Recruiter - October 2018

www.recruiter.co.uk

Turning recruitment on its head Meet the mavericks who are making new rules for the long game

Business intelligence for recruitment and resourcing professionals

October 2018

Matters

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INCORPORATING Recruitment Matters

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NEWS

05 Recruiters inundated by

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‘casual candidates’ The ease for candidates to apply for jobs leads to a rise in unsuitable applicants A great gig for employers and workers Hospitality is one of the industries where the gig economy could grow Clients demand chief marketing ‘fractionals’ CMOconsultancy has launched to deliver a new type of CMO Start-up of the Month: Detail Co-founder Liam Paddison on Detail’s aim to kill the CV This was the month that was...

Contracts & Deals

TRENDS

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18 THE BIG STORY

Disruptive recruitment Meet a breed of recruiters who go against traditional conventions

24 Catching up on tax

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HM Revenue & Customs is cracking down on those contractors who have used disguised remuneration

E COMMUNITY 29 Community: Upstart V7: DIY relocation

33 Social Network 35 Community Careers: Simon Hunt

36 Business Advice: Alex Arnot 38 My brilliant recruitment career: Sophie Vickers

40 Movers & Shakers 41 Recruiter contacts 42 The Last Word: Alan Furley

12 Insight The recruitment sector is seeing a mergers and acquisitions upswing Tech & Tools Top of the search: making your site stand out

FEATURES

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INTERACTION Viewpoint Drey Francis, Engage Technology Partners Soundbites

I M AG E S | I KO N / ISTO C K / G ETTY

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CONNECTING YOUR RECRUITMENT BUSINESS

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UPDATE

Recruiters inundated by ‘casual candidates’

WE LCO M E

LEADER

H

ope you’ve made the

BY COLIN COTTELL

switch-around after encountering the cover of this month’s Recruiter! We wanted to catch your attention and get you thinking from a new point of

view alongside the subjects in our Big Story this month – all of whom have very different takes on running their business. Learn from the mavericks, starting on p18.

We like to give our content a regular refresh, and this month we launch our new Upstart feature. Upstart

“We wanted to catch your attention and get you thinking from a new point of view – learn from the mavericks”

looks at recruiters who have done something highly unusual, thoughtprovoking or just plain creative and interesting in their business.

This month we

highlight Manchester’s V7 who brought their DIY skills to work. Read about them from p29. And we’d love to hear about your ‘upstart’ activity.

Be sure to get your tickets for our evening Investing in Talent Awards on 31 October – it will be a treat of an occasion!

And see if you can spot the notices about the exclusive Club HOT 100 in our pages. Are you a member?

DeeDee Doke, Editor

THE RISE OF THE ‘CASUAL CANDIDATE’ is turning recruitment on its head so that a good outcome is getting candidates not to apply, HR professionals and recruiters at a recent conference have heard.

Speaking at Gartner’s ReimagineHR conference in London, Dion Love (right) principal executive adviser Gartner, said that technology, such as one-click applications, had made it so easy for candidates to apply for roles that it had led to recruiting departments being inundated with applications from unsuitable applicants.

With this came higher costs of hiring and costs of talent acquisition.

Among the other repercussions of this “any time, any place approach” to applying for jobs were: • candidates not receiving the level of candidate care they expected, particularly feedback • a large number of candidates who accept a job offer fail to turn up on the first day.

Brian Kropp, group vice president Gartner, said one behavioural trait of the ‘casual candidate’ was they applied for roles first, and only having interacted with or spoken with the recruiter did they consider whether the organisation might be suitable.

Kropp said the extra workload on recruiting departments meant that “getting candidates not to apply was a good outcome”. Consequently, he continued: “We have got to change the way we do things.”

Love suggested one way “to manage down excessive application volumes” was to provide candidates opportunities early on in the selection process to show they were both serious and a good fit.

He cited pharmaceutical company Roche as an example, describing how as part of the hiring process it had introduced a business challenge that gave candidates an opportunity to showcase not just their skills, but to show that their values were aligned with those of the company.

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37,209 FOLLOWERS

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UPDATE

AS OF 13 SEPTEMBER 2018

L-r: Arran McDowell, Chris Barber, Marco Galer-Reick, PJ Kenny, Antony Woodcock

A great gig for employers and workers

BY COLIN COTTELL

AN AUDIENCE AT A BREAKFAST briefing in London heard differing views on the necessity for gig workers in the hospitality industry.

Speaking at a breakfast briefing in London, hosted

by GIG, springboard and Caterer.com, and moderated by Recruiter and recruiter. co.uk editor DeeDee Doke, Chris Barber, hospitality, food & beverage consultant at CB Food Solutions, said that while “unfortunately the word ‘gig’ has become a PR disaster in the sector, it shouldn’t be because it is the way our business survives”.

However, Marco Galer-Reick, people director at fast food restaurant chain LEON, told the audience that “at the moment LEON doesn’t use gig workers because we don’t need to”. He said that while he accepted that gig workers provided flexibility for workers, to a great extent LEON already provided this for those that wanted it.

Barber responded that as “an aspirational brand” that paid above the national minimum wage, LEON was not typical of hospitality employers for whom “getting people on board is far more challenging”.

Barber said the reason gig workers were essential in hospitality was because the public didn’t value the product, and therefore employers “cannot afford to pay a decent wage”. “If we paid 50p a cup more for a cup of coffee the problem would go away,” he added.

The majority of our workers do it because it fits in with their lives and they want to earn a little more money 6 RECRUITER

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Antony Woodcock (inset), founder a and CEO of flexible work app and m market place GIG, said the public’s p perception of the gig economy e emanated from press coverage of companies such as Pimlico Plumbers, which had been involved in a high-profile legal case about selfemployed and employee status. However, he said this did not detract from his view that “the majority of our workers do it because it fits in with their lives and they want to earn a little more money”. The gig economy also provided people with valuable opportunities to dip their toe into the water, as well as giving employers access to a pool of talent that they would not otherwise have.

PJ Kenny, general manager of boutique hotel The Hoxton, Holborn, said he used gig workers in the hotel’s banqueting department. Not only did it provide him with the flexibility to manage peaks and troughs, gig workers also supported existing staff to focus on key elements of their job.

Arran McDowell, HR director at contract catering firm Elior, said the most important issue for his company when it came to gig workers was “that the relationship between the worker and the organisation was one of respect”. “The moment that breaks down, that is where we will have problems as a company and as an industry,” he added.

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

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THOUGHTS FROM…

UPDATE

CHRIS BARBER HOSPITALITY, FOOD & BEVER AGE CONSULTANT, CB FOOD SOLU TIONS

“ ‘Gig’ shouldn’t be a dirty word because it’s the way our business survives.”

Client demand for marketing expertise leads to new offering

BY GRAHAM SIMONS

GEOFFREY OWENS WH O PLAYED ELVIN TIBIDEAU X ON THE COSBY SHOW , AFTER PHOTOS OF HIM WORKING AS A C A SH IER AT TR ADER JOE’S WERE MOCKED ON L I N E

“There is no job that is better than another job. It might pay better, it might have better benefits, it might look better on a resumé and on paper, but actually it’s not better. Every job is worthwhile and valuable.”

MOST REVEREND JUSTIN WELBY ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBU RY

“The gig economy, zero-hours contract is nothing new. It is simply the reincarnation of an ancient evil.”

CLIENT DEMAND for a more flexible chief marketing officer (CMO) resource has led tml Partners to launch a ‘fractional’ CMO element to its service offering, CMOconsultancy.

Simon Bassett (right), managing director at the senior marketing staffing specialist, told Recruiter demand for the new service came from clients who couldn’t necessarily afford a full-time permanent chief marketing officer with typical salaries on such roles ranging from £150k-£250k a year.

According to Bassett, clients told him that when they have hired a permanent CMO, their new recruit carried out the initial strategic marketing work over the first year or so but then sought pastures new.

This was a common complaint among mid-sized private equity backed companies in particular, he added.

CMOconsultancy places one of its panel of tml Partners’ board level marketing professionals as a fractional CMO with a client. These professionals specialise in consulting and interim work, directing and advising the client on what their marketing strategy should look like.

Reflecting on his 15 years with marketing recruiter EMR before setting up tml, Bassett explained over his career, CMOs and marketing directors have often told him they feel underserviced by the recruitment sector: “If they go to any of the generalist headhunters or search firms, whether it’s a permanent or interim placement, they’re just that – they’re very generalist.

“The reality is that because marketing has been such an expansive industry and is evolving so much, actually the demand for marketing directors and CMOs is higher than it’s ever been.”

STA RT-UP OF THE MONTH DETAIL Liam Paddison (right) and silent partner Steven Rawlingson have launched Newcastle-based agency Detail – a recruitment business that is aiming to kill the CV. Paddison told Recruiter the firm operates a traditional technology recruitment agency model that sees candidates interviewed by consultants who screen them against six characteristics – drive, experience, track record, attitude, integrity and life experiences.

Results are then fed into an algorithm that matches suitable

candidates with clients.

“We plan to kill the CV. We view it as anathema in the modern world that people are hired for jobs on the strength of a piece of a paper.

By thoroughly screening against these characteristics, we are able to better match candidates both on a functional level and in line with the cultural fit of a team or organisation,” he said.

Paddison explained that the machine-learning component of the technology also helps to recognise recruitment trends based on previous interaction with hiring

clients. “These technical tools, coupled with our extensive industry knowledge, put us in a position to achieve outstanding results for our clients,” he added.

The firm also offers volume recruitment campaigns, with clients paying an arranged upfront fee for access to an agreed number of screened and interviewed candidates.

Looking ahead, Paddison said the firm aims to gain a strong foothold in the North East’s technology sector before expanding its services to other tech hubs across the UK. WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK 7

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THIS WAS THE MONTH THAT WAS… Here is a round-up of some of the most popular news stories we have brought you on recruiter.co.uk since the September issue of Recruiter was published A U G U S T •‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒→

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EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNAL DISMISSES AGENCY WORKER APPEAL An employment tribunal has dismissed an appeal challenging a ruling that found a security guard was an agency worker and not a permanent employee, under the Agency Worker Regulations (AWR) 2010.

In April 2018, a London employment appeal tribunal heard a Mr Matei was employed by security services firm Brooknight as a security guard on a zero-hours contract. Matei’s contract had included a flexibility clause meaning he could be assigned to different sites as required, although in general he worked at sites controlled by Mitie Security.

While Brooknight claimed it was not a temporary work agency under AWR, the tribunal rejected this argument as Matei was supplied to work temporarily for the hiring company, meaning he was an agency worker and Brooknight was in breach of AWR. The appeal tribunal looked into the nature of Matei’s contract and took the same view as the original April tribunal ruling that as Matei had to provide cover as a security guard when required, he could not have been employed on a permanent or indefinite arrangement and was therefore an agency worker.

More: https://bit.ly/2wTv8bJ

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RECRUITMENT DIRECTOR BANNED FOR FIVE YEARS FOLLOWING INVESTIGATION A former director of a Bristol-based recruitment agency has been banned from acting as a director for five years

More: https://bit.ly/2M6sELW

FRI, 31 AUGUST 2018

COMPLAINTS ABOUT RECRUITMENT AGENCIES SEES 50% INCREASE The Employment Agencies Standards Inspectorate has seen a 50% annual increase in complaints about recruitment agencies, according to its latest annual report.

The 2017/18 report, released at the end of August, reveals EASI received 1,261 complaints in 2017/18, compared to 828 in 2016/17, although the body attributes this to work it has carried out in raising awareness and a higher media profile in general around workers’ rights.

The recruitment sectors attracting the most worker complaints were hospitality and

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following an Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate (EASI) investigation.

A statement, released by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Insolvency Service, revealed Nicholas Brown, former director of agency National Recruitment Ltd, trading as C Cotterell and Gifford, pleaded di guilty at a hearing at Bristol Magistrates’ Court of withholding wages to two workers for work they carried out in December 2015 and February 2016, and failing to provide the right information to his workers when they started their jobs. An investigation was launched following a worker’s complaint to EASI.

healthcare, with these sectors accounting for almost a third of total complaints over the period.

