Recruiter December 2014/ January 2015

December 2014/January 2015

www.recruiter.co.uk

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE FOR RECRUITMENT AND RESOURCING PROFESSIONALS

Matthew Jeffery

Guide to Recruitment Software 2015 A

SUPPLEMENT

Linking the pathways

Is g glo oball domination of the tale ent lan ndscape ahead for software provider SAP?

SPONSORED BY

As technology enables recruiters to do more with a click, integrating the many systems becomes the top challenge

GAME CHANGERS 2014

CORDANT REGROUPS

The latest technology trends that will transform the way you recruit in the future

Rebrand and radical restructure for Cordant’s recruitment division

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WITH THIS ISSUE: Recruiter’s Guide to Recruitment Software 2015

FOCUS ON TURKEY Recruiter turns its spotlight on Turkey and in a Special Report highlights recruitment challenges in the country

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Almost as constant as the rain the UK had for much of November has been the steady flow of mergers, acquisitions and major investments throughout the recruitment industry in recent weeks: Impellam snaps up Lorien, Hays takes a major stake in Veredus, the RIG Energy deal and of course, Tim Cook’s major move, supported

by Graphite, at the Human Capital Investment Group.

No doubt the drive to acquire is picking up steam, and that means an invigorated and, frankly, lusty sector with an appetite. It’s good to see the waiting game end, and an infusion of energy. Where will it all lead?

Each time I attend LinkedIn’s Talent Connect event, I’m struck by the not-so-subtle link being made by the organisers between heads of resourcing and rock stars. (‘We are stardust, we are golden’, go the lyrics of the ancient but always amazing ode to Woodstock, the gold standard for years of the rock festival.) And this year was no different. “Look! It’s Matthew Jeffery!” (see our cover story). Or, “Look! That’s Isabelle Hung!” and others whose reputations have reached mythic proportions in the industry. This is resourcing conferencing as both entertainment and religious or cult revival — and clearly, LinkedIn are getting a lot of this very right: can four-digit attendance lie?

Until 2015 — have the very best of holidays!

Peter Searle

Contents

NEWS

FEATURES

Cordant aims to put passion back in the high street

5

Cordant’s CEO aims to shake up the marketplace of highstreet recruiters

Social mobility needs boost Commonwealth Games have lasting impact on Search

5

6

Search Consultancy speaks about Games’ legacy on Search and Scotland

26 COVER STORY Matthew Jeffery, vicepresident, head of global sourcing and employment branding, SAP 32 Game changers 2014 This year we highlight the recruitment technology developments that could change the way you recruit in the next year

Central sourcing sits well at John Lewis Partnership...

7

... but some believe it lacks the personal touch 10 Tech & tools: Seizing the

mobile opportunity 16 Special Report: HR and resourcing in Turkey

ANALYSIS 12 Sector Analysis Public sector 15 Global Spotlight on Turkey 25 Insight Britain’s skill ‘hot spots’

DeeDee Doke, Editor

32

26

REGULARS 08 Tumblr 19 Interaction

Soapbox: Sarah Gillatt Ricky Martin Soundbites 41 Movers & Shakers 19 19 21

Industry moves 42 Bloggers with Bite:

Matt Churchward

WHO’S HIRING? 38 Penna, Gabbitas Education,

Blue Octopus

Scan here to get your own copy of Recruiter

39 Ruth Moran

16

EDITORIAL Editor: DeeDee Doke T: +44 (0)20 7880 7601 deedee.doke@recruiter.co.uk Reporters: Sarah Marquet T: +44 (0)20 7880 7606 sarah.marquet@recruiter.co.uk; Nicola Sullivan T: +44 (0)20 7880 7603 nicola.sullivan@recruiter.co.uk Contributing writers: Sam Burne James, Colin Cottell, Sue Weekes Production editor: Vanessa Townsend T: +44 (0)20 7880 7602 vanessa.townsend@recruiter.co.uk Art editor: Adrian Taylor ADVERTISING Business development manager: Tom Culley T: +44 (0)20 7880 7607 tom.culley@recruiter. co.uk Senior sales executive: Lisa-Jane Parker +44 (0)20 7880 7610 lisa-jane.parker@recruiter.co.uk Recruitment advertising: Amalia Zafeiratou T+44 (0)20 7880 7608 amalia@redactive.co.uk Fax +44 (0)20 7880 7553 PRODUCTION Production executive: Rachel Young T+44 (0)20 7880 6209 rachel.young@redactive.co.uk PUBLISHING Publishing director: Aaron Nicholls T: +44 (0)20 7880 8547 aaron.nicholls@redactive.co.uk RECRUITER AWARDS Events: Juliette Bond T: +44 (0)20 7324 2771 juliette.bond@redactive.co.uk CIRCULATION and SUBSCRIPTIONS To receive a regular copy of Recruiter, the leading magazine for recruitment and resourcing professionals, telephone +44 (0)20 8950 9117 or email recruiter@abacusemedia.com • Recruiter is also available to people who do not meet our terms of control: Annual subscription rate for 12 issues: £29.99 UK £35 Europe and Rest of the World • To purchase reprints or multiple copies of the magazine, contact Ryan Hadden T: +44 (0)20 7880 7618 ryan.hadden@redactive.co.uk

Total average net circulation between 1 July 2013 & 30 June 2014 – 18,994. Recruiter is also sent to all REC members

Redactive Media Group 17-18 Britton Street London EC1M 5TP

CONTRIBUTIONS Contributions are invited, but when not accepted will be returned only if accompanied by a fully stamped and addressed envelope. Articles should be emailed. No responsibility can be taken for drawings, photographs or literary contributions during delivery, transmission or in the editor’s hands. © 2014 Redactive Media Group. All rights reserved. This publication (and any part thereof) may not be reproduced, transmitted or stored in print or electronic format (including but not limited to any online service, any database or any part of the internet) or in any other format in any media whatsoever, without the prior written permission of Redactive Media Group. Redactive Media Group accepts no liability for the accuracy of the contents or any opinions expressed herein. The publishers cannot accept liability for any loss arising from the late appearance or non-publication of any advertisement for any reason whatsoever. ISSN 1475-7478

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News

CORDANT TO PUT PASSION BACK ON THE HIGH STREET IS YOUR FIRM ONE OF THE 50 FASTEST? How fast was your recruitment business in 2015?

Recruiter’s FAST 50 returns in our February 2015 issue, the first issue of the new year.

The FAST 50, created in association with Boxington Corporate Finance, is the benchmark league table for the fastest-growing UK recruitment companies.

The FAST 50 is sponsored in 2015 by Hitachi Capital.

Cordant Group’s new look recruitment division, particularly the high street business Cordant People, will shake up the “boring” marketplace and give its competitors a “bloody nose”, chief executive Steven Kirkpatrick has promised.

Kirkpatrick recently unveiled a radical restructure and rebrand of the family-owned group’s recruitment arm exclusively with Recruiter.

He told of his plans to increase profitability, increase geographic and sector spread, and win marketshare from the big recruitment agencies.

The new division, now named Cordant Recruitment, encompasses four specialist consultancies: Cordant People, Cordant Technical and Engineering, Cordant Managed Services and Cordant Medical and Wellbeing.

While he was not so keen to talk about the latter three just yet, it was Cordant People, the high-street brand, that was the most exciting, he said: “It’s the piece that I’m most passionate about because that’s my strength, where I came from.”

The new brand brings into one the businesses Prime Time Recruitment (except the managed services offering), Abacus, Match Employment and CCS. Premiere People will also be brought into the new brand everywhere except Northern Ireland, owing to its market position there.

Before the restructure, the “completely disconnected” brands were “cannibalising” each other and not performing as well as they could, Kirkpatrick said.

