Louise's UK Recruiter Blog

Employment law Webinar

It seems that 2011 is a year of significant change in employment law.  Recruitment Consultancy, Office Angels, are hosting a number of webinars to help other recruiters and corporates understand and plan for these changes. 

The webinars are free and each last an hour.  The next few are:

• Wednesday 11 May, 2.00pm -3.00pm
• Thursday 12 May, 2.00pm -3.00pm
• Wednesday 18 May, 2.00pm -3.00pm

They aren’t pre-recorded, they are run live and the speaker is Andy Smith; Head of Regulation and Employment for Adecco Group UK and Ireland.   Topics will include:

• Legal Calendar
• Overview of the abolishment of the default retirement age
• Overview of changes to maternity and paternity leave
• AWR in details

With information about changes such as the 2010 Equality Act and the change in retirement age this is going to affect all industries from childcare to financial services jobs for example.  So, if you feel you aren’t quite up to date with all that’s going on in the legal sphere right now check out the webinars.

TweetJobs’ Social Media starter pack

Tweetjobs advertise with us in the newsletter (although that’s not why I’m writing this!).  I was talking with Richard over there the other day and I said how I think for many recruiters the problem with Facebook, Twitter and even LinkedIn is not having the time to keep thinking about what they should be doing to make it work. They (we!) engage in a bit of activity – posting jobs, putting up interesting content, adding videos, etc..... then nothing!   What you really need in the early days is someone telling you what to do and when. 

That’s when Richard mentioned their “social media starter pack”.  This is a paid for service before you get too excited – but it’s still worth a look. 

What you get is:
-12 months unlimited job posting to your Twitter account and their industry, location and job specific accounts
- Advice on how to grow your followers on Twitter and look after the admin
- Jobs aggregated to a facebook fan page and linkedin group
- Design of a facebook fan page and 12 months hosting
- Their 7 steps to establishing a social media presence document
- 3 months support to help you set up you campaign and advise on how to get the most out of social media

The cost is £800 + VAT.  If you want more information I think you need to email Richard.

What does it take to work in Retail? – From TotalJobs

TotalJobs are always sending me interesting stuff.  To be honest this is a bit more jobseeker orientated than we’d normally use – but I think it’s quite good background stuff.

Over 11% of the UK’s working population are employed in the retail sector and it’s a sector that’s predicted to grow by around 15% over the next 5 years. This makes it a really big business, and one that’s ripe with opportunities for people looking for work.

What does it take to work in Retail?
One of the things that sometimes puts people off working in the retail sector is the thought of working as a shop assistant. Of course, this is an absolutely vital part of retail and the industry couldn’t survive without it, but actually the retail sector is much more diverse than many people think. This means that there is likely to be retail jobs to suit everyone from school leavers and students looking for part time jobs in London to people looking for their next smart career move.

As well as selling goods and customer service, retail also includes aspects such as buying. This involves sourcing and buying products to sell in shops, as well as sourcing materials that can be used in manufacturing before entering the retail chain. You could also find yourself working in design, coming up with new product ideas or in HR, providing professional support to managers and hiring and training new staff. You could also get involved with the financial side of the organisation, making sure all regulations are complied with, or perhaps developing IT business systems to benefit the whole company. Other retail jobs could be taking care of the PR – promoting the company’s products – merchandising products to maximise sales, managing a store or working in retail banking.

As you can see, there is much more to retail than first meets the eye. If you’ve ever thought about working in the sector and are currently contemplating your next move, what are some of the key qualities you should have to make your retail career a success? Of course, this isn’t a comprehensive list as many qualities will vary depending on what sort of job you go for, but hopefully it will give you a guide as to what might be expected of you:

• Customer service. There’s no getting away from it; retail is always going to be customer focused and so this is a really crucial part of working in the industry.
• Forward thinking. Much of the retail sector’s success depends on its ability to continue to develop and grow, so if you can plan ahead and assess the potential impact of decisions, you could be great at this.
• Innovation. Retail also needs things to be done better, faster, to a higher standard and more efficiently all the time. Creative and innovative thinking is vital.
• Management. Retail depends on good management to keep things running smoothly, so this is another really important quality. If you have good time management skills or experience of managing other people, it could be a good career for you.
• Perseverance. Like any other industry, parts of the retail sector are very competitive so determination to succeed is vital in this fast paced environment

Removing information about yourself from Google

It’s a more frequent problem for individuals…. what can you do  if you spot some seriously dodgy stuff posted about you on the internet.

