Duncan Elliott's Blog

New Website for Wave!

2011-11-08T16:01:00.000Z

Well the moment is here to announce the new website of the Wave Employment brand, so here it is:

My HR advice and employment law consultancy service is proving very popular with firms in and out of the recruitment sector and I'm getting busier all the time. Please contact me if you feel I can help your business.

Have Salespeople Stopped Listening?

2011-08-02T11:21:00.000+01:00

Had a sales call this morning from someone trying to flog me something. I don't know exactly what it was because he didn't say. He did however say enough for me to know I wasn't interested. He was looking at my website as he spoke to me, and rambled on about 'European this' and 'HR Director that.'

He should have killed the call in the first 30 seconds because I was no prospect for what he was selling but no, he rambled on and on, following a script, striving for an end that would never come. Poor training, and I suspect skewed KPIs too.

I have experienced this more and more in recent years, where salespeople do no research and just do not listen. I was trained in sales when I was 18, and the old adage of 'two ears and one mouth', whilst trite, was absolutely right.

Nowadays people seem obsessed by getting their point across, even if that point is completely irrelevant. I blame the Internet.

AWR - Is the Swedish derogation model workable?

2011-07-28T09:24:00.001+01:00

The more feedback I'm getting from lawyers, HR professionals and clients the more I'm thinking it's not. I don't mean not as in it's not physically possible, I just mean not really viable, especially in the high-street sector. Here's why.

The temp must be employed by the agency and the agency by law has to explain the nature of the AWR, the derogation model itself, and exactly why they are asking the temp to sign the contract. They are encouraged to actually tell the temp that the SDM is specifically designed to 'get around' paying them parity pay.

Then the agency has to agree with the temp the nature of work the temp will agree to do, now this is a thorny one. The overarching priority of any agency will be to avoid paying the temp the four-week 'not on assignment' guaranteed pay. Therefore it will be in the agencies' interests to get the temp to sign a contract basically saying they will accept any work from the agency. This in practice will mean administrators being asked to agree to accept toilet cleaning if it's the only work available.

Next, as a zero-hours contract is illegal under the derogation, but a 'one-hour' one isn't, agencies are likely to sign a temp up on the following basis:

You are an employee of XYZ agency
XYZ agency will only EVER pay you minimum wage
You HAVE to accept any assignment XYZ agency offers you
XYZ agency is liable to pay you £5.93 a week if we can't find you work

Temps will be queueing round the corner to sign up to that. Not.

If the temp does go straight on assignment, the agency will be forced to load the client charge rate to cover the potential four week 'out of work' period. Even if they offer to refund you the money in the hazy future event that the temp is never not on assignment, do you really want thousands of pounds of your money in an employment agencies' bank account? I think not.

Use of the derogation model will mean for hirers:

A two-tier temp workforce will develop
Non-derogation agencies will have the better skilled and qualified temps
Switching to an agency using derogation will alienate your temp workforce
Multiple agencies will ALL have to be on the same system
Ad-hoc bookings will be hard to fill based on the fact that as agencies will be forced to keep temps in work, your favourite regular (but not full-time) temps will be shoved into any assignment and you won't be able to book them
Someone has to pay for the four week 'out of work' period
Being seen to deliberately get round the AWR (which the SDM is) will lead to bad feeling, bad publicity, and is likely to give rise to tribunal claims

So imagine two agencies next to each other on a high street, one using the SDM, one not. Who will have the temps with the better skills, experience and work references? Who is more likely to be able to supply quality staff at short notice?

Many ad-hoc assignments will never result in parity pay because they won't last 12 weeks. In any case there is nothing stopping you ending an assignment after 12 weeks, provided you don't deliberately wait six weeks, then re-engage the same temp. Anti-avoidance fines under the AWR are considerable, at £5,000 a pop, not to mention tribunal awards, so deliberate avoidance is unlawful and commercially unsound.

So my advice would be to think very carefully about using the SDM, the EU is likely to close the loophole anyway in the next year or two. It may look like it saves money at first glance, however I feel it will actually result in the opposite. A partner at a major employment law firm I was talking to called the Swedish Derogation Model "a mandate for the unscrupulous, don't touch it with a barge-pole."

Will The Real Duncan Elliott Please Sit Down?

2011-07-21T11:27:00.002+01:00

There's a song by the band Fleet Foxes called 'Helplessness Blues' that begins: "I was raised up believing I was somehow unique, like a snowflake, distinct among snowflakes, unique in each way you can see." So far so good. It then goes on to say: "And now after some thinking, I'd say I'd rather be, a functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me."

