Recruiter February 2014

February 2014

www.recruiter.co.uk

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE FOR RECRUITMENT AND RESOURCING PROFESSIONALS

andSoMe Putting g a rather more social face on recruitment advertising and employee engagement

GOING MOBILE? SEE P36

REVEALED: THE REVIVAL OF RESEARCH Keeping the conversation going despite all the technological noise

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IN-HOUSE REWARDS

THE CHALLENGE

How to incentivise your recruitment team to consistently produce the right results

Video Arts plays a starring role in Lloyds Register — Marine’s major recruitment campaign

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Contents

Music historians know that the expression ‘Going mobile’ predates the widespread consumer use of mobile phones, and can probably be traced to The Who’s eponymous 1971 song. The song, written

by The Who’s Pete Townshend, was said to have been about “celebrating the joys of having a mobile home and being able to travel the highways at will”.

Today, going mobile is about travelling the information highway at will and helping others — like job candidates — to do the same. Our Smart Resourcing special supplement focuses on just that. While many organisations have been slow to adopt mobile in their recruitment programmes, others like Marriott International, Morrisons and Thomas Cook are looking to take the candidate world by storm by simply helping them to use their communication tool of choice to get in front of employers of choice. These companies offer some highly instructional case studies of getting mobile to work for them.

Standing on Recruiter’s Soap Box this month is Gavin Jones of Energize Recruitment Solutions, who makes a strong case for putting service levels at the forefront of recruiting standards. Gavin argues that his company’s commitment to great service is “the natural evolution for recruitment”. Who could disagree? See Gavin’s manifesto for making our industry and profession better (p19), and consider just how much sense he’s making there.

And speaking of recruiting standards: be sure to see our March issue for the shortlist of our Recruiter Awards for Excellence 2014!

D D D k Editor DeeDee Doke,

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NEWS 5

Don’t touch our employer brand say resourcers In-house resourcing heads don’t want to relinquish brand control to RPOs

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Diversity with a public face Emirati grads in demand UAE employers are keen on snapping up internationally experienced future leaders

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FEATURES 28 COVER STORY Manda Crowder and Mark Rice, co-founders of andSoMe 33 Research comes of age Anticipating future skill needs and building a talent pipeline are key to research 36 Special supplement:

Smart Resourcing

Shining lights of staffing

Mobile career sites are no longer a luxury but a musthave for employers

Staffline and Impellam have outperformed their peers despite the recession 8 Tech & tools 10 Special report: Get the inside track on developers’ thinking. Stack Overflow highlights its latest survey findings

ANALYSIS 14 Sector Analysis Charity & Third Sector 17 Global Spotlight on Mexico 23 Insight Incentivising internal recruiting staff

REGULARS 13 On tumblr this month 19 Interaction

Soapbox: Gavin Jones Ricky Martin Soundbites 24 The Challenge 19 19 21

Lloyds Register and Video Arts 46 Movers & Shakers Industry moves 50 Bloggers with Bite:

Jenny Rollinson

WHO’S HIRING?

Scan here to get your own copy of Recruiter

36

47 Recruiter Republic 48 Call Centre Associates,

Calverton Finance, Consort Group 49 Integra

EDITORIAL Editor: DeeDee Doke T: +44 (0)20 7880 7601 deedee.doke@recruiter.co.uk Senior reporter: Colin Cottell T: +44 (0)20 7880 7603 colin.cottell@recruiter.co.uk Reporter: Matt Bodimeade T: +44 (0)20 7880 7606 matt.bodimeade@recruiter.co.uk Contributing writers: Sam Burne James, Christopher Goodfellow, Sam Sachdeva, Sue Weekes Production editor: Vanessa Townsend T: +44 (0)20 7880 7602 vanessa.townsend@recruiter.co.uk Art editor: Adrian Taylor ADVERTISING Business development manager: Tom Culley T: +44 (0)20 7880 7607 tom.culley@recruiter.co.uk Display sales executive: Jasmine Pengelly T: +44 (0)20 7880 6205 jasmine.pengelly@recruiter. co.uk Recruitment advertising: Amalia Zafeiratou +44 (0)20 7880 7608 amalia@redactive.co.uk Fax +44 (0)20 7880 7553 PRODUCTION Deputy production manager: Kieran Tobin T: +44 (0)20 7880 6240 kieran.tobin@redactive.co.uk PUBLISHING Publishing director: Anne Sadler T: +44 (0)20 7880 6213 anne.sadler@redactive.co.uk RECRUITER AWARDS Events: Juliette Bond T: +44 (0)20 7324 2771 juliette. bond@redactive.co.uk CIRCULATION and SUBSCRIPTIONS To receive a regular copy of Recruiter, the leading magazine for recruitment and resourcing professionals, telephone +44 (0)20 8950 9117 or email recruiter@abacusemedia.com • Recruiter is also available to people who do not meet our terms of control: Annual subscription rate for 12 issues: £29.99 UK £35 Europe and Rest of the World • To purchase reprints or multiple copies of the magazine, contact Ryan Hadden T: +44 (0)20 7880 7618 ryan.hadden@redactive.co.uk

Total average net circulation between 1 July 2012 & 30 June 2013 – 19,289. Recruiter is also sent to all REC members

Redactive Media Group 17-18 Britton Street London EC1M 5TP

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. © 2014 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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START-UP SUCCESS: WHY NOW IS THE TIME TO BE YOUR OWN BOSS Within just one month, over 35,000 companies have been set up in the UK (StartUp Britain, January 2014). The backbone of the UK economy has been and still is the SME market. In 2013 the FSB released İgures showing that 99.9% of all privately owned companies in the UK are SME’s. Without small businesses the UK’s outlook would not be so rosy. What’s needed now is for the next generation of entrepreneurs to take the step into business ownership – so isn’t it time the recruitment sector started to catch up?

When you think about your relationship with work, how often do you consider being your own boss? The recession has hit hard and whilst being made redundant can be unfavourable, it can also force people to make life-changing decisions that would otherwise be ‘stuck in a

rut’. Some choose to start their own business, and for many they have found increased success, money and happiness.

However for most, starting your own business can sound daunting and costly. Not so – through our many years of experience we have learnt that you need a solid plan along with the motivation, passion and the willingness to succeed, and being positive helps!

There has never been a better time to start-up a business on your own.

With the advent of social media and home-based working, gone are the days when you needed a large budget to launch your business and an ofİce that will drain your salary of İrst year earnings! It’s easier than ever to tell people you’re here and to deliver the quality service that your clients want.

Across the country recruiters are questioning the standard recruitment model, and in the buzz of the upturn they want a greater share in the rewards of their hard work. High billing recruitment consultants deserve a more equitable share of the proİts, and the industry is always looking for more innovative ways to work.

100 years’ collective recruitment experience. Horizon RCS provides a 360 degree support facility that cannot be matched by other recruitment incubator companies.

Horizon RCS offers recruiters the opportunity to break free and start their own successful company without needing to provide any initial capital, bypassing the huge İnancial burdens placed on recruitment start-ups.

Janet De-Havilland, Managing Director of Horizon RCS says; “Having worked in the Recruitment Industry for over 21 years which includes start-ups and driving early stage environments; there is no better time for experienced recruiters to break out on their own. Horizon RCS is the ideal partner who will provide everything you need to get started, with no upfront costs.”

Horizon RCS is the only recruitment incubator that can proudly boast of

providing all of the expertise needed in-house. Futurelink Group has been in the business of supporting recruiters for over 18 years and with the launch of Horizon RCS, recruiters will have the opportunity to become part of the future evolution of the recruitment industry.

If this sounds of interest to you and you want to İnd out more about Horizon RCS can help, it’s easy – just contact Neil Arnett who will explain how to become your own boss.

Just think – work when you want, how you want, and take home more pay? Wouldn’t everyone want to start their own business today?

Contact: Neil Arnett on 01923 299660 Neil.Arnett@HorizonRCS.co.uk

With a shift in attitude towards start-ups, and the launch of Horizon RCS, going it alone is as simple as ABC. We are a revolutionary new entrant to the recruitment incubator market, working in partnership with Futurelink Group; a business with a rich history supporting recruiters, and a management team with over The Horizon team, from left: Janet De-Havilland, Neil Arnett, Chantall Bourne, Tiffany Cornwell and Adam Becker

@HorizonRCS /company/horizon-recruitment-consultancy-support

www.HorizonRCS.co.uk | 01923 299660

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DON’T TOUCH OUR BRAND, SAY IN-HOUSE RESOURCING LEADERS Most in-house resourcing leaders want to keep control of their employer brand and not relinquish its management to recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) organisations, a recent discussion hosted by the Work Group in conjunction with The Forum for In-house Recruitment Managers (The FIRM) revealed.

Benefits of owning the employer brand internally include greater alignment to the business, global consistency, better employer reputation, a long-term advantage over short-term gains, better ability to build talent pipelines and a better candidate experience, attendees suggested.

“No one touches our brand — it’s too valuable,” said Jenni Workman, resourcing delivery manager at the John Lewis Partnership.

About 60 senior in-house recruitment professionals attended the inaugural AM Forum event, also attended by Recruiter.

Attendees were invited to discuss which

recruitment services they would not want to outsource.

Speaker Chris Bones, a leading business educator and former Cadbury-Schweppes HR executive, warned the attendees against accepting “the tyranny of experts” when it comes to understanding and driving a social media strategy.

Bones said that too many HR professionals leave responsibility for defining interaction with their external communities, and the understanding of how to interact with them, with consultants.

Too often, Bones said, resourcing leaders walk away from conversations with their consultants not understanding either what they have been told or what is occurring

News

with their company’s social media. “They need to make themselves understandable to you,” he added.

If the internal recruiters do not understand the strategy and how to work with it, “you’re not going to be as successful”, Bones continued. “There is a challenge around employer brand,” he added.

While resourcing and recruitment leaders don’t have to actually conduct the interaction themselves, “it’s important you understand what they [the consultants] are doing to you”.

Work Group provides a variety of employee attraction, retention and development services.

DEEDEE DOKE deedee.doke@recruiter.co.uk

DIVERSITY WITH A PUBLIC FACE AS CIVIL SERVICE CASTS ITS NET WIDER

ARM ALIGNS TRAINING FUNCTION WITH TALENT

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Aligning the training and recruitment functions is the key to kitting out chip designer ARM with talent, according to Jennifer Duvalier, the company’s new executive vice president, people.

Just over four months into the role, Duvalier told Recruiter she is working to ensure talent strategy is at the centre of the business.

“Talent acquisition has been moved to sit within a broader, more strategic Talent Centre of Excellence. This enables us to take a holistic view, to align our talent sourcing and talent development activities,” explained Duvalier.

Jennifer Duvalier Before joining ARM, Duvalier was group people and culture director at marketing and communications services business UBM. At the moment, 127 positions are advertised at the Cambridge site, where the head office is based, and Duvalier says the company is going to hire “something in the same magnitude” of the 619 new starters they had in 2013.

THE CIVIL SERVICE is casting its net increasingly wide to recruit public servants from diverse backgrounds, engaging with schools and colleges to identify diverse talent at an early age.

Civil Service Fast Stream chief assessor and chief psychologist Phil Wilson spoke about identifying “great and diverse talent” at a breakfast discussion on the future of graduate recruitment, hosted by e-recruitment software provider WCN last month [January].

Wilson said the graduate talent management programme had a strong focus on attracting a wide range of candidates, and had improved its diversity levels considerably in recent years.

Over half of those in the Fast Stream programme were women, 13% were black and minority ethnic (BME), and 14% were disabled.

The programme targeted universities with a higher percentage of working-class students, and also worked with schools and colleges to engage with potential candidates from diverse backgrounds earlier in their lives.

“From 13 years old, kids are really getting involved in their career management — some of them are — and that’s what we’re trying to plug into.”

Wilson said talented candidates from more diverse backgrounds were easier to identify and support earlier in their lives, as high-ability students from a lower social class often “fell back” academically compared with low-ability students from a higher social class who had better support.

From a psychological standpoint, Wilson said stereotyping and FOR MORE NEWS AND unconscious biases against minority COMMENTS GO ONLINE candidates were important issues that needed to be considered by recruiters.

RECRUITER.CO.UK WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK

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SAM SACHDEVA

CHRISTOPHER GOODFELLOW

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News Events SourceCon 2014 Atlanta 19-20 February, Marriott Buckhead Hotel, Atlanta, US sourcecon.com

Work & Family Show 21-22 February, ExCeL, London theworkandfamilyshow. co.uk

Recruitment Agency Expo 25-26 February, Olympia, London recruitmentagencyexpo. com/london

I-COM and LinkedIn recruiter event 27 February (8-11.30am) St James’ Building, Manchester icom.net

CIPD Recruitment Conference 4-5 March, Cavendish Conference Centre, London cipd.co.uk/events/ recruitment

The Voice of Apprenticeships Conference 4-5 March, The London Film Museum apprenticeships4england. info

Recruiter Awards for Excellence 2014 7 May 2014, Grosvenor House Hotel, London recruiterawards.co.uk *Table bookings open now*

FOR MORE NEWS AND COMMENTS, GO ONLINE

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Thoughts from recruiter.co.uk, Twitter and beyond…

“We are seeing a trend for senior executives to go dark — to disengage from social media” CHRIS MOLLOY, CEO OF RSA ON A POSSIBLE NEW DIGITAL DIVIDE

UAE FIRMS SEEK EMIRATI GRADS WITH INTERNATIONAL MINDSET Employers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) seeking to develop a pipeline of future Emirati leaders who have been educated abroad brought their talent quest to a London careers fair last month.

Emirati graduates with degrees ranging from business to engineering are in high demand with employers that are UAEowned as well as multi-national companies with UAE operations, many of whom had stands at the UAE Embassy-hosted event.

Exhibitors included BP, Etihad Airways, Serco and Standard Chartered Bank.

The London event was considered sufficiently important that organisations’ key UAEbased resourcing heads flew to the UK to meet and greet attending students and staff stands.

One exhibitor told Recruiter that the opportunities on offer would allow Emirati graduates

UAE employers are keen to attract a pipeline of leaders with international experience

to get in on the ground floor of experiencing, delivering and understanding potentially “iconic” products and services that had previously never even been used in the UAE. While degrees are important, even more essential in Emirati graduates was “the ability to understand people from other countries, that international mindset”, said an exhibitor from UAE defence and specialised

manufacturing company Tawazun. “If you are not experienced in that, you will be limited.” The exhibitor said he had also recently attended a similar event aimed at Emiratis studying in the US. The UAE Embassy did not return emails or phone calls from Recruiter for follow-up information on the event.

DEEDEE DOKE deedee.doke@recruiter.co.uk

AMS BUILDS EMPLOYER BRAND SERVICE RECRUITMENT PROCESS outsourcing firm Alexander Mann Solutions (AMS) •is putting renewed emphasis on its employer brand management service

(EBMS) by building its staff and fully integrating the operation within the overall business.

Having employer brand specialists sitting side by side with the company’s on-site recruitment teams is a key part of the strategy to drive the brand throughout clients’ recruitment process, Adam Shay, AMS’s global head of employer brand management, has told Recruiter.

“We’re becoming more integrated with the entire AMS business, so as much as we’re keen to work on big, sexy employer branding and digital projects, we’re equally keen to deliver the employer brand across the multiple candidate touch points. We don’t believe many organisations do this particularly well,” said Shay, who joined the company last August.

The EBMS team currently consists of 26 people in three regions. Their roles include employer branding consultants, project managers, and creative and digital specialists.

The division is expected to grow by 20% in 2014. “We’re planning on growing our digital capability and we’re always looking at strong talent in the field of employer branding with a specific focus on people who can link the brand to the day-to-day recruitment requirements of our clients,” said Shay, adding that it can be difficult to find people who can combine the implementation know-how with strong consultation skills.

The new hires will include project managers for branding and social media in both the US, where the AMS’s business is growing “rapidly”, according to Shay, and the UK. Recent hires include Sarah Lenton, lead consultant, employer brand; Liz Weeks, lead manager USA; and Zenna Smith-Allen, project manager.

CHRISTOPHER GOODFELLOW WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK

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News

“The little black book still exists, but it has always been something of a myth” FREELANCE RESEARCHER, JOCELYN BUXTON

“I can’t use up all my energy, I need to save some for tweeting!”