“There was a fierce sibling rivalry where ‘as long

Kirkpatrick: aiming to give the competition a ‘bloody nose’

as I do better than you, I’m alright Jack’ … it’s wrong, it’s fundamentally wrong.”

In determining how the new structure was going to work, the client, the consultant and the candidate were all considered, on a location-bylocation basis, he said.

The choice to use the word ‘people’ in the name was to reflect the nature of the business and because he believed there was no major high-street recruiter with people in its title.

“And I think that’s endemic of how boring high-street recruitment has become … It’s boring and I intend to do it in a very different way, where my Cordant People business, in the end, gives the established big five or six in UK high-street recruitment a bloody nose by running a business for the clients, for the consultants, and for the candidates, not for the shareholders.” [cont. p6]

SOCIAL MOBILITY SHOULDN’T RELY ON LUCK

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BUSINESS MUST TAKE MORE demonstrable action to promote social mobility because currently, opportunities only occur through luck, MP for Tottenham David Lammy said at a recent Social Mobility in Financial Services event hosted by recruiter Bruin Financial.

Social mobility initiatives should involve “helping young people understand culture, reaching deep to get those who are up to it and hopefully, as a consequence, diversifying our businesses and organisations”, Lammy said.

He told of his own experience when, as a 16-year-old aspiring City lawyer, his careers guidance teacher told him he should be a fireman. Luckily, his older brother happened to be going out with a girl who had a lawyer friend. Through that friend of a friend, he gained work experience that set him on course to studying at Harvard Law School in the US and eventually becoming an MP. Sixth form Dartford Grammar School student Jeffrey Thomas spoke at the event of his desire to work in financial services, but how he found it difficult to gain work experience as he had no contacts.

Through the City Talent Initiative, which was launched by Bruin after a challenge from Lammy, Thomas gained work experience at JP Morgan and now has an offer to study at the London School of Economics. The City Talent Initiative helps high-achieving young people from low-income backgrounds access opportunities in the finance sector and is managed by the Social Mobility Foundation.

At the same event, David Johnston, chief executive of the Social Mobility Foundation, said financial services firms need to seriously consider who they give work experience to, instead of giving it to relatives of employees and friends.

SARAH MARQUET sarah.marquet@recruiter.co.uk

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News

Thoughts from recruiter.co.uk, Twitter and beyond…

“In the absence of a hard policy like affirmative action (like in the US), we do need more demonstrative action to get to where we need to be” MP FOR TOTTENHAM DAVID LAMMY, SPEAKING ABOUT SOCIAL MOBILITY.

DIVERSITY NEEDS MORE OF A PUSH

COMMONWEALTH GAMES HAVE LASTING IMPACT ON SEARCH

•

Glasgow-based Search Consultancy Scotland, official recruiter for this year’s Commonwealth Games, says the event’s legacy is already evident.

WHOSE RESPONSIBILITY IS IT to push for diversity in candidates, shortlists and ultimately hires? The recruiters, or the clients?

The point was debated at a recent event hosted by specialist recruiter Empiric with equally strong feelings on both sides.

Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo) chief executive Ann Swain, who sat on the panel at the event, said recruiters did not do as much as they could to push for diversity in shortlists.

However, recruiters could only do what their customers asked for, she said. She added she did not think the benefits of “looking beyond your silly old norms” and creating greater diversity had been sold well enough.

“It’s for us to sell it. We don’t care who we place, we get paid for placing great people, it doesn’t matter who they are as long as they are a great person and they do a great job.”

Empiric clients who attended the event, though, said when sending a job specification to a recruiter, they expected to have diverse candidates returned but it was not happening.

They wondered if they had struck a lazy recruiter, or whether it could be that there were no diverse candidates for certain roles.

Freelance diversity and inclusion specialist Jemima Jefferson said there was a perception that recruiters would only provide what they perceive was the hiring pattern for the business and therefore the business would always get the same recruits.

Swain said it was up to recruiters to push the issue.

“If we keep pushing, customers will open their minds about not always getting the same recruit.”

SARAH MARQUET

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“It’s given a lot of Scottish people a much stronger skill set, skills like marketing that they learnt for the games, lead to greater international opportunities for Scottish people,” Search Consultancy managing director Simone Lockhart told Recruiter.

The Glasgow-based consultancy was tasked with recruiting 1,044 people for the Games, a number that rose to about 1,500 to as demand for services grew.

Some recruits have now gone on to build an international games career, Lockhart said.

For example, a previously unemployed graduate recruited by Search, has gone on to work for the Asian Football Confederation in Australia.

More than 170 of Search’s recruits have gone on to accept

employment at other games, including 80 who will work at the European games BAKU 2015, to be held in Azerbaijan and 60 for the Rugby World Cup 2015.

And the legacy for Search?

“For us it’s being a part of something so successful. We have the opportunity to help showcase Scotland for future events and potential new inward investment: for example, companies hoping to set up business here and knowing that they can get the skills,” Lockhart said.

As part of its assignment, the consultancy also developed a programme aimed at helping professional athletes make the transition from sport to successful long-term careers, matching them to work placement opportunities with sponsors and businesses across the UK. It has so far helped 13.

Overall Search received 38,354 applications for 453 different role types across 70 different departments.

SARAH MARQUET

CORDANT TO PUT THE PASSION BACK ON THE HIGH STREET [cont. from p5] Some niche brands, depending on how well they perform, will keep their own branding, but sit under one of Cordant’s four umbrellas.

The acquisition of Sugarman Group, which has an office in Sydney, Australia, earlier this year, offered international expansion, on top of expansion into a new niche.

The Australia base provided a platform from which Cordant can extend its other offerings, something that now forms part of Kirkpatrick’s ambitions.

Strategic acquisitions will occur “every single year, without fail” to land the business in a new niche or location in the company’s sights so it can “harpoon out from there”.

Kirkpatrick said about a dozen people had left the company during the restructure because of cultural change.

They include regional directors, managing directors, branch managers and consultants.

He was quick to point out, however, that 250

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Search’s MD Simone Lockhart with the Glasgow Games’ mascot Clyde

had joined the business since the beginning of 2014.

They are, in part, to staff some of the five new offices opened in the last 10 months. There are now 52 Cordant People offices nationwide and Kirkpatrick intends to bring that up to 70 by the end of 2015 to “truly have a national footprint”.

As for the cost of the restructure so far, he said he did not know yet but it was “significant”.

The process will never really stop though because, “[if] you stop changing, you’re dead”, he said.

“So if I’ve got to throw it up in the air in five years’ time, I will throw it up in the air because the world moves and technology moves. Our clients don’t [change] in particular and people don’t in particular but the facilitation of the service might change … I can see a need to constantly be investing and reinventing.”

The ultimate aim is for the company to become the top specialist recruiter across all industries.

SARAH MARQUET sarah.marquet@recruiter.co.uk

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News

“The only reason I come to this conference is to get the LinkedIn notebook”

“It’s [increasing diversity in companies] about changing the mindset — we are short of talent and that talent can come in any form, at any age, in any style to fulfil the needs we have in any sector”

ATTENDEE AT LINKEDIN TALENT CONNECT EVENT IN LONDON

ASSOCIATION OF PROFESSIONAL STAFFING COMPANIES (APSCO) CHIEF EXECUTIVE ANN SWAIN SPEAKING ABOUT RECRUITMENT’S ROLE IN DIVERSITY.

JLP’S RECRUITING IS CENTRAL Six months into a new centralised resourcing operation, the John Lewis Partnership (JLP) recruiting team is earning plaudits for the quality of new hires being brought into the organisation’s various businesses.

