Recruiter May 2013

May 2013

www.recruiter.co.uk

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE FOR RECRUITMENT AND RESOURCING PROFESSIONALS

Best of the best Sod dex xo Prestige’s g Jo Morgan g and Balance Recruitm ment’s Tony Vicckers scoop indiviidual honours at the 2013 Recruiterr Awards for Excellence, sponsored by Eploy

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FROM THE AWARDS… See inside for news, soundbites and pictures from the 2013 Recruiter Awards

INCORPORATING 01_Recruit_may13_Cover.indd 1

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Contents 36

31

And did your May get off to a good start?

At Recruiter, May 2013 could not have got off to a better start. Spending an evening with 1,100 of your brand’s best ‘friends’ is a luxury too few of us get to enjoy. It’s a privilege and an honour when our readers and sponsors choose to spend their time and resources with us, and equally so when you elect to share your innovation secrets and best practices with us and the wider world of recruitment.

NEWS 5

See the complete list of all the winners from the 2013 Recruiter Awards for Excellence, sponsored by Eploy

We wish we had hundreds more pages in this issue to share all of your stories and pictures from the night. But we will share more throughout the year.

As if there was any other news to report this month… (please imagine a winking emoticon here!) Of course there was! A documentary about assessment in recruitment, six guiding principles from LinkedIn for in-house recruiters to consider this year, challenges in China’s logistics talent base and Kelly Services’ exploration of data are just a few of the non-Awards related stories waiting for you inside this issue of Recruiter.

Thanks for spending part of your busy May with us. We look forward to chronicling more of your Awards-worthy adventures in recruitment throughout the y year!

Winning on the night

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Recruiter Awards news Hays, AdMore Recruitment, Annapurna Recruitment…

7

Six principles of change LinkedIn reveals activities recruiters should adopt

selection biases 10 Kelly focuses on making

REGULARS

sense of data 11 Tech & tools 12 News Digest

20 23 23 26

The Awards in pictures…

ANALYSIS

14

Scan here to get your own copy of Recruiter

31 COVER STORY Individual brilliance Celebrating the success of in-house and agency recruiters of the year, Jo Morgan and Tony Vickers 36 Winning brand on a local level LV= scooped the Most Effective Employer Brand Development award for the second year running

10 Documentary captures

14 News Analysis Recruiters as corporate spies?

16 Sector Analysis Healthcare 19 Global Spotlight on The Netherlands

DeeDee Doke, Editor

FEATURES

Soapbox Soundbites Awards chat Insight Strategy is key for in-house recruiters in managing the expectations of hiring managers

28 The Challenge Vanquish Recruitment and WorkPlaceLive 44 Movers & Shakers Industry moves 46 Bloggers with Bite

WHO’S HIRING? 45 Ruth Moran

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: Sam Burne James T: +44 (0)20 7880 7606 sam.burnejames@recruiter.co.uk Contributing writer: Sue Weekes Production editor: Vanessa Townsend T: +44 (0)20 7880 7602 vanessa.townsend@recruiter.co.uk Art editor: Adrian Taylor ADVERTISING Advertising director: Andy Daniel T: +44 (0)20 7880 7607 andy.daniel@recruiter.co.uk Display sales executive: Jasmine Pengelly T: +44 (0)20 7880 6205 jasmine.pengelly@recruiter.co.uk Recruitment sales executive: David Rix T: +44 (0)20 7880 7608 david.rix@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@alliance-media.co.uk • To purchase reprints or multiple copies of the magazine, contact Andy Daniel T: +44 (0)20 7880 7607

Total average net circulation between 1 July 2011 & 30 June 2012 – 17,838. Recruiter is also sent to all REC members R d ti M Redactive Media di 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. © 2013 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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RECRUITER

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Perfect.

You have roles that are vacant.

We have readers who aren’t.

Talk to the best candidates, talk to us Call 0203 353 3401 or email jobs@guardian.co.uk

web print tablet mobile

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guardianjobs

08/05/2013 10:42

AND THE RECRUITER AWARD WINNERS ARE…

News

The best and brightest in recruitment were recognised on 1 May at the 2013 Recruiter Awards for Excellence, sponsored by Eploy. Around 1,100 guests attended.

WINNING WAYS Best Newcomer Agency: AdMore Recruitment (Highly Commended: Pod Talent) Best Employee Referral Strategy, sponsored

by Eploy: EMC Best Recruitment Agency Marketing Team: FiveTen Group (Highly Commended: Cititec) Most Effective Recruitment Campaign: The Portland Hospital in partnership with Pink Squid Best Banking/Financial Recruitment Agency: Cititec Most Effective Employer Brand Development, sponsored by Transline Group: LV= (Highly Commended: Allied Bakeries) Best Temporary Recruitment Agency: Protocol Education (Highly Commended: Randstad Education) Best Candidate Care, sponsored by the Recruitment & Employment Confederation: Independent and Kiddicare (Highly Commended: Penta Consulting, Tangent International) Best Candidate Experience and Onboarding, sponsored by indeed: Matalan (Highly Commended: Ovo Energy) Best Client Service, sponsored by Liquid Friday: CBSbutler Best Graduate/Trainee Recruitment Strategy: Newton Europe (Highly Commended: Deutsche Bank) Best Apprentice/School Leaver Recruitment Strategy: Network Rail with Work Communications (Highly Commended: Visa Europe) Best International Recruitment Agency, sponsored by Eploy: Penta Consulting

FOR MORE NEWS AND COMMENTS GO ONLINE

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

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PHOTOGRAPHY: RAFAEL BASTOS

The event was hosted by Ed Byrne at a packed Grosvenor House Hotel in London’s Mayfair.

In addition, £1,420 was raised at a charity casino on behalf of SoldierOn!, Recruiter’s charity of choice for 2013-14. This is the second time Recruiter has partnered with the organisation, which works to enable disabled ex-servicemen and women into meaningful, long-term employment. .

(Highly Commended: Antal International) Best Global/International Recruitment Strategy: Life Technologies Best Engineering Recruitment Agency, sponsored by Boox: CBSbutler Best Professional Services Recruitment Agency: Annapurna Recruitment Best IT Recruitment Agency: LA International Computer Consultants Best Technology Innovation: YO! Sushi in partnership with Pink Squid Innovation in Recruitment: Hays (Highly Commended: The Royal Bank of Scotland Group in association with ThirtyThree) Best Job Board: CareersinAudit.com (Highly Commended: Technojobs) Best Small Recruitment Agency to Work For: Caritas Recruitment Best Large Recruitment Agency to Work For, sponsored by CV-Library: Goodman Masson Best Embedded Recruiting Team: Capita Resourcing at Secure Central Government Client Outstanding Outsourced Recruitment Organisation: GradWeb Small Recruitment Agency of the Year: Resourcing Group Agency Recruiter of the Year, sponsored

by Strategic-Move: Tony Vickers, Balance Recruitment In-House Recruiter of the Year: Jo Morgan, Sodexo Prestige Best Recruitment Team: Life Technologies (Highly Commended: LV=) Large Recruitment Agency of the Year, sponsored by ICS: Pathology Group Entries for the 2014 honours are due to open in early autumn.

“Cititec… can I just point out that that’s not how you spell city, or how you spell tech” ED BYRNE IN RESPONSE, ROBERT WOODFORD, GLOBAL HEAD OF MARKETING OPERATIONS AND CSR AT CITITEC, WHICH WON BEST BANKING/ FINANCIAL RECRUITMENT AGENCY, SAID:

“It bought us more publicity, which is all we can ask for really” “We love the Recruiter Awards. It’s the biggest event in recruitment. It’s great to be part of it and to help people to celebrate their achievements, and to get together with people that you haven’t seen for a while. It’s a nice event.”

CHRIS BOGH, FOUNDING DIRECTOR, EPLOY

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News

Random thoughts from recruiter.co.uk, Twitter and beyond…

“We weren’t expecting to win. This is the first awards event we have entered. It’s a great honour”

PHOTOGRAPHY: RAFAEL BASTOS

HARRY KANG, RECRUITMENT MANAGER, EMC

AWARDS NEWCOMERS ON TRACK FOR MORE SUCCESS Best Newcomer Agency, retail specialist AdMore Recruitment, is already looking towards the future.

And they have a strong act to follow, as the winner of the same accolade in 2012 — Annapurna Recruitment — is this year’s Best Professional Services Recruitment Agency.

One of Annapurna’s founding trio, James Ballard, said the 30-strong business has near doubled in size since last year. Following last year’s award, it also enjoys a burgeoning reputation — he gave an example of a household name sporting brand that “called us out of the blue about their global head

of leadership talent, and two years ago that wouldn’t have happened — they wouldn’t have known who we were”.

The awards wins are “fantastic” for its employer brand, he noted. “People are looking for opportunities to join a growing, dynamic business. I think it really does set you apart,” in particular amongst graduate talent with less knowledge of the sector, Ballard added.

With seven staff, this will be music to the ears of AdMore co-founder Russell Adams, who said: “Now it’s about that next step forward, and for us that is about increasing our headcount.”

But Adams is keen for them to stay true to

Left: Annapurna Recruitment scoop Best Professional Services Recruitment Agency, while (above) AdMore Recruitment picks up the Best Newcomer Agency award

their roots. “We have tried to be I guess brave and courageous on occasions, to turn down work that we feel doesn’t fit in our remit,” he told Recruiter, “which isn’t always easy and we’ve had some clients put us under pressure sometimes to get us to work on stuff, but we’ve tried to stay true to what we set out to do.”

SAM BURNE JAMES sam.burnejames@recruiter.co.uk

HAYS CHALLENGE INNOVATION WINS GRAD ATTRACTION WINNER OF the Innovation in Recruitment •category was Hays, with its eponymous

The Hays Challenge — an online, interactive recruitment game which showcases all aspects of a career in recruitment in a fun and engaging way.

Speaking to Recruiter after the awards, James Cullens, head of HR at Hays, said the gamification idea arose from the need to catch the attention of graduates who might never have thought of recruitment as a career choice. “Social media and gamification is the best way of attracting young people,” he said.