“Profiteering is a very serious allegation”…

OVERHEARD AT ENHANCE MEDIA’S THE YEAR AHEAD 2014 ONLINE RECRUITMENT CONFERENCE

THE REC’S TOM HADLEY RESPONDS TO SHADOW BUSINESS SECRETARY CHUKA UMUNNA’S ALLEGATIONS

STAFFLINE AND IMPELLAM: SHINING LIGHTS OF STAFFING Staffline and Impellam’s share price growth have out-performed their industry peers by a ratio of more than seven-to-one in the last five years.

The price of Staffline’s shares increased by 1,720% between 2009 and 2013 — potentially turning a £1k investment into £18,205 — and Impellam’s grew by 1,327%, according to Recruiter’s analysis. By contrast Matchtech, which had the third best performance among the eight large listed recruiters considered, increased by 187%.

In 2009, the staffing sector was facing the onset of the worst recession since any of these companies launched. “You have to bear in mind that the sector has been stuck in recession for the last few years. It is highly operationally geared and the more cyclical area of recruitment is perm,” David O’Brien, analyst at Shore Capital, told Recruiter, noting that Staffline and Impellam had much lower exposure to permanent recruitment compared to the rest of the group.

Staffline’s on-site model Sue Dodd helped reduce the amount of business it lost during the recession, according to analysts. “Staffline is very much a quality offering in that market and they started to gain traction at the start of the recession. It became attractive because they were saying to clients; ‘we can save you money,’” Sue Dodd, director at Agile Intelligence, told Recruiter.

O’Brien added that the company gained around 13 on-site customers per year over the period. The firm also launched a training business and boosted revenue by making acquisitions (in 2012 alone, Staffline

acquired DKM Driving, Go New Recruitment, Select Appointments and GB Resourcing).

Impellam was formed in May 2008 through the merger of The Corporate Services Group and Carlisle Group. It then started a major restructuring in 2009.

One analyst told Recruiter that at the start of the period the company’s shares were like “penny stocks”.

“With the case of Impellam, it particularly reflects the five-year valuation,” Adrian Kearsey, equity analyst at Hardman & Co, explained to Recruiter: “The valuation relative to others was very low.”

Since its formation, Impellam has been able to significantly reduce operating costs. “It became a very efficient business over the last three, four years. The chairperson at the time [Cheryl Jones] removed a lot of cost and inefficiency from the business. Five to six years ago it was highly indebted and has since been transformed into a very cash-generative business, resulting in them paying off their debt,” said O’Brien.

Talking about the Julia Robertson structural changes Impellam has been through, Julia Robertson, chief executive officer, who started at Carlisle Group, told Recruiter: “One of the key elements of our success … is putting customers at the heart of our decision making. In practical terms, what that has meant for our business success and financial performance is that we have been trusted to run managed service programmes and RPOs for trusted brands, where many would have said we were punching above our weight.”

CHRISTOPHER GOODFELLOW

EXIMIUS REFORM REFLECTS NEW FOCUS •

A RADICAL REFORM inside the Eximius Group is underpinning its strategy of being a true specialist, managing director of Eximius Technical, Ed Stevens, has told Recruiter.

The restructuring of the group, that began 18 months ago, and its subsequent rebranding, is due to be completed by the end of March. The results saw Eximius Finance, Eximius Operational and Eximius Front Office subsumed into Eximius Financial. A new legal arm, Eximius Legal, was also created. Eximius Technical became Eximius Energy to reflect the focus on the oil & gas sector.

Stevens said that these changes went hand-in-hand with internal changes to make the company stand out as a niche player. This meant having specialist consultants, a centre of excellence within each of its brands, more focus on cross-selling and increasing net fee income from existing clients through its client management programme.

Much of that programme, Stevens said, “is about understanding what are the client’s hardest-to-fill positions and locations”. Following the restructuring, every consultant has a defined demarcation: a candidate specialism, a location focus — for example, Norway or Aberdeen — as well as being dedicated to contract or permanent recruitment. “By having that three-pronged approach to client management we are able to track, say, Norwegian individuals who could potentially work in different locations around the globe and regularly relocate them back to Norway, which clients find very useful,” Stevens said.

Contract News Alexander Mann Solutions: Talent Collective is acquired by the RPO specialist… Argyll Scott: Acumen Resources’ UK business acquired by the exec recruiter… Barracuda: The search specialist launches a new private equity division…

Concept Resourcing: The recruiter has chosen SEO agency Miromedia.co.uk to provide search-marketing services… Cordant Group: The multi-brand recruitment agency has acquired medical, education and social work recruiter Sugarman Group…

Debenhams: Partnership announced with The House of St Barnabas to donate suits to the homeless…

Data Alliance: The data company has partnered with DataSift… de Poel Clarity: The workforce specialist has acquired compliance companies CompliWithUs and Compliance Passport… Driver Hire: Amanda Jeffries is the new owner of its Wisbech and Fens franchise… Mölnlycke Health Care: The healthcare provider has awarded a new contract to recruitment process outsourcer CPH… NES Global Talent: The engineering specialists have signed an agreement with liquefied natural gas company BG Group…

Nicholas Associates: The recruiter has merged with Trinity Recruitment Group…

Pertemps: Partnered with Families in Business to provide recruitment services to members… PC Recruit: The agency has secured £50k from invoice finance providers Positive Cashflow Finance…

Talent Q: Integrates with Oracle Talent Management Cloud

COLIN COTTELL colin.cottell@recruiter.co.uk

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Tech & tools

SELF-SERVICE RECRUIT PLATFORM LAUNCHES n online self-service recruitment platform has launched out of beta testing, which allows organisations to manage their recruitment advertising and processes from one site.

Ben Barney, managing director of Krooter.co.uk, told Recruiter that with self-service principles being applied to other business processes, recruitment is also “ripe” for such treatment. “Be it email marketing campaigns, online advertising or online accountancy, digitally-savvy individuals are taking more control of their business processes,” he said. “We’re majoring on self-service from end-to-end and using technology to empower people to make the right decisions. So, for example, on job board selection we’ll make recommendations based on job role and location but the user has total control and can choose their own.”

Ben Barney Barney explains that the service is typically used by small- to mid-sized companies for “average salary” permanent roles for which agency fees are hard to justify or recruiters do Bridget Kelly not have the time to recruit directly. Users pay a single fee of £299 per advertisement and this allows them to post to five different job boards (it currently has links with 40 of the main job boards but plans to include all UK boards eventually).

Those who recruit in larger numbers can buy credit up front, called Krootons, and the more Krootons they buy, the cheaper the service becomes. The price can come down to £175 for one advert to five boards.

Krooter provides help when writing job advertisements if required and templates for various tasks, and also acts as an applicant tracking system when candidates apply.

What adds real value to the service for the user though is the intelligence built into the system. Algorithms will help to create a shortlist of candidates and also deduce which job boards will be best for that position. “There are a lot of tasks that zap your time and we’ve put effort into the areas that will deliver real value,” explained Barney, who added that a team of account managers provide a human element to the shortlisting to make sure the algorithms are

A

working as well as they could be.

One of the organisations involved in the beta testing was the business-to-business sales accelerator company, SCI Sales Group.

Bridget Kelly, head of HR and learning and development at the company, has used it to recruit for a range of positions including business development, account management and data related roles.

“The concept is really good and it works,” she said. “I’ve used services before where you pay a fee and a job appears on five job boards, but they don’t offer all of the other functionality. The way it flags up the relevance of CVs is really useful and accurate.

You certainly get the numbers and quality of candidates. I recruited five business development managers from one posting.”

Kelly said among the other features she liked about the service were the metrics and statistics, presented in a simple graph, which tell you which job boards/channels have been most effective. “I’m more likely to try a niche/bespoke job board, as the risk is minimised because of the luxury of using five job boards,” she said. “We try to be as objective and scientific in our recruitment process as possible but there is always some trial and error. We’re in a period of growth this year so my team are going to be really busy. Krooter helps to make us more efficient with our time.”

Be in the in crowd of resourcing A new recruitment platform that makes use of crowd-sourcing techniques to create a marketplace for recruiters around the world to come together and compete for work has been launched. Although US-based, Mike Achilles, founder and president of Crowd Recruiting, told Recruiter that it has just introduced the availability to post UK job orders and offers GB pounds currency as commission. “We did this as a direct result of recruiters in the UK asking for it,” he said. “We also had demand in Canada, Australia and from various places around Europe, so we now support five currencies.”

Achilles, a technologist and entrepreneur who has launched two staffing companies in the US as well as an international job board, said he found it difficult to balance the needs for both sales and recruiting each day. Around 80% of job orders would remain unfilled, so he would contact independent recruiters, sourcers, RPOs and other staffing companies to fill them.

While this was successful, he was then left with the problem of managing all of the relationships, administration and communication that went Mike Achilles with this, which is what the Crowd Recruiting platform seeks to address. “Our focus is recruiters helping recruiters,” he explained, adding: “We want recruiters to come to us as their last resort … we’re working hard to integrate with various applicant tracking systems to allow recruiters to push their job orders to us when they aren’t successful on their own.”

Recruiters can post their job orders to a worldwide network of recruiters and invite competitive proposals to fill the roles.

Alternatively, they can set their budget upfront and invite recruiters they know from the network to work on filling the role. “Any recruiter from almost 200 countries can actively recruit on those requirements if they choose,” said Achilles. “In short, Crowd Recruiting provides the ability to create an on-demand recruiting team that can grow or shrink depending on daily needs.”

The platform can also be used by recruiters and agencies that have candidates looking for roles. “An agency recruiter may have a great .net candidate in London but no active job orders. That recruiter can look in Crowd Recruiting to see if any other recruiters are looking for one,” said Achilles. www.crowdrecruiting.com

www.krooter.co.uk SUE WEEKES

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SPECIAL REPORT

Web comments NHS reduces numbers being paid off-payroll (29 January) Perhaps all the off-payroll staff should describe themselves as locums and be paid £75,249 - £101,451 a year which, according to NHS Jobs, seems to be the going rate for locums.

Problem solved?

DEVELOPERS TALK CAREERS Stack Overflow is a question-and-answer site for professional and enthusiast programmers. They recently surveyed 7,500 site visitors about market trends. On this page, global results are revealed.

See p12 for UK results

Dean Lipscombe Cameron promises to slash ‘crazy’ red tape (27 January) If he [David Cameron] is so concerned at SME crazy red tape, why is he considering directing apprenticeship funding to SMEs direct to tie them up even more? SMEs are reporting that if further paperwork has to be done by them then they will give up taking on unemployed young apprentices altogether!

Jim Clarke UK financial services sector bouncing back (21 January) I still think we’re a little way from this translating in to significant hiring. There is risk aversion which will probably never go away and shouldn’t. Restructures will mean that new skills will need to be hired in the new operating model and this is where most hiring will be, as well as in areas with a spotlight on for regulatory reasons, risk springs to mind.

Tim Baker Recruitment bodies hit back at Miliband’s comments on the Swedish Derogation (7 January) Our view is that this working practice is perfectly valid when used correctly and for the right purposes.

We are confident that our customers/employees working on the PBA route do so compliantly and are fully informed of the implications of the contract they are signing into.

Alison Salas

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News

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News

On tumblr this month On recruitermagazine.tumblr.com, Recruiter magazine’s tumblr feed, we showcase some of the lighter moments of recruitment — and this month is one that might even inspire other recruiters in their day-to-day work

Advanced Global Recruitment Oil & gas specialists Advanced Global Recruitment (AGR) have added to their charitable achievements of last year, which included taking part in the Tough Mudder and an offshore challenge where volunteers were plunged into the icy depths of the North Sea… no pictures unfortunately(!).

Earlier in the month some brave staff members undertook a 24-hour Recruitment Challenge — a real busman’s holiday — starting 8am on a Friday and going non-stop through to 8am on the Saturday. This meant clients and candidates round the world were reached in a caffeine-fuelled, relentless recruitinga-thon, which raised an amazing £1,980 for the recent Philippines disaster. And don’t they all look enthusiastic?

Don’t forget to send us your lighter news with pictures to recruiter.editorial@redactive.co.uk

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www.LGCawards.co.uk 12 March 2014 Grosvenor House Hotel, London

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06/02/2014 11:39

Sector Analysis

Charity

The money issue

RECRUITERS WANT TO MAKE SURE THIRD SECTOR CAREERS ARE NOT SECOND CHOICE, AND ARE INCREASINGLY LOOKING TO NON-CHARITY SECTOR CANDIDATES Charities have “been commercialising for years, with much higher levels of achievement and clearer parameters for success”, according to Rory White, the director of charity recruiter Flow Caritas.

“The sector is the lynchpin of public services now,” he adds, “with many previously council-run public services now being taken over by charities who have to pitch for the contract.”

Alongside this, substantial funding cuts have meant that “demand for good fundraising staff is on the increase”, says Michele Smith, a director at agency Morgan Hunt. There are, she says, “only a handful of agencies who specialise in that” and a “tight talent pool”.

Smith adds that the sector remains “more traditional in the way it recruits” in some quarters, and potentially loses out when people are expected, for example, to fill out lengthy paper application forms. However, the last couple of years has seen something of a spike in charities setting up internal recruitment teams. “No doubt we will see more,” she adds.

Ian Olivo, HR manager at blood cancer charity and bone marrow registry Anthony Nolan, who has worked in voluntary sector HR for a decade, highlights what will be a major issue for the industry’s new in-house teams.

“People from the private sector may not even consider looking at jobs in the charity sector, as they assume it’s a slower pace or that it’s a fluffy work environment,” he says.

“In fact, it’s far more business-like than many people realise,” he continues. “Much of our revenue

MILLENNIALS WANT TO WORK FOR FIRMS WHO HAVE A MORE SOCIAL IMPACT AGENDA

comes from people who voluntarily donate funds, so it’s vitally important that we are not complacent and we always strive to do better.”

Vika Golokoz, a recruitment and retention consultant at children’s charity NSPCC, agrees. “We must do more to show people that working for a charity is no less exciting than working for say Google,” she argues.

Reaching beyond the sector for new recruits is also key because it means bringing much-needed new skills into the organisation, digital capabilities in particular, Golokoz adds. “We are much more open to private sector applications in support functions,” she says.

That said, in terms of the frontline children’s services NSPCC provides, the organisation is generally “much more conservative” given the child welfare implications, and the need for safeguarding and experience.

Broadly, however, the “lines are becoming increasingly blurred” between the charity world and other industries, British Red Cross resourcing manager Charlie McPherson says. “People are finding it easier to move across,” he adds.

The charity world, increasingly, is no parallel universe. Nor will the sector accept being a poor relation of other careers any more — although the issue of money does remain something of a challenge (see box, right).

Raphael Frascogna, group resourcing manager at not-for-profit schools group United Learning, used to work in the agency world. “At one agency I worked for previously,” he describes, although not saying which one, “we were told to put our less able candidates in the direction of the public sector and not-for-profits.”

Things have changed, however. “Millennials want to work for firms who have a more social impact agenda,” Frascogna says. So a new generation of charities will need to look out for a new generation of talent.

SAM BURNE JAMES recruiter.editorial@redactive.co.uk

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CHARITIES: DESIRABLE An analysis of 4.9m searches on Google UK in July 2013 by digital agency Greenlight showed that 5% of people searched for charity jobs, just behind ‘civil service jobs’, the most popular sector-specific job queries with 10% of searches

Rick Mower Chief executive officer, Aspire Oxfordshire “Three years ago we decided we had to be the best at everything we do, and start paying decent commercial salaries. Anyone I’ve met who we’ve interviewed, when I’ve said ‘you can earn the same salary and also change lives’, will always come and work for us.”

Charles Cotton Performance and rewards adviser, CIPD “The private sector could learn quite a lot from what the third sector are doing around rewards. They have had to be quite nimble, creative and innovative.”

Rob Hayter Director, TPP “Definitely pay has always been a challenge, but I would say that 90% of people looking at jobs through us have decided they will take a pay cut… I don’t think it’s necessarily affected the flow of talent.”

Charlie McPherson Resourcing manager, British Red Cross “We could not compete entirely based on salaries, so to attract the best people we need to be innovative in our resourcing strategy and sell the other benefits that we have to offer. These include, especially when working for a larger charity, a more positive approach to flexible working and establishing a work/ life balance. In addition, greater emphasis is being placed on supporting career development.”

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Market Indicators

Global Spotlight on Mexico

GOVERNMENT REFORMS AND ECONOMIC STABILITY ARE STARTING TO HAVE AN IMPACT ON MEXICO’S SMALL BUT GROWING RECRUITMENT SECTOR Mexico’s recruitment market is in a state of flux.

Strong growth realised since 2009’s recession faltered in 2013, but sweeping reforms promise to bring opportunity and stability to the country — if the government manages to pull off the reforms.

