Sirona Says

The Top 10 Handshake types and what they reveal about you, your clients and your candidates

Recruiters are meeting people all the time (or they should be anyway!), and one thing we all do as a matter of course in the greeting is shake hands with people. Wouldn't it be great to actually know more about the person you are meeting? A sales expert called Dr Gregory Stebbins has written a book that helps us understand the people side of sales. So primed with this new found information you will be able to learn the hidden messages with your clients or your candidates.

Below are the Top 10 Handshake Types - and what they reveal about your client or your candidate:

We have all done it....haven't we?

We are now in 'sicknote season' in the UK - defined as such because it is the longest stretch of work without a Bank Holiday. As such companies are being urged to recognise this fact, and be generous in allowing their workers more time off in the run up to Christmas. Of course companies could just stick to their holiday allowances, and they would be legally entitled to do so. But the fact is, the majority of the workforce will take some false time off during this time, so wouldn't it be better for morale to allow them a Christmas shopping day or a 'winter duvet day' - it could even be part of a retention strategy? This way it would be under control (to a certain extent), and would enable staff resource planning as opposed to getting the 'sickie' call early one morning causing a potentially damaging staff shortage.

Fish4Jobs have just completed a survey of workers, and 80% of the respondents admitted to feigning illness to take time off work leading up to Christmas. The top responses for missing work were:

1. Taking a sickie because of a hangover, and claiming it is a migraine
2. Taking a sickie to attend a job interview
3. Lying about the death of a relative to avoid work
4. Contracting a foreign disease on returning from holiday
5. Claiming a favoured family pet has died
6. Citing a DIY disaster, needed to have time off to repair or visit the hospital

But beware....38% of the respondents were caught out by a colleague!!

Marks & Spencers own social networking site?

Martha Lane Fox, previously a co-founder at LastMinute.com,  and who is now a non-exec at Marks & Spencers, was recently waxing lyrical about branding and online social networking. She spoke at Retail Weeks 100 Club last week, and talked about making corporate sites more appealing and fun to use.

"Fundamental to the experience if the internet is how you build your brand within it and the internet is phenomenal at building networks. Social networking gives control back to the individual" , stated Martha.

So strong is the business community's belief in Martha with what she has achieved, the automatic assumption has already been made that Marks & Spencers will soon be adding to the world of social networking with a site of their very own!  (Although M&S deny this rumour - well they would wouldn't they?) And with the tremendous brand loyalty that M&S have, who can doubt it would be anything other than a success?

Does your current employer recognise your talent?

You are a talented individual, am I right? But how do you know you are talented, does anyone actually tell you? or do you just have great self belief? Obviously there are complex psychometric and profiling tests you can do that will help you find out how good you are, and they are all effective in their own way. What about a more simplified way of giving yourself a check on how you are currently feeling about your career and your employer? Here is a quick three minute Talent Test to assess your own belief in your own talent and whether your current employer is right for you?

Below are 15 simple questions that will help you establish whether your current employer recognises your talent?

100 Resources to help recruit and retain talented women

The recruitment landscape is forever changing, and one of the larger areas of movement over the last few years, has been the larger number of women that have been recruited into mid and senior level roles. This has had the effect of providing confidence and inspiration to many females starting their careers, which is in turn will provide more balanced workforces in years to come. With this in mind, HR World, has produced a great article - 100 Resources to Attract, Retain and Leverage Talented Women. It covers:

1. Finding talent
2. Attracting talent
3. Retaining talent
4. Interaction between female and male workers
5. Maximising female talent
6. Developing leaders

There are many good articles such as my previous post, 10 Ways to Attract Female Talent for each of the headers, with the articles being taken from the worlds business and HR press.

Thanks Rich McIver, for making me aware of this article, what we need now is the male focused article!!

10 Ways to Attract Female Talent (legally of course!)

There are more companies that are recruiting women (fairly I might add!) into senior positions within their organisations. But how do you make sure that you also tap into the female talent pool as well as the male talent pool, when searching for that next key employee? An article by an american search consultant, Erin Johnson explains what the 10 ways are:

1. Be a good listener.
2. Understand the needs of the female.
3. Allow the female to shine.
4. Lead with confidence.
5. Show interest.
6. Give praise and appreciation.
7. Be sincere.
8. Make a commitment.
9. Nurture, nurture.
10. Say "I do."

Obviously, these are just the headlines, but it is worth reading how a female consultant feels that you have to adopt a more friendly approach to recruitment, to recruit the best female candidates. Does that then mean that women feel the business community is still too male orientated?

Staff must come first, Clients second..

Marketing companies and advertising agencies are really struggling to recruit and more importantly retain staff. So with such a common and consistent problem, you would think that they are working hard to look at longer term strategies around better staff retention, wouldn't you. WRONG! Recent research carried out by the global media recruiters Aquent found that the solution that companies in this sector like to do, is to simply throw money at staff to get them to stay with them!!

Is there then any wonder why there is always continual change within the world of marketing and advertising? Surely this must effect client retention as well?

Star Wars recruiting video......great!!

For all of you who remember the days of The Empire, Darth Vadar, Jedi Knights and alike, you will enjoy this recruiting film I came across - The Star Wars recruiting video!!

Enjoy....I did, and may the force be with you!!

A recruitment blog verses the establishment...who will win?

When Peter Gold first made comment on an established recruitment advertising magazine - The Appointment, little did he know that he was soon to be taking part in a David and Goliath battle!

The owners of the Appointment took offence to Peter's blog, in which he dared to criticise them regarding recruitment advertising in the magazine. Then followed a solicitors letter from them, which Peter dealt with in the best way he knows how.........posting a reply on his blog!!!

Already looking forward to the next installment!!

Don't bash agencies before you put your own house in order!

Here we go again, recruitment agency bashing.....

1. "Agencies will lie about candidates receiving better offers to ratchet up their salaries and their own potential fees"
2. "There is a lack of customer service, lack of professionalism and lack of focus on filling more difficult posts"
3. "They need to meet our needs and listen to what we want,but they don't. They phone constantly and get quite rude with staff when we won't take their calls"
4. 80% of the companies believed agencies offered a poor or average service!
5. 60% of the companies said that agencies poached staff from each other.
6. 60% thought agencies fees were excessive.

Source: A recent report by the Association for Consultancy and Engineering (ACE).

Yet the spokesman for ACE said that recruiting through agencies is still the preferred route to fill (or not as the case may be!) their vacancies.
One simple question....ARE THEY MAD OR JUST SIMPLY ALL HYPOCRITICAL?