FOR MORE ON THE AWARDS, SEE PP12-13, 23 AND 31-42

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“We were missing out on retail graduates, for example, who wouldn’t have thought of recruitment as a career.”

At the same time, he added, The Hays Challenge is a way of professionalising the industry, as graduates see that recruitment is an entrepreneurial, consultative and exciting career choice, offering graduates the chance

to receive a professional qualification on completion of their training.

As for the game, the first level has players reviewing and evaluating individuals and CVs. In level two each player is encouraged to provide candidates with appropriate career advice. And the final level tests players’ skills by pitching for business with the chief executive officer of a major client. “The Hays Challenge stresses the consultancy side of recruitment,” Cullens explained.

Through challenging the misconceptions of recruitment, the game has been played by more than 20,000 people worldwide. More than 70% of UK graduate applicants invited for interview have played the game, which Cullens said improved their preparation for the assessment centres.

VANESSA TOWNSEND vanessa.townsend@recruiter.co.uk

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News

“Absolutely delighted for the whole team. There are 200 people in the firm and this is recognition of all their hard work”

“It is recognition of the work we have done to recruit high quality people to support our business growth”

STEPHEN LAWRENCE, CEO PROTOCOL EDUCATION

ROS KING, HEAD OF HR, NEWTON EUROPE

“It’s a night when excellence in recruitment is shown at its fullest potential” LISA SCALES, CO-FOUNDER, TRIBEPAD

SIX PRINCIPLES OF CHANGE How is wine growing in Denmark comparable to recruiting in 2013?

For David Cohen, director, UK and Northern Europe, LinkedIn Talent Solutions, both activities represent mindset and activity shifts occurring largely because of changing global conditions such as climate change, technology advances and economic volatility.

“Something different is happening right now,” Cohen recently told a LinkedIn Connect London audience. “There are those who are trying to hold on to the past, and there are those who are thinking about new information, access and data as an opportunity to do things like never before.”

Under such conditions, standing still is not an option and recruiting as if it were 2015 requires recruiters to adopt six principles, Cohen said.

• Rethink how you’re spending your time. What three key activities would you like to refocus your team around? A survey of LinkedIn customers chose proactive sourcing (74%), pipelining candidates (68%) and employer branding (52%).

• Turn your team members into talent scouts. Adopting this mindset could include encouraging the recruiting team to become specialists, embedding them into business units and even working with

Contract News Acorn: The recruiter is

email signatures to reflect talent scouting activities.

• Embrace the power of data. The LinkedIn survey revealed that a staggering 78% of respondents believed their utilisation of data was average or poor.

• Invest in the pipeline. For instance, encourage recruiters to have coffee with candidates even if they don’t have a role.

• Optimise mobile.

• Hire from within.

The LinkedIn survey also showed that a sourcing specialist was the top choice of respondents if they could add one role to their team.

Other findings: • 83% agreed that employer brand has significant impact on the ability to hire great talent • 91% of companies spent more or the same on employer brand in 2012 compared to 2011.

The survey drew 3,200 participants globally, including 250 in the UK. DEEDEE DOKE deedee.doke@recruiter.co.uk

TAKING STOCK OF CHINA’S LOGISTICAL SHORTFALL •

EMPLOYERS IN China face such a severe shortage of logistics staff that one British company is offering work to 20% more candidates than it has jobs.

Paul Brooks, sales director of Unipart Logistics, said that the company regularly offered employment to between 10% and 20% more candidates than it had jobs because they knew that within a week this number of candidates would take up job offers from other employers. The firm employs 250 staff in China.

At a press conference during a recent visit to Unipart in Oxford by a Chinese delegation of logistics and education officials to the UK, Brooks said that staff retention was also a major issue, with the industry experiencing an annual staff turnover of more than 50%. Even a small wage increase would entice employees to move to another employer. “They will leave for 30p more, they will just not turn up,” said Brooks.

Haoxiang Ren, vice-president of the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing, told Recruiter that in China “the skills shortage is for every subject and every position in the sector.”

Ren explained there was a fundamental mismatch between the demands of employers and what the Chinese education system is turning out. “Demand is like a pyramid,” he said, with many more lower level operative-type jobs at the bottom, and relatively few jobs for managers at the top.

Despite this, he explained that around 400 universities in China provided 100,000 graduates a year studying logistics as a major part of their degree, leading to a glut of people looking to enter the sector at managerial level.

The problem is made worse, “because more and more parents are looking for their children to go to university and not college”, he added.

In contrast, Ren said that only 90,000 graduates with a relevant qualification left 800 secondary vocational colleges (for 15-18-year-olds) — an insufficient number to fill the far more numerous lower-level roles. “It [the education system] doesn’t fit the nature of the industry demand,” he said.

working alongside Cardiff Metropolitan University to launch a foundation degree in applied professional practice… Amrop: The executive recruiter has launched in Saudi Arabia by partnering with local search firm Fair Path…

Changeworknow: Metro Bank now uses the software company’s applicant tracking system… Consort Group: The London recruiter has acquired specialist recruiter JP Banking Solutions…

CTPartners: The executive recruiter has acquired UK search firm Augmentum Consulting… gap personnel: The industrial labour provider has acquired recruiter Bristol Drivers Solutions… Harvey Nash: The recruiter now owns Norwegian search firm Bekele & Luther outright, and began a strategic partnership with Japanese conglomerate Mitsui & Co… Konetic: The e-recruitment firm has acquired software provider RecruitActive… Network

Recruitment Partnership: The Pertemps Network Group firm has acquired supply chain and logistics recruiter BJD Group… Oil and Gas Job Search: The recruitment website has been bought by job site CareerBuilder... RGF Hong Kong: The recruiter, part of Japan’s Recruit Co, has bought Asian executive search firm Bó Lè Associates… USG People: The recruitment group has acquired a majority stake in rec-comms firm Adver-Online… Volt: The recruitment outsourcer has won a managed service deal with chemical and equipment provider Air Products.

COLIN COTTELL colin.cottell@recruiter.co.uk

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RECRUITER

MAY 2013

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09/05/2013 14:35

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A word from our Sponsor s a long term partner of Recruiter, we were proud and honoured once again to support the Recruiter Awards 2013 as KHDGOLQH{VSRQVRU

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08/05/2013 16:20

News

DOCUMENTARY CAPTURES BIASES A documentary, commissioned by specialist wireless and communications recruiter Campbell Black, highlights the potential for recruiters to make better hires through better use of data.

The documentary, entitled The Outside View, followed Campbell Black director Rob Symes as he toured the US for seven weeks speaking to a variety of experts on how the use of data analytics had helped American football and baseball teams assess who was likely to be successful in the professional game.

Speaking at the premiere at London’s Barbican Centre, Symes told the audience that analysing data could help recruiters solve a fundamental problem.

“O2 has 800 sales people,” said Symes. “We know who the top sales people are, and who are the mediocre sales people, but we don’t know why [their performances differ]. ” The documentary highlights how biases observed within behavioural science could lead to poor decision making, with potential implications for recruitment.

Such biases might include making important conclusions, for example, on

often thought • more information leads to better decision making — it doesn’t, it only leads to more confidence in those decisions • false consensus: everyone wants the same guy. “This happens all the time in executive recruitment,” observed Symes during the documentary.

Symes said the solution was better use of data analytics. He said that by measuring 25 key attributes of Campbell Black director Rob Symes with Jonita Macyte, who features in the film sales people, the factors that make for a successful salesperson how fast a candidate talked or the person’s could be identified. It was then a matter of appearance. continually recruiting in that image, he said.

The documentary explored other The screening preceded the unveiling of a common misconceptions, observed by new company to be launched by Symes that behavioural scientists, that lead to poor will help companies and recruiters use data decision making: analytics to improve their selection.

• performance isn’t as transferable from one environment or culture to another as COLIN COTTELL

KELLY FOCUSES ON WORK DATA EMPLOYER INTEREST in employee engagement will prompt greater •focus on measuring the productivity of external or contingent

workforces as well as that of their full-time permanent staff, predicts John Healy, vice president of talent supply chain strategy for global recruiter Kelly Services.

While productivity can be measured on manufacturing production lines and contact centres, measuring it in other industries is challenging. “We’ve got to think a little differently,” Healy told Recruiter.

“What is the work you’re trying to accomplish? Is there accountability to completing a task? I think you’re going to see some points of focus on productivity measures coming for external workforce.”

He said: “It’s not just the profit per FTE [full-time equivalent] — that’s too easy to manipulate: you just let a few people go, change the denominator and we’re done. But true productivity measures — how do we get to that? It’s a hard thing to measure.”

Kelly aims to bring greater data-based insight to its clients and talent supply businesses around the world.

One vehicle is a recently launched tool, the Talent Market Analyst.

Built with Economic Modeling Specialists International (EMSI), it digs deep into the supply and demand of labour in the current and future world of work. Data is currently available for the UK, US and Canada.

“If you knew every occupation, and the configuration of every company and every industry of their taxable workforce, what could you do with that data?” asks Healy.

“We’re trying to take data and apply management science to it,” Healy said. “We’re trying to take the information and apply science to it and think about it. That’s what I think our industry has been bad at, as a whole. I think our industry has not taken the data, and sat down and helped customers to understand it.

“Now you’ve got to get more and more ‘granular’ to what people are asking for, and how do we make it actionable versus just a bar chart.”

DEEDEE DOKE

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Tech & tools

News

SMART RECRUITING FOR THE SMALLER FIRM SMART RECRUIT ONLINE IS OFFERING A ONE-STOP SHOP FOR SMES, WITH THE HELP OF THIRD-PARTY TECHNOLOGY TOOLS new software-as-a-service (SaaS) based platform is bringing together a range of best-of-breed tools and services to provide the SME [small and medium-sized enterprises] direct recruiters market with a one-stop shop for recruiting.

Mark Stephens, founder and director of Smart Recruit Online (SRO), told Recruiter that the firm had carried out a “scientific” assessment on the type of platform that would constitute the most effective base to run a recruitment service. “Our optimum demographic is an SME which hires between five and 30 people a year,” he explained.

