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September 2013

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Jonathan Young Meet the man in charge of internation nal defence g gian nt Lockheed Martin’s frontline recru uitment outside the US MBA DEMAND ON RISE The race to find the best and brightest business school talent hots up

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Contents 32

What a tangled web we encounter in trying to navigate legislation that has been put in place to determine the best and most ethical ways to employ people. The combined controversies of the Agency Workers Regulations and zero-hours contracts point up the bottom line of an issue that we all understand instinctively but yet seem unable to deal with: life and work are not intrinsically fair. In an ideal world, everyone should be able to plan precisely which hours they will work, which days and weeks they will work, and where they will work. Everyone carrying out honest work should earn a wage that gives them and those with whom they share their lives a decent, if not outright good life. People, say, with children, or those responsible for incapacitated people, or those that have pets they love should be able to plan their work life to accommodate these human needs. For their part, employers should be able to count on the amount of business they will do and work to pass on to employees. In an ideal world, that is. But sadly, none of these ‘should be’ situations are true all of the time. What one employee might consider exploitation under a zero-hours contract might seem a preferable situation to someone else who is employed as an agency worker under the Swedish derogation rule. And vice versa. The dilemma is, how can you make work situations as fair as possible to most people and still be able to provide work? That’s the billion pound question, and too little effort is being expended to explore it in its entirety. Recruiters are caught in the middle of this quagmire, trying to abide by laws, please clients, keep candidates/ workers happy and run a business. We need to take the discussion back to basics and explore a holistic approach to this whole mess: what is the best we can do for all?

NEWS 5

FEATURES

Talent spotting at O2’s digital Campus Party Termed ‘Glastonbury for geeks’, the O2-hosted event showcases much-needed digital skills

BAE Systems helps make the move easier Local employers help workers’ families ﬁnd jobs

Latest in-house moves mirror jobs market The in-house market seems to be hotting up

8 Tech & tools 10 Brieﬁng: HR standards 12 News Digest

28 COVER STORY Jonathan Young, head of international workforce strategy, analytics and talent acquisition at Lockheed Martin 32 Keeping a safe distance Outsourcing back ofﬁce functions may seem scary but it needn’t mean a business loses control

REGULARS 19 21 21 24

ANALYSIS 13 Ricky Martin The Apprentice winner on why social media is so important for recruitment 14 Sector Analysis Education 17 Global Spotlight on Hong Kong

Soapbox Soundbites On tumblr this month Insight Recruiters need to innovate to capture the best MBAs leaving business schools

26 The Challenge Steria Recruitment and NHS Shared Business Services (SBS) 38 Movers & Shakers Industry moves 42 Bloggers with Bite

DeeDee Doke, Editor

Scan here to get your own copy of Recruiter

WHO’S HIRING? 39 Ruth Moran 40 Blue Octopus, MLR

Recruitment, Twenty Recruitment

EDITORIAL Editor: DeeDee Doke T: +44 (0)20 7880 7601 deedee.doke@recruiter.co.uk Senior reporter: Colin Cottell T: +44 (0)20 7880 7603 colin.cottell@recruiter.co.uk Reporter: Sam Burne James T: +44 (0)20 7880 7606 sam.burnejames@recruiter.co.uk Contributing writer: Sue Weekes Production editor: Vanessa Townsend T: +44 (0)20 7880 7602 vanessa.townsend@recruiter.co.uk Art editor: Adrian Taylor ADVERTISING Advertising director: Andy Daniel T: +44 (0)20 7880 7607 andy.daniel@recruiter.co.uk Display sales executive: Jasmine Pengelly T: +44 (0)20 7880 6205 jasmine.pengelly@recruiter.co.uk Recruitment advertising: Amalia Zafeiratou +44 (0)20 7880 7608 amalia@redactive.co.uk Fax +44 (0)20 7880 7553 PRODUCTION Deputy production manager: Kieran Tobin T: +44 (0)20 7880 6240 kieran.tobin@redactive.co.uk PUBLISHING Publishing director: Anne Sadler T: +44 (0)20 7880 6213 anne.sadler@redactive.co.uk RECRUITER AWARDS Events: Juliette Bond T: +44 (0)20 7324 2771 juliette.bond@redactive.co.uk CIRCULATION and SUBSCRIPTIONS To receive a regular copy of Recruiter, the leading magazine for recruitment and resourcing professionals, telephone +44 (0)20 8950 9117 or email recruiter@alliance-media.co.uk • To purchase reprints or multiple copies of the magazine, contact Andy Daniel T: +44 (0)20 7880 7607

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CONTRIBUTIONS Contributions are invited, but when not accepted will be returned only if accompanied by a fully stamped and addressed envelope. Articles should be emailed. No responsibility can be taken for drawings, photographs or literary contributions during delivery, transmission or in the editor’s hands. © 2013 Redactive Media Group. All rights reserved. This publication (and any part thereof) may not be reproduced, transmitted or stored in print or electronic format (including but not limited to any online service, any database or any part of the internet) or in any other format in any media whatsoever, without the prior written permission of Redactive Media Group. Redactive Media Group accepts no liability for the accuracy of the contents or any opinions expressed herein. The publishers cannot accept liability for any loss arising from the late appearance or non-publication of any advertisement for any reason whatsoever. ISSN 1475-7478

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TALENT SPOTTING AT O2’S DIGITAL CAMPUS

News

According to an O2-commissioned report, the UK will require 745,000 digitally skilled workers in the next five years. About a fifth of the roles to be available could be filled by “first or second jobbers”, O2 human resources director Ann Pickering told Recruiter. “Bringing in young people with digital skills is really important,” she said. At O2 alone, Pickering said, “we have a goal to bring in 30,000 people between now and 2017, so that’s going some”. A digital skills marketplace was a key feature of the week-long technology festival, which incorporated talks by leading-edge entrepreneurs and innovators, gaming competitions, workshops and a performance by London beatbox guru Beardyman. In addition to O2, employers represented at the event, which drew several thousand attendees from across Europe, included Barclays, BlackBerry, Cisco, Microsoft and a variety of technology start-ups. Asked if she hoped to recruit from the several thousand attendees from across Europe at last week’s event, Pickering said: “If I’ve got 30,000 to find across Europe, I hope, I really hope, I’ll get significant numbers from here. But even if they don’t walk away today having contacted us, the fact they’ve been here, they’ve seen us, they’ve felt us, they know about O2’s about — they won’t forget us, and that’s really important. “We’re all here to reach out, touch and hopefully recruit,” she said. At the same time, Pickering acknowledged that the specific digital skill areas needed in the next few years were not necessarily known now. “I’ve come to the conclusion you don’t know what you don’t know,” she said. “I need to recruit people for attitude because we can train

FOR MORE NEWS AND COMMENTS GO ONLINE

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DEEDEE DOKE

Mobile phone company O2 has put the exploding needs of both the UK and the company itself for digital skills talent under the spotlight last week (2-7 September 2013) with Campus Party Europe, described by some as “Glastonbury for geeks”, at The O2 entertainment centre in North Greenwich.

Campus Party Europe attracted both digitally skilled attendees and those with an interest in the tech world

them for skills, and we don’t know what we require in two years’ time.” Job hunting was not the focus for every attendee though. Visiting from Bratislava, Slovakia, master’s degree students Martin Pivarnik and Andrea Stenova told Recruiter they were attending because of the “interesting content”. They said they were not concerned about finding jobs when they finished their studies in, respectively, computing/networks and engineering, but would be open to relocating when deciding on a job. Recent start-up TaskHub was among the smaller companies with a presence at the digital skills marketplace. With just five staff at the moment, TaskHub was looking for a developer to join its ranks and also for

“new people with passion to stay in touch with us. We want to meet as many people as we can”, co-founder Aurore Hochard told Recruiter. But the connected nature of the so-called ‘geek’ or techie community means that it was not only those attending in person who might link up with his or her next job via Campus Party. While the developer TaskHub sought will likely be “someone more senior” than many attendees and “looking for the next big thing to build”, co-founder Rahul Ahuja said that meeting as many people there as possible would no doubt lead the company to the person ultimately hired. “That person will be in someone’s extended network,” he said. DEEDEE DOKE deedee.doke@recruiter.co.uk

RECRUITER

SEPTEMBER 2013

05/09/2013 15:20

News

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

“There is so much change in the education system that complexity has become a real issue” STEWART MCCOY, RANDSTAD EDUCATION — SEE P14 FOR MORE

Events Discover Sourcing 17-18 September, Prospero House, London uksourcers.co.uk/discoversourcing

Innovation in Recruitment, organised by the IOR 19 September, Britannia International Hotel, London theior.org.uk/events

Social Media: What’s new for 2014, organised by the Recruitment Society 19 September, Penna offices, Birmingham recsoc.org/events

Recruitment Agency Expo Birmingham 2-3 October, NEC Birmingham recruitmentagencyexpo.com

SourceCon 2013 Seattle 2-3 October, Microsoft HQ, Redmond (Seattle), US sourcecon.com/2013seattle

SAVE THE DATE! Recruiter HOT 100 2014 celebration 14 November, evening, hosted by RBS, 250 Bishopsgate, London

IRP Awards, organised by the REC 3 December, London Marriott Hotel rec-awards.com

Recruiter Awards for Excellence 2014 7 May 2014, Grosvenor House Hotel, London **Entries open imminently – stay tuned!**

