Sirona Says

How do you successfully extract people from 'happy jobs' to fill your role?

This week I have had three particular conversations with people I know well that have all ended with me (for once) being lost for an immediate answer to their problem!  The cause for my dilemma has been the current employment landscape!!

All three conversations have been along the same lines, so let me para-phrase the scenario:

Large blue chip company looking to recruit senior sales and marketing roles. They are well established, have a solid financial track record, have a good reputation and are paying good salaries. They do have high standards (as you would expect) but not unrealistic, and there is proven career progression.
These companies have been trying to recruit these roles for several months, and have even got to offer stages (all of them), but were all counter offered, and subsequently lost their candidates.

The question I was asked was this, "What do we have to do to find great people that actually want our jobs, and extract them from their current employers?"

Now as you might expect, I have covered many things with them in trying to help them understand why they are having problems such as; salary, package, location, spec, profile, company profile, brand, career, training, development, employment brand, understanding candidate motivation, approach of the recruitment agencies, which agencies they use, products they are selling, travel, market perception etc etc

I would just like to say that they are all being realistic and prepared to be flexible where they can, but there does come a point where you draw the line!
The impression that these people have been left with, is that yes there are many candidates 'looking for a job', but when it comes to the crunch they won't make the ultimate commitment and leave, citing the economy and 'maybe in six months time' as reasons.

WHY?

This is where you come in!
A question for all you recruiters or candidates out there - how do companies like the ones above entice people away from a good job? What can they do to make them take the final step and actually leave their current company?
I would really like to hear your ideas?

Facebook is used to recruit a UK World Champion

Facebook, is now being used more widely as a recruitment tool. A recent success story shows just how effective Facebook can actually be for recruitment.

The UK is not renowned for its huge numbers of bobsledder's, so when recruiting for new team members, some creativity was needed, highlighting  the skills needed rather than the experience - please take note employers!
The No 1 women's bobsleigh driver Nicola Minichello, was looking for answers. She knew that her team needed boosting with new talent to challenge for medals, but since it was not forthcoming, she started her own talent search......on Facebook.

From her initial search, she shortlisted twenty candidates, that she felt met her criteria  then she got emailing. Following, some communications and subsequent trials, they found an absolute star, in the name of Edinburgh long jumper Gillian Cooke. She was so good that she went straight into the No 1 team.

After a series of top 3 finishes in various World Cup races, they capped it all with a Gold Medal, by winning the recent Bobsleigh World Championships in Lake Placid in New York.

So if anyone says to you that you can't use Facebook, to successfully find very specific skills, then let this story be a great example of how good Facebook can be as a recruiting tool. 

Are Job Seekers wasting their time with Recruitment Agencies?

Every day now there are seemingly endless amounts of people ending up in the queues at the Job Centres. Even today, the Government are trying to help the middle classes who have found themselves out of work in this recession, with special initiatives to help them find work.

So, as someone who has spent their career in the recruitment sector, I find myself asking questions of the industry and whether there should be some evolution in the way that job seekers are advised to find a job. 

I have recently questioned if it is right, to pay a career consultant to help find a job, which prompted some interesting discussion.

Today, I want to focus on recruitment agencies - are they a waste of time for job seekers?

Are Job Seekers now having to deal with Interviewers that have returned to the Dark Side?

Just like Star Wars has been enjoying a resurgence of popularity with the good that is, Luke Sywalker fighting the evil that is, Darth Vadar, it seems like the Evil has returned to the job market!

There is one simple reason why this is happening - the global credit crunch.
The unfortunate effect of the recession is that many more people are looking for, and applying for jobs. And this has given the interviewers too much choice!

So why is this a problem?

Many interviewers - and I include both corporates and recruitment agencies in this - don't possess a fantastic array of interviewing skills. They have probably taught themselves through experience, and it is unlikely that they will have had much training at all. For approximately 12 months prior to the start of the credit crunch, these interviewers were really 'trying hard' to up their game when interviewing new candidates - they had to as there were very limited job seekers out there. So we saw them working hard at learning new skills like competency interviewing, taking advice from colleagues and, dare I say it, actually doubting whether they had the skills to be able to interview in the first place! Then came the credit crunch......

Now there is more choice and some ugly habits have returned!