The highest number of complaints related to agencies’ failure to pay workers.

More: https://bit.ly/2wR7ITw

OCTOBER 2018

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12/09/2018 16:37

TUE, 4 SEPTEMBER 2018

JET2.COM AND JET2HOLIDAYS LAUNCH RECRUITMENT DRIVE FOR UK AND EUROPE E Jet2.com and Jet2holidays are looking to recruit 3,000 new staff across the UK and Europe. More than 2,000 jobs are being created across the group’s nine UK bases.

Further afield, the airline is recruiting for 1,000 roles across Europe in customer help and to support its free resort flight check-in service.

More: https://bit.ly/2oWpAsE

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JABBA THE HUTT CASE SERVES AS WARNING TO RECRUITERS TO BE ON GUARD OF FALSE REFERENCES

MON, 3 SEPTEMBER 2018

I M AG E | I STOC K / S H U TT E RSTO C K / RE X

WORKING ON COMMUTE COULD BREACH NMW RULES, RECRUITERS ARE WARNED Any move to include work emails sent during the commute as working time could result in recruiters falling foul of National Minimum Wage (NMW) rules, lawyers have warned.

The warning follows BBC reports on a recommendation from a researcher at the University of the West of England. The university’s research revealed commuters are so regularly using travel time for work emails that their journeys should be counted as part of the working day.

But Stephen Jennings, partner & solicitor at law firm Tozers Solicitors, told Recruiter any move to include work carried out in the commute as part of the working day could raise issues around minimum wage and working time rules.

“Minimum wage rules currently require the minimum wage to be paid for all time actually spent working, although in practice as minimum wage compliance is assessed over the course of a pay reference period (usually a month) most employees are paid sufficiently over the minimum wage for small periods of time not to make any difference to their overall entitlement.

“Employers should, as a minimum, ensure clear records are kept of all time their employees spend working and they may want to check time claimed against output. The risk of not doing so is a complaint or claim for failure to pay the minimum wage.”

In light of a case in which a pilot put forward Star Wars gangster Jabba the Hutt as his referee, recruiters have been urged to be wary of placing candidates on the basis of false references.

The case relates to claims brought by a Mr N FrancisMcGann against British cargo airline West Atlantic UK. In July, a Birmingham Tribunal heard Francis-McGann had successfully applied for the role of a captain before being trained by the airline and starting work as a captain.

It later came to light he had

provided a false reference from a false email address; it was from Desilijic Tiure – an alternative name of Jabba the Hutt.

The airline challenged FrancisMcGann, who was then given the opportunity to resign, which he did.

Francis-McGann subsequently claimed three months’ notice pay, being his contractual entitlement had he resigned with notice, while West Atlantic counterclaimed for recovery of his training costs.

The tribunal dismissed Francis-McGann’s claim, but allowed West Atlantic’s counter claim, with the airline awarded £4,725.

More: https://bit.ly/2O7D5k9

SE1.7PB

RE CRUI TE R’S I NDUS TRY -L E AD IN G RANKI NGS

More: https://bit.ly/2x6Qf9K

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

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CONTRACTS SPONSORED BY RECRUITMENT MERGERS

CONTRACTS & DEALS

Allen Lane The shareholders of public and not-for-profit sector staffing specialist Allen Lane have sold 82.5% of the issued shares in its holding company to Japanese firm Outsourcing Inc. Law firm Mishcon de Reya represented the shareholders of Allen Lane on the sale.

EMR Search & Selection IPE Ventures, the private equity arm of the IPE Group, has acquired international marketing staffing specialist EMR Search & Selection from the recruitment organisation the FiveTen Group. The deal was led by Adam Fletcher and Enam Rehman on behalf of IPE Ventures, supported by Gateley and Haslers Corporate Finance.

FiveTen was advised by Blackwood Capital. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Frontline Recruitment Leicester-based Frontline Recruitment has secured a new one-year sole supplier agreement with manufacturer and distributor of durable medical products Drive DeVilbiss Healthcare. The deal will see Frontline supply all unskilled labour to the Thurmaston-based company in Leicestershire.

ManpowerGroup UK Recruitment giant ManpowerGroup UK has chosen HR tech company Talmundo’s services in a bid to make its employee onboarding journey faster and easier, while also minimising the time-consuming paperwork involved in the hiring process. ManpowerGroup UK expects to use the onboarding solution to hire more than 300 new staff across the group within the first year of the collaboration, while Talmundo’s onboarding software will be integrated into the company’s own applicant tracking system.

Barker Ross Construction firm Berkeley Modular has appointed Leicester-based construction staffing specialist Barker Ross to recruit 140-145 roles in the firm’s new factory.

The move follows Berkeley Modular, the volumetric modular construction arm of Berkeley Group, starting construction on its purpose-built modular homes manufacturing facility. Roles include quantity surveyors, supply chain managers, design engineers, production operatives, project managers, facilities managers and quality engineers, as well as plumbers, electricians and carpenters, and roles in administration, HR and finance. As part of its partnership with Berkeley Modular, Barker Ross has now opened a dedicated office in Dartford, Kent to recruit for the new state-of-the-art facility. It will also lease an office at the 10-acre factory site in Ebbsfleet.

Trust Tech Japan-based staffing business Trust Tech is to take a majority stake in multi-sector recruiter Quattro Group. In a statement, the group revealed its board of directors had passed a resolution for it to acquire 75% of the shares of Quattro Group through subsidiary gap personnel. Trust Tech further revealed it plans to make Quattro Group a consolidated subsidiary of the group following the deal.

DEAL OF T HE MONT H

Search Consultancy Search Consultancy has bought technical and IT sales recruitment specialist Henderson Scott in a multimillion pound deal.

In a statement, Search Consultancy revealed the deal would give Search a combined revenue of £220m, with more than 750 staff across 17 UK offices. The

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acquisition also sees the enlarged group change its name from Search Consultancy to Search Group.

Henderson Scott recruits across six core IT recruitment markets.

Henderson Scott’s CEO Mark Bailey will be joining Search’s board following the deal.

For more information

www.recruitmentmergers.com charlie.watson@recruitmentmergers.com

More contract news at recruiter.co.uk/news

12/09/2018 14:40

RETAINED BUYER OF THE MONTH

REFERENCE CW0409 LOCATION National, UK

TEMPORARY AGENCY SOUGHT FOR ACQUISITION Overview Recruitment Mergers has been instructed by a specialist employment

Desired business features • Temporary focused • Turnover between £2 million and £30 million • 2nd-tier management team • UK based • Owners willing to commit to a handover period

company, with investment backing, looking to acquire recruitment agencies to add to their growing portfolio.

Should you be looking at an exit strategy this could be With multiple acquisitions under their belt they are looking for further targets to continue their planned growth strategy.

a perfect opportunity to join a growing company well versed in acquiring businesses. Recruitment Mergers is representing the buyer so should a transaction take

Any acquisitions made will be solely funded with cash reserves.

place no fees will be due by the seller.

GET IN TOUCH...

Charlie Watson Principal M&A Consultant +44 (0)7787 560 553 charlie.watson@recruitmentmergers.com

ARE YOU AIMING TO ACQUIRE OR PLANNING AN EXIT STRATEGY?

WWW.RECRUITMENTMERGERS.COM Mergers & Acquisitions for the recruitment industry

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TRE NDS

INSIGHT

MAGNET FOR PRIVATE EQUITY BUYERS The recruitment sector is seeing a mergers and acquisitions upswing, with high-growth niches such as HR software and outsourced solutions being particularly in demand from private equity investment funds

BY PETER AUGAR

C

ompanies in the global human capital services sector are enjoying a surge in demand from private equity investment funds, which are competing to buy businesses in highgrowth niches such as HR software and outsourced solutions, primarily related to the acquisition and management of permanent and temporary employees.

This mergers and acquisitions (M&A) upswing has seen sizeable mid-market companies being valued at more than 10 times profits. Why are we seeing so much competition for specialist and differentiated recruitment businesses, and what are the consequences for the sector and, in particular, sellers?

Companies are increasingly outsourcing recruitment to specialist providers, making this activity a hot sector. Across Europe, demand for providers is being driven by high 12 RECRUITER

OCTOBER 2018

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employment levels and key skills shortages.

But here in the UK, Brexit is also accelerating this dynamic. One reason is that Brexit is likely to exacerbate this skill shortage dynamic if freedom of movement is constrained. Conversely, a weakening of the UK economy postBrexit could hinder growth in the sector, as client companies look to fire instead of hire. On the flip side, in the past, economic downturns have been catalysts for companies to adopt outsourced HR solutions, as they seek to reduce fixed costs and create more dynamic talent acquisition capabilities that are adapted to market conditions.

Therefore, Brexit could lower the UK’s attractiveness and competitiveness in the international labour market, leading to increased demand from client companies for high-quality outsourced recruitment services to find eligible talent. This trend in itself could drive growth in the sector – which has

implications for owners of recruitment businesses, but also private capital pouring in and looking for returns.

In recent years, the sector has become particularly attractive to private equity (PE) funds, for several reasons.

No longer are HR departments considered as just a back-office function.

Instead, they are integral to achieving objectives that are set at the board level.

However, the global ‘war for talent’ is making HR departments more aware of the high cost of recruiting, acquiring and retaining talent in their organisations. This awareness is leading to greater outsourcing to increase the return on human capital by improving outcomes such as hiring the right person, increasing diversity and reducing process costs and times. Most companies manage ILLUST RAT ION | GET T Y

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INSIGHT

The sector has become attractive to private equity funds

landscape for providers has shifted from creating more unified HR products to becoming embedded in clients’ overall HR strategy and deployment.

The PE industry has a long track record of acquiring and successfully growing companies in the broader human capital sector. What has changed in recent years is the price it is willing to pay for leading players with a clear competitive advantage. PE firms are under pressure to deploy billions of dollars of uninvested capital. Some funds have lowered their return thresholds to ensure they can win against corporate buyers in M&A processes.

PE firms have also been supported by strong debt markets, with banks and debt funds lending more than five times profits for businesses with recurring revenue, high profitability and potential for tech-enablement.

In particular, companies with multiyear client contracts, very high client retention rates and profit margins of 20% are highly attractive. As well as growing revenues by winning new clients, many HR outsourcing companies can grow revenues with existing clients through selling multiple services and covering new regions.

Reward Gateway, an employee engagement technology specialist, has already been through two PE buy-outs. Last year in the US, Carlyle Group invested in ZeroChaos and Harvest Partners invested in PRO Unlimited. All three represented highquality, mid-market HR outsourcing companies, acquired from other PE firms at valuations at or above 12 times profits. Alexander Mann Solutions (AMS) completed its third buy-out with OMERS Private Equity in 2018, valued at £820m.

The first PE investment into AMS was for £100m in 2007, then £260m in 2013, highlighting the considerable growth that AMS has achieved. AMS created the talent acquisition and management industry, and has continued to innovate for clients, widening their talent pools,

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Companies are increasingly outsourcing recruitment to specialist providers, making this activity a hot sector Across Europe, demand for providers is being driven by high employment levels and key skills shortages In the UK, Brexit is accelerating this outsourcing dynamic The market has seen the rise of the ‘captive candidate pool’ Technology brings a particular advantage in making a company attractive to PE funds PE is driving high M&A valuation

improving candidate quality and increasing employee retention.

M&A market conditions remain strong, and valuations are at record levels for HR software and outsourced solutions providers. Some form of economic slowdown is likely in the medium term, so companies that can manage their revenue and profitability through economic cycles will be most attractive and stand to gain the most from PE capital.

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their HR activities in-house, so there is a huge opportunity for outsourcing to specialist service providers.

Another trend is the rise of the ‘captive candidate pool’. Some companies have decided to go beyond recruitment services for their clients. These companies are supporting the training of graduates, or re-skilling those who are unemployed, to ‘control the supply’ of candidates with the right skills to place into client organisations.

An example of this process is Adecco Group’s acquisition this year of General Assembly for €335m (£301m). General Assembly provides digital skills training, helping organisations to upskill their current talent and transition them into new, technology-powered roles.