I didn't like my name at first, it made me stand out, and being a kid that was the last thing I wanted. I was the only Duncan at my school, and at college, then I was the only Duncan at my first workplace. By then of course I had got used to being the only one around, and I liked it.

Then when I changed jobs there was another Duncan, and it felt really weird. Like I'd been robbed of my own distinctiveness. All the Marks, Steves, Richards and Davids I'd grown up with presumably never had this feeling, due to there being at least three other Marks, Steves, Richards or Davids in their class at school and God knows how many at work.

But at least he wasn't a Duncan Elliott. That particular shock came later when I was sitting in the doctor's surgery in the small village to which I'd moved. I thought the doctor was giving me some funny looks when I started talking about my hay fever. Then he said, quite casually, "How have you been since they removed your bladder?" I was surprised, mainly because to my certain knowledge (unless I'd been kidnapped by aliens and had the procedure done on the mother-ship, along with the obligatory anal probe and memory-erasing) no such serious operation had ever taken place to remove anything from me, let along something so seemingly vital as my bladder.

Turns out there was another person of exactly the same name as me living in this small community. From that moment I was on my guard, just in case my singular uniqueness of name (or so I had presumed) would be challenged again. Not long after this identity-based trauma I met another Duncan through a colleague, and this new Duncan was nicknamed 'Dunc' or 'Duncs' (and sometimes even 'Funks') by this mates. That wasn't right either because I'm Dunc, Duncs (and sometimes even Funks), not this cheap and nasty pretender to the title.

Then the Internet came and along with it the vain practice of self-googling. To be fair at first I just did it to make sure the web site I was promoting at the time would be found on search engines, but I then of course discovered a whole universe of Duncan Elliotts. One was a black belt in karate and ran a dojo, one a post-war actor in such movies as The Thief Of Paris, one a pretty amazing rock sculptor, there was a professor with a PhD in Computational RAM, the head of some local authority somewhere, a few photographers, a 'health, fitness and wellness professional,' and quite a few dead Duncan Elliotts, who had achieved various small things.

From the Internet's Urban Dictionary I also discovered (which I secretly knew to be true already) that; '"A Duncan" is the person that you fall in love with, early on in life. Your first love. Every new partner is measured by Duncan's standards. Obviously, one rarely ends up with one's Duncan as a life partner. However until one is thoroughly over "Duncan" one cannot move on.' How very sad but also very true. The wake of a Duncan is often littered with broken hearts. Still, we must be multiplying (or at least converging) because believe it or not where I live now there are no fewer than three Duncans in my street, I know because I've met the other two.

I know this sounds like something from that Radio 4 show John Peel (RIP) used to do on Saturday mornings, but I did grow to find it quite reassuring that the global brotherhood of Duncan Elliott is out there, in the world, making and achieving things. Then this very morning I took a call from someone confirming my attendance at an exciting-sounding event in Rome tomorrow. Only they wanted another Duncan Elliott, a different one, not me, some globe-trotting marketing bloke, with a far more exciting life than mine.

But I'm still the only real one, right?

Rebekah Brooks Finally Resigns...can we have some news now please?

2011-07-15T14:37:00.001+01:00

Thank gosh that's over. I wonder if the BBC will now focus on other things happening in the world, I don't know, like 10 million people affected by a flood in Somalia for example. I know the phone hacking thing is serious but come on...
I cannot believe how obsessed with itself the media is, it's an embarrassment.
Nothing to do with recruitment but it's Friday. Have a nice weekend.

How Far Out Of The Box Are We Really Thinking?

2011-07-06T09:06:00.000+01:00

One of the pains of working in rec-to-rec is dealing with the often two-dimensional expectations of clients. Recruitment, whilst preaching anything but to its customers, can often be an incredibly narrow-minded industry when it comes to filling it's own vacancies.

There is often an expectation from clients that any new recruit must want to stay forever, and that anything on their CV that remotely suggests they have any other professional interests must mean they aren't 'committed' to the recruitment industry. But how many people really are committed to it, and how many just fell into it and are actually, albeit in a low-level way, really just looking for an exit?

I've blogged about this before, but most hirers in recruitment know full well that keeping a good person more than a couple of years is a decent result, and growing that person into a position where they can positively influence others is an even better one.

So bearing in mind that very few people stay that long anyway, even the ones who appear to do and say all the right things, why the obsession with them doing it and saying it in the first place? Looking back over the placement history of Wave Recruitment, many people still in post and doing well are actually the apparently 'riskier' hires, not with a cookie-cutter CVs, and not necessarily 'big billers' (and how many genuine stand-alone big billers are really out there?)

