Recruitment fails and why they matter

October 11th, 2018 | Industry News

A recent study produced by University College Dublin reveals that companies that give candidates a poor experience may actually be helping their rivals to succeed.

It’s related to a psychological phenomenon called The Immutable Law of the Ex, which is the process in which footballers outperform their usual standards when they are playing against their former club. So what does this mean for employers?

People who feel badly treated or overlooked by a potential employer are twice as likely to share that information online as those who have a good experience – not only that, but then they go all out be a total winner in the next job they do get, to prove the ‘bad’ employer wrong. The recruitment industry is barely aware of this phenomenon, but it’s likely to have a huge social impact on the reputation of both employers and recruitment agencies. When assessing what makes a ‘bad experience’ in recruitment, three key issues stand out:

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Creative hiring and untrustworthy recruitment agencies

September 26th, 2018 | Industry News

How to find good candidates in a buyers’ market

Every HR department knows that recruiting is getting more difficult. While recruitment software can help sift through the available candidates, it can’t magic suitable candidates out of thin air! So how can recruitment agencies and HR teams find those elusive ‘suitable candidates’?

One way is to move from job descriptions to position personas. The standard recruitment outline describes the job and the person required to do it in terms of skills, qualifications and experience. In a shrinking candidate pool, persona descriptions look at softer skills, empathy, resilience, self-propulsion, sociability etc. – they enlarge the candidate base by allowing organisations to use their web based recruitment software to identify people who could be up-skilled or re-qualified to fulfil the job description.

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Rules for new recruitment agencies and recruiting for e-commerce

September 11th, 2018 | Industry News

The recruitment sector is often said to be one of the faster growing industries in the UK – which ignores the fact that as many agencies close as open. It’s certainly true to say that the industry is one of the fastest-moving; agencies come and go with lighting speed! So what gives a new recruitment agency longevity?

1. Knowing how the sector operates – ‘disruptors’ have ideas about how to make recruitment faster, more reliable or less labour intensive. Good for them. But when disruptors don’t actually know how recruitment works, they have a one-dimensional view of the sector. The reputation of an agency depends on:

• matching demand with supply
• sourcing high calibre candidates
• building great client relationships
• securing a recruitment package that suits both sides.

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Tech, diversity and visas – major impacts on the recruiting sector

August 21st, 2018 | Industry News

The recruitment industry is impacted by many factors, but none has been so significant as technology. Recruitment management software fulfils a variety of needs today: search tool, process management system and database.

The best recruitment CRM is now proactive in the various search and management processes that an effective recruiter undertakes. For example a recruitment consultancy can interrogate a CV in a variety of ways, as well as looking at a candidate’s former employment roles and even their social media trail to help establish if a candidate is a good cultural fit for an employer as well as being well qualified to fulfil the role. Companies are using recruitment database software to create the parameters for background research into candidates – in fact

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Recruitment agencies as data collection hubs?

August 7th, 2018 | Industry News

In a major new development, MPs are thinking of asking recruitment agencies to take responsibility for collecting data about the exclusion of older people from the UK workforce. This is the result of a report from the Women and Equalities Committee which says that over a million fifty-plus people are unemployed and willing to work. Members of Parliament are hoping that using recruitment software UK wide, will show them were there are gaps in recruitment that could be addressed.

Not all recruiting software will be equal to the task, and the idea of ‘reporting age profiles for the work force’ would have to be handled sensitively. There are three areas of concern: prejudice, unconscious bias and ‘casual ageism’, all of which are not only unlawful but can limit the candidate pool for vacancies, depriving the employer of the most diverse range of candidates.

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Recruiting undercurrents – the things that aren’t being talked about… but should be

July 23rd, 2018 | Industry News

This time we’re focusing on two blog posts that highlight different aspects of the recruiting industry that often go undiscussed. First Pilita Clark writing in the Financial Times about the ‘ghost’ candidates appearing in every industry. Ghosting is the act of disappearing from somebody’s life without warning and without leaving contact details and while it used to be a behaviour related to romantic relationships and friendships, it’s turning up in the workplace too.

But let’s take a step back. Even with employers having the best applicant tracking system UK wide, candidates have often the experience of not hearing back about a job, sometimes even after they’ve been interviewed. Now employers are having facing the same response from candidates that they’ve given to them, it could be seen as poetic justice. But the why of it happening is interesting – there are two different forms of ghosting:

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Recruitment software as an aid to the economy

July 12th, 2018 | Industry News

Hard on the heels of the announcement that the UK Government is to set up a fee-free portal for teaching vacancies, research by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) reveals the pressure that recruiters are under to find supply teachers. Most recruitment firms are given less than two hours’ notice that a school needs a temporary teacher, the survey reveals. Given the speed with which recruitment agencies must find a qualified and vetted temp, online recruitment software makes a substantial contribution to this process.

This rapid and demanding recruitment turnaround is set against some DfE statistics showing that over a quarter of teachers left the profession between 2013-2016, the highest departure rate since records began in 1996 and further information from the REC stating that three quarters of recruitment agencies have had to persuade a teacher to remain in post in the past 12 months. To meet these needs, 92% of recruitment agencies say their consultants get to work between 6-8am.

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Recruitment tensions in the UK

June 29th, 2018 | Industry News

One good word to describe the current position of recruitment in the UK is prickly – here’s some evidence!

Teaching recruitment

When Secretary of State for Education Damian Hinds announced that he was going to cut down on schools using agencies to find staff, he described the agency fees as ‘unnecessary costs’. According to Mr Hinds, “… agencies charge schools costly finder’s fees if head teachers want to make supply staff permanent.”

His solution is to offer a new national deal for head teachers – a list of agencies that don’t charge fees if staff go from temp to perm after 12 weeks. These will be preferred suppliers. There is a degree of misunderstanding about how agencies work implicit in this approach. The best recruitment software for agencies actually does a lot of the work of sifting CVs and shortlisting candidates. It requires a couple of things though: online recruitment software needs to be regularly updated and recalibrated so that it remains contemporary and sensitive to the trends and requirements of the marketplace.

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How is the gig economy affecting the recruitment industry?

June 6th, 2018 | Industry News

Around five million people, either contractors or working as temps, are involved in the gig economy in the UK. The latest government white paper says that 4.4% of the UK population had undertaken some kind of work in the gig economy in 2017 and that for the first time, half of those undertaking gig work were under 35. It’s a fascinating snapshot of how this new way of working, which is entirely fuelled by digital technology, is affecting recruitment and the economy more generally.

Recruitment agencies have already discovered that the pattern of working has changed massively over the past decade, and at an accelerating rate in the past five years. The main changes being:

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The role of recruiting software in new industry sectors

May 21st, 2018 | Industry News

China’s executive recruitment

One of the most surprising areas of growth for recruitment agencies in the past 18 months has been headhunting executives for China.

The People’s Daily newspaper reports that the recruitment market in China has seen a 12.9% growth year on year and the shortage of high level candidates in the country has led to a number of sectors seeking help to find executive talent via recruitment consultancies around the world. Web based recruitment software has given headhunters and recruitment consultancies the scope to identify candidates who are willing to help China’s rapidly expanding industries and that same recruiting software is able to fast track ideal candidates whilst helping consultants educate their clients about what kind of package might best appeal to this external talent pool, persuading it to commit to a career that includes a spell in China.

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