Louise's UK Recruiter Blog

Lessons for (sales) Recruiters from The Apprentice

Gavin Ingham is off the blocks in superb fashion with his blog/email reviews of The Apprentice.  Last year he did a summary of each episode in his weekly blog.  This year he is going to put the lessons from The Apprentice into his newsletter and post the full report onto his blog.

As with last year I had every intention of watching the series - but already I have missed out by "double booking" the first episode.  Luckily Gavin's summary from last Wednesday night is so detailed that even Sir Alan wouldn't know I watched Freaky Eaters instead (poor Joanne is addicted to potatoes!).

Back to Gavin's review of The Apprentice.  Gavin tells us how the episode pans out (very detailed and amusing reading) and then they key sales training messages that it contains.  It is well worth signing up to Gavin's newsletter and reading his blog.  Even, if unlike me, you manage to actually watch the series.

Top 10 Countries by Number of Recruitment Companies

This came my way the other day from the International Confederation of Private Employment Agencies (CIETT). 

Top 10 Countries and Number of Recruitment Companies
Japan:  30,600
UK:  10,462
Germany:  7,885
USA:  6,000
South Africa:  2,739
Netherlands:  2,100
Czech Republic:  1,707
Poland:  1,541
Brazil:  1,250
France:  1,200

Now, the data is from 2006 - but I imagine it's probably still pretty reflective of the order just two years on.  What's interesting is that Japan has three times as many agencies as us despite only having twice the population of the UK and that the US has half the number of agencies des pite having five times the popluation.   

I suspect I would need to pull in figures about unemployment and staff attrition rates, as well as data about country specific legislation in order to explain this fully.   As I don't have this I will simply share the figures and allow you to make your own assumptions.

Does your face suit the role?

I think the stats sound pretty startling - but I wasn't actually surprised to find that bosses 'chose attractive job candidates when recruiting' (as reported in HR Review)

A survey of 2,266 UK employers conducted by employment law firm, Peninsula, found that 88% of respondents who conduct interviews had at some stage, given the job to the most attractive candidate. 92% said that appearance could influence their decision on who gets the job.

We ran an article a few years back on why it's not illegal to discriminate on the grounds of appearance (within reason), and I've seen it happen a lot over the years; hearing clients ask for people who are "easy on the eye".  In my formative years in recruitment two major clients spring to mind.  When hiring Field Sales Representatives for Pepsi we would often ask ourselves if the candidate was "Pepsi Pretty" (which did refer to more than looks I must admit) but the most bizarre, looking back, was a campaign for Sales Reps for L'Oreal. In the advert we asked candidate's to send in a photo of themselves so we could pre-screen them on looks.  We got plenty of normal headshots, a few "model style" photos (normally of the women) and one glamour shot of a young lady doing the Christine Keeler pose.  Somehow that one got detached from the CV and lost in the desk of one our lively young male consultants!

By the way my favourite headline for this story was "Looks could kill job opportunities for ugly mugs"  that I saw from PersonnelToday.com

bemyinterviewer.co.uk - worth sharing with candidates

I want to apologise for being so very late in writing about this.  However,  I thought it hardly fair to punish Jobsite by not writing about their site just because I am tardy!

Last month Jobsite launched BeMyInterviewer.co.uk, described as "the UK’s first interactive video based website offering jobseekers interview practise with some of the UK’s leading business bosses and HR managers".

The "interviewers" are Ruth Badger (businesswoman, consultant and runner up on The Apprentice), Duncan Bannatyne (serial entrepreneur and star of Dragons’ Den), Andy Hart (MD of Associated Northcliffe Digital), Jacqueline Gold (CEO of Ann Summers and Knickerbox), Kirsty MacCulloch (Senior Project Manager for graduate recruiters Hobsons/GET), Moray Coulter (Production Talent Executive at ITV) and Keith Potts (CEO of Jobsite.co.uk).

Before looking at the site I had assumed it would feature questions AND suggested answers from these individuals.  However, it's just the questions - I suppose you are meant to then answer the question to your computer screen!  It is great for candidates to have forwarning as to what questions they might be posed and I really like the fact they have made this visual rather than just boring old "top 50 interview questions" format.  However, what's missing is advice as to how to answer these questions (Eva over at online-Recruiting.net thought the same).  I'm not suggesting they actually give a sample answer but maybe suggest what the question is getting at. For example to the question of "Tell me a secret you’ve never told anyone before” - does Andy want to know the fact you really fancy Prince Charles, or is he more interested in you proving you can keep a secret (by keeping schtum to him) or should you laugh and show him your sense of humour, etc (actually, I would really love Andy to explain that question to me!).

