Recruitment

The UK recruitment industry is one of the most highly competitive in the business arena. The fast-paced nature and lucrative salaries on offer make jobs in this sector particular attractive for the right sort of ambitious, driven individuals. The UK’s recruitment industry annual turnover is approximately £23 billion and its growth shows no signs of slowing. There are always new areas of employment fueling this growth, most recently examples of which are Scientific recruitment and Laboratory Recruitment.

The recruitment industry serves all business sectors, forming strong partnership with organisations from sole traders to multinationals. These partnerships can be incredibly lucrative, so naturally recruitment agencies will pursue exclusive deals with as many companies as possible.

Recruitment Agencies act as a filtering service, attracting candidates and matching them to jobs in client companies on a temporary or permanent basis. The Consultants' job is the vital link between candidates and clients and they operate in almost all sectors of the employment market. There are a number of publicly quoted companies and firms that operate multi-nationally as well as thousands of small independent ones, such is the attractiveness of the rewards on offer.

The role of the recruitment consultant is diverse, demanding and very fast paced and requires a certain type of person to succeed. Recruitment Consultants often come from a sales background however the ‘hard sell’ approach is not applicable in recruitment. Consultants must demonstrate excellent relationship building skills and must be able to just the character and credentials of an applicant in relation to the company and position they are applying for. Putting forward a totally unsuitable client reflects very badly on the agency in question.

The role itself involves attracting recruiting business from companies using sales, business development and marketing techniques. This includes meeting with clients on a regular basis in order to establish strong working relationships, keeping in touch over the telephone and also in writing. It is essential that consultants know about the companies they are recruiting for - what they do, how they operate and the general culture or atmosphere of the workplace.

Consultants are also required to attract candidates by drafting advertising copy and creating maximum exposure for their job adverts using a wide range of media. Screening candidates thoroughly by meeting them face-to-face and testing their interview skilld is incredibly important, as it helps in selecting suitable candidates to put forward to client companies. Recruitment consultants are also involved in negotiating pay and salary rates and finalising arrangements between client and candidate.

Salaries for Recruitment Consultants vary from one company to the next but it is usual for recruitment businesses to pay Recruitment Consultants a basic salary plus performance-related bonus or commission. For those who are prepared work hard and are good at their job the rewards can be substantial.

The recruitment industry generally employs candidates from various educational backgrounds and there is a great future for those with the drive and determination to succeed. It is generally said that personality and attitude is more important than educational achievements when it comes to recruitment. There is, however, a lot of copy writing involved in the role of a Recruitment Consultant so a good grasp of the English language is essential.

Some employers may have dedicated career development programmes for graduates or those wishing to progress quickly.

There are two main types of recruitment websites: job boards and CV databases. Essentially they are the same thing catering for different ends of the job market. Job boards allow companies to post job vacancies in order to attract suitable applicants. CV databases however, allow candidates to upload their CV so that recruiting companies can identify suitable candidates for their vacancies.

Of course some recruitment websites have evolved into all encompassing recruitment entities, capturing candidate details and then pooling them in online client areas.

Recruitment websites are very helpful in finding candidates when they are actively looking for work, but they don’t generally do well in attracting "passive" candidates who might only find out about an attractive position and respond favorably, if it is presented to them using other means. In addition to this, some candidates who are actively looking for a new job are hesitant to put their CVs online due to the risk of colleagues and company management coming across them.

Headhunters are usually only employed when others methods of recruitment have not yielded the desired results. If in-house recruitment efforts or even recruiting through an agency has failed to deliver the right candidates, a company may choose to seek out suitable employees using more aggressive tactics.

Headhunters often use advanced, under-hand techniques, such as posing as clients in order to ascertain employee details, and they may be so bold as to visit candidate offices. Another tactic employed by headhunters is the purchasing of expensive lists of names and job titles, but most will generate their own lists over time rather than go down this route. Headhunters perform many of the same tasks as a regular Recruitment Consultant eg. prepping a candidate for interview, negotiating salaries and conducting closure to the search. Headhunters can often be seen at trade shows and other meetings nationally or even internationally as there’s a good chance or them running into managers who are hiring, or alternatively relevant candidates.