Yet many hiring managers in JLP businesses believe that centralisation has led to “a lack of personal touch” in recruiting, acknowledged Yvette BloxhamSmith, JLP head of resourcing, in a talk to in-house recruiters last month at the LinkedIn Talent Connect conference in London.

JLP includes the John Lewis department stores, Waitrose

A John Lewis store in Liverpool

supermarkets, online and catalogue businesses, a farm, hotels and clubs that serve company employees, and distribution centres. All of its

92,000 permanent employees are referred to as Partners and are shareholders in the business. This creates, as Bloxham-Smith put it, “a democracy” in which Partners are consulted on all significant business changes. Seasonal employees become temporary Partners during their stint at JLP. Before centralisation, the company, one of the UK’s most admired employers, had previously left most recruitment and hiring to its local operations.

The move to a centralised recruitment operation was to ensure consistency across the company’s many divisions.

DEEDEE DOKE deedee.doke@recruiter.co.uk

RECRUITER RICKY MARTIN RETURNS TO THE SET Ricky Martin, founder of science and technology recruiter Hyper Recruitment Solutions, has been reminded of how gruelling the experience of being a participant on TV’s The Apprentice was when he recently returned to the show.

This time, instead of vying for the privilege of working for Sir Alan Sugar, Martin was on the other side of the desk, interviewing the most famous and arguably stressed out job candidates in the country.

Martin, who won The Apprentice in 2012, came face-toface with the final five somewhat frazzled candidates who had the daunting task of presenting their business plans.

Martin told Recruiter: “As soon as I sat down for the interview, the first person that was sat in front of me I looked straight in their eyes and thought ‘man, this person is pretty beat — this person has been through a heck of a process’.” He added: “Bear in mind, it was week 11 of a 12-week process — they would have spent 11 weeks living and breathing The Apprentice and trying to get the investment.”

Martin relished the opportunity

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Lord Sugar, flanked by trusted advisers Karren Brady CBE and Nick Hewer

to grill the candidates because as a busy recruiter he spends a lot of time in HR interviewing. “To go on there and do my day job on The Apprentice rather than learn new things was actually in itself something that was a really good experience.”

Martin’s role on the show was to assess the personalities of the candidates to see whether they would be able to work with Lord Sugar. “We have got some very talented people in the process. I think what everyone might have seen on TV is a snippet of really what they are all about,” he said.

The person can make or break a business plan, said Martin. Even

the strongest business plans will fall apart if it is being delivered by someone who is as “dull as dishwater”, he added. “If a business plan is not specific enough then it is very hard to assess it.”

It is recruiters’ ability to address two customers — the client and the candidate — that can give them the edge when competing on The Apprentice, said Martin.

“Any recruiter is like a business owner because you have got a desk of clients, a desk of candidates and financial performance that needs to be delivered. A recruiter needs to market their jobs and come up with strategies.”

Contract News Anderson Partnership: Acquired SearchBank China … Assist: Acquired Flexible Staffing …

Berry Recruitment: Acquired Mainline Resourcing … CTPartners: Acquired Neumann … … GatenbySanderson: Underwent a MBO by founder Graham Goodwin …

Human Capital Investment Group: Underwent a MBO by its chief executive Tim Cook … Impellam: Acquired Lorien … Intern Avenue: partnered with Vodafone Foundation …

InterQuest: Acquired the remaining 29.92% of issued share capital that it did not already own in its subsidiary Fulcrum Telecom … Liquid Personnel: Will supply social workers to Wolverhampton City Council via its in-house temp recruiting agency Yoo Recruit … Morgan Hunt: Appointed managed service provider for charity Together UK … Navartis: Underwent a MBO… PwC: Won a human resources managed services contract with the MoD … Quarsh: Will manage talent acquisition across the UK and Ireland for Interactive Data … Randstad Holding: Renewed its partnership with Formula One team Williams Martini Racing … RTC Group: Bought RIG Energy… Transport for London: Signed deals with recruiters Talascend Worldwide Technical Resources and Hays …

TTP Education: Is now the preferred recruitment provider for Singapore-based Eton House

NICOLA SULLIVAN

RECRUITER

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%

78 TOP

of UK HR directors are finding it common for employees to read and respond to emails during meetings, but only one in 10 HR directors believe this is acceptable, according to Robert Half firm OfficeTeam

5

MOST VIEWED JOBS ON OUR WEBSITE

1. Alexander Mann

Solutions, Lead recruiter, London

2. GatenbySanderson,

Research consultants, Leeds

3. REED Education, Team manager, Solihull

4. Financial Ombudsman Service, Resourcing partner

5. Randstad, Resourcer, TOP

Ilford

5

MOST VIEWED ARTICLES ONLINE

1. Reed’s former finance director jailed for swindling £300k+

2. 2014 Recruiter HOT

On tumblr this month On recruitermagazine.tumblr.com, Recruiter magazine’s tumblr feed, we showcase what recruiters — and a few others — get up to when they’re not recruiting Athona Recruitment In August 2013 healthcare and education recruiter Athona Recruitment set themselves a mammoth target of raising £10k in 12 months for Little Havens Children’s Hospice based in Thundersley, Essex. The fruits of their labours have meant they have exceeded this by raising £11,110.86. Throughout the year Athona employees took part in a 24-hour cycle challenge, the London Marathon, Southend Half Marathon, 5k Santa run, a quiz night and a Great Gatsby-themed charity ball. Pictured here are Athona’s managing director Stewart London, with (far right) director Tina London and (far left) senior marketing executive Candice Marnell presenting Little Havens’ corporate fundraiser (second left) Lydia Plews with the cheque. Great work, everyone!

Driver Hire Nationwide Driver Hire franchisees took part in Road Safety Week, which ran from 17-23 November. The theme for 2014 was looking ‘looking out for each other’ and encourages drivers to take a bit of extra care and look out for more vulnerable road users, such as cyclists and pedestrians. “According to road safety charity, Brake, ‘Sorry didn’t see yer mate’ accidents were the most common form of crashes on UK roads in 2013,” says Chris Chidley, Driver Hire’s CEO. “Encouraging drivers to take that bit of extra care and look out for other more vulnerable road-users such as cyclists and pedestrians can make a real difference. Of course, responsibility lies both ways. It’s also important for cyclists and pedestrians to ensure that they wear highly visible bright clothing and don’t take undue risks.”

Driver Hire’s cycling commuters give Road Safety Week their full support. (Pictured above, left to right: Dave Robbins, Dan Love and Mark Ashton.)

100: HOT 10 technical recruiters from mainly engineering and scientific sectors

Randstad CPE Construction, property and engineering recruiter Randstad CPE is working in partnership with Fareham College in Hampshire to give students experience in the workplace. Damien Vanderhaegen (pictured left) from Fareham College is currently undertaking a six-week traineeship with the recruitment specialist. Additionally, Britoni Farrer-Williams (pictured right), also from Fareham College, is working with the marketing team to gain conference and event management experience.

3. 2014 Recruiter

HOT 100: HOT 10 professional recruiters revealed

4. Cordant Group

restructures, rebrands recruitment division

5. 2014 Recruiter HOT

100 – Plugged in: the IT & telecoms HOT 10

Don’t forget to send us your lighter news with pictures to recruiter.editorial@redactive.co.uk

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News

Tech & tools

SEIZING THE MOBILE OPPORTUNITY At a recent webinar hosted

by Recruiter and sponsored by Indeed, two UK-based recruiters presented their separate and very different journeys towards capturing recruitment’s “mobile moment” and how they devised their mobile strategies.

Here’s what they had to say: Simon Dear, chief executive, full services global technical recruitment company, Tangent International, which specialises in the telecoms, technology and engineering sectors Objective: To put in place a mobile and media strategy which it believes go hand-inhand. Among the agency’s aims were to engage with a wider candidate base for harder-to-fill jobs, believing this talent would predominantly come from social/ business media channels and via the mobile space.