FOR MORE NEWS AND COMMENTS, GO ONLINE

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BAE SYSTEMS ENLISTS LOCAL EMPLOYERS TO HELP PARTNERS In an effort to boost the recruitment and retention of skilled engineers at its Barrow-in-Furness shipyard in Cumbria, where it builds the UK’s submarine fleet, BAE Systems is working with other employers in the area. The defence company is in the early stages of collaborating with local employers to help the partners of employees and prospective employees find work in the area. Rowland Cooper, HR director at BAE Systems Maritime – Submarines, told Recruiter that for increasing numbers of employees and prospective employees, a key factor in whether to move to Cumbria was their partners’ job and career prospects. “We are exploring how we work with other local employers in making people aware of other job opportunities available locally,” said Cooper “If someone is joining us, we will spend a lot time and effort helping them understand the local geography, the schooling,

HMS Ambush on the shiplift at BAE Systems in Cumbria

who the other employers are, and we can give them information on the sort of job vacancies available, if Rowland Cooper their partners aren’t appropriate to us.” Cooper said this would also help with staff retention: “A lot of people have adopted a lifestyle choice of working away

from home during the week and commuting back at the weekend, but the problem with this is you run a higher risk of attrition.” Cooper said the hardest people to hire were “experienced professionals, 10-15 years into their careers, because they have families, roots and partners working — they are the trickiest ones to recruit”. COLIN COTTELL colin.cottell@recruiter.co.uk

SHARPE MOVES BACK TO RECRUITMENT •

THE CO-FOUNDER of international legal search and recruitment consultancy Shilton Sharpe Quarry (SSQ) is making a return to recruitment after a taking a break from the industry. Gavin Sharpe founded SSQ with Gareth Quarry in 2003, helping it to top Recruiter’s 2012 HOT 100 league table, sponsored by Microdec, of the most profitable UK staffing companies before selling his stake in the company back to SSQ in January 2012. He told Recruiter that he has joined executive search firm Dartmouth Partners as a non-executive director. “I had approaches from a number of companies to join, but this was one of the most entrepreneurial,” he said. Sharpe said he relished the opportunity to help the company realise its ambitions to expand its markets and develop internationally. “I hope I can be a sounding board. We are all so petrified to fail and I can help them see the wood for the trees,” he explained. Sharpe intends to use his experience in scaling up the business at SSQ to help Dartmouth’s growth. He has also founded a recruitment training company, Gladesmore Consulting, teaming up with a number of trainers and delivering occasional sales training himself. COLIN COTTELL

WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK

05/09/2013 14:57

News

“We have got the technology and the ideas. We just need the people” SIR JAMES DYSON BEMOANS UK TALENT SHORTFALLS

Fab edition of @recruitermag We can’t help but feel “a drink with” feature is just an excuse for @editordeedee to go to the pub! #MasterPlan OUR FRIEND @CITITEC GETS CHEEKY ON TWITTER

“We are prepared to talk about it, but we need the flexibility to use agency labour, as we do elsewhere” PREMIER FOODS SPOKESPERSON LOOKS TO “MOVE THINGS FORWARD” WITH STRIKERS

IN-HOUSE MOVES MIRROR ECONOMY Melanie Hayes of Sodexo and Paul Maxin of Unilever are among the senior in-house resourcing leaders making career changes this month that, some observers say, signal new movement in the jobs market.

Gareth Evans

BIG DATA JOBS •

‘DATA SCIENTIST’ and ‘econometrician’ are the hot jobs that organisations are looking to ﬁll as they get to grips with making “big data” work for them, say recruiters specialising in big data jobs. “Data scientist — this is a big one, it’s the new sexy job title for 2013,” Michael Young, managing director of technology, digital and analytics recruiter MBN told Recruiter. “They are the ones who can transform the mass of data” into potentially useful information by examining it from different angles, determining what the data means and how it could be applied. Econometricians, added MBN non-executive director Russell Dalgleish, often are employed by media companies and use mathematical models to predict customers’ future spend. However, the bottom line for many employers seeking to wrestle big data into submission is “’can you get someone who understands the data and what they should be doing with it?” said Gareth Evans, associate director for business intelligence & analytics at Eligo. “And what is big Russell Dalgleish data, and what should we be looking at?” Evans added: “A lot of companies don’t really know what it is.” Michael Young

DEEDEE DOKE

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James Ballard at specialist recruiter Annapurna HR told Recruiter that the in-house market was “hotting up at all levels — the sign of an improving economy, as the first thing that happens is that as businesses become more confident they look to recruit”. Andy Mountney of Aspen In-House confirmed to Recruiter: “There’s some evidence that there are some [movements] finally in the merrygo-round where one big move triggers others.” Named last month by Recruiter as one of the 11 Most Influential In-House Recruiters, Hayes leaves her role as head of resourcing and talent for Sodexo UK Paul Maxin Melanie Hayes & Ireland this month to lead the resourcing function for Care UK’s healthcare division, beginning 1 October (see Movers and Shakers, p38). She told Recruiter: “I had kind of a three-year plan at Sodexo, and we’ve gone James Ballard Andy Mountney through some major transformation. I’m now there [at the end of three years], although I wasn’t going to start looking until the end of the year.” Maxin also was named one of Recruiter’s 11 Most Influential InHouse Recruiters. His decision to leave his global head of resourcing role after “seven wonderful years” at Unilever stemmed from the relocation of his offices at the multinational giant from London Blackfriars to Kingston to the capital’s South-West, he told Recruiter. “I think I’ve got some good skillsets, and I’ve had some fantastic experiences. So I’m looking forward to the future,” Maxin said. He said he was taking time to reflect on his next move, possibly to another global organisation “going through transition and transformation in a VUCA [volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous] world” or “maybe a smaller organisation that’s on a rapid growth trajectory, and needs an impactful talent and talent acquisition strategy to support that trajectory”. Recruiter has learned that Roopesh Panchasra, director of recruiting for global digital travel company Expedia, also moves on to a new role this month. It is understood he will take on an EMEA talent acquisition role with workplace systems company Workday. However, when contacted by Recruiter, Panchasra declined to comment. Aspen’s Mountney said that some markets are picking up for inhouse recruiters, specifically professionals services and technology. Growth is also being seen for in-house recruiters seeking new jobs in small- and medium-sized businesses which have not previously had inhouse functions, he added. DEEDEE DOKE deedee.doke@recruiter.co.uk

Contract News ApTask: London-based professional recruiter Rochester Global has been acquired by the US staffing firm… Capita: The outsourcing giant has won a £474m, 10-year contract with the London Borough of Barnet for services including HR and payroll… Citation: The employment law and health & safety advisory firm has acquired fellow compliance provider Bibby Consulting and Support… CV-Library: Ricky Martin’s Hyper Recruitment Solutions has chosen the job site as its generic job board supplier for the second year running… G-Cloud: IT & telco recruiters can apply before 23 September to be a supplier to the government’s cloud computing and ICT system… Milestone Operations: Supply chain firm DHL Automotive has awarded the recruiter a contract to supply two DHL sites with Jaguar Land Rover, and another with JCB… MSI Group: The medical recruiter has won its first ever NHS master vendor agreement, and will recruit locums to two Shropshire NHS trusts… NES Global Talent: The Institution of Chemical Engineers has awarded the technical recruiter a threeyear exclusive contracts as its global recruitment partner… OUTstanding in Business: The LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] professionals network is to commence an awards programme with the Financial Times… Recruit Co: The Japanese recruiter, has acquired Indian exec search firm NuGrid Consulting… System One: The US staffing firm has acquired New Jerseybased recruiter Joulé.

RECRUITER

SEPTEMBER 2013

05/09/2013 15:34

News

Tech & tools

HARD-TO-FIND TECH PEOPLE TRACKED VIA ONLINE FOOTPRINT R

ecruiters will find it easier to track down hard-to-find technology professionals with the help of a new UK-based ‘people aggregator’. 3Sourcing has been launched by former recruiter Tom Savage and business partner Raz Dinu, and is part of a Silicon Valley accelerator programme for start-ups, which will broaden out to other sectors in the future. Savage told Recruiter that he was frustrated by the recruitment sector’s use of what he felt were relatively old methods of finding people. “I felt there was a much more intelligent way to go about things, and that the answer may lie in some technological solution,” he said. Dinu has written an algorithm that brings together all the available unstructured data that makes up a person’s online footprint in one place. The tool was born after the pair tried to solve the disconnect that existed between jobs and candidates on 3Desk, its online marketplace launched for freelancers. “There would always be lots of jobs for hardto-find candidates and lots of candidates, but no jobs for easy-to-fill roles,” said Savage. “We were tinkering around trying to solve this problem, and that is how 3Sourcing was born. We shared it with some recruiter friends and they couldn’t get enough of it, so we knew we were on to something.” 3Sourcing has kicked off with technology professionals because these staff “have an interesting footprint” on the internet, said

Tom Savage

Savage and it has indexed relevant sites such as GitHub, Stack Overflow and Dribble. 3Sourcing works just like a search engine and is simple to use: a recruiter keys in a skill, such as the programming language Java, and a location, and it will return suitable individuals with a brief summary and links to their various online profiles and activities. Currently, searches return a healthy crop of results but Savage said they still have more indexing to do. Early adopters of 3Sourcing include the agencies Austin Fraser, Square One, and Stott and May. Aaron Neale, director at Stott and May, believes that people aggregators “are the future” of the industry. “It affords a recruiter more of their most valuable asset: their time,” he said. Because of the accelerator programme, Savage would not be drawn on which sectors or markets 3Sourcing would focus on next, and said the priority was getting feedback from users to find out how the site is being used. He reported that some are running it as a tab in the background so they can quickly locate the latest information on a person that they might find on a candidate database or a job board. “This means they don’t waste time tracing someone who isn’t available any more,” he said. “This is one of the issues we want to address. There’s a huge amount of time spent across the recruitment world tracking people who aren’t available. We want the tool to help people make more qualified calls to people who want to be reached. Availability of candidates is something that comes up a lot.” Recruiters can run several free trials on 3Sourcing and can then pay a subscription of £99 per month per user.