Fixed Fee Recruitment RPO providers - shouldn't they actually be called recruiting FARM's?

 

As part of a large recruitment audit I am currently working on, I have had cause to look at the fixed fee recruitment providers, such as Webrecruit, Networx, Net-Recruit, Websearch and EasyWebRecruitment.

The first thing to try and do was to understand what they are actually called and what they do. They are not really full RPO (recruitment process outsourcing) companies, although they have the capacity to be. They are not true recruitment agencies, but again they do some of the process.
They all charge a fixed fee for a recruitment management service, whether that be job board advertising, CV database searches or response management.

So, I have created a description for them that I feel is both appropriate and effective as a description of what they do - recruiting FARM's.
F - Fixed fee
A - Advertising jobs
R - Resourcing vacancies
M - Management of the process

I actually think that it describes what they do very well.

What do you think? Does it suit their service? Can you come up with a better one?

Does Your Business need a Recruitment Pinch Hitter now?

I am sure that many of you are not fans of Baseball, so first let me explain what a pinch hitter actually is:

They are simply defined as a substitute for another person, especially in an emergency or a moment of need.  This expression comes from baseball, where it is used for a player substituting for another at bat at a critical point or in a tight situation.

So to put into a business context, it would be someone with specialist skills being called upon to go into a company and solve specific needs of that company, for problems or issues they are experiencing.

Yes it's not brilliant out there, but it's NOT THAT BAD

We all know the state of the economy, it is something that everyday the media seem to taking great pleasure in telling us because they think people want to hear about it!
But what is more significant, is that all this bad news and the continual overkill of doom and gloom  (in my opinion, anyway) that comes out of the British Chamber of Commerce is ever-shrinking the confidence of recruitment and employment in UK businesses.

But let me be clear here, yes there is alot of bad news out there, but it is not effecting every company in the same way, as many are still recruiting staff at all levels. There are still big recruitment problems out there for some companies, as the quality and availability of candidates is becoming very limited.

A large retailer I spoke to last week, told me that their usage of recruitment agencies has actually increased since the credit crunch took hold!! Is that so surprising?
They now receive ten times more CV's, and the quality has dropped dramatically, so for this retailer to get to speak to the skilled individuals they need in their business, they are needing to use agencies to source them.

Now these results may surprise all you hardened online recruiters!

As part of a project to look at and examine the recruitment process for a large employer, we commissioned an external market research campaign based around employer brand. The survey was targeted at 1000 16-35 year olds in the UK, and was conducted by one of the UK market leaders in consumer research.

One of the questions, has provided some very interesting - and surprising - insights into how this age group looks for a new job.
When asked what medium they would use to find a job (from a list of about 12 choices) these were the top answers:

1. Job Centres - 54%
2. Online Job Boards - 47%
3. Local Newspapers - 43%
4. Company Websites (Direct) - 38%
5. Word of Mouth - 33%
6. Recruitment Agency - 32%

Has that surprised you, because I was not expecting the top answer to be the job centres! But should it be a real surprise? Maybe we do underestimate the role they can play in recruiting staff?

The only problem I have with them is the calibre (most of the time) of staff, that are in charge of the recruiting interface with clients. They usually have no experience of recruiting , and are there just to -seemingly - process numbers to interviews, whether they are right or wrong. Because of  the threat of having benefits cut, many job seekers from job centres are only interested in attending interviews to maintain benefits.

I guess that's why so many companies have had bad experiences with job centres previously. BUT is it time to revisit them and try again? Over half the survey sample of 16-35 years would go to the job centre to look for jobs - maybe it is time to reconsider?

The other surprise, is the number of people that would go direct to company websites to look for a job. This must definitely be a change in the marketplace, as more people have become more web savvy, and (maybe) less trusting of recruitment agencies?
It does highlight the need for companies to put some work into their websites, and to start to make them functional and appealing to job seekers - a good one that has just launched is the new Sky website.

So overall, job seekers between the ages of 16-35, use a mix of sources to find a job. Is that really so strange? I guess not, but the mix certainly is!!

What would you do with a career break?

Don't you just love it when a company does something different and innovative? Well, while spending last week in Dublin with a client, I came across this piece of innovation from an Irish Bank.