President Enrique Peña Nieto’s sweeping reforms aim to increase competition by making structural changes to education and fiscal policy, and the telecoms and broadcasting, energy and banking sectors

“We don’t have the competition that we obviously have in the UK or Europe, or even Brazil,” says Cazalet, adding: “We have small local competitor companies and then we have the major search firms, but in mid-market we have no real competition.”

The government reforms that directly impact labour rules aim to increase flexibility by introducing new types of employment contracts.

“A seasonal employment arrangement has been introduced, which allows for short-term employment to cover the need for additional workforce requirements during seasonal peaks,” says Jorge de Presno, partner and senior associate of the Labour, Employment and Social Security practice group of Basham, Ringe Y Correa. In addition, new arrangements will permit workers to be taken on for trial and initial training periods.

De Presno says employers and recruitment agencies will have to revisit employment practices to ensure they can take advantage of, and be in compliance with, the new regulations. However, recruiters acknowledged it was too early to know if this change would provide business opportunities.

In spite of a tough 12 months, Mexico’s staffing professionals are positive about the new opportunities increased stability and the reforms will bring.

“We’ve started to hear a lot about Mexico globally. 2013 has been a year of a lot of change, and there is still more to come,” says Cazalet.

When asked whether poor economic performance was leading to a brain drain, he adds: “On the contrary — I think everyone sees Mexico as a big opportunity for the future.”

Felipe Rivelles, managing partner of executive search company Amrop Mexico, told Recruiter last year’s change of government “paralysed” business: “Public spending slowed down terribly. Everything was in place for rapid growth, which didn’t happen. Our business is the first monitor of decline, we went to lots of clients and they were putting plans on hold.”

The Mexican economy contracted by 4.7% in 2009, in part because of headwinds from the US, its largest trading partner, However, it quickly recovered, expanding by 5.1% in 2010. In 2013, the recovery faltered, with GDP growth dropping to 1.4%.

The liberalisation of the oil & gas market, which currently operates as a government monopoly, preventing foreign investment, will have the biggest impact on recruitment, according to industry professionals.

Monica Flores, regional managing director of ManpowerGroup Latin America, tells Recruiter the energy bill, which was approved two weeks ago, will lead to “increasing demand of engineering technicians and other professionals specialised in the oil & gas and energy sectors”.

This may prove a challenge. Remy de Cazalet, managing director of Michael Page Mexico, tells Recruiter: “The sector for which talent is hardest to find in Mexico is oil & gas, and also construction.”

The oil & gas sector reforms are not expected to take place until next year.

Mexico’s staffing sector is less developed than Europe and the US. Michael Page estimates only 10% of businesses in the country use recruiters, in comparison with 50-70% in Europe.

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Interaction

SOAP

BOX

Benchmark your service levels

Gavin Jones, managing director of IT and digital staffing specialist Energize Recruitment Solutions, argues that the time has come to put service levels at the forefront of recruiting standards The recruitment industry is playing a crucial part in the recovery of the UK economy. The Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) forecasts that the sector will grow at a rate of 7.3% in 2014-15, with sales reaching an all-time high of £31bn. This is impressive bearing in mind the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) states the UK will grow at only 1.9% in the same period. Yet as the industry continues to grow, how can we measure our service levels? Which recruitment company is the market leader in service standards and who is falling short?

Industry leaders constantly advocate that our sector should be recognised as a professional service, but is this possible when we are so focused on growing sales, with service levels taking a back seat?

A way of resolving this dilemma is to work alongside independent bodies such as The Institute of Customer Service, which provides a service benchmark across a range of industry sectors. Members of the Institute, including organisations such as Pannone Solicitors and Boots, contact 100 of their customers twice a year to gather feedback on vital areas such as quality and speed of service, competence of staff and communication. These scores are then indexed and every member can compare their performance against other companies in their sector.

At the time of writing, no recruitment business is a member of this Institute. Why? Energize is leading the way in setting a benchmark Surely, with the help of governing bodies and other recruitment companies, we can put together our own benchmarking tool that allows us to monitor service.

In January 2013 Energize Recruitment embarked on a 360-degree feedback programme with our staff, candidates and clients to better

RICKY MARTIN

So what are the options?

As business owners, CEOs, leaders of governing bodies, we have a decision to make. We can continue to allow bad practice to remain hidden, or demand a greater transparency by laying our performance at the mercy of the customer. Sites like www.recruitmentreviews. com have seen varying degrees of success, but until recruiters accept the necessity to measure competency through a certified system, recruitment as a ‘professional service’ is nothing but a wishful daydream.

Delivering great service is not at the expense of sales and profits but the exact opposite. They are two sides of the same coin so let’s start measuring both.

Finding excellence in new recruitment consultants

From 2012 when I first opened HRS’s doors, I have been in the fortunate position of growing the business. As any recruitment owner will know a company can only grow if it has the right amount of business, and in turn great people to service it. With this in mind, I have kept my eyes on the market looking for good recruitment consultants who can join my business and become a part of our family. The real question this has made me ask is “What really makes a good recruitment consultant?”

Previously I had worked for a major company where bringing one recruiter on board might change the team dynamics but not the business culture. However, going from a company from 1-2, 2-5, 5-10, 10-20 and so on does mean that every time a new person joins any business of this size then the culture of the business is at risk with every hire. Each new person is a significant percentage of your headcount.

If you are building your business like mine off the back of strong ethics and values, then a significant cultural change of your company is not necessarily something you want. Agility and flexibility in your market is one thing. But changing the backbone of the company via its culture is another. So when I looked at hiring I asked others what they think makes a good recruitment consultant. The answers I heard can be summarised to the following points: • One that generates a significant ROI via sales.

• Somebody who lives and breathes customer service.

• A recruiter who socially gets on with the team yet is their own person.

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understand our service levels and what improvements could be made.

While this does not create a competitor standard, the insight to our personal performance is invaluable. We believe our commitment to great service is the natural evolution for recruitment, similar to the legal sector, whereby firms are governed for measureable performance.

We presented our customer feedback scores to every consultant and there was a clear correlation between the highest service scores and our top performers. Taking this a step further we identified which values and behaviours would help drive service excellence and these now form part of our initial hiring process. To create a culture of continuous improvement, service scores have also been embedded into reward, recognition and promotion schemes.

From the survey response we identified the need to invest significantly to improve our market knowledge in each IT vertical. We instantly spent heavily in external training so that each consultant has the upmost understanding of their market. This is just one area of investment that will not only lead to higher service scores, but also allow us to achieve our vision “to become the market leader of service standards in the global IT & digital recruitment industry”.

• A professional who knows their market and is known as an expert.

Arguably the answer is all of the above. For me the most important has been anything which shapes the cultural fit of the person to my business. This therefore is not the pound signs and sales history of the person. It is the individual behind the CV. This is very much how The Apprentice hires. I was initially assessed on my ability, passion and character (my competency) for 11 weeks and then final decisions were made on my business plan (a CV) in the 12th and final week. So putting the person before the resumé resulted in my personally getting hired.

So each time I hire in to HRS it is about assessing the person behind the CV by interviewing on a competency basis, identifying what is important to that person and why, and genuinely getting to know the candidate. If we share the same vision and values then the cultural fit is not something that needs work; it just happens. As a result, my business has grown, and will continue to, in unity with a shared culture that reflects in our services.

You may be looking for a new job as a consultant, or are looking for new staff yourself. If so, make the decisions on what fits your visions/ambitions and values first. Remember, it is about ‘recruitment excellence’ and hiring good recruiters who can ‘consultant’ in your marketplace. The job title is not a recruitment consultant for nothing!

Happy hiring all.

RICKY MARTIN is managing director and founder of Hyper Recruitment

Solutions. Find out more at www.hyperec.com or @Hyperec_HRS on Twitter

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Interaction

SOUND

BITES

“What is the strangest career change you have come across or instigated?”

Leatham Green

Richard Shea

Assistant director, personnel and training, East Sussex County Council

Managing director EMEA, Search, Korn/Ferry Futurestep

The strangest career change I have come across is twofold. Over my career in HR two colleagues have taken a career change late in life — one became a Buddhist monk and moved to Malaysia and the second became a Roman Catholic priest. Both came as a real bolt from the blue as they had been so silent about their faiths — life changing and still inspiring.

Steve Thompson-Martyn Director, CDL Consulting

The most bizarre request started out in a pretty straightforward way. A factory supervisor wanted to retrain as a tree surgeon. All good so far. He was also to supplement his income by providing whole time cover as a retained firefighter. He had invested £1k in equipment and was enrolled on a course. As someone who is not great with heights I applauded him on his ability to master this particular element, to which he replied that he too was scared of heights... he had figured he would only have to work on trees at ground level and as for the fire service there were a lot of bungalows in his area! A very expensive lesson in thinking through all aspects of a career change.

ANALYSIS: Government proposals on combatting false self-employment ‘unreasonable’ says APSCo (5 February) At last the government is making it an even playing field for us legitimate recruiters.

We will now be able to charge a fair price and compete on quality rather than being undercut by these shady practices. Well done HMRC and the government — it’s not often I get a chance to say that.

WEB

CHAT

Malcolm Elson Umunna wrong on highly-skilled EU workers, says Staffline CEO (17 January) I share Andy Hogarth’s sentiments and his message needs to get through to politicians and many of the electorate who live in the same ‘virtual’ world as UKIP in which the UK’s doors would be closed to foreign nationals, including EU nationals if a UK referendum on EU membership disastrously led to our withdrawal from the EU! Business leaders need to stand up to the ridiculous argument perpetrated by many politicians — particularly

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The strangest career change I have been faced with at Futurestep was when a geologist within a global oil company changed their role and became a software sales executive for one of the largest software companies in the world. This candidate had been a geologist for three years, but had become disillusioned with the oil industry and so took an opportunity to go into sales. They had always had an interest within technology, but no sales background. Since then, they’ve become very successful in their new chosen field.

Kris England-Smith Training and development director, Penta Consulting

A good example is within our own team.

Ghassan Latif joined Penta eight months ago with a background in pretzels. For the previous three years he had been running an Auntie Anne’s pretzel franchise in Basingstoke. He came to Penta via a referral and is doing very well working as a product strategy consultant across the Middle East and Africa.

His focus on getting the ingredients right in his prizewinning pretzels pays off with his innate ability to find candidates who offer the right skills and qualities to fill difficult ‘rolls’.

Conservative backbenchers and UKIP — that the UK should ‘go it alone’. Migrant workers from the EU and further afield are a massive factor in a sustained economic recovery and good for the UK. I just wish more business leaders would bang the drum in favour of migrant workers, as their businesses would collapse without them.

religion and personal presentation skills. This is why we have laws against recruitment discrimination. It’s much easier to ascertain if any discrimination has taken place, if it follows a candidate actually attending an interview.

David Scarlett

GLA to contact Channel 4 over worker exploitation shown in Benefits Street (14 January) Not for the first time the GLA is finding out about the serious cases through the media — not the other way round! Why are millions of taxpayers’ and licence fee payers’ pounds thrown at the ‘intelligenceled’ GLA if it relies on watching the telly to find out what is going on?

Accident insurance allegations: Staffing companies could face ‘unlimited fines’ (29 January) In response to Chuka Umunna’s comments, I think we can now see that the unions own the Labour Party lock, stock and barrel. They hate temp agencies and have forced through much of the tedious ‘easy to trip over’ legislation which threatens to destroy the industry and the UK’s flexible labour market.

Rebecca Fuller

John Lerner

Tom Atkinson YouTube enabling recruiters to reboot and refresh (5 February) But videos are so discriminatory! They allow shortlisting based on a candidate’s age, sex, ethnicity, pretty/ugly, even

A scene from Channel 4’s Benefits Street

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Insight

Incentivising internal recruitment staff TO DEVELOP A STRONG INCENTIVE SCHEME, MANAGERS MUST LOOK AT GOING BACK TO BASICS, PETER LOVELL ARGUES Incentivising internal recruitment staff is a key tactical facet for any recruitment manager, and at Jagex I’ve been spearheading that for more than four years. To develop a strong incentive scheme, managers must analyse the structure and strategy architecture relating to in-house recruitment personnel. At Jagex, our shift in recruitment strategy was prompted by the decision to aggressively inflate the size of the studio ahead of the pre-production of our upcoming online computer game, Transformers Universe.

Solid foundations Previously, Jagex would mainly look for solid graduates. This was achieved by building strong links with universities, bringing talent through, getting them started in junior roles, and then developing them internally. The reasoning was that because so much of our technology is bespoke and proprietary, more experienced candidates would have to unlearn what they knew before learning our internal systems and software.

But with the announcement of the new game, it became clear the company needed to increase staff numbers with experienced individuals that could develop and deliver a game quickly.

To achieve that, the company had to grow the recruitment team with specific qualities, so we brought on agency-experienced recruiters.

Before Jagex, my background was very much in agency. As many will no doubt testify, transitioning from agency to in-house is significant, bringing with it a fundamental switch in motivation. In an agency environment the motivation is pretty much a financial one, as the hire equals cash.

The positive side of that is in-agency recruiters are very good at dealing with huge amounts of candidates and requirements. They have to take on as much as is physically possible in a working day, and have an innate drive to fill the roles to secure lucrative payments with every success.

In an in-house environment it’s almost the complete opposite. Recruiters take time to consider candidates and take longer during the hiring process to ensure the match is the right one for the company, and in terms of a cultural fit.

We also have a responsibility for retention, again different to an in-agency recruiter. As recruitment manager, I had to find the middle ground in my team: individuals who wanted to own more of the

recruitment cycle that being an in-house recruiter demands, but still find drive in a competitive environment.

My team ticks those boxes, forming a tight-knit and multi-award-winning unit. I look for a certain type of individual whose motivations are in the right place — masters in the soft sell, which is linked into the inherent motivation that they’re paid well if they get it right.

Incentivising With the right team in place, the challenge was to encourage the right behaviours needed for successful hires at Jagex through an incentive scheme that avoided a ‘bums on seat’ approach, ensured quality hires, but also pushed time to hire to be minimal. This is how the internal commission structure at Jagex was developed.

We created a matrix that compares open vacancies with the level of difficulty to fit the position. Through our team experience we know and understand the positions that are difficult to fill; we know where there are specific skills shortages in the UK and so widen our search abroad. The commission structure helps incentivise recruitment staff by determining which roles are difficult and which are easy, against the time it takes to fill a role.

Critics of course will ask how this strategy ensures the team isn’t self-serving and isn’t just looking to fill the most challenging positions as quickly as possible without considering the impact on the organisation. This is simple: if there are situations whereby people are hired and it’s obvious they were the wrong hire, the commission can be clawed back as it’s paid on a quarterly basis. We are all accountable to each other and the broader goals of the business; a commission structure isn’t the panacea, it is part of a total system that has to work.

Supporting this strategy you have to work towards ensuring every avenue is the best it can be. Our events presence is always comprehensive and as pervasive as possible. We combat negative assumptions and overturn them. We’ve got people joining who had never even considered Jagex.

You’ve got to get all of the different streams right: talent pipelines; social media; careers presence; advertising. And behind that you need people you can trust that are passionate about what they do about the company pulling the strings — and that’s what I’m fortunate to have.

Power Points And what qualities should your in-house recruiters have in order to earn those incentives?

Be naturally inquisitive, seek to understand Be a master of the soft sell, aggression in closing can kill a cycle Have the confidence and ability to raise your profile internally and externally Know your markets and talent pools. Keep a close eye on movers and shakers.

Love and live your company values every day

PETER LOVELL is talent acquisition manager at Jagex Games Studio.

Jagex Games Studio has a unique reward structure for internal recruitment staff. Lovell’s processes have helped the recruitment team become a stand-out department that consistently meets its targets in the challenging UK computer games sector

Share your insight and blue-sky thinking. Contact the editor: deedee.doke@recruiter.co.uk

WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK

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The Challenge

Video Arts stars for Lloyds Register Anne-Marie Krivonjeva Recruitment lead

‘PEOPLE LEARN NOTHING WHEN THEY’RE ASLEEP AND VERY LITTLE WHEN THEY’RE BORED’. VIDEO ARTS FOUNDER JOHN CLEESE’S WORDS RANG TRUE WITH LLOYDS REGISTER...

THE CHALLENGE Lloyds Register is certainly no new kid on the block. Established back in the mid-18th century to give merchants information on the seafaring quality of their vessels, Lloyds Register provides independent assurance and expert advice to firms operating high-risk, capital-intensive assets in the energy and transport sectors.

