Crossroads in recruitment – a round up from Recruit So Simple

September 15th, 2017 | Industry News

Recruiters to benefit from better pay

In the last couple of months we’ve seen some game-changing initiatives in the recruitment industry – the first of which will definitely please the recruitment consultants: pay increases!

The latest Glassdoor pay report shows that recruiters are likely to benefit from substantial pay rises in the next 12 months – with the most successful obtaining an average of 8.4%. It’s an interesting development, given that automation of recruitment processes is supposedly cutting down the number of recruitment professionals actually in the industry.

So why the pay rise? Apparently it’s because top companies are relying more on relationship management professionals to find the best talent, particularly in the USA, but also in the UK where Brexit concerns are making some organisations jittery about the maintenance of a talent pool for the future. Where the talent of candidates is a vital concern, the talent, and skills of the recruiters, are also highly valued.

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Seven ways cloud-based software helps you recruit the right candidate

August 29th, 2017 | Industry News

At Recruit So Simple, we’re completely confident that cloud recruitment software is one of the greatest benefits to the recruitment industry since the rolodex was invented – and we don’t think you’d find many people arguing to the contrary! However, a much less well explored question is just how online recruitment software can benefit all recruiters by helping to identify the best candidate for each position. So we thought we’d share the seven reasons that SAAS (software as a service) recruitment software can really solve your recruitment problems:

• Speed – the best candidates go fast. Recruiters, whether consultant or in-house, tend to operate at a slower rate than a good applicant tracking software system, which can mean that the best person for you has been snapped up before you even get to evaluate their CV.
• Prejudice – we’re not talking about overt prejudice here, but the kind of inherent or unconscious bias that can cause human administrators to reject certain candidates or promote others, completely unaware of their personal foibles.
• Administration – it’s easy to become controlled by filing cabinets and stacks of paper. Cloud based employment software removes the tendency to hide behind paperwork and gives recruiters plenty of scope to focus on what they’re hired to do – find the right person for the job.

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Recruitment under pressure

August 16th, 2017 | Industry News

Brexit is causing pressure in all directions – Theresa May is under pressure from sectors of the recruitment industry because of the failure to outline a coherent post-Brexit immigration policy. Over 600 employers were surveyed and 87% said they were being forced to maintain or increase use of temporary staff in the next six months because of the uncertainty over Brexit.

A third of London’s construction industry employees come from the EU – and recruiting platforms are being scoured to find alternative skilled labour if these individuals are likely to be available. Concern is being expressed that at the time businesses are being most encouraged to deliver growth to ensure a ‘strong post-Brexit’ economy, the current UK workforce will not be able to meet demand. Sectors likely to experience such shortfalls, alongside construction, include education and engineering.

Permanent vacancies on the rise, uncertainty over IT

The Association of Professional Staffing Companies has interesting survey information for recruiters. Professional recruitment is showing much wider variations in sectors than in previous years and applicant tracking software is increasingly being used to differentiate ‘professional’ calibre permanent vacancies from ‘churn’. Churn features in contracting in particular, where vacancies have fallen by 13% across all sectors, showing that non-permanent staffing is less attractive to employers than sourcing and retaining high quality permanent candidates.

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Recruit So Simple looks at the Taylor Review and a Tax Avoidance scheme in disarray

July 24th, 2017 | Industry News

Extensive changes to the UK’s employment law and practices were promised by the Taylor Review released on 12 July, but already the government is admitting that it may be impossible to implement any of the Taylor recommendations.

Recruitment, self-employment and blurred employment status

The report covers the staffing industry, the gig economy and has a specific focus on worker classification, a thorny issue for recruitment as the definition of ‘employed’ and self-employed is blurred by Uber, Deliveroo and other cloud-based recruitment systems that crowd source gig workers.

The report signalled out at recruitment agency work as ‘important … in a vibrant market’ and suggested that clarity of employment status and worker rights would help the recruitment industry continue to make gains. An Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate is also recommended to police workers’ rights compliance. Sector leaders view this as a failure to promote corporate governance and likely to negatively impact already struggling government bodies charged with enforcement.

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Recruitment – success and failure

July 13th, 2017 | Industry News

One of the biggest risks any business faces goes almost completely unrecognised – the risk of recruitment. To put it in human terms, if you asked somebody to invest a week of their lives in interviewing life partners, then to put between 12-20% of their income into an escrow which that person can draw on, and only then to sit down across the table from their chosen one and establish if they have anything in common, almost nobody except the utterly desperate would do so.

