Sirona Says

The Recruitment Phoenix is starting to rise, but how do you make it fly?

Today's post is a first for my blog - it is written by a guest writer. Over the next few weeks and months I have a number of fantastic guest writers lined up to share with you some great content from the world of recruitment. They are all experts in their particular subject matter, and none of them are particularly shy about that fact, either!
So expect to raise a few eyebrows, draw deep breathes and get your keyboard ready to comment on them!!

The subject of the recession is very close to a recruiters heart - but more importantly their wallet!! Recruiters are rewarded on successfully placing candidates, but if the jobs are not there, then, well the rest is obvious. So where do recruiters go from here?

Let me introduce Bill Boorman....

Some of you in the recruitment industry will already know Bill as a successful recruitment trainer (he is the MD of Bill Boorman Consultancy, supporting recruiters and recruitment companies across Europe) , but lately he is becoming better known for his use of social media, particlarly Twitter (you can follow him @billboorman) as communication tools in the recruitment sphere. He also hosts a Blogtalk radio show and is very active as the owner of his LinkedIn Group - The Good News Group (Recruiters). Last week he presented an interesting topic - Phoenix Recruiting - to the recruitment conference in Dallas, TalentNetLive.

I asked him to share what I felt were some very salient points from his presentation, and they do make for good reading. As I said earlier, you may choose to agree or disagree with Bill's point of view. But one thing is for sure, the Recruitment Phoenix is rising, and recruiters are going to have to change.

Over to you Bill...........

A tweet goes a long way. I have recently been presenting a keynote entitled Phoenix recruiting, the road to recovery, most recently in Dallas, Texas. From London to Lagos, the challenge is the same, as the market recovers the challenge is timing and tactics. Doing the right things at the right times to make the most of the better days.
In terms of timing, recruiters are in a unique position to predict where the market is going next because we are closest to employer confidence and deal with a wide range of companies across most sectors. Based on this, you can split the recession in to 4 key stages:

Stage 1: Temp business increases while perm business stalls. Lots of jobs withdrawn at the final stages as companies get concerned about future business. Happened in the UK from July – October last year. Temp recruiters were asking “What recession” and applying the ostrich strategy.

Stage 2: Temp business drops dramatically with little or no perm activity or opportunity. Recruiters go in to panic mode with no pipeline. What jobs are around have little or no commitment. Discover social media to look busy! From November 08 – March 09 plenty of recruiters exit, become career coaches or become experts in outplacement. The dark days.

Stage 3: Temp numbers slowly increase. (I measure number of companies using) rather than total numbers. Perm placements start to happen with some pipeline appearing. Recruiters dare to think ahead. Better conversions of jobs to placements. Week on week this has slowly happened from March 2009. The key here is not to compare with last year (all time high) but last quarter. Employer confidence is returning with skeleton workforce stretched by new business. Employers dip their toe in through temp & interim to cope then plunge in to full time hires.

Stage 4: Temp numbers reach a high with plenty of perm jobs converting. Business back to respectable level. Happy days again :-) My forecast for this is May 11th 2011!
Time to get the new car brochures out and remember what it was like to eat out and go on holiday

Where are we now and what does it mean?

One City Job Centre that actually cared!

Over the last few months the Job centre has come in for a considerable amount of criticism (me included!) in the way that they are not able to help the millions of job seekers that need real help.

So when I come across (and work) with a Job Centre that is proactive, responsive, helpful and extremely efficient, then it is worth shouting about!.
As you may know I am working with Primark,on a recruitment project.  Their new store in Bristol (which successfully opened yesterday), was a project that started (from a recruitment perspective) back in May. As with all new stores we endeavor to build relationships and work closely with the appropriate local Job Centres. Bristol was no different.

What we found with Bristol Job Centre (the corporate team) was a team of people that not only knew the local market very well (that may sound surprising, but many don't), but also proactively worked with us to make sure we recruited the people that we needed. Again that may sound strange, but too often Job Centres "encourage" you to employ people you don't want, just to reduce their long term unemployed stats!
From day one, Andy Scull and his team, were superb and even actively assisted us and participated in the whole of the 10 day long recruitment event, showing genuine care and a real passion to help us be successful in our recruitment goal.
I met with Andy again at the store opening yesterday, and he was genuinely pleased that we had successfully recruited over 400 new staff from all backgrounds in the Bristol area.

I would like to hope Andy and his team are not a one off in the Job Centre network, but unfortunately in 20 years of working with them across the UK, I have not yet met anyone that has even come close.

So if your company is thinking of moving to Bristol or you are recruiting staff in Bristol, then make sure you contact Andy Scull - he really is worth working with.

If you know of any other equally efficient Job Centres, then please share the information in the comments below............I am not expecting it to be a long list....unfortunately!

OK, so what DO you have to wear to the interview to get a job then?

Is it a sign of the times that 76% of British bosses will make a decision on your suitability for their job,  based on what you are wearing when you sit in front of them at the interview?

Is this really a surprise? I don't think, so as employers have been doing it for years. In candidate driven markets they have had to 'scale down' their expectations and would overlook dress codes (especially when recruiting gen Y'ers). But now the landscape as changed (albeit temporarily), and the hiring companies feel that they have the control back in the interview, which of course they do!

According to this recent Ladders survey of 500 senior bosses from UK companies, over a third of interviewers have cited bad interview appearance as a primary reason for candidate rejection!! Blimey!!

So what should you avoid wearing at an interview?

Ok Men here you go with your no-no's!

1. No tie (52% say fire)
2. No jacket (50% say fire)
3. Chinos (50% say fire)
4. Polo shirts (66% say fire)
5. Jeans (82% say fire)
6. T shirts (88% say fire)
7. Leather jackets (70% say fire)
    

Here you go ladies, don't feel left out...