So if we can agree that a wide range of skills are the key to success in recruitment, then just because someone's CV doesn't read like a 'standard' recruitment CV, try looking again. They might fit your organisation better than 'same old same old.'

After all, we try to persuade our clients that CVs aren't important, and that they are paying us for a 'consultative' service.

Don't Say Yes When You Really Mean No...

2011-06-24T09:38:00.001+01:00

I'm not sure what people hope to achieve by answering 'yes' to a screening question on a job site when they quite clearly don't have the skills or experience required. Do they perhaps think the recruiter reading it will be so stupid that after reading the CV, will think to themselves, 'oh well, I can't find the experience, but the candidate says they have it so they must have...'?

Won't happen will it? Perhaps it's the delusion arising from growing up in a world where facing up to one's shortcomings is becoming increasingly rare.

Is It Just Me Or Is LinkedIn ******* Anyone Else Off?

2011-05-12T12:03:00.000+01:00

I don't know, maybe I'm confused. I've resisted posting this for a while, but what is it with LinkedIn at the moment? Let me start by saying that LinkedIn is a fairly useful business networking tool, there's no doubt about that, but I reckon problems are creeping in. Here are a few:

1. People randomly 'sharing' news headlines, snippets of stories etc. Could it really be that they're worried their fellow networkers aren't consuming enough media, like they might similarly worry about their kids not eating enough vegetables? Or are they just lonely and concerned that it's been a few minutes since they were at the top of the home page? You decide. Maybe they just don't have enough work to do...

2. 'Liking' things. I like things; I like clever ideas, useful leads, good candidates and clients, a nice lunch, a sunny day, Christmas... but why do people feel the need to 'like' everything on LinkedIn, almost as though if they don't 'like' it, a negative inference will be taken? I've just encountered half a dozen boring and tedious 'updates' with two or three other people 'liking' them. What was there to like? "I'm having a Starbuck's at my desk." "Ooooh, way to go, I LIKE that!" No, you don't. It's weird, stop it.

3. Drawing the line between social / professional networking.

We all have lives, I know I do, but is it wrong not to care about someone's new cat, new car, or what they did at the weekend? Save it for Facebook guys.

---

So maybe one of the problems here is the ability to link Twitter and other social networking tools to LinkedIn, creating a situation where one tweet populates both the social and professional sphere. Maybe that's the way of the future. Is LinkedIn just morphing into Facebook with a professionalised veneer? If it isn't at the moment, look again in a year or so.

In the meantime, consider if people really will benefit from (or even want to see) your updates, next time your pointer hovers over the 'like' button, consider whether you really want to add to the morass of sugary little positive strokes breaking out all over LinkedIn.

I would Like that.

So What Are The Deal Makers/Breakers?

2011-05-06T10:57:00.001+01:00

With seemingly so many recruitment jobs currently being advertised, what's going to motivate someone to move jobs, will it be 'pull' factors such as:

Higher salary
Better commission
More sociable hours
Promotion prospects
More attractive sector
More suitable role (acc man, BD, 360 etc)

Or maybe people are now exercising their right to choose, to move away, with the variety available, to account management, 'internal' recruitment, better culture, different management style.

What are the factors you would consider in your personal recruitment career? It is Push or Pull?

Is Recruitment Full Of Bad Managers?

2011-03-23T16:06:00.000Z

A favourite client and I were chatting this week about why so many people, many of them successful billers, are still leaving the sharp end of recruitment and going into ‘internal’ recruitment or ‘account management’ positions.

His perspective was that recruitment is full of bad managers and bad management practices, and that perpetuates itself through the generations of recruiters to come.

If a boss finds it necessary to micro-manage all their staff then there is something fundamentally wrong with either their management of the company, or their own internal recruitment decisions.

What they are also doing is breeding a new generation of micro-managers to follow them. I’m not saying micro-management is always wrong, like bureaucracies are not always wrong, but humiliating conference calls, endless box-ticking, stone cold sales lists and the like all take consultants away from doing what they need to do to make placements.

If that’s the case in your company no wonder people are leaving.

The Rise of Part-Time Recruitment

2011-02-25T09:10:00.001Z

Well over two years ago I managed to place, in IT recruitment, a working mum, at three days a week, working from home. Now I was pretty pleased with that at the time and she's still in place, billing well. In fact from what I hear she's billing at full-time figures.

So what of this? Well, I've noticed in the candidate-short market we are in, a few more firms are exploring the idea that an experienced, efficient and capable recruiter can run a desk on a part time basis. This of course is going to apply to perms more so than temp or contract, but it's definitely worth considering for employers with gaps to fill and nobody to fill them.