Alongside the Energy and Rail divisions, the Marine division comprises experts in niche areas, which include marine or mechanical engineering, naval architecture, metallurgy, fluid dynamics and electro technical systems. In July 2012, Anne-Marie Krivonjeva was brought in as recruitment lead, Lloyd’s Register – Marine, to build a new resourcing team that would support the proposed move of around 400 people from London to a new purpose-built Group Technology Centre, co-located with Southampton University.

The challenge faced by Krivonjeva and her team was that Lloyds Register has had a stable workforce, “with very low levels of staff turnover” and so the hiring managers had very little exposure to recruitment.

“Managers were willing but lacked confidence,” Krivonjeva told Recruiter. The aim was for managers to be empowered to take control, without relying too heavily on HR. Krivonjeva consulted with managers, and discussed their concerns and what they were lacking. The overwhelming need was for more training on interviewing skills.

In addition, Krivonjeva said, there has been enormous change in legislation around recruitment over the past six to eight years, such as with equality and immigration laws, “and all this meant that hiring managers had to know an awful lot more than they ever did before”.

THE SOLUTION A two-pronged training approach was decided on, which would cover recruitment legislation, as well as practical interviewing techniques.

Previously recruitment manager, global R&D for pharmaceuticals company AstraZeneca, Krivonjeva had used video-based learning provider Video Arts in the past and believed an engaging and stimulating programme would be the best way to train hiring managers quickly and give them confidence. “For senior managers with little time on their hands, we needed the training to have maximum impact, so the choice of delivery methods was key,” she said.

Like Lloyds Register, Video Arts also has an established heritage, as it was set up in 1976 by the actor John Cleese and broadcaster Anthony Jay to provide engaging learning content for business situations. Even today, the training films have famous actors playing the roles and scripts by talented writers including Hugh Laurie and Armando Iannucci. Sally Winter, head of marketing at Video Arts, told Recruiter: “It’s surprisingly easy to get well-known, recognisable actors on board. It helps that a large, BAFTA-award winning production company is

behind us [Tinopolis]. And of course it’s got a powerful brand name, with John Cleese still involved.”

Winter said that Lloyds Register approached Video Arts with a welldefined training need, “a significant recruitment exercise requiring managers to be competent and confident in recruiting global talent”. After looking through the relevant training films in Video Arts’ extensive library, between them they decided that the Behavioural Interviewing film (below) would be the best, as it breaks down the interview process, highlighting the competency-based behaviours that the hiring manager needs to recognise.

So Krivonjeva devised a programme entitled ‘Licence to hire’. Part 1 is an e-learning module around recruitment and selection legislation, written by Krivonjeva.

“The content is around the theory of best practice recruiting and key aspects of employment legislation, which made it suitable for an e-learning platform,” she said. After completing the module, managers take an assessment, which on successful completion, they receive a certificate and apply to take Part 2.

Part 2 is a one-day interview skills workshop, consisting of a structured interview format and practical exercises, based

Sally Winter Head of marketing

on Behavioural Interviewing and starring actors Kris Marshall and James Nesbitt among other famous faces. The afternoon concentrates on practical work, where managers split off into smaller groups to put in practice what they have learnt.

“Even after attending the one-day workshop, managers may still not do an actual interview for a while,” Krivonjeva explained, “so Video Arts has an ON>DEMAND element, which can be accessed remotely via tablets or home devices as a refresher course.” ON>DEMAND was only launched last October, Winter said, but “more and more clients are using the ON>DEMAND option, as the material can be accessed and delivered on any device, any time, any place”, Winter added. “It’s great for trainers as they can push content out to managers,” she said, as well as make their own clips from the video.

Recruitment and selection training will continue into March/ April, Krivonjeva said, however the initial feedback from managers has been extremely positive, with all saying their objectives have been met and “already putting the lessons learned into practice”, according to one hiring manager.

Finally, Winter told Recruiter: “We try really hard to put the client at the centre of what we do.”

Krivonjeva echoed that sentiment, saying Video Arts “were very supportive in what we were trying to achieve. We were able to preview the relevant products and build a proprietary programme. They’re a very customer-focused company”.

Would you like to be involved in The Challenge? Contact Vanessa Townsend at vanessa.townsend@recruiter.co.uk

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Recruitment Matters Issue 22 February 2014

Trade Association of the Year

What’s inside The Intelligence 2 -3 and REC Talk

Theresa May visits the REC to discuss worker exploitation

Spotting green shoots It is estimated that nearly 30 million people around the world are trapped in modern slavery.

Recruiters can often help prevent and spot this type of exploitation, as we explore in this issue of Recruitment Matters on pages 4-5. In October, the Home Secretary Theresa May spoke at the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) about her department’s work to crack down on worker exploitation. After the meeting, the REC’s chief executive Kevin Green said: “The REC has a strong relationship with the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA) and the Home Office, and a shared commitment to eradicating worker exploitation from labour supply chains.

We strongly support Theresa May’s plan for an modern slavery bill to address the infiltration of the UK’s labour market by criminal gangs and human traffickers.”

One example of an industry in which worker exploitation is common is flower picking. The GLA is calling on agencies that provide flower pickers in Cornwall, as well as the growers themselves, to join them in helping to stamp out worker exploitation through the current season. Problems have been experienced in past years when daffodil picking gets underway in the county, says the GLA, with migrant workers arriving to find their working and living

conditions in the UK do not match what was described.

GLA chief executive Paul Broadbent said: “With a large influx of migrant workers to any area over a relatively short period of time, opportunities exist to exploit these vulnerable people who have little or no command of English. “The majority of operators adhere to the necessary regulations in place to protect workers, but there are some unscrupulous businesses who, driven by profit, may underpay or mistreat their workers – cutting corners to make money.

“From our perspective, the messages are simple – labour agencies supplying workers for flower picking need to have a current GLA licence and must comply with our licensing standards. Flower growers using labour provided by a gangmaster should only employ pickers from licensed operators and should treat those workers fairly and with respect at all times.

If in doubt, call the GLA and we will help you.

“And to everyone else in Cornwall, if you suspect unlicensed activity is taking place or workers are being exploited in any way, contact us free and in confidence on 0800 432 0804.”

To learn how you can help – and what red flags to look out for – read our expert advice on page 4.

The skills gap, the year ahead for the REC policy makers and how to make the most of economic growth

The plight of 4-5 modern day slavery The government and labour bodies are trying to stop worker exploitation. Here’s how recruiters can help

Update and Business Matters 6Legal The legal lowdown and REC’s new business partner IT First

7

Institute of Recruitment Professionals We speak to Steve Perkins from Orgtel and Ian Alexander from MAA International Ltd

Best Events and Training 8 The REC Audited Education and the new City Conference Tours

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Leading the Industry

the intelligence Fig 1: Median recruiter turnover growth

The Skills Gap

20

Employers lack workforce capacity to respond to growing demand, says Nina Mguni

How much capacity is there in your business to take on more work without creating more jobs in the organisation?

100

530

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90

510

70 60

500

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0

450 2011

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Vacancies (000s)

% of respondents

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■ None – we would have to take on new staff

520

■ A little – we might take on new staff if demand grew this year ■ A fair amount – we would take on a lot more work now ■ Considerable – we have a great deal of space capacity ■ Vacancies (ONS Vacancy Survey)

0 -5 %

engineering, computing and IT, and education and training are the areas in which employers expect to have the most difficulty sourcing appropriately skilled candidates for permanent roles.

Technical and engineering is also the area of greatest concern for employers thinking about temporary roles, followed by driving and distribution, and professional and managerial.

As Kate Shoesmith, the REC head of policy, stated: “Employers’ inability to improve their workforce productivity without hiring new staff is likely to suppress pay growth in the foreseeable future, as they invest in increasing headcount rather than pay packets.

“Starting salaries and hourly pay rates will rise in certain areas where skilled candidates are scarce and companies have to compete for talent. The shortage of candidates with the skills required for a growing number of vacancies is a looming problem.”

While the economy appears to be picking up, it will be interesting to see how recruiters respond to the heightened demands for a skilled workforce.

Nina Mguni is senior researcher, REC

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-10 -15 -20 -25 -30 -35 Apr 09

Oct

Apr 10

Oct

Apr 11

Oct

Apr 12

Oct

Apr 13

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Fig 2: Median revenue growth & UK job vacancy growth 20 10 0 %

In January, the REC published a report that looked at the UK’s postrecession labour market, reviewing how the jobs market has changed in recent years.

The report also drew attention to the long awaited improvements in the labour market data and highlighted some early warning signals that could suppress growth.

The report reviewed data from our monthly JobsOutlook report.

First, the good news. Increased demand has led to a growing proportion of businesses that have no more capacity to take on further work without creating new jobs (see below); 31% say they have no spare capacity and would have to hire new staff if work increased.

Employers have started to increase their headcount, with 21% reporting they have increased their headcount within the year (up from only 4% in 2009). The rate at which employers are reducing headcount has slowed, with only 12% record having made redundancies in the past year, down from 22% in 2009.

However, as demand grows, the pertinent question will be whether there are staff of sufficient quantity and quality to meet the demand for more workers. Technical and

15 10

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■ RIB median revenue ■ ONS vacancies

20 30 40 Apr 09

Oct

Apr 10

Oct

Apr 11

Oct

Apr 12

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Apr 13

Oct

On the up As can be seen in Figure 1, median recruiter turnover growth showed a welcome uptick in November to 6%, reversing the worrying slowdown that we saw in September and in October, and approaching the growth levels that we saw in early summer last year.

Encouragingly, growth in the number of job vacancies in the UK reported by the Office for National Statistics has continued to accelerate to just under 15%.

Historically, growth in job vacancies has been a good leading indicator of recruiter revenue growth, although for the last six months or so revenue growth has been relatively flat – over the next few months we will monitor this closely for signs of a structural decoupling or a welcome upward acceleration in revenue growth.

Combined with this pleasing acceleration in revenue, we are seeing a very positive expansion in profit margins. Figure 2 shows that median net profit margin has increased to 4.7% in November, the highest we have seen for over two years.

A combination of accelerating revenues and expanding profit margins makes a wonderful combination for recruiters.

• Chris Ansell is chief financial officer at Recruitment Industry Benchmarking (RIB). www.ribindex.com

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Leading the Industry

Secrets of the Lobby

The View

Tom Hadley looks at the stats, facts and the power of lateral lobbying A big part of the policy team’s work is to drive campaigns aimed at challenging misconceptions, and improve recognition for our industry’s contribution to the UK economy and labour market.

The recent media attention on locum costs in the NHS is a good example of why we need to remain constantly on the front foot. The contribution to the NHS of locum doctors and skilled temporary staff is something to be praised, not denigrated as an unnecessary cost. Of course trusts must have effective procurement and management procedures in place but the reality is that highly skilled flexible staff are a huge benefit to the NHS and its patients.

Other REC sector groups are driving similar issues and we will continue to promote the role of specialist recruiters. A crucial weapon in our counter-offensive armoury is access to robust data on the contribution our sector makes to the labour market and wider economy. The most salient facts are that recruiters placed more than 600,000 people into permanent jobs in 2012-13 and that 1.1 million agency workers are fulfilling temporary roles in workplaces across the UK at any time.

Another tool is using the subliminal power of what I like to call ‘lateral lobbying’. This is all about positioning our voice to raise overall perceptions of recruitment and strengthen our hand when it comes to pushing back on government. A good example of this is our Youth Employment Charter, which has resulted in other 20,000 young people receiving customised career support from recruiters. The industry contribution in this area was explicitly recognised by the skills minister Matthew Hancock at our House of Lords reception in early January.

The need to get out there and drive positive recognition is increasingly important as the political machine cranks up ahead of the 2015 general elections and party manifestos take shape.

The REC’s ‘Good Recruitment Charter’ will be a major catalyst for this in 2014.

The best lobbying tool we have through is the work that REC members do every day to ensure compliance and to provide excellent service to both clients and candidates. The latest REC JobsOutlook survey shows a 95% satisfaction rate with agencies, so progress is clearly being made. The priority for the policy team is to accelerate this recognition and respect for our sector in our ongoing campaigning work with government and employers.

Confidence is building and plenty of economic data is now positive, so it’s a great time to be in recruitment again. But as the market improves and permanent hiring comes back, who will be the real winners in our sector?

It seems clear that the key drivers of growth and superior performance in our industry are those businesses who are great attractors, retainers and motivators of talent. Yes, we are in the human capital business.

Historically as an industry we have not been good at positioning recruitment as a career of choice, meaning that people fall into it almost by accident. But times are changing and the REC is leading the way. Our members have gone into schools and helped over 20,000 young people in the last three years. And while we are helping these youngsters develop their CVs or talking to them about what employers want, we are at the same time also positioning recruitment as a good career. We have over 200 recruiters signed up to our Youth Employment Charter and over the next two years we want to double the number involved. (You can sign up here https://www.rec.uk.com/ news-and-policy/policy-and-campaigns/examplenews-item) We now also have apprenticeships in recruitment to help businesses attract and train young people once they have left school. This brings in some government funding too, which can help recruiters cover their training costs.

However, while these are important initiatives, it is the team leaders and managers in businesses who must engage, motivate and inspire young people, not only to sign up to recruitment in the first place but also to produce results day after day. Putting time into training your managers as effective people leaders is vital to success in recruitment. Investing in your people is key.

As you would expect the REC is again here to help. We have a wide range of industry expertise to call upon – and don’t forget that we reinvest all the money earned from training back into our industry.

I hope to see meet as many of you as I can at our UKwide City Conference Tours. https://www.rec.uk.com/business-support/events

• You can follow Tom on Twitter www.twitter.com/@hadleyscomment

• You can follow Kevin on Twitter www.twitter.com/@kevingreenrec

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The Big Talking Point

The plight of modern-day slavery A

t last year’s Conservative Party Conference, Theresa May, the home secretary, announced that the British government would be introducing an anti-slavery bill in this parliamentary session to address the issue of modern slavery, a serious problem that persists today in the UK. The issue received a lot of media attention following the news of three women imprisoned and enslaved for 30 years in South London in November.

In December, May introduced a draft bill alongside the publication of MP Frank Field’s Modern Slavery Evidence Review.

Both agreed the need to consolidate definitions of trafficking and forced labour, and to beef up sentencing guideline.

The draft bill increases the maximum sentence for modern slavery offences from 14 years to life imprisonment, indicating just how seriously the UK is now taking this problem. The bill will encourage the government to work more with businesses to ensure that exploitation does David Camp, not creep into their director of the workforce, and will Association of Labour Providers also look to recover

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more of the monies made from this type of exploitation, something that the REC has long called for.

“Bonded labour is an extremely serious issue,” says Ben Farber, senior policy advisor at the REC. “The public and employment agencies are all growing more aware of it and enforcement agencies are taking a more proactive role. The question is, how do we improve business processes and build trust?”

The Stronger Together initiative is one such way. Launched in October by the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA), the Association of Labour Providers (ALP), the charity Migrant Help, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and together with major retailers, it is an educational campaign to tackle labour abuse in UK food production, retail and horticulture.

The campaign is based around a website, www.strong2gether.org, alongside other resources, guidance and a toolkit containing multi-language posters and leaflets, and a series of workshops across the UK. The aim is to engage with over 1,000 farms, food producers and labour providers, who in turn will reach more than 100,000 workers, to tackle what the campaign refers to as “the scourge of modern day slavery, human trafficking, forced labour and other hidden migrant worker exploitation”.

PA

Recruiters can help clients and candidates avoid worker exploitation by learning about the red flags, says Francesca Steele

National referral mechanisms such as these have already prompted significant increases in the number of recorded exploitation cases, which are up 67% in the two years up to the end of 2012, according to David Camp, director of ALP and programme co-ordinator for Stronger Together.

“The ALP’s aim is for the provision of temporary labour to the UK food and agricultural sectors to be recognised as a model of good practice for all UK employers,” he says.

“This is a pioneering initiative for the industry itself to tackle these issues and it’s as much a collaborative exercise. The project is in phases; the first phase was to prepare the guidance, the tool-kit, the

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It can be difficult to explain to clients why paying attention to these things matters Sally Hewick, general manager at GI Group

Marshall Evans

video and the advice for HR managers and for employers on the website. The second stage is to start rolling out regional workshops to employers and labour providers. Six have taken place and about 180 organisations have attended so far, and feedback has been very positive.”

