essential ingredient in building a successful sales operation. So with new companies such as Brighter Box and Recruiting Social tapping into the younger generation’s use of social media, it’s time to innovate and fully embrace the power of marketing.

OCTOBER 2017

14/09/2017 12:16

CO M M U N I T Y

CAREERS

It’s time to change the way you fish

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

BY TARA LESCOTT

↗ TARA LESCOTT is managing director of recruitment-torecruitment agency Recruiter Republic

I M AG E | I STO C K

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TIMES HAVE CHANGED. TODAY, CANDIDATES AND CLIENTS BEHAVE LIKE CONSUMERS. So why are so many recruitment agencies still using ‘client’ and ‘candidate’ speak and talking only about jobs? Such conversations are one-dimensional, and are ever less effective. The brands that are taking marketshare right now are the ones that gain candidate and client exclusivity. And we all know that the holy grail of exclusivity comes when you are ahead of the curve and take control before they have committed to alternative courses of action. If you want to manage the most lucrative and attractive accounts and ring-fence the best candidates, you have to win the hearts and minds of clients and candidates before they make a decision to hire or move. Which is why you can’t just be talking about jobs – it’s too late by then. If your marketing and

“You have to win the hearts and minds of clients and candidates before they make a decision to hire or move” attraction strategies – whether you’re a consultant at a desk or the leader of a business – still centre on job boards and pushing out job-related posts via social media, you will only be ﬁshing in the same pond as everyone else – ﬁghting over the same prized people. Add value If you want the best clients and candidates, your marketing strategies must change and evolve. This process doesn’t have to be complicated. Think back to the last post from a well-known brand that you engaged with. It’s likely that it wasn’t a direct email/ advert selling a product. It was probably a ‘how to’ video or a free report or a competition or a video guide. It was something that added value, that made you spend time with the brand and build rapport and trust. And guess what? We all like doing business with people we know, like and trust.

So my challenge to you is this: go window-shopping around your business, team or desk. Look at what you do through the eyes of a candidate or client. Look online, on Google, look at your Facebook or Instagram page, and your LinkedIn company page. Are you talking to your audience on a personal level? Are you offering solutions to their pain or just talking about how great you are? How does your marketing make you feel as the candidate or client? What are you inspired to do? Does it make you like the brand? Do you trust the brand based on what you see? Does it feel personal to you? Now go and review the same places for a consumer brand that you know and like – can you see the difference? Its marketing focuses on you as a consumer, not the company; it’s rarely a direct advert to buy something. It inspires a feeling, it builds trust and rapport, and it adds value – which buys loyalty. So decide who your ideal clients and candidates are. Talk to them on a personal level, show you understand their pain, and give immediate value by offering solutions that help them while you build trust and rapport. Very soon, you will no longer be fishing in the same pool as everyone else. You’ll be fishing in your own private lake. Happy fishing. ●

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14/09/2017 12:17

A DV E RTO RIA L

Legislation Brought to you by

DATA PROTECTION – WHEN CONSENT IS NOT ENOUGH Recruiters have always known that they need to comply with data protection legislation and most have arrangements set up for obtaining consent. However, under the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), the law in this area will change on 25th May 2018. The regulations follow a lengthy review by the EU that looked at data misuse, particularly resulting from technology innovation.

Theresa Mimnagh Associate Director, Lawspeed

Is consent finished? The current method, of obtaining tick box consent to process individuals’ personal data, is typically on a nonspecific basis, i.e. “you consent to our use of your data”. However, under the new, tightened regulations, which are set to tackle the widespread abuse of consent for commercial gain, this kind of ‘blanket’ consent can no longer be relied upon. A key requirement of the GDPR is transparency. Accordingly, any ‘consent’ to use personal data must be given ‘freely’, ‘for a specific purpose’ and ‘on a fully informed basis’; this will require detailed specific information, for example setting out to whom personal data will be disclosed. Here lies an immediate problem. In practice, whilst a few recruiters may only have one or two clients, most will not at the registration stage be able to name all the potential recipients to whom the data may be disclosed. Furthermore, candidates seeking work may feel pressured to give consent in any form (so they can get the agency to start finding work), and thus it may not be given ‘freely’. Even if consent is obtained under the rules, the candidate can withdraw that consent at any time. This could lead to a conflict. For example, even where a candidate withdraws consent, you may still be obliged to keep some data to comply with legislation. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) suggests that if a candidate’s data could be processed without his or her consent, it would be ‘misleading and inherently unfair’ to rely upon consent in the first place.