In fact at this very moment I have an excellent part-time role in Bristol which would suit down to the ground someone only wanting to do three days a week. It seems to me that there is a real source of untapped talent out there in the part-time market.

Recruitment (and sales in general) has traditionally been wary of part timers, but I think it's time for employers to really look at why these assumptions are there and decide if perhaps they are more to do with ingrained behaviour and attitude rather than any commercial merit.

Will this trend continue I wonder?

Well we could see this coming..

2011-02-09T09:23:00.000Z

Seems everyone is recruiting at the moment. This is of course great news for the industry as a whole and also for the various 'hangers-on' like yours truly who feed (or is it feed off?) the sector.

Way back in the mists of time (May 2009's Recruiter magazine 'Soapbox') I questioned the long term wisdom of cutting loose the rec-to-rec sector completely as short-termist and uneconomical.

It seems I may have been right. I've lost count of the number of middle-to-senior-managers I've spoken to recently who have over recent years been forced to personally trawl the job boards looking for recruitment candidates when they should have been running their divisions. What did that all cost, not only in terms of their impressive real-terms hourly rate but also the opportunity cost of what they weren't doing at the same time?

One summed it up like this, "I'm in charge of fifteen offices, and I spent a week's 'project' trawling job boards to find bottom-of-the-barrel candidates, whereas had I spent that week helping each branch get five extra temps out that would have increased GP across the business by £5,000 every week the numbers were maintained."

Interesting.

Now it seems that whilst sanity may be returning to a certain extent, we seem to be back in the position we were four or five years ago with a sector not so much expanding, but re-inflating like a sagging balloon, all at the same time, with daily requests coming in to us for "CVs." That by the way is entirely another article...

Anyway, one point I made was to keep suppliers in the loop so they will recognise your business for what it is, post-recession. Many did, but many did not. Guess who are getting the better people from rec-to-recs now?

You Get What You Pay For

2010-11-04T11:18:00.003Z

Recently a company contacted me looking for a recruitment consultant; two years plus experience, good billing figures and a genuine reason for moving. In other words the most difficult thing to find in the present market. They then told me their pay package, which was lower than average, then they told me the maximum fee they were prepared to pay me for a successful introduction, which was a lot lower than average.

A client of mine has an email signature that states; "Quality is remembered long after price is forgotten," which as far as I can tell was originally said by Henry Royce, of Rolls-Royce. The reason I mention this is that as the rec-to-rec market is once again becoming increasingly candidate-driven (especially in those sectors, such as IT, which suffered somewhat less during the recession), issues of both quality and price are paramount at the moment.

This in turn got me thinking of the Common Law of Business Balance, attributed to 19th Century polymath John Ruskin:

It is unwise to pay too much, but it is worse to pay too little.
When you pay too much, you lose a little money, that is all.
When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do.
The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot; it can’t be done.
If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run. And if you do that, you will have enough to pay for something better.

There is a great deal of false economy in business, for various reasons, often to do with short-termism, and people trying to make themselves look good. I used to work with someone who I'm convinced derived actual physical pleasure from getting people to accept the lowest salaries possible. Then of course those people would leave at the earliest opportunity.

So, if you do get what you pay for, pay once for the right thing, not several times for the wrong.

"What I'd Really Like To Do Is...."

2010-07-14T12:46:00.005+01:00

Aaaah, nooo, don't say it...I'm not listening! Recruitment at the moment is a tough business and those who are unable or unwilling to sing for their supper are in my opinion looking at a quick exit from the industry.

The above quote - "What I'd Really Like To Do Is...." - is mostly a precursor to a candidate telling me that they don't want to continue as a billing recruitment consultant and actually want to find a pretend recruitment job where they will still (miraculously) earn a big basic and loads of bonus but just be an 'internal' or 'on-site' recruiter.

Pah! Boring and very short-termist. You leave a billing role and go and work on-site on a contract that a National Sales Team for a big name has won, you might be lucky and stretch it for a year, maybe two, but then some other team from a different company will undercut your firm and bang, out you go, either back to a desk (much disadvantaged) or out of the business. OK I know some people genuinely want to move into an HR career and if that's the case then good luck to you.

But why the desire to move, really? Is it the KPIs getting you down, your manager being forced from above to force you to ring companies you know damn well you can't service. If you are being made to feel like a failure it doesn't mean you are one. Ask yourself the following questions:

Have you ever been told you are a good recruitment consultant?
Have you billed consistently in your market?
Have you ever consistently won business from business development?
Have you successfully gained referrals and leads from both clients and candidates?
Have you personally 'made business happen' that would otherwise not have?