Cloud in a box suits new agencies The choice of cloud-based options for the recruitment market continues to grow with the launch of AppLayer’s Recruitbox app store. AppLayer takes a ‘business-in-a-box’ approach to the cloud by providing a choice of hosted software applications for a monthly fee. The technology is designed to enable an agency to build its own secure cloud IT solution. New applications can be added as and when required. Software available via the app store includes Filefinder, Voyager, Microdec and Bullhorn Reach, as well as security software such as Spectresoft. Andrew McLean, AppLayer chief executive officer, told Recruiter that cloud computing should be the first choice for a recruitment agency that is starting out, and that such agencies stand to benefit more than many other businesses. “Due to the fluid nature of their business and rapid expansion plans, with Recruitbox all your applications are in one place, all your data is in one place and all your billing is in one Andrew McLean place,” he said. McLean acknowledged that some recruiters still have concerns about security and accessibility of data in the cloud, but claimed the company offers “governmentgrade cyber security”. He added that the technology addresses the security fears associated with the increasing trend of ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD), whereby employees use their own personal device to access applications and data: no information sits on the device itself and when an employee leaves the company, access to Recruitbox is switched off. One of the early users of AppLayer is global recruitment group Phaidon International. Phaidon CEO Adam Buck said that centralised cloud computing helps the organisation manage its global business and removes the headache of tech support. “Opening new offices overseas couldn’t be easier, as each staff member requires only an internet-connected device, not the longdrawn-out process of involving IT companies,” he said. www.recruitbox.co.uk

www.3sourcing.com SUE WEEKES

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News

BRIEFING

Web comments Plimsoll reveals ‘widening gap’ between rich and poor in recruitment agency land (recruiter.co.uk, 7 August) “I think you will find this gap is due to the way contract criteria are being set for the major players, giving less opportunity for the small recruitment firms. This is particularly true with the public sector contracts.”

Karen Deehan

HMRC debt transfer actions already proving successful (recruiter.co.uk, 20 May) “It’s all well and good applauding HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) in their pursuit of managed service companies (MSCs). However, it might be worth sparing a thought for the workers, I being one of them, caught up in this. I trusted the advice given by the recruitment agency and the accountant. I was a limited company responsible for my own work/contracts and finances. HMRC says not. To date I have spent almost £7k in trying to challenge this. I don’t have savings and we will most likely lose our family home. My only crime was to trust the professional advice given. I am not nor ever have been rich. I’m much poorer now and at 50 face losing everything I’ve worked for. There are no fast cars, second homes, savings etc. I, and many more like me, face ruin. The agents and accountants will be fine as, despite the transfer of debt legislation, if you have equity in your house — no matter how small — HMRC will take that, forcing individuals and their families into bankruptcy. Spare a thought: things are never black or white.”

Debbie Smith

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SEPTEMBER 2013

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BSI TO DEFINE HR STANDARDS FOR PEOPLE VALUATION SETTING INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS IN HUMAN RESOURCES WILL LEAD TO IMPROVEMENTS IN PEOPLE MANAGEMENT The collapse of banks which had large, ‘professional’ human resources (HR) departments has thrown into question what HR is doing in terms of its contribution to corporate governance, culture and performance. The need for change is now imperative and urgent. So says Paul Kearns, author of ‘Professional HR — Evidence-based People Management & Development’ and chair of a British Standards Institution (BSI) committee now exploring the potential to establish standards across the practice of HR in the UK and possibly globally. BSI is the UK’s national standards body and a participating member of ISO (the International Organization for Standardization). No one can argue with the benchmark that standards provide a given industry. Yet, to date, HR — including recruitment — has no such universally recognised standards. Setting HR standards undoubtedly is problematic: each organisation uses its own criteria, each adds weight to different aspects and the measures used are by no means universal. However, the potential value of standardising and professionalising HR management is becoming more widely accepted, both in the UK and beyond. Kearns explains: “The respect for any profession is directly connected to the standards it sets. The medical profession is respected partly because its standards are evidence-based and partly because it can strike off anyone who is guilty of malpractice. Strong standards breed respect. Setting HR standards is problematic, but that is no excuse: without standards who knows how good HR is?”

Development of proposed international standards on cost-per-hire, recruitment and workforce planning is now in progress through ISO with a range of possible other standards listed for consideration. Dr Wilson Wong, from the UK’s Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), is also on the BSI committee and believes that developing and utilising welldefined metrics is the key. “Sixty per cent of business expense is human capital. If you reliably know what the return on your investment in people is, you have cracked it.” Input from practitioners in sectors such as corporate finance, legal compliance, and mergers & acquisitions is needed to present cohesive and persuasive input into international work. Not only is such engagement a major step in qualifying and offering trusted knowledge, it helps to create a standard that is thorough and accurate through the collaborative accumulation of knowledge across a spectrum of disciplines. The ongoing ISO work is based on proposals inspired by standards developed by the US HR organisation, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).

The SHRM standards are merely a starting point, and there is ongoing international debate about their scope, content and structure. BSI and the UK experts involved are committed to only developing and adopting standards which are of value to the UK. As industry begins to recognise the need to professionalise HR, it may be possible to go beyond current proposals and develop standards in areas such as HR strategy and due diligence. As reported by recruiter. co.uk (‘CIPD confirms human capital measurements partnership with CIMA’, 17 July 2013), partnerships in this field are already emerging, with CIPD now working with the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) to develop a suite of HR metrics, in the belief that these will lead to widespread improvements in people management. “One day HR will be as well respected as medicine,” says Kearns. Credible standards are undoubtedly the first step. SALLY SWINGEWOOD is committee manager and secretary to the Human Resources Management Committee at BSI.

JOIN THE DISCUSSION Visit surveymonkey. com/s/DHDZT3V to participate in a survey about the use of standards in your business. Or, if you are interested in providing input into the BSI committee, contact Sally Swingewood, committee secretary, at sally.swingewood@ bsigroup.com for further information

WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK

05/09/2013 14:49

REC.09.13.01.indd 1

05/09/2013 08:13

DIGEST

News

FIND YOUR BEST CANDIDATES ON A WEDNESDAY LUNCHTIME •

EVER WONDERED WHAT the best time of day to

TOP

6am – 9am: 7% 9am – 11am: 26% 11am – 2pm: 34% 2pm – 5pm: 24% 5pm – 8pm: 9%

Consulting, Recruitment consultant

Monday: 7% Tuesday: 18% Wednesday: 36% Thursday: 9% Friday: 30%

2. Nigel Frank

International, Recruitment consultant

Sleep-deprived workers

3. Sand Resources, HR got the second-longest nights of the 10 professions in the survey, at six and half hours on the dot, and they were also the only ones spending less than an hour worrying (57 minutes to be precise!). The most somnolent profession of all: marketing, with average trips to the land of nod coming in at a frankly lavish six hours and 36 minutes.

Recruitment consultant

4. Hudson, Graduate

recruitment manager

5. Twenty Recruitment

Group, Recruiters wanted in New York

TOP

As for which candidates are likely to be at their sharpest at the crack of dawn or late in the evening, this month also bought us a Travelodge survey asking 2,000 people across a number of different professions how well they slept. Bankers are the most sleep deprived, getting an average of just ﬁve hours 50 minutes sleep a night, and spending an hour and 40 minutes a day worrying about work instead of sleeping. All other professions managed over six hours sleep, although teachers and nurses could manage just four and 11 minute above that respectively.

Experian Hitwise: most popular employment and training websites — August 2013

Websites

Domain

Visits share

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

www.linkedin.com www.indeed.co.uk www.reed.co.uk www.totaljobs.com uk.jobrapido.com www.jobs.nhs.uk www.cv-library.co.uk www.jobsite.co.uk jobs.theguardian.com www.monster.co.uk www.tes.co.uk jobsearch.direct.gov.uk www.jobisjob.co.uk www.jobs.telegraph.co.uk www.simplyhired.co.uk www.ﬁsh4.co.uk www.jobstoday.co.uk www.branchout.com www.jobs.ac.uk jobs.trovit.co.uk

20.03% 12.22% 4.66% 4.10% 2.92% 2.88% 2.53% 2.21% 2.07% 1.65% 1.51% 1.37% 1.24% 0.97% 0.83% 0.80% 0.68% 0.63% 0.61% 0.61%

RECRUITER

SEPTEMBER 2013

12_Recruit_Digest_Sep13.indd 12

MOST VIEWED JOBS ON OUR WEBSITE

1. Timothy James

And by day of the week: • • • • •

of Danish hiring organisations are working with external executive search companies, according to ‘Newsletter for Boards’, a monthly Danish business bulletin

interview is? Legal recruitment agency Douglas Scott looked back at its last 1,000 successful interviews (where a candidate got the job or got put through to the next round), and Wednesday lunchtime looks like a frontrunner. Their successful interviews were at the following times: • • • • •

employee over benefit stop tweets

2. Bank of America

interns work on in ‘hostile’ jobs market

3. Investment banks

hiring, recruiters busiest since 2010, FT says

4. TUC lodges complaint against government over ‘unfair’ AWR

5. Hovis workers strike over use of Staffline temps

WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK

05/09/2013 15:20

Ricky Martin

The importance of social media to a recruitment business BY RICKY MARTIN MANAGING DIRECTOR, HYPER RECRUITMENT SOLUTIONS For the past six months, pretty much every day I have been sent invites to talks on social media. This could be on the ways to best use it, why we should use it or how we should use it. This got me thinking about one simple question: how important is social media to a company, especially a recruitment business? And the short answer in my opinion is – “extremely!” Whether you enjoy or despise social media, it is everywhere. With the likes of Twitter boasting over 500m users and Facebook over 1.1bn, there’s no doubt about it, social media is widely used and therefore makes it a powerful platform through which to communicate. So what is the value of social media to recruitment? Well, recruitment is all about bringing people together, building relationships and working with people (not products). Is this not what social media is all about? It’s a chance to bring people together in an environment where they can be themselves, which will only become more important as the years roll on.