↗ THERESA MIMNAGH Associate Director, Lawspeed

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Although there may be a few circumstances where relying upon explicit, informed consent may still be appropriate or indeed necessary (for example, when processing sensitive data), as a general rule recruiters will no longer be able to rely on consent as a justification for processing candidates’ data from 25th May 2018. Indeed, attempts to obtain consent as before may result in significant breaches of the GDPR, which contain some harsh financial penalties.

Looking ahead These rules will apply to existing personal data as at 25th May 2018 and to data obtained thereafter. To comply, recruiters must identify the most appropriate basis for processing a candidate’s data and communicate this to the candidate. One permitted basis for processing data is compliance with legal obligations. Thus, as a very simple example, a recruitment business which has to comply with the agency Conduct Regulations when providing work finding services should satisfy the ‘compliance with legal obligations’ basis for retaining personal data on identity, provided that it informs the candidate appropriately. However, the same business cannot use the same basis to retain data which it intends to sell to a third party for profit. Data sharing with third parties is permitted where suitably disclosed, but this is an area where recruiters should exercise extreme caution. Whilst there are severe financial penalties for non-compliance, perhaps a greater risk may be reputational damage, as compliance in this area is set to become a key point for both hirers and candidates. Given increased rights for candidates and new obligations on ‘controllers’, as well as application to historical, current and new personal data, it is essential that recruitment businesses fully understand the practical implications and address the requirements at an early stage. To assist, Lawspeed is holding seminars on 10th and 12th October and will be running a series of recruitment specific workshops throughout the remainder of 2017 and early 2018. For more information, please call Lawspeed on 01273 236236 (quoting Recruiter) or email us at info@Lawspeed.com

OCTOBER 2017

13/09/2017 11:02 10:25 08/09/2017

CO M M U N I T Y

BUSINESS ADVICE

ASK THE EXPERT Q: I spend all my time on internal recruitment and it’s hurting the business. How can I free up the time? The time-consuming nature of internal recruitment can quickly become a stumbling block for growing companies but cutting corners will backﬁre. Investing in an internal recruiter, even if you only hire 3-4 people each year, is often cost-positive much earlier than you expect and is likely to free you up to improve the business and, potentially, to bill more yourself. When running a recruitment business, on average I interviewed 17 people per hire. Consequently, without someone to develop and maintain the company’s talent pipeline, and manage the recruitment process, I wouldn’t have had time to manage the business.

Alex Arnot The SME Coach ● pure recruiter: someone to reduce admin, minimising your involvement with market mapping, talent pipelining, candidate vetting and interview organisation? ● strategic recruiter: a more experienced internal recruiter to help develop and reﬁne your hiring plan? Further to the admin they can help determine the business’s current and future skills needs, identify talent bottlenecks and reﬁne your recruitment process. ● head of talent/HR: combining recruitment and HR roles creating a holistic approach to the company’s talent management? Beyond overseeing recruitment, this individual’s responsibilities might include developing consultants, organising training, mentoring the senior management team and developing the company culture, thereby reducing staff turnover.

Internal recruitment is a long-term game Efficient long-term growth requires planned rather than reactive recruitment. Planning will make you more efficient by: ● filling more senior roles internally. Hiring well enables you to develop more talent internally ● reducing staff turnover. A hiring plan gives employees a career path, reducing resignations ● ensuring a full talent pipeline. Nurturing potential employees to get the best when you need them. Until you prioritise your recruitment strategy you will be firefighting and it will compromise your growth. Create a three-year business plan with a hiring plan and cashflow predictions.

Your next hire

All recruitment firms fish in the same pool and your recruitment process is the most effective way to differentiate yourself. Success requires regular (ie. monthly) contact with everyone in your talent pipeline further to being responsive, flexible and/or decisive when opportunities arise. Do you really have the time to run the business and do all of that?

↗

An internal recruitment manager will get you on the front foot and can take many forms: ● Their background: internal recruiters can come from a training, in-house recruitment or HR background. ● Full-time or part-time: in addition to cost savings, the under-exploited pool of ﬂexible-working talent means part-time roles are often easiest to ﬁll. The person can work from home, further reducing costs. ● Scope of the role: a job description will clarify the business’ current needs and how the role could evolve. Consider if you want a:

Why an internal recruiter does more than save you time

ALEX ARNOT is non-executive director to more than 25 recruitment companies.