Karen Blakeman has the answer.  I’ve been reading Karen’s Tales from the Terminal Room for nearly 10 years.   In a nice succinct blog post she shares an overview on the subject and links to some very useful information on what you can do if you find something on the web that you need to remove.

Check it out (and while you are at it you should bookmark her blog)

 

Online Video Interviews – How It Can Really Work

I’m not big into putting case studies on my blog but I thought this was a nice example of how technology really can aid and improve the recruitment process…

Specialist Westcountry holiday lettings company Classic Cottages has revealed it used cutting-edge video interviewing technology in the process of recruiting its new Managing Director.

The company, based in Helston, Cornwall received more than 300 applications for the role when it was first advertised in September 2010. The quality of the candidates was so high that they ended up with a list of 100 applicants they wanted to interview.

They worked with Ovia (an online video interviewing company); allowing them to record and upload three questions.  The candidates then recorded their answers on their webcams and uploaded them to the Ovia website for the Classic Cottages’ selection team to review in their own time.

They said that if they had relied on the traditional, CV only technique to get the ‘shortlist’ down from 100 to 20 people they “would have missed some excellent candidates and probably interviewed some people who looked good on paper, but were not really the most suitable for the job. Using the video process meant that the people who arrived for interview were the right candidates and I’m convinced we had a much better final 20 than we would have had without the use of video.”

I understand they got about a 90% take up rate from applicants in terms of recording their interview answers.  I think in part this will be due to it being such a unique experience. 

To go with the case study they’ve got a youtube video that if you are interested in video interview technology it’s worth taking a look at.

Pick of the Blogs - The Recruiters Little Black Book

This is meant to be a regular feature on our blog…. But again I’ve been a bit remiss with keeping up with these.  To make up for it we have the winner of 2010’s UK Recruiter’s Recruitment Blog of the Year Awards.   The Recruiters Little Black Book Blog is written by Lee Cooper of Transcend Executive Search.  Lee describes himself as an “entrepreneur who loves business and innovation, politics, current affairs, social media, gadgets and technology, Music, Books and Coffee and perhaps most of all Sports, Football and Arsenal FC”.  However, mostly what he blogs about is recruitment related.

Some of my favourite posts are:

Strike a pose with your CV
A little thanks goes a long way
You can’t poke, tweet or email a handshake

Lee hasn’t blogged for about a month (that might be explained by his recent “Time for Change” post)  – but I’m hoping he’ll be back to it in some form soon!

I'll be picking another superb blog soon. 

Directors Only networking event - 5th May

It’s just three weeks until our next Directors Networking event!

It takes place on Thursday 5th May from 3pm to 6pm near Holborn.

For this event our speakers are Mishcon de Reya who will be talking corporate law (with a recruitment sector slant!) and David Leyshon of CBSbutler sharing his own experiences of an MBO.    We’ll also have Chris Ledbury and the team of Hamilton Bradshaw Recruitment Ventures taking questions on MBOs.   As well as all this we have James Caan, with the help of Helen Reynolds, hosting a Q&A session.  It's your opportunity to ask James ANYTHING at all! 

As well as structured and informal networking time we will have breakout sessions with our sponsors. 
We’ve got some great sponsors again for this event.  We’ll be partnering with HBRIDA during all of 2011 for the events but we’ve also got Bullhorn, Broadbean and iResourcer.

This is a networking event JUST for directors of recruitment companies (or inhouse) so unfortunately supplier organisations are not able to register to attend.

If you want to come along to the event you will need to email louise@ukrecruiter.co.uk to get access to the sign up page (just send me a note with the subjects "Directors Event"). I want to mention that we do charge a small fee of £20 to attend the event but as well as the opportunity to meet other recruiters and learn from our other speakers you will get afternoon tea.