“They are less likely to have a full-time recruiting person and unlikely to have purchased any software to manage their recruitment.”

Employers pay a fixed fee per month, which begins at £24.95 for an SME user (there is also a free basic service) and then buy job posting credits. Advertising is posted out to a network of more than 3,500 job boards and social media sites, and then the SRO campaign management tool evaluates the applications that come in and presents them in order of suitability on a single dashboard. The system incorporates Burning Glass intelligent CV parsing and matching technology. Applications are saved in a talent pool and every time a new job vacancy is loaded, it automatically tells the user whether they already have suitable candidates in the database.

SRO was originally formed in 2009 in response to the demand for fixed fee recruitment services during the recession.

Stephens, a recruiter, believes that while such services responded to the changing behaviours in recruitment at that time, many were flawed because they relied too heavily on human resource from the provider. He reckoned the answer lay in

A

building automation into the process. “If this model is going to work for the client, it has to work for the people providing the service as well and we realised that technology could help,” Mark Stephens he said. “We have a lighttouch human element that monitors what is going on and intervenes as and when required. We’ve looked extremely closely at the behavioural and customer service aspects of what we are offering.”

Among the third-party tools integrated with the system are TheJobPost, the agency selection and management service (see Recruiter, March 2013) that allows an employer to select three agency recruiters to work on their vacancy. Users will shortly be able to buy additional services such as video-interviewing provided by Tazio, psychometric profiling from Prism and Safe Screening’s CV validation service.

While aimed at the SME market, corporate licences are available from £99.95 per month.

There are no limitations to the system for larger scale recruiting, claimed Stephens, who said that a corporate may demand specific aspects of the system rather than the full range of services. “For example, they could use the posting feature and we could customise an API [application programming interface] for them, so applications can be fed directly into their own candidate relationship management system.”

SRO is currently in the final stages of beta, and future plans include development for the mobile environment and an international launch. It is already available in 16 languages. www.smartrecruitonline.com SUE WEEKES

Greg Moran

The appliance of science to predict top talent US-based software developer Chequed.com is introducing a tool that aims to improve the quality of hires and predict top performers by building data and analytics into every step of the recruitment process. Chairman and chief executive officer of Chequed.com, Greg Moran, told Recruiter that failing to collect the data necessary to predict what types of competencies they need is one of the biggest challenges recruiters face when trying to hire top talent. “This is because of inadequate job definition and over-reliance on the CV during the selection process,” he explained.

“As a result, recruiters and hiring managers then focus most on a candidate’s past accomplishments as opposed to evaluating criteria relative to the job profile and data that incrementally predicts that a candidate is likely to be a high performer.”

Based on Chequed.com’s proprietary assessment science and selection technology, the cloud-based Predictive Talent Selection Suite integrates competency-based data into a recruiter’s workflow. Put simply, it achieves this by linking each step of the process, from sourcing through to assessment, interview, verification and onboarding, directly back to a particular competency map or job profile. The five components of the system are ChequedProfile, ChequedFit, ChequedInterview, ChequedReference and ChequedAnalytics and they can be used independently or collectively.

Chequed.com’s recruitment tools can be integrated with numerous applicant tracking systems and also work with the Take the Interview video interview technology. www.chequed.com

SUE WEEKES

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News

RECRUITER AWARDS FOR EXCELLENCE

HIGHEST PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS REWARDED AT HONOURS NIGHT The Great Room at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel was the setting as the leading lights from across the recruitment world assembled earlier this month for the 2013 Recruiter Awards for Excellence, headline sponsored by Eploy.

DeeDee Doke, editor of Recruiter, told the expectant gathering that despite challenging times their achievements shone through. “We are here to celebrate your drive to exceed professional standards,” said Doke to applause from the Great Room.

Irish comedian Ed Byrne (far right) regaled the audience with his wit.

Referring to his home country, Byrne wondered if there was a need for recruiters there. “If there is a job in Ireland, word gets around,” he joked.

But as the occasion proved, this was a night for the recruiters to show the world what an amazing and indispensible job they do.

Pathology Group : winners of Large Recruitment Agency of the Year

GROUP CAPTAIN IAN TOLFTS, HEAD OF RECRUITMENT, ROYAL AIR FORCE: “The Recruiter Awards showcases the best in the industry. It provides inspiration to other companies and individuals by showing them what they can achieve, and helps to ensure that the service they provide to clients is the best it can be.”

PAUL HARRISON, CARVE CONSULTING: “One of the opportunities with the Recruiter Awards is you get a chance to positively influence or nudge behaviour.

All of us are members of the communities in which we work and learn and live, and one of the cool things about the Recruiter Awards is you get a chance to recognise and reward companies who really do put something back.”

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RECRUITER AWARDS FOR EXCELLENCE

News

PHOTOGRAPHY: RAFAEL BASTOS

GradWeb: winners of Outstanding Outsourced Recruitment Organisation

YO! Sushi in partnership with Pink Squid: Best Technology Innovation

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News Analysis

RECRUITERS CAUGHT BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

SHUTTERSTOCK

The dilemma of candidates revealing confidential information in an interview is becoming more commonplace, with recruiters feeling stuck in the middle and unsure how to deal with the knowledge they have discovered. DeeDee Doke reports

B

roadly speaking, a recruiter’s job is to bring in the right talent for specific roles. But along the way to filling the role, in-house recruiters may get inside information from candidates they interview that could make a strategic difference to their own organisations.

How should you deal with that information?

For some recruiters, it’s potentially valuable insight that should be passed on within the business. Yet for others, being on the receiving end of such information sends up a red flag: either a candidate may naively be trying too hard to please the interviewer or perhaps they should be viewed warily as someone whom, if hired, might offer similarly damaging information when looking elsewhere for a job later on.

And if you use this tantalisingly useful information to your organisation’s advantage, does that make you a corporate spy?

The issue was a hot topic recently at a Centre for In-house Recruiting Excellence (CIRE) group roundtable in London, hosted

by SunGard Global Services and CIRE leader Andrew Mountney, founder of HR recruiter Aspen In-house.

“It’s an area where

I think we have to be mindful of the ethical nature of how we get that information

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Key comment “If candidates are volunteering information they maybe shouldn’t be, you could argue it’s OK to pass that on” RPO executive

the ethical piece is increasingly important,” Mountney suggests. “I hear from a lot of people who have very conflicted priorities.”

He goes on to say that many recruiters “feel stuck in the middle where they’re sitting on information” that has dropped into their hands while they are undertaking a recruitment brief. Sharing the knowledge could “significantly compromise” the interviewee or, if the information is acted upon, the candidate’s current employer could realise that their employee had been interviewed by the competitor.

Sometimes the recruiter may come under pressure from colleagues or bosses to dig deep for valuable competitor knowledge during an interview — or at least share fruits of information gleaned.

Yes, there is such pressure and it is increasing, reveals a recruiter for a financial organisation who requested anonymity. “I think that pressure comes in twofold,” he says. “One is in terms of developing competitive intelligence to understand how we improve our recruiting process, to make sure that we are looking at the right people that are doing the right jobs in the right way.

“It also comes from a business perspective,” he adds.

“We are uniquely positioned, along with some of the research teams that are employed to look at alternative companies, to look at what they’re doing, how those businesses are operating, in which markets they’re operating and to what level.”

And how does he feel about that? “I am actually kind of OK with that,” he says. “I think we have to be mindful of the ethical nature of how we get that information. But if that information is given to us, then I think it’s our job to be open-minded and keep our eyes open for information that could be beneficial.”

Commenting on the debate, a business development executive for a recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) company who attended says: “It’s treading a bit of a fine line, I think.”

However, he adds, “having done recruitment in sales for a number of years, salespeople are perhaps more vocal about what they’re currently working on at their current employer. I’ve heard some useful information about clients they’re working with, clients they have got problems with — which surprises me that people would reveal that information so easily without any prompting.”

In the current recruitment environment, as corporate recruiters become more aligned to their businesses and its objectives, the dilemma of how much to keep back versus how much to share with their business — and even how much to dig — will not go away. “The more they understand the business objectives, the more they’ve got to ask in the right sort of questions of prospective candidates and feed that information back,” predicts the RPO executive. “So I think it will become more of an issue.”

Sign up for our daily news bulletins at www.recruiter.co.uk

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Sector Analysis

Healthcare

Healthcare

Views from the market

THE NHS IS CHANGING TO REFLECT THE CHALLENGES OF THE 21ST CENTURY, SO RECRUITERS NEED TO BE AWARE OF THE NEW VALUES AND CULTURE TO FIND THE WORKFORCE OF THE FUTURE The National Health Service was never a simple beast. But the aftermath of Robert Francis QC’s Independent Inquiry into care provided by Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust — aka the Francis Report — effectively makes it “the world’s largest organisational development challenge”.

So says Dean Royles, chief executive officer of NHS Employers, which represents employers in the NHS. In recent years, NHS employers have increasingly looked to “recruit for values and train for skills” – something he says the Francis Inquiry will “accelerate”.

Six values have come to the fore, the “six Cs” described by Sue Covill, the director of employment services at the same organisation.

They are: care, compassion, courage, communication, competence and commitment.

“NHS job advertisements have already been changing to reflect this… not just for nurses but for all staff,” she adds. “Employers want potential recruits to understand that some roles are changing in the NHS and that all roles have a crucial part to play in quality care, whether doctors and nurses or scientists, therapists or managers.”

Covill also says workforce planning has become a bigger priority, including liaising with educators and developing new pathways into NHS careers, such as apprenticeships.

John Howden, interim deputy director of HR at Mid Staffs concurs, saying its recruitment is “now as much about confirming cultural and behavioural alignment as… qualifications, skills and professional capability”.

EMPLOYERS WANT POTENTIAL RECRUITS TO UNDERSTAND THAT SOME ROLES ARE CHANGING IN THE NHS

Of course, the qualifications and compliance nuts and bolts remain. Simon Hudson, the director of healthcare at Hays, tells Recruiter: “It [the Francis Report] is of great concern to us as a business, but the changes that we have to implement as a business are limited.”