Technology brings a particular advantage in making the sector attractive to PE funds. Technologyenabled HR solutions comprise a diverse range of software and services to employers to facilitate HR functions, spanning the employee lifecycle from pre-hire to administration – such as payroll, benefits, time & attendance and compliance. There are multiple new fundraisings for smaller HR tech companies each week, increasing scope and differentiation within the sector.

HR software solutions are beginning to converge, driving M&A activity and valuations. As firms seek to integrate front-end recruitment software with post-hire solutions – such as talent assessment, performance management, compensation and training – the

POWER POINTS

PETER AUGAR is a director in global technology and services investment banking in the London office of financial services company Baird WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK 13

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12/09/2018 14:41

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T R E N DS

TECH & TOOLS

Top of the search Making your site stand out SUE WEEKES

In August, Google issued a ‘broad core algorithm’ update. While many sites didn’t notice any change, it was reported in the search community that some rankings were negatively affected.

Andy Drinkwater, search marketing specialist and founder of IQSEO, who has been working with recruitment agencies for almost two decades, said this upgrade seemed to address a site’s ‘authority’: “This means that unless a site is able to show appropriate credentials, then Google might end up marking it down.” Even if your site wasn’t affected this time, however, it is a reminder of the importance of featuring good-quality and relevant content.

WHAT DOES GOOD CONTENT LOOK LIKE?

HOW DOES THIS TRANSLATE AS CONTENT?

Search engine marketing consultant Marie Haynes’ blog reported that Google’s response to recovering from a drop in the rankings was to “just create great content”. It also referred to its Quality Raters’ Guidelines, and while these are highly specific, they run to more than 160 pages long. However, recruiters should be aware of the principles of what makes content ‘good quality’.

Drinkwater says that an “authority” site is one “which answers the question of its searchers”.

If someone performs a search for ‘IT recruitment agencies in Hull’, Drinkwater explains that these sites in Hull need to make sure that they have a complete address, phone numbers, Google My Business accounts, other local listings in the likes of Yelp and the content to go with this. “As an IT recruitment agency, you would want to make sure content is focused on their niche,” he says. “It is also important to understand what people are searching for. You can use Google

Search Console to see what terms are showing your site in the search engine results pages and then focus on answering these.”

HOW OFTEN SHOULD CONTENT BE ADDED? Not all sites need to have fresh content added for Google to see them as an authority, but Drinkwater explains that it is “vitally important” to update content as something happens, not days or weeks afterwards. “If you have written a really good piece based on stats for 2017 and you could update with

W H AT I S G O O G L E S E A R C H C O N S O L E? An extremely useful set of tools that helps measure your site’s search traffic and performance as well as fix issues. You can also find out which queries bring users to your site. Remember, the old adage “knowledge is power” is never more true than when talking about SEO.

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stats for 2018, then you would want to change this,” he says. “The same goes for pages like team members that come and go.

Update your pages when it is necessary but don’t just update them for the sake of it.”

STAND OUT FROM THE PACK Differentiating yourself from the rest is a mark of authority.

A good content mix is jobs combined with well-written, relevant sector-specific or general news and articles, white papers and reports, jobseeking and careers advice, as well as multimedia.

“If a site were to publish just a standard page of content on writing a CV with the usual dull stock images, then how is this page going to be any better than the

hundreds of thousands of other similar pages out there? You need show why you are an authority.”

MAXIMISE SEO’S BENEFITS Keeping up with Google is no mean feat and Drinkwater says without a dedicated marketing team it can be an uphill struggle.

Dipping into search forums, reading Google’s blog, quizzing your SEO agency on its activity helps to build a knowledge base that can make a genuine difference to your rankings. “From what I see, there are a perhaps a few dozen sites that rank well for a lot of the major terms such as ‘London recruitment agencies’, ‘recruitment agencies’ and ‘IT recruitment agency’,” says Drinkwater.

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C

INTE R AC TIO N

VIEWPOINT

Establishing a balance An all-inclusive approach is still needed in some areas

BY DREY FRANCIS

n the past decade, recruitment has moved away from the domination of the generalist and now favours the specialist agency. Indeed, the consistent increase of start-up businesses launching over the past few years – with 9,001 new companies set up in 2017 alone – indicates a sharp rise in niche firms operating in the UK. But while niche ‘inch-wide, mile-deep’ recruitment is, arguably, the best way to futureproof your firm, you do need to find the right balance.

For both generalist and specialist firms, there’s still a need for an all-inclusive approach across some elements of the hiring process. Recruiters have long discussed the idea that the candidate experience has taken on a consumer-like style.

However, I’d argue it’s not just applicants who expect this. We all demand it in everything we do. We want our suppliers to provide us with top-notch, streamlined services similar to the experience we’ve come to expect from Amazon, for example, where you can purchase virtually anything you need in one place. And your clients want this approach as well.

The driver of this change – as with most of today’s evolution – is technology. We all want an instant solution, which offers the most seamless option possible – without juggling multiple processes and relationships.

Employers, for example, don’t want to be managing several firms that specialise in one particular field through separate emails, meetings and calls to source the talent they need across their entire business. Managing multiple agency relationships through siloed channels, while also ensuring each of these really ‘gets’ the employer brand and represents

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OCTOBER 2018

“We can’t ignore what everyone is crying out for: a one-stop-shop solution”

the company well in candidate communications, is an unnecessary and hugely time-consuming headache for internal hiring managers – hence the strong growth in the managed services/RPO model.

For recruiters themselves, jumping across CRM/ ATS systems and compliance platforms can be a logistical nightmare. If hiring managers are making use of the managed service RPO model, why aren’t there more examples of inclusive offerings for the recruitment sector itself ?

If we take technology as an example, there have long been calls to be a specialist in a certain niche rather than look at an all-encompassing solution.

Even with social media, we’re told to pick one platform and channel our efforts into this. But is that really the best solution?

It’s undeniably difficult in this recruitment realm to buck the trend and go against the advice of our peers. In fact, whenever I’ve discussed the idea of a streamlined and inclusive offering with my network, the advice has always been to stop trying to deliver an all-encompassing solution and pick one area to invest in. But how else is the industry going to evolve alongside the sectors it services?

Everyone in recruitment needs to be bold and believe in the power of an inclusive approach. Yes, there will be a need for niche offerings as skills shortages drive this demand. However to survive, recruitment firms of all types have to evolve and look at other service models that complement the specialist niche in which they operate.

We can’t ignore what everyone is crying out for: a one-stop-shop solution, whether that be an all-encompassing recruitment partner that delivers specialist talent while managing other generalist suppliers, or a single platform that pulls all your administrative and back-office systems together.

IMAG E | ISTOCK

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I N T E R AC T I O N

SOUNDBITES

L ET T ER S/ WEB CHAT

UK ENTRY LEVEL NOT JUST A MATTER OF EDUCATION Following the recent discussions surrounding second referendums and no-deal agreements, I am writing to express my concern over the need for clarity for the often-overlooked trade industries.

The question everyone is demanding as business owners is ‘who will be allowed to enter the UK and work post-Brexit?’ But my fear is that the government is only focusing on certain types of workers. We hear a lot about the situation for overseas doctors, academics and scientists – who, of course, play incredibly important roles, but they do not by any means represent the entirety of the UK’s workforce.

We also have a scarcity of chefs, waiters and professional drivers, and with this in mind, the government must realise that the entry level to our post-Brexit Britain simply cannot be based on education levels but on a genuine skills shortage.

There is no point in having an abundance of medical professionals and scientists if we do not have enough skilled drivers to deliver their supplies, and long queues in hospital cafés due to a service shortage!

Genuine skills shortages identified by all industries must be taken into account, and the government must then act on this. Personally, I think a vote on the final deal is vital.

GETHIN ROBERTS, MANAGING DIRECTOR, DRIVERS DIRECT RECRUITMENT

TRUST ME, I’M A RECRUITER In response to your article ‘Complaints about recruitment agencies sees 50% increase’ (31 August, recruiter.co.uk), this is awful to hear. After having recently commissioned national research focusing on trust in recruitment, we found that an incredible 90% of people say they do not trust recruitment agencies to do a good job.

It seems that wherever you turn, trust in recruitment is low, with an underlying sense of bad and unethical practices. How can candidates and clients know where to go for the best? We commissioned the research as I believe there’s too much invested in the status quo for existing agencies and organisations to take it on.

We’re now looking at what needs to change for it to return to being the honourable profession it once was.

JULIET ECCLESTON C O -F O U N D E R A N D C E O, A N YG O O D ?

What would your dad have said about you had he written your CV for you when you were 16?

GED MASON G ROUP CEO, MORS ON G ROUP, ON W H AT H IS L AT E FAT H E R G E R RY, FOUN D ER OF MORS ON , WOUL D H AV E S A ID A B O U T H I M

“School Could try harder.

Character Ambitious. Not much attention to detail, needs to improve. Bad with his hands – no good with anything practical, like fixing things. He’s no engineer.

Definitely has the gift of the gab.

Hobbies Far too many distractions – football, golf, horse riding, motorcycles, squash… even tiddlywinks!

Summary Smart enough to make a top recruiter or businessman one day if he tries harder to fulfil his potential. If he applies himself, I might even think about employing him myself.”

LAUR A JO BARKER OP ER AT I ON S D I REC TOR , AV I ATOR F UT URES

“Rather than guess, I asked my father. His slightly edited reply was: ‘I don’t think you were ever a normal 16-year-old – the wilful determined lassie was already there. I was just thinking the other day we discussed you finishing up as a millionaire or an old lady pushing an old pram with all your belongings in it, do you remember that? With your natural determination that will never happen. In summary: Wilful, determined and a bit of a law unto herself’!”

JODIE R AFFERTY MA N AG IN G D I REC TOR , R A F F ERT Y RES OURCI N G

“I have spoken to my father – Colin Hayes. He was quite thorough and gave me a list of skills and qualities: • An average student, but would have been an A* student had she spent more time studying • Always presents a good argument and enjoys debating • Good communications skills – although her manners need fine tuning • Naturally creative and has a fine display of graffiti on her bedroom walls To summarise, Jodie would make an excellent candidate for the Armed Forces, as she can talk for England, has excellent negotiation skills and should she find herself in a hostile situation, she will either talk her way out of it, or use her well-practised escape techniques – they are quite something. Jodie will work her way up the ranks quite quickly, I’m sure, as nothing is ever good enough.”

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“We are disrupting the classical contingency recruitment model” ILLUSTRATION : IKON

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T H E BIG STORY: D IS RU PT I V E R E C RU I T M E N T

Colin Cottell meets the latest breed of recruiters and looks at how their models go against recruitment conventions but strike a chord with candidates and clients alike espite the continuing popularity of the traditional agency model, an emerging breed of operator is entering the recruitment sector and flexing their muscles.

Often technology-based platforms, these enterprises operate in the same world as recruitment agencies, have the same goal of placing people into work, but their business models and their approaches are worlds apart. Rejecting as they would see it the tired old sales-based approach of many agencies and firing out CVs in response to vacancies, those running these businesses claim they provide a better and cheaper service for clients, a superior candidate experience and greater fairness in hiring.

James Uffindell, founder of Bright Network, is one of this

D

upstart breed, which eschew the traditional agency model. “Twenty to 30% of recruitment consultants are very good, but a lot of consultants are literally firing CVs over and not adding that much to the process, making it expensive and not helpful to the candidate,” he contends.

“I thought recruitment was a bit broken,” adds Uffindell. But rather than simply criticise from the side lines, Uffindell decided to act, launching Bright Network in 2013 with the aim of disrupting the agency market and taking marketshare.

Early tracking His big idea was to build a network of some of the UK’s top young talent and to track them through the early stages of their careers. In addition to successfully signing up 60,000 students a year from the age of 18, when

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T H E BI G STORY: D IS RUPT I VE R E CRU IT M E N T

they first go to university, a further differentiator from agencies, Uffindell says, is the data they have gathered on them from their years at college.