Solution: Tangent’s strategy included developing a mobile app to drive traffic and a responsive website that would adapt its size and format to the device on which it is being viewed. “We wanted it to look as good on mobile devices as it did on the laptop,” said Dear.

The app is dedicated to candidate search while clients and candidates would move between social media channels and the website to get the full Tangent experience.

“We wanted to create as many channels as possible for candidates and widen our search for the passive candidate as well as develop an engaged candidate community,” he said.

The focus on mobile also sent out important internal and external messages: “It was something that got our staff excited and showed we were investing in them while it showed clients that we are moving with the times and understand the technology.”

Its impact and what next?

More than 3,000 people have downloaded the app, and Dear

SHUTTERSTOCK

WITH 50% OF JOB SEARCHES ON GLOBAL JOB SEARCH ENGINE INDEED COMING FROM MOBILE DEVICES, THE ONUS WOULD SEEM TO BE ON RECRUITERS, BOTH AGENCY AND INHOUSE, TO UP THEIR GAME IN OPTIMISING THE POTENTIAL OF THIS APPLICANT SOURCE

said mobile would remain an ongoing focus. It wants to offer true 24/7/365-day engagement and is currently making the app available in Chinese and Spanish.

It also plans to develop mobile access to intra-web portals for candidates and clients. “We don’t see mobile as something that is now done,” said Dear. “We will

constantly look at it in weekly and monthly management meetings and you must also keep an eye on what your competitors are doing.”

Matt Green, chief executive, professional services recruitment firm IDEX Consulting which serves UK and international clients and candidates

Make the most of the mobile moment Ronan Mooney, director of sales, UK staffing, Indeed, believes we have “reached the mobile moment”. Half of Indeed’s traffic and half (51%) of applications are coming from a mobile device. He urged recruiters to put the candidate at the heart of a mobile strategy: • Attempt to apply for a job on your site with a smartphone. Is it a seamless experience or does it put you off the application process?

• Optimise the mobile experience by taking out any unnecessary steps from the application process.

• The number of screening questions you ask can have a big impact: more than 30 can reduce applications by half, and by 70% if there are more than 40.

• Although streamlining the website, don’t sacrifice the branding. Fully brand it to ensure you are recognised and to build trust and credibility among candidates.

• Use video and imagery as well as text to show the value-add you bring to candidates.

Objective: To provide a seamless professional journey for the user and, in the wider business perspective, generate as many leads as possible for consultants.

Of IDEX’s web traffic over the past 12 months, 30% was from mobile but the bounce rate of these visitors (those clicking on and straight off) was 82%. “And the other 18% left after two to two-and-a-half minutes so we knew we needed to fix this problem,” said Green.

Solution: Developed a bespoke site with a desktop version and a version fully optimised for mobile. “We wanted that speed of process of a traditional site rather than just relying on a mobile app,” said Green, who said it had to meet with a number of suppliers before it found one that understood its needs.

It also found that it had involved too many internal stakeholders in the project.

“Everyone wanted a part of it so we quickly reduced it to five stakeholders,” he said, adding that another “massive learn” was the timeframe because of the length of time it sometimes took to get feedback from those involved. It initially did a soft launch which kept the site off social media to ensure “teething problems” didn’t escalate and the site went properly live in September this year.

Its impact and what next? The bounce rate of mobile visitors has reduced to 31% already and average time spent on site increased to over five minutes.

Job applications have gone up by 20% against last year.

“We want to nurture the people who use the site and turn them into leads,” said Green.

“We see mobile as an ongoing project. When I see a website that isn’t optimised for mobile, it makes me question whether the business is geared for the future.”

SUE WEEKES

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RACS GROUP HAS THE FOLLOWING VACANCIES....

HEAD OF SALES tĞ ĂƌĞ ůŽŽŬŝŶŐ ĨŽƌ Ă ĚLJŶĂŵŝĐ ,ĞĂĚ ŽĨ ^ĂůĞƐ ƚŽ ŵĂŶĂŐĞ ŽƵƌ ŶĂƟŽŶĂů ŐƌŽǁƚŚ ƐƚƌĂƚĞŐLJ͘ ĂƐĞĚ Ăƚ ŽƵƌ ,ĞĂĚ KĸĐĞ ŝŶ tĂƌŵŝŶƐƚĞƌ͕ ƚŚĞ ƉŽƐŝƟŽŶ ǁŝůů ĂƉƉĞĂů ƚŽ ĐĂŶĚŝĚĂƚĞƐ ǁŝƚŚ Ă ƉƌŽǀĞŶ ƚƌĂĐŬ ƌĞĐŽƌĚ ŽĨ ƐƚƌĂƚĞŐŝĐĂůůLJ ŵĂŶĂŐŝŶŐ ŝŶƚĞƌŶĂů ĂŶĚ ĞdžƚĞƌŶĂů ƐĂůĞƐ ƚĞĂŵƐ ŝŶ Ă ĨĂƐƚͲŐƌŽǁŝŶŐ ďƵƐŝŶĞƐƐ͘ KƉĞƌĂƟŶŐ Ăƚ ƐĞŶŝŽƌ ŵĂŶĂŐĞŵĞŶƚ ůĞǀĞů͕ ƚŚŝƐ ƌŽůĞ ƉƌŽǀŝĚĞƐ ĂŶ ĞdžĐĞƉƟŽŶĂů ŽƉƉŽƌƚƵŶŝƚLJ ĨŽƌ ĂŶ ĞdžƉĞƌŝĞŶĐĞĚ ĂŶĚ ĂŵďŝƟŽƵƐ ŝŶĚŝǀŝĚƵĂů ůŽŽŬŝŶŐ ƚŽ ƉƌŽŐƌĞƐƐ ƚŚĞŝƌ ĐĂƌĞĞƌ͘

REGIONAL ACCOUNT MANAGERS EŽƌƚŚ ĂƐƚ Θ ^ŽƵƚŚ ĂƐƚ

tĞ ĂƌĞ ƌĞĐƌƵŝƟŶŐ ƚǁŽ ƌĞŐŝŽŶĂů ĂĐĐŽƵŶƚ ŵĂŶĂŐĞƌƐ ǁŝƚŚ ƉƌŽǀĞŶ ĞdžƉĞƌŝĞŶĐĞ ŝŶ ƚŚĞ ƌĞĐƌƵŝƚŵĞŶƚͬƵŵďƌĞůůĂ ƐĞĐƚŽƌƐ͘ ĞŶƚƌĂů ƚŽ ƚŚĞ ĮĞůĚͲďĂƐĞĚ ƌŽůĞ ĂƌĞ ďŽƚŚ ŵĂŶĂŐŝŶŐ ĞdžŝƐƟŶŐ ƌĞůĂƟŽŶƐŚŝƉƐ ǁŝƚŚ ŽƵƌ ĐƵƌƌĞŶƚ ĐůŝĞŶƚƐ ĂŶĚ ŐĞŶĞƌĂƟŶŐ ŶĞǁ ďƵƐŝŶĞƐƐ ŽƉƉŽƌƚƵŶŝƟĞƐ ŝŶ ĞĂĐŚ ƌĞƐƉĞĐƟǀĞ ƌĞŐŝŽŶ͘ dŚŝƐ ƉŽƐŝƟŽŶ ǁŝůů ĂƉƉĞĂů ƚŽ ĐĂŶĚŝĚĂƚĞƐ ǁŝƚŚ ĞdžĐĞƉƟŽŶĂů ŝŶƚĞƌƉĞƌƐŽŶĂů ƐŬŝůůƐ͕ ĂŶ ĞŶƚƌĞƉƌĞŶĞƵƌŝĂů ŵŝŶĚ ƐĞƚ ĂŶĚ ĂŶ ĂďŝůŝƚLJ ƚŽ ĚĞǀĞůŽƉ Z ^ 'ƌŽƵƉ͛Ɛ ƉƌĞƐĞŶĐĞ ŝŶ ĞĂĐŚ ƚĞƌƌŝƚŽƌLJ͘