The challenge for recruiters, says Farber, is firstly to implement their own

checks on candidates and to maintain relationships with those candidates, but also to get their clients – in other words, in the case of Stronger Together, supermarkets and other end-users in GLA-related industries – to ensure that a process is in place to check workers’ situations and also to trust recruiters and the GLA enough to share any new

What recruiters can do • Register for the stronger2ether website and download the toolkit • Look out for repeat National Insurance numbers and addresses with candidates • Cross-check bank details to make sure several candidates don’t have money going to the same bank • Engage with candidates (and clients). The better your relationships, the more both candidates and clients will trust enough to confide in you if something is wrong. Plus, if you are familiar with a candidate you may yourself notice if something seems awry • If you do notice that something seems wrong, notify the relevant agency, for example, the GLA

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information with them. “The more that the GLA gets out there in front of endusers, the more effectively we will all be able to work together.”

Marshall Evans, group operations director of recruiter Staffline, who is on the board of the GLA, agrees. “The GLA has about 1,000 licence holders and I’d say that most now have faith in the GLA that if they come forward with information they won’t have the finger pointed at them. A few years ago, I’m not sure that was the case. In addition, if people are still nervous, we have a hotline which people can call anonymously. But the authority focus is very much on criminality.

“There’s a nasty bunch of illegal gangmasters out there but there is a determination to actually get them and to concentrate resources on getting them rather than concentrating on compliance.”

Sally Hewick, general manager at GI Group, says that recruiters can make a huge difference. “It can be difficult to explain to clients why paying attention to these things matters – especially when there is so much pressure on fees and value for money. But the starting point is explaining to clients what it is they are getting for their money: what checks recruiters do on their candidates and so on. And how that can help keep the client avoid acquiring a workforce suffering from exploitation.”

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Legal Update

GETTY

The legal lowdown What’s new in agency worker regulations and zero-hour contracts, asks Lewina Farrell, solicitor and the REC’s head of Professional Services AWR – the recent case of Moran and others v Ideal Cleaning has potentially put the cat among the pigeons regarding the application of the Agency Workers Regulations (AWR). In brief, the claimants had been employed by Ideal and supplied on long-term contracts (one since 1987) to work for Ideal’s client.

On being made redundant by Ideal, the claimants argued that they were agency workers, entitled to equal treatment under the AWR. This was rejected by both the Employment Tribunal and the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) on the grounds that as they were supplied for indefinite periods they were in fact on permanent contracts and could not be temporary workers for the purposes of AWR. The EAT spent some time looking at the evolution of the Temporary Workers Directive (which is implemented in the UK by the AWR) and concluded that ‘temporary’ means short term. We are aware the members have received calls from clients seeking to use this judgement to avoid AWR. However, before members start to amend contracts to place workers on contracts of indefinite duration they must bear in mind the requirements of the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003, in particular regarding the provision of assignment details, including the length of the assignment. Read the REC’s full analysis of the case in the legal bulletin of Jan/Feb 2014, available here: https://www.rec. uk.com/legal-resources/legal-bulletin Extension of the right to request flexible working – there has been some confusion as to when the right to request flexible working would be extended to all employees. Originally it was supposed to be 2015, then 6 April 2014 but BIS have just announced that it will be delayed until later in 2014. This is because the Children and Families Bill, which brings in the new right, is now

Business secretary Vince Cable

not expected to receive Royal Assent until 21 March. REC will keep members updated as to the date and the nature of the changes.

Zero-hours contracts – the government launched a consultation into zero-hours contracts on 19 December 2013. This follows months of public debate regarding the validity and level of use of these contracts across all of UK industry and business. The REC has a number of concerns about assumptions made, definitions used and the accompanying impact assessment. The REC will engage with members in the coming weeks before submitting a detailed response by 13 March 2014.

Pensions auto-enrolment – in January we reported that REC would be running a new series of pensions seminars in 2014.

Businesses with up to 499 workers on their payroll as of 1 April 2012 will stage in 2014. It is essential that members give sufficient time to plan for auto-enrolment, so if you haven’t already got a plan in place, we recommend that you attend a seminar as soon as possible. The locations and dates are as follows: Manchester

18th February

Birmingham

20th February

Swindon

4th March

Leeds

1st April

London

10th April

Manchester

13th May

Glasgow

10th June

London

17th June

Birmingham

24th June

Business development: Put IT First The Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) has recently announced a business partnership with specialist IT provider IT First.

IT First provides IT support, consultancy, product supply, data security, internet and cloud hosted solutions, as well as telephony support, and will be providing REC members with a selection of unique offers for new start up recruitment agencies, as well as established businesses.

Operations director at IT First, Simon Gregg (pictured above), said: “We’re delighted to be appointed as an REC Business Partner.

We recognise the role that the REC plays in supporting the industry through its extensive range of products and services, so

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to be able to support REC members in areas where the REC need a specialist provider with an in-depth knowledge of the market, is great for our business and fits perfectly with our plans in the sector.”

REC chief executive Kevin Green said: “Technology is an important part of every modern recruitment business and recruiters need to look at different ways of maximising their efficiency as we look forward to a positive year of growth ahead.”

For more information about IT First, their unique REC member offer and how they can help you, visit the IT First webpage on the REC website: https://www.rec.uk.com/business-support/ business-partners/technology-business-partners/it-first

www.rec.uk.com 06/02/2014 09:55

Inspiration

Behind the scenes at the Institute of Recruitment Professionals

Reality Check This month we speak to Steve Perkins, 28, of Orgtel, who won Temporary Consultant of the Year at the IRP Awards Congratulations. How did it feel to win?

It was amazing.

How did you get into recruitment and what did you like about it?

I kind of fell in to recruitment. Straight away I liked the fact it was target-driven. I couldn’t face the idea of working somewhere, sat next to someone doing less work than me but getting paid the same. I like the fact that it’s all on me.

Why do you think you won this award?

I had high billings but I think the main thing is that I’ve maintained good relationships with key people. With this kind of work you have to get to know the individual projects in great detail and to do that you have to have good relationships with contractors.

Have you been up to anything in particular this year?

Yes, this year I’ve been managing a team of 13 people for the first time, which has been interesting. They say management is the hardest job, and managing different personalities can be tricky. But I hope I’ve pushed them and helped them. I like to throw people in at the deep end but be there for them too.

Do you think recruitment as an industry is changing?

Yes, the previous generation worked more on the phone, and there was a lot more headhunting. Now it’s a lot more about social media and email. That does change the way things work. The negatives are that people become lazier. People rely too much on email and are sometimes a bit less proactive. The positives are that it can make you a more diligent and well-rounded consultant if you can utilise these new technologies properly. It has become a market where you have to be really trusted to do well – and increasing trust is no bad thing.

Tell us something about you that your colleagues don’t know.

I have a soft spot for really terrible reality TV!

Things I Know Ian Alexander, managing director of MAA International Ltd gives us his career tips Everyday is a school day I feel especially passionate about training, having started my career as an engineering apprentice and then joining a recruitment firm who gave me a pretty intense two-week preliminary training course before I was even allowed to pick up the phone. Recruitment is booming again but there is still a lack of good candidates coming into the industry. I think we often lose good people because they haven’t had the right training or development.

It can be good to look around At one point in my career I thought, maybe it’s time to move away from direct recruiting and I actually set up a recruitment training business. After that I bought a manufacturing company. None of them gave me the same buzz I get from recruitment though.

Everyone should understand business I was aware by the third year of my apprenticeship that I really wanted to own the engineering company rather than be an engineer. You must understand the business side, accounts, profits, cashflow etc. It’s probably the biggest mistake some recruiters make, thinking that they just have to be good with people. Understanding the business side of things helps make you a manager and a better recruiter.

What doesn’t break you makes you stronger My recruitment career started in 1985. I was an engineer and completing my apprenticeship and was made redundant. I decided to complete a HNC, covering marketing economics, a bit of HR. I was 22 and I was four years into the apprenticeship. We were in a recession at the time, much like now. I set up my own business in 1991 and bought a business in 2006, so everything big I’ve done has happened about the same time as a recession really!

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

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Events and training

Launched in May 2013, the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC)’s Audited Education scheme gives clients the reassurance they need of the high standards adhered to by recruitment agencies that supply teaching and non-teaching staff to schools, academies and education providers across England and Wales. Worldwide recruiter Hays has now achieved the standard and Apollo Teaching Services became the first recruitment business in Wales to do so recently.

Martyn Best, managing director for Education at Hays, said: “I am delighted that Hays has achieved the REC Audited Education accreditation. This new audit is a great recognition of our high standards and levels of professionalism as one of UK’s leading education recruitment experts. It will help us to continue to attract the highest calibre candidates for our clients and ensure the safeguarding of children. The accreditation will play a significant role in ensuring the highest standards in the education industry for years to come.”

Faith Olding, co-director of Apollo Teaching Services (pictured above), said: “This award is the culmination of the hard work the team at Apollo Teaching Services has undertaken over the last

In your city

Apollo Teaching Services

REC Audited Education wins support from education recruiters around the UK

Apollo Teaching Services reaches the standard

few years. In our industry, having rigorous procedures in place to safeguard students and to optimise educational progress is essential in relation to supplying the best service to our schools and ultimately to learners.”

For more information on REC Audited Education or to find out how you can achieve the standard go to the REC website: https://www.rec.uk.com/business-support/audited/ audited-education

The REC’s new City Conference Tours bring the Good Recruitment Campaign to life, sharing all the latest industry insights with you in your home city. Hot topics include market updates, how to use the Good Recruitment Campaign and charter to engage your clients, the latest policy updates from the coalition and the EU, sector updates from peers within your sector, and expert advice on skills development for your team.

Carol Scott, REC head of Corporate Membership, said: “We are delighted to introduce a new conference format to bring all the latest recruitment knowledge directly to our members. These one-day or half-day conferences are designed to give REC members access to all the latest information and knowledge they need to develop their businesses, whatever sector they specialise in and wherever they live.”

Location

Date

Duration

Sector focus

London

05-Feb-14

Full day

Office Professional Sector

Newcastle

06-Feb-14

Half day (pm) General sector update

Cardiff

09-Apr-14

Half day

Welsh Policy Forum

Education

Birmingham

13-May-14

Full day

Education

Healthcare

Edinburgh

24-Jun-14

Half day (pm

Scottish Policy Forum

Accounting and FS

Childcare

Aberdeen

25-Jun-14

Half day (am)

Scottish Policy Forum

Engineering (Oil and Gas)

Manchester

09-July-14

Full day

Technology

Construction

Bristol

10-Sep-14

Half day

General sector update

Birmingham

21-Oct-14

Half day

Drivers & Industrial

Leeds

05-Nov-14

Half day

Healthcare

Retail and Hospitality

London

25-Nov-14

Full day

Diversity Forum

Engineering and ‘Big Data’ Sectors (AER, A&FS, Legal & HR)

Recruitment Matters 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

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Membership Department: Membership: 020 7009 2100, Customer Services: 020 7009 2100 Publishers: Redactive Publishing Ltd, 17 Britton Street, London EC1M 5TP. Tel: 020 7880 6200. www.redactive.co.uk Publisher: Anne Sadler anne.sadler@redactive.co.uk Tel: 020 7880 6213 Consulting Editor: Ed Sexton ed.sexton@rec.uk.com Editorial: Editor: Francesca Steele francesca.steele@redactive.co.uk. Production Editor: Vanessa Townsend Production: Deputy Production Manager: Kieran Tobin. kieran.tobin@redactive.co.uk Tel: 020 7880 6240 Printing: Printed by Woodford Litho © 2014 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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Profile

andSoMe CHRISTOPHER GOODFELLOW SPOKE WITH CO-FOUNDERS MANDA CROWDER AND MARK RICE

When a company’s name evolves, usually there’s a change in actual wording. But the three incarnations of recruitment and employee engagement communications firm andSoMe’s name represent the changing dynamics of recruitment advertising, from the creation of a specialist boutique agency to the latest approach to online recruitment.

In this instance, the name andSoMe reflects the development of expertise in social media to the point where this activity accounts for 90% of the agency’s output.

“We’ve evolved with the way recruitment’s changed. We did the traditional, and then we moved into digital and social media. Now we’re the only ones that are predominantly social media. Everyone does it as part of what they do, but it’s such a big part — it’s integral to everything,” Mark Rice, who co-founded the company with Manda Crowder, tells Recruiter.

This acknowledgement of the business’s evolution was marked by a subtle change of the name: the ‘S’ and ‘M’ in andsome were capitalised, and it’s now pronounced “and so me”, rather than “and some”.

As the founders describe it, the offering’s become “a partnership with businesses to promote themselves and to engage with potential candidates and their own employees across social media platforms”.

The client list includes companies like Sony Playstation, luxury hotel chain The Dorchester Collection, restaurant Le Manoir and retailer Arcadia. andSoMe’s recent work with Boots provides a good case study to how this works in practice.

Crowder says the retailer has a high awareness of the importance of being a digital brand and that the “majority” of Boots’ recruitment advertising currently is social: “Social media isn’t just about recruitment; it’s about engaging the people and speaking to a wider audience about what you’re like as an employer. It’s not about selling the jobs anymore; you’re selling ‘you’ as an employer.”

The key to this kind of engagement is to join in, or hang out with the people you want to target, rather than shouting at them.

Part of the recent Boots campaign involved targeting fashion and beauty bloggers who frequent social media platforms Instagram and Tumblr, along with their fans, using hashtags like #bbloggers and

“NEVER DEVIATING AWAY FROM WHAT WE ORIGINALLY SET OUT TO DO. BE AUTHENTIC, REAL AND HONEST. AND WORK TO PRODUCE QUALITY, INNOVATIVE WORK THAT’S RIGHT FOR OUR CLIENTS — AND HAVE FUN DOING IT!”

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PHOTOGRAPHY: RICHARD LEA-HAIR

MANDA CROWDER’S SECRET OF SUCCESS

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#fbloggers. To attract their attention, haircut shots and advice based on Boots products or services were posted, and then such discussions became a vehicle for talking about jobs.

As with most of its campaigns, andSoMe took over the company’s social media channels. This involves a lot of trust on the part of the client. But without this level of control Rice and Crowder say they can’t offer the kind of reactive service needed to meet the demands of today’s active and passive candidates.

Their model offers clients the benefit of managing the social media presence out of hours and the ability to tailor messages to breaking events. This could mean tweeting about Manchesterbased management jobs for café chain EAT when Alex Ferguson announced his retirement, but it also meant handling 200-plus inquiries when a customer site went down over Christmas.

The recruitment channel is usually separate to a company’s general social media accounts to avoid confusion, but still represents the whole of the business. “You’re representing whoever the company may be. You learn a lot about people and why those people want to work for you as a business,” says Rice. andSoMe was launched 15 years ago as ‘andadvertising’ when the pair left the large agencies they were working in to focus on client relationships — “It was about working together, rather than just being a supplier,” says Rice — an approach they thought the space was lacking. Even at this stage, several years before the launch of Facebook and Twitter, its campaigns were geared towards creating ideas that were easy to share.

An early project was working with Pret A Manger in 2001. To target managers working for other food retailers, yoghurt pots were sent to them as ‘messages in a bottle’. It was a bold move to target them directly and reactions were mixed, with one company returning the product filled with gazpacho soup.

However, the campaign generated a huge amount of word-ofmouth and national newspaper coverage. The campaign, which also involved a small number of print advertisements, led to 80 managers being recruited over a year to help cater for Pret’s rapid expansion.

The name was changed from andadvertising to andsome in 2008 to mark the shift to digital and increased focus on employer brand. “Recruitment and employer branding has changed so much over that time [from when the company launched to 2008]. It’s not really advertising anymore; it’s about brand, it’s about engaging people,” says Rice.

The transition away from print dominance was difficult for advertising agencies because it was unclear how the business model was going to work when the focus was on free, or low-cost digital adverts. Keeping andSoMe to a six-person team made it easier to take advantage this structural change. “We’ve been the size we are now from the beginning. There’s no grand plan to become a big empire, get bought by anybody else or to grow through acquisition,” says Crowder.

This team “lives in” the social media space on a day-to-day basis, allowing them to constantly learn about new tools and what’s being shared. This is a process that in-house recruitment teams may find difficult committing time to, says Rice.

A recent example is a campaign to recruit a head chef for Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, Raymond Blanc’s two Michelin-star restaurant and hotel in Great Milton, Oxfordshire. In spite of having a strong brand, the company had tried without success for eight months to find a head chef when andSoMe took over.

The tactic was to use the Twitter feed @RBCookeryTutors to commentate on and provide details about Blanc’s TV show The Very Hungry Frenchman, joining in with the discussion while it was being aired. This took advantage of the company’s brand to promote them as an employer and provided the perfect audience for the campaign.