Other than for networking, why else would we use social media? Commercially, because it’s free! Whether or not it will be free forever isn’t clear, but for the time being it is, so why not embrace it and use social media as a platform to aid your business? By this, I don’t mean to replace your traditional networking tools or business practices, just to complement them. If, like me, you have a young and growing company, it is definitely worth capitalising on. Promoting your company and your services through traditional means such as newspapers, television or billboards ads can be expensive. Therefore, the world of social media is an ideal place for advertising your business to millions of potential customers without big bills. The only thing it does cost, however, is time. So if you are looking to use it more regularly, make sure you know what your time is worth before spending hours on social media. Let’s face it, time is the only thing a lot of us in recruitment never seem to have enough of. It’s a well-known fact that word of mouth is the most effective tool for promoting your

business and social media can help take it one step further. With so many people in one place, positive feedback can be instant and easily shared among millions of people. It enables a two-way conversation with your customers so they can directly engage with your business on a more informal and personal level. There are many social media platforms to choose from, based upon your type of business and customers. However, if you are curious about how I use such tools, feel free to look up my company on Twitter at @Hyperec_HRS. For those of you who read my last column on raising the standards in recruitment, make sure you continue to tweet me at @rickymartin247 using the hashtag #recruitmentexcellence. Let’s use social media as a platform to share best practice and continue to promote the positive and professional areas of the industry. RICKY MARTIN is managing director and founder of Hyper Recruitment Solutions. Find out more at www.hyperec.com or @Hyperec_HRS on Twitter

43 sessions on recruitment, talent, leadership, engagement and more. Expert recruitment advice from KFC, M&S, Unilever, Santander and more. Keynotes – ‘Creating the Best Workplace on Earth’ and Dan Pink, world-renowned author on the changing world of work.

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13_Recruiter_Martin_Sep13.indd 13

Find out more at

RECRUITER

SEPTEMBER 2013

05/09/2013 14:52

Sector Analysis

Education

Views from the market Fintan Donohue Executive chair, Gazelle

DEREGULATION AND CHANGE ARE NEW CHALLENGES ON TOP OF THE PERENNIAL PROBLEM OF FINDING GOOD TEACHERS Academies, free schools, pay freedom, the new National College for School Leadership, the scrapping of Quality Mark as APSCo adds an education group, a higher school leaving age, and tightened purse strings… there’s lots going on in education. “It’s a school-led environment,” says Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) senior policy adviser Chris Wilford, as the “Academy revolution” continues to divest local authorities of power, which “really changes the way recruiters have to think about working”. Helping clients through tumultuous times can be a virtuous cycle for recruiters, Wilford says: “It really helps deepen that relationship.” Stewart McCoy, teaching agency Randstad Education’s operations director, says challenges go further still. “Looking forward there is likely to be a growing candidate shortage across the board,” he suggests. “The market has been relatively candidate-rich over recent years and many in the industry won’t remember […] the late 1990s and early 2000s when quality candidates were scarce.” The picture isn’t uniform nationally, says Meridian Business Support senior education recruitment consultant Jay Nichols, with “a lot of people going into teaching, but there’s not necessarily the roles — the amount of permanent posts are very low overall”. In July, Teach First, which fast-tracks graduates into schools in low-income areas, became the UK’s largest graduate recruiter, and demonstrates the sector’s broader appeal. Dan Moynihan, chief executive officer of Harris Federation, a group of 27 Academies in and around

COLLEGES ARE FINDING THEY CAN NO LONGER SUSTAIN IN LARGE VOLUME THE OLD-STYLE ONE-TO-25 TEACHING MODEL

“From a recruitment point of view, we’re looking for personnel who are not just subject specialists, but we’re also looking for teachers that can work in teams, work across the needs of students.”

London, tells Recruiter that Academies have personnel advantages. They already enjoy the pay freedom about to roll out nationally, he says, which has made recruitment “easier, although not easy”, and since last summer can put unqualified teachers into teaching posts. “Some people have been very critical of that,” he admits, but points to success in the private sector as proof that this works, especially in skills-short subjects. Harris Federation also has a ready-made “employment market” within its network, making clear career paths for staff, he says, as well as “consultants in the centre”, qualified teachers advising on school affairs, who are deployed before agency staff to take on supply duties. Being “more businesslike” is the name of the game, Moynihan says, predicting “a large growth in the number of primaries becoming Academies”. Fintan Donohue, executive chair of Gazelle, a further education (FE) colleges group, says he expects to see FE colleges move further into the 14-16 age range, and get “actively engaged in” primary schools. Funding is a problem for Donohue, like the sector as a whole, and says “colleges are finding they can no longer sustain in large volume the oldstyle one-to-25 teaching model”. With Gazelle’s ethos focusing on creating entrepreneurship, with students running commercial businesses alongside their studies, Gazelle takes this as an opportunity, and now colleges “are increasingly recruiting people who can actually offer alternative routes to learning through higher use of technology, [and] certainly a greater emphasis on coaching of students”. This also means more demand for teachers “with some industrial experience”, someone who won’t fit into “that purist model, that a teacher will just sit in a subject and teach only in that, [which] I think is in decline, except where you’ve got shortage areas”, STEM subjects in particular. Indeed, there may be little room for the purist or old-style models at all in this sector.

Jay Nicholls Senior consultant, Meridian Business Support “We’re attracting new custom but they’re not spending as much… the schools are being more business-like and where they can save money they can seek alternative options.”

Sarah Shaw Education partner, Odgers Interim “My busiest area by far has been higher education and I think that has been driven by the movement in student fees. This has turned students and their parents into customers, and universities have had to re-look at what they offer — the entire student experience.”

Chris Wilford Senior policy adviser, REC “At the middle-career level we’re hearing reports of a lot of teachers wanting to work overseas, in the Middle East and South-East Asia, and I think a lot of recruiters have developed their overseas operation.”

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

100 75

Jan

RECRUITER

Feb

Mar

Apr 2013

SEPTEMBER 2013

14_Recruit_SectorAnalysis_sep2013.indd 14

May

Jun

Jul

17.5

16.3

15.4

Q3 2012

Q4 2012

Q1 2013

8.4

125

TOP OF THE CLASS Highest average education wages, from Adzuna.co.uk

■ Jobs (000s) ■ Applicants/job

9.9

150

REPORT CARD From Totaljobs Barometer

8.7

175

PAY MARKUP? A survey of 202 contractors in the education sector from umbrella company giant group ﬁnds 86% expecting increased pay rates over the coming year, 21% expecting no change in pay and 14% expecting a decrease

13.7

200

Jobs: ■ Education ■ All UK Salaries: ■ Education ■ All UK

11.6

REED JOB INDEX AND SALARY INDEX 225

Q2 2013

By subject Biology: £35,010 Art teacher: £29,577 Counsellor: £29,150 By region London: £32,543 Scotland: £31,576 Northern Ireland: £30,689 WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK

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05/09/2013 08:14

Market Indicators

Global Spotlight on Hong Kong HONG KONG IS BOTH A STRATEGIC HUB AND GATEWAY TO MAINLAND CHINA, AS WELL AS BEING A COMPETITIVE AND GROWING MARKETPLACE In July, white-collar recruiter Selby Jennings told recruiter.co.uk it was readying to ramp up its operations in Hong Kong. Martin Andres, head of sales and trading for Asia, explained this was not only because the market itself appeared attractive and lively, but also because “if we want to go into China… it makes sense to have a fullystaffed office on the ground [in Hong Kong]”. It’s hard, not least as Hong Kong’s official name is ‘Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China’, not to think of the country in terms of its titanic neighbour. However, the two markets are very different, comments Steffi Fan, the head of talent acquisition for consumer electronics firm Philips for Greater China* (see box, right): “In Mainland China we have big volume and most of the hiring demands are focused on sales, marketing and also function positions but if you look at Hong Kong, most of the demand is for very senior positions.” She continues: “We would look to hire local people in Mainland China but actually in Hong Kong it’s open for all kinds of talent… Hong Kong is more open and multi-language.” With potential candidates for those senior roles in Hong Kong coming from all over the world, Fan says the challenge is “how can we define the sourcing channels for these needs… also what is our strategy to attract people from the other markets not just Hong Kong? That requires recruiters to do more proactive search, to find international hiring channels”. For Andres at Selby Jennings, the challenge in Hong Kong is that this is a small, competitive, relatively mature market. “Singapore’s saturated, but it’s more the IT and oil & gas sectors,” he explains. “In Hong Kong, it’s more the financial markets [that are crowded]; we will probably have more competition in Hong Kong than we did in Singapore.”