Headhunters are typically small operations that make high margins on candidate placements (sometimes more than 30% of the candidate’s annual compensation). Due to their higher costs, headhunters are usually employed to fill senior management and executive level roles, or to find very specialized individuals.

I've been having a bit of a think about Interview processes recently, perhaps because i've been conducting interviews myself but also because i haven't been in my current job very long so it wasn't long ago that i was attending them myself. The thing that has come to my attention is that very few companies focus on the personality aspects of potential employees. It seems almost obligatory these days to include a psychometric test in your interview process - and don't get me wrong, they do work - but the most common reason I hear for employees i've placed leaving their new job within the frist 3 months is that they didn't like the working environment, didn't feel like they fitted in, nothing in common with their colleagues etc. This is obviously pretty costly for the company involved because essentially they have to go through the whole recruitment process twice.

This got me thinking......Obviously it's very important that the successful candidate shows aptitude, ability, intelligence etc. but I'm beginning to think that it's equally important that recruiting companies also focus on the personality on their new recruit so they don't end up in the situation mentioned above. Now, personality is something very difficult to quantify and most people will naturally project the image of themselves that they feel the employer wants to see (don't worry, we've all done it), so how can we find out the true personality? Answers on a postcard please.

I have a couple of ideas, both of which are pretty simple. The first one involves holding more informal interviews at the second stage - ask people to come along in their casual clothes and have a chat. You could even take them to the pub for a drink with a few other people from the office. I know this sounds a bit extreme but part of the reason people act the way they do in an interview is because that's what's expected of them. Take candidates out of the formal dress, environment and situation, and you're much more likely to see a more realistic representation of who that person is.

The second idea is not an original one - it involves getting people into the office for a couple of days. Give them some tasks to do on their own and in a group to see how they interact. By the second day they should have familiarised themselves with their colleagues and the working environment enough for you to see how they would fit in. It should also give the candidate enough of an idea of whether or not they want to work for you.

We all know that at some point we will need to recruit employees, yet all too often we are reacting to someone leaving, have to move quick, and consequently have a weak structure in place. This is a bad way to do things and it often leaves us with a sub-standard candidate while the better fish pass us by.We therefore should be planning to recruit permanently - you could work with your scientific recruitment consultancy during quieter periods to put a strategy in place, thereby avoiding the hasty recruitment decisions that can lead to mistakes as a result of recruitment knee-jerking.

Of course, in these days of on-line job boards and virtual recruitment agencies, it could be argued that there is no longer a need for a traditional recruitment agency at all. While the internet has automated many of the processes involved in sourcing candidates, it has also caused problems as well. By enabling candidates to post their CV on numerous databases simultaneously, the net is causing CV overload, and the possibility of the same CV arriving on a recruiting manager's desk twice is greatly increased.

The HR manager ideally wants a small selection of excellent CVs, not have to wade through hundreds of specs, many of which are duplicates.

These days unemployment is low, and people are more conscious of what they spend. This is why the role of the human recruiter is still very important.

Employers need someone who knows what is happening in their own market.

Someone who knows people who may not be on the market, but are certainly 'in the market and who can be at least be encouraged to talk. Someone who knows people who know people.

Therefore, if you employ scientific staff I would urge you to become proactive in your approach to laboratory recruitment.

According to a top UK recruitment agency the UK has one of the most unhappy workforces, and the science and pharmaceutical sector is one of the biggest sufferers.

A survey has found that British workers are among the unhappiest in the world - around 48% of employees surveyed claimed to be unhappy with their current job, and out of 28 countries surveyed, the UK came in equal 23rd with Thailand which is shocking considering how much more developed the UK is.

UK bosses were actually rated 11th best amongst the 28 countries which was a surprise, the best bosses being found in Mexico, USA and Canada, and the worst in Sweden, Italy and Turkey.

The survey rated employers on four key attributes - communication, leadership, team spirit and delegation skills; areas which UK employers did not excel in, but fared reasonably.