Hudson notes that recent years have seen more emphasis on induction for staff, something he welcomes. He doesn’t foresee that already very stringent checks and compliance could be made any stricter in light of the report.

As for the cultural elements alluded to by Francis, Hudson says: “There’s not a lot more that we can do as an organisation to help culture.”

Thomas Simons, East & North Hertfordshire NHS Trust’s director of workforce & organisational development, wants just that. “If you control 10% of my workforce, you’ve got a pretty significant stake in ensuring that we address the challenge that Francis has set out for us,” he says.

“If we think about how agencies would differentiate their offering to us, it’s about how they could demonstrate that these candidates are aligned to our values, and looking at the NHS Constitution would be a good start.”

Also of relevance to agencies is a trend noted

by Ian McDougall, the managing director of Castlerock Recruitment Group (CRG).

Frameworks across different areas of the public sector, he finds, are having fewer agencies named on them.

He says this change benefits patients alongside balance sheets, “because one of the things they’re looking to do by reducing that is having a more consultative relationship with those people [the agencies]”.

One thing won’t change — the NHS’s place at the heart of public life and the lives of the public.

An ongoing criminal investigation by the Health & Safety Executive into the death of one Mid Staffs patient only highlights how much getting recruitment into the NHS right matters. A matter of life and death, even.

SAM BURNE JAMES sam.burnejames@recruiter.co.uk

JOBS AND APPLICANTS 18 15

■ Jobs (000s) ■ Applicants/job

TYPES OF ROLES ADVERTISED ON JOBS.NHS.UK Admin & clerical 21%

9

Additional 6% clinical services

TOTALJOBS.COM

12

Allied health 9% professionals

16

6

Nursing & midwifery 30%

3

Medical & dental 18%

0

Q2 2012 Q3 2012 Q4 2012 Q1 2013

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Other 16%

65%

4% 5%

Sue Covill Director of employment services, NHS Employers “There is a double challenge for employers seeking to recruit quality applicants in nursing, which recently became a graduate career… potential nurses may instead be attracted by other degreelevel courses.”

Jayne Hanson Managing director, Cardea Resourcing “We’ve got a particularly high demand for residential care workers and at this time we don’t have a shortage of applicants — a year ago we didn’t have this demand and we did have a shortage, so as a nation we seem to have got it right. We have still got a shortage of nurses. They are like gold dust.”

Simon Hudson Director of healthcare, Hays “As far as doctors are concerned, the key shortage areas are relatively unchanged year-on-year: you’ve got doctors who are specialists in A&E, paediatrics, anaesthetists, general medicine and psychiatry. Those are the main ones [where there are shortages].”

John Howden Interim deputy HR director, Mid Staffs NHS “When working with agencies, even on short-term assignments, it is vital that candidates are a good fit with our approach to deliver a safe, efficient and patientcentred service, and show an understanding of the journey that we have been on.”

24%

■ Permanent ■ Fixed term ■ Bank ■ Other WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK

09/05/2013 14:24

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Market Indicators

Global Spotlight on the Netherlands THE NETHERLANDS MAY BE A CLOSE NEIGHBOUR TO THE UK, BUT AS FAR AS RECRUITMENT IS CONCERNED, IN SOME WAYS THEY COULD BE WORLDS APART A developed economy, high English-language proficiency, right on the UK’s doorstep — first appearances suggest the Netherlands would be a low-hanging fruit for UK recruiters.

Key indicators

But beware, says Daniel Mulholland, co-owner at Darwin Recruitment, which does a fifth of its work there. Living 10 years in the country before setting up Darwin’s operation, he says: “My Dutch friends tease me and say ‘remember, the Netherlands is not just England with a Dutch accent’.”

An important difference is the bureaucracy.

Doing business “is much trickier, it is slower, more expensive… [getting] funding is near-on impossible”, says Mulholland. Employment law, he adds, is also far more protective of workers than in Britain.

There is at least one major thing the Netherlands and UK do have in common. “The market was extremely positive for all agencies until 2008… an amazing market,” says Nicolas Béchu, the regional managing director for Northern Europe at PageGroup. Now, he says, the Netherlands is “tough… very competitive”. Even where PageGroup has been profiting — IT and healthcare are the strongest divisions — there has still been decline.

Jon Dweck is MD of Pod Talent, highly commended in the Best Newcomer Agency category at 2013’s Recruiter Awards for Excellence, sponsored by Eploy.

One plus for the market, he says, is that current “[euro] exchange rates are to our benefit across Europe, because equivalent salaries across the EU are quite good, and because we invoice in pounds”.

Cultural exchange, however, has been “one of the biggest learning curves. We’re similar in many ways but there’s one big difference — they are much more direct. The British way of gently letting someone down… the Dutch don’t work like that”.

Where the Dutch do take the British way, however, is linguistically. “What you see in the Netherlands is more and more people speaking English,” says Saskia

Minimum wage (ages 23+): €339.10 (£285.44)/week.

The UK minimum for over 21s is £6.19 – £247.6 in a 40-hour working week.

Dutch employees receive an extra 8% holiday pay on top of their basic salary, i.e. a 13th month’s pay.

The Dutch government allows many foreign skilled workers to earn 30% of their salary tax-free.

The Netherlands ranks second of 25 countries globally for combined business administration skills. Similarly they rank second for administrative & clerical skill certifications.

It ranks slightly above average in its supply of potential leaders for tomorrow, outranked by several countries including Mexico.

Source: SHL Talent Report

van Rongen, the Amsterdam-based EMEA and APAC talent acquisition manager at digital print innovations firm EFI. Native speakers of Dutch accept this is the way business is done.

“Most of the agencies in the UK and the Netherlands are quite the same,” she adds. “They try to work on an exclusive basis, but I will not accept that. Fees of Dutch agencies are a little bit higher than British ones, so sometimes I prefer to work with a UK one.”

Some differences are to be found within HR, explains Lee Grant, former commercial director of resourcing firm Alexander Mann Solutions. Grant has recently launched HR software firm Youforce in the UK — Dutch HR services giant Raet’s first foray overseas.

“The Dutch HR world is more complicated than ours over here. It’s more regulated,” Grant describes, but says that in the recruitment module of Youforce, there is “no fundamental change”.

As Anthony Lasocki, tech firm Verizon’s EMEA talent acquisition operations manager, tells Recruiter, the key is subtle differences.

“While some job boards are gaining in popularity… the Netherlands offers a smaller number of discipline-specific sites,” he says. It is “seeing a slight decline in offline advertising and generic job boards”.

“Careers fairs also still play an important role in the Dutch recruitment markets. They are particularly popular for larger employers.”

The general consensus is that the Dutch recruitment market is not too far behind the UK’s in maturity terms. So it may not be long before that changes, and the differences for recruiters to deal with are ever more subtle.

SPONSORED BY

RECRUITMENT HOTSPOTS IN THE GDP GROWTH AND UNEMPLOYMENT NETHERLANDS, ACCORDING TO RANDSTAD ■ Netherlands ■ UK ■ Germany Netherlands (unemployment) Technical jobs (high demand, talent shortage): 6 • Welders • Bench mechanics • Process operators 4 Logistics jobs (high demand, talent shortage): • Forklift drivers • Reach-truck driver 2 Specialists & education jobs (lesser demand, but still talent shortage): %0 • Science teachers • IT system controllers • IT -2 programmers • Nurses and nurses’ assistants Admin and finance -4 (high demand, but less talent shortage): • Administrators • Financial administrators/ -6 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 advisors • Sales representatives WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK

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2012

(UNEMPLOYMENT AT YEAR’S END, FROM EUROSTAT, GDP 2007-2011 FROM WORLD BANK, 2012 ESTIMATES FROM CIA WORLD FACTBOOK)

SAM BURNE JAMES sam.burnejames@recruiter.co.uk

NO. 1 QUALITY FINANCIAL & ADMINISTRATIVE SUPPORT AS AFFIRMED BY OUR AWARD-WINNING CLIENTS

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Opinion

Soapbox

Low barriers, high standards IN THE UK RECRUITMENT MARKET, THERE IS LITTLE OFFICIAL REGULATION AND SMALL START-UP COSTS, SO BARRIERS TO ENTRY ARE LOW. BUT IS THIS NECESSARILY A GOOD THING? Barriers to entry can exist as a result of government regulations, industry regulations, high start-up costs or they can occur naturally as markets mature. The UK recruitment market has historically been an industry perceived to have low barriers to entry due to the small start-up costs and little official regulation or governance.

Given these low barriers to entry and with potential for uncapped profits, the UK recruitment market has been an attractive proposition for the shrewd investor.

However, has the fact that the industry has not adopted stricter governance and regulations been a deterrent to its long-term success? To understand this we need to look at how the UK recruitment model operates and what positives and negatives we can derive from this.

The bad news: the UK recruitment industry has many thousands of companies essentially doing the same job, so to stand out from the crowd and succeed on a long-term basis you

need to be an over-achiever. This means that charging premium prices for premium services becomes very difficult. Also, negative perceptions can be a problem.

You can see the direct correlation between negative perception and barriers to entry — estate agents, insurance salesmen and recruitment consultants often being herded into the same category.

However, there is good news: with low barriers to entry, recruitment companies are not obliged to have formal training or qualifications and don’t need to face off to any official regulators. This means that in the market you will find few companies that are actually going the extra mile to improve the quality of their service and that are genuinely interested in hiring the best staff and keeping them.

So with the right investment in hiring and training (this does not need to cost a lot of money), a militant stance on the importance of quality information in the business, you are able to create a proposition that is

SOAP

BOX

significantly stronger than your competition.

So in conclusion, consider the debate in the context of Porter’s Five Forces. For the uninitiated, Porter’s Five Forces is a framework to determine the attractiveness of an industry, developed by Michael E Porter of Harvard Business School in 1979. The five forces are: competitive rivalry, power of suppliers, power of buyers, threat of substitutes and threat of new entrants. Now if we were to use Porter’s Five Forces to analyse the potential for longterm success in the UK recruitment market, it would be easy to be discouraged by the odds and comparative threats.