Percentage of ﬁrms expecting to hire in the quarter minus those expecting to ﬁre, seasonally adjusted ■ Hong Kong ■ China ■ Singapore ■ UK

20 15 10 5 0

2012

Q2 2013

China receives 54% of Hong Kong’s exports and accounts for 46% of imports. It is the world’s 12th-biggest exporter and 10th-biggest importer, despite its small population (7.2m). (Source: CIA World Factbook)

Hong Kong is behind only Macau, Monaco and Singapore as one of the world’s most densely populated states, with 6,400 people per km2. Hong Kong is the world’s third most competitive market to do business in 2013, according to business school IMD. It is down from first place last year, having been overtaken by the US and Switzerland. * ‘Greater China’ refers to ‘Mainland’

China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan/Chinese Taipei. See also ‘Global Spotlight on China’, Recruiter, July 2013.

Small and crowded yes, but one that “remains very robust” for recruiters PageGroup, according to regional managing director for Greater China Anthony Thompson. “We continue to experience year-on-year growth across almost all positive metrics in Hong Kong,” he notes, also calling the market “immature relative to markets such as the UK and Australia”, suggesting the potential for growth and more recruitment businesses in the country. Hong Kong acts as a “regional hub”, for both recruiters and corporates, Thompson adds. “Many senior roles with regional responsibility continue to reside in Hong Kong,” he says, making it a nerve centre of the region, an important strategic location. Martin Gooden, the director of Asia at rec-to-rec firm Global Solutions, tells Recruiter that for his firm “the advantage of hiring in Hong Kong is that most people who recruit in Hong Kong also recruit across North Asia”. Another plus point, he says, is that the firm “has an incredibly advantageous tax situation” for both businesses and individuals. And Gooden, who himself recruits across Asia, points out another recruiting-specific trend in the market. “One thing I’ve noted… is the amount of casual coffees; people will meet for a casual coffee and that will be a first interview or have a chat before the formal interview, and people are very flexible about that. “Thinking of my placements in the last six months, I think all of them have started in a coffee shop.” Selby Jennings could do well to check none of their prospective Hong Kong consultants have a low caffeine tolerance, Recruiter might suggest.

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RECRUITER

SEPTEMBER 2013

05/09/2013 10:06

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE

Working together to get results arlier this summer, FPS Group launched a brand new online game for recruiters called the FPS Codebreaker. The game challenged recruiters to work out an elusive 4 digit code, with an ever increasing prize fund. Each attempt to crack the code revealed the accuracy score of the attempt, allowing the consultant to figure out their next move.

The first winner was announced recently, but surprisingly it wasn’t won by an individual recruitment consultant, it was won by a whole team - Service Care Solutions! We spoke to Richard Freye, Managing Director at Service Care Solutions, about their team work ethos and how it helps them achieve success.

How did the team find the FPS Codebreaker game? The team really enjoyed trying to break the code, the whole office got involved and it really helped drive competition amongst the staff.

day. All our successes are shared as a group and this leads to fantastic results across the floor. Although a lot of agencies and companies will claim to have a fantastic teamwork ethos and atmosphere, at Service Care it is 100% true, it’s why we are so successful at what we do.

Who were the key players in finally cracking the code? Jay Ashton played an absolute blinder in cracking the code, at the time he cracked it he had half the office round him hoping for a win. When he did crack it there was no doubt it was going to be shared with everyone and that the whole company were now going to be able to use it for something we can all do together.

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The FPS Codebreaker has been reset with a brand new code and the prize fund returned to its starting position of £500!

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08:18 05/09/2013 08:14

Soapbox

Pre-interview investment

SOAP

BOX

TIME SPENT DEFINING EXACTLY WHAT A JOB ENTAILS AND THE SKILLS NEEDED FOR A CANDIDATE TO SUCCEED IN THE ROLE IS NEVER WASTED — IT WILL HELP YOU FIND VALUABLE TALENT Businesses are under constant pressure to deliver more in less time and an increasingly competitive marketplace. The email that just hit your inbox from a valued client/customer demands an answer immediately, or so we all believe. But this ‘now’ culture that has crept into our working lives is taking its toll. Decisions and responses that require some thought, that are worth sleeping on but that are taken in haste, result in shortcuts that ultimately damage brand and image. This is particularly true when it comes to managing people. People are not commodities. All aspects of their management deserve consideration because they are not just ‘another email’ to be dispatched. Your people are your business. Getting the ‘right’ people into that business is the path to success. Your recruitment process requires careful preparation, beginning with a properly structured job description and competency profile to provide to the candidate before

interview. A poorly prepared candidate and interviewer result in a poorly executed interview. You cannot find good candidates to interview if you do not have a benchmark to assess them against. You cannot determine their skills and how relevant their experience is to the job in question if you don’t know what skills are needed for them to be successful at it. If you want to attract the best talent, you have to commit to giving them time. This is equally true about the unsuccessful candidate and giving feedback, or just replying to an application. How you deal with the unsuccessful applicants speaks volumes about your attitude to your employees. Although no one likes giving bad news, it is such an important part of the hiring process that you can’t afford not to handle it properly. One of the top complaints made by candidates is postinterview silence from employers, which is insensitive and dismissive.

Opinion

Valuable candidates who can make a difference to your business growth choose to work for companies that value their employees and that show their appreciation by creating an environment in which people can thrive; where they understand the goals of the company and the difference that their own contribution, and that of their colleagues, can make to the achievement of those goals. So where do you start? Invest time at the beginning of the process in defining exactly what the job entails and skills needed to be successful in the role. If you don’t know how to write a comprehensive job description and competency profile, then find someone who does. Any professional recruiter worth their salt should be able to help you. If you want the best, you need to be the best. Your employees are your bottom line. KIRSTY CRAIG of Kirsty Craig Associates, Chester,

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Interaction

On tumblr Soundbites this month

“If we could wave a magic wand and give you an extra hour in your day, what would you do with it?”

Have you visited Recruiter magazine’s tumblr feed? Go to recruitermagazine.tumblr.com for a selection of what the profession gets up to alongside the day job… …and don’t forget to email us at recruiter. editorial@redactive.co.uk with any charity or social events you’ve held, special talents you want to show off or excitement to share with the recruitment world!

Nigel Jameson Head of human resources, The Shield Group

I would spend part of my day on all those relevant magazine and web articles that I’d always meant to read but haven’t got round to yet. I’d also need a magic wand to get through the masses of emails and letters I get from our employees each day. Everyone should feel that they are an important part of the team that they work in, and so I’d want to reply to each and every email in as much depth as I could.

Jason Thomas Managing director, Thomas Recruitment

Driver Hire and MBN in pole position Both Glasgow-headquartered MBN Recruitment and specialist driving agency Driver Hire had their logos featured on Marussia F1 team cars for the 2013 Belgian Grand Prix on 25 August. The two companies were given the opportunity by private equity ﬁrm Lloyds Development Capital (LDC), which backs Driver Hire and is also a founding investor in Marussia.

Super-strange superhero times at ID Medical Medical recruitment group ID Medical raised money through August’s Learning Disability Week 2013 for mencap. Clearly not a ﬁrm to be outdone on the creative or sartorial front, this involved Darth Vader (or someone dressed as him) challenging their other fancy dress heroes to a table tennis tournament. Of course… check out the pictorial evidence at recruitermagazine.tumblr.com

Director, Danbro

In the true style of an accountant I would do some nifty number work, double the hour, pass the extra time along to my exceptionally hard-working team and reward them with more comfortable chairs to make their longer hours more enjoyable. I’d then use the additional time to continue improving Danbro’s limited company service, which saves contractors time and money. If my evil plan failed, I’d come and steal your magic wand.

Chief executive officer, WilsonHCG

The latest newbie at legal recruiter Douglas Scott is Jason Connolly, and as the picture shows, he’s got a bit of magic about him. A previous member of the Magic Circle who has performed on cruise ships and in London’s Covent Garden, his unconventional career path also saw him work for the Metropolitan Police.

Charity drive goes up, up and away for HR GO A charity balloon race organised by recruitment group HR GO has raised over £8k and counting for Make-A-Wish Foundation UK.

21_Recruiter_Soundbites_Sep13.indd Sec3:21

John Thorburn

John Wilson

Douglas Scott: from Magic Circle… to Magic Circle?

WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK

This would be a gift that I would spend celebrating the success of the business with Thomas consultants and managers. Small wins sometimes get overlooked as we tend to focus on the larger ones — the ones that provide us with the growth that we desire. A new client, a new booking or a vacancy filled are essential for success, so it would be great to give more recognition to the hard-working staff who carve out those opportunities. What better way to spend an hour than saying thank you to the people who count!

Connecting with more employees on a one-on-one basis would be at the top of my list. I think it’s important to maintain a personal connection with each employee, but this becomes more difficult as our company continues to grow. Humanising yourself as an executive, and reassuring employees that their questions are being answered and ideas are being implemented, are keys to growth and innovation. Without that extra hour, I strive to stay connected through introductory emails, periodic check-ins and regular open forum calls.

IF YOU HAVE A LETTER OR WOULD LIKE TO BE A CONTRIBUTOR TO SOUNDBITES, EMAIL... VANESSA.TOWNSEND@RECRUITER.CO.UK

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The support provided by the whole team is second to none: no problem or user issue has been too much, and the product knowledge is outstanding. They are very understanding of our users and no question is felt too silly for us to ask.