If you’re unable to make the 5th May or hold some other role within the recruitment industry you might like to attend our new technology showcase event on the 26th May

Review of ERA Annual Conference

Our latest roving reporter, George Royce of Royce Associates Executive Resourcing, gives an account of the Executive Research Association’s 2011 Conference:

The ERA (Executive Research Association) held their Annual Conference on 6 April 2011.

More than sixty members attended the event entitled “Social Media – Friend or Foe” held at the Royal Society of Arts in their magnificent building beside the Thames near Charing Cross. They enjoyed a fascinating and stimulating day where the renowned speakers gave very practical guidance on how to exploit social media and leading search engines to find the very best candidates.

The first speaker was Andy Headworth, Managing Director of Sirona Consulting. Andy helps and advises companies about recruitment strategy, recruitment process, online recruitment and social recruiting. He is passionate about the value of social media as a recruitment tool. Although most of the audience already used social and business networking sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, Andy quickly showed how these and many others sites and resources can be used to optimum advantage. He gave numerous practical examples of how to link them together to create powerful profiles for your own business and also how to drive good candidates towards your website.

He swept aside any misconceptions and concerns that people may have about these tools and left his audience totally convinced that social media should be an integral part of their recruitment strategy. Andy’s stark message was that companies, recruiters and candidates need to jump on the bandwagon right away if they are not going to be left behind.

After this intensive and invaluable session delegates enjoyed a delicious lunch and were able to catch up with old friends and also have the opportunity to meet the many new members who were attending their first ERA event.

After lunch, Simon Stephenson, the Co-Chairman of the ERA introduced a panel discussion on whether social media will ultimately make executive researchers redundant. The panel members were Ann Gales, Director of Ann Gales Consulting, Jamie Homer, Director for European Talent at Urban Outfitters Anthropologie, Alex Wratten, Business Development Manager, Telegraph Media Group and Jocelyn Buxton, a very experienced independent researcher and founder member of the ERA.

The panel responded well to a series of penetrating questions from the floor but the general consensus was that even though social media and other tools are vitally important there is still a need for recruitment professionals to check the data, assess its validity and speak to the candidates. Social media, however good, can only ever be part of the researcher’s toolkit and there will never be a substitute for personal interaction with candidates.

Relieved to hear that they still had a job, members of the audience took a short break in the beautiful spring sunshine.

They returned to a short presentation by Jason Starr of Dillistone Systems who took them through some features of Filefinder 10 which has only just been released. Among many enhancements, Filefinder 10 pools a wide range of data gathered from social media and networking sites and this will make it an even more valuable resource.

The final speaker was Katharine Robinson, Sourcing Recruitment Manager at Capgemini Consulting. Katharine won the title of Grandmaster Sourcer at SourceCon in San Diego in March 2010 and it rapidly became clear why she was given this prestigious award. Building on some of the points Andy Headworth had made earlier in the day she treated the audience to a whistle stop tour of Google and other sites to show the real power of these tools that few people ever harness. Using certain key words and search strings she demonstrated just how much information can be retrieved. Her audience was totally absorbed by her presentation and tried to assimilate as much as they could from numerous live examples.

Simon Stephenson then drew the conference to a close. He thanked the speakers and the panel members for giving everyone such a stimulating and thought provoking day and then invited everyone to sample some delicious wine in the cellars of the RSA. This was yet another resounding success for the ERA. As the leading executive research organization in the UK they welcome new members whether from the search, research or corporate communities.

For more information on the 2011 Conference and the ERA’s programme throughout the year please contact:  Sarah El-Rasoul at ERA on 01442 828846 or email sarah@theera.org

How Much Do Astronauts Earn?

Completely daft follow up to my blog post about recruitment salaries.  If you want to know how much an astronaut (and a few other random professions) earn plus job requirements, career advancement opportunities and pros and cons…. then this is the site for you. 

Should keep you entertained during your morning coffee break.

How to get the most out of keywords in a blog post

This is a guest post, very kindly written for us by Daniel Kidd.