Z ^ 'ƌŽƵƉ ŝƐ ŽŶĞ ŽĨ ƚŚĞ ĨĂƐƚĞƐƚ ŐƌŽǁŝŶŐ ĐŽŵƉĂŶŝĞƐ ŝŶ ƚŚĞ ƌĞĐƌƵŝƚŵĞŶƚ ŝŶĚƵƐƚƌLJ ǁŝƚŚ ĂŶ ĞŶǀŝĂďůĞ ƐĞƌǀŝĐĞ ƉƌŽƉŽƐŝƟŽŶ ĂŶĚ ďƌĂŶĚ ƉƌŽĮůĞ͘ tĞ ŽīĞƌ ŐĞŶĞƌŽƵƐ ƌĞŵƵŶĞƌĂƟŽŶ ǁŝƚŚ ƵŶĐĂƉƉĞĚ Kd ͕ ĂƩƌĂĐƟǀĞ ďĞŶĞĮƚƐ ƉĂĐŬĂŐĞ ĂŶĚ ĞdžĐĞƉƟŽŶĂů ǁŽƌŬŝŶŐ ĐŽŶĚŝƟŽŶƐ ĨŽƌ ďŽƚŚ ƌŽůĞƐ͘ • dŽ ǀŝĞǁ ĨƵůů ũŽď ĚĞƐĐƌŝƉƟŽŶƐ͕ ƉůĞĂƐĞ ǀŝƐŝƚ ǁǁǁ͘ƌĂĐƐŐƌŽƵƉ͘ĐŽŵͬĐĂƌĞĞƌƐ • /Ŷ ƚŚĞ ĮƌƐƚ ŝŶƐƚĂŶĐĞ͕ ƉůĞĂƐĞ ƐĞŶĚ LJŽƵƌ s ĂŶĚ ĐŽǀĞƌŝŶŐ ůĞƩĞƌ ƚŽ ŚƌΛƌĂĐƐŐƌŽƵƉ͘ĐŽŵ

Head Office RACS Group House, Three Horseshoes Walk Warminster, Wiltshire. BA12 9BT

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0845 604 0571 info@racsgroup.com racsgroup.com

04/12/2014 11:03

Sector Analysis

Public Sector WITH A GENERAL ELECTION JUST ROUND THE CORNER, THE PROSPECTS FOR RECRUITMENT REMAINS UP IN THE AIR FOR THOSE WORKING IN THE SECTOR Budget constraints, an imminent general election, severe skills shortages, and high levels of scrutiny directed at operations such as children’s services make the public sector a significantly challenging arena for recruiters.

Martin Tucker, joint managing partner at Gatenby Sanderson, tells Recruiter that it is difficult to recruit for senior roles in children’s services. “There is a shortage of good leaders — people who can lead complex and challenging children’s services.”

Tucker suspects that those in middle management jobs are put off taking leadership roles after witnessing the pressure their bosses are under, both in terms of the complexity of their role and the level of public scrutiny and inspection it attracts. “I think people are looking at those jobs and thinking ‘I don’t want to do them’,” says Tucker.

While agency workers and locums are often used to plug the gaps in social services, they do not escape criticism. In November, Recruiter reported concerns raised by The British Association of Social Workers that a reliance on temporary staff was at worst putting vulnerable children’s lives at risk. At the time Debbie Smith, chief executive of social care recruiter Caritas Recruitment, told Recruiter that longer-term contracts and more lengthy notice periods would reduce risk and increase the value of temporary workers. She said: “The ability of locum workers to walk away from a contract with limited notice can be very disruptive, and then pose risks.”

Budget constraints are still having an impact on the sector as whole. Although, according to David Cairncross, public sector director at Hays, the majority of budget cuts have been built into organisations, and therefore he does not anticipate further staff reductions around the corner. However, he says there’s “not any more money in the system” to compete on jobs. While

an increasingly “prosperous” private sector may be able to up a procurement manager’s salary by 10%, public sector employers simply don’t have that option.

And according to Natanya Alder, policy and strategy manager at Morgan Hunt, procurement roles are in high demand as cost savings are still very much a priority for public sector institutions.

Observers have also seen an increase in demand for finance, technical, research and analysis, and project management roles.

There has been less activity around senior HR roles, notes Tucker. This he puts down to in-house promotions and the increased pooling or sharing of back-office functions. “There are numerous examples across the police and local government where there is an HR director or a finance director who is looking after more than one organisation,” says Tucker.

The ongoing issue of a skills shortage in the NHS has not gone away, with concerns raised by the Labour Party that too much money is being spent on agency workers. Cairncross says that changes such as the introduction of Clinical Commissioning Groups and Commissioning Support Units demand people with new and different skills. He says: “The NHS has been subject to an enormous amount of change, not just recently, but for a prolonged period of time. The fact is there are roles that are nonpermanent and only for a certain period of time.”

It is of course difficult to predict the future of public sector recruitment this close to a general election. Cairncross is expecting a bit of a “slowdown” in the coming months. There will be a bit of a “bottleneck” post-election as the sector adapts to new requirements, he says.

One thing is clearly certain: the public sector will remain an area of recruitment that is not for the faint-hearted.

Views from the market Natanya Alder, policy and strategy manager at Morgan Hunt: “Our recruitment cycle tends to mirror the policy-making process. Perm is picking up again, and currently we are seeing a rise in research and analysis roles.”

Martin Tucker, joint managing partner at Gatenby Sanderson: “We have also seen increased demand for people with programme and project management skills, and the ability to transform organisations. The key driver for this, of course, is that the public sector will have less money over the next five years than it has now.”

David Cairncross, public sector director at Hays: “This is not solely an NHS problem — this is representative of what’s going on in many parts of the public sector, including local government and central government and even within the transport sector.”

NICOLA SULLIVAN

WHICH DISCIPLINE IS EXPERIENCING THE BIGGEST SKILLS SHORTAGES? 15%

Leadership

14%

Strategic change

9%

Business improvement

Source: Anglia Ruskin University and iGov survey, published in November 2014 Sample: The survey polled 679 individuals from 541 organisations across the public sector (central and local government, healthcare, the emergency services and education)

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Market Indicators

Global Spotlight on Turkey THE COUNTRY’S YOUNG WORKFORCE AND GROWING ECONOMY ARE JUST TWO FACTORS THAT MAKE TURKEY A STRONG BASE FOR INTERNATIONAL COMPANIES — AND RECRUITERS Turkey’s potential to become a global economic powerhouse, based on its size and its growing population, including a plentiful supply of young workers, has become widely recognised in recent years. As one of the MINT countries — along with Mexico, Indonesia and Nigeria — this regional power is earmarked by many economists for greater things. However, for the moment at least, recruiters at the sharp end are questioning whether a country whose economy doubled in size between 2003 and 2013 can continue its spectacular upward trajectory.

Arzu Saraçoglu, co-founder of Turkish staffing company Ekspres Personel Servis ve Danısmanlık AS (EPS), says the ongoing political instability in the wider region, which includes Turkey’s close neighbours Syria and Iraq, has fed through into lower hiring activity, “as companies cut investment and reduce their budgets in most sectors”.

Hugo Campo, PageGroup’s managing director for Turkey, agrees that after years of rapid expansion, “Turkey is entering a new phase”, characterised by lower growth.