One of the key drivers behind a recruitment consultancyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s decision to change their software provider is support. We know this, so weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve built our business model around providing an unrivalled level of support. It starts with the design of Itris: to be as trouble-free as possible. But if things do go wrong, you have access to our support team by phone, email and online. The Itris support package entitles you to all updates and new versions automatically. Itris helps you maintain a competitive advantage by ensuring that as we release new features and functionality, you get them effortlessly and painlessly. And most importantly, without incurring additional cost. 0845 680 0660 www.itris.co.uk

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Insight

Race for talent is on at business schools INNOVATION CAN HELP RECRUITERS TO CATCH THE BEST MBAS, SAYS JULIA TYLER OF THE GRADUATE MANAGEMENT ADMISSION COUNCIL Despite all the talk of economic gloom, MBA recruiting is still a highly competitive space. Research from the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) shows that 75% of employers plan to hire MBAs in 2013, up from 71% last year. The average number of MBAs companies expect to hire is also up, from 11 per company in 2012 to a projected 14.6 this year. Given robust demand for high-quality business school graduates in the hiring mix, corporate recruiters cannot rest on their laurels, waiting for the talent to come to them. Rather, they must work hard to amplify their company’s brand, and fill talent pipeline needs by attracting the candidates they want most at their organisations. The survey found that 60% of jobseekers reported receiving early offers of employment this year (as of mid-March 2013) — a situation much improved from the rates of job offers secured five years ago. These figures suggest that it is vital for corporate recruiters to gain access to students earlier in their business school journey, to steal a march on rivals and secure the best talent available. For recruiters to heighten their visibility among potential employees, an on-campus presence is important. Research shows that 67% of companies plan to make recruiting visits on-campus this year, and are increasingly taking far more creative approaches to engaging business school students — long before on-campus interviews take place. Of the companies surveyed, 48% planned to leverage partnerships with universities as part of their recruitment strategy this year. A range of venues with business school talent may offer opportunities for companies to engage in brand building. For example, companies are increasingly getting involved with leadership programme activities and academic competitions — serving as judges, audience members or sponsors, or even becoming partners for community service activities or student events. These are all excellent, nontraditional methods for companies to deepen their engagement with business school students and get to know potential hires better.

WHEN IT COMES TO FINDING TALENT… THE IMPORTANCE OF THE INTERNSHIP CANNOT BE OVERSTATED

However, an on-campus visit is not a possibility for all recruiters, particularly smaller corporations, and three-quarters of employers tell us that they have plans to recruit from schools using methods that don’t bring them on campus. In this scenario, working closely with the career services office is key to tapping into the talent pipeline at a business school. In particular, requesting CV books from the career services office makes it possible for recruiters to get a full picture of the available talent pool without making a campus visit. To best leverage this tool, it is vital to build a strong relationship with the university’s career services, and ensure that university partners understand the recruiter’s hiring locations and organisational styles so they can recommend candidates who match the company’s needs. There are also opportunities to engage students in a more personal manner, without the need for a campus visit. For example, if a company posts a job notification on a university job database, it is often possible to work with the careers services office to host a virtual presentation to discuss the position and grow awareness of the organisation among students. Finally, when it comes to finding talent that matches the company’s culture — something that is often difficult to gauge even in a lengthy interview process — the importance of the internship cannot be overstated. The internship allows candidates to network from within the firm while simultaneously offering recruiters an opportunity to expose them to the business to see how the potential new hires perform in ‘real life’ scenarios. Of the 67% of companies surveyed that offered internships to business school talent in 2012, 78% went on to hire these interns as full-time employees, demonstrating the high overall success rate of this recruitment method. In fact, according to our research, the methods yielding the most job offers for business school students overall were working with the business school career services office and pursuing internship/work projects. Ultimately, one of the hardest parts of the MBA recruitment process for many companies is simply making contact with potential candidates, and this can become particularly problematic in a competitive recruitment environment. So it is important for recruiters to use innovative methods to engage with students early on, forge a personal connection, and bring onboard the best of business school talent to their organisations.

Power Points Start early — to attract the right candidates, your company needs to be recognisable to potential hires long before they begin the job application Consider participating in on-campus opportunities beyond the traditional career fair to build your company’s brand and get to know potential hires better — think about sponsoring a community service event, or serving as a judge at an academic competition Use the career services office to find the right talent for your organisation — ask for CV books, and don’t be afraid to request a look at the entire talent pool or specific candidate types based on your organisational needs Don’t forget the talent right under your nose — your interns are often the best candidates to convert to full-time employment

JULIA TYLER is executive vice president, Graduate Management Admission Council

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

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Raising Standards

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The Challenge

Steria relieves the strain for NHS SBS Benjamyn Damazer Head of commissioning

A CONTRACT TO PROVIDE AN INTEGRATED SINGLE FINANCIAL ENVIRONMENT WAS A POTENTIAL HEADACHE FOR NHS SBS. STERIA ALLEVIATED ITS RECRUITING PAINS

THE CHALLENGE This year NHS England has a budget of £95.6bn, more than five times the national output of Estonia. So when in April 2012, the NHS Commissioning Board Authority (now NHS England) signed a contract with NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS) to provide it with an integrated single financial environment (ISFE), it was no surprise that this was the latter’s largest ever project. The increase from previous projects was “by an order of magnitude — typically it would be one hospital trust at a time”, Benjamyn Damazer, NHS SBS head of commissioning and ISFE programme director, told Recruiter. The challenge of providing finance and accounting services, IT systems and staff training to 235 organisations across the NHS, or recruiting them themselves, sounded like a tall order for NHS SBS’s 1,900 workforce,

“I’ve never worked with a recruitment agency that was as willing to take ownership of a project ” BENJAMYN DAMAZER

particularly as the project was set to go live on one day, 1 April 2013, 12 months’ time from the contract date. And so it proved. “We weren’t looking for 100 accounts clerks,” said Damazer, but for people with a wide range of skills. These included IT directors, finance and accounting managers and experts, Oracle database administrators, debt collection staff, expenses administrators and receptionists. Following a selection process run by NHS SBS’s HR department, the contract was awarded to Steria Recruitment, which has eight offices in the UK as well as an office in India. Damazer told Recruiter that Steria, which NHS SBS had previously worked with for about five years, ticked all the boxes. Not only could it provide coverage across England, but “we wanted somebody who could understand the nature of our business”, he said. Andy Rees, senior manager at Steria and service manager for the NHS SBS recruitment programme, told Recruiter: “This was a major transformation programme, the largest recruitment drive Steria had undertaken for that client.” All told, 200 people were appointed in temporary, contract and permanent roles, he said, with most employed between October 2012 and June 2013.

THE SOLUTION Given the size and nature of the project, Rees said it was vital that Steria kept as close to the client

Lessons learned “Getting the employer branding right to attract the right people works only if you are really close to the customer,” said Andy Rees from Steria Recruitment. The key messages conveyed by Steria, including through the use of social media, were: the NHS is the largest employer in Europe, and that this was a high-profile MSP (managed service provider) that handles £90bn worth of transactions a year and saves the NHS millions of pounds. However, he said getting this message out to the market had been possible only because the client was clear that this was what it wanted to communicate.

as possible. This approach began with informal conversations even before Steria won the contract and continued after it was awarded, with regular project brieﬁngs and the establishment of a joint recruitment project team. Staff from Steria also travelled to the key sites in Bristol and Leeds to meet the client.

Andy Rees Senior manager

As a result of the brieﬁngs and of a detailed knowledge of the time scales involved, Rees said his team was able to get ahead of the curve by building a talent pool and pipelining candidates even before some of the roles reached them. At the peak of the project, Rees said Steria had six recruiters, two temp controllers, a person embedded with the client and support staff, involving its staff both in the UK and in India. “We recognised that this was a highvolume recruitment exercise.” As a client, NHS SBS was “extremely demanding”, he described. “They were under a lot of pressure, and we understood this was very important to the SBS and the Department of Health.” The aim was to take as much weight off the client’s shoulders as possible, said Rees. “We tried to give them minimum intervention by providing the quality from the outset, and supporting them through the interview process, onboarding and induction.” This aspect was particularly appreciated by Damazer. “I have never worked with a recruitment agency that was as willing to take ownership of a project,” he noted. And even when there was a major change in NHS SBS’s skill requirements during the project, he said: “Steria just took it on the chin and made it happen seamlessly and effortlessly, and it was ﬁne.” Damazer added: “Steria really has got its act together. Would I use it again? In a heartbeat. It is exactly what I need as a service provider.”

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

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Profile

Jonathan Young COLIN COTTELL MEETS LOCKHEED MARTIN’S RECRUITER OUTSIDE THE US YOUNG’S

PHILOSOPHY

An anonymous office block in a Havant business park is, on the face of it, about as far away from the battlegrounds of Afghanistan or Iraq as you can get. Yet for Jonathan Young, head of international workforce strategy, analytics and talent acquisition at international military, security and aerospace giant Lockheed Martin, the Hampshire facility, which houses more than 500 staff, is very much part of his own frontline. Young, who heads Lockheed Martin’s recruitment outside the US, is engaged in his own battle to keep the company at the forefront of one of the world’s largest and most technologically advanced industries. The demand for talent, driven by the company’s state-of-the-art products and services, is every bit as voracious as the fuel demands of its F-35 Lighting II multirole fighter or C-130 Hercules multirole fourengine turboprop aircraft. And this summer, that demand for talent just got bigger. Over the next two to three years, Young’s team expects to quadruple this year’s 1,000-1,100 hires, he says. The launch in July of Lockheed Martin International, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin, sets the company on a path of international expansion, with a target of growing the company’s sales outside the US from 17% to 20% of the global total over the next few years. Last year, Lockheed Martin had sales of £30.2bn. Among the countries earmarked for growth are the UK, Lockheed’s second biggest market outside the US, Canada, Mexico and Asia-Pacific. The Middle East is another region ripe for expansion. “There is a greater focus on growing our international operation,” says Young. To reflect this, in the next 12 months he expects to ramp up the size of his team of about 20, spread across the UK — where Lockheed Martin runs a recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) operation — Europe and Asia. For so long a company synonymous with defence and aerospace, Lockheed Martin has already successfully branched out into new areas. A major contract to supply the Post Office with distribution software enables 52m items of post to be handled each night. “There is a real opportunity to build our reputation in system integration, software development and system engineering,” says Young. While much of the work carried out by Lockheed staff — including around 2,000 in the UK — is secret, requiring security clearance, anyone looking for clues to Young’s role in Lockheed’s growth doesn’t need to be an expert in industrial espionage. In fact, they need look no further than his job title. “It does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s the strategic, the data and