“We know what they are interested in, [and] what their motivators, values and behaviours are, so they are hyperengaged with us,” he says.

A further difference with the traditional agency model is that Bright Network does not charge commission.

Uffindell is not afraid to nail his colours to the mast: “We are disrupting the classical contingency recruitment model. If you want to access top talent directly, we are the candidate database you want to get to rather than by just using a middleman.”

Silver is good Another in this wave of unconventional businesses entering recruitment is Final Stage, a start-up launched by Eddie De Lewis and co-founder Will Morris in May this year. De Lewis, who along with Morris also runs a traditional agency AliQuantum, describes the SaaS (softwareas-a-service) platform as “a pre-vetted and exclusive LinkedIn” – albeit, he acknowledges, miniscule by comparison.

The thinking behind Final Stage, De Lewis says, is that it enables employers to share the talent they don’t want with other employers. “The question was, what was happening to those candidates, who companies have spent millions on attracting but who do not receive offers at the final stage, even though generally it is not a question of quality – it’s ‘are they the right fit for the business?’.”

Candidates who have been unsuccessful in the final stage of their application receive a message from a recruiter in the organisation to which they have directly applied inviting them to join Final Stage. This allows them not only to apply to that organisation again at a later stage, but also gives them access to other organisations who are interested in giving rejected final stage talent (known as silver candidates) a chance.

“Initially, we got a lot of criticism from companies saying ‘Why would we share with our competitors?’,” says De Lewis.

But now, he says, companies such as

Arcadia are saying ‘this is interesting’ not only because it improves the candidate experience, but also because it gives them access to a source of new talent.

“We are definitely not a recruitment consultancy,” De Lewis says. “We are more an information or talent guide, and we are not motivated by one particular candidate getting a placement with a particular company because we charge a monthly fee to our clients.”

Removing the bias While Final Stage confounds the notion that employers aren’t prepared to share talent with their competitors, the platform Applied challenges one of the most basic tenets of recruiters up and down the country that the hiring process is fair and based on a person’s merit. “There is a growing recognition that the way hiring is done at the moment systematically biases against certain groups, be it women going into technology jobs, men going into primary care, where stereotypes about particular jobs define who gets hired,” says CEO and co-founder Kate Glazebrook.

Forget about gut instinct in hiring; launched in 2016, having been spun out of the Cabinet Offices Behavioural Insights Team or ‘Nudge Unit’, Applied uses behavioural and data science to remove bias from the hiring process, and make it fair for everyone.

Glazebrook is in no doubt that the traditional CV-based process isn’t working. She says an experiment Applied carried out in 2016 proved that over half the candidates hired through the platform wouldn’t have been successful if screened through traditional means.

“Those hired through the platform were more diverse in a variety of ways – be that economic background, ethnicity, education, etc,” she says.

Among Applied’s research findings are that candidates who are shortlisted first are rated more highly than those that follow. Similarly, someone’s rating varies according to the scores of those that precede them. As a result, Applied’s review algorithm has been designed to ensure that reviewers do not read candidates’ responses to different interview questions in the same order.

are you in the club?

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TH E B IG STO RY: DISRU PTIVE RECRUITMENT

Peer trust Juliet Eccleston traces the inspiration for co-founding Anygood? back to her own frustrations of using agencies. Having spent much of her career streamlining processes in the financial services sector, Eccleston says the idea behind the platform was to do the same in recruitment, for example by cutting out the involvement of multiple agencies in the hiring process. Taking its cue from Airbnb and Purple Bricks, companies that have brought huge disruption to the hotel and estate agency industries respectively, the platform-based model taps into the trend for people across many areas of modern life “to have trust in their peers”, Eccleston says. Turning the whole idea of networks of talent on its head, she explains how Anygood?’s network, or membership, is made up of people who can recommend others they know, and have worked with, for vacancies. Once a recommended candidate is placed, the member receives a reward of £1.5k.

An important aspect of Anygood?’s business model is that clients rate the recommenders, Eccleston says: “It’s exactly the same as rating your Uber driver.” To maintain the quality of referrers, all referrers’ ratings are monitored, with a drop in a member’s rating setting the alarm bells ringing.

“It may be they are not right for the platform, which is fine,” she says.

recruiters currently working in IT and technology and not in recruitment per se. In Kapadia’s view, using professionals who are working in the field in which they are recruiting “means they have a better understanding of the role, and ensures that it works for the candidate rather than just the business”.

An important feature of these emerging businesses is their claim to undercut recruitment agencies. Reecru’s Kapadia is typical in claiming that his business, which is based on a technology platform rather than a traditional bricks and mortar business has lower overheads, and therefore can afford to charge less. Taken together with the savings from using gig workers, who only get paid when they get a placing, Kapadia reckons that the result is Reecru is around 60% cheaper than the typical

recruitment agency in the sector.

Meanwhile, entrepreneurs such as Uffindell have adapted the subscription model widely used across the sharing economy by companies such as Netflix and Spotify. At a cost of £500 a month to employers and additional £500 when someone from the platform is placed with that employer, Bright Network compares favourably with a typical £5k or £6k fee charged by agencies placing a graduate into a £25k role, Uffindell says.

Over the years, recruitment agencies have confounded those who predicted their demise. While many of this wave of businesses are still small, their use of technology combined with radical approaches and their willingness to question basic tenets of the standard recruitment agency model suggests they shouldn’t be underestimated. ●

Better and cheaper Like many of this breed of entrepreneur entering the sector with fresh thinking, Rishi Kapadia, founder of Reecru, doesn’t have a recruitment background.

Working as a technology consultant and a data migration specialist, he says the lack of understanding of technology by the recruitment agencies he used led him to think he could do better. “Then it clicked with me that we could bring the Uber model into the recruitment business,” he says. So rather than employing staff in the traditional way, Reecru has built up an 18-strong pool of freelance or gig workers, who are free to accept or decline assignments as they choose.

Again, Kapadia has turned his back on conventional wisdom, with many of his

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Doing things the right way has brought us a long way.

The world of recruitment might have changed in 20 years – but our values haven’t. %DFN 2IĆFH ĆUVW RSHQHG LWV GRRUV LQ -XO\ 6LQFH WKHQ ZHèYH EHFRPH D OHDGLQJ QDPH LQ IXQGLQJ DQG EDFN RIĆFH VHUYLFHVðD VXFFHVV EXLOW RQ DOZD\V IROORZLQJ WKH VDPH FRUH SULQFLSOHV 2XU SHRSOH FDWHJRULFDOO\ SXW RXU FOLHQWV ĆUVW NHHS HYHU\ SURPLVH DQG DOZD\V ORRN WR LPSURYH ZKDW ZH GR %HLQJ ćH[LEOH HQRXJK WR ĆW DURXQG \RX DQG RIIHULQJ DOO WKH VXSSRUW DQG DGYLFH \RX QHHG 7KH\èUH ZK\ RYHU WKH ODVW \HDUV VR PDQ\ UHFUXLWHUV KDYH FKRVHQ WR ZRUN ZLWK XV $QG ZK\ \RX VKRXOG WRR

6HH KRZ %DFN 2IĆFH FDQ KHOS \RXU EXVLQHVV JR IXUWKHU Call us on 01260 280290 or visit EDFNRIĆFHVXSSRUWVHUYLFHV FR XN RXU ZD\

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07/09/2018 15:02

An HM Revenue & Customs crackdown on tax avoidance is sending shockwaves through the contractor supply chain, as Colin Cottell reports

TAX CATCH-UP mpowered by recent legislation, HMRC is taking action against up to 100,000 contractors who received part of their remuneration in the form of a loan or some other form of disguised remuneration rather than in taxable salaries or dividends, supposedly saving them thousands of pounds in tax and National Insurance.

E

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As a result of this HMRC enforcement action, contractors who signed up to these schemes provided by or arranged through umbrella companies and contractor accountants are now receiving tax bills for what in some cases are reportedly lifechanging amounts.

It is not only contractors who are affected, however, with reports that

recruitment agencies are being caught in the crossfire of tax avoidance measures, and warnings that directors are at risk of unlimited fines and a criminal record.

FERTILE GROUND Although tax schemes involving loans to contractors have been around for decades, Graham Fisher, CEO of Orange Genie

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Umbrella and chair of the Freelancer and Contractor Services Association (FCSA), says he began to notice a proliferation of such schemes in the lead-up to controversial changes to the IR35 regulations in the public sector in April 2017. According to Fisher, the resultant drop in the take-home pay of contractors – typically 15-25%, whose income was now taxed under PAYE – proved fertile ground for unscrupulous providers of these schemes.

Fisher says the effect of the IR35 changes was almost instant. Within a month he says some firms “moved from being accountants to umbrellas overnight.

Suddenly there was a company with three, four or five contractors typically in the healthcare sector springing up”.

According to HMRC, contractor loan schemes “involve people being paid in interest-free non-repayable loans often from offshore trusts [into which a proportion of the person’s income has been paid]. Scheme users will have avoided paying tax for several years on some or all of their employment income.

Schemes users typically earned twice as much as the average UK taxpayer.”

Variations that HMRC considers fall into the same category include payments made to the contractor for an annuity, and even redeemable loyalty points. A common feature is that the loan doesn’t have to be repaid. “Often these schemes involve more than one limited company to move money through. The umbrella company is often used as the ‘front’ company to make the operation look compliant,” adds Matthew Brown, CEO at umbrella and managed services provider giant group.

One healthcare sector agency that refused to use providers of loan schemes lost 800 contractors, who chose to go elsewhere rather than see their income decimated. But the effects didn’t end there, says Fisher: “Some large agencies have moved from a PSL [preferred supplier list] of four or five to up to 120 umbrellas offering these schemes.” But not because they wanted to. “Either they did, or they lost the contractor,” he explains.

TAX HIT The 2019 Loan Charge will come as a shock to many contractors, with any loan received since 1999 being added to their taxable income for 2018-19, unless the loan has been repaid or had tax I L L UST RAT I O N | IKON

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paid on it, resulting in a hugely inflated tax bill. “The impact for the tens of thousands of contractors is significant, with unexpected tax bills in the range of five to six figures being the norm,” says Matt Fryer, group compliance director at contractor accountants Brookson.

According to The Loan Charge Action Group, a group of contractors, who are campaigning against what they see as punitive retrospective legislation, someone on a £40k salary who signed up to a loan scheme for 10 years could face a bill of £182k.

Julia Kermode, CEO at the Freelancer and Contractor Services Association (FCSA), says the noose is tightening when it comes to these types of schemes, with HMRC now having increased legislative tools at its disposal to curb contractor loans. These include the 2017-18 Finance Bill, which introduced revised rules on disguised remuneration, GAAR – The General Anti-Abuse Rule – and the 2019 Loan Charge. HMRC has set those who signed up to a loan scheme until 30 September to declare they used these schemes or face a hefty fine, with any loans made since 1999 being treated as taxable income. HMRC told Recruiter

that so far 24,000 scheme users have registered an interest in settling their tax bill, and that up to 50,000 people could fall within the scope of the loan charge.

In addition to anti-tax evasion legislation, The Criminal Finances Act, introduced in September 2017, puts recruitment agencies at significant risk.

CHALLENGE TO AGENCIES Crawford Temple, CEO at payment intermediary trade body PRISM, says the combined effects of the various pieces of legislation now available to HMRC to target contractor loans and associated HMRC enforcement action is not just bad news for contractors, but for recruitment agencies too. “Contractors are already getting demands from HMRC for noncompliance, and in some cases these are coming back to recruitment companies.

We are seeing contractors challenging recruitment companies, and asking them ‘what checks [on providers] did you make?’.”

Temple says he has seen tax demands of between £6k and £20k, while agencies have told him in conversations they have received “significant bills” from contractors.

ACTION POINTS FOR RECRUITMENT AGENCIES → Ask the scheme operator to provide a breakdown of the worker’s total pay, reconciling it back to the amount the agency paid them and showing clearly which amounts are subject to PAYE. If there is an element not subject to immediate PAYE this should be a red flag. → Make sure that 100% of the gross pay is paid through Real Time Information payroll – anything that isn’t could be disguised remuneration. → Tighten due diligence on your PSL by asking the following questions, and investigate further if the answer to either is ‘no’: • Is the company you pay the same entity that pays your worker?