That said, recruiters continue to see plenty of grounds for optimism. Betül Gulmëz, Adecco Turkey’s operations director, points to sectors such as retail and construction that “seem to be constantly growing”. “Turkey is also a very strong regional base for many [international] companies,” she adds.

And despite signs of a slowdown, Turkey continues to provide many attractions for its indigenous workforce and for expatriates alike, says Campo.

He points to “strong and reputable” homegrown companies such as Turkcell, a multi-billion pound turnover mobile phone operator that is “just as attractive” as any multinational. “Turkey is still a very good place if you want quick development in your career. It is still the country to be,” he adds.

That said, attracting the best candidates from Turkey’s younger generation, in a country where half the population is under the age of 30, requires employers to pay careful attention to both pay and the workplace environment, says Fariha Salahuddin, pharmaceutical giant GSK’s vice president of HR for emerging markets and Australasia.

“The corporate market in Turkey is becoming more flexible. There is much less hierarchy than in the past.

This matches the expectations of the new graduates entering the workforce who expect flexibility, opportunity and personal growth,” she says. They expect this to happen every two or three years, and if they don’t get it “they look for other opportunities”, she adds.

“Companies now understand the need to try to

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keep the good people and the best performers in order to avoid the cost and time of onboarding, as well as to improve customer satisfaction,” adds Gulmëz. “Rather than continually hiring lots of new people as they used to, they understand that staff selection and employee satisfaction are very important.” This is particularly the case in high turnover sectors such as retail, she says.

However, according to Saraçoglu, labour mobility remains a feature of the Turkish labour market.

“It is very common for workers to move from one position to another, or one sector to another sector,” he says. And this, he says, works in favour of employers, because it results in a large pool of available talent that is competent in many disciplines. The downside, he says, is that it is more difficult to find specialists.

While this is not good news for employers, Campo says one positive outcome has been to allow professional recruiters the opportunity to prove their worth. In the past, he says a lot of hiring was because someone was a family member, a friend of a friend or part of an internal network.

This is changing, he says, and there is growing recognition that external recruiters “with an objective point of view can improve the selection of candidates”.

Gulmëz agrees that recruiters have made progress, particularly in explaining the value of temporary recruitment. However, much remains to be done, she says, not least to ensure that recruiters themselves understand Turkey’s multifaceted culture.

“You cannot use the same recruitment model in Istanbul and Ankara [the capital]. Each city has its way of doing business, and you have to adapt,” she says. “In Istanbul, you can say ‘Let’s do an interview in Starbucks in 25 minutes’, whereas in Ankara it’s more formal. You have to inform all parties, you have to be right on time and dressed up for the occasion.”

Key facts – Turkey 2013 – GDP (gross domestic product) US$820bn (£517bn) Turkey is the world’s 16th largest economy According to HSBC, Turkey will be the world’s 12th biggest economy by 2050 Over the past 10 years, Turkey attracted more than US$100bn of FDI (foreign direct investment) Among the many multinational companies that have regional headquarters in Turkey are BP, Coca-Cola, GlaxoSmithKline, Imperial Tobacco, Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft, Pepsi, Siemens and Unilever Source: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Country Update, September 2014

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COLIN COTTELL

RECRUITER

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News

SPECIAL REPORT

New BIS proposals unveiled to curb late payment (28 November) All good and well to have transparency over payment terms but what about ‘pay when paid’ contracts? These contracts put immense pressure on cashflow and is incredibly unfair on small businesses.

Jill Henry I am also noticing plc companies are using third party providers who are late payers to recruitment firms so plc companies do not get the blame - you make a placement and then have to wait for the payment from their HR resourcing partners who can take forever and they fall under the radar for paying late from the UK government.

Gina Le Prevost

Recruiters need to educate businesses in benefits of older workers (27 November) Recruiters would benefit greatly themselves by employing and retaining older workers. Having worked since 2005 with recruiters I often wonder where the ‘elephant graveyard’ of ex (older) recruiters go after they leave since it’s rare to find many past 35 and most seem to be much younger!

Julia Kaya

RPOs ‘a big deal’ and set to grow, say researchers SIA (27 November) Unbelievably depressing…. I’ve yet to speak to a candidate or agency who likes them and not many clients (apart from procurement) are keen.

Julia Briggs

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SHUTTERSTOCK

Web comments

YOUNG TURKS STRIKE OUTTO EMBRACE BRIGHT FUTURE DEEDEE DOKE RECENTLY VISITED THE COUNTRY, STRADDLING EAST AND WEST, TO DISCOVER THE DYNAMIC TRENDS IN RECRUITMENT For Sevilay Pezek Yangin, the president of the People Management Association of Turkey (Turkiye Insan Yönetimi Dernegi), her country is now in the throes of a VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) environment. But while the acronym ‘VUCA’ is most often associated with turbulent conditions, Yangin’s view is more optimistic, even aspirational. “My VUCA is ‘vision, understanding, clarity and agility’,” Yangin told Recruiter last month at her association’s conference in Istanbul.

Entrepreneurial and networking-savvy, Turkey is throwing itself into a new era of dynamic human resources and recruitment, where employer brand is critical, recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) is a new player on the ground, and the population is dominated by the young.

While “a country of contrasts” may seem a cliché, Turkey’s business environment is certainly that. On the one hand, poor working conditions in the country’s traditional mining industry, leading to injuries and deaths, mean Yangin and her peers want to

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push health & safety higher up the HR agenda. Meanwhile, questions surrounding the working futures for an influx of Syrian refugees fleeing their conflict-torn country are yet to receive wide debate.

At the same time, Turkey’s low-cost airline with its new fleet of jets is taking on exotic routes Eastward — and lots of employees, in part provided through RPO partner Civitas — as it democratises air travel for its own population and serves the rest of the world. Didem Egeli, Pegasus Airlines’ HR director, says: “Flying becomes a habit for Turkish people. And we are famous for creativity, humbleness, flexibility and our commitment to departing on time.”

Next year, Pegasus will almost double its 500-pilot workforce to 900, increase its number of flight attendants by

Didem Egeli

17% and recruit other types of workers to fill 400 different job descriptions within the company.

By challenging the status quo and developing very much its own business culture, Turkey faces a promising future — but will it ultimately find its firmest connections with the West, or with Russia and its Eastern neighbours?

Some Turkish snapshots: Recruiting young Turks to sell life insurance and private pensions to their countrymen is easy — but retaining them is difficult for leading Turkish financial services provider AvivaSA. According to Murat Bayburtluoglu, assistant general manager — human resources for AvivaSA, 600 new recruits are brought in each year to sell both life insurance and private pensions, with nearly 50% leaving within the first six months. That figure is more than double the companywide employee churn within the first six months of joining.

Of the 50% who leave, close to 9% will have been fired.

The salary is low, at a base of 1,250 TL (£356) and the products not easy to

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Trendy, home-grown eateries such as Cook Shop are seeking staff to take advantage of the country’s youthful consumers

Murat Bayburtluoglu

sell in a market where both life insurance and private pensions are relatively new commodities. While strong future growth is anticipated, widespread acceptance has yet to take firm hold in a country with a young population. Life insurance is particularly hard to sell. “We Turkish believe we will live forever,” Bayburtluoglu told Recruiter.

Bayburtluoglu takes a pragmatic view of the departures. “Everyone thinks at first that they can easily sell,” he said of new recruits.

“If they can sell, they stay, if they can’t, they leave. Then we are happy they are leaving because they cannot sell. It is a business decision.”

At the same time, he

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recognises that it would be preferable to have a highly productive workforce that stayed in place. AvivaSA has in place different methods to find the right people, he said, using internal and outsourced recruiters, with the aim of better pinpointing candidates with the best potential.