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the doing,” he says, adding that talent acquisition is “where the rubber hits the road”. “The job title saves on the job spec,” he says, cheerfully admitting that it is “probably the world’s longest job title”. For Young, a genial Scot who describes his accent as “relatively posh for Glasgow”, the task of meeting the talent needs of such a large and complex organisation as Lockheed Martin — where products can be many years in the planning and development — begins by looking ahead. “It’s not just about hiring; we have to be able to predict the need,” he says. So reactive recruiting simply won’t do. “If we win a contract on Friday and are hiring for it on Monday, you are always going to be up against it.” That’s rather an understatement. Getting ahead of the curve, says Young, begins with workforce strategy, covering the next three to five years; then takes in workforce planning, over the next two years; and finally, involves staff planning over the next 12 months. “We have to add value at a strategic level. The strategic questions are: where our talent is coming from, what the business need is in two to three years time, and how we are going to address this from a people perspective,” he says. This planning is essential if the company is to eliminate the risk of not delivering to its customers. “That is something we cannot tolerate, so we take it seriously,” he says. Furthermore, having that capability plays a key role in winning new contracts. “The biggest issue is who is going to do the delivery [of the new business to the client]. The who bit sits with me to deliver,” he adds. “It’s about partnering with the business,” says Young. This means ongoing discussions on where growth is expected to come from, sales predictions, and where the business is likely to be in the next three years. Members of Young’s team play a key role in Lockheed’s new business capture teams. These internal discussions sometimes begin a couple of years before the contract is awarded, because of the size and complexity of projects, many of which run into billion of pounds over decades — the cost of the F-35 could eventually reach $400bn (£257bn). Young acknowledges that the attitude of the business makes it easier. “They welcome our

“Recruitment is about getting the emotional loyalty of the individual. At the end of the day, taking a job is a personal decision, and we need to make them feel good about it”

CV 2011 – present: : Head of international workforce strategy, analytics and talent acquisition, Lockheed Martin

2009-11: Stafﬁng, talent development lead, Lockheed Martin

2006-09: Head of resourcing, Barclaycard/Barclays emerging markets

2004-06: Head of commercial resourcing, Abbey

2001-04: Group resourcing manager/ HR business partner, Tesco

1995-2001: Associate director, Norman Broadbent

1991-95: Degree in planning, Strathclyde University

SECRETS OF SUCCESS

“THE ONLY PERSON WHO SEES ME AS SUCCESSFUL IS MY MUM. BUT IF YOU REALLY PUSHED ME, A COMBINATION OF LUCK AND HIRING BETTER PEOPLE THAN MYSELF BELOW ME”

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PHOTOGRAPHY: PETER SEARLE

Profile

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05/09/2013 08:05

Profile

expertise. We don’t have to force the door open; it’s ajar — we just need to be there and support.” Workforce planning is a continuous process, he says. “It has to be reviewed on a regular basis, informally and formally, to ensure we are meeting expectations. Things change. And when things change, we have to be able to react to that.” Hiring managers can take convincing of the benefits of workforce planning, says Young. As a line manager himself, he sympathises with their focus on plugging immediate gaps. The only way to get their buy-in is by delivering their talent needs, he says. In his view, workforce planning is more art than science. That said, he points out the amount of rigour involved. This is where the analytics in his job title comes in. Illustrating the point, he describes how analysing the career paths of Lockheed’s UK graduates revealed how “being good at moving them up quickly through the organisation” created a problem. “We realised that we were going to run out of graduates in six months’ time,” he says. In response, the company ramped up its graduate programme overnight from less than 10 a year to 70, and provided 30 internships. Problem solved. A firm believer in the capacity of data to drive change and improvement, Young attributes this faith to his three years as group resourcing manager/HR business partner at supermarket group Tesco. He is particularly effusive about how categorising its employee base gives Tesco the capability to make its staff aware of the benefits of working there. This process offers clues as to how Lockheed Martin, can build “emotional loyalty” among staff, particularly during onboarding, he says. After Tesco, Young took up in-house roles, first at Abbey and then at Barclays, before joining Lockheed Martin in 2009. While he clearly believes that cold data, intelligently analysed, has its place, he also gives the impression that at heart he remains an old-fashioned recruiter. He fondly recalls how he cut his teeth in recruitment at search firm Norman Broadbent as its first non-

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Oxbridge graduate, “interviewing really interesting career people”. “I have never really lost my thirst for that,” he says. Young admits that Lockheed’s employer brand can sometimes be a drag on its ability to attract the staff it needs. Outside the US, it is often seen as purely “an airplane company”, so “sometimes they [candidates] may not know of us”, he says. When he points out that Lockheed Martin employs more software engineers than Microsoft, there is both pride in his voice and also regret that this isn’t recognised more widely. Asked what will help attract candidates, who are also targeted by “some of the biggest companies in the world”, Young is clear about what won’t work. It won’t come about by having “a fancy brand, or words on a page”, he says. Some of the answer lies in getting the IT element of recruitment right, standardising the recruitment process and building the capability of his team, he says. A priority is introducing one end-to-end recruitment process across each of the UK’s five different business units, so that “when we bring people in we bring them in as Lockheed Martin UK rather than the different business units”. At the same time, everything that he and his team do must be underpinned by values that are even more important: ethics and integrity. Young says that within the recruitment function these values can be seen in being open and honest about the organisation, and in encouraging people to ask questions. “We are not a system, it’s not an ATS [applicant tracking system], it’s people. People join organisations for people,” he says. Indeed, while not decrying the importance of process and data, Young warns there is a risk that recruiters could miss the wood for the trees. “You can get worked up by process and data, but it’s about the individual joining your own organisation. And it’s not just the individual — it’s their children, their friends, even the people in the pub. We need to make them feel good about it.”

KEY FACTS Formed in 1995 by the merger of Lockheed Corporation and Martin Marietta, Lockheed Martin is a global security and aerospace company Headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland, US Products include: Trident Missile, F-35 Lightning ﬁghter, C-130 Hercules, Warrior armoured ﬁghting vehicle Revenue: 2012 $47.2bn (£30.2bn) 116,000 staff Operates in more than 70 countries Major supplier to the US government The UK is its second largest market after the US

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05/09/2013 08:05

EXPERT OPINION

Removing the age barrier for agency HGV drivers

By Gary Chambers

ith the UK road transport industry continuing to face a shortage of Heavy Goods Vehicle (HGV) drivers, and efforts to attract younger people to fill driving roles delivering only moderate success, employment agencies working with recruitment insurance specialists Thistle Insurance Services can now outsource HGV drivers aged 21 who would previously have been refused insurance on the grounds of age. Thistle Insurance Services currently provides drivers negligence cover for temporary drivers who are outsourced by recruitment agencies. If the temporary driver causes damage to the hirer’s vehicle, the policy provides cover of up to £10,000 to help cover the cost of vehicle repairs. But, in contrast to some of its competitors who offer drivers negligence cover as long as drivers are aged 23 or over, Thistle Insurance Services is now offering cover for temporary drivers outsourced by recruitment agencies aged 21 and above. Amendments to Thistle Insurance Services policy wording will be welcomed by the UK’s road transport industry whose hard-earned profits have been checked by surging fuel prices and a shortage of qualified drivers in recent years. A report by Skills for Logistics – the Sector Skills Council for the UK’s freight logistics industries – revealed 16% of HGV drivers are aged 60 or over , while the number of individuals taking and passing their HGV test is declining year-on-year. In 2009, the Government lowered the minimum age at which drivers could gain their HGV licence from 21 to 18. But this created a blockage for recruitment agencies to supply younger drivers. Gary Chambers, technical director for recruitment insurance at Thistle Insurance Services, explains: “The blockage to allowing new younger HGV drivers to take up their chosen profession has undoubtedly been caused by the terms of some insurance policies for recruitment agencies. “Some policies will only provide insurance for drivers outsourced by recruitment agencies if they are over the age of 23 and have held their licence for two years. If an 18-year-old qualifies and gains two years’ experience, they will only be 20 or 21 years old. This would prevent recruitment agencies from hiring them as they couldn’t be included under the drivers negligence section of their insurance on account of their age.

