Do you need a specialist recruiter?

May 28th, 2019 | Industry News

Every industry claims to have unique elements – but to what extent is that true and how much does it affect the recruitment process? Web based recruitment software comes in two forms, generic or bespoke. The advantage of bespoke software is that you can have it designed to your specific circumstances, but the disadvantage is that this can substantially limit your recruiting potential.

If you choose generic online recruitment software, will it meet your needs?

The best recruitment CRM should be customisable to a degree that allows your organisation to tailor its usage to your own needs. An example – retail is a huge industry, with a $26 trillion turnover predicted by the end of this year.

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The role of recruitment software in legislative compliance

May 9th, 2019 | Industry News

In April 2020, recruitment agencies will take on the responsibility for setting IR35 status – a situation that has been the case since 2017 in the public sector. It’s crucial that recruitment agency software has the capacity to determine IR35 because the financial liability for a wrong decision could have substantial implications for the agency. Designed to prevent tax avoidance by contractors, there are three key factors that help an agency ensure they remain on the right side of the law:

1. Supervision, direction and control – determining the degree of autonomy that a contractor has is vital. For contractors, the freedom to control projects is a significant factor in deciding IR35 status. To avoid getting caught in the IR35 net, a contractor has to be in control of every aspect of any project they have been recruited to complete. With IT contracts, it’s important that there be specific deadlines and tasks attached to a project to prevent it being seen as ‘without end’ which would make the contractor an employee. In all cases, contracts must not contain clauses that give a client the right to control or supervise the contractor. The best recruitment CRM allows for a clear and transparent communication trail which can be used to clarify IR35 status if there any queries.

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2019’s recruitment challenges and an Easter egg from Recruit So Simple

April 24th, 2019 | Industry News

Recruitment Software can’t solve all problems and we’d be the first to admit it. Bullhorn has just published Global Recruitment Insights which identify skills shortages, technology challenges and political and economic threats to growth. The report focuses on the skills dearth, particularly in STEM areas, and with over three quarters of recruiters questioned saying that overcoming the skills shortage would be a major challenge in 2019, addressing the diversity deficit is becoming crucial. As the report says, organisations that deny themselves the opportunity to benefit from a diverse approach, they also lack a wide perspective and a range of resources.

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Technology, training and recruitment

April 8th, 2019 | Industry News

A recent article in Personnel Today reveals that while many organisations are trying hard to find methods of blind recruitment, unconscious bias is almost impossible to eradicate unless there’s a sophisticated software solution that can remove the subtle indicators that allow unconscious bias to thrive.

Recruitment Software like ours is designed to help companies manage their recruitment processes effectively and one feature of the best recruitment software for agencies is the ability to remove language that gives hints to gender. For example, the report says that “analysing… the average number of words and unique words used by male and female candidates across all sectors showed that female candidate CVs tend to be longer and use a greater variety of words.” While no recruiting software can alter such information as the variety of word use, it is possible to harmonise CV length so that all candidates have a similar ‘feeling’ CV.

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Recruitment software – how and where it works best

March 26th, 2019 | Industry News

Today the Recruit So Simple blog wants to look at the best, and worst, of the recruitment industry. Let’s start with the worst.

Failing recruitment agencies have non-transparent systems

Already this year the Recruitment and Employment Confederation was forced to rescind the membership of a Southampton-based recruitment firm, ARZ, for three different breaches of the REC’s own Code of Professional Practice. The recruitment consultancy’s failings included not abiding by GangMaster and Labour Abuse Authority licence requirements, not giving workers copies of employment contracts, incorrectly calculating leave and holiday pay, and not issuing payslips. As the agency refused to cooperate with the REC, we don’t know exactly what went on, but we can say – for sure – that they weren’t using effective web-based recruitment software. Recruiting software like ours ensures that processes are flagged and completed, results are introduced to the CRM database, and consultants can check, at a glance, that their activity is both legally compliant and professionally productive. You can’t run a deliberately bad agency with great software, which is why we believe ours is the best recruitment software for agencies.