Have you ever written a great blog post that didn’t get the traffic it deserves? Although content is the most important feature of any post, you need to make sure you focus on the correct keywords.

I’m going to show you in a few simple steps how to do this.

Keyword Research

Working for an SEO Agency, I get a lot of clients who tell me what keywords to rank them for. I then do some research and find out that there aren’t any searches for them.

Keyword research is important because you might write a fantastic blog post, get lots of incoming links, but because you haven’t done your research, you rank for a term that has no searches. Although you’re getting a lot of readers through other sites linking to the post, the power of the search engines isn’t utilised.

For keyword research, there are some great tools available to help.

For beginners, use the Google Keyword Tool. It’s easy to use, free and the information is quite accurate. It allows you to enter more than one search term and shows the amount of searches (local and global) the term gets. It also shows how much competition there is for the keyword on Google Adwords. Although SEO doesn’t include Google Adwords, it gives you a guide on how many people you’re competing against.

Long tail/short tail keywords

A short tail keyword is more generic than a long tail. It will have more searches and will be more difficult to rank for. You can use your long tail keywords with the short tail ones to get the best results.

If you’re writing a blog post about England football, and you’re targeting 3 long tail keywords:
• England Football Team 2011
• England Football Team
• England Football

If you optimise for these keywords correctly, not only will you rank for the two easier long tail keywords, but the term ‘England Football’ will also rank.

Try to use a mixture of long tail and short tail keywords and try to overlap them so both of them rank.

How many keywords to use

There are no rules about this, but I would stick to around 2-3 long tail keywords in a blog post. Try to overlap them with more generic terms. This way, you can concentrate on getting the post to look as natural as possible without keyword stuffing, which search engines don’t like.

Title

A title of a blog post is what grabs the attention of readers. It’s important to make sure you have a title that makes people carry on reading. It’s also important to include a keyword in the title, as Google takes it into account when ranking a page. Because of these two factors, you have to find a balance between a great heading and proper use of keywords.

Tip – When writing the title of a blog post, try not to use the same word twice

Headings

Google also looks at heading tags when they rank a page. Try to use a keyword in there while sticking to the title rule.

Images

Not many people include this when they talk about keyword optimisation, but I do. Here is why. Have a look at this page. Paella is used in the title, the heading and the body. It’s also used in the image title. The result of this fine keyword optimisation? Search for paella on Google, and you’ll find the image on the first page. This was done by accident, and it doesn’t happen all the time but it shows what good keyword optimisation can do.

Body

The body is where the most mistakes are made. There are a lot of so called SEO experts out there who tell you to use your keywords but don’t explain how often.

This began with the beginning of the search engine. People would use a keyword 50 times in a 200 word blog post and still rank. The internet has evolved, and so has the search engine (particularly Google), and you are more likely to be penalised for this behaviour now.

The term ‘keyword density’ is used a lot. It explains how often a keyword should be used in a page or blog post. Personally, I wouldn’t stick to this. I just write a blog post naturally, and when I’m done, I have a look to see how many keywords I’ve used. I try to have a couple at the start of the post, and spread them out for the rest. I don’t stick to any rules but they’re usually around 4% of a post.

Search engines don’t like keyword stuffing because it is an attempt to artificially manipulate the search rankings. It’s important to use keywords in the blog post, but not at the expense of the content.

Remember that a blog post is written for people to read and not to rank on search engines. That’s why in the SEO industry, there is a massive emphasis on content. Finding a balance between keywords and content can have a big effect on the amount of people who see your blog post, so make sure you’re using them correctly.

Daniel Kidd is a SEO/Link Builder at Organic Development.  He's also on Twitter

Recruitment Trends Report 2011

  This is a free download from Broadbean (via their Facebook page).  

The Recruitment Trends report has analysed, in a lot of detail, what really happened in online recruitment during 2010. It includes reporting on the key trends in vacancy volumes, application volumes, as well as salary levels across a wide range of industry sectors.

 

If you connect with their Facebook page you'll also get access to additional, mostly statistical, information on an on going basis.