But while the sector may be experiencing some growing pains at the moment in terms of sales skills and a committed workforce, Bayburtluoglu believes that the 36bn TL (£10.3bn) industry will be one of the best places to be in coming years. “It is a wise decision to come on board now,” he said.

And as the chief executive officer Aviva Europe, David McMillan, said in a company statement in September, “Turkey is an extremely attractive market to Aviva, with excellent growth prospects.”

Denizbank on strategic growth track Fast-growing Turkish bank Denizbank (translated to Seabank) is hiring a minimum of 3,000 new employees a year in what it is calling a

“sustainable growth strategy”.

Of the 3,000, two-thirds are intended to be new graduates, executive vice president Yavuz Elkin told Recruiter. Elkin, a former senior vice president of commercial banking, heads the bank’s human resources and Deniz Academi group.

The Academi is the bank’s corporate university and using the bank’s link with the sea as a branding tool, its missions are to create top-quality new ‘sailors’, or employees, and identify and train new ‘captains’, or managers.

An internship programme, Pearls of the Sea, is generating interest in working for the bank, with a follow-on Pearls of the Sea Alumni initiative creating a corps of brand ambassadors on Turkey’s university campuses.

At the same time, the bank is also putting a priority on recruiting Turkish high school graduates who have not continued on to university (see Recruiter, November 2014).

When experienced hires are needed, the organisation’s large recruiting department taps into LinkedIn to identify potential recruits – but the bank also attracts interest from other banks’ employees who like what they see happening at Denizbank.

The bank’s unique blend of reaching outside for fresh talent with different backgrounds, focusing on internal mobility to fill managerial roles and a 21st century usage of LinkedIn’s professional network is helping it to become one of Turkey’s top employers of choice.

Its chief executive, Hakan Ates, was the first Turkish ‘influencer’ on LinkedIn, and he is widely seen in Turkey as a leading business role model.

Elkin said that the bank

Yavuz Elkin

RECRUITER

TURKEY TODAY: Top skills • Management • Sales • Marketing • Analysis • Project planning Top five economic regions • Istanbul • Ankara • Izmir • Bursa • Antalya Top five universities • Anadolu University • Istanbul University • Marmari University • Istanbul Technical University • Middle East Tech University Source: LinkedIn

wants “at least 70%” of new managers to come from its internal ranks, a target Denizbank is currently achieving. Over the last five years, around 75% of manager appointments have been internal candidates. Such aims promote engagement, Elkin said, adding: “All employees can then see the opportunities here.”

One highly visible means of demonstrating Denizbank’s commitment to building its corps of ‘captains’ is at its annual conference for managers and leaders, attended by about 1,500 of these ‘captains’. A traditional ritual at the event is to ask at the beginning how many are first-time attendees. At the most recent event, about 300 raised their hands. Between 200 and 250 then held their hands up when asked how many were there for a second time. Overall, Elkin said, around half of the attendees had become new captains within the last three years.

“This feeds current employee trust and engagement,” Elkin said.

Denizbank is owned by Russia’s Sberbank.

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Don’t miss out on disabled skills

There are many talented and skilled disabled, deaf and mature candidates out there who want to work but employers and recruitment agencies are missing out on their skills due to fear, misconceptions and a general lack of knowledge about the abilities of disabled, deaf and mature candidates (DDMCs).

Equally, these candidates are nervous about approaching employers/ recruiters due to possible discrimination, barriers or difficulties navigating the complex job search processes that are routinely used.

Recruitment processes have become complex with the introduction of psychometric, literacy, numeracy and IT competency testing, as well as CV selection, online applications and assessments. More candidates are vying for the same jobs, which makes it harder for DDMCs to compete on an equal basis.

The DDMC group may come in two categories: those who accessed good education and hold qualifications; and those who have not accessed good education but have trade skills.

Those who have not accessed good education face greater barriers to employment due to the high level of literacy and IT knowledge required in the job process such as filling in application forms online, writing competent emails or letters to employers, testing, understanding the jargon on job descriptions and interviews (face-to-face and telephone).

Disabled/deaf candidates face additional difficulties as employers/ recruiters do not understand that there are tools available to assist such candidates through the recruitment process and in work, such as ‘Access To Work’, new technology, interpreters and training.

It has been suggested that disabled/deaf candidates should disclose their disability upfront to enable employers/recruiters to understand the candidates’ circumstances but it can generate ‘hidden’ discrimination,

RICKY MARTIN

SARAH GILLATT is a deaf professional, working as a community development

officer for a deaf charity

Recruiters should cultivate a culture of picking up the phone

Do you remember the time when we used a telephone to talk to each other? It’s quite hard to believe that’s the way we all communicated. Well, once upon a time the telephone was also the primary method of communication between recruiters and candidates. However, the story is quite different today.

These days, most recruiters dismiss the idea of having a real-time conversation, meaning that the telephone is in fact becoming one of the least-used methods of communication in our business. In-mails, emails and LinkedIn connection requests appear to be the preferred methods of engagement. So why do recruiters avoid using the phone?

The obvious reason why recruiters are favouring emails is probably because of ‘the fear’ of an off-the-cuff conversation as opposed to the comfort of sending a message via email. Such a controlled message can be carefully prepared, which in turn can elevate worries of making a phone call and saying the wrong thing. There’s no need to think on the spot and answer any unexpected questions in this new, fashionable way of engagement, so recruiters are in their comfort zone.

The trouble with this ‘new age’ recruiting, despite it being a safer approach, is the speed of response. When we are all trying hard to reduce our customers time to hire, we are actually prolonging it. On average the response time to an email is roughly 72 hours, if at all. But when making a phone call it can be instant. With this in mind, surely making a telephone call should still remain a no-brainer to a recruiter.

Although we now have so many ways to communicate, calling candidates is still the most efficient, effective and quickest way to recruit. More importantly, this traditional method of communication typically produces immediate results. The best response

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which can be difficult to identify. Candidates want to be defined by their qualifications, skills and achievements, not by their disability or age. If recruiters/employers publicise that they are accessible to DDMCs, the candidates may disclose their access needs earlier.

Several recruitment agencies are still using telephones as the main form of communication with candidates, but it is becoming outdated and expensive when other companies are exploring the potential of new cheaper technology such as social media, emails and Skype.

Telephones make it difficult for deaf candidates to interact with recruiters and employers, and this can lead to misconceptions made about deaf candidates that they are not eligible or suitable for jobs that include verbal communication. In fact, deaf candidates can do jobs that involve verbal communication because they have interpreters who assist with communication, as well as new assistive technologies.

Deaf professionals have successfully delivered presentations to hearing audiences with assistance from interpreters.

Recruiters and employers need to think about becoming more accessible and inclusive. People may become disabled at any point in their lives due to illness, the development of a health condition or accidents within and outside the workplace, for example. With the Equality Act 2010 in force, an ageing population, people working longer and the government’s work reforms, recruiters and employers need to start looking at their practices and processes, and make it easier for candidates to get employed regardless of age and disability.

Let’s make Britain an inclusive and positive place to live and work!

rates from passive candidates are as a result of recruiters using the telephone on a regular basis.

Here are my top tips for improving your recruiting calls with candidates.

• Every call is an opportunity. It’s not just about trying to seek out qualified individuals, it’s a chance to use those initial calls as a networking conversation which can be beneficial to both you and your candidate in the long run.

• If your call is regarding a job, research and understanding the opportunity before calling a candidate. This is crucial. Being able to present an opportunity and explain why it is an exceptional fit with a particular person’s career path are both vital.

• Grab their attention — even the passive candidates. Find out what interests or motivates them and if you truly can relate to them.

Why are they looking for a new opportunity? What are their longterm career goals? Get to know them. This cannot be done easily over email or In-mail!