“We would put occasional things about coming to work for the school because of his [Blanc’s] passion,” explains Rice: “We did that for five or six weeks and we had lots of engagement with chefs who wouldn’t have even thought about applying. The first night that ran

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CV Mark Rice 1998– present: andSoMe • Creative and community director • Co-founder 1995–98: Bernard Hodes UK • Creative director • Managed a large creative team producing employer branding and employee marketing

Manda Crowder 1998– present: andSoMe • Client service and community director • Co-founder

Company profile Founded in 1998 Head office in Shoreditch, London, UK

we had a direct message from a chef that saw the Twitter stream, and he was the one they ended up taking on.”

What does andSoMe recommend to firms to take advantage of social media? Rice balks at the suggestion of providing his top tips, saying the current fad of writing lists on how to use social media is counterproductive.

“There are always ‘10 top tips to do this’, how you should tweet.

You should ignore those; you should see what other people do and don’t copy, but learn and try things yourself,” he says.

“There’s this over-reliance on case studies,” Rice continues. “You can potentially learn from them, but people tend to rely on them to back up their own argument for doing something. That goes back to the old ways of using media; it’s not like that at all.”

When pushed, he provides a couple of ideas about what recruiters need to avoid, such as scraping lots of content and putting it under the company’s banner, an approach that andSoMe often finds in accounts it takes over.

Another of Rice’s pet hates is scheduling, which involves a tweet being written and set to go live at a later point. This is obvious to social media users, he explains, and ruins the kind of engagement these campaigns need to succeed: “You don’t have to be a visible human face, but the way you react can show the personality of that brand.”

In terms of the latest state-of-the-art tools, Rice says it’s important to be aware of what’s around and be ready to take advantage of it. The Boots Christmas campaign used six-second video-sharing platform Vine, which was launched a year ago, to provide easy-toshare messages from Boots employees, for example.

Rice says that regardless of the approach the crucial thing to remember is that social media provides a space to try new ideas.

One of andSoMe’s first experiments was using Twitter to recruit runners for ITV. The award-winning campaign used three characters’ names with underscores between them, asking the audience to fill in the story lines (eg. Tyrone ___ because ___ Molly ___ Kevin.). It caused lots of discussion online and led to more than 900 applications.

“We were fortunate to have a client that was open to new ways of doing things. You put suggestions forward to them six years ago, and it was a trial for them and a trial for us. That was the first time people started recognising what you could do with it [Twitter]. It was using it in a creative way, which no one had ever really done at that stage.”

The passion for experimentation has given andSoMe the edge — not only in their own evolution, but in guiding their clients to adapt and thrive as the nature of recruitment advertising itself changes.

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MARK RICE’S PHILOSOPHY

“NEVER STOP LEARNING. ALWAYS TRY THE NEW, NOT JUST THE TESTED. LOOK FOR INSPIRATION OUTSIDE OF THE INDUSTRY AND DON’T EVER BE AFRAID TO FAIL”

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EXPERT OPINION

Fragmented Software Platforms Have Become a Weakness Rather Than An Edge

T

By Brandon Metcalf, Founder and COO of Talent Rover he staffing and recruiting industry has a workflow unlike any other in the business world. We are faced with a complex sales process for not only finding clients, but also recruiting the best candidates. Both require extensive documentation, follow up, planning and speed.

Once we make the match we are then challenged with managing timesheets, onboarding, terminations, compliance and invoicing—not to mention calculating and paying commissions. This doesn’t take into account all of the other internal processes like expense reports, internal onboarding, managing fixed assets, IT maintenance and more.

For years, we’ve tried to connect these complex processes with administrative and operational efficiency—and that is where most staffing software has failed. We’ve relied on separate software platforms to manage staffing processes. In fact, we’ve budgeted for extra headcount just to handle the data entry and reconciliations of these systems. It’s like having a railroad track that is disconnected—at specific points, we must unload the train, load the goods into a horse and buggy, then haul them several miles to the next section of the track, load the train back up and then audit the delivery to make sure nothing fell off in the process.

With one CRM, one ATS and a variety of independent software solutions for all the other back office functions, getting systems to talk is expensive and complicated. As a result, a team has to repeat data entry, wasting time and increasing the probability of errors and reconciliation down the road. Moreover, we cannot track revenue and commissions in real-time. We want to run reports, understand what’s happening with the business and make strategic decisions based on data, not intuition.

In the highly competitive staffing industry, fragmented software platforms have become a weakness rather than an edge. When software takes time away from making sales, finding talent and locking placements, that software is failing to serve its purpose.

During my time in staffing, I held roles in sales, recruitment and regional management at a multi-billion dollar global staffing firm. I learned what it’s like to have gaps in the railroad track. We had a CRM system for sales, a recruitment and matching platform, and an archaic system for handling placements, timesheets and invoicing. We could only access our systems from a work computer connected to a corporate server, and if the server went down or that internet connection crashed, we

couldn’t work. As we all know, whoever presents the candidate first wins. At times, connectivity and server issues caused a delay in the placement process and resulted in lost revenue.

Eventually, I moved to a multi-million dollar staffing firm and was responsible for managing all technology. Well versed in the staffing industry and its technology, I was dedicated to finding and implementing software that would make sales, recruitment and placements faster and more cost-efficient. Yet there was no single software platform that could support the complex staffing workflow, overcome unreliability of hosted solutions and address the need for better mobility.

This unmet need led me to co-found Talent Rover in December of 2011 with Kent Gray. Our goal was to create software to manage the entire workflow and operations for a staffing and recruiting firm. We built a single solution that handles sales, recruitment, placements, onboarding, timesheet processing and expense reports. We also designed the system to integrate directly with accounting and payroll systems that finance teams were already comfortable using. This eliminated unnecessary data entry and communication between multiple software platforms, allowing staffing firms to finally access realtime business intelligence.

Drawing on more than 30 combined years of staffing experience, Kent and I designed a system specifically for our industry and ensured that our solution would be fully mobile. Because Talent Rover is built on the Salesforce Platform, the trusted world leader in cloud computing, the system is also supported by multiple datacenters around the world.

Even in the event of a technical error or disaster, Talent Rover data is safe, and our users are still up and running.

In essence, we’ve made Talent Rover your “command center” for managing an entire staffing and recruiting organization. Built to be fast, easy and comfortable for every level of tech-savviness, Talent Rover has simple page designs where minimal clicks provide maximum access to information. We minimized the time and steps it takes to find and skill candidates. There’s no hunting for basic information like phone numbers—everything you need appears on the candidate’s profile, meaning you don’t need to have Excel, LinkedIn, a Word document and a job board open just to make a placement.

We invite you to join us at the Recruitment Agency Expo on 25-26 February at the Olympia Conference Centre in London. Talent Rover’s UK sales team and I will be exhibiting and offering demos in Booth #15. We look forward to showing you how Talent Rover can help you achieve greater efficiency, faster time to placement and increased revenue.

For further information please call 020 8616 7305, visit www.talentrover.com or email info@talentrover.com 32

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Research

RESEARCH HAS BECOME MORE THAN JUST PROVIDING NAMES TO FILL IMMEDIATE NEEDS. AS COLIN COTTELL FOUND OUT, ANTICIPATING TALENT SKILLS AND BUILDING PIPELINES FOR THE FUTURE ARE KEY FOR COMPANIES GETTY

Research comes of age When Simon Stephenson, joint chairman of the Executive Research Association (ERA), a global forum for talent intelligence and insight professionals, remarked to members at a recent meeting that “research used to be 25 ladies on bikes going around London having good lunches”, there was laughter around the room.

However, Stephenson, also director of research firm Corporate Executive Research (CER), was making a serious point: that the nature of research has changed, and continues to do so at a rapid rate making it virtually unrecognisable from this dated vision of its past.

Grant Weinberg, director of talent acquisition Europe, Asia and Middle East at Gilead Sciences, neatly lays out the choices for in-house resourcers, who traditionally buy in research, either from individuals, search firms or specialist research firms. “You have

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to be clear: do you want somebody to just map the market and pass the list to your in-house recruiters, or do you want somebody who can also provide some information on the performance of those people? For Weinberg, the latter is the Gold Standard. “That is where I would like it to go,” he says.

While Gilead takes the view that research hasn’t yet reached this exalted state, he and Stephenson are in agreement on the direction of travel for a service traditionally associated with ‘the little black book’ of personal contacts, and filling specific role gaps on demand.

Stephenson agrees that increasingly research is much more than the purely “transactional piece” of providing a list of names to fill an immediate need.

“It is also about anticipating future recruitment needs, building databases of future candidates, understanding what other companies are doing

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“BEFORE IT WAS ‘COME BACK WITH A LIST IN TWO OR THREE MONTHS TIME’; NOW THEY WANT PRETTY HIGH QUALITY REPORTS ON A WEEKLY OR FORTNIGHTLY BASIS” JAMIE NEWMAN and how they are structured,” he says. Increasingly, Stephenson says that clients ask his members to carry out such tasks. “This is often followed up by being asked to do a proper recruitment project,” he adds.

Matthew Mellor, managing director of research-led headhunting and information company Armstrong Craven, says there is a link between the increasing focus on talent within client organisations and the types of services companies such as his provide. “We are increasingly providing insights and helping clients make better decisions about talent, to locate talent, what does it look like, what are their skills and aspirations.”

Another increasingly common assignment is to compare clients’ employer brand against the market, he adds.

“Armstrong Craven is now involved in the talent planning cycle much, much earlier,” says Mellor. For instance, before deciding whether or not to put a shared service centre in Barcelona, he explains that a client might ask his firm to find out whether “they are going to able to find the skills there”. “It’s more of a consultative service. We would consider ourselves as leading a much more consulting-led service,” he says.

Asked to put a figure on how the role of his company has changed, he says, “50% of our work is helping clients at the point at which they have a role they need to fill. Five years ago, it was probably closer to 70%”.

Weinberg, whose company Gilead Sciences employs two or three researchers as part of its in-house resourcing function in the US, says that researchers can be used to improve decision making, including creating the optimum organisational structure.

He explains that in specific countries, research projects can uncover a trend of unfilled roles within competitors, indicating a shortage of skills in the market. “We need to use this data to our advantage when considering our organisational design and not default to potentially chasing an empty talent pool,” says Weinberg.

Stephenson notes the rise of in-house researchers, as part of in-house resourcing function within large corporates, citing Centrica as an example, although he says this trend is “still not widely supported”. “A lot of companies are still uncomfortable about ringing up their competitors and asking their staff to come and join them,” he says.

Weinberg says that having an in-house research team can be useful in keeping “alive” lists of talent provided by external research. “My research team could add to it and delete from it, and continue to validate it, making for cost effective research tailored to our business needs. This avoids using the recruiter’s time inefficiently,” he says.

In-house researchers are also expected to “build some sort of talent pipeline capability”. For instance, the researchers should be networking with the new

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hires building up new and fresh talent pools capturing data that might not be in the public domain.

David Steel, client director at talent acquisition & insight solutions company Write Research, says that many of the changes to research in recent years are linked to the rise of the in-house recruiter, and their increasing focus on talent and talent management.

With this, he says, has come a trend for workforce planning and for the development of talent pipelines.

Clients now look up to 18 months ahead, and as a result the role of the researcher has changed.

While, say, five years ago his role at Write Research was largely reactive, “now it is longer term, not just we have a hole to fill in our business”.

Steel adds that these days, working with clients is “a lot more collaborative”. In part, he explains this is made easier because the person on the client side is now more likely to have had recruitment experience than in the past. This has fostered the development of longer term-relationships with clients, often on a retained basis.

Indeed, Neil Purcell, global chief executive officer of talent sourcing, recruitment intelligence and employer branding solutions firm Talent Works International, says that for many clients, his company has “almost become an extension of those corporate organisations”.

In doing so, the company has diversified into new services well beyond the usual definition of research, such as helping clients to target specific candidate groups. “Attracting candidates is high up on everybody’s agenda,” he says, with more emphasis on the passive candidate market, he adds.

Jamie Newman, senior managing director at executive search firm Page Executive, agrees that client expectations of what a researcher should be expected to do are changing. Not only are they expected to identify people for a specific role, now they are involved in the preparation and information for client pitches, he says.

Clients also often want to see the researcher’s list of candidates before the researcher makes any approaches. “A lot of clients are as equally networked” [as the researchers], says Newman, adding that clients “may want to preclude and include people themselves”.

Clients are also much keener for researchers to keep

“ATTRACTING CANDIDATES IS HIGH UP ON EVERYBODY’S AGENDA” NEIL PURCELL

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“THE ROLE OF THE RESEARCHER IS ALL BASED ON THE ABILITY TO HAVE A CONVERSATION WITH SOMEONE”

“WE ARE INCREASINGLY PROVIDING INSIGHTS AND HELPING CLIENTS MAKE BETTER DECISIONS ABOUT TALENT”

SIMON STEPHENSON

MATTHEW MELLOR

them in the loop, he says. “Before it was ‘come back with a list in two or three months time’; now they want pretty high quality reports on a weekly or fortnightly basis.”

Just as client demands are driving what research provides, the economics of research is also a factor driving change. As Weinberg points out, using research firm or an individual freelance researcher to provide a list of candidates can work out far cheaper than engaging a traditional search firm.

Where a search firm might charge £15k for its services, a research firm might only charge £5k, he says. And if the client hires two people from the list, the savings go “right to their bottom line”. However, Chris Molloy, CEO of niche pharmaceutical and life sciences executive search firm RSA, doesn’t see it this way, and extols the value of research within retained executive search. “There is still an absolute requirement for high quality human interaction to make the

knowledge that you have up to date, relevant and ultimately useful,” he says.

Another significant development is that researchers now use the internet, particularly LinkedIn, as a matter of routine. Techniques such as Boolean search, more usually associated with sourcers, are also becoming a feature, says Molloy.

However, Sheana Dudley, MD of Research Direct International, says that despite the increasing use of technology, the human factor remains vital within research. “You can spend an awful lot of time on LinkedIn,” she says. “You might get 20 names for a role, but you need to talk to them to really know if they are right for the role.”

The ERA’s Stephenson agrees that despite the increasingly complex and varied demands being placed on researchers, the role of the researcher “is all based on the ability to have a conversation with someone”.

That at least is unlikely to change.

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SPONSORED BY

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Firms turn off talent on mobile

The approach that many employers take to their mobile recruitment strategy can be likened to putting a job advertisement in a newspaper and forgetting to tell people how they could apply, believes Dave Martin, chief technology officer and co-founder of mobile recruitment technology specialist, Three Sparks Global. “Or putting the ad across 10 pages in little boxes,” he adds.

A consumer survey by Google found that 88% of people search for jobs on a mobile device — but most companies still do not have a mobile corporate career site, and many that do provide the candidate with a sub-standard experience in the mobile space.

“The experience of the mobile candidate is no different than the expectations of any mobile web user,” says Martin. “They search and find, and when they find, they want to act. So most of them are feeling let down by these companies.”

It would seem that many employers aren’t recognising the impact a poor mobile

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experience has on their mobile brands. Nor are they putting sufficient value on giving the candidate a good experience. Both add up to a false economy.

As Rob Williams, sales director UK/ Ireland at US mobile technology provider MoBolt, which opened a UK office more than a year ago, points out, they may think their site is adequate because they receive applications, but they are likely to be missing out on top talent. “There will be jobseekers who persevere to complete their application, but those with alternative options are more likely to abandon the journey and go elsewhere,” he says.

“They may have found a job through Google, Facebook, Monster or Totaljobs, which all provide a nice mobile experience and are then redirected to the corporate careers site to apply, where it then goes wrong,” Williams says.

Chris Bogh, technical director of recruitment software developer Eploy, says that its clients’ career portals are receiving 36% of its traffic from mobile devices and last year launched Eploy Connect, a multi-lingual web platform that

GETTY

DESPITE ONE IN THREE JOBSEEKERS SEARCHING FOR THEIR NEXT ROLE ON A MOBILE DEVICE, IT SEEMS THAT EMPLOYERS STILL DON’T GET IT AND ARE TURNING AWAY POTENTIAL TOP TALENT AS A RESULT OF POOR MOBILE CAREER SITES. SUE WEEKES REPORTS

provides customers with a tailored mobile experience.

Eploy carried out a survey of the career sites of some of the UK’s major retailers and found that 82% of the companies represented at a recent conference didn’t have a mobile site and only 10% had what he would describe as a good candidate experience.