However, by understanding that doing highquality work is not enough these days and that you need to have a structured strategy for self-promotion backed up with a commitment to keeping internal standards high, it is still possible to run and grow a very successful recruitment company.

LAWRENCE HARGREAVES is managing director of

international IT recruitment company Nicoll Curtin

19–20 June 2013, Olympia, London

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Opinion

Awards chat The 2013 Recruiter Awards for Excellence, sponsored by Eploy, got lots of you talking on the night

•true passion of the business, all of the values, came through every “THIS AWARD MEANS everything to us because it meant that the

single step of our recruitment. It doesn’t matter what the economic environment is, you can only run a truly great business once you’ve got the most amazing people.”

Jo Carr, resourcing service director, Independent (Independent and Kiddicare won Best Candidate Care)

•

“THE PREMIER EVENT in the calendar celebrating excellence in the market. Getting the end-user customer involved in judging and celebrating excellence is a really good thing for us.”

Ann Swain, chief executive office, Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo) “RECRUITMENT IS SALES and marketing, and it’s important that the •industry gets recognised for the important work it is doing… You

cannot run a business without people, and recruitment is a little bit more important than selling and marketing to your customers.”

Genevieve Bradbury, head of resourcing and organisational design, The LateRooms Group “FOR THE RETAIL industry, the profile of recruitment should be •higher.

The Recruiter Awards raises awareness of the move from

agency to in-house, and promotes the idea that in-house can actually achieve the same or better results than outsourcing to agencies to fill specialist roles.”

Kevin Hollingworth, head of talent, Matalan

•

“THE RECRUITER AWARDS present a great opportunity to recognise and celebrate best practice in the recruitment industry. In doing this it sets standards for other companies to aspire to, stimulating innovation and re-enforcing a focus on continuous improvement.”

Michele Ryan, HR director, McDonald’s UK, and a Recruiter Awards judge

•some of the top people in our industry. Being shortlisted was very “IT WAS A fantastic platform to recognise the achievements of

exciting and added to the thrill of the evening.”

Zoe Lewis, head of resourcing, Methods

•

“I WOULD HAVE loved to have won the Best Professional Services award for a third time — that would have been very special too, but I’m probably even more delighted to have won this.”

Founder and board director at Goodman Masson, Paul Goodman, whose firm won Best Large Recruitment Agency to Work For

Soundbites “As we celebrate success in our Awards issue this month, what has been your proudest moment in recruitment?”

David Judge Partner, Connected Consulting

I think building Connected Consulting into a profitable and rapidly growing business is my proudest achievement. More so because of the timing: the three founders resigned from a leading London-based multinational agency towards the end of 2008, a year in which the economic recession was very much to the fore. It was a leap of faith in some regards but the risk was mitigated by the one thing you always crave from clients and candidates — loyalty. Our business today is built on the loyalty of these highly valued customers.

Raphael Frascogna Managing director, Michael Vincent Consulting

It would be remiss of me not to mention the pride felt when starting my own recruitment business and taking it from a part-time venture that part-funded my CIPD studies, to a full-time business. However, there are many other moments in recruitment that make me equally, if not more proud: from mentoring minority applicants successfully through the police officer recruitment process, to placing senior candidates in L&D [learning and development] roles where they impart their wealth of knowledge upon hundreds of others. My ethos is to take pride in my work and the service that I offer, as it is the catalyst for repeat business and the cornerstone of a successful organisation.

Andrew Groves Head of talent acquisition, hibu

Probably the thing I am most proud of is my current team at hibu [previously Yell, and before that Yellow Pages] and their dedication to the job. We have all but eradicated agency usage across sales and corporate hiring. We haven’t had a single agency hire in sales recruitment for over a year and we hire around 350 sales people a year, all with outbound experience [sales calls to customers or potential customers].

•

“WE WERE QUIETLY expectant because we felt we had done a good job and have continued to do a good job over the past four years. We haven’t entered for a few years, but we decided to make the effort.

These are the only industry awards that we recognise.”

Scott Henry, managing director of LA International

• For further coverage and news from the Awards, see pp5, 6, 12-13 and 31-42

WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK

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IF YOU HAVE A LETTER OR WOULD LIKE TO BE A CONTRIBUTOR TO SOUNDBITES, EMAIL...

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09/05/2013 14:31

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Insight

Strategy key in easing recruitment pain FINDING AND RETAINING TOP TALENT REQUIRES IN-HOUSE RECRUITERS TO MANAGE HIRING MANAGERS’ EXPECTATIONS

Power Points Do the basics well.

A new white paper by global digital recruitment group Evenbase outlines the difficulties encountered by recruiting leaders in dealing with parallel challenges: an unprecedented high volume of applicants, and finding and retaining niche and high-level talent.

Difficulties range from creating the right relocation package for a given candidate and role in today’s housing market to setting hiring manager expectations for timelines and potential candidate profiles, and targeting potential candidates who want what a particular organisation has to offer.

Yet as the white paper points out, in many cases it is up to the in-house recruiter to set the agenda for hiring managers and to proactively research and provide insight and information to deliver the best possible recruiting process and hire.

The white paper was based on a recent recruitment leaders’ roundtable chaired by John Vlastelica, managing director of consulting and training firm Recruiting Toolbox. Vlastelica, a former recruitment head at Amazon and Expedia, provides consultancy services to global businesses such as Groupon and was the keynote speaker at Recruiter’s recent Smart Resourcing 2013 conference.

The 10 attendees were recruiters from Amazon, Sodexo, Guidewire Software, Vestas and other organisations.

Key issues raised and discussed included: • Recruiters must understand there is “a difference between finding a name/lead, and turning that lead into a candidate”, the white paper said. Fulfilling these requirements can be carried out by team members with different duties. One such division might involve researchers who put lists together, analyse organisational charts and identify target companies.

• Relocation packages may be necessary to encourage candidate mobility. “People may not be living in a house that’s worth what they originally paid for it. Unless you’re getting a big relocation package, you can’t afford to leave,” the paper points out.

• Engaging and, in essence, managing hiring managers through to a successful recruitment puts up challenges to the recruiter. Expectations must be set at the start. Participant Alyson Weeks, learning and development consultant at the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development,

said: “It’s all about pre-framing the whole process and managing expectations right up front. This is about a good transition, so everyone knows what’s happening all down the line, and may even include you managing their diaries as you go. The process from start to finish often takes a lot longer than you think.”

During the process, recruiters must “avoid subservience at all costs”, the paper warns. “If you think of them [hiring managers] purely as a customer and the recruiter as the supplier, the conversation and engagement becomes harder.”

Setting timeline expectations is especially critical, and Vlastelica urged recruiters to incorporate a column into all process documents that details the major causes of delays at each stage: unrealistic salary, target profile, bad questions or advertisement.

The paper goes on to suggest that at a strategy kick-off meeting between recruiter and hiring manager, recruiters must set expectations by explaining what can happen to cause major delays and associated costs. This then shifts responsibility to hiring managers for contributing effectively to the process and “allows them a greater sense of ownership”, the paper says.

“Managers react to ‘pain points’: the locations and practices in their day that have recurring problems that appear insurmountable or unavoidable. If you are not talking about a pain point, then they will inevitably find something else to prioritise over recruitment,” Vlastelica said.

Recruiters are also urged to present hiring managers with examples of hypothetical or historic candidates who have a range of backgrounds, salaries, travel and development expectations, and get a response about the feasibility of these candidates. These… “can be used to calibrate expectations and demonstrate the real candidate profiles that actually exist”, the paper said.

• If managers say they want their new hire to “hit the ground running”, that means they want to hire someone who is already doing the same job. The paper asks: “Why would they simply want to do the same thing for someone else? Recruiters are able to offer a candidate far more if they have only eight out of 10 things that they need to progress. The recruiter can then offer a way to achieve those final things.

That makes the position a good career move. It’s a different way of thinking.”

• To obtain a copy of the white paper, visit www. evenbase.com/recwhitepaper

Understand there is a difference between finding a name/lead and turning that lead into a candidate.

If looking to relocate the successful candidate for a role, consider the current housing market and whether you can offer a healthy relocation package.

Engage hiring managers by setting expectations at the beginning, and emphasise your expectations of them in the recruiting process.

‘Pre-closing’ using hypothetical or archived candidate resumes can help explain to hiring managers the types of candidate profiles that may be feasible for given roles.

Innovate in your search through techniques such as ‘reverse engineering’ your organisation’s top talent.

Consult alongside HR to look at which roles are ‘build’ and which are ‘buy’.

Survey recent hires to find out if the job meets their expectations and how they would rate the recruitment process.

Target potential candidates who are naturally motivated by what you are offering.

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

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10/05/2013 08:32

The Challenge

WorkPlaceLive helps Vanquish the IT blues Greg Ashmore Director and co-founder

VANQUISH RECRUITMENT WAS HAVING ‘ISSUES’ WITH ITS CLOUD-BASED PROVIDER BUT DIDN’T KNOW WHO TO TURN TO. WORKPLACELIVE GAVE THEM A SIMPLE IT SOLUTION

THE CHALLENGE Established in 2009, sales recruitment consultancy Vanquish Recruitment places graduates and experienced sales professionals into the recruitment sector, and specialises in finding trainee and experienced sales professionals for companies within the business intelligence, conferencing & events, finance and media sectors.

Director and co-founder Greg Ashmore told Recruiter that when he and fellow director David Stephens set up the business four years ago, neither of them had any IT or “techy” experience.

“We wanted to make it [the IT side of the business] as simple as possible so we wouldn’t have any IT worries,” he said. A hosted desktop set-up seemed the obvious solution. Ashmore found an IT company that did just that, and signed up.

However, as Vanquish grew and took on new staff, the service the company was providing was not living up to expectations.

“When you’re hiring staff, you don’t want to stress about setting up a new account. It’s simple IT, not complex” TERRY SHEPHERD

Ashmore said there were “issues” with customer service support, as well as connection speed, which was slowing up business. It was “turning into a bit of a nightmare”, Ashmore said. In particular, email searches were painfully slow — not good if you’re a recruiter relying on getting back to clients and candidates promptly. The solution was to find another provider, but finding a company that Ashmore could trust to do a good job wasn’t going to be easy.