I haven't listened to all the questions (mostly as I am hoping never to have to endure a job interview again in my life) but I did choose to listen to some of Ruth's.  The photo on the home page of the site does not do her justice - she looks slightly cross/raunchy at the same time and I'm sure that's not the idea.  However, I thought her presentation style was great and I liked all her questions.

Anyway, all in all I'd suggest that if you have a candidate who you can't (although you should!) offer interview advice to yourself - point them in the direction of www.bemyinterviewer.co.uk.

Update: Vicky at Jobsite has phoned me to point out that I am totally wrong and that the "answers" are on the website.  However, as I wasn't the only person to miss them they'll be making it a bit clearer when they update the site. 

Anyway, so I now know that with the "tell me a secret" question Andy is looking to assess the integrity of a candidate.  He doesn't want to hear your secrets - he is looking to see if someone "has the self respect to not say anything".   Hmmm.

A week in the life of a Talent Attraction Manager

After a long weekend it can be difficult to re-motivate yourself for work.  I know I’m incredibly lucky to actually love what I do for a living – but not everyone can spend all day reading blogs, chatting to people they like (I call it facilitating introductions!) and organising socials (more info on the next networking event will follow shortly). 

So when I spoke to Emma at Sky (you can read about my new Talent Attraction Manager blog buddy here) I asked if and why she couldn’t wait to get back to the office today.  Luckily it turns out she too loves her job - mainly for the variety of the role (I’m sure she’d have also mentioned how fabulous Sky is to work for if I’d have given her the chance!).

So for those of you either wanting to understand what your client in HR actually does (whilst seemingly avoiding your calls) – or if you are interested in moving over to HR recruitment; here is Emma’s week ahead.

• Tuesday: meetings about the job section of the Sky website.  After two years it needs a re-vamp.
• Wednesday: hosting a group of Said students.  A group of half a dozen MBA students will be spending the day meeting with key people in the business.  Finding out about branding, advertising, strategy, etc.  This is part of their “University relationship strategy” and they host days like this once a month.  At present these are for Universities but they are looking at doing them for schools too.  It’s a long term strategy as they don’t necessarily expect the students to apply to Sky as their first job - it’s more about long term (subliminal!) messaging.
• Thursday: Meetings with the job boards they have annual contracts with and re-negotiating the contracts.  Monthly resourcers meeting with the entire resourcing team – talking about new techniques, strategies and learning from each other.
• Friday: Attending “Social Networking for HR summit”.  Hopefully taking enough notes to share with the rest of here.   If you are also attending the event keep an eye out for Emma!  

Candidates are NOT looking for a job at Easter!

Recruiters may as well knock off early today and roll in late next Tuesday because, according to Broadbean, few candidates apply for jobs on Good Friday and Easter Monday.  In fact this Easter weekend is just behind the Christmas period (New Year’s Eve and Day, Christmas Eve and Day and Boxing Day) in terms of poor job seeker activity.

Contrary to popular belief, the weekend is also a slow time for responses with the number of applications falling by around two thirds. Broadbean sees candidate applications increase on a Monday (but not this Monday!) and responses peak at lunch time on a Tuesday.  As Dan recently pointed out on his blog this message has still not got out to the general recruitment community: "Friday night is NOT the best time to distribute your adverts. It is, however, the most popular time for posting amongst my clients".

So... sneak off after lunch and come back in on Tuesday ready to post all your jobs and snap up the best candidates (of course, if those are recruitment jobs you should be giving our new site UKRecruiterJobs a go!).

Is there a misconception in the value of HR?

I’ve recently got to know the Talent Attraction Manager at Sky (as they posted an in-house job on our new ukrecruiterjobs).  I was talking with her yesterday and she mentioned a debate that was on our discussion board about in-house recruiters.  It started off with how recruiters can get on the PSL and ended up with an attack on in-house recruiters. By the end the postings were getting quite angry and vitriolic.  Emma was quite taken aback by this and so we wondered why HR is seen in this way.

She believes that people have a very old fashioned view of HR.  On the forum I see this quite a bit – recruiters suggesting that the recruitment person or team within HR are just about paying salary, getting timesheets signed off, etc and that they are a barrier to successful recruitment.  It’s not really considered as a strategic function; covering manpower planning, working with line mangers to define the people needs of the company and full service talent resourcing.  Also, what is probably not considered is that in many organisations 60% of recruitment is actually internal.  For these roles it’s not just about allowing someone to move from sales to marketing – it’s about proper succession planning.   