• Is the worker contracting with an entity outside the UK? → Consider using a professional or accreditation body, which will have the expertise to check out providers. → A whole group of contractors on a site suddenly all wanting to move to a particular umbrella should set alarm bells ringing. → Investigate thoroughly any schemes that are promoted solely or mainly on take-home pay enhancements with no other commercial benefits. Any scheme offering more than 80% take-home pay should be viewed with suspicion.

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The pushback on agencies is likely to continue as the number of contractors identified as using loan schemes rises, Temple warns. All these schemes, he says, will include an element of PAYE, which must be reported under Real Time Information (RTI) under an employer code. As a result, Temple says that as soon as a provider is deemed to be noncompliant, say after a tax tribunal case, HMRC knows everyone who uses it.

In addition to having better information, Temple continues, HMRC is believed to have taken on more inspectors – although when queried by Recruiter, HMRC neither confirmed nor denied it.

“The issue is not whether someone gets found out, it’s when their resources get round to it being at the top of their pile.

This perception that people won’t get caught because the Revenue isn’t doing enforcement is false,” Temple says.

While Fisher says many recruitment agencies succumbed to the commercial pressure to use providers of loan schemes, Kermode warns that anti-tax evasion legislation introduced in September 2017 makes this a risky strategy.

“The Criminal Finances Act [CFA] makes companies criminally liable if they fail to prevent tax evasion by a member of staff or an associate, and prosecution could lead to criminal conviction and unlimited fines,” says Kermode. For those agencies that have used or continue to use providers of loans schemes, one of the biggest risks is HMRC taking the view this facilitates tax evasion. “They may want to take action against any firm that might have been recommending these schemes,” Kermode says.

In addition to a criminal conviction

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and unlimited fines, they could also be liable for the contractor’s tax and National Insurance liability, penalties and interest.

Graham Palfery-Smith, chairman of 6CATS International, a provider of contractor management solutions, says that the risks of the CFA to recruitment agencies go wider. “The problem with the CFA is it doesn’t have to be wilful; if it happens on your watch you are liable,” he warns. So even if a recruitment agency doesn’t actively encourage or recommend someone to join a scheme, the directors are also liable if someone in the agency is simply aware that a client is involved in such a scheme. Furthermore, to avoid liability the agency must show that it implemented ‘reasonable prevention procedures’ to prevent any facilitation of tax evasion in their supply chain.

“The only defence is, you have policies, processes and procedures in place to check these things,” says Palfery-Smith.

Louise Rayner, founder of back office, umbrella and accountancy services provider NumberMill, gives HMRC credit for upping its game when it comes to tax compliance and enforcement. However, this has not had the desired effect on agencies, she argues: “If the Revenue is going to get anywhere they are going to need to take some sort of action against an agency that will set a precedent, but that hasn’t happened so they are getting away with it, unfortunately.”

While bigger recruitment agencies “get the CFA, and are doing everything to make sure they are compliant”, she says she still sees lots of agencies, particularly low-margin agencies, looking for alternative tax schemes.

Although Fisher says he hopes that the

HMRC’s view “It is not normal, or indeed reasonable to be paid in loans that are unlikely to be repaid. Disguised remuneration schemes are clear examples of contrived tax avoidance that seek a tax advantage that parliament never intended.

“We know that the loan charge applies to a large number of schemes and our legislation has effectively shut them down. We are actively pursuing promoters of disguised remuneration schemes and have a wide range of powers to tackle both promoters and enablers of tax avoidance that are designed to change behaviour and influence those involved to move out of promoting and enabling them for good, with various sanctions and penalties for those who don’t.”

publicity about contractors being landed with huge tax bills will put others off going anywhere near loan schemes and that this will reduce the market for such schemes, he appears far from convinced.

“The issue we have is the ill-informed who are vulnerable to these schemes, and there will always be unscrupulous umbrellas and agencies that will pick these people up,” he says.

However, a combination of tougher anti-avoidance legislation and HMRC’s increased focus on such schemes means that any involvement with them by agencies and others in the payment supply chain looks increasingly risky. ●

OCTOBER 2018

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THE VIEW AND THE INTELLIGENC E

Our Future of Jobs follow up P2 BIG TALKING PO INT

Salaries and benefits P4-5 LEGAL UPDATE

RECRUITMENT MATTERS

How important are references? P6 Issue 66 October 2018

PRO DUC TS AND TR AINING

What’s coming up? P8

E U RO P E

Falling employer confidence highlights need for smart immigration policy D

ipping employer confidence has bolstered calls for a smart new immigration system.

Employers’ confidence in the prospects for the UK economy turned negative in August, according to the Recruitment & Employment Confederation’s JobsOutlook report.

The balance of those seeing a positive outlook as opposed to a negative one was a net -1, a fall of 7 points since July.

Despite the deterioration in confidence in the economic outlook, employers’ confidence in making hiring and investment decisions in their own businesses remained in positive territory with a net balance of +15, only falling by 1 point since July.

This may have been driven by ongoing concern about candidate availability with employment rates high. Half (50%) of UK employers expressed concern this quarter over the sufficient availability of candidates for permanent jobs – anticipation of shortages was most

@RECPress RM_October_2018-NEW.indd 1

heightened in relation to construction skills.

“A shortage of available candidates in many areas of the economy means employers are having to work harder to bring in key staff – with many sectors, such as drivers and food supply, fearing they may be hit hard by future changes to the UK’s mobility deal with the EU,” says REC chief executive Neil Carberry.

The report was buttressed by August’s ONS migration statistics, that found fewer EU migrants were coming to the UK. CIPD’s senior labour market analyst Gerwyn Davies says the numbers boost calls for a new approach to immigration policy.

“At a time of record low unemployment and mounting recruitment and retention pressures, it is sensible that controls on migration from outside the EU are loosened to take the heat out of the tightening labour market,” he says.

The report backs up the REC’s call for an immigration system not based on “arbitrary quotas” but the contribution individuals make to the UK economy.

www.rec.uk.com 11/09/2018 15:28

L E A D I N G T H E I N D U S T RY

the view...

It’s up to everyone to talk up recruitment, says NEIL CARBERRY, REC chief executive

I

have been asking myself how we tell the stories of recruitment in the best way possible.

A core role of the REC is highlighting the contribution recruiters make to UK prosperity – in both government and the media. Fantastic recruitment businesses all over the country are making a real difference to people’s lives and companies’ performance.

Economic data supports the case for what we do – our own research shows that almost eight in 10 UK employers are satisfied with the recruitment agencies they used in the last two years. Employment rates are high and candidate feedback is strong.

The facts are on our side. And in influencing public policy and debate – on issues like skills, regulation, tax and Brexit – that is invaluable, right? Well, yes – up to a point.

The nature of modern politics and fast-paced technological changes mean the public debate about our sector isn’t always based upon the realities of life for workers and companies around the country.

We need to do more than churn facts. If we’ve learned anything from the political debate of the past few years, facts alone aren’t persuasive – and narrow self-interest never is. Our challenge is to tell an engaging story about the value we create, the lives we change and the experience of people we place into work.

A clearer story about the value of what we do and a focus on improving recruitment practices will make the sector’s voice louder, and ensure we are seen as the essential service we are. It will prompt policymakers to engage and allow us to be persuasive. But it will require all of us to work together.

If you want to keep up to speed with all things recruitment then follow me on Twitter @RECNeil

2 RECRUITMENT MATTERS OCTOBER 2018

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What does the follow up to the Future of Jobs report hold for the industry? asks TOM HADLEY, REC director of policy and professional services HADL EY ’ S C OMMENT

Let’s own the future We have engaged with more than 1,000 recruiters since launching our ‘Future of Jobs’ commission report. Our follow up report ‘Recruitment 2025’ identifies four areas the industry can build on to thrive in the changing employment landscape.

1) Looking ahead – nurturing a future-focused mind-set Although recruitment will always be about the ‘here and now’, we must develop a future-first mindset. Recruitment can drive innovation and harness new technology, with 70% of REC members surveyed saying they’ve adopted this mindset to A1 and tech.

2) Looking out – forging a new identity Real opportunities exist to expand the types of service recruiters offer and forge new relationships. It bodes well that 81% of employers are satisfied with the agencies they use. Helping clients with their strategic workforce planning will involve making change happen on diversity and social mobility and will underline the industry’s role in ensuring that a future UK jobs market is all-inclusive.

3) Looking in – building future skills and leadership An evolving economic landscape is already impacting on the type of skills, competencies and leadership within our industry. Recruiters say these internal changes must accelerate to reflect seismic changes to the world of work. Investing in skills and building a new generation of leaders will become pivotal.

4) Looking to make a difference – becoming Future of Jobs ambassadors Recruitment is an essential part of the UK economy. Bringing the education and labour market together will be critical. Our network of ‘Future of jobs ambassadors’ will help to make this difference.

As the pace of change accelerates, clients and candidates will need help to navigate the complexity of a constantly evolving landscape.

This is where we come in: let’s own the future of jobs.

You can follow Tom on Twitter @hadleyscomment

www.rec.uk.com

11/09/2018 12:09

6%

the intelligence...

WITH REC SENIOR RESEARCHER, MARK HARRISON

T

he REC’s latest research report shows it’s a good time to be a recruiter. In ‘Attract and retain top talent: pay and benefits in the recruitment sector’, the REC research total annual earnings team have explored remuneration rise for consultants and rewards among recruitment managers and consultants across the UK and compared them with the results of our 2015 pay and benefits rise for managers report ‘Planning for Growth’.

For both managers and consultants, remuneration has been increasing. Our latest survey shows that for consultants, the average basic salary has increased 6% from £23,810 three years ago to £25,341 today. For managers, there has been a 3% increase from £38,170 to £39,158. When considering non-financial benefits, the distribution of entitlement to perks between managers and consultants is fairly evenly spread, though there is a skew towards managers being more likely to be entitled to most benefits.

Overall, half of the recruiters in our survey were satisfied with their pay and benefits, compared to

10% 1%

8.5%

4.5%

PERMANENT AND TEMPORARY BILLINGS UP, YOY, ACROSS H1 2018

Temporary H1 2018

Permanent H1 2018

Temporary turnover and permanent billings versus last year % – average across H1 2018, for the median recruiter

www.rec.uk.com

RM_October_2018.indd 3

a quarter who were dissatisfied.

Unsurprisingly, those with the highest earnings had the highest levels of satisfaction.

Gender pay reporting has highlighted gender pay gaps across a range of sectors, typically in favour of men. Unfortunately, recruitment is no exception to this. When looking at mean total earnings, our survey found a gender pay gap of 14% in favour of men among consultants and a gap of 10% in favour of men among managers. Men were also more likely to be entitled to any given benefit with the key exception of female managers being more likely to be entitled to flexible working than male managers.

14%

gender pay gap in favour of men among consultants

The latest real-time information from the RIB Index shows that both permanent and temporary billings were proportionally higher in H1 2018 than those generated in H1 2017.

Taking an average of the median recruiter’s monthly

Our latest survey shows that for consultants average basic salary has increased 6 per cent from £23,810 three years ago to £25,341 today

When it came to actually using flexible working benefits, over half of all women in our survey had used one method of flexible working in the last 12 months, compared to a third of men.

To access our latest report in full, including recommendations for leaders of recruitment businesses of all sizes on how to attract and retain managers and consultants, visit www.rec. uk.com/newsand-policy/ research/latestresearch/attractand-retain-toptalent.

10%

gender pay gap in favour of men among managers

performance across H1 2018, turnover from temporary placements was 8.5% higher whilst billings from permanent placements were up 4.5% year-on-year (YoY).

With temporary margins remaining buoyant for the median RIB recruiter across

H1 2018, the uptick in turnover will be generating notable additional NDR yield.

Whilst proportionally lower, the improved performance within perm billings is even more notable, however, due to the fact that average margins have deteriorated YoY.