THE SOLUTION Ashmore had worked with hosted desktop consultant Terry Shepherd in a previous business relationship, and so when Shepherd contacted him on behalf of his new company, WorkPlaceLive (WPL), the timing couldn’t have been better.

WPL is a cloud computing company and specialises in taking customers from using onsite IT for which they are responsible themselves to fix if anything goes wrong, to introducing them to a hosted model, with high-end servers which are held in data centres. “WPL has a massive internet connection — and clients simply piggy-back onto our highspeed line,” Shepherd explained, using Citrix solutions technology to ensure better connection.

Ashmore liked what he read about WPL’s customer service feedback, and even though initially he thought he’d “heard it all before”, he admitted “it rang true”. So he invited Shepherd to the Vanquish office in the City of London for

Lessons learned Even if you’re not an IT expert, do your homework before signing up to an IT provider and don’t believe the hype.

Before WorkPlaceLive, Ashmore went with the first provider he spoke to “because it all sounded so great”.

a meeting. Shepherd came with WPL’s chief technology officer, which impressed Ashmore as he felt he was being shown what the system could achieve — rather than simply being “sold to”. “I was shown real-time information and given a proper demonstration of how quickly the email search was with WPL’s system,” Ashmore said.

Shepherd added: “As everyone at WPL uses hosted desktops, we could show Greg using his inbox on an iPad exactly what he could experience. Because the server connects using Citrix, it was much quicker [than the previous provider].”

The deal was done. Although the cost factor was important to a small business, the deal wasn’t necessarily down to that alone, Ashmore said. Shepherd added: “We’re competitive. We charge on a per user, per month basis. That means for organisations such as recruiters, who may scale up and

Terry Shepherd Desktop consultant

down, they’re not overpaying.

Similarly, when you’re hiring staff you don’t want to stress about setting up a new account.

It’s simple IT, not complex.” New starters are set up within an hour — even interns who might not be in the company for long. Similarly, a user can be disabled in the same amount of time if they leave.

Migrating from the previous provider was very quick. Over a weekend, WPL set up new email servers and user names, as well as copied over data into the file structures stipulated by Vanquish.

“Staff came in on Monday to the same set up they left on the Friday — same set up but just much quicker,” Ashmore said.

The flexibility of a hosted cloud-based system extends to the hardware and an employee’s working arrangements. When asked what the experience is like on a home computer compared with being in the office, Ashmore told Recruiter “exactly the same”, adding: “Because it is not devicedependent, you could even log on with your iPhone. This flexibility is really important to our staff, so they don’t feel they are tied to the office.”

And using WPL has saved Vanquish money on office costs.

One consultant focuses strongly on the London market but is actually based in Manchester 80% of the time, Ashmore said. “WPL’s solution has given us the option not to open new office premises.

It’s saving us money and it’s good for employee morale and their work/life balance.”

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

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08/05/2013 12:18

Profile

Individual brilliance

SAM BURNE JAMES MET UP WITH THE WINNERS OF IN-HOUSE RECRUITER OF THE YEAR AND AGENCY RECRUITER OF THE YEAR, JO MORGAN OF SODEXO PRESTIGE AND BALANCE RECRUITMENT’S TONY VICKERS PHOTOGRAPHY: PETER SEARLE

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Profile

A few minutes walk in opposite directions from Recruiter’s London office lie the workplaces of the two individual winners at the 2013 Recruiter Awards for Excellence, sponsored by Eploy.

CV JO MORGAN Senior HR manager, Sodexo Prestige

November 2012 – present Senior HR manager, Olympic Park South, Sodexo Prestige

March 2011 – October 2012 Staffing manager, Delaware North Companies

2007-11 Learning & development advisor, BNY Mellon

2006-07 Staffing and recruitment manager, Marylebone Cricket Club

2005 Education: PGCert Human Resources, Manchester Metropolitan University; International Hospitality Management, Bournemouth University

TONY VICKERS Owner and principal consultant, Balance Recruitment

WHAT WORKED FOR THEM: Jo Morgan

To Holborn in the West, the shiny corporate base of Sodexo UK & Ireland — part of a French multinational, its contract catering brand Sodexo Prestige, and their In-house Recruiter of the Year, senior HR manager Jo Morgan.

To the East, the home of Balance Recruitment, an eight-man finance, procurement and accountancy recruitment consultancy, and Tony Vickers, one of its three co-founders — our Agency Recruiter of the Year.

The two do considerably different jobs, but are united in being at the leading edge of their professions and in looking forward to remaining there in 2013 and beyond.

But how different things might have been, in a not-sohard to imagine alternate reality.

Vickers tells Recruiter he initially chose catering as a career, training as a chef (not with Sodexo, sadly, for those who enjoy wonderful coincidences) before turning his hand to recruitment. Similarly, Morgan’s arrival as lauded recruiter was indirect.

Joining Sodexo Prestige in March 2011, Morgan was charged with running a major catering operation in the Olympic Park during last year’s Olympic and Paralympic extravaganza. But she wasn’t expecting to get as involved in recruitment to the degree it later, very successfully, turned out.

“We were initially looking to engage with agency suppliers to deliver the staff, which is our general model… we decided that actually, we could do it ourselves,” she says, describing that decision as “a risk, dramatically different from our usual model”.

The staff management aspect she was confident with, calling it “very, very similar” in scale to big events in a previous role with hospitality management company Delaware North at sites such as Wembley Stadium.

“Where I wasn’t so experienced was the recruitment,” she says.

Morgan’s award was the fruit of doing something “dramatically different”, as part of a once-in-a-lifetime spectacular. Talking to Vickers, his success comes from learning what works over time, and repeating.

Setting up Balance in 2008, Vickers says the founders

Morgan involved colleagues from various parts of the business in the recruiting effort for the Olympics.

Once the dates of recruitment days had been set, communications were sent out to staff saying: ‘We’d love you to get involved.’ Participants included a communications manager, finance and operations managers from different segments of the business, and even Sodexo Prestige’s managing director Chris John.

“I wanted people who knew our business,” Morgan says, but she also knew playing a role in the Olympics project would appeal to colleagues. “They felt part of it,” she says, “it was about engaging everyone.” It appealed enough, in fact, that after people had volunteered one day initially, a lot “came back for more”.

wanted “to ensure that the good things we had seen, in all the different recruitment firms we had worked for over the years, were taken under one roof”.

He is involved in a number of projects: hosting regular roundtable events, producing a Quarterly Market Updates for clients and candidates, acting as a Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) finance and accountancy sector expert, and running the newly launched Ask Balance scheme (see box overleaf, What worked for them).

Vickers doesn’t like the term ‘adding value’, calling it “very much over-used”, and sees such initiatives not as extras or an add-on, but key to developing his contacts, his reputation and giving people a reason to want to talk to him.

“We get an awful lot out of introductions and putting people in front of people that can be helpful to one another,” he says. But this only works because it is mutual, with him showing “my client group and my candidate network that I have got an interest in taking that collaborative approach and gaining knowledge”.

Another element that is both referred to in testimonials included in Vickers’ entry to the awards, and evident on meeting him, is his personal courteousness

2008 – present JO MORGAN’S SECRET OF SUCCESS Senior consultant, Finance Professionals (part of Hydrogen Group)

2007-08

PHOTOGRAPHY: RAFAEL BASTOS

Senior business manager, Elements Group

2004-07 Consultant, FSS Financial Search & Selection

2002-04 Morgan (centre) receives her award from Michele Ryan, HR director, McDonald’s UK (left) and host Ed Byrne

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“TALKING ABOUT WHAT WE’RE GOING TO DO, WHAT WE WANT TO DO, WHAT WE CAN DO AND MAKING SURE THAT EVERYONE IS FULLY AWARE AND ENGAGED AT EVERY STEP OF THE WAY BECAUSE THERE ARE SO MANY DIFFERENT STRANDS TO WHAT YOU’RE DOING WITH… ALL THE DIFFERENT PEOPLE THAT WORK AND PULL THESE EVENTS TOGETHER. IF YOU’RE NOT CONSTANTLY TALKING TO EACH OTHER, IT’S NOT GOING TO WORK”

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Profile

PHOTOGRAPHY: RAFAEL BASTOS

TONY VICKERS’S SECRET OF SUCCESS

Vickers (centre) receives his award from Paul Bogle-Fearon (left), co-founder and director of Strategic-Move, sponsor of Agency Recruiter of the Year and host Ed Byrne

WHAT WORKED FOR THEM Tony Vickers Balance has long produced quarterly market updates for clients and candidates. He says sharing knowledge is a key way of keeping clients and candidates alike engaged. “It’s something that really we should do as recruiters, I think you need to network with information that you’ve gathered from the jobs market.”

Since entering the Awards, Balance has launched ‘Ask Balance’ via its website, inviting individuals to put questions to them online, and publishing the answers. While Vickers sees such things as a vital part of his recruiting, he is keen to point out that of eight staff in the business, three are support. “It’s sort of seen as quite high [the ratio], but it really does help us focus on the recruiting activity,” he says.

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and respect. “Everyone at Balance, without exception, believes in ‘the good guy wins’ sort of thing; you get what you’re given... I think it goes a long way.”

Indeed, what he always refers to as “my network”, the axis around which his work revolves, goes further, perhaps, than his sector specialisation. His nominal specialist area is finance professionals in consumer markets, but says: “The sector specialism thing is a little bit over-used. A lot of Balance’s biggest clients aren’t within my sector niche.”

As finance skills are transferable, candidates may be people who have moved elsewhere through their career, but he’s not going to turn down these business opportunities. More important than which sectors you recruit to is “having those relationships and being honest, integral and trustworthy” — good relationships will come back to pay dividends.

Vickers calls Balance’s way of working a “slower approach… not coming in and really smashing it straight away”. Not one for ‘aggressive growth strategies’, then?

“No, well I’d say we’re very much the opposite,” he replies.

While being and branding themselves as something different from your average recruiter is key for Balance, the development of a new employer brand concept ‘Be More Than A Spectator’ was key for Morgan and Sodexo Prestige in the run-up to the games.