We talked about how the big blue chips (and probably many smaller companies) have moved on in the past decade and created an in-house resourcing function (some also with a talent management function).  Resourcing is about recruitment (filling of vacancies) whereas talent management spans  the full employee life cycle from recruitment through to retention – manpower planning and succession planning, through to sourcing and onboarding.  It’s about considering employer branding and creating supplier relationships that support the company objectives.  In many organisations it’s also about taking a certain element of headhunting in-house.  Resourcing also extends to equipping line managers with the tools to select the right candidates (teaching interview skills, etc) running psychometric testing and ensuring the process is legally compliant (eg, fulfilling discrimination guidelines).  All in a proactive manner. 

Emma says having a Talent Resourcing function isn’t about cutting out agencies – it’s about finding the most effective way to recruit.  Nor is it about stopping recruiters talking with line, it’s about creating strong partnerships with agencies across the business.  Talent Resourcing will be in the loop for every assignment not as a block to the process but as a facilitator.  In fact HR can be an ally in helping the recruiter!

We are planning on adding this as a regular "column" to my blog.  It'll be a sort of "conversation with HR" type feature.  My HR expert for this is Emma Mirrington who is Talent Attraction Manager at BSkyB.  Emma has over ten years resourcing experience within a variety of roles encompassing both graduate and experienced hire recruitment. Most recently she was with Unilever for five years as their European Talent Manager before moving to Sky in January this year.  In her role she is responsible for Employer Branding, Future Talent and developing new sourcing initiatives.  Emma has also seen recruitment from the "other side" (well, almost) as she spent two years with Best People in their managed services division.

Emma and I will be talking about all sorts of HR recruitment topics and in many cases how HR and third party recruitment agencies can/should work together.   If you have any topics that you would like me to discuss with Emma then please let me know.

If you want to know a bit more about Emma you can view her talking about engagement issues here and view (and connect to her) on LinkedIn.

Why you should watch what you say on the web

Sir Tim Berners-Lee has given an interview with the BBC in which he has said "consumers need to be protected against systems which can track their activity on the internet".  You can read the full story and view a video clip of the interview on the BBC website.

Stephen O'Donnell of AllJobsUK.com has sent me over an article he's written about internet privacy which I thought I'd share here:

So Sir Tim Berners-Lee believes individuals should be protected from their information being gathered by intelligent systems for commercial gain?  He is not alone in this, but I’m afraid we may already be beyond the point of legislating and regulating the use of the internet to protect worldwide users. 

What we can do, however, is educate ourselves about this enormous resource, into which so much information about ourselves is entered.  Much of it we provide ourselves, voluntarily, onto sites like Linkedin, Facebook, Bebo etc.  Increasingly we find ourselves contributing to discussion forums, on all kinds of subjects, feeling safe to make any comment behind an anonymous username.

An enormous amount can, and is, gained from such communication, but we do need to be aware that anyone's eyes can alight on what we write - not just our intended readers.  Now don’t get me wrong, I like to have a rant, and occasional diatribe against my own personal annoyances. I do however do so in the knowledge that everything I write will ultimately be attributed to me, and the day may come, when I’ll have to answer for them. The internet is a wonderful thing almost entirely because of its lack of firm regulation. It’s entirely possible for any private firm with the funds (like Google) to spider or crawl every single page, and they do. The entire flow of traffic on the internet passes through a relatively small number of servers strategically situated worldwide. All of this traffic is addressed (IP's), and logs are kept. ISP’s like MSN, AOL, and the rest have databases that connect to your name and address. Consumer sites have databases on your shopping habits and more addresses. Kept apart from one another, this information may seem relatively inert, but what if someone somewhere was able to connect it all together?

Years ago, universities developed software to eliminate cheating, by comparing students papers, and identifying matches with papers already written. Matching the writing style of people online in the same way helps the CIA identify potential terrorists and criminals, who believe they can communicate anonymously online behind “blind usernames” and proxy servers. The development of the Internet is accelerating at a rate very few civilians are aware of. The ability to connect all of this will very soon be commercially available (at a price), and ultimately after be available to all. Your grandchildren will be able to read everything you have written.

With the knowledge that everything written on the internet is stored, cached, and backed-up, from at least 1995 onwards, we must surely be disabused of the notion of anonymity, no matter how sneaky we think are being, behind that proxy server, using a strange username, and temporary email address, from an internet cafe. Rapists and murderers are being convicted today on DNA evidence for crimes committed 30 years ago. They couldn’t have predicted the science that would later catch up with them. 