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E EMPLOYABILITY CO M M UNITY

WRITTEN IN STONE? BY COLIN COTTELL

software tool developed by a businessman with dyslexia is helping to level the playing field for people with a range of disabilities, who are looking for employment. Recite Me was first developed by Ross Linnett back in 2004 after he was diagnosed with dyslexia on leaving university. The software was developed by Arch, a digital agency founded by Linnett, based in the North-East. Already used by clients from charities and universities, airports and transport companies to name but a few organisations, the software’s capacity to improve accessibility to the jobs market for people with a range of barriers to employment is only now being recognised. The software has been specifically designed to enhance the digital experience of people with dyslexia, those with a mild visual impairment and those who have problems reading English because, for example, it is their second language. According to the British Dyslexia Association, one in 10 people in the UK are dyslexic, while the Royal National Institute for the Blind says around 1.6m people have sight loss but are not registered blind or partially sighted. Both groups are part of the UK’s disability employment gap. The ageing UK population, combined with more and more of the candidate experience migrating online, highlights the software’s potential to make a difference. Keith Moutter, a former recruiter who now works as a sales executive for Recite Me, says the software has the capability to level the playing field for these individuals, who in his experience are often discriminated against in the labour market. “The

frustrating thing is that when people hear the words dyslexia or visual impairment they feel they’re a second-grade candidate. It shocks me in this day and age they would class them in this way,” says Moutter. Morgan Lobb, founder of diversity & inclusion job board Vercida.com, formerly known as Diversity Jobs, says that from the launch of Vercida.com three months ago, a priority for its website was to be enabled for Recite Me. “As a person with dyslexia I find it useful, and see the importance of it,” says Lobb. The facility, whereby users can highlight content which is then played back to them audibly, is particularly valuable for those who find reading content online troublesome. “Web pages in recruitment are very one-dimensional. And while job specs and company profiles have imagery, they don’t do anything to bring it alive. By adding sound you are adding another dimension to stimulate your audience,” says Lobb.

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CO M M U N I T Y

EMPLOYABILITY

According to Recite Me, one of the most popular features is downloading the screen content into an audio file that can then be played back later. Translating web content into over 100 foreign languages is also a widely-used feature, and has the potential to help those for whom reading a website in English is difficult, if it is not their first language. “Their reading of English might not be as good as their speaking or their understanding of spoken English, so it reaffirms they are getting the correct information they are seeing on screen,” says Lobb. However, the software also allows users to customise the appearance of websites. “It provides them with a more interactive and better experience,” he adds. Not only can users change the background colour, they can also alter the font to make it more userfriendly and easier to read. One option is the Open Dyslexia font, which applies weighting to the bottom of letters, thereby stopping them from floating and spinning around, something that is a real problem for people with dyslexia. The ability to space characters horizontally also makes reading content easier for these users.

“One in 10 people have dyslexia to some degree”

“Their reading of English might not be as good as their speaking or their understanding”

“One in 10 people have dyslexia to some degree, so if we can make our site more accessible to even 1% more people then we are providing them a service,” Lobb says. “By not having it you are limiting the way you present information on the internet.” Julie Storey director of marketing recruiter Network Marketing, which added the Recite Me functionality to its website earlier this summer, says: “The software has only been on our site for a few months so it’s too early to measure the impact. The point of adding systems like this is to remove barriers to accessing information for as many people as possible. That has to be a good thing, especially in marketing recruitment where creative thinking and passion are some of the key skills our clients are searching for and a disability isn’t a barrier to those skills.” With many organisations struggling to ﬁnd the talent they need, not being able to get your message across to potential candidates through their website can only mean one thing – a limited talent pool. Recite Me can ensure this no longer happens.

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E CAREERS CO M M UNITY

‘It’s vital to ﬁnd your “tribe”. These guys ys are my tribe – we’re like a work family’ y’ MY BRILLIANT RECRUITMENT CAREER What was your earliest dream job?

What was your first job in recruitment and how did you come into it? I was 20, just out of university, and took a temp job working in Capita’s property and infrastructure recruitment team in London. I was commuting about two hours each way and grafted hard to show I wanted it. By month two I was the team’s top performer. I had a call from the division’s CEO, asking me whether I wanted to come and work for her directly.

What do you love most about your current role? Happy hour. No, I’m joking. Probably the people I work with. It’s the ﬁrst time I’ve worked with people I genuinely like outside of work. It’s

↗

Big cat vet – I watched The Lion King when I was one or two – until I realised I’d have to study for about seven years. It was then not so appealing.