If the answer to those is yes then maybe it's better to look for a job within billing recruitment where you can play to your strengths, be happier, earn good money and not be thrown on the scrap heap before you're 30. I may have a few that would suit you here.

Worth thinking about ain't it?

Go To Jail - Go Directly To Jail, & Take Your CV With You!

2010-03-30T12:53:00.017+01:00

Looks like 29-year-old Rhiannon Mackay will have a new and interesting experience to relate at interviews, after being imprisoned for six months for lying on her CV and fabricating references, therefore committing a crime under the 2006 Fraud Act. It used to be called 'Falsely Obtaining Pecuniary Advantage' but it amounts to the same thing, basically fraud, and therefore theft.

I wonder how many recruitment consultants haven't found a lie, misrepresentation or exaggeration on a CV in the last year? I bet very few, and many reading last weekend's article in the newspapers will have rolled their eyes at how common this practice actually is.

Job-seekers reading that article may also have crept blushingly to their computers and hastily made a few adjustments to their own, rather embellished CV. Prisons, after all, are not nice places, they smell, make you go pale, and you might take up smoking, self-tattooing, and other unpleasant habits.

So what are the reasons for it? I suppose it's the same reason why people illegally download music, text while driving, or fiddle their tax return; they believe they won't get caught. Otherwise known as the Homer Simpson Defence. I reckon Ms Mackay had absolutely no idea she could be imprisoned for her actions.

Of course many current job-seekers came through an education system reeling from repeated government experiments in 'child-centred learning', which in many people's opinion created an entire generation who "knew their rights but not their responsibilities." This has arguably created a system where people really do believe that if getting the job they want is their right, then surely they have a right to break the rules, because after all, it’s their right?

Wrong! Go to jail...go directly to jail...and don't even think about collecting £200.

It may also be that the number of hoops people are being asked to jump through by an increasingly layered and inefficient recruitment process is forcing people to feel they must lie. Is it possible that the claims by many employers that they want to be ‘diverse’ and for people to ‘be themselves’, actually want anything but? There is an amazing amount of pressure on young people (and not so young people) today to tick so many, largely invented, boxes.

Why are two A levels specifically necessary for a job? Why is being a graduate essential, when three-five years of work experience might actually be a better thing than a degree for this particular role? Why must someone have two years experience, when it may turn out to be two years experience of doing it really badly?

If you create (or allow to evolve) a system where lies, excuses and general apathy towards ethics are enabled by those in power, people creep inexorably to the lowest common behavioural denominator.

It could also be a symptom of the "It's not my fault" culture. It used to amaze when I was at University that the academic staff would repeatedly accept the same old excuses from the same old students for not handing in an assignment on time. As I have said before in this blog, there are a finite number of dying grannies available at any one time.

Before this entry begins to sound like a Saturday Mail 'think' piece, being a qualified educator I'm professionally acquainted with the way in which the power, status and 'benefit of the doubt' was shifted to the child, or student in the 1990s. This, many argue, aided the fracturing of the Institutional adult and child relationship, which culminated in (amongst other things) the child-abuse witch-hunts of the previous decade, when Paediatricians had their houses stoned by baying mobs, because the ignorant fools couldn't spell Paediatrician, or Paedophile. In fact, let's face it, they couldn't spell at all.

Maybe the education system should blush about that too. But I digress.

Let me end with a comment on the pressure perhaps felt by many aspirational people growing up on a diet of shows like The Apprentice. The Apprentice may once have been a fresh idea. However I now hope that Alan ‘Baron’ Sugar is cringing with embarrassment at presiding over generational example-setting from what amounts to (with very few exceptions) a collection of verbose, self-aggrandising people, whose own CVs, if found to contain interesting departures from the truth, could land them, very publicly, behind bars.

Perhaps 'SrAlan' needs a new phrase; not 'you're fired', but 'you're nicked!'

Is this the best Recruitment Opportunity so far in 2010?

2010-03-19T11:10:00.001Z

I said I wouldn't post job ads in my blog, but have a read of this and tell me you aren't interested:

Are you carefully considering moving jobs or sectors in the Recruitment industry? If you feel that company culture, career aspirations and earning potential are your key motivators then read on. If you further feel that you have a lot of drive, professionalism and emotional intelligence which perhaps is being under-utilised in your present company than definitely read on!