Be yourself online, be it nice, nasty, provocative or whatever version of yourself you are happy to be fully identified with. If people are losing their jobs today, for what they post on Facebook, how much more will be able to be found in even just 18 months time? Each and every keystroke that you make, before clicking the Submit button, is there forever. They will know who and what you are, and they won’t need to try too hard to find out.

Community Driven Recruitment - Sam Michel's presentation from The Year Ahead Conference

Over the past few weeks I have been doing a mini-series of posts about the key elements from each speaker’s presentation at the Enhance Media the Year Ahead Conference (you can see a list of them below).   Sam Michel, Founder of Chinwag talked about community driven recruitment.  Sam’s background is in the digital media industry.  Chinwag is a community for new media and digital marketing professionals and includes the job board “Chinwag Jobs”.

Sam started his presentation by talking about the history of Chinwag.  The site was launched in 1996 using the old style internet groups and was called uk-netmarketing.  Members would communicate via a discussion forum type system where every message posted was sent out individually to each member of the group.  I found this interesting as I remember using the groups as potential sourcing ground for candidates in the late 90s.  Now Chinwag consists of three main areas: Chinwag.com community - which has forums and resources, Chinwag Jobs – which is a specialist recruitment website and Chinwag Live – which are informal (live) panel debates.

Sam’s idea is that community driven recruitment enables you to connect with individuals within a specific niche and by “humanising” the contact you can build strong relationship with potential contacts.  He talks about how corporates should engage in community recruitment; ensuring they have a candidate centric approach, staying on top of what is being said about your company and knowing how best to handle it. 

He talked about organisations ensuring they have a “community policy” which sets guidelines for employees usage (ie, you may say anything on the web as long as it doesn’t bring the company into disrepute or break laws).  This was a thread that was touched on in two other presentations during the event.  I wonder how many companies have one in place – especially one that is kept up to date as internet usage evolves?

Sam finished by briefly mentioned their recent digital skills survey.  The headlines of the findings are (you can view the full report here: http://www.chinwag.com/reports/chinwag-jobs-skills-shortage-2007):

· 97% of respondents find it either difficult or impossible to attract the right digital staff for their businesses
· 76% of respondents find it difficult to retain staff within their companies.
· Most businesses have increased the amount of staff working in digital during the last year, with more permanent staff joining than leaving.
57% of respondents reported that the digital skills shortage impeded the growth of their business in 2007.

Other blog posts (and articles in the newsletter) I've written about the conference are:

• How e are you? - Tim Elkington's presentation from The Year Ahead Conference
• Employer Brands and Social Media - Paul Harrison's presentation from The Year Ahead Conference
• Profiling for Recruitment - Charlie Atkinson's presentation from The Year Ahead Conference
• The Year Ahead Conference Review – Luke Mckend of Google
• The Year Ahead Conference Review – Westley Gillard of Zappy Mobile
• The Year Ahead Conference Review – Josie Fraser

25 years of delivering excellence

I spent a lovely evening at the lavish Mandarin Oriental last night at an event organised by Highfield Human Solutions.  They were celebrating their 25th anniversary and had invited a number of senior clients and candidates.  Despite being “press” (barely, I know!) I don't normally get invited to these sorts of events. However, Highfield are the search company I worked for before setting up UK Recruiter - and they are so great that I've never quite escaped from them.  As evidenced by how they actually got me to organise the party! 

The food and service at the Mandarin was exceptional – I can highly recommend it and as business networking events go it was actually a lot of fun.  Despite being there in my Highfield capacity I managed to get a bit of UK Recruiter work in – discreetly mentioning our ukrecruiterjobs site to a few senior HR contacts.  DeeDee from Recruiter was there with some of the team from their new Resourcing magazine (which is worth checking out by the HR recruiters amongst you) and I met up with a "regular" from our discussion board (hi, Mitch).   

The speeches were brief, with a typically amusing one from Marcus Lorenzo and a heartfelt one from the MD Sherilyn Shackell. There were moist eyes as she commended over 20 years' of service from her Financial Controller, Rita.  Later, after everyone had crowded round the chocolate cascade (hotels like the Mandarin can't just call it a chocolate fountain!), the evening ended with the distribution of goodie bags.  I always think these are a great idea and in this case the contents were provided by a number of Highfield’s clients (freezer bags from Almondy, USB pens from Sky, That was Easy buttons from Staples, notebook from Monsoon, sauces from HJ Heinz and snacks from UB to name a few). 

So congratulations to Highfield on reaching this fabulous milestone.... and maybe I'll ought to try a bit harder for the contents of the goodie bags at our next networking event.