In general employees felt that their managers were good at delegating effectively, but weak on the other three qualities.

Respondents in the science and pharmaceutical sector gave their bosses the third highest rating, after business services and local government which is another surprise given the current crisis in the lab recruitment sector.

The study was conducted on around 70,000 people across 28 countries worldwide in order to give a decent spread. Of the 70,000 approximately 6000 were UK based.

The survey also found that:.

The UK's teachers are happier with their jobs than any other UK industry sector, and place their bosses in the top three nationally.

63% of UK teachers were happy or very happy, and bosses in teaching scored an average of 6.8 out of a possible 10.

UK workers employed in transport and distribution are the least happy (25%).

In research conducted in October 2006, this industry also reported high levels of discrimination.

44% claimed they had experienced discrimination when applying for a job, positioning it among the bottom three industry sectors, while 35% said they experienced discrimination whilst working within the last five years.

Wales has the happiest workforce (60%) with Scotland (58%) and London (57%) following closely behind.

Northerners are the least content at work, with 24% claiming they're unhappy in their current role.

The under-20 age group were kindest to their bosses, awarding them an average score of 6.8.

Those aged between 45-54 proved tougher, awarding their bosses an average score of 6.1.

A staggering 43% of employees claimed their boss does not reward them for a job well done.

Among those who do show praise and recognition, there was surprisingly little difference between men and women.

58% of women show their gratitude to their employees compared to 56% of men.

The findings also revealed that apart from the 55+ age group, which showed a slight preference for a male boss, people in general do not mind whether the boss is male or female, 78% saying that it made no difference.

A spokeswoman for the survey had this to say: "The survey has revealed both good and bad news for the UK.

"While we may be one of the unhappiest workforces in Europe, we still have confidence in our bosses, believing they are doing an acceptable job.

Scientific employers are the latest in a long line of top level managers to criticise the services of recruitment agencies in a report generated by the Association for Consultancy and Engineering (ACE).

Scientific employers levelled a number of criticisms at scientific recruitment agencies and the services they offer, in a report by the Association for Consultancy and Engineering (ACE). The report highlights high fees (in some cases as much as 20% of the successful candidates first year salary) and poaching staff (known in the industry as headhunting) as common complaints and believes that recruitment agencies could be doing more to fill some current vacancies thought to around 20, 000.

Quality issues have dogged recruitment agencieson all sectors since recruitment services began to be offered. The problems lie with discrepancies in the objectives of recruitment consultants and recruiting managers. Firstly, a recruitment consultant may only need a small number of placements monthly to meet their target, hence, when there are an abundance of vacancies they can cherry pick the easiest to fill, without concern for the rest. Meanwhile, a recruiting manager must focus on trying to fill 'all' of their vacancies and hence are often left short by a recruitment consultant happy with filling only a couple of positions.

Most scientific employers, when questioned, said that they would be happy to do without the services of recruitment agencies if they could afford the time to manage the recruitment process. The recruitment industry has, in the past 15 years or so, become very reliant on the use of recruitment professionals. Although many companies would prefer to handle the recruitment of new staff in-house, the means to do so are limited. The majority of good candidates are already registered with one, or in some cases many, recruitment agencies and there are very few websites that allow for direct recruitment. The human resources manager of one such company said “we feel like we’re backed into a corner. We’ve made efforts to bring our recruitment process in-house but inevitably we’ve ended up having to use the services of recruitment professionals because we couldn’t attract enough suitable candidates directly. It’s a shame because we’re willing to try and take it on ourselves but the recruitment agencies have such a hold over the whole of the recruitment market”.

The next issues stems from the turnover of recruitment consultants, which is high. Very few recruitment consultants stay on the same position for any length of time. This coupled with high bonuses available means their motivation to make placements make overtake any desire to build long term client relationships.

Many of the engineering recruitment agencies surveyed felt that recruitment consultants would ratchet up salaries falsely to increase their own fees. The issue of poaching is a serious problem.

