Good news for the UK hiring economy and how to find the perfect recruitment consultancy

July 26th, 2019 | Industry News

The Recruitment and Employment Confederation reports that UK employers felt 4% more confident about making hiring decisions in the last quarter. Confidence in the economy has also risen by around 3%, although it’s still very low. Demand for temporary agency workers is forecast to increase by 2% this quarter, just as it did in the previous one, but it’s still 13% lower than 12 months ago.

On the negative side, four out of five employers say they have little surplus capacity and 27% say they have no extra capacity at all. This means that companies are tightly stretched and illness or other absence problems are likely to increase stress on the rest of the employees. Over 90% are expected to use a recruitment consultancy in the 12 months ahead and they say they are looking for either geographical expertise or sector experience when selecting a partner agency.

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Recruiters as retainers – a new paradigm in uncertain times

July 16th, 2019 | Industry News

The traditional view of recruiters is that retention is their enemy. Today’s employment uncertainty means that retention has become a key issue, not just for companies hiring staff but for recruiters trying to fill vacancies. A survey has shown that the number of people offered permanent jobs via recruitment agencies fell for the fourth month in a row in June. While temporary hiring rose slightly, the first six months of 2019 have been the slowest growth period since 2013. Employers are struggling, but aren’t necessarily turning to recruitment agencies because of this old, and today profoundly out-of-date image as the spivs of the hiring world.

Recruiting software, applied with sophistication, can not only improve recruitment but work towards retention. For a new hire to stay, three factors have to be considered:

• Are they right for the job?
• Are they motivated?
• Are they adequately rewarded?

Recruitment CRM software can deliver responses to the second two questions BEFORE the candidate is hired. How?

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Innovation in recruitment – a software perspective

June 24th, 2019 | Industry News

Everything moves faster these days. Recruitment is no different, but systems don’t always keep pace. We’ve chosen a case study to show how the best recruitment CRM actively speeds up recruitment and gives agencies the lead in effective recruitment.

How to recruit in FinTech

A recent Government report into the UK FinTech market reveals that this sector produces £6.6B per annum, 42% of personnel are from overseas and women make up a third of the total workforce. In another study 78% of vacancies fell into five categories: software design and engineering, operations, data and analytics, sales and marketing and less than 10% of those vacancies were in the latter two areas, so this is a tech heavy recruitment field.

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Recruitment costs and growing your own talent

June 11th, 2019 | Industry News

According to HR Director, a standard recruitment process can cost up to £11,000 and soak up around 27 days. That’s a substantial increase in both cost and time over five years ago. It’s no surprise to recruitment professionals with Brexit, economic uncertainty established talent gaps particularly in STEM sectors all contributing to the difficulty of finding, and retaining, the right people.

Limitations in the traditional ‘recruitment campaign’ include the process of the funnel which limits both speed and access to ideal candidates by taking a linear approach to hiring. New models which have a ‘wheel’ of recruitment change recruiting from a linear to a non-linear process but engaging all potential candidates – via recruitment software – in a process that puts them, rather than the job, at the centre of a web of connections. Recruitment agency software can be used to nurture relationships, staying in touch with each individual and establishing a long-term relationship via an applicant tracking system, UK-wide and able to recognise the vital moments when talent in the network can be rapidly recruited into appropriate positions.

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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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