Permanent TSB has come up with the innovative (and brave) move of offering paid career breaks to their staff. Now, there may well have been other companies doing this, but have they done it in a recession? No, the likelihood is that they would have simply gone for redundancies instead.
Obviously the intention of Permanent TSB is to cut spending while keeping skilled workers on standby, rather than lose all that well gained experience. And career breaks are more cost effective than redundancy:
Employees will be given half their salary up to 20,000euros to take a two year break, or 35,000euros to take a three year break. And it is open to staff of all ages and levels!

There will obviously be certain conditions imposed, and of course it won't suit everyone, but to have a career break with a guarantee of a job at the end of it is a step forward for those that are in need of a break.

Then the question comes......what would YOU do if you had a career break?

Mine is a simple one (once the children are self succient) - I would fly to Canada with my wife, buy a motorhome, and spend the time working my way down through many of the US states until we run out of land (ie the Keys)!

What would you do with a career break? (Please share your idea in the comments.)

Does your body language give you away? - Do you Steeple, Head Cock or Preen when you meet people?

A post I wrote last year on the top 10 handshakes, created a huge amount of interest (and still does via Google), so  when I came across these video's on the Times Online website, I thought it would be worth mentioning, because for recruiters this subject should be second nature - body language.

Do you know what Steepling, Posture Superiority, Feet pointing, Preening, Deception, Posture Congruence and Powerplay have to do with recruitment?
Well they are all forms of body language that we all use every single day in our jobs -some rightly and some very wrongly!

So, if you want to know when someone is lying to you, then I suggest you watch the first video - it is essential for any recruiter (am I saying that candidates lie?????).

The second video is on body language while giving a presentation - again something that recruiters should be adept at, that is if they are client facing.

The third video deals with the most famous recruiter trait (well it is for some of the more arrogant idiots in our industry anyway) - exerting power and control over a subordinate (colleague or interviewee). So if you want to avoid coming across as a complete nobhead in the future, then take note.

Interview body language is next - and is an absolute definite must to view. As recruiters it is something we are doing all the time, but are you giving the wrong signals? Watch and check if you are in this fourth video.

The final video is very interesting, and deals with the body language when trying to negotiate a promotion - we have all been in that meeting at some time!!

Overall, this makes a nice set of video's to watch - not too long, but useful in its content. Just ignore the blatant advertising for Canada (what's wrong with the UK??) at the beginning (sorry you Canadian readers, nothing personal!).

Talent Management and free beans for a year!!

If someone mentions the product, baked beans, to you, which brand is synonymous with them? Well for me there is only one brand - Heinz. The same goes for soup, Heinz again!
But even with two such powerful brands (and others of course), the company were starting to lose market share, and even confidence in their own products - they didn't even serve them in their own canteen!

So, a new CEO was ordered  - the third in four years! So how did the new one, Dave Woodward, turn around the performance?
He realised that the future of the company lay in the strength of its talented employees. He encouraged employee involvement, engagement and empowerment - after all the employees should know their product and have their own great ideas and opinions, shouldn't they?
He went about the task like a steam train, firstly replacing ten of his twelve senior managers within four months, and put in place new talented managers who believed in his vision that success can be driven by internal talent - but only if they are correctly managed and motivated! Some of the other interesting changes he made were:

• At 8am every Monday morning, his most senior managers would attend a tasting session to tase every single new product.
• Every month, there would be meetings for all the 2300 - by video if needed. He used texting as the medium to collect questions to be asked at these meetings.
• He set up a group of 42 leaders who had to work in the factories, visit the retailers, talk to in store customers and even spend time in consumers homes!! He wanted them to get closer to their product and their customers.
• Introduced a Dragons Den initiative to help staff present their new ideas. Successful new products have been produced because of this. Rewards for this? Well one was a years free supply of beans!!

His belief in his staff and the initiatives he put in place worked because now two years later, Heinz have regained their No 1 position in their respective markets

I believe many companies should show more belief to their existing employees. Given the encouragement and involvement, they may well find that many more of their staff join internal talent management programmes. It will also improve staff retention, help further develop an employment brand and will help improve staff recruitment.
Companies don't always have to go externally to find the talent they need. They may just have to look a little harder - and maybe therein lies the answer. Is talent spotting the real issue?