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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The latest from Global Recruiter UK Summit
April 11th, 2017 | Industry News
Shake up in recruitment in 2017
The recent Global Recruiter UK Summit opened with a headline talk about how technology is changing the workplace, and therefore how the operation and focus of many recruitment businesses will need to change too: the ‘human cloud’ and increasing workplace automation are both expected to lead to different ways of packaging recruitment; uncertain economic situations will lead to shorter lead times for recruitment; and talent platforms like Recruit so Simple are likely to be delivering $2.7 trillion to the global economy by 2025 according to one speaker. Where ‘human cloud’ resourcing operates, online recruitment software is an essential component of a realtime recruiting policy and cloud-based Software As A Service will be vital to managing complex workflows in real time, often at a geographic distance.
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Brexit, budget and building… three key areas for March recruitment
March 17th, 2017 | Industry News
2017 budget and recruitment
In a week where a budget U-turn created a lot of heat in the recruitment industry, we thought it would be a good time to bring some light to the Chancellor’s budget decisions, and how they affect recruitment, both permanent and temporary.
The U-turn was on NICs, of course and was welcomed by many lobbyists for the self-employed, but increasing National Insurance wasn’t the only impact that the 2017 budget had on recruitment, and a couple of less headline-worthy issues may definitely change the way the UK recruitment industry operates.
The Chancellor announced that the dividend tax allowance of £5,000 per annum will be cut to £2,000 from April 2018 and this applies to every taxpayer, not just single directors of shareholder companies. This was the only firm conclusion from the government’s announcement that the 2017 budget would include consultations on employee expenses and the taxation of benefits in kind. While these consultations are still up in the air, it’s certain that recruitment agency software will need to demonstrate high transparency to ensure that problems do not arise with HMRC in future.
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Recruiting Trends in 2017
March 7th, 2017 | Industry News
Technology is projected to be the big trend in recruitment in 2017 and recruiting volumes in this area are predicted to rise. In 2017 the UK alone is looking at a 58% increase in hiring.
Industries experiencing recruitment pressures
Wireless technology markets are experiencing a degree of change – while industry regulation in the USA is still allowing operators to charge higher prices that permit capital to be raised for network upgrades and innovation, in other markets commodification is well advanced, changing the nature of the offering and requiring a different approach to basic delivery. Increased pressure as telecoms operators fight for subscribers means that focus is moving steadily from brand identity to delivery metrics with broadband speeds, customer service responses and reliability changing the nature of recruitment in the industry and reducing out top end positions such as marketing and strategy whilst increasing demand for temp and fixed contract professionals working in the infrastructure, engineering and customer service areas.
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