Recruitment Advice

Pontin’s is due to spend £50million refurbishing its six holiday camps in a move upmarket designed to attract more holidaymakers. There will be a major switch this year from overseas holidays to UK holidays, due to the economic crisis and the weakening pound.

Ocean Parks, which owns Pontin’s, says the plans will create more than 2,000 jobs. Initially the existing entertainment, catering and bar facilities will be refurbished. Pontins is promising a ‘re-styled entertainment programme’ and a ’substantially enhanced food and beverage offer aimed at satisfying all tastes and budgets’.

Among the star performers this summer will be the singer Duncan James, previously with the boy band Blue, and entertainer Joe Pasquale.

Butlins has also made a move up-market in recent years. It will be opening the 200 room £20million Ocean spa hotel in Bognor Regis in the summer. The rooms offer flat screen TVs, leather sofas and rainfall showers

It seems that it is not all doom and gloom as we enter the recession. It appears that although some firms are making cut backs or even going into administration, others are on a recruitment drive.

Waitrose is one company that is currently recruiting and it looking to increase its workload by an extra 4000 employees. They are also planning on opening 22 new stores this year!

The increase comes from natural expansion and the food retailers are planning on buying 13 stores from the Co-Operative group. This will mean that the number of Waitrose stores will reach 220 in the UK.

The managing director of Waitrose, Mark Price has said:

“I’m delighted to announce the biggest period of growth in the history of Waitrose. There is a real weight of evidence that businesses that continue to invest during tough economic times fare much better when the economy begins to recover. Our new shops will help ensure Waitrose is in the best shape possible coming out of the recession”

The UK is officially in a  recession, figures have shown that the economy is at its worst since 1991. This is means that the there has been two consecutive quarters of falling economic growth

The economy shrank by 1.5 per cent in the fourth quarter of last year - worse than the declines seen in the recession of the early 1990s and the biggest fall in more than 28 years, according to the Office for National Statistics.

The ONS said the manufacturing industry saw output decrease by 4.6 per cent quarter-on-quarter in the last three months of last year. The services sector, which accounts for around 75 per cent of the economy, fell by one per cent - its worst performance since 1979.

Bank of England governor Mervyn King said the economy was expected to continue contracting into the first half of the year, with `further marked falls in output’

The Bank of England has aggressively cut interest rates to 1.5% - aimed at driving down the cost of lending and making it easier for consumers and businesses to access credit.

However, banks have been reluctant to lend sufficiently, despite a £37bn injection into major banks, and a scheme to offer insurance to banks against potential losses on risky loans.

A temporary cut in value added tax (VAT), from 17.5% to 15%, was an attempt to encourage consumers to spend and boost the retail sector and wider economy.

The unemployment rate was 6.1% for the three months to the end of November, compared with 5.2% in the same period of 2007.

It is the highest jobless rate since the three months to the end of April 1999.

December is the eleventh consecutive month that the claimant count has risen.

The number out of work is set to continue to rise as the seven weeks since the end of November have seen tens of thousands of jobs cut, including more than 27,000 jobs lost when Woolworths finally closed its doors.

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.

Online recruitment company Monster worldwide has invested in a new data stratergy to ensure it survives the credit crunch.

The digital recruitment company has commited to $130million overhall of its services as part of a relaunch that includes the creation of a new database of C.V’s. It will also employ interactive web facilities using Web 2.0 tools that add a personal and community touch to their 24 websites worldwide.

The new functions will enhance the online job site for people and businesses who are looking for data quality to meet their employment needs.

Monster Worldwide has recently joined forces with newspapers in the US to enter into a shared data strategy to access a wider pool of employees and job-seekers.

Waitrose has announced it will create 3000 new job in 2009 as a result of the acquisition of some Co-op stores. The supermarket chain has entered into a conditional agreement with the Co-op group to purchase 13 of its stores and open at least 9 new branches in 2009.

Following the acquisition 1000 Somerfield staff will join Waitrose with a further 500 jobs to be created at those stores. The nine new stores will create 2000 new staff with 500 new jobs in operational support.

All new employees will become partners within the John Lewis Partnership, which means they become co-owners of the business and receive an annual share in profits.

Morrisons supermarket chain said it plans to create 5000 jobs this year as its continues its expansion. The newly created jobs are based across the business in a variety of positions.

Meanwhile, budget supermarket Aldi is increasing its graduate intake by 50% to offer 150 university places on its management training scheme this year, bucking the trend where many employers are cutting their graduate recruitment as the economy continues to deteriorate.

In the current job market, employers are finding it increasingly harder to attract and retain qualified job candidates that suit the needs of the business. The official figures also showed in the UK there were 530,000 job vacancies in the last three months of 2008, down 69,000 from the previous quarter and the lowest figure since records began in 2001.

The total number of people unemployed is widely expected to have passed two million in the last three months of 2008 - those figures will be released in February. With jobs available and even more people trying to fill them, how can your company stand out from the competition and attract top applicants?

Promotional products can help draw attention to your company at any job fair or recruitment event will help candidates to remember your branded message.

At job fairs, recruitment events and seminars are all good recruitment opportunities to reach out to potential candidates. Custom promotional gifts can go a long way toward getting a candidate’s attention and encouraging them to consider your company. Just make sure your promotional gifts send the right message about your company and the kind of employee you’re looking for.

Promotional mugs and pens are amongst the traditional giveaways that you can find at these events.

The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) have confirmed that up to 30,000 new jobs will be created to help build the London 2012 Olympic Park and Olympic Village over the next few years. Thousands of job opportunities will be created this year alone which will include bricklayers, wood workers, electricians, security guards, administrators and support staff.

The olympic jobs is unlikely to prevent large-scale unemployment in the construction sector. The olympics may be a saviour for some people, but they are cutting back on so many big building projects. The Olympics will more alleviate than cure the large scale unemployment problem.

The ODA also made a commitment to boosting the Olympic Park jobs and skills legacy. Two-hundred and fifty new dedicated apprenticeship opportunities will be created on the Olympic Park, including the Olympic Village, on top of an existing commitment to 2,000 training and apprenticeship roles.

Job appointments and vacancies hit a record low in December, according to the recruitment and employment confederation and KPMG’s latest report on jobs.

It found that that demand for staff declined in most areas, falling at its fastest rate since the survey began in 1997, and vacancies were up in only the nursing and care sector.

The British Chambers Of Commerce warned in its latest economic forecast that as many as one in ten workers could be laid off in the next 2 years, pushing unemployment above three million by 2010. The new statistics have prompted calls for further government measures to boost employment and kick start the economy.

The prime minister has already announced 100.000 new jobs through a programme of public works and investment in digital technologies and was considering further options.

When putting my recruitment plan together for 2009 i was asked to reduce the costs by 50% but to increase the amount of staff required by 60% based on 2008.

With this difficult task in mind and researching various free methods of recruitment, it made me think how much organising it was going to take to keep on top of all the C.V’s and replying, interviewing and selecting these candidates.

We do not have any recruitment software packages to organise the amount of recruitment we plan on doing in 2009 or the budget to purchase one. Free methods of recruitment often mean a high response to any advertisement placed, which in turn you have to spend a lot of time searching through the all the C.V’s you receive.

The manageability of the whole process can be a pain, we have previously relied on recruitment consultants to do all the administration and store any C.V information.

We currently have no back up system in place for storing the C.V’s and it the event that our computer systems were to fail then we would have to start the process again, which can be costly and time consuming. Services such as online backup will aid against any data loss, this will help to comply with any data protection rules and can form part of the companies disaster recovery plan.