HANNAH THOMSON, senior associate and head of business development, Ashmore Stark

Hannah Thomson vital to ﬁnd your ‘tribe’. These guys are my tribe – we’re like a work ‘family’.

Laugh or cry, what did your most memorable candidate make you want to do and why?

Who is your role model – in general life or in recruitment?

I had a candidate, who at the end of the interview, rather than ask any questions relevant to the job, asked how long it would take them to get to work every day. The interviewer said: “I don’t know where you live, so I can’t tell you.” The candidate said: “That’s probably going to make a difference – maybe I should have a look into that” and the interviewer said “Maybe you should”...

In life, it’s my mum. I know that’s clichéd, but it’s true. She started her business when I was four and sold it in 2012. I watched her make sacriﬁces that most mums couldn’t or wouldn’t do. I learn something from her every day. In recruitment, it’s my boss Greg [managing director of Ashmore Stark]. He’s a fantastic mentor, and probably the ﬁrst manager I’ve had about whom I’ve thought ‘wow, there is so much I can learn from you’.

What’s your top job to fill at the moment? A partnerships director role for a ﬁntech ﬁrm that’s just about to do its Series A funding.

What’s your signature dish? I’m a notoriously awful cook. The only thing I can cook is spaghetti bolognese, but I cook it really well.

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What’s the best or worst interview question you’ve ever heard? ‘How many corner shops are there in England?’ One of my candidates was asked that in my previous role at Capita.

What would you regard as your theme tune? Probably whatever Greg is singing at any one time. He has this habit of getting songs stuck in his head and then singing them all day, so that becomes our theme tune.

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E RECRUITMENT WWW. RE CRUITE R .CO.UK

View the latest jobs at jobs.recruiter.co.uk To place your advertisement E: recruiterjobs@redactive.co.uk or T: 020 7880 7621

Recruitment Consultant Temps & Perm commissions will bring OTE in excess of £40k Cambridge Due to continued growth we're seeking another Recruitment Professional to join our team. Polytec Personnel is a long established, Cambridge based Recruitment Agency specialising in the Engineering and Scientific sectors. Most of our clients are in the local area, thriving in the fast paced hi-tech & bio-tech cluster that Cambridge and the surrounding area has become. Demand for skilled staff is at record levels and using our local knowledge and huge database we select staff for both Temporary & Permanent positions. If you're interested in sharing our success, please send us your CV with a covering letter to consult@polytec.co.uk explaining why you feel you would be a great fit for our team.

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High-End Financial Executive Search Consultant Location: Central London Salary: £22,000 - £25,000 (OTE £40K+) Start Date: ASAP London's longest standing High End Executive Search firm that specialises in placing top level executives into Tier 1 Investment Banks around the world. After experiencing rapid growth in revenues over the past 3 years, their client base has grown to include world-renowned companies such as Citigroup, J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley. With offices in Central London, New York and Singapore you will be exposed to global markets and have the opportunity to travel internationally within the firm. You will receive a fantastic starting salary of anywhere between £22k - £25k with a first year OTE of £35k. From day one you will be placed on an outstanding training program to help you progress through the business very quickly. Graduate Fasttrack recruit across the UK into London and all major regions. To find out more about Graduate Fasttrack and what opportunities we are recruiting for, either apply to one of our adverts on Recruiter Jobs (http://jobs.recruiter.co.uk), or give us a call on 0203 621 8100 to chat through your profile.

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OCTOBER 2017

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View the latest jobs at jobs.recruiter.co.uk To place your advertisement E: jude.rosset@redactive.co.uk or T: 020 7880 7621

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Autonet Insurance Services, a digitally focused insurance broker specialising in van, car and small business insurance, has appointed Trasie Woolley as director of HR. Woolley was previously HR director of Hyperion Insurance Group, where she worked on group integration projects and unifying group-wide beneﬁts involving the launch of an employee forum following the group’s acquisition of insurance broker RK Harrison. She has also held several HR director roles at global engineering ﬁrms, including Black & Veatch and MWH Global. In her new role she will be responsible for ensuring that the business’s HR and learning & development teams support the broker’s next phase of growth.

ASCENDANT: The multi-sector recruiter has promoted David Forbes from divisional manager to operations manager for both its Milton Keynes and Northampton offices.

ATHONA: Jackie Cloake joins the healthcare recruiter as business manager for AHP (allied health professionals) and international appointments.

