Recruitment Advice

New figures show that 25% more students are staying in education than this time last year. The research carried out by High Fliers involved around 16,000 students has found that as the job market slows up more students are enrolling for further education.

The research found that 52% of students thought that the prospects for new graduates a getting a job were very limited and 36% thought that they would not get a graduate job this year.

The survey found that teaching was the most popular career choice this year, up from third last year. the top three career choices were:

• Teaching 13.7%
• Media 13.6 %
• Marketing 12.6%

Is the future looking brighter for our troubled UK economy?

The government has made an announcement for a £140 million plan to fund 35,000 new apprenticeships to ease unemployment and improve competitiveness in the credit crunch.

Meanwhile Mcdonalds have revealed that apprenticeships will be made available to all its employees. The fast food chain aims to provide apprenticeships for up to 10,000 a year from 2010.

News on new apprenticeship schemes will help children who are ready to leave school. The number of apprenticeships for school leavers this year has been down on previous years. Traditionally the schemes available have been in the manufacturing and construction sectors and as these have been badly affected during the credit crunch the numbers of apprenticeships originally thought to have been available has been low.

Employers are looking for potential staff with a specific experience, writing your first C.V can be difficult. We gain experience in everything we do including responsibility, maturity, communication and problem solving and these are all areas of experience that employers are looking for.

There are employers that are looking for new talent in the market place who are keen to learn, highly committed and display qualities that show determination to succeed.

The best way to approach this is to create a good letter accompanying your C.V that clearly explains your strengths and values. Explaining that although you do not have any career history you feel that you have gained experience in other areas such as reponsibilities at home or at school.

Follow up any application with a telephone call and make sure you talk to the person who will be involved with the decision on who to recruit.

CV-Library, the online job site has announced that a record number of CVs have been uploaded to it’s databases. Over 100,000 CVs were added in October, which has increased the total to a massive 1.2million. The database has grown by 153% in the last 18 months.

The website is apparently receiving 25,000 CVs per week. The Director of the company, Lee Biggins, has said:

“We saw 5140 CVs uploaded in a single 24 hour period this month, which is a new record for CV-Library. With our strategic advertising campaigns now in place on over 50 targeted career related websites, we are generating high volumes of high quality CV’s from all industry sectors.”

With all the redundancies taking place at the moment and with many more to come, there will be plenty of CVs being uploaded onto sites like CV-Library.

I have recently been advertising for a number of positions in the company i work for and have seen a massive increase in the number of applications and CVs i have received compared to a couple of months ago.

It’s quite a sad state of affairs, but it looks like the future for a lot of employees is set to look quite bleak in the run up to Christmas.

After wading through the mass of CV’s that have landed in your inbox, choosing which candidates to interview can be quite a task. Some of the CV’s you get through will be good, others will be the complete opposite and deciding between them can be tricky.

In my opinion the best thing to do is to take one CV at a time and work through the job description for the role they have applied for. By doing this, you can match up the candidates experience and skills to the ones that are required.

Whilst you are screening the CV there are  number of things you should  look out for, these are:

• Big gaps in employment - if someone hasn’t worked for a long period in between jobs then it would be good to find out why!
• Examples of previous work - Depending on your industry, it may be helpful to see samples of their work from previous roles, this would let you see how good they are rather than taking their word for it.
• Hobbies & Interests - I always like it when someone puts down that they are interested in a part of the role they are applying for. Not only does this mean that they already know a bit about it but that they aren’t going to get bored of it either!

Once you have decided which candidates you want to invite for an interview, the next step is developing interview questions which takes me onto my next post..

How do you go about creating the perfect C.V?

When sending your C.V to your perspective employer this will be the first time they will hear about you and this is the opportunity to WOW them on paper!

Within the first 30 seconds of the employer reading your C.V they will know whether they want to invite you to a  interview or not.

The aim of the C.V is to get you to the first interview, employers look at 100’s of C.V’s and you need to stand out from the crowd. Your C.V needs to highlight that you are right for the position. You must demonstrate

• You have an understanding of the job role
• You have the professional and person attributes for the role
• The skills you have to offer
• Previous experience

Further more, C.V’s must be short enough for the employer to scan the page and want to meet you, clearly laid out and in a logical order and be relevant for the role. Your C.V should always be tailored to the position your are applying for.

Before submitting your C.V you must proof read, read and read again the most common errors on C.V’s are spelling and grammar mistakes, keep the document to 2 pages and honesty is always the best policy.

If you don’t already have the perfect C.V you can use a online tool that will help your apply for your dream job, you can create a professional fully formatted C.V that will stop you doing common errors and mistakes.