I don’t know why recruiters think it is acceptable to do all of their networking and engagement via social and professional networking sites or email. To succeed, do what we do best — consult. You don’t go to see a doctor over email or LinkedIn for their expert opinion on healthcare and well-being. Recruitment is not different and what I call ‘cyber recruitment’ is not helping the image of our industry. It complements what we do; it does not replace it.

So what’s stopping you? Pick up the telephone and speak to your candidates.

RICKY MARTIN is managing director and founder of Hyper Recruitment

Solutions. Find out more at www.hyperec.com or @Hyperec_HRS on Twitter

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Interaction

SOUND

WEB

BITES

COMMENT

“Do you think British workers are too fussy when it comes to jobseeking compared to other nationalities in the UK?” Kelly Haston Managing director, Aspire Cambridge

Having worked extensively with candidates of varying nationalities, I would say that British candidates are generally more passive than active. I have found that the British would prefer to wait for the perfect opportunity and edge with caution rather than take a chance, especially as they are more likely to have misconceptions regarding a company or a position. We find candidates from different nationalities are more open and flexible in their job search, especially candidates that have relocated to the UK within the past 12 months.

Andy Hogarth Chief executive officer, Staffline Group

I think sometimes pay rates are low.

The minimum wage in some areas of the country isn’t enough to encourage people to come off benefits. In 2007 (pre-recession) we had about 20% UK citizens working for us and that is up to 34% now. It is a huge jump, and I think that shows that it’s not that people are too fussy, but I do think that sometimes the benefits system encourages them not to take work. Is it that the benefits are too high or that the pay is too low? It is one or the other, or probably both. And for some jobs, foundry [work] for instance, there is just nobody with the skill set in the UK, so we have to recruit from overseas. In general most Brits are prepared to turn their hand to anything, but subject to how much the work pays.

Miles Lloyd Chief executive, Outsauce

The combination of lamentable school careers advice, a benefits system that doesn’t encourage work and the hangover of the government push for everybody to go to university has created a culture of fussiness among British workers. While other nationalities roll up their sleeves, take jobs and earn, we have a lost generation of degree-educated people who are untrained for the workplace. Worse than this, they have high expectations and think that certain roles are beneath them. The key to tackling this is to create a careers system that nurtures the individual skills of young people and includes a balanced mix of apprenticeships and higher education.

Potential new Facebook product could help recruiters source candidates (17 November) I wouldn’t want the two Facebook products to be able to link with each other. Business and personal contacts should be kept separate for some pretty obvious reasons for recruiters. Imagine the candidate who feels aggrieved at not getting considered by you for a role and turns into a troll or worse?

Mike Grossbard Head of Ofsted tells schools to look to apprenticeships more, offer children vocational or academic route at 14 (19 November) At long last we have someone at the head of Ofsted thinking practically. We need children to understand work ethic before they reach the time they need to make up their minds as to what they choose to do for their careers. The only way they will have any indication of this is to gain ‘real’ work experience in a business. My idea is to allow the students to gain this by creating a forum in which directors of small businesses are willing to allow them to work in their businesses for at least a couple of months while they are 14 years of age.

I would very much welcome this as a business owner, and I know other business owners who would join me in this. In addition to this, parents should be taught how to educate children too from the home point of view, while the children do their homework. This time spent with them is invaluable and pays dividends in the long run. I recruit people on a regular basis and we have come across young people who believe it or not are sent out from schools not able to read or write properly, let alone understand the world of work.

Christina Ashcroft Recruitment industry challenges Miliband’s proposals for ‘rogue’ recruiters (25 November) Yet again Ed shows just how desperate he is to grab onto an issue — any issue — that will get him into the headlines. Pity he doesn’t think before putting his foot in his mouth. For goodness sake Ed, get rid of the ’50s ideology that ‘Government knows best and can do anything the private sector can, but better’; it’s been proved wrong repeatedly. Also, it’s a bit rich for politicians to be talking about ‘rogue’ recruiters — this from the people falsifying their expenses!

Vic Fatah The over-reaction from people in the recruitment industry who should know better is pretty pathetic. I have little time for Mr Miliband but an hysterical response to sensible commentary is simply going to convince people that ‘industry’ is being unreasonable (cue banker bashing etc.) and that he deserves a chance. What he actually said was that many agencies are fine but some are cowboy: who in their right mind could disagree with that?

Chris Sale

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04/12/2014 11:12

The Challenge

Positive spoke Kerr’s language Jasmine Enteghami Operations director

MULTI-LINGUAL RECRUITER KERR RECRUITMENT WANTED TO REINVIGORATE ITS BRAND AND TO REVAMP ITS WEBSITE. POSITIVE ADVERTISING ANSWERED THE CALL AND FOUND A BI-LINGUAL ONLINE SOLUTION

THE CHALLENGE As part of a five-year growth plan, multi-lingual agency Kerr Recruitment identified that its website required a much-needed revamp. Kerr operations director Jasmine Enteghami, who is based in France, told Recruiter that as well as looking “ugly”, the website was unusable. “Everything was going well with Kerr but the functionality with the website was very poor,” she explained.

Alongside this, Enteghami recognised that the Kerr brand needed to be reinvigorated.

The aim was to present an image of a dynamic, servicedriven operation, but which differentiated the company from its competitors.

Kerr is part of the gap personnel group and at that time the group was using digital marketing agency Positive Advertising to look after the PR side of its business. It also

“Understanding is very important.

You need to trust and know who you are working with” JASMINE ENTEGHAMI

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happened that gap’s previous marketing manager Zoe Day was now business development consultant for Positive. Despite this appearing to be the obvious solution, and “natural to choose the company where Zoe had moved to”, Enteghami said Kerr looked around at other solutions first. “We spoke with a few other marketing agencies, and Positive wasn’t the cheapest but they were the ones who most understood what we wanted,” she said.

THE SOLUTION Nick Spiteri, managing director of Positive, told Recruiter that initially the conversation centred around the website.

“We mentioned that the old brand was tired and old,” he said.

“The look and feel needed to be changed. It needed a budget for a new identity.” As well as rebranding the Kerr logo and rolling it out on its signage, stationery, merchandising, marketing assets and revamped website, Kerr also wanted a bi-lingual website in French.

Spiteri and his team at Positive first set about redesigning and developing the Kerr logo and brand, working closely with Enteghami. “I didn’t have much to say,” she told Recruiter. “They were coming up with the ideas for us.” Spiteri added: “We presented solutions and why we thought they would

work. Obviously certain elements are very subjective, ie. I don’t like this, but by and large, it was a very healthy relationship.”

Enteghami said the logo was spot on: “We’ve had lots of congratulations [about the logo] on social media, such as Twitter.”

The next step was the website redesign and the new site in French. Building a multi-lingual site, Spiteri explained, raised technical problems, as well as cultural aspects. “A search in English and French would be different, therefore you need cultural sensitivities with the phrases used,” he said.

Search engines such as Google use conversational language for searches, and as the characters used are often longer in the French language, this technical side needed to be addressed. “So we built two separate websites with two different addresses, so that the French Google/search engine would direct you to a French site.” There were cost implications for two separate websites and two different coding strategies, “which were all agreed in the budget beforehand”, Spiteri said.

An important aspect of site design was that most candidates today browse and upload CVs on mobiles or tablets, so the sites had to be mobile responsive.

Another core difference would be content. “We paid a great deal of attention to content,”

RECRUITER

Nick Spiteri Managing director

Spiteri said. It was agreed that the most important thing was simplicity for both candidates and employers.

“You should tell them what you provide, how you can use it and what you should do,” Spiteri explained. “Simple, clear messaging, which should portray and communicate trust.” And so even though the content on the new Kerr websites is ‘light’, this helps the key pages look clean and able to deliver