Any recruitment system is – in its essentials – exactly what we’ve just described. Hours of time goes into screening CVs and composing interview questions. Further time is spent interviewing the selected ‘blind dates’ and then, if the employer is lucky, its staffing software will spit out the name of a candidate who can be employed and will make a substantial contribution to the organisation. And that money in escrow? It’s been consumed in screening, selecting, training and introducing new hires to the company. And year in, year out, organisations go through this process, sometimes succeeding in hiring the right person, sometimes failing and losing their investment entirely.

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Recruitment round-up June 2017

June 29th, 2017 | Industry News

The true cost of recruitment

A recent Australian study has revealed that it can cost up to 120 business hours to recruit a candidate, and that getting that recruit up to productivity may be around 50% of the individual’s salary for the first three years!

If that sounds excessive, it does depend on the nature of the business and the recruitment process but, for example, consider that an organisation’s recruitment needs involve: writing a job description, advertising, reviewing and interviewing candidates, shortlisting, taking references, a probationary period and on-the-job training. On that basis, 120 business hours sounds quite conservative, doesn’t it?

Investing time to get the key elements right is vital. The job description has to be appropriate and realistic, interviewing has to be in-depth and relevant (no copying interview questions from the internet and hoping for the best!) and checking references and other due diligence must be comprehensive to avoid wasting time recruiting a dishonest, or simply disorganised, recruit.

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All recruitment, all online, all the time…

June 8th, 2017 | Industry News

The latest research into online recruitment predicts market trends and forecasts up to 2021 and focuses on global-level industry players as well as offering a historic analysis for many markets. What is clear from the report is that online recruitment systems are going to feature heavily in everybody’s futures, from temporary and contract staff through to fast-track career heavyweights.

The recruiting platform of the future is online

What else do we know about the future of recruiting? Well, the global market is expected to exceed £29 billion by 2021, growing from around £21 billion in 2016. We know that major growth sectors are likely to be IT (and especially AI), logistics and security – no surprise about any of those, with the UK’s Brexit vote potentially giving rise to a series of similar referendums around the world.

It’s also clear that any agency’s recruitment software database is likely to find itself subject to more stringent controls, specifically around data protection but also very possibly related to new legislation that may arise to track the movements of individuals who could be considered a risk to security.

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Brexit, recruitment, business concerns

May 25th, 2017 | Industry News

With employers from Hyatt Hotels to the NHS expressing concern about a post-Brexit future, the one certainty for all employers is that recruitment is about to become more complicated.

In fact, a Hyatt spokesman claimed “life could become very difficult” if access to foreign workers is restricted, echoing concerns expressed by major employers in the construction, education, healthcare, hospitality and manufacturing sectors. For Hyatt, like many others, the proportion of British citizens working in their hotels is relatively small and the labour situation could become problematic.

Top tips for employers in a post-Brexit world

Many industries are calling for a review of what Brexit will mean for business so that organisations can prepare for what’s ahead. There’s no evidence that such a review will happen and that means that businesses must attempt to work out for themselves the best approach to an uncertain future. At Recruit So Simple we have a few tips to help chart a path in a post-Brexit world.

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Choosing recruitment software for an uncertain future

May 9th, 2017 | Industry News

The announcement of the UK snap election has taken almost everyone by surprise – and the recruitment industry has been rapid to respond. The claim that the election is designed to reduce uncertainty and instability is one that recruiters will take to heart. As Brexit negotiations continue, the focus on goods rather than services and service provision can’t be ignored. The UK labour market is a major contributor to the national economy to the tune of £35 billion and its role can’t be underestimated.

Recruitment software is crucial to the effective management of employment services and to a large extent the scope and sophistication of the chosen recruiting platform will impact the success of any recruitment strategy, whether an in-house process or a recruitment agency one.

When choosing a recruitment software system, a key question must be to ensure that it will meet the needs of the organisation now, and in the future. Staffing software cannot stand still, any more than society can and yet the counterbalancing consideration has to be the certainty that any chosen system can be easily introduced and utilised by any team member without requiring complex and time-consuming training.

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LinkedIn fatigue and AI – the future of recruitment?

April 25th, 2017 | Industry News

Effective recruitment – how not to waste anybody’s time

According to Recruiter, there’s an increasing weariness in excellent candidates who are sick of being ‘targeted’ by recruiters who bombard them with ill-thought-out and often time-wasting pitches. It’s not just those who are on LinkedIn who find themselves on the wrong end of a badly focused communication from a recruiter whose employment software hasn’t kept up with the candidate’s current situation. ‘LinkedIn fatigue’ as it’s known is causing many top candidates to try to hide themselves from inept recruiters and one measure of the sophistication and application of recruitment software in the future will be the way that it uses the applicant tracking system to contact candidates only when a truly interesting opportunity arises.

Is AI the future of recruitment software?

Start-ups around the world are claiming that they are heralding a new future for recruitment platforms by incorporating large amounts of AI (artificial intelligence) into each newly-launched recruitment system.

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