Sirona Says

Travelodge and their 3 minute recruitment values

This week Travelodge publicly announced (personally I would have kept very quiet about it) their their new 'innovative' method for recruiting Managers is a three minute Q&A  session!! They are forgoing the interview for a three minutes of a candidates time! - what a fantastic way of really understanding your future management.....not!!  Their Resourcing Manager Ruth Sanders justifies this by saying that they,"..will recruit more than 1000 managers by 2020 and it is imperative that we continue to find new and innovative ways to recruit."

What does that say about the values and the employment brand of Travelodge? Remember this is the same company that have been found to promote overbooking and booking cancellation at the last minute. So maybe three minutes is all they need to establish whether the 'managers' have the particular ruthless character to carry out their 'business strategy'?

Or alternatively they are just too tight to do things properly!!!!

Are candidates Blind?

Sorry, rant time again!! It has long been my opinion that candidates fall into two distinct camps, ones that can read and ones that are blind! Let me explain...

You place a well written advert on a web board, targeting a specific candidate both in the title and with the right keyword phrases in the body of the advert. You might even put a phrase such as 'you must have xxxxxx knowledge, you cannot do the role without it' or 'do not even applying if you haven't got xxxxxx skills'. Self explanatory I would imagine! Well evidently there are many blind candidates out there, because they obviously cannot read!!  Why do I say that? Simple answer - because even though they haven't got any of the must have skills they still send in a bloody CV for the role! WHY? They don't have the skills to do the job and they still send a CV??!!

We often use many words to describe these people and the politest I could put here was 'Muppets'. If you are a candidate reading this now, please please please don't send a CV for a job you know you cannot do - it just wastes everybody's time, and it just contributes to our high stress levels and large alcohol intake of an evening (just joking about the stress bit!!)!!

10 'Out of Office' email responses to make you smile

These made me smile, and gave me some ideas for some future 'Out of Office' automatic email responders of my own - bring on my holiday (even if it 5 months away!!!). I particularly like No.6 ......very clever! Thanks to Blackberryreview for these 10 amusing 'Out of Office' response emails:

1. I am currently out of the office at a job interview and will reply to you if I fail to get the position.. Please be prepared for my mood.

2. You are receiving this automatic notification because I am out of the office. If I was in, chances are you wouldn’t have received anything at all.

Employer branding - the new twilight zone?

Your ability to attract and retain the brightest young talent in your industry, ahead of your competitors, is determined by the self proclaimed statement - 'who you are is who you hire'. This is a radical shift of emphasis and culture, but one that does appeal to generation Y'ers. This is a key part of the future business strategy and should be treated as such by senior management, not just the HR department.

We have stepped into the world of the twilight zone, also known as, employer branding!! Whist many companies spend significant money, time and resources on developing their brand and market presence, not all of them focus significant resources on developing their employer brand. I believe the Generation Y'ers and the future Generation Z'ers ( I know I am getting ahead of myself here!) will really focus on the employer brand, what it stands for and the values it represents as an employer of choice. It will differentiate employers if not now, then certainly in the not too distant future. The young people are becoming more choosy and picky when they look at jobs, not just looking at money, perks and bonus. They want to work in organisations that have the right culture, a heartbeat and visionary credentials for the future.

The problem is that because of employment demographics for the next 10 years ( a shrinking workforce!), these young, future employees will have the luxury of being able to make the choices!! So get out of the twilight zone and find your employment brand!

LinkedIn is now on your Blackberry, iPhone or mobile

Well, it does seems like an age, but finally LinkedIn is now available on your Blackberry, iPhone or internet connected phone. So you can now get all your contact access while mobile. All you need to do is go to http://m.linkedin.com on your device and log in.

So if you are an avid LinkedIn user then this could really be a powerful tool for you. When you meet great people, you can connect to them on LinkedIn straight away at the meeting - now that is a great conversation piece!!

Dragons Den losing its appeal?

Are the Dragons losing their appeal? It seems that they are not such an appealing prospect for SME's, with 65% of them saying that they would turn down a deal from one of the five dragons - Duncan Bannatyne, Peter Jones, Deborah Meadon, Theo Paphitis and  newbie James Caan. I have slight problem with the survey here for me though, as it pre-supposes they would actually get on the TV with their product/service in the first place. Of course many good ideas wouldn't even get past the producers, after all they can't all be good for TV can they? - a tad cynical? - what me......... never!!.

This survey was carried out by Kashflow, and to be honest I think it was a bit of a poor headline stealer! All the effort and cost to promote cashflow issues in SME's - surely they could have done better with something that could actually be in 'reality'?  They say  36% of the companies surveyed would accept an offer for the experience of the dragons, 27% would accept to grow their company and 24% would accept for good PR.  But it is a pretty meaningless survey, and as good as the,'how many cars would you buy if you won the lottery?' question we all ask ourselves every week!!

The Bourne Ultimatum delivers management training!

It is not often while watching a box office smash hit film, do you get given a gem of a business statement. Well while watching The Bourne Ultimatum yesterday,starring Matt Damon, I was given just that! And the thing is, it not only applies totally to recruitment, but also across every business out there.

"Plan for the worst, Expect the best"

How true is that?

Alison Wright the departing Chief Marketing Officer at EGG gets free industry CV promotion

Is it me or does the marketing world like to look after their own? I have just had my weekly news email from Marketing Week, and one of the headlines is, "A marketer looking for a new posting is Alison Wright, who is leaving her position as chief marketing officer at Egg". Now obviously it is a shame that Alison has lost / or is leaving her job (likely due to the merger), but Marketing Week don't stop there!!   In the headline content of this email (sent out to 1000's in the marketing industry, probably including many recruiters), Alison Wright has been given a big favour with some 'availability' promotion, and some marketing of her career. Not her fault I know but does it have to this blatant?

Recruitment RPO with a difference - they have UK accents!!

This week I finally met with Easywebrecruitment, a recruitment process outsourcing company (RPO) I have known of for a while, that have been growing very well. They are a UK based company that have proved to be very successful indeed in fixed price recruitment. Their differentiator though is that they actually speak to the candidates, conducting pre-screening, and even arranging interview podacsts and video cv's where needed. They of course provide all the usual range of recruitment RPO services you would expect such as job advertising, candidate sourcing etc but with the refreshing sound of UK accents!!   There must be something in this accent thing - several very large UK companies are just about to ink contracts with Easywebrecruitment for their full range of services. Maybe RPO offshoring is not as appealing after all??

And if you think they take themselves too seriously, check out the picture of Adrian, their Managing Director on the site, who is a sports commentator in his spare time!!

Employee referral schemes on speed!

A couple of client conversations this week further highlighted that companies are still not doing everything they can, to tap into their own internal resources. One of their biggest sales tools are their staff, and many companies, I think, have forgotton this. The employee referral scheme has been around for many years, and some companies are fantastic at it. Many though, have one in place but either haven't got the time or the inclination to maximise its effectiveness, and so it stagnates on the notice boards or the intranet.

A new product I really like the idea of, deals with this problem very well. It has been developed from the company that brought us Jobtonic, and it is an online employee referral scheme replacement for companies. They have two options - ReferitPro (aimed at corporates) and ReferitLite (aimed at SME's).

They provide a fully trackable way of extending out vacancies from an internal employee referral network, out to many levels of referrals externally. The beauty is that the clever software handles all the tracking of fee splits and even manages the payments, to save the companies the hassle. So if your employee referral scheme has become dull and unproductive, take a look at these!