The survey also found that many sites fell down on the basics even when it came to the desktop experience. For instance, more than half of the websites had the name of the third-party applicant tracking system (ATS) visible in the URL, and when a candidate registered or applied they were taken to a bland form that was clearly from a supplier rather than the organisation.

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“The better candidates would use a social apply facility and would expect the company to follow up but some employers don’t have the time or resources to do this” Rob Williams, sales director UK/Ireland, MoBolt

“This can affect their confidence in applying for a position,” says Bogh, who adds: “If employers can’t even do these parts well, problems are just compounded when it comes to mobile.”

Quite why employers aren’t being more proactive when it comes to mobile strategies is unclear, and Bogh thinks it may be because they simply aren’t aware how bad the candidate experience is because they have never tried to register on the site.

Martin believes it could be because suppliers have promised something further down the line but when delivered this falls short: “In some cases the technical supplier in the recruitment industry has not understood the challenges that mobile brings.”

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Three Sparks was launched around a year ago to directly address these problems, and its adaptive technology platform is used to drive a number of recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) clients and direct employer sites. Its platform can adapt to whatever mobile device the candidate is using, so even if it is an old-style Blackberry it ensures a high standard of experience and it also adapts to content in the keyword search.

One problem with mobile job-hunting is that the candidate is given too much data/ information for the device and user to deal with, a challenge the Three Sparks solutions seeks to overcome. “Giving them the opportunity to search all over the UK is not necessarily very helpful,” explains Martin.

“So instead of giving candidates a horrible experience of feeling like they are searching for a needle in a haystack, the system adapts to the jobs data.” Thanks to built-in analytics and monitoring of the conversion funnel from candidates landing on the site through to applying, the system also continuously improves the user experience.

Another strand of the technology addresses one of the biggest challenges for candidates and employers: the business of actually applying. It features a cloud ‘apply’ button which allows the candidate to upload a CV without having it on their phone by taking it from another source such as Dropbox or a job board.

And there is more integration to come, says Martin. However, Three Sparks is also mindful that more options can bring more complexity for the user. “So if it is an IT job, we wouldn’t, for instance, suggest a financial careers sites as one of the options for uploading their CV,” Martin says.

US-based company Jibe, which has developed a range of cloud-based talent acquisition products, takes a similar approach by allowing candidates to pull

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“The experience of the mobile candidate is no different than the expectations of any mobile web user” Dave Martin,

GETTY

CTO and co-founder, Three Sparks Global

a CV from cloud storage facilities such as Dropbox or Googledocs or grab information directly from social professional profiles such as LinkedIn or their email.

Jibe spokesperson Jed Hamilton explains that it also employs a patented mirroring technology that synchronises directly with the employer’s ATS so users don’t have to re-enter the same information time and time again. “Many employers don’t buy into the hype that full mobile apply is necessary but that is starting to change as organisations see top talent move on to the next opportunity when an apply process forces them to jump through hoops,” he says.

“While there are technological challenges such as the limitations of the ATS, it’s more a perception problem than anything else.”

Williams agrees that it is often the employer’s ATS which is holding mobile recruitment back and its solution is effectively overlaid onto an ATS. When it comes to applying, it takes a similar approach to the big consumer sites of taking as much information as possible readily available on the device or in social profiles.

“It is standard practice to use Facebook credentials to start the process whether you are buying a DVD or looking for a job,” says Williams. “We pre-populate information as much as possible. When it does need to be input by the candidate, we make it as intuitive as possible with radio buttons and drop-downs, and use gamification. Anything that minimises the possibility of error and makes it more enjoyable for the jobseeker.”

Williams adds that while many employers like the idea of a “soft apply” facility such as submission of a link to a LinkedIn profile, in his experience many employers don’t have

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the internal resources to manage these and will prioritise the full applications. “My personal view is that the better candidates would use a social apply facility as they think they are great and would expect the company to follow up, but some employers don’t have the time or resources to do this,” he says. “That’s where the agency/ staffing world comes in as they have more motivation to follow up on good jobseekers.”

While metrics from the MoBolt platform bear out the desire to apply online, Williams explains that they also show that some candidates save their application on mobile to finish at the desktop.

Eploy provides a two-stage apply process where candidates can register on their mobiles and finish the application at home but Bogh believes there will be a big move towards integrating with cloud storage sites such as Skydrive and Dropbox and also more use of candidate portals, one of the characteristics of its software. “Candidates don’t want to do multiple registrations; the single approach is good,” he says.

There is little doubt that across the recruitment world the candidate is having a range of mobile experiences. For many employers it is early days but with mobile accounting for more than one in three job searches, many run the risk of continuing to let candidates down if they don’t act swiftly.

An employer may have all sorts of perceptions about how the candidate acts in the mobile space but they can’t argue with hard data. Indeed, mobile analytics tools from the likes of MoBolt, Three Sparks and Jibe show precisely where candidates struggle in the process and ultimately drop out.

“Candidates don’t want to do multiple registrations; the single approach is good” Chris Bogh, Technical director, Eploy

Martin says that based on some of Three Sparks’ data, around half of candidates searching for a job in the ‘mobile space’ clicked through to see the job description from the list of returned results, compared to only a quarter at the desktop. Its data also shows that it is something of a myth that jobseekers do the bulk of their jobseeking discreetly during commuting times.

“It’s completely across the board and a huge proportion is done through wi-fi, which is obviously not when they aren’t roaming,” Martin says, then adds: “What mobile has certainly done is lengthen the day [for jobseekers]. Traffic used to start around 8.30am and drop off at 6pm but now it’s more likely to start at 7am and go on beyond 10pm when they are browsing in front of the telly.”

Clearly, the mobile jobseeker is called that for more than one reason.

WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK

06/02/2014 09:51

EXPERT OPINION

The power of self-service

T

oday we are presented with more ways to do things ourselves than ever before.

This is a phenomenon that I spend many a waking hour thinking about. What are the drivers of self-service and the motivations behind why people are willing to take a DIY approach to services they’re used to having someone do for them?

The rise of self-service shopping in supermarkets started as early as 1916 but did not come to the UK until after the Second World War. Shopping was a slow process, limited by the number of shop assistants behind the counter, who would fetch each and every item on your behalf. Allowing customers to select their produce from the shelves directly meant less staff and more convenience for the customer. A classic win-win. Now we can weigh our own veg, scan our own barcodes and even checkout our own purchases all in the pursuit of lowering costs and increasing speed and convenience.

The self-service movement has since been applied to more complicated and skilled services. IKEA has turned the hamfisted into cabinetmakers; Expedia has made us all travel agents, and YouTube houses a galactic library of “How To” videos giving the layman the power to take on all sorts of jobs normally reserved for professionals.

campaigns without the need for an expensive agency. Xero streamlines the management of a company’s finances, reducing their reliance on bookkeepers and accountants.

Google allows businesses to control how many visitors come to their website on any given hour, on any given day, on a pay per click basis. Transparency, control, ease of use, efficiency, and cost reduction are the living embodiment of these selfserve businesses.

My business, Krooter, brings these same self-service benefits to recruitment. Our online tools enable businesses to reliably recruit by themselves while saving time and money. For the inexperienced, Krooter provides optimised job ad templates and algorithms to match the most appropriate job boards with the role. Professionals, meanwhile, can copy and paste their own ads and select their preferred job boards from our extensive list. Post to multiple job boards in one click and save by benefitting from our discounted media buying. Share your vacancy to your company’s Facebook page, LinkedIn page, Twitter or even your website and have candidates apply direct. An applicant tracking system collates the applications and provides a smart short-list so you can hone in on those candidates most suitable first.

The economic drivers and consumer benefits of self service recruitment are obvious and unlike the 50 years we had to wait to do our own shopping, UK businesses will benefit immediately.

This brings us to self-service business tools that are challenging traditional practices with clever use of cloudbased technology. MailChimp, for example, enables a novice to create and execute beautiful HTML email marketing

For further information, please call 0808 168 5340, visit Krooter.co.uk or e-mail info@krooter.co.uk

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Self-serve recruitment.

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Jobs on the go-go A WELL-DESIGNED, EASY-TO-USE MOBILE-FRIENDLY CAREERS SITE IS NO LONGER A LUXURY BUT A VITAL PIECE IN EVERY COMPANY’S RECRUITMENT JIGSAW. DEEDEE DOKE REPORTS ON A FEW CONVERTS In China, 2014 marks The Year of the Horse. But from a more global perspective, 2014 could emerge as The Year of the Renaissance of Corporate Careers Site — with nods to mobile technology and social media critical to the revitalisation underway on many of the direct employers’ shiny new web offerings.

Supermarket chain Morrisons and travel company Thomas Cook both have newly unveiled digital ‘shop windows’ intended to clarify and simplify potential recruits’ pathways to putting their applications forward. Through putting in place socalled “responsive” sites, both Morrisons and Thomas Cook have built in mobile

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friendliness as part of the clarity and simplification solution.

Building on the mobile-friendly trend, hotelier Marriott International last month launched ‘mobile apply’, enabling potential recruits to apply for jobs via mobile. This follows on from the introduction last year of the mobile version of its careers site in 14 languages.

Marriott International chief human resources officer Europe Bridgett Price told Recruiter: “Simply having a mobile site where you can search for jobs showed us a 19% increase in career site traffic last year.”

With Marriott’s mobile apply, Price said: “We’re excited that jobseekers can now apply quickly and easily.”

Clearly mobile momentum is here — with

surveys claiming that nearly two-thirds of jobseekers have tried to job search via a mobile, and 80% of jobseekers saying they would like to start their application from a mobile.

Many employers have not yet got to grips with the mobile whirlwind (see ‘Firms turn off talent on mobile’, p38) but Marriott, Morrisons and Thomas Cook all recognised that they had to hitch their wagons to its force now — or lose out on untold numbers

WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK

06/02/2014 16:40

EXPERT OPINION

Find your ideal candidates from the community software developers trust most Joel Spolsky is co-founder and CEO of Stack Overflow, and a globally recognised expert on software development

I

magine, if you will, a course with 10 obstacles.

A bunch of runners stand at the beginning.

There’s a two-story wall you have to jump over, there’s some kind of rope bridge, snakes on a plane, whatever.

For simplicity, assume that each obstacle successfully stops 50% of the runners. So if 12 runners start out, after the very first obstacle, six of them will somehow find themselves defeated. You will see them piled in a heap at the bottom of the two-story wall.

The remaining six will move on to the rope bridge, where three will fall through the ropes in a humorous way, eventually finding themselves dangling by one foot in the air, with all kinds of silly things falling out of their pockets. Keys, wallets, coins etc.

Nobody, really, will make it past all 10 obstacles. In fact, if you want to get just one person to pass all 10, you are going to have to start out with 210 runners on the start line. That’s 1,024 runners.

The process of hiring great technical talent is an elimination course.

A lot of people have never heard of your company. A lot of the people who are left don’t know that you’re hiring. Others live in the wrong city. Still others don’t have the right visas. Others send in the resume but John, who reads them all, tends to throw away the resumes from schools who beat him when he was on the football team at Columbia.

Still others came in for the interview and bombed. Of the remainder, some were pretty good but had other job offers. Those who didn’t have other job offers were so distressed by the peeling, gray paint on the walls and the nasty fluorescent lighting that they stayed at their current job. And a few who didn’t mind the cubicles decided that they really didn’t want to program bunker-buster bombs for a living. Not that there’s anything wrong with bunker-buster bombs; it just wasn’t for them.

This obstacle-course reality of hiring sounds depressing. It really does.

Does it mean we have to start with 3,000 candidates to hire three programmers?

obstacle — just one! — you can double the number of people you hire.

Eliminate two obstacles, and you quadruple the number that make it past the remaining obstacles. And so on, and so forth.

But there is no silver bullet. There is no magical single thing you can do to solve all your hiring problems and get great developers working for you tomorrow. What you have to do is look at the whole process as an obstacle course and start to think about how to eliminate as many obstacles as possible. Work on all of them, because they’re all equally important.

If your title is “technical recruiter” or something in Human Resources, you might notice a small problem beginning to emerge. In fact, if your title is anything other than “Lord High Supreme Ruler, Commander of the Empire and Queen of All Bees,” you might have this problem: sometimes the obstacles to recruiting are not your fault and they’re not under your control. If people don’t want to work for your company because they’d be working in a loud, dark, windowless room with cubicles, flickering lighting, old ratty carpets, and a distinct smell of mildew, well, that’s a facilities problem, not a recruiting problem, right? Sorry, I know it’s not your fault, but it is your problem. A lot of the things I’m going to be talking about that you need to do to recruit great developers are outside of the scope of the normal recruiter. Heck, many of them are things that even the CEO can’t control.

All is not lost. You should at least have an awareness of what these issues are, so you know what to lobby for. If you’re having trouble recruiting because the office space is awful, well, even though it’s not traditionally a recruiter’s job, you’re going to have to inject yourself forcefully into the next office planning session. If the company is located in a place that doesn’t attract bright college graduates, that’s something to talk to your CEO about the next time he yells at you for not filling those openings. In the meantime, you can work on the other parts of the obstacle course that are under your control, and you should still see positive results.

And I hope it will help you make your organisation a great place to work, and by doing so, increase, in some small way, the amount of happiness in the world.

But there’s a silver lining, if you will: a bright side to all this meandering mathematical moroseness. And that is this: if you can eliminate one

For further information please visit our website careers.stackoverflow.com/uk/

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of potential recruits who want to look for jobs, along with checking cinema listings, shopping, ordering take-away, exchanging photos and chat with friends and more on their mobile.

“The bottom line is that this is an important step in building Marriott’s future workforce,” Marriott’s Price said of mobile apply, which she described as “a mobile website rather than an app”.

“Mobile apply is particularly important when considering two key audiences: young people and those in emerging markets.”

Price went on to say: “Three-quarters of mobile devices are located in the developing world. Mobile devices are more accessible and more affordable than desktop computers. We have to be easily accessible to potential job candidates. Mobile helps us to do that.”

At Morrisons, mobile was a priority in creating the company’s new site. “We know that 40% of our careers site visitors come from mobile devices, so we were really keen to cater for these on the new site,” said Carla Murray, resourcing manager — sourcing. “In retail you’re always on the move; you’re not sat behind a computer all day and many of these workers do a lot of travelling.”

But even the truest believers in mobile use for recruitment purposes differ on how best to put it into play. For instance, Murray and Morrisons don’t share the Marriott vision of a full-service ‘application by mobile’.

Murray spoke to Recruiter of a different approach and a contrasting view of what jobseekers really want.

“We thought about building an application form that could be completed on a mobile device, but the research shows that our candidates don’t want to do that,” Murray explained. “Instead, they want to ‘basket’ the jobs they are interested in so we can email them a link to apply later at their convenience from a laptop or desktop PC.” She added: “You’re looking at job sites when you’re at lunch or having a snack. The likelihood of you putting all your details through, of having your CV is low. Filling out a complete application doesn’t work.”

Mobile aside, organisations that decide their existing sites aren’t up to scratch look for new and improved means to successfully impart their employment stories to as wide an audience as possible. At Morrisons, that meant launching a single new group-wide careers site instead of the existing six.

Where Morrisons and Thomas Cook are in synch is in adopting the use of video, although the two organisations’ sites feature very different offerings. Morrisons’ video features short text messages and simple graphics illustrating the company’s story

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“In retail you’re always on the move; you’re not sat behind a computer all day” Carla Murray, Resourcing manager — sourcing

from history to future, set against company colours. “Our research shows that 85% of candidates go to a careers site purely to search and apply for vacancies,” Murray said. “I’m so fed up of going onto sites where there’s lots of extras. To get the message across sharply and as quickly as possible gives impact.”

For Thomas Cook resourcing business partner Tony Romeo, the highlight of his company’s new site “has to be the videos” which showcase actual employees explaining their jobs, he told Recruiter. “None of it was scripted, and it wasn’t heavily directed.”

The videos illustrate the business’s diverse nature and the wide variety of jobs available, giving potential candidates a good idea of various roles within the business.

“I’ve seen a lot of careers sites,” Romeo went on to say. “When you’re a large, complex business like us, it can be easy to overlook key job families.”

Incorporating a “full set of analytics” for the first time, to see and understand how applicants interact with the site, and social media connectivity were other elements that weighed heavily in the development of the new Thomas Cook site.

In fact, what Romeo called “a sustained campaign featuring an accumulative amount of social media” is being rolled out to occur over the next three months on Facebook, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter and YouTube to keep

potential recruits up-to-date on the latest job opportunities to be posted on the careers web site. “The campaign will be highly tailored to each of the platforms,” Romeo said.