“In direct response to the changing needs of the marketplace and the blockage caused by some other insurance policies, our new policy wording reduces the minimum age to 21. This means recruitment agencies can attract a greater number of younger drivers who because of their age would otherwise have been refused insurance cover under their current arrangements.” With a limited pool of talent in the UK, so the probability of drivers collecting convictions increases. Under the terms of Thistle Insurance Services’ previous policy, customers would be required to declare any conviction other than speeding or parking fine. But its new policy wording states that as long as a driver doesn’t have more than 9 points on their licence and has only been charged with minor offences, the recruitment agency does not need to inform Thistle Insurance Services. Gary says: “A number of insurers insist on the recruitment agency referring a driver to them if minor convictions appear on a new driving licence in order to get them agreed. These changes will mean less administration for agencies as well as helping reduce the likelihood of a conviction being missed and a claim being rejected.” Meanwhile, Thistle Insurance Services has also added vicarious liability to its professional indemnity cover. Standard professional indemnity only provides cover in relation to technical errors and omissions made by the recruitment agency while it conducts its day-to-day business. But a market study of professional indemnity wordings with vicarious liability by Thistle Insurance Services found many clauses only provided cover for errors made by the temporary worker which were caused as a result of initial errors made by the recruitment agency. Gary says: “Any professional indemnity policy – including our current wording – would cover this eventuality. But our new policy wording outlines how errors and omissions by the temporary worker will be covered even if the recruitment agency played no part in the initial error. We simply state that if the recruiter becomes legally liable, the policy will react to defend them. “At Thistle Insurance Services, we constantly monitor the recruitment sector and work closely with our customers and leading recruitment sector bodies to make sure the cover we offer reflects their changing needs. The improvements to our policies have been introduced to minimise the impact of the current shortage of qualified drivers and ensure the career progression of young drivers does not stall.”

To ﬁnd out more, visit www.thistlerecruitment.co.uk, or call 0800 454 632.

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RECRUITER

SEPTEMBER 2013

06/09/2013 09:57 09:23

Back office

Keeping control at a safe distance OUTSOURCING OF BACK OFFICE FUNCTIONS CAN SEEM SCARY BUT IT NEED NOT MEAN LOSING CONTROL, AS SUE WEEKES EXPLAINS

The very description ‘back office’ suggests something that can be left to run itself in the bowels of the organisation, while those in the front office and customer-facing roles cheerily go about their business, oblivious to these processes. Experienced business owners know, though, that they neglect this part of their operation at their peril. The back office, from which people are paid, the business accounts are run and where the increasing burden of administration and legislation is most felt, is much like the backbone of an organisation and needs to be treated as such. Outsourcing core back office functions such as payroll, accounts and HR doesn’t mean you never have to think about them ever again but it does free you of their day-to-day running and enables a business owner to focus on more core tasks. It is a natural step for many businesses in the recruitment sector. “Given the level of entrepreneurial flair that leaders within this sector have, it is appealing to have the mundane and routine tasks outsourced but close enough to control,” says Sharon Wiltshire, regional managing director for Bibby Financial Services, which provides factoring and outsourced invoice services. For others, whether or not to outsource can remain a dilemma for many years. Some fear loss of control while others fail to recognise the false

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economy of trying to keep the back office running efficiently in-house at the expense of spending time on revenue-generating tasks such as finding new business. “In our experience, many recruitment companies spend 20-30% of their time dealing with salary enquiries and finance administration,” says Sanjay Swarup, director of SKS Business Services, which provides a shared services business model for accounting and finance. “For those with weekly salary requirements — which is more commonplace in the recruitment

GETTY

“IT IS APPEALING TO HAVE THE MUNDANE AND ROUTINE TASKS OUTSOURCED BUT CLOSE ENOUGH TO CONTROL” SHARON WILTSHIRE, BIBBY FINANCIAL SERVICES

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05/09/2013 08:07

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08/08/2013 08:57

Back office

industry — the additional costs of servicing can far outweigh the relevant returns.” David Thornhill, MD of Simplicity, provider of outsourced back office and financial services to the recruitment sector, agrees and says while many recruiters do look for outsourced help immediately, others try to go it alone, before seeking help when they realise they can’t cope. “Naturally, this very much depends on individual characters, strengths and experience, as no one is the same,” he says. “It’s sometimes better from the outset to let go of the areas where you’re less experienced and focus on the parts of the business that will make you more money. The management gurus call it ‘sticking to your knitting’.” Before making any business case for outsourcing, it is important to assess what you want to achieve by making the switch. “The operational benefits are numerous; just be clear on what you are trying to achieve, and assess the potential implications for your brand,” says Miles Lloyd, chief executive officer of Outsauce, provider of outsourced back office support and contracting services to the recruitment industry. “Firstly, identify the business drivers and establish the criteria by which you will measure success. It could be improving quality, enhancing the customer experience, minimising cost or limiting headcount.” Sheila Wade, MD of back office solutions provider Genius Professional Services, agrees it’s important to understand why you want to outsource other than to save costs. “Once you have an understanding of the other opportunities it offers in giving you a competitive edge, the decision-making process and what you require from the service may be different from one purely focused on cost savings,” she says. Having decided this, it follow up with a thorough cost analysis. Back office costs affect a business’ fixed and variable costs. As Thornhill points out, the costs for payroll support and software must be factored in, along with the mechanism of paying your workers (a bank or BACS facility), staff to run this process (with additional staff to cover during annual leave), credit control staff (and again, additional cover staff) and processes to collate reports, particularly as different systems don’t talk to each other — “such as invoice and payroll systems to create gross margin reports”, he points out. “So someone will have to manage this.” Start-ups in particular need to make sure they know what the “real” cost of running their business is. Thornhill reports that as a start-up, between 7-10% of the net invoice value is the real cost of your back office and finance packages. “So with volume, this will reduce,” he says. “It’s surprising how many recruiters don’t know enough about their finances, so I’d strongly advise them to look carefully at their back office and finance costs, as it will make them more money in the long run.” Bear in mind that the administrative costs of Real Time Information, the Agency Worker Regulations, Pensions Auto-enrolment and future legislative demands should also be factored in. These have — or will in time — considerably added to the back office burden and in many cases require your team to have a far more in-depth knowledge of employment and related law than previously, and the potential cost of this can be vastly under-estimated. “Outsourcing gives the business the structure it needs to cope with

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“MANY RECRUITMENT COMPANIES SPEND 20-30% OF THEIR TIME DEALING WITH SALARY ENQUIRIES AND FINANCE ADMINISTRATION” SANJAY SWARUP, SKS BUSINESS SERVICES such developments,” says Wiltshire. “Clearly such developments have a financial demand upon the business. This underlines the fundamental importance of understanding the numbers from the outset and having the correct level of funding.” When looking at the costs associated with outsourced options, it is also important to consider the actual cost in terms of time and resources of finding the right provider and making the transition. “This will require time to investigate the possibilities and potentially travel costs in meeting with shortlisted providers,” warns Wade. “On choosing a provider, time will be required to manage the transfer process and the ongoing time required to manage the relationship and processes between you and the outsource solution. Time spent on non-core areas of your business has an associated cost that needs to be included in your case.” Furthermore, she advises agency owners to ask what requirements the provider has to allow them to interface with the business or if there will be development work and costs involved in this. One area that is often overlooked in the business case for moving to an outsourced model is the impact it may have on other business processes. For instance, you may decide to outsource the payroll function alone initially but you must examine what impact it will have on those left in-house running accounts and finance or indeed HR. “Map out the entire process, from implementation to operation,” says Lloyd. “Identify all the touch points that could cause problems in other business areas. Include parallel running of systems and processes wherever possible to provide a safety net during the critical launch phase.”

“JUST BE CLEAR ON WHAT YOU ARE TRYING TO ACHIEVE, AND ASSESS THE POTENTIAL IMPLICATIONS FOR YOUR BRAND” MILES LLOYD, OUTSAUCE

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05/09/2013 08:24

Back office

“IT’S SOMETIMES BETTER TO LET GO OF THE AREAS WHERE YOU’RE LESS EXPERIENCED AND FOCUS ON THE PARTS THAT WILL MAKE MORE MONEY” DAVID THORNHILL, SIMPLICITY

Having selected a provider and drawn up an agreement, business owners should ensure this is reviewed by someone with legal expertise. They must themselves be alert to any hidden costs or any issues that may incur costs further down the line that would dilute the business case. Wade warns that you should also check that both the contract and price allow for any planned growth of the business. “Services that are needed later down the line will be charged as add-ons if not included in your original scope and contract,” she says. “It’s worth taking both the time and necessary advice to protect your costs down the line and including this outlay in your business case.” Central to the business will, of course, be the estimated time for a return on investment. If the initial outlay is low, this could come sooner than you think, especially for start-ups. “From the perspective of a new start the outlay can be minimal; therefore the return on investment will be seen more quickly,” says Wiltshire. “And the overheads and outlay can be better controlled.” Wade adds that it can even be possible for start-ups to see a return on day one. “Our pricing structure is tied in with business performance, which keeps costs low for start-up businesses and eliminates the need for them to recruit headcount and purchase hardware, software, licences and so on,” she says. “For existing businesses often the access to a wider skills base and robust purpose-built systems gives them an immediate competitive edge against those who are still using legacy systems. A typical transition can

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take anywhere between three to 12 months and we would expect our clients to see a financial return once this transition has taken place and any historic costs associated with an in-house solution have ceased.” As you’d expect, longer-term outsourcing agreements will typically offer more competitive rates. When negotiating these, Lloyd says, ask a supplier whether it can tailor its costs to your business projections. “Outsourcing facilitates growth, and growth increases economies of scale,” he says. For those who fear a loss of control when they outsource, technology is helping to allay these fears. Lloyd points out that a fully outsourced facility should always retain full transparency and control for the customer but adds that technology has made it easier than ever to outsource myriad services and processes that were once “sacred and core”. Meanwhile, cloud-based technology has improved the quality and efficiency of the information that is provided to outsourcing providers. “For instance, payroll information can now be sent directly from candidates via smartphones, further reducing admin for the outsourcing customer,” he says. Swarup agrees that recruiters should be making use of such technology to ensure these savings are felt on the bottom line. “The cloud facilitates such cost savings by providing real-time access to documents from anywhere in the world,” he says. “Recruiters should be accessing the global economy to maximise efficiency and minimise costs where they can.”

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05/09/2013 08:07

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