Recruitment Advice

Because of the recent economic downturn, the engineering sector has started tightening up when it comes to recruiting. For those people that are searching for a graduate role in the industry, they may find that they need to bring a lot more than just a glowing academic record with them to the interview.

According to the Chairman of the Engineering and Technology Board, employers are looking for graduates with a broad skill set, which could be difficult if you have any just come out of University.

“It’s not a criticism of them or of the work the graduates have put in, but they want more in terms of team working, communication skills, project management and entrepreneurship”.

A recent report has shown that applications for engineering courses at Universities have increased by 7% over the past 5 years.

Does this mean that more graduates are applying for courses they they are never going to be able to secure a job in because they haven’t got the experience?

I’m sure this isn’t the only industry that is tightening up when it comes to who they recruit and do you think the graduates are going to find it even harder to get jobs in every sector?

Will recruiters shy away from recruiting immigrants as the new points based system comes into effect?

The system only covers migrants from outside the European Economic Area (EEC) and Switzerland. Larger businesses are finding the administration time and cost too much and smaller businesses are shying away. This is because they simply don’t have the spare money during the economic downturn and lack the resources to understand what to do, therefore they are not looking at recruiting workers who need sponsorship.

As a registered sponsor it is the companies responsibility to make sure that the migrant workers comply with their immigration conditions, by keeping records and reporting any changes to the Home Office. The cost to become a sponsor is between £300 and  £1000 for 4 years registration.

Under the new system, migrants will need to pass a points-based assessment before they are given permission to enter or remain in the United Kingdom. The system consists of five tiers. Each tier has different points requirements.

• Tier 1: Highly skilled individuals to contribute to growth and productivity;
• Tier 2: Skilled workers with a job offer to fill gaps in United Kingdom labour force;
• Tier 3: Limited numbers of low skilled workers needed to fill temporary labour shortages;
• Tier 4: Students;
• Tier 5: Youth mobility and temporary workers: people allowed to work in the United Kingdom for a limited period of time to satisfy primarily non-economic objectives

A lot of people believe that when recruiting, the big boys in the industry will always get the best candidates. This is not always the case and if it were, how would corporate giants like Google and Starbucks Corp be where they are today?

Small businesses are now actually managing to scoop the better candidates whilst sitting right under their competitors noses. They are doing this by keeping business savvy and holding a definable recruitment edge to other organisations.

Here are a few tips to make sure you get the best candidate for the job.

• Work quickly - Everyone knows that the best candidates are hired quickly, so make sure that you find and hire candidates within a small amount of time. Working quickly is generally where the bigger companies lose out. They tend to be slower and clumsier  than smaller companies.
• Prove that your company is stable - Your business may be solid but how does a perspective employee know this? They don’t, so make sure that you promote your company via newspaper articles and business references.
• Generate a benefit package - This is one thing that will attract a candidate to your company. Although you may not be able to afford benefits with whistles and bells on, providing basic benefits such as health care and a generous holiday allowance will suffice and is better than offering them nothing.

Finally, make sure that you create an attractive work setting that reflects the employee’s commitment and professionalism.

If you are a small company or you are setting up a new company but struggling to find candidates, then let me know if this advice has helped.

Employee referral programmes have been used for decades and are a great way of filling vacancies. Although the programme can be quite effective, it is often under appreciated and there are many pros and cons that come along with it.

It’s easy enough to ask employees if they know someone that might be interested in the position, but it’s really important that you have some kind of structure and communicate it well. One way of doing this is by informing employees that the programme has a benefit and a reward on a successful placement. A monetary bonus is normally offered when the new starter has been retained for a certain period of time. This award however, should be sufficient enough to motivate the employee but not too large that they they refer unsuitable candidates.

Here are some of the pros and cons of an employee referral programme:

Pros

• Referred candidates tend to be of a higher quality. The referring employee will normally screen the referral closely. After all, their reputation is somewhat on the line with every person they refer for the vacant position.
• The programme can be significantly cheaper than using recruitment agencies, newspapers etc.
• The programme is especially effective when you are recruiting for a specialised role. People tend to associate with other people in their profession.
• The monetary bonus can be seen as a morale booster for the referring employee.