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

OCTOBER 2018 RECRUITMENT MATTERS 3

11/09/2018 12:09

N E W R E P O RT

big talking point

Carrots and salary Salary and benefits packages remain important to consultants and managers. If your company is not regularly reviewing your offer against market trends and your competitors’ packages, you may risk losing good staff, failing to attract new talent or both.

The REC’s ‘Attract and retain top talent – Pay and benefits in the recruitment sector’ report is the latest survey of salary and benefits in the recruitment industry.

Recruitment Matters looks at the big recommendations. t is a good time to work in the recruitment industry. Despite political disruptions and some economic uncertainty around Brexit, combined with a declining availability of candidates, the industry continues to grow and respond to employers’ labour needs.

As in most businesses in the service sector economy, employees are the most fluid asset of recruitment agencies. As competition for talent escalates, the recruitment industry must focus on how to attract and retain staff.

The REC’s ‘Attract and retain top talent – Pay and benefits in the recruitment sector’ report outlines six ways your recruitment agency can keep your consultants and managers paid and happy.

post. Make your staff who are new to the industry or to your business understand how their total rewards might potentially change as they improve their skills and performance.

Being open and transparent about the pay trajectory individuals could be on at your firm will help with candidate attraction, as well as build loyalty once in post.

Be transparent

Flexible work is more important than ever

The recruitment industry rewards experience and longevity with significant boosts in total earnings coming after a few years in

4 RECRUITMENT MATTERS OCTOBER 2018

RM_October_2018-NEW.indd 4

Be open about progression As well as the opportunity to increase their earnings, recruiters want to know there are clear opportunities for progression when they take a job. Advertise to external candidates and promote to your current staff the opportunities you have for them to advance in their careers and develop their skills within your business.

Flexible working is an important draw for both consultants and managers and more

www.rec.uk.com

11/09/2018 17:15

GENERAL ELECTION

2015, although it is still only available to a minority of respondents to the REC’s survey. Only a quarter of respondents report their employers offer parental leave beyond the statutory minimum.

than half say it is not something they are entitled to in their current job. For owner/managers of recruitment agencies who are currently unable to offer increased pay packages or higher bonuses, being pro-active about offering flexible work opportunities is a low-cost way to make your company and its culture attractive to new candidates, as well as a place current staff will want to stay. If this is something you already offer, be sure to advertise the fact prominently when recruiting.

Mind the gender gap

Family first Other family-friendly benefits are still not universally offered. This presents an opportunity for some agencies to set themselves apart from competitors by being more generous in their entitlements. The number of recruiters reporting that employers offer childcare assistance has increased since

“The area of real concern in this year’s survey remains the persistent gender pay gap, which does not appear to have reduced since our last report. All large employers are now required by the government to report this. But what matters is what we do next. Reviewing pay and bonus policies to ensure they are gender neutral is vital, as is ensuring men and women have equal opportunity to grow into more senior roles” Neil Carberry, REC chief executive

www.rec.uk.com

RM_October_2018-NEW.indd 5

The survey suggests that not only are women’s basic salaries lower than men’s on average, but that the gap increases when discretionary payments such as bonuses and commission are taken into account.

Agencies should be monitoring pay and rewards schemes to ensure they are applied equitably and that any discrepancies in pay between men and women are addressed.

REC members can download the full report from www.rec.uk.com/toptalent

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS EARNINGS UP Since the last survey in 2015, overall earnings have risen, with both managers and consultants enjoying above inflation pay rises in the last financial year.

HIGHEST IN THREE YEARS The average pay rise for both managers and consultants in the last financial year was the highest in the past three years.

LONGEVITY A FACTOR The recruitment industry rewards experience and longevity with significant boosts in total earnings coming after a few years in post.

THREE MOTIVATORS The top three considerations for recruiters when choosing a new job are pay, followed by personal development opportunities, and flexible work practices.

OCTOBER 2018 RECRUITMENT MATTERS 5

11/09/2018 17:15

REFERENCES

legal update

Let’s talk references

By KAREN AFRIYIE – Legal and compliance adviser at the REC efore an individual engages on an assignment with a client, or is offered a permanent role, employers may require a number of references from that individual. But what are the rules regarding a former employer’s obligation to provide a reference? Typically, there is no legal obligation for an employer to provide a reference, except in the financial sector where regulatory references are mandatory. Therefore, employers in other sectors can refuse to provide a reference, unless they previously contractually agreed to do so.

Under Regulation 22 of the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003, employment

B

“There is no legal obligation for an employer to provide a reference”

RECRUITERS AND TODAY’S NEW WORKPLACE REALITY, ALEX PARKER, EXCELREDSTONE

More people than ever before are working more flexible hours, with a recent YouGov survey showing only six% of people in the UK work the traditional 9 to 5, with almost half the respondents working flexibly, such as job sharing or compressed hours.

Is it time for recruiters to take a different look at the office worker?

Agencies adopting a flexible working practice can use this to attract and retain top talent and promote a

6 RECRUITMENT MATTERS OCTOBER 2018

RM_October_2018-NEW.indd 6

agencies and employment businesses have to comply with additional requirements when introducing or supplying jobseekers that work with vulnerable people.

While recruiters find candidates that meet all the requirements for a role, they must also obtain two references from people not related to them. Recruiters also need to obtain consent from a referee to disclose the reference to the hirer. If recruiters can’t obtain references they must inform the hirer that that have taken all reasonable and practical steps to fully comply with Regulation 22 requirements, but have been unable to do so.

A common question is whether the individual’s consent is required before obtaining and providing a

reference – the simple answer is yes. Under the General Data Protection Regulations (2016/679EU) (GDPR), as the reference will contain personal data, the employer will need the individual’s consent which must be freely given. However, under the GDPR, recruiters and employers can determine whether there is an appropriate lawful basis to process the individual’s data, for example: • there is a contractual obligation; • there is a legal obligation; • they could rely on the consent of the data subject; or • they may rely on a legitimate interest.

Another frequently asked question is whether a confidential reference must be disclosed if a subject access request is made.

Although there is a specific provision in the Data Protection Act 2018 that relates to confidential references, the position is not entirely clear.

The REC is currently communicating with the ICO to identify the scope and application of this section.

Dealing with references should be a straight forward process in recruitment. However, due to statutory obligations, it is important to be aware of any requirements and/or limitations to ensure that neither party’s interests are at risk.

healthy work/life balance.

But how can you give staff more freedom and the tools they need to do their jobs without sacrificing productivity or security?

The answer is technology.

A successful, flexible remote workforce need access to business applications and data from anywhere and any device – advanced communications tools and collaboration spaces to keep productivity levels up.

Cloud services like virtual desktops, voice and video

conferencing, instant messaging and file sharing give employees the ultimate freedom to work wherever and whenever they need to.

With an IT managed service provider, like ExcelRedstone, looking after your IT, implementing flexible working can also be hasslefree and cost-effective.

ExcelRedstone is the REC’s IT service provider of choice.

For more information visit www.excelredstone.com/ REC.

www.rec.uk.com

11/09/2018 17:15

I N S P I R AT I O N To keep up to date with everything the Institute of Recruitment Professionals is doing, please visit www.rec-irp.uk.com

ASHLEIGH WRIGHT is the

leader at Oyster Partnership

What sector do you recruit in?

What sector do you recruit in?

What are you looking forward to?

I originally specialised in the public sector for Town Planning, which I enjoyed, however after a year I decided I wanted to start something from scratch. I now specialise in the contracting market of Environmental Health, which strangely isn’t all that involved with the environment in the traditional sense.

I cover a really varied profession, which includes Food Safety, Licensing, Environmental Protection and Housing Standards, all of which have their own challenges and niche details.

Expanding our team even further after we have experienced a successful first year. I am really looking forward to the challenge of managing an even bigger team and seeing how far we can grow and develop – I find this to be hugely rewarding.

What makes you unique?

We are the only consultancy in the North East region to be REC Audited, which is the gold standard for recruitment.

This proves we are committed to providing excellent service delivery to both clients and candidates, and is definitely something we pride ourselves on!

What are some of your big challenges?

Increased competition which means margins are continually being eroded. And it’s always been a challenge to recruit excellent

RM_October_2018.indd 7

WILL SHIPLEY is a team

commercial director of Westray Recruitment Consultants

Professional, Commercial, Technical & Engineering and Industrial & Manufacturing

www.rec.uk.com

Q&A

What I know

BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE INSTITUTE OF RECRUITMENT PROFESSIONALS

recruiters – ironic, isn’t it?

What are you looking forward to?

We are opening our second office in October, which will be based in Teesside. This is just the start of a wider growth plan that we have, but I can’t give too much away at the moment!

What advice would you give a recruitment entrepreneur/ leader starting out?

Always stick to your guns. There’s a lot of competition out there but never devalue the service you offer by competing on price.

Also, don’t be scared to walk away from clients who are difficult to work with. There’s always going to be other clients who appreciate what you do and who will value a true working partnership.

What are some of your big challenges?

Researching a new sector, whilst stepping up and managing a team, was difficult initially but the success we are building makes it all worthwhile!

What advice would you give a recruitment entrepreneur/leader starting out?

1. Be patient, it takes time to build the sector that you specialise in. Your business relationships are vital, so communication is key!

2. Always be willing to listen and learn from those around you.

Whether they are more senior or more junior than you, you never stop learning in this job!

OCTOBER 2018 RECRUITMENT MATTERS 7

11/09/2018 12:11

W H AT ’ S C O M I N G U P ?

Join us at the Recruitment Agency Expo in Birmingham 3-4 October, National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham The REC is excited to support the sixth annual Recruitment Agency Expo in Birmingham.

With over 14 hours of expert content spread over two days and 80+ exhibitors on the show floor, Recruitment Agency Expo is the premier annual event for the recruitment industry.

Join us at the REC & IRP stand, and make sure you hear REC chief executive Neil Carberry talk about the future of recruitment on 4 October.

The Recruitment Agency Expo is free for all REC and IRP members to attend.

Register now on the events section of the REC website – www.rec.uk.com

How taking an IRP qualification helped my career We interviewed our very own JOANNE RANDALL about how the Level 3 Certificate in Recruitment Practice took her career to the next level What have you learned from passing the Level 3 Cert RP? Taking the Level 3 was a brilliant refresher for me into recruitment and the processes involved.

It has strengthened my knowledge of the legal and ethical requirements of the industry, as well as provided me with some great sales methods.

Who would you recommend this course to?

Anyone in recruitment who is looking to enhance their professional skills and taking the next step in their career in recruitment. If you’re a recruiter, this course will help you out – it did me!

What skills did you gain?

This course helped me develop and adapt my client relationships style, as well as provided me with even more of a strategic approach to the sales cycle.

How has this course helped you progress in your professional career?

Not only has this course helped me develop my own skills, it has given me an even better understanding of what all our students go through. It’s been years since I sat an exam so that opened my eyes again, but to sit the exam

RECRUITMENT MATTERS

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

8 RECRUITMENT MATTERS OCTOBER 2018

RM_October_2018.indd 8

with so many others, it was really rewarding!

Now I have my CertRP, I am able to support our members far better and continue to develop my recruitment knowledge here at the REC.

What feedback would you give to your trainer?

Having taken the fast-track course, I had the opportunity to attend a two-and-a-half day workshop. It was an intense refresher for the exam and really helped us all prepare better. The one bit of feedback I would suggest is for all of the students to have more time testing each other. I found working with other students really helpful and things stuck better in my mind!

What have been the best ‘take homes’ others have got from this course?

I’ve become more effective in my day-to-day tasks at work and have been able to analyse sales opportunities with more structure.

It’s increased my passion for the industry and I can’t wait to share that with all of our future students. Not to mention the free IRP membership I got for the duration of the course plus 12 months after it, too.