CAPITA: The business outsourcing provider’s group ﬁnance director Nick Greatorex has been appointed interim CEO following Andy Parker’s exit on 15 September. Greatorex will continue with his responsibilities as group FD.

DRIVER HIRE: The recruitment franchise welcomes Marc Harrison as the new owner of its Carlisle office. Previously, Harrison was a member of the ﬁrm’s head office franchise support team.

EAMES PARTNERSHIP: The global executive search and consulting business has made Peter Jackson a partner, focusing on providing executive search and consulting services to the senior technology, operations and change markets.

ENTELO:

COOPER LOMAZ: The East Anglian recruitment company has promoted commercial director Simon Brown to managing director. 48 RECRUITER

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The recruitment software provider has appointed Chris Grimes to the newly created role of head of recruitment marketing relations. Grimes will lead strategic sales and marketing efforts to forge new agency alliances.

ETONWOOD: The staffing specialist

recruiting infrastructure technologists within ﬁnancial markets has appointed Ash Holmes as operations director.

FRANKLIN FITCH: The IT infrastructure specialist recruitment consultancy has welcomed Alex Garst as a principal consultant in its Frankfurt team in Germany.

GREEN PARK: The executive search ﬁrm has appointed Nick Scott as director within its retail and consumer practice.

HEIDRICK & STRUGGLES: The global executive search ﬁrm has appointed Gustavo Alba as partner in the global and technology services practice in its New York office.

IRCO KSA: Sean Thomas has been made head of HR by the property developer.

MERIDIAN BUSINESS SUPPORT: The multi-sector recruiter has promoted Derek Skelton, MD of its industrial division, to CEO.

Email people moves for use online and in print, including a short

14/09/2017 14:42

Ashling O’Connor as a partner leading its media, content and digital practice in EMEA.

STHREE:

INSTITUTE OF DIRECTORS: Therese Liddle, CEO of Newcastle-headquartered recruiter NRG, has succeeded David Cliff, MD of business consultancy and coaching business Gedanken, as the professional institute’s vicechairman for the North-East.

ODGERS INTERIM: The interim management provider has hired Jes Ladva to lead its local government practice. Current head of the practice and partner Bambos Eracleous will now head up Odgers Interim’s sports, media and gaming division.

Barrie Brien joins the international specialist STEM staffing business as a non-executive director and member of its remuneration, audit and nomination committees, with immediate effect.

CONTACTS

VOLCANIC:

Contributing writer Sue Weekes Production editor Vanessa Townsend

The recruitment technology business welcomes three new members to the team to meet increasing demand for its GDPR-compliant websites. Former national sales manager at recruitment marketing company 4MAT, Tom Ross joins as enterprise sales director. Matt Roberts joins the team as sales consultant from job board CareerBuilder and sales executive Dan Jarvis joins from recruitment consultants Sewell Wallis.

YOUR NEXT MOVE A selection of vacancies from recruiter.co.uk

PEDERSEN & PARTNERS: The international executive search ﬁrm welcomes Brant Burke as principal in its Asia Paciﬁc industrial practice group, based in Hong Kong.

PONTOON: The global talent solutions provider has appointed Corinne Ripoche Van Hecke as president.

SRI: The sports, media and entertainment staffing specialist has welcomed

Recruiter Republic Divisional manager/director recruitment London £50k-£70k + bonus + bens Polytec Personnel Recruitment consultant Cambridge £40k OTE Fresh Partnership Senior recruitment consultant Bury, Greater Manchester Engineering £competitive salary

EDITORIAL +44 (0)20 7880 7606 Editor DeeDee Doke deedee.doke@recruiter.co.uk

RECRUITMENT ADVERTISING +44 (0)20 7880 7556 Recruitment sales manager Emma Phillips

Reporters Colin Cottell, Graham Simons

emma.phillips@redactive.co.uk

colin.cottell@recruiter.co.uk graham.simons@recruiter.co.uk

PRODUCTION +44 (0)20 7880 6209 Production executive Rachel Young

vanessa.townsend@recruiter.co.uk

Designer Craig Bowyer Picture editor Claire Echavarry ADVERTISING +44 (0)20 7880 6220 Advertising account manager Josh Hannagan josh.hannagan@recruiter.co.uk

+44 (0)20 7324 2762 Senior sales executive Will Hunter

rachel.young@redactive.co.uk

PUBLISHING +44 (0)20 7880 8547 Publishing director Aaron Nicholls aaron.nicholls@redactive.co.uk