‘Be More’ was born because Sodexo “wanted something that told people what it was about, but we were very restricted, we couldn’t talk about what we were doing because we weren’t a sponsor”. Without being specific, it told people “what it was all about”, talking broadly about “big events over the summer”. That would be the Olympics, then.

Host boroughs, however, were able to point people towards them via job brokerages referring specifically to the O-word, while word of mouth among applicants also gave a significant boost. Another big drive came when games head Lord Coe was filmed speaking for TV news in front of a Sodexo background. “That drove so much volume to our website that day,” Morgan laughs.

In a competitive market, Morgan says Prestige “didn’t have the luxury to recruit for skills because the market was so saturated with all the other caterers”, forcing them to recruit “with the knowledge that we would have to engage and train them more highly further down the line”.

“I THINK THE THING AT THE VERY TOP OF THE LIST IS HAVE RESPECT FOR PEOPLE AND GAIN PEOPLE’S RESPECT BACK IN RETURN RATHER THAN ‘LET’S MAKE 100 CALLS THIS WEEK AND INTERVIEW 15, 20 ACCOUNTANTS FROM RETAIL OR WHEREVER’. I THINK OUR EMPHASIS IS A BIT DIFFERENT, IT’S PERHAPS MORE ON THE SOFT SKILLS”

Engagement was key — all the 3,500 candidates who were successful on one of 14 recruitment days got “an information pack that said ‘congratulations, you have a job with us’… on the back there was a timeline of when they would expect to hear from us”. She adds: “You could have had a very different circumstance had we not kept in touch with the people that we had recruited.”

With all the hard work done, Morgan says “my sleepless night was the night before the opening ceremony, sitting there thinking ‘Will people turn up?

We’ve engaged them, we’ve trained them, they’ve said they’re coming. Are they actually going to get there?

What if the trains don’t work?’”

The trains worked and the Games were a huge success — not that Morgan was actually able to sit down to enjoy any of it. She says the summer left her with a tremendous sense of pride, foremost in “giving people an opportunity to work that wouldn’t ordinarily get the opportunity, or even think that that opportunity was open to them”.

She continues: “We had so many people who came and said ‘thank you, we’ve had a brilliant time, I didn’t know I could work like I’ve worked and you’ve given me skills and actually given me confidence’.”

A positive legacy if ever there was one. And for Morgan, the upshot of ‘Be More’ too was just that, “a legacy model for our business”, something for the business to take forward.

Now focusing on completing her CIPD qualifications by the end of this year, Morgan has been “working very closely on tenders for future business”. The model and its Olympian success “will hopefully give people confidence that we can do what we say”, she adds.

While Morgan’s award was for her as an individual, she is keen to stress that the accolade was “great for our business”.

As does Vickers — and alongside hoping it “will give us a bit of a name”, he hopes the award “goes some way to demonstrating the value of working with a smaller niche recruiter”. He is upbeat on the broader health of the recruitment profession, saying that over the period since the start of the recession it has become “a lot slicker… a lot better, a lot more refined with the aid of new technologies, but also better recruiters”.

Few slicker — and none better, according to the Recruiter Awards at least, than this pair.

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10/05/2013 08:26

Award winners

COLIN COTTELL MET UP WITH KEVIN HOUGH, HEAD OF GROUP RESOURCING AT LV=, TO FIND OUT HOW THE INSURER WON MOST EFFECTIVE EMPLOYER BRAND DEVELOPMENT FOR THE SECOND YEAR IN A ROW

Winning brand on a local level PHOTOGRAPHY: PETER SEARLE

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10/05/2013 10:00

CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR WINNERS, THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS

HEADLINE SPONSOR

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12:04 10/05/2013 12:08

Award winners

The sporting adage that it is easier to get to the top than to stay there comes to mind when speaking to Kevin Hough, head of group resourcing at insurance and financial services mutual society Liverpool Victoria, now almost universally recognised as LV=.

As a winner for the second consecutive year, along with his team, of the Most Effective Employer Brand Development Award at the Recruiter Awards for Excellence, sponsored by Eploy, you might expect Hough to look back on a night of wild celebration.

Not a bit of it. Though clearly over the moon about the team’s achievement — “it’s something special and different because the Recruiter Awards are the ones the industry recognises. It’s a really nice feather in the cap” — Hough admits he was back in his hotel around 12.15. “There were a few sore heads around the team, but we are recovered and it’s heads down and back to normal,” he says.

Already back at their desks, though no doubt with an extra spring in their step, Hough and his team are clearly not ones to rest on their laurels.

The previous major rebranding programme, carried out with recruitment communications consultancy ThirtyThree for what was then plain old Liverpool Victoria, was first developed in 2007. It used company employees as the face of LV= across a range of

advertising and marketing channels, and spearheaded a drive towards direct hiring, which resulted in a halving of recruitment costs from £4m to £2m a year.

By 2012, however, Hough says the employer brand needed to adapt. Liverpool Victoria had grown from a 1,750 strong company in 2007 to one with more than 5,700 staff. And while as recently as 2009, a lot of the company’s recruitment was for call centre staff around the Bournemouth area, today it has 22 sites spread across the UK, employing a wider range of support staff, and more employees in senior roles.

According to Hough, the task set for his team was clear: to strengthen the LV= employer brand in key locations, where it has offices, based on the concept of ‘owning the town’.

Key to this were changes to LV=’s careers website, says Hough, including the introduction of clever IP recognition software, which is able to recognise the location of the visitor and their LV= office, to within a 20-mile radius. So instead of candidates in Huddersfield or Exeter seeing images on the website of the Bournemouth office, they receive local content PHILOSOPHY OF RECRUITMENT

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Award winners

RAFAEL BASTOS

The LV= team, with Kevin Hough holding the trophy, receive their award from host Ed Byrne (far right) and (far left) Paul Beasley, managing director of category sponsor Transline Group

that is relevant to them, including a welcome from a local LV= employee, stories from the local office, and local vacancies. “This positions LV= as a local employer, and encourages visitors to make an application,” says Hough.

A new feature of LV=’s revamped employer branding is the use of images of staff with instantly recognisable local landmarks, where they work.

Launched in June 2012, this builds on the faces of LV= campaign, which used photographs of local staff across a wide range of advertising media, including press, banner and bus shelters.

“The whole faces of LV= concept is a real testament to making people in the local area feel that they own it [the employer brand. It gives that recognition that ‘this is LV=’ in Hitchin or Exeter, and not just ‘come and work at LV=’ and see if we have got any vacancies.” Hough believes that candidates warm to the concept because: “It makes it more personal, it feels less faceless because it feels real.”

And it clearly leaves an impression. Hough refers to “some really great stories” of new staff telling their new colleagues “Oh, I remember seeing you on a bus stop. You are real.”

A further enhancement of employing its staff as the living and breathing embodiment of the brand, says Hough, is that the website now features stories from previous faces of LV= who have gone on to do well in the company.

SECRET OF SUCCESS

“IT’S ABOUT HAVING A GREAT RELATIONSHIP WITH THE BUSINESS AND A DEDICATED TEAM WHO ARE PASSIONATE ABOUT WHAT THEY DO” 40

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As the need for more specialist and senior staff has grown, the website has begun to include more stories from existing LV= employees about they how joined and progressed through the ranks. “The focus now is getting the real quality hires in at more senior level — that is where we try to excel as a recruitment team,” Hough adds.

Hough is aware that localising the message could potentially lead to a hotchpotch of confused messages, with each LV= site doing its own thing. However, as he points out: “That is the power of having a central recruitment team.”

And to maintain that sense of consistency across the employer brand, all of Hough’s team have received ‘tone of voice’ training. This ensures that all communications, such as emails to candidates, use the same tone as used by LV= in its messages to customers. “We talk about the language of LV=, which is very straight talking and fresh, and treating people like equals. That’s important so people understand the culture and what we are all about, and what they are coming into,” explains Hough.

In all of this, Hough is keen to point out the dangers behind portraying an employer brand unless it reflects the underlying reality beneath the surface. “That’s the bit that would make the whole thing come falling down, if that wasn’t the reality behind it.

“When people walk in the door they have got to experience the culture and the feeling they have had up until then.

“We can have the most amazing careers website and the most fantastic recruitment experience, but actually if we are not owning that, and the experiences we are selling aren’t a reality, that is when you have high attrition and people walking out the door.”

CV KEVIN HOUGH 2011 – present LV= head of group resourcing

2010-11 LV= HR delivery manager

2008-10 LV= project manager

2006-08 Zurich Financial Services, project manager

2006-07 National Policing Improvement Agency, project manager

2004-06 British Army, EDMS consultant Education BSC, information systems management Bournemouth University

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Award winners

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We know one size doesn’t fit all For Hough, the employer brand is not something that is owned by just HR and recruitment but by everyone in the company.

“The whole employer brand piece is around the whole organisation buying into that and into the strength of the LV= values,” he says.

Social media is playing an increasing role within LV=’s employer brand communications strategy, with Twitter and Facebook constantly being refreshed by employee blogs, CV and interview tips, and up-to-date information about what is happening at LV=.

The importance of social media is set to grow further in June, with the introduction of social media career champions — LV= staff, who will be responsible for conveying the resourcing team’s central message through these channels.

LV=’s efforts to enhance what was an already successful employer brand were clearly recognised by the judges at this year’s Recruiter Awards. Not just because it’s a nice concept, but because it has delivered on the company’s objectives (see box below), including estimated savings of £8m in recruitment costs since 2008, as direct hires have replaced recruitment agencies, although Hough insists they will continue to have a role.

In winning Recruiter Awards in two consecutive years, Hough and his team join a select bunch of recruiters, who have proved that the adage ‘success breeds success’ trumps ‘harder to stay at the top than get to the top’ any day.

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Careers website receives 16,000 visits More than 2,000 new starters Cost per hire £550

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96% of hires direct Annual savings £2m a year

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09/05/2013 14:43

We are in a much better position today thanks to Itris.

It is light years away from our previous system in terms of business visibility. It also has great front line functionality and it has really given us back control.