Cons

• If you rely on the programme too much, this could lead to a “stick together” workforce and could create cliques within the organisation leading to friction with other employees.
• Competitors may retaliate against your company by thinking your are stealing their happy employees.
• The programme might lead to under representation of certain protected groups which could come along with charges of discrimination from rejected candidates.

As you can see, the benefits do outweigh the pitfalls of the employee referral programme and in my opinion, a well designed programme should be an essential part of any organisations recruitment strategy.

I recently wrote a post about how online recruitment isn’t being halted by the credit crunch and one company that has turned to online recruitment is the high street fashion retailer River Island.

It is the first time that the company have decided to use online recruitment and are due to employ staff in 200 stores across the country.

Previously to this, River Island used application forms which had to go through a central recruitment team to then be forwarded on to stores to be short listed, which as you can image, is quite a time consuming process.

River Island are hoping that this new process with reduce the administration time and also make it fair for candidates, as they will all get processed in the same way.

The use of online recruitment is definitely on the up and Anders Jensen from ClickAJob thinks its due to increase even more.

“Instant turnaround is just one of the plusses that employers expect, particularly in staffing up for the festive season peak. With facilities like email alert, not only is a job online immediately, if the requirements match a previously entered request, the candidate looking for it is immediately informed too. Such same-day results make all the difference to a retailer who has to respond quickly.”

Other stores such as Woolworths are also going to try out the online recruitment method.

There has been several announcements over the last couple of weeks over car manufacturers closing down plants in a short term measure to save jobs. Car maker Honda are shutting down there plant in Swindon for 50 days as part of a dramatic cutback in vehicle production. The shutdown will take place in February and during that period the car firm will produce its annual output by 21,000 cars.

Others companies such as Ford, Vauxhall and BMW will also be closing there plants in the UK for extended Christmas leave to halt production.

Negotiation with Unions are ongoing over the payment of staff during the shutdowns. Some companies are making deals with staff to negotiate payment at a later date when market conditions improve.

Other companies are asking staff to work a shorter week to avoid compulsory redundancies before the Christmas break. Last month workers at JCB agreed a 4 day week with a pay cut to save thousands of jobs.

Competency frameworks have been accepted as part of the recruitment process used by many companies a 2007 CIPD survey revealed that 60% of companies had a competency framework in place for recruitment

Competency based interviews can also be referred to as situational and behavioural based interviews, it is a style of interviewing that is used to score you on areas of competency that the employer has set at a level for you to demonstrate your ability and experience.

Employers typically use some of the following areas for competencies:

• Teamwork
• Problem Solving
• Leadership
• Decision Making
• Career Motivation
• Commercial Awareness
• Communication
• Trustworthiness and ethics

Employers that use competency based techniques believe that it is the way to distinguish a candidates potential future performance and to find examples from there previous experience. Structured interviews are more of a accurate predictor for those candidates that are honest and can prove there previous skills to those who simply try to bluff there way through the interview process.

Welcome to my recruitment advice blog.

I will be discussing all aspects of recruitment and selection from creating the perfect C.V to your first day in your new job.

Lets begin with, “What is Recruitment?”

Recruitment is a vital part of a business’ human resource planning.

When recruiting new staff for any business the aim of recruitment and selection process is to recruit talented individuals to help achieve the overall business objectives.

Recruitment is a continuous process and it is becoming increasingly important for businesses to develop a progression method for staff turnover.

The stages in recruitment are too:

• Look at the role that you want to recruit for, identify skills gaps, prepare job descriptions and person specifications
• Look at ways in which you will attract your candidates,using a variety of recruitment methods will help to achieve a wider range of candidates
• Look at what are the most effective ways of interviewing the candidates and the selection methods when deciding which candidates are most suitable
• Look at the induction plan to get the candidates into the role and the individuals training needs

Having the right person, in the right role is crucial to the business performance, successful recruitment depends on finding the right person.