Find out more about the Level 3 Cert RP at www.rec-irp.uk.com

Membership Department: Membership: 020 7009 2100, Customer Services: 020 7009 2100 Publishers: Redactive Publishing Ltd, Level 5, 78 Chamber Street, London E1 8BL Tel: 020 7880 6200. www.redactive.co.uk Editorial: Editor Michael Oliver michael.oliver@redactive.co.uk. Production Editor: Vanessa Townsend Production: Production Executive: Rachel Young rachel.young@redactive.co.uk Tel: 020 7880 6209 Printing: Printed by Precision Colour Printing © 2018 Recruitment Matters. Although every effort is made to ensure accuracy, neither REC, Redactive Publishing Ltd nor the authors can accept liability for errors or omissions. Views expressed in the magazine are not necessarily those of the REC or Redactive Publishing Ltd. No responsibility can be accepted for unsolicited manuscripts or transparencies. No reproduction in whole or part without written permission.

www.rec.uk.com

11/09/2018 12:11

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CO M M U N I T Y

UPSTART

E

Desks constructed out of scaffolding poles and scaffolding boards were one of Steve Whiston’s main priorities for the new office, and a walkway (below) offers staff and visitors an unusual welcome

DIY RELOCATION

BY COLIN COTTELL

F

rom sales and marketing, to payroll and IT, those who run early stage recruitment business have to be a dab hand at a wide range of tasks. But surely few recruiters will have taken things to such extremes as Steve Whiston, managing director of Manchester-based technical recruiter V7.

This new chapter in Whiston’s recruitment career began with a decision to relocate the business from “just a service office: one room, six desks, white walls and no character” to bigger and better premises.

“I had a kind of vision and idea of what I wanted.

I wanted to build a business and an environment where people enjoy coming to work, so we decided to bite the bullet and to take our own space,” he says.

Having found the perfect location, with features that included exposed brick and listed status, at 56 Princess Street in the heart of Manchester’s commercial district, Whiston obtained quotes from several companies to fit out the premises – which Whiston described as “just a big open space, with no desks, phones, meeting rooms, [or] internal walls”. He WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK 29

p37-38_recruiter_upstart.indd 37

12/09/2018 14:45

E UPSTART CO M M UNITY

was horrified with the response.

Among other quirky “I was getting quoted £100k and elements is the V7 bar figures like that,” he says.

Recognising the financial strain that such a large bill would have on a young company, established only six months earlier in January 2017 without a large amount of cash sloshing around, Whiston came up with a radical alternative solution: why not do the work himself?

After spending his whole career before founding V7 working in the “corporate” offices of recruitment companies such as Fircroft and Cordant Technical, Whiston admits that designing and fitting the company’s new offices was a journey into the unknown.

But despite being no DIY buff and never having done anything like this before, he was undeterred. However, little did he know at the time that the next four weeks would turn out to be the hardest he had worked in his life – “a minimum of 18 hours a day, getting home at midnight, then getting up at 4am or 5am to go again”. And all this while still managing the business that was continuing to operate in the old office. “It was a pretty stressful three or four weeks,” he says.

Fortunately, Whiston didn’t have to go through this ordeal on his own. His father Ian is a project director in the construction sector and a joiner by trade, and had just finished a project in London. He agreed to his son’s request to help manage people on the site. “I utilised him as much as I could,” says Whiston. “He ended up getting his hands dirtier than he would have probably liked,” he adds.

“Dad was fabulous throughout,” he says, adding with a touch of pride in his voice, that his dad described him as “his toughest client”.

Despite his lack of experience of fitting out offices and not having architect’s plans, Whiston had a good idea of what the new offices should look like. “I must have spent hours and hours on Pinterest trying to get inspiration, and then took ideas and looked at cheaper options,” he says.

Central to his vision were desks made out of scaffolding, with scaffolding boards as tops, inspired by a visit to a coffee shop “where they had a high table made of scaffolding”, he says. “Genius,” he adds. A contact in the scaffolding industry confirmed the concept would work, before Whiston made the desks himself.

With the scaffolding desks costing just £1k in total, accommodating up to 26 staff, compared to £250 per

“It was a pretty stressful three or four weeks”

“It makes it worthwhile when you take staff on and they comment on how nice our offices are” 30 RECRUITER

p37-38_recruiter_upstart.indd 38

conventional desk, the savings were considerable.

Other cost savings came from calling on skilled friends, such as electricians. None of these friends asked to be paid for their work, although Whiston acknowledges this proved a bit of challenge; other calls on their time meant they weren’t always available. A nephew was roped in to do labouring as well. “We were kind of having to beg, steal and borrow people,” says Whiston.

With the desks sorted, this assorted workforce moved on to the rest of the building, constructing a boardroom, an office for Whiston, a bar and a seating area. Whiston is especially proud of a walkway tunnel, through which people enter the office. “I had seen it on Pinterest in a different environment, and to my mind I thought it would fit perfectly.”

At the end of the tunnel is a huge mirror, which Whiston credits to his father. “I wouldn’t have known where to go for that, but he did, and that kind of contact was invaluable.”

Despite keeping an eagle eye on costs, Whiston says it is the nature of such construction projects that things end up costing more than expected. “You might only think you need 25 litres of paint but you end up needing 40 litres,” he says as an example. He found he had underestimated the number of wall sockets needed for all IT and electrical equipment needed in today’s super-connected offices. The amount of electric cabling needed was also a shock.

“We probably needed 5,000m of data cable, when originally we probably thought we needed 1,000m. It is those kind of things you don’t think about.”

The total cost of £15k came in slightly above what Whiston had anticipated, but was still a massive saving on the £100k he had been quoted.

Despite the blood, sweat and tears and the 20-hour days, Whiston says the result made it all worthwhile.

“When you create a space that people enjoy coming to and where they feel relaxed you get the best out of people, and that is actually what we are seeing now,” he says. “It makes it worthwhile when you take staff on and they comment on how nice our offices are.

Considering what we did it for, I think it is a pretty fantastic achievement.”

So with this success behind him, does he see fitting out offices as a possible new career? “I don’t think I would want to do that,” he says firmly. “I think I will stick with something I know.” ●

OCTOBER 2018

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CO M M U N I T Y

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

E

From putting on fundraising events to having a hi-vis approach to charities, you’ve been busy as usual since the last Recruiter…

CV-LIBRARY RAISES NEARLY £4K IN MEMORY OF FORMER COLLEAGUE VIA Job board CV-Library has raised £3.9k for Thrombosis UK. A charity raffle took place in memory of Sam Chapman from the company’s sales team, who sadly passed away last summer from venous thromboembolism (VTE). The raffle was organised by Sam’s daughter, Abi Chapman (above, left with mum Sam), who works within CV-Library’s marketing department.

RECRUITER: BY ROYAL (MAIL) APPOINTMENT VIA

RUTHERFORD BRIANT SCORES WITH CHARITY 5-A-SIDE

An eagle-eyed Recruiter fan spotted September’s issue about to be delivered to an expectant reade reader in Central London. Do you have any phot photos of Recruiterr in random places? Let L us know – we’d lov love to publish them!

Essex-based Rutherford Briant Recruitment hosted a 5-a-side football charity event with a number of local accountancy firms. The event raised £575 for East Anglia’s Children’s Hospice, with Scrutton Bland beating off stiff competition to secure first place. Well done to everyone who took part!

IM AGE | TOM CULLEY

TW I TT E R

GENESIS SHINES NES A LIGHT ON ZOË’S PLACE WITH HI-VIS CAMPAIGN VIA

Make Halloween special this year!

Join the celebrations at Recruiter’s Investing in Talent Awards on 31 October

West Midlands-based based Genesis Employment Services is donating £1 for every hi-vis vest it hands out to temporary workers over the next 12 months. Genesis hopes to generate around £2k to go towards essential palliative, respite and end of life care to babies and infants under the age of five suffering from life-limiting or life-threatening conditions.

DON’T BE LATE TO THE PARTY! A final reminder to book your seats for Recruiter’s Investing in Talent Awards on 31 October at The Brewery in London.

Tables are selling out and you won’t want to miss out on celebrating and networking with the best in the recruitment industry. Take a look at www.investingintalent.co.uk and we’ll see you there on the night!

www.investingintalent.co.uk

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07/09/2018 15:06

CO M M U N I T Y

CAREERS

Never a better time to cross the divide

E

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

BY SIMON HUNT

↗ SIMON HUNT chief operating officer, Oakleaf Partnership Executive

FIRSTLY, A ‘THANK YOU’ TO TARA LESCOTT for connecting the Oakleaf team with Recruiter about the opportunity to take over from Andrew Mountney.

It is a pleasure to take the opportunity to provide advice, counsel and commentary on the in-house recruitment world for Recruiter.

Oakleaf Partnership is a boutique HR recruitment business, working across all industries and at all levels. Inhouse recruitment is one of our core HR function deliverables.

In-house recruitment jobs amount to 15-20% of our annual vacancy numbers, according to our data from the past three years. And given the breadth of our technical specialism in HR, it means that partnering with our customers to source talent or vacancies in this space is a significant part of our day job.

“The demand is for experienced agency recruiters who have performed at the highest level” Permanent hires make up 50% of these mandates, around 20% being fixed-term contracts and around 30% interim hires. We tend to see relatively consistent volumes of hiring up to manager level and, indeed, up to senior manager level too.

The main exceptions in senior manager hiring volumes are those for EMEA region heads or global heads. There simply hasn’t been the demand for these roles. Hence the number of talented individuals open to new opportunities is making competition fierce.

In regard to specialisms, the greatest demand is for outstanding tech recruiters, and their price mirrors this.

Technology opportunities The in-house recruitment market has been evolving with the rapid improvement of technology over the past few years. This improved ability to source and deliver has alerted organisations to the benefit of larger in-house recruitment teams.

These teams are being I M AG E | I STO C K

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populated by recruiters with more niche skill sets – with specific depth of market experience, networks, talent pools and black books – aka the best agency recruiters.

For the first time in an age, we are being asked for agency experience, over and above in-house talent acquisition experience.

That said, the demand is for experienced agency recruiters who have performed at the highest level – top billers with excellent placement volumes and conversion rates. These innovators understand what technologies can be used to gain competitive advantage and form multichannel brand awareness.

We have had nigh-on 300 recruitment mandates in the first half of 2018, and the vast amount of them will look at outstanding agency recruiters who can manage tough briefs and volume hiring, and have the resilience to deliver at pace.

The in-house executive resourcing market is also growing, as organisations see the benefit of building out their own functions. This is also a step change in the market, as it was always difficult to make that leap from pure search to in-house.

This trend offers a welcome lifeline for individuals looking for a change. Even smaller boutique firms are considering search consultants to build high-touch, in-house search offerings for them.

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E BUSINESS ADVICE CO MM UNITY

ASK THE EXPERT Q: You advocate constant business development, but if you have enough clients isn’t that a waste of time?

‘Enough’ is a subjective term, but even if you have a sufficient number of clients not all relationships are equal, and you can always look to find better clients.

The three reasons I advocate constant business development are to: • make sure business development is a habit • ensure you always have a choice of clients • continuously drive down your time to deal (a ratio calculated by working out the revenue generated divided by the cost of the time invested – the greater the revenue per unit of time invested, the better).

Develop the habit Business development is easy to put off if it is not part of your routine. I often hear “I haven’t got time for business development – I’ll only hit target if I focus on filling the roles I’ve got” or “I’ve got enough roles on that I don’t need any more to hit target”.

There is no good reason to stop doing business development, and once new business stops being part of the routine it can be hard to get into the rhythm again. The biggest billers put aside time for new business development every week, no matter what, because it enables them to operate at maximum efficiency.

Choice can boost efficiency

36 RECRUITER

The SME Coach development. They will look to be briefed on 20-plus roles and then focus on the most promising – where the fee multiplied by the percentage probability of the fee divided by time spent on the role is the greatest. They also won’t be satisfied with simply hitting their official target – they’ll set their own targets far in excess, giving them a built-in buffer.

The time saved by being able to cherry-pick roles more than compensates for the time spent on the business development.

Client churn is healthy While it is more time-consuming to build new relationships than maintain existing ones, all relationships go through peaks and troughs, and I am a firm believer that client lists need to be constantly refreshed if you are to maximise your efficiency.