Our client has an exceptional opportunity in Bristol for just the right person. Their approach to recruitment is as a full-service recruitment and HR services organisation, with various successful brands to their name, yet still retaining their individuality and independence. They are not driven by KPIs and they manage people according to how the people want to be managed.

They are seeking to appoint bright, ambitious individuals during the growth phase of their careers. Sector experience is unimportant provided you can demonstrate success to date, valid judgements on your own career so far, and a willingness to learn.

Our client offers truly exceptional one-to-one coaching and training with an industry-leading practitioner, as well as a managed career plan which does not use a 'one size fits all' scenario. Our client's emphasis is ensuring candidates work in the sector that best suits them and encourages people to explore different sectors by ensuring people make the right choices about sector based on what it really is rather than the culture of companies within in (if that makes sense).

Benefits include:

• Basic to £35,000
• Excellent commission structure (topping out at 50%!) Large OTEs happen
• Structured training and career development
• Home work stations and flexible attitude
• Relocation packages available
• Wonderful incentives (e.g. holidays) to be won
• Mature atmosphere in one of the thought-leaders of the recruitment industry

Whatever stage you are in your career this firm will enhance your skills and make you better at what you do, thereby enjoying work more and earning more money! For a confidential discussion contact me now.

NB. The same is available in Reading and M4 corridor too.

Get Me The Best Recruitment Job In Bristol!

2010-03-17T15:23:00.006Z

An innovative client briefing this week raised some interesting points for me. The client was doing exactly the right thing, inviting trusted suppliers to share some of their recruitment philosophy and methods, to better attract top people.

Several interesting points resonated with me, the main one being, why do people even work in this business? It relates to some extent to a previous blog post I made here about Recruiters who don't want to be in Recruitment.

At the meeting the client said they want the kind of people who are moving towards something rather than moving away from it - wise words. Thinking about the many candidates I've interviewed in rec-to-rec there is a fundamental difference between the 'moving towards' mindset and the 'moving away from.' Guess which ones get the best jobs?

This moves me on to sector. I'm close to believing that 'sector' ain't about what it seems to be. If I said 'IT Recruitment' just as many people would visualise an aggressive sales floor, big ties, long hours and 'shouty' management than would visualise an IT contractor working in C++. How many assumptions that we make about sector are driven by our cultural perceptions of the majority of firms within it?

From that argument one could argue that all successful recruitment consultants should seek out a firm the the right culture in any sector. Therefore think! Anyone with a brain can learn a new sector in relatively quick time, provided the culture they are in encourages that learning to take place in a supportive environment.

OK so I know there are some very different mindsets and suitability for a public practice accountancy brief at £80k over a fork-lift driver at £7.50ph. But think about similar sectors, most specialist recruitment firms servicing middle or senior technical or management types can offer a pretty similar career, just a vastly different culture from firm to firm.

I will relish the next credible candidate that approaches me, regardless of sector, saying 'get me the best recruitment job in Bristol!'

Bring it on.

Where Have All The Recruitment Consultants Gone?

2010-03-09T13:36:00.002Z

OK so I'm pleased that almost all firms are back on a recruitment drive and the vacancy market (from a rec-to-rec perspective) is buoyant. What I'm not so pleased about is the apparent lack of good quality people out there! Whilst demand seems fairly high for management posts I think we are really only now seeing quite how many people at the grass roots level have in fact left the business - in most cases probably never to return.

A very long in the tooth rec-to-rec professional of my acquaintance recently told me they haven't seen such a skills gap in 20 years.

This leaves firms with a dilemma. Do you simply cope with what you currently have till the right person comes along, putting pressure on existing teams and managers? Do you lower your standards and accept that the creme you want isn't out there so second best is OK? Or thirdly do you change your policy, take in raw trainees and accept the time lag in performance and development, not to mention the cost and attrition that this brings?

Not an easy one. I suspect the answer is a little bit of all three, depending on where you sit in the marketplace. More on this to follow.

Your Company Will Benefit Me, How..?

2010-02-19T12:27:00.003Z

I've had a glut of graduate and trainee applications this week for a few posts, and most if not all the covering letters start in the same way. It's always along the lines of; "...working for your company would be very beneficial for me and my help me gain experience for future career blah blah blah.

Whatever happened to trying to convince a future employer that YOU would be good for THEM rather than the other way round? In my opinion too many graduates see their first job as something that will be 'done to' them almost as an extension of university, rather than somewhere where they actually have to add some value.

The other thing is that being a graduate ain't what it used to be! With the playing field so level now that over 50% of school leavers go onto university some of my clients have specifically asked for non-graduates, on the basis that they will have 3-4 years more work experience and be more used to the workspace's norms and values, as well as targets.