Full integration with social media will be part of the next phase of the careers site development at Morrisons, along with CV writing and interview guidance.

Marriott’s Price outlined some of mobile apply’s key features. For instance, it can connect with applicants’ LinkedIn profiles as well as allow applicants to “just tap in their responses”. Another inviting feature allows applicants to “easily re-apply if they’ve previously submitted an application with us. All the data from the past is stored and accessible via mobile”, Price explained.

Features introduced last year to Marriott’s careers site reflect a real effort to get inside the minds of potential candidates and answer life-issue type questions, such as commute time estimators and local points of interest. “Knowing where they will get a coffee and how long it will take them to get there, those are important things in envisioning themselves at Marriott,” she said.

In Price’s view, mobile apply is a quantum leap forward as Marriott looks to staff 1,000 more hotels in its global chain, adding to its existing 3,900 hotels across 18 brands.

“Countries like India are considered mobile-first, where 59% of mobile web users never or infrequently use desktop web,” Price said. “We believe the mobile apply functionality will be particularly useful to people in these mobile-first countries, where we also happen to have a lot of growth.”

The approach may take different forms, but companies such as Marriott, Morrisons and Thomas Cook are demonstrating that successfully going mobile doesn’t have to be a ‘one-size-fits-all’ affair.

WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK

06/02/2014 16:40

EXPERT OPINION

Keep data in-house to identify talent in the future

A

ccording to the FIRM (Forum for In-house Recruitment Managers) annual report, there is a continued move towards direct sourcing of talent and a steady push to reduce agency spend. However, for inhouse teams to offer a comparable service to agencies, they should be aware that using the correct tools can often help level the playing field, in an area where agencies are frequently thought to be more advanced regarding process and technology.

There is a current trend with all recruiters, in-house and agency, to turn immediately to online sources before assessing whether the internal talent pool could meet their requirements. This reaction is not surprising, the sheer volume and variety of candidates makes it an obvious choice. But to rely on the same pool of talent as everyone else is surely just commoditising services, offering very little difference between what either party can deliver.

Furthermore these online sources are now becoming more versatile, allowing candidate interaction and communication to be conducted within the site itself. This practise of recording information only in the cloud and not replicating within the internal database may be harmful in the long term. It means that large parts of the recruitment process, that would normally add to the depth of the database are being omitted. There will be no trace of the interaction between company and candidate, no indication of the recruiter’s opinion on the suitability of the individual or any measure of the expertise that the consultant was originally hired for. If none of this information is recorded internally, just in cloud, when a particular recruiter leaves, their knowledge and experience leaves with them. When really it, or their value, should have been captured for future use, making the database richer and deeper.

company rely on the expertise of an inhouse team when a recruitment agency may offer equal or greater value?

The potential of the internal database has a more strategic and higher level function. As a provider of Talent, it is easy to understand your delivery plan for the next 12 months. What becomes harder is the same task but over the medium term – 2 to 3 years. When a company wonders: Where are my points of failure or weaknesses and how can I address them? Recruitment technology can be very helpful to analyse your department’s current capabilities in line with the company’s business objectives over the coming years.

Internal systems should offer the visibility to understand what talent is available within existing resources and who can be accessed through various networks. How does what I have compare with what I actually need?

Only once it has been understood, where your blind spots are or where the competition could have the upper hand, can processes be put in place to fill the gaps that have recently been identified.

DaXtra has the ability to integrate all of the above with an existing internal CRM/ATS, but also to provide reporting on locations of skills and individuals across geographies; helping the user identify potential target areas for future recruitment drives and initiatives.

This level of understanding can also go a step further: Do external talent trends co-inside with my company’s expansion plans over the next 2 to 5 years? Do they confirm the decision to set up an office in a particular location due to key skills being in abundance a region or should the location be reconsidered following an exodus of required skills from that area?

This level of planning and strategy is key to meeting the requirements placed upon an in-house team by internal stakeholders, but more importantly to ensure that the perception of the department remains positive and its existence justified.

If this process continues and the information or interactions not captured, then why should other departments within the

For further information, please contact Stephen Blackmore, Head of Sales – Europe, e: s.blackmore@daxtra.com

WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK

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Movers & Shakers

Sponsored by Recruit Ventures

• 360 RESOURCING SOLUTIONS:

FINANCIAL CONDUCT AUTHORITY HIRES MAXIN

David Davies has been hired to head up the sales and training division.

ALIUM PARTNERS: The global •interim management provider

has appointed Kathy Weidman to launch its media and entertainment practice.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), regulator of the UK’s financial services industry, has appointed Paul Maxin as its head of talent and resourcing.

He will be accountable for the talent management and acquisition strategy of the company, and will focus on how the FCA builds, buys and deploys new capabilities across the organisation.

Maxin was most recently global resourcing director at Unilever. He was also one of Recruiter’s 11 Most Influential Recruiters in the August 2013 issue of Recruiter.

ANTAL INTERNATIONAL •NETWORK: Doug Bugie takes up

the position of president, having previously been an adviser to the board.

•has been hired to take charge

BIS HENDERSON: Paula O’Reilly

of the staffing specialist’s newly established procurement recruitment practice.

AFTER SEVEN GREAT YEARS AT UNILEVER, I’M THRILLED TO JOIN THE FCA. THE ORGANISATION IS ESTABLISHING A NEW APPROACH TO CONDUCT REGULATION IN FINANCIAL SERVICES, WHICH PUTS GOOD CONSUMER OUTCOMES AND MARKET CONFIDENCE AT THE CENTRE OF ITS BUSINESS

•

CAPGEMINI GROUP: The firm has appointed Hubert Giraud as director of people management and transformation.

CORE-ASSET CONSULTING: •Fiona Aim has been appointed

to the new position of company accountant.

EDEN BROWN: Having most •recently owned his own firm,

Iain Davies has joined the public sector and technical recruiter as chief executive officer.

ELEVATION RECRUITMENT: The •multi-sector recruiter has made

two hires. Ben Suddaby has joined the accountancy and finance team, while Michelle Fergusson comes in as business manager within HR.

•

ENERGIZE RECRUITMENT: The IT recruiter has taken on Anuschka Natley as international resourcer, Oliver Ellis as digital marketer, and Mark Clendining, Chi Nguyen and Andy Lee as senior consultants.

• EXSURGO: The retail and consumer recruiter has appointed Andrew Pyman as a senior hire in its procurement division.

•telecoms provider has appointed FIRST POINT GROUP: The global

Mark Silverman as non-executive director.

JAEGER: The high-end fashion •brand has appointed Liz Jewitt-

Cross, former HR director at Joules, as HR director.

LMA RECRUITMENT: Fergus •Hooley has been appointed

associate director in the compliance division, and Fiona Rooney as specialist reward recruiter.

•recruitment specialist has

SELLICK PARTNERSHIP: The

promoted Anna Gibbons to corporate communications director.

SHEFFIELD HAWORTH: The •global executive search and

president, chief people officer with responsibilities for five additional European markets.

interim management consultancy has hired Noel Ó Curraoin to its retail financial services practice.

PEDERSEN & PARTNERS: Amina •Tukur-Tarfa has been appointed

WATSON: With more •thanTOWERS 17 years’ experience at the

as country manager for Nigeria, and will support offices across Africa.

company, Chantal Free has been appointed to lead the talent and rewards business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

•

RECRUITMENT MANAGEMENT •GROUP: Giles Hampson has been

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A selection of vacancies from recruiter.co.uk Sharna Associates Recruitment consultant Construction/built environment £18-30k DOE + excellent commission Bolton, Lancashire

Darwin Recruitment Contract manager £50k basic plus considerable team bonus (£100k OTE) Essex

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of the healthcare sector, as well as continuing to manage new and existing clients.

UK: Jez Langhorn •hasMCDONALD’S been promoted to senior vice

PINSTRIPE & OCHRE HOUSE: The recruitment process outsourcing and talent management provider has appointed Jane Bilcock to the newly-created role of executive vice president and chief HR officer.

Your next move?

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VALIDITY SCREENING SOLUTION: Barbara Simmer has

For more jobs, people moves and career advice go to • recruiter.co.uk/jobs • inhouserecruiterjobs.co.uk • internationalrecruiterjobs. com

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joined the employee screening company as director of business development.

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Email people moves for use online and in print, including a short biography, to recruiter.editorial@redactive.co.uk

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www.recruiterrepublic.com 06/02/2014 14:50 12:05

RESOURCING REDEFINED Consort Group is a thriving and innovative recruitment business based in Moorgate, placing c4,000 candidates a year across the UK. We work with some of the biggest brand names within the IT, retail, financial services and cleantech sectors, providing core contingency and RPO recruitment services along with recruitment/HR consulting and advisory services.

We have undergone huge growth in a challenging financial climate and encourage a happy, professional and collaborative workplace, with an emphasis on delivering outstanding results to our candidates and clients, every time.

We are now looking to grow our contingency business further and are currently hiring for proven 360 recruiters with vertical specialisms

to build businesses in either the financial services, cleantech or IT sectors, permanent or contract. You will gain access to our existing infrastructure and value add services to enable you to develop client relationships to their full potential and our bonus and commission schemes are extremely competitive, rewarding high achievers above and beyond many of our competitors. We have also recently launched a share option scheme, for wealth generation.

All offers are subject to relevant and satisfactory checks and employment references.

If you would like to apply for this position, please email your CV and a cover letter to hayley.bawden@theconsortgroup.co.uk

If your career aspirations extend beyond purely financially related targets, we also encourage individuals to grow teams and develop major accounts.

At Consort Group we understand that it isn’t always the right time to change roles, so if you

Corporate Manager – London

www.theconsortgroup.co.uk

Are you interested in an entrepreneurial opportunity?

Regional Manager

£40,000 + bonuses and commission + Company Car, Pension & Health Care

Edinburgh - £ - Salary to attract the best

Do you deal with the recruitment industry?

Are you looking for a new challenge?

We are seeking an ambitious, commercial and driven individual to launch, grow and develop our brand new state of the art regional office in Edinburgh.

Calverton Finance Limited provides Invoice Finance faciliƟes to small to medium-sized businesses. We have been established for over 15 years and are based in Milton Keynes.

“PayFactory” is a division of the business providing Įnance and back oĸce services to recruitment agencies. We see 2014 as being a year of growth for the recruitment industry and we want to expand our oīering parƟcularly in London and the South East.

As part of this strategy for growth we are recruiƟng for a new posiƟon to cover the London area. You can be based from home or oĸce, technology and car are supplied. We need someone who is passionate about the recruitment industry and has great contacts but is looking for a new challenge and wants to embark on a new career but at the same Ɵme using their industry knowledge.

This posiƟon will involve developing and expanding our exisƟng introducer base, meeƟng prospecƟve clients and structuring deals to suit their requirements.

The ideal candidate must have:• Experience within the Recruitment Industry.

• Strong sales background.

• Great interpersonal skills.

• Knowledge of Invoice Finance would be an advantage but not essenƟal as full training will be given.

Please apply by email to: sharonsimpson@calvertonĮnance.co.uk

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help us by referring a friend or colleague, who we later hire, we would like to say thank you with a gift of vouchers of your choice, to the value of £1,000 (terms and conditions apply).

RECRUITER

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FEBRUARY 2014

If you’re frustrated by the lack of progression with your current employer and are looking for the next step in your career with greater levels of autonomy, challenges and rewards, we have the perfect role for you to consider as Regional Manager for the Scottish region.

For a confidential conversation please contact Steve Usher on 020 8514 7400 or email steve@ccarecruitmentgroup.com

Recruitment Consultants x 6 London, Manchester, Edinburgh Tired of a lack of development or recognition and ready to move from a generalist environment to a niche market?

We work with some of the most recognised brands in the UK across a vast array of vertical sectors offering you an opportunity to truly focus and become an expert in your field.

We offer continuous training, excellent reward schemes and opportunities for progression to those with an ambition to develop into specialist, managerial or account management roles.

For a confidential conversation please contact Barrie Brown on 0161 457 0191 or email barrie@ccarecruitmentgroup.com

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06/02/2014 15:12

®

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Award Winning Flat Fee Online Recruitment Service Here at Blue Octopus we have a no nonsense approach to online recruitment. Not only do you get the best price but we also guarantee ĨĂŶƚĂƐƟĐ ĐƵƐƚŽŵĞƌ ƐĞƌǀŝĐĞ͕ ƚĞĐŚŶŽůŽŐLJ ĂŶĚ support. ͻ ^ĂǀĞ ƟŵĞ • Increase your talent • Save thousands in agency fees • Reduce your cost per hire rates ͻ ŶŐĂŐĞ ZĞĐƌƵŝƚŵĞŶƚ ƚĞĐŚŶŽůŽŐLJ

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GET OUT OF THE RAT RACE Senior Recruitment & Recruitment Consultants Salary £18-40k dependent on experience with an excellent commission scheme and benefits.

National technical recruitment agency Integra People is looking for senior recruitment and recruitment consultants to join their growing team.

Having recently expanded into a new head office, Integra requires pro-active and driven consultants. Hard work and determination will be rewarded with strong career opportunities and benefits.

To apply, email a CV and covering letter to HR supervisor Natalie Whelan: natalie.whelan@integrapeople.com

634 Fountain Court, Birchwood Boulevard, Warrington, WA3 7QU

T: 0845 4747 316

www.integrapeople.com e: contact@integrapeople.com

PLAN YOUR NEXT MOVE

on the move See latest job listings Create job alerts by email Save and email jobs from mobile Apply for jobs by saving your CV to your profile Keep track of your activity

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FEBRUARY 2014

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06/02/2014 15:17

Bloggers with Bite

JOB SWAPS MAKE SENSE FOR BUSINESS SUCCESS Letting go of the reins and taking up someone else’s can do wonders for an organisation elinquish complete control of your business and take over someone else’s for a week.

Sounds daunting, doesn’t it?

It certainly did to me when I, along with the other managing directors across Randstad’s business lines, agreed to do just that.

For the past 18 months the leadership team, which includes the managing directors of the Randstad UK business lines as well as the UK executive team, have sought out innovative opportunities to broaden our knowledge of each sector specialism so as to create a more united and forward-thinking business.

The idea of an MD job swap was proposed so we could learn about each other’s processes and cultures, as well as share ideas to enhance our own business practices — something we strive for throughout Randstad.

For one week I let go of the reins of Randstad Education and took the place of my colleague Owen Goodhead at Randstad Construction, Property and Engineering. While these two industries differ greatly in terms of the array of candidate skills, job types and client relationships, it quickly became clear that both businesses have a shared work ethic and ambition for excellence. This was a very encouraging starting point.

Over the course of the week eek I met with key individuals around the country, ntry, both fee earners and support staff, aff, but I also spent time with different rent teams absorbing their processes cesses and culture. It was also a good ood opportunity for staff to find out about how we MDs got to the position we’re in and why hy our career paths have taken n the route they have — something ng that fitted neatly with our wider ‘How I Became’ platform (see ee www. randstad.co.uk/how-i-became/). me/).

In addition to the day-to-day -day work practices, I also had the opportunity portunity to attend the Builder and Engineer ineer Awards 2013 and present one of the e sponsored awards. It was fantastic to engage with construction and engineering clients, and d discuss the job swap idea — something they expressed an interest in doing in theirr own businesses.

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Jenny Rollinson is the managing director of Randstad Education

Overall, I felt the entire exercise was a great success but there were three key things that I learnt from the experience that will be of great benefit in the future: 1. Working closely with other business lines is vital in order to prevent barriers developing between sector specialisms. We’re all on the same team.

2. Closer working relationships with other teams, offices and sectors allows you to find ways in which you can work together to further unite the business.

Even the most diverse teams have opportunities to work together; you just need to be able to spot them.

3. It’s important to demonstrate to your staff and fellow team members that you are willing and able to step outside your comfort zone. It is extremely beneficial for overall morale and your staff’s attitude towards you.

I strongly recommend the idea of a job swap to any business leader but it’s not just senior staff who can benefit. We intend to implement more job swaps up and down our businesses but it’s important that whoever is undertaking the swap totally immerses themselves to get the most out of it.

Think about what you want to take away from the experience, and ensure you discuss and share what you have learnt from the process — there will be a lot, believe me.

It was also a good opportunity for staff to find out about how we MDs got to the position we’re in What do you think? Tell us at recruiter.editorial@redactive.co.uk

In March: meet Jill Duthie, RBS’s head of sourcing, UK & Europe WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK

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