RECRUITER AWARDS/ INVESTING IN TALENT AWARDS +44 (0)20 7324 2771 Events eventsteam@redactive.co.uk

william.hunter@recruiter.co.uk

CIRCULATION and SUBSCRIPTIONS Recruiter is the leading magazine for recruitment and resourcing professionals. To ensure each issue of Recruiter magazine is delivered to your desk or door, subscribe now at https://subs. recruiter.co.uk/subscribe. Annual subscription rate for 12 issues: £35 UK; £45 Europe and £50 Rest of the world • Recruiter is also available to people who meet our terms of control: http://bit. ly/RecruiterCC • To purchase reprints or multiple copies, or any other enquiries, please contact mysidekick@recruiter.co.uk or +44 (0)20 8950 9117 CONTRIBUTIONS Contributions are invited, but when not accepted will be returned only if accompanied by a fully stamped and addressed envelope. Articles should be emailed. No responsibility can be taken for drawings, photographs or literary contributions during delivery, transmission or in the editor’s hands. © 2017 Redactive Media Group. All rights reserved. This publication (and any part thereof) may not be reproduced, transmitted or stored in print or electronic format (including but not limited to any online service, any database or any part of the internet) or in any other format in any media whatsoever, without the prior written permission of Redactive Media Group. Redactive Media Group accepts no liability for the accuracy of the contents or any opinions expressed herein. The publishers cannot accept liability for any loss arising from the late appearance or non-publication of any advertisement for any reason whatsoever. ISSN 1475-7478

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14/09/2017 14:42

E THE LAST WORD CO M M UNITY

Alan Furley Firms nearing a headcount of 40 need to guard their values

I’m less than two years away from hitting my 40th birthday. It’s a big one, that, and presents challenges that – for all our sakes – I won’t over-share. But 40 is a big number for recruiters, too. When it comes up, it tends to cause problems. It seems a headcount of 40 is when a ﬁrm’s sparkle begins to fade. It’s when the ﬁrm’s brightest and best start looking for somewhere else to ply their trade. I’m not the only one to notice this phenomenon. Deloitte research shows that staff churn rates increase sharply as fee incomes rise into the £2m-£10m zone. And while we have around 24,000 agencies in the UK, 87% of them have incomes of less than £10m. It seems that growth isn’t as simple as growing.

Communication gap The main issue at the 40-staff level is the cavernous gap that will have grown up between a company’s directors and its employees – particularly new starters. As my business grew beyond 20 staff, I brought in team leaders, an internal recruiter and a performance

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coach. For a while, it was bliss not to get the call from a gravel-voiced trainee calling in sick. But that call might have made me realise that trainee had not been getting the support she needed in her challenging ﬁrst weeks. Some directors promote their top billers. It might seem natural, since they’re great at generating revenue. But not all ﬁrms are able to develop the future superstars – particularly in line with the values of the business.

Risk to values It’s those values – which you worked so hard to instill – that get washed away by poorly behaving top billers. They get the power they’ve always wanted, but that everyone else has been fearing. Suddenly, all that talent in the team is a sitting duck for the new kid to shoot at. Maybe, if I weren’t terrible at golf, I’d be playing the role

of the boss who spends Monday to Thursday practicing his swing, then drops in to shout at people who are having a bad week, before taking his favourites out for an early Friday pint. I don’t play golf. And, as ISL is only just approaching 35 people, I can’t tell you how we’ve pushed on from 40 staff, either. But we’re alert to the problem, and working on the basis that prevention is better than cure. These are some of the measures that can help: ● Gauge the temperature: I can’t have one-to-one sessions with everyone, every week. But I can sit down with a good spread each month, to ‘gauge the temperature’.

Your values can get washed away by poorly behaving top billers

ALAN FURLEY is director at ISL Recruitment

● Survey employees: A survey on the key issues can provide rich data to help with decisions. It might also give some people a safe environment to voice their real concerns. ● Share the vision: When I still had my name on the sales leaderboard and a staff of 15, it was a lot easier to sell my vision. At a staff level of 40, it’s not so easy. Speculation becomes gossip, and gossip costs faith. So you need to get everyone together to share the vision. As in life generally, what happens when you’re 40 frequently depends on the plans you make when you’re 25. Our strategy is sharing the vision, even if we’re not constantly there. I’ll let you know how we get on. ●

OCTOBER 2017

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