If you review which roles have the lowest time to deal, you will find patterns. Certain clients will simply never offer your candidates or brief too many agencies; others have slow recruitment processes or require you to jump through multiple hoops; others regularly brief on roles that never materialise; and so on. You should be looking to replace these clients with ones that operate in a way that works for you.

That is not to say that building relationships isn’t important. It is fundamental to operating efficiently – but that’s a discussion for another month.

↗

Recruiters who perform consistently know the ratios they need to achieve different levels of revenue. They know their average fee and have calculated their jobsfilled ratio (jobs filled per month divided by jobs worked per month). They then make sure that they have enough roles on to make sure they hit their target.

For example, if they need to hit £12,000 a month at an average fee of £4,000 (three roles) with a roles-filled ratio of 1 in 4, then they make sure they are working 12plus roles every month. Really big billers may actively work slightly fewer or more roles, but they will have a better jobs-filled ratio and a better time to deal. The way they achieve this is to have a wider choice of roles initially, so they can ruthlessly select those they will be able to fill most quickly.

Maintaining that choice requires consistent business

Alex Arnot

ALEX ARNOT is founder of MyNonExec and board adviser to more than 30 recruitment companies

OCTOBER 2018

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E CAREERS CO M M UNITY

‘I love hearing the stories once the placement has started, finding out about the clinic as well as the local area’ MY BRILLIANT RUITMENT RECRUITMENT CAREER What was your earliest dream job? b?

What was your first job in recruitment and how did you come into it?

This is my first role in recruitment. I found out about [veterinary recruitment agency] A1 Locums from a customer when I was working in retail. I came in for an interview, but I was about to go travelling for three months. At that point, they decided ‘no’. But while I was abroad, travelling in Zambia, they decided they did want me, and I was lucky enough to be offered the role.

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

In netball, former Australian player Sharni Layton and England international Sasha Corbin, who are two of my idols.

Corbin used to play for England, but then snapped her cruciate ligament.

That’s why I stopped playing netball – I completely ruptured my cruciate ligament as well. I was about 11 when I started playing, and was en route to playing at a higher level when I had my accident.

That was why I didn’t carry on playing, so now I’m coaching.

Layton is one of the best defenders the world has ever seen. She’s just taken a year out because of mental health issues. She is doing a lot with mental health and sport and young girls, which I think is excellent.

38 RECRUITER

OCTOBER 2018

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↗

I always wanted to be a sports physiotherapist istt or work in ex-military rehabilitation.

SOPHIE VICKERS, senior recruitment consultant, A1 Locums, and netball coach

Sophie Vickers What do you love most about your current role?

The variety of people, from both the UK and overseas, whom I speak to on a daily basis. I love hearing everyone’s stories.

Working in the veterinary sector means every day is different. We get sent a lot of pictures of people’s new ‘fur babies’ from the locations we send them to all over the UK and the Channel Islands. A lot of our candidates pop over the pond for volunteer work, which I love hearing about as I have done two stints volunteering in Africa.

What would you consider to be the most brilliant moment of your career?

I would say every time I make a placement. I love finding people their dream permanent role or a long-term locum stint. I love hearing the stories once the placement has started, finding out about the clinic as well as the local area.

What’s your top job to fill at the moment?

I have an amazing client in London looking to fill a 24-hour shift in Belgravia, London.

What is your signature dish?

Any things that involves cake – I’m an avid [Great British] Bake Off fan. This week I have made apple and blackberry crumbles, pies and infused gin.

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

Laugh and then cry. A clinic in St Lucia purchased two horses for a riding school and was shipping them over from Portsmouth, so they needed a vet on board. The vet I found for the client sent me a lot of photos.

While they were on the boat, it was all good. Then they arrived in St Lucia. Seeing the photos of the Grenadines islands, the beach parties, the rooftop bars and the food made me want to cry a little.

What’s the best or worst interview question you’ve ever heard?

We don’t really get involved in the interview process.

What would you regard as your theme tune?

Shake it Off by Taylor Swift.

IMAG ES | ISTOCK / SHUTTER STOCK / A LA MY

12/09/2018 15:18

Search 13 million CVs and advertise jobs in all sectors!

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E CAREERS CO M M UNITY

Engineering, EMBS IT and EMBS Property.

[LEAD STORY]

ADVANCE TRS: The technical engineering staffing specialist has appointed Rob Kelly (left) water & infrastructure director in the new office in Port Solent on the South Coast. The firm also welcomes Neil Wilkie (right) as training and development director.

CAREERBUILDER: The HR technology firm has promoted Irina Novoselsky from president and chief operating officer to CEO. Previous CEO Matt Ferguson becomes executive chairman.

CAPITA: Patrick Butcher will join the business outsourcing provider as chief financial officer at the end of the year.

EMBS: James Hall (top, middle column) has been appointed director within EMBS Engineering. His move follows a group restructure incorporating three subsidiaries: EMBS 40 RECRUITER

OCTOBER 2018

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FIRCROFT: Leonie Williams joins the technical engineering recruiter as board director for human resources.

GTMC: The professional body for travel management companies has appointed executive board member Suzanne Horner to lead initiatives on behalf of its people strategy group in her new role as chair.

HOWGATE SABLE: Chris Green joins the executive search firm as associate partner.

MARLIN GREEN: The IT recruiter

Real estate adviser Colliers International has appointed Tom McNally EMEA director of talent acquisition.

McNally joins Colliers from commercial real estate services and investment firm CBRE, where he worked on securing key hires for the business. Before this role, he ran the property desks at recruitment agencies Investigo and Cobalt Recruitment.

Commenting on McNally’s appointment, Colliers International’s EMEA director of people transformation Mo Karim said: “One of our main priorities for 2018 was to develop a people transformation agenda that was closely aligned to our commitment to double the size of our company by 2020.

“Coming from a specialist property recruitment background, McNally has a thorough understanding of the current landscape and will ensure that we are able to push ahead with our vision for growth in a strategic and innovative manner and will act as a core member of the EMEA people transformation leadership team.”

welcomes Jan Foryszewski as sales director and Ross Gorton as CFO.

MARLIN HAWK GROUP: The global executive search firm welcomes Philip Young as client partner, financial services.

MARRIOTT INTERNATIONAL: Colin

NRL: The engineering recruiter

Minto has joined the global hotel company as senior director, talent acquisition and employer brand, Europe.

welcomes Simon Cairns as business development executive to its Scottish recruitment operations.

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

12/09/2018 15:19

SPENGLER FOX: Dr Eva Wuellner joins the executive search firm as regional practice group leader, MEA – family businesses and technology.

Redactive Publishing Ltd 78 Chamber Street, London E1 8BL 020 7880 6200

CONTACTS EDITORIAL +44 (0)20 7880 7603 Editor DeeDee Doke

RECRUITMENT ADVERTISING Sales executive Jack Stevens

deedee.doke@recruiter.co.uk

+44 (0)20 7880 7633

Reporters Colin Cottell, Graham Simons

PEACE RECRUITMENT: The Edinburgh-based recruiter has appointed Jennifer Ryan as a manager in its executive search division.

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

Contributing writers Sue Weekes, Roisin Woolnough Production editor Vanessa Townsend

TEAMJOBS: The commercial, industrial and engineering recruiter welcomes Michelle Mitchell in the newly-created role of operations manager.

ZRG PARTNERS: The executive

PLUM PERSONNEL: Lindsey Atkins joins the Midlandsbased recruiter to head up a new temporary division.

search firm has appointed Alex Bennett as managing director and chief growth officer. Greg Gerson joins as MD in its healthcare services and solutions practice.

YOUR NEXT MOVE A selection of vacancies from recruiter.co.uk Locke & McCloud Trainee recruitment consultant Rec-to-rec, in-house recruitment West and Greater London £25k up to £55k, dep on comm

RETAIL EXECUTIVES: The specialist fashion and retail recruiter has appointed Darren Topp as chairman.

ROC SEARCH: The technology and engineering recruiter has promoted Cherise Yau to account manager from principal account executive within its key accounts division. Business manager for senior appointments Melissa Freer moves over to manager within the division.

Deverell Smith Trainee recruitment consultant Rec-to-rec, in-house recruitment Central and Greater London £20k-25k + uncapped comm Contracts IT Recruitment Consulting Recruitment consultant London £competitive

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

biography, to recruiter.editorial@redactive.co.uk

p48-49_Recruiter_MoversShakers.indd 49

vanessa.townsend@recruiter.co.uk

Designer Craig Bowyer Picture editor Akin Falope ADVERTISING +44 (0)20 7880 6213 Sales manager Paul Barron paul.barron@redactive.co.uk

+44 (0)20 7880 6245 Sales executive Jonathan Adebayo

jack.stevens@redactive.co.uk

PRODUCTION +44 (0)20 7880 6209 Senior production executive Rachel Young rachel.young@redactive.co.uk

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

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

jonathan.adebayo@redactive.co.uk

CIRCULATION and SUBSCRIPTIONS Recruiter is the leading magazine for recruitment and resourcing professionals. To ensure each issue of Recruiter magazine is delivered to your desk or door, subscribe now at https://subs. recruiter.co.uk/subscribe. Annual subscription rate for 12 issues: £35 UK; £45 Europe and £50 Rest of the world • Recruiter is also available to people who meet our terms of control: http://bit. ly/RecruiterCC • To purchase reprints or multiple copies, or any other enquiries, please contact mysidekick@recruiter.co.uk or +44 (0)20 8950 9117 CONTRIBUTIONS Contributions are invited, but when not accepted will be returned only if accompanied by a fully stamped and addressed envelope. Articles should be emailed. No responsibility can be taken for drawings, photographs or literary contributions during delivery, transmission or in the editor’s hands. © 2018 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

Total average net circulation between 1 July 2016 & 30 June 2017 – 14,995. is also sent to all REC members

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Scan here to get your own copy of

12/09/2018 16:58

E THE LAST WORD CO M M UNITY

Alan Furley Is equality actually quite simple?

I’ve been thinking about equality, recently.

The only reason I’ve been thinking about so grand a topic is because I’d not thought about it that much before.

Normally that, on its own, is good enough reason to have a go at thinking about something. But my company – ISL Recruitment – was recently named one of the best small businesses for female employees in the UK, so ‘equality’ has suddenly become a bit of a theme.

That sounds a terrible admission. How could we, as directors of a growing people business, not consider gender diversity part of our core strategy?

It’s not as though there’s any excuse. If you Google ‘women at work’, you get more than 10bn search results. And with gender pay gap reporting, the

topic is high on the news agenda, too.

Unhelpfully, it dawned on me that I’d not really thought about gender diversity – only until I was being interviewed about it by a local journalist.

The result was me trying to improvise a coherent business plan around inclusivity when – as far as everyone else is concerned – it’s public record that we’re actually great at it.

Luckily, it came to me.

We hadn’t written it down because, instead of recruiting with numbers in mind, we’d recruited with the team in mind.

We’d listened when they talked about what kind of place they wanted to work in, and then found that by following their lead we’d created a natural balance.

Instead of recruiting with numbers in mind, we’d recruited with the team in mind 42 RECRUITER

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Shared values We have a 50/50 split of men and women and a high proportion of staff from BME backgrounds.

Those numbers are not targets – but they’re not accidents, either.

We do have a recruiting strategy in place: we seek interesting, socially aware individuals who share our values.

Our culture is open and inclusive, and we’ve developed a mentality around friendly competition and supportive sales environments.

That’s not to say we’re not aware of our 100% white, male director board.

We’re conscious of our unconscious bias.

But we have, purposefully, designed our business to be somewhere that people

ALAN FURLEY is a director at ISL Recruitment

from all walks of life can feel comfortable in and can get results.

I need to be clear: effective and challenging inclusion strategies should be top of everyone’s agenda.

I might be pleased with how it is with us, but I’m also aware of how tough it can be – especially in businesses with established cultures.

But, no, we don’t have a 20-page gender parity plan getting dusty on a shelf – because our people create it anew every day.

And although I still couldn’t write the book on equality, I can safely say a mix of people benefits the business – and everyone in it – in so many ways.

OCTOBER 2018

12/09/2018 15:20

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