Recruitment consultancies of all kinds choose Itris Recruitment Software because it adds value to their business. It delivers total functionality right out of the box, without the need for countless additional modules or databases.

Inspired by recruiters, Itris can easily be configured by you with no specialist training needed. It’s built on the highly scalable SQL Server platform so it can grow as your business grows. Our total system support will help you maintain a competitive advantage and ensure it’s always working for you. And best of all, upgrades to new versions are included as standard.

It’s the total package, and probably the most cost-effective investment you can make for your recruitment business today.

0845 680 0660 www.itris.co.uk

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Movers & Shakers

Sponsored by Jark Ventures

David Hancock joins •theADECCO: recruitment giant in June

NEW HR DIRECTOR FOR SODEXO UK&I

as head of investor relations.

Incumbent Karin SelforsThomann moves to become senior vice president and head of sales (North America) at its Pontoon brand.

Angela Williams has joined on-site service solutions group Sodexo as HR director for the UK and Ireland.

Williams’ previous experience has included senior-level HR roles for British Gas and its owner Centrica, commercial property firm Land Securities Group and video games maker Electronic Arts.

She has also worked internationally with the Walt Disney Company, booksellers BH Blackwell and oil & gas firm Exxon Mobil.

Additionally, Sodexo Netherlands has a new HR director in Hugh Owens. He has been with the business since 2002.

• See pp31-34 for more on Jo Morgan, senior HR manager at Sodexo’s Prestige brand, winner of the In-House Recruiter of the Year award at this year’s Recruiter Awards for Excellence, sponsored by Eploy.

•

AMBITION GROUP: The international recruiter has hired Eric Dodd as non-executive chair.

•

CITITEC: Naj Saif has started work as internal talent acquisition manager at the recruitment firm.

•

CLASSPEOPLE: The education recruiter’s new Exeter office is headed by newly-appointed Sam Leach.

The •newCLOCKWORKTALENT: digital recruiter has been launched by digital agency SiteVisibility, led by experienced recruiter Natasha Woodford and SiteVisibility’s Kelvin Newman.

•

CPH: The recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) provider has hired David Miller as its talent & resourcing manager. He joins from the Adecco Group.

•specialist recruiter has

DMJ RECRUITMENT: The

appointed Ali Braid as training and recruitment manager.

EAMES CONSULTING GROUP: •Philippa Anderson has joined the

professional recruiter to head up risk management, audit and compliance. Justin Peck joins as managing consultant in its Singaporean business.

• has promoted Gemma Jones to

ENL LEGAL: The legal recruiter

the role of director.

INVESTOR GROUP: •ChrisEXSURGO Ledbury has stepped down

and outsourcing group has taken on David Bezem as a non-exec director.

HEALTHCARE AUSTRALIA: The •healthcare recruiter, part of

HCL, has hired new CEO Jason Cartwright.

•

HIRERIGHT: Adecco’s director of London 2012, Steve Girdler, has joined the background screening provider as EMEA managing director.

•

INTERIM PARTNERS: The interims provider has taken on senior director Adam Kyriacou.

NES GLOBAL TALENT: Martin •Hickson joins the technical

recruiter as a manager in Perth, Australia.

•

ODGERS BERNDTSON: Senior sports industry executive Andy Dolich has been appointed as head of the search firm’s North American sports practice.

as chief executive officer of the Hamilton Bradshaw private equity-backed recruitment group.

New hire Zeth Couceiro leads the recruiter’s new oil & gas division.

HARRIER: The Australia and •Asia-Pacifi c HR firm has taken

GROUP: Gary Benson •joinsORION the energy and engineering

on Teghan Britton-Lee as general manager of its resourcing division.

recruiter as chief operating officer, Americas & West Africa.

• HARVEY NASH: The recruitment

• OPUS RECRUITMENT SOLUTIONS:

REED SPECIALIST RECRUITMENT: •James Reed, the son of group

founder Sir Alec Reed, has stepped down as a director of the Specialist brand, but remains chair of its parent company.

SELBY JENNINGS: The financial •recruiter’s new Singapore

accountancy and finance division is led by new hire Bryan Marshall.

STARK BROOKS: Gron Ffoulkes•Davis is appointed permanent

CEO of the Manchester recruiter, while owner Sally Toumi becomes executive chair.

•

TALENT CONNECTIVE: Paul Modley, who headed recruitment at London 2012, has joined the talent acquisition consultancy as head of consulting.

ASSIST GROUP: •JanTOTAL Coombes has joined

the healthcare recruiter as operations manager.

VOHS & CO FASHION RETAIL •RECRUITMENT: The new business

has been launched by Matthew and Nicole Vohs, part of a family with 50 years’ retail industry experience.

RECRUITER

MAY 2013

52_Recruiter_movers_may13-A.indd Sec3:52

A selection of vacancies from recruiter.co.uk

Calderdale Council Resourcing operations manager Halifax

GNB Partnership Senior IT consultant £22-27k basic with OTE up to £50k Brighton, East Sussex

Language Matters Recruitment consultant (language skills useful) c£40k, uncapped OTE plus great bens London, West End

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

do you want to

START

YOUR OWN

RECRUITMENT

business

totally risk free?

•

VMA GROUP: The communications, HR and change management recruiter has promoted Katrina Andrews to its board, and appointed Erin Loh as principal consultant for its Singapore office.

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

44

Your next move?

Your business - YOUR BRAND Contact David Simons on

07900 263043 dsimons@recruitventures.com

www.recruitventures.com

WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK

09/05/2013 16:13

Appointments

View the latest jobs at www.recruiter.co.uk

To place your advertisement E: david.rix@redactive.co.uk or T: 020 7880 7608

www.recruiter.co.uk

NEW WEBSITE...

NEW FINANCIAL YEAR...

NEW CAREER? New International division launches 1st May 2013 headed

by Francesca Macauley.

For further details contact Francesca on 07887 442550 or email her on francesca@ ruthmoran.co.uk

For further information please contact: Ruth Moran - Managing Director Neil Prestwich - Director

Lucy Spencer - Director

• • • • •

• Technical • Engineering • Oil and Gas • Scientific • Construction • Manufacturing • Automotive • Rail

Legal • Accountancy/Finance Financial Services/Insurance Sales/Marketing • HR • IT Executive Search and Selection FMCG

Email - ruth@ruthmoran.co.uk 0113 2460062/07970 840061

The Recruiters’ Recruiter REC.05.13.053.indd 1 RUTHMORAN_FP2013.indd 36

• • • • •

Commercial • Industrial Driving • Social Care Healthcare Medical/NHS Education • Hospitality and Catering

Email - neil@ruthmoran.co.uk 0113 2460062/07971 094450

Email - lucy@ruthmoran.co.uk 0113 2460062/07805 687550

For current updates or to register online log on to our website on www.ruthmoran.co.uk

RECRUITMENT AGENCY

10/05/2013 16:43 11:56 09/05/2013

Bloggers with Bite

DUFF CANDIDATES = DUFF SERVICE Despite the news of trail-blazing innovation in recruitment and fantastic technical software products helping recruiters recruit better, when it comes down to it the industry basically still needs the right people offering a first-class service to customers and clients

N

o doubt, by the time you are reading this, on all the preceding pages there will be great stuff about recruitment agencies, employer branding, employee engagement, attraction strategies, fantastic new software and all the techno-gizmos that are a must-have for every switched-on recruiter.

All brilliant, but worthless unless they are underpinned by the right people with the right attitudes…

Many years have passed since I began working with Austin Knight, the sturdy old warhorse of rec-ad [recruitment advertising] and, in the opinion of finer minds than mine, the best agency ever. Customer service was drummed into us. We gave unbiased help and advice, not based on what would make us the most money, but on what the customer actually needed. As a result we made lots of money, because customers trusted us and retained us. When we cocked up, we gave the money back. When someone gave duff advice or service, my boss went ballistic.

Contrast this with a recent, not untypical story from a client who has just suffered the slings and arrows of an outrageous rec-con.

They, like many others, were desperate for engineers. In their naivety, they had gone to a couple of rec-cons who told them they were experts

Alastair B Blair works as thePotentMix, thePotent independent an indepen expert on recruitment, recruitme media and marketing, marketing www. thepotentmix. thepotent co.uk/mediaco.uk/me newsletter newslett

in engineering. In the client’s words, “they sent us lots of CVs, most of which were clearly recycled misfits”.

However, there was one who looked good, so they gave him a job, paid the fee and then, six weeks later, when the candidate turned out to have been a misfit in disguise, the ‘small-print’ clause was invoked by the agency to get out of repaying any of the fee.

Yes, yes (I hear you shout), ‘we’re not all like that’.

Sadly, just a few too many are. I have friends who have worked for some big regional rec-cons. They were young graduates who lived for money and fun (and another three-letter word). They would have sold their own grandmothers to hit their target, and cheerfully admitted this.

Speak to quite a few recruiters and they are often not complimentary, in general terms, about recruitment agencies. A necessary evil sums it up in many instances.

Rec-ad, my field, doesn’t necessarily fare much better, with an increasing groundswell of opinion that the service levels from some ad agencies and media have deteriorated badly in recent years.

That said, this applies to many industries. However, does this mean that we shouldn’t strive to be honest, decent, legal and truthful? It is difficult: we have almost all on occasion told porkies, if not barefaced lies, in a business context. But that rec-con who refused to pay back the money for the duff candidate has: a) ruled themselves out of ever getting any more business from that company; b) been bad-mouthed by said company to others; and c) done the whole industry a disservice.

Thanks guys.

We’re often told this is a people business. Even with all the aforementioned wonderful new recruitment strategies and software, it still is. Forget this at your peril.

Customer service was drummed into us. We gave unbiased help and advice, not based on what would make us the most money but what the customer needed What do you think? Tell us at recruiter.editorial@redactive.co.uk

TO POST YOUR COMMENTS, GO ONLINE

RECRUITER.CO.UK 46

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In June: Paul Clark, CEO, Penta Consulting, Best International Recruitment Agency, 2013 Recruiter Awards WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK

09/05/2013 14:44

W

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