This is the scenario where a recruitment consultant takes staff from a client they are also trying to find people for. In some cases, they end up 'recycling' the same people and indeed the same vacancies, for example, poaching someone and making a fee, then approaching the manager who has lost his member of staff to gain the new vacancy, before anyone else knows about it.

This post is a little bit off topic but I thought i'd break up the recruitment posts with some reviews of companies/websites i've come across and some that i've been asked to comment on by friends, colleagues etc.

Accessories By Park Lane

Accessories by Park Lane are one of the UK's leading wholesale jewellery specialists. The company supplies over 1000 individual items of wholesale costume jewellery and wholesale fashion jewellery.

A recent redesign and relaunch of their website has seen it given a more interactive feel with customers able to zoom in on specific products using a moveable magnifying galss feature - much like the one used so effectively by online clothes giant ASOS.

Product categories are laid out in a much more user friendly format. Products are now divided by item eg. wholesalse rings rather than by collection as before.

IMO the new site looks great and performs better than the old site. The new colour scheme is very classy and contemporary.

Fast Tack Direct

Fast Tack Direct are a very well established online equestrian clearance and horse riding equipment retailer. Their ecommerce enabled website has hundreds of brand name horse riding clothing, horse tack, equestrian accessories and much more, all at very low prices.

The website itself is really easy to navigate and the shopping basket system is easy to navigate. Imagery is clear and gives an excellent respresentation of the products.

All in all a great website for horse enthusiasts.

Night Space

For those of you who don't know what serviced apartments are I suggest you listen up because they may just revolutionise the tourism industry. Serviced Apartments are generally privately owned luxury self-catering apartments that can be hired for as little as one night and as much as 1 year, and cost about as much as a good hotel. Like a hotel serviced apartments are regularly cleaned, beds made, linen washed etc. However, unlike a hotel you have absolute privacy, home comforts and a whole host of rooms to play in. Many business have stopped using hotels for business trips altogether because it is much cheaper to hire a serviced aprtments and house 2-3 of their employees in it.

Night Space manage around 10 luxury serviced apartments in the beautiful spa town of Harrogate, North Yorkshire. With a busy conference centre and a thriving tourism trade Harrogate is a prime spot for luxury accomodation, and it's no wonder that Night Space have quickly become one of the major players in the Harrogate accomodation industry. If you're planning on visiting Harrogate and you're looking for a luxury hotel alternative near the centre, type 'serviced apartments Harrogate' into Google and look for Nightspace.

The website has some fantastic imagery that reall sells the properties on offer.

DWP Web Design

DWP are fast emerging as one of Harrogate's, and indeed North Yorkshire's best SME-focused web design companies. Their non-nonsense approach to creating simple, effective brochure and ecommerce websites is very refreshing.

They've also come up with an innovative website payment schedule allowing companies to break the overall costs down into monthly instalments - a absolute winner given the current economic climate.

The website is fresh, informative and easy to navigate. Great company, great website.

If you want to find them type 'website design harrogate' or 'seo harrogate' into Google and you can't miss them.

Mixd

Another of Harrogate's top web design companies but with a bit more of a creative flavour. The Mixd team all hail from big agency land having cut their teeth in one of the UK's biggest and most well recognised digital agencies. Now they've set up on their own and are really making waves around the Yorkshire region.

Mixd are more top end, specialising in producing inspirational creative work for larger clients. The Mixd team have a collective interest in extreme sports and have inadvertantly put together an impressive list of ski, snowboard and mountain biking clients.

The Mixd website is bold, eye catching and showcases their work brilliantly.

If you want to find Mixd type 'web design Harrogate' or 'website design Harrogate' into Google.

Mobility Plus

I came across these guys recently, and having found their level of service excellent, I thought i'd give them a review. The reason for my coming to deal with the company was that my Grandmother is having to modify her home because she is no longer as mobile as she once was. I took it upon myself to find some possible companies to work with and these guys came out on top.

Mobility Plus have a fantastic range or walk in baths and walk in showers, all of which can be viewed on their website. What's more they are recommended by none other than Judith Chalmers so if that's not a good enough endorsement......