So do I have something against graduates? Of course not, I'm one myself, but rest assured your covering letter will stand out more if you start talking about what you can do for your new employer rather than the other way round.

It's Official - The Recession Is Over!

2010-01-26T09:39:00.002Z

Or is it? According to the BBC this morning the UK economy has come out of recession, after figures showed the economy had grown by 0.1% in the last three months of 2009. The economy had previously contracted for six consecutive quarters - the longest period since quarterly figures were first recorded in 1955. Amongst the recent recovery signs were last week when UK unemployment fell for the first time in 18 months!

So are we in the recruitment industry right to be optimistic? It seems we are.

Since early January (if you don't count the snowy week) a steady trickle of new vacancies has turned into something of a flow, with a new batch of candidates applying too. This has got to be good news. The 'feel' of the market seems different too, this time last year many of my clients could be seen hunkering down with little plan to recruit in 2009, or more likely, plans to downsize. I'm therefore surprised at quite how successful January has been, especially as Recruitment is a lagging indicator of the economic climate, with R2R being a lagging-lagging indicator, if you see what I mean.

So whilst we are not out of the woods yet, it seems those who made it through, provided they hold their nerve, are going to make it.

In The Olden Days...

2009-12-02T14:24:00.002Z

It occurred to me recently that there's a modern version of the question I used to ask my parents when I was little; 'Mum, Dad, what was it like in the olden days before television?' My little boy, some time soon, is going to ask me the same question about the Internet isn't he? I will then of course feel ancient.

I will then be forced to explain that 'in the olden days' if one wanted to find out an obscure fact, one consulted an encyclopaedia, which were big, heavy alphabetically sorted books, that usually came in sets of 12, that were, at best, snapshots in time. Salesmen came round knocking on your door offering easy payment plans for Encyclopaedia Britannica. Even the name suggests a bygone era of lost Empire...but I digress.

I will of course insist on explaining to him that we only had three TV channels, that my brother and I used to watch snooker in black and white (and get the balls right), and that if we wanted to contact our mates we got on our bikes and pedalled to their houses. I will then probably say something about kids today not knowing they're born, to which he will undoubtedly reply that he never asked to be.

Enough of that, and why this nostalgic post I hear you ask? Well, I was musing on the world of work and business over a glass of something with my octogenarian uncle-in-law the other day, and he told me an interesting thing. The uncle had had a very successful career in the UK and abroad as both a Buyer (now known of course as Procurement Executive) and as a Salesman (now known as Business Development Manager) of expensive shoes. That isn't the interesting bit.

Despite having a varied career for several different firms he told me he had never used a CV, never actually applied for a single job, and had never had a job interview in his life! Every job he ever had, including his first opportunity in the business, came through his father or friends of his father, and later friends of his. In his words, the 'old pals' network. He was very successful at his work and I did wonder if the other poor applicants (had any of the roles actually been advertised) from less well-connected backgrounds might have been more suitable? We will never know.

How times have changed. In these days of equal opportunities, endless measurement, targets and relentless self promotion through networking, and more recently, Social Networking, the Old Pals network is probably the strict preserve of the upper echelons of commerce, law and government, and maybe that's a good thing really, especially if you're the wrong side of the doors of White's Club. As most of us nowadays are.

He did ask me some seemingly basic questions about what I do from day to day, and he was both fascinated and mildly alarmed at the constant let-downs, excuses, broken promises and general human egregiousness that we in Recruitment have to put up with on a daily basis.

But then, we do have HD TV and the Internet. Must go and check Twitter...

Are Recruiters All Optimists?

2009-11-13T14:32:00.004Z

Sales, and recruitment in particular, is populated by optimists. In fact in an interview, if you said something like, ‘to be honest I’m actually quite cynical and pessimistic about people…’ you probably wouldn’t get the job.

But surely being an effective recruiter is all about being able to spot the forgeries?

In rec-to-rec, our clients are faced with a continuous and familiar problem; because we all work in recruitment, we all feel the imperative to ‘fill the job’, and whether you like it or not it can influence your judgement when recruiting for your own company.

In the candidate-driven market of the middle bit of this decade many managers within recruitment firms cheerfully glossed over an intuitive ‘I’m not sure…’ because they needed a bum on a seat and it was more optimistic to look the other way and give the candidate the benefit of the doubt.

Not so nowadays. Particularly in the SME sector, where I mainly operate, many firms have overhauled thoroughly their selection, interview and assessment processes, in a way that candidates would not have put up with pre-recession.