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Two ways recruiters can innovate to improve business performance

March 15th, 2019 | Industry News

Save your clients money

An example of how recruitment database software can help clients save money and perform better emerged as a result of research into the hiring practices of NHS Trusts in the UK. The problem comes from the way that temporary and permanent staffing needs are handled through different departments. Lacking effective recruitment management software, and with no recognition of each other’s needs, the two departments often counteract each other’s efforts. This happens because while temporary staffing is able to use agencies as a route to fill jobs, NHS permanent recruitment teams often aren’t authorised to work with recruiters, meaning that their vacancies remain unfilled… and therefore fall to the temporary staffing team to fill with short term placements.

It’s claimed that the NHS could be wasting as much as £300 million on temporary agency fees when permanent staff exist on web-based recruitment software to fill those very same vacancies. Several agencies have recognised this gap and are using their recruitment agency software to highlight when a temporary contract has become something that the permanent staffing side could be filling through an available and qualified candidate. As a result, they have become preferred partners for that NHS Trust, earning a coveted position as the ‘go to’ agency for every vacancy.

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Five reasons to invest in online recruitment software

February 21st, 2019 | Industry News

It seems like a good time to reiterate what we believe gives successful recruitment consultancies the edge over their struggling counterparts. Some recent – and not so recent – research shows that recruitment processes are crucial to a company’s overall success.

In 2017 IBM released a report called ‘The Far-Reaching Impact of Candidate Experience’ – one astonishing statistic was that 58% of candidates who had a negative experience with a company’s recruitment process would never apply to that company again. Recruiting software can help improve that experience which, it turns out, makes top talent much more likely to accept a job offer, according to the same report. So how does recruitment software help?

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Brexit, hiring priorities and the role of software in recruitment

February 8th, 2019 | Industry News

To start February rolling we’ve got a mash-up of the biggest stories in recruitment right now, and it turns out they have a linking thread…

Deal? No deal? Backstop? Everybody’s feeling confused about where we stand and what happens next, which is why the recent comments by Neil Carberry, chief executive of the Recruitment & Employment Confederation are significant. “A no deal Brexit is not a tolerable way forward,” he said, before pointing out that “Political paralysis is already impacting firms – slowing down investment decisions and damaging our reputation globally.”

Sadly, no recruitment software can provide certainty about our future, but one thing that online recruitment software can provide is flexibility. A recent survey by CV-Library reveals that while 72% of UK organisations are planning to work harder on recruitment in 2019, over 80% of recruitment professionals are experiencing a lack of ‘relevant talent’ which bring us to the question of the role of software (and even hardware!) in recruitment.

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We predict the recruitment fireworks and damp squibs of 2019

January 6th, 2019 | Industry News

When monster.com reports that the biggest job application day of the year is 27th January, with the number of applications that day being 75% above the daily average, we know we have a phenomenon on our hands. But like the dating market (where match.com reports a 42% increase in new members on their most popular day, 7 January) there’s also a tendency for job applicants, like online daters, to never take any further action (41% of dating app users never go on a date!).

The drivers for seeking a new job include:

• spending time with friends and family over Christmas and being asked how work is going
• overspending during the holidays
• doing something at the office party that you really don’t want to have to face up to in the New Year!

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Recruit So Simple’s year end round-up

December 23rd, 2018 | Industry News

Well, it wouldn’t be a round-up if we didn’t include Brexit, and with the latest Office of National Statistics report showing that net EU migration has fallen to its lowest since 2012, everybody’s focusing on how to recruit, where to recruit and most of all – how to retain, key staff.

As candidate availability reduces, and employers struggle to take on more work because they aren’t confident that they can recruit the necessary staff, recruitment agency software needs to be more sensitive, more selective and more rapid in responding to client need.

Online recruitment software has two major advantages:

1. it allows consultants, and candidates, to update and amend information outside office hours
2. it permits experienced recruitment consultants to interrogate data in ways that deliver the right information rapidly and succinctly to the hiring client.

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