1. Short skirt (60% say fire)
2. Low necklines (95% say fire)
3. Sports shoes (91% say fire)
4. Dangling jewellery (99% say fire)
5. Bare legs (94% say fire)
6. Big shoulder pads - ala 80's style - (97% of bosses say big shoulder pads are wrong for interview)

I haven't finished yet, as there are more no-no's.....

1. 59% of interviewers, stains and dirty marks will see you out of the interview room immediately
2. 36% of interviewers see co-ordination of colours and styles as an important indication of the candidate’s personality
3. 75% of interviewers will look at whether your clothes are “appropriate for the circumstances”
4. 33% of interviewers said they would consider whether the candidate’s style suited their organisation
5. 95% of interviewers said orange was an inappropriate colour to wear to an interview, with red (84%) and pink (83%) coming in closely behind orange

What have the interviewers got against the 80's? People did get jobs then even with the fashion mistakes you know!!

So after all that, what should you be wearing to your interview?

1. Tailored navy single breasted suit (51% hire)
2. White or blue long sleeved shirt (48% hire)
3. Black leather shoes (56% hire)
4. Black socks (77% hire) (too right here, seen white socks making a comeback again !!)
5. Low key tie (35% hire)
6. Cufflinks (37% hire)
7. and no handkerchief (35% hire) (Come on, who wears a handkerchief in the top pocket any more?)
8. A mid-length black skirt or dress (64% hire) (women, obviously....)
9. Long sleeved and collared shirt or blouse (42% hire)
10. Tights (94% hire)
11. High heels (69% hire)
12. Pearls (56% hire)

Well it seems that we have returned to traditional boring conservative Britain again!! 

The sooner the employment market gets back to normal, and the gen Y'ers can (and maybe the gen Z'ers) can start to break the mold the better! Seriously, do we all have to dress like shop dummies to get a new job?
Well obviously at the moment, while the companies have control, then I am afraid if you want your next job, you better get shopping!!

Nice idea Monster, but a dangerous 'promise' to job seekers!

Yesterday an email arrived from Monster, promoting their new Monster Virtual Jobs Fair later this year on the 1st October. Great idea, and certainly a good way to go to try and innovate the job board market place.

That is until I saw the 'promise' message that it gives you (as a job seeker) when the page is loading......

Is this just Monster stupidity or negligence (or both)?  Access more that 120 job offers? Maybe they thought that people wouldn't watch the 'loading page' ?
There must be a better way to convey that message - maybe they have a trainee copywriter that they recruited from their own job board?

"I will work for a month for FREE" - Recruitment Managers!

Yes it has finally happened, although I thought it would be a while yet before these 'dramatic' measures started!
In conversation with a company this morning, he made me aware that several household name high street retailers have been recently approached by multiple professional level job seekers offering their services for free.
They offer to work for a month for free, to try and prove their worth to the organisation and therefore generate a job out of it. The difference is that these job seekers are professional Corporate Recruitment Managers!!
Has the corporate recruitment sector sectors really got it that bad from an employment perspective, that they need to resort to this?

Should we applaud the 'bravery' and boldness of these individuals, obviously desperate for a new job?

For me it is certainly a creative idea, but not one that I would condone for a job seeker, as it gives off desperation signals, and can put the individuals on a negative footing from the start.

Are you shocked or have you already seen this happening in your workplace?

Innovation or Madness? New Recruitment company, Playfair and Noble, pay 50% of their fee to the successful candidate!

Do you ever get emails from companies looking to 'sell you' their company? Probably like you, I get a fair amount arriving in my inbox each week. So you could probably say that I am a little sceptical (too long in the recruitment world, I am afraid!!)

So it was a really pleasant surprise to see a recruitment platform (from non-recruitment people I might add) that is daring to be different and placing its big kahuna's right there on the middle of the recruitment table to be chewed at!! (Metaphorically of course!)

Now before you think I am over dramatising this a little, let me tell why it is so different - This company actually pays the successful candidate  50% of the fee they get paid from their clients!!  And before any of you recruiters say it won't work (like I did before I spoke to them), they have done their maths, and they believe it will.

Now that I have your attention let me tell you the company - Playfair and Noble - and with a name like that, and the offering they are proposing, it won't surprise you to guess that ethics are a HUGE part of what they stand for.
Basically they have a real issue with recruitment agencies.

Who is actually helping the unemployed find a job?

Every single day in the media there is news of more redundancies - even the BBC have put a job loss tracker on their website - but have you ever taken a minute to think who is actually helping these people find a job. And when I mean helping them get back to work, I don’t mean assistance in filling in a form at the local Job Centre!

What I mean is proper and honest advice from professionals that can actually help and advise these people that have lost their jobs - people that can actually add some real value to helping the unemployed find work.

This post came about from an article of Fistful of Talent that I read earlier today concerning the trend in the USA for people to charge circa $2000 to write CV’s for executives looking for work. This particular post started my cogs going and I then started to think about the UK, and how people are actually going to find work again.

So what are the ways that people can get help in writing a CV, interview skills, using the internet job boards as well as many more areas of job hunting? Where do they go and what chances of success should they expect?

So who is helping the unemployed find a job?

Schools/Colleges career advisors
Suffice to say that, in my opinion, the majority of these people are just way off the mark. I have seen the advice they have given out to a good number of people and quite frankly, it is mostly common sense and a waste of time. They are usually too far detached from the real world and the harsh realities of the working world. There will of course be some very good advisors out there who care passionately about their students finding work, and if you have been exposed to them then you are very lucky.
Chances of them helping you with finding your first job – Nil – zero. (But they can recommend a nice university course that will put you £15k in debt though!)

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?

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.