The result has been varied. Some managers have undoubtedly thrown the baby out with the bathwater, mindful of the New Rules and over-obsessing about a decision a candidate made in their career that made them uncomfortable. Or passing up a perfectly good candidate because of a prejudice of some kind.

Others have got the balance between scepticism and optimism about right, and some, it must be said, still just say, ‘send me lots of CVs, if they were trained by XYZ they must be good.’

So where does that leave candidates? My advice is simple, don’t apply for a role that you don’t really want, or don’t have the skills or experience for. If you do, it will either be spotted by the savvy firms and you won’t get the job, or it will be overlooked by the ‘optimistic’ ones and you’ll not get past probation.

Bad either way really, and I’m not even a pessimist.

Winter Market Update 2.0

2009-11-06T13:53:00.004Z

If the first half of 2009 was a half of downsizing, and the following half was one of consolidation, it looks to me that the outlook for 2010 is, in the main, positive. As we see 2009 drawing to a close it's encouraging to see so many firms putting into place positive and realistic plans for 2010.

Even in the sectors worst hit such as Commercial, most firms are optimistic about the future and that shows in the number of vacancies being released. There has been a steady increase in that since June. It's still the usual suspects at the top of the heap however, IT, Healthcare, Industrial, certain Construction sectors, with Accountancy and Finance growing too, which is great news.

Since the last time I wrote, this blog has featured on a few mainstream news outlets and plans are afoot for more. Over 1100 individuals have now visited since I started in the summer. Some may have even stopped to read it. The blog has also been entered in the UK recruiter 'recruitment blogs' competition too, which I'm delighted about.

There is still a reluctance in many quarters from people running a steady desk to go out looking (and why would they? You might say) however early signs show that many more interesting roles will be released in Q1 of 2010 so that is likely to entice more successful candidates looking for a career move.

Some bad habits of the Recruitment market are still there of course, many CVs are still appalling, many hirers are too old-fashioned about a candidate's motivation and still project too many assumptions on them about the future. I have posted comments on these issues in the last so please scroll down and have a look at older material if you like.

Enjoy the run-up to Christmas.

But will the job be too small for them..?

2009-10-16T16:47:00.004+01:00

Aah, what a question. I've placed a few middle and senior management candidates recently who for reasons of their own are downsizing roles and looking for jobs at a 'lower level' than they previously held.

You know the inevitable questions; will the job be too small for them, will they leave as soon as something else comes up, are they burned out, are they just looking at this out of desperation? The answer could be yes to any and all of the above.

But it could be no too. Successful careers don't always have to go up the ego-ladder all the time. After all, who would want to be Head of Deck-Chair Re-Arrangement on The Titanic when there are good jobs as Assistant Head Deck-Chair Re-Arranger on other, more successful cruise liners? Who indeed.

The question also arises that surely it's better to recruit the top talent and manage and reward it properly to make damn sure it won't leave, rather than recruiting second (or third) best on the basis that it's less likely to go? Sounds crazy in such black and white terms but firms do it all the time. They refuse to take on someone who can clearly do the job (but suspect they may not really want to) in favour of someone who has never done it but claims they can (and you know they want it as it's a 'bigger' role).

It comes down to two questions; CAN they do it, and WILL they do it? The trouble is, judging them purely on the fact that the role they have applied for is a step down is no basis for answering the second question.

I know I'm being a bit harsh here, Recruitment has its share of middle-management types who secretly want to swan around with their laptops from branch to branch achieving nothing but massaging their own egos. But it's pretty easy to spot them, and if every ex-manager looking for a new challenge scares and upsets you, you're in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Will the job be too small for them? Maybe it's you who needs to think bigger.

More on (moron) CVs..

2009-10-09T12:49:00.005+01:00

"A good CV should be like a meticulously planned sales document", so says Mike Jones here, and adds "The first thing to understand about the job market is that it is a market. Within it there are buyers and sellers, and the laws of supply and demand are as valid here as anywhere else."

Mike is right.

I know I've mentioned it before on this blog, but in Recruitment, especially in Recruitment, the quality your CV really does matter. Not only for the obvious reasons, but also the fact that if a Recruitment person (of all people) creates a bad CV, then surely it's a statement of their overall intelligence that they can't even get that bit right.

Katrina Collier's site has some good tips on avoiding common mistakes.

Unsurprisingly, the well-constructed CV tends also to include pertinent information, achievements, billing figures and all the things an employer needs to know to answer the question, "Can this person fill my need?"

So come on, let's turn over a new leaf and take a fresh look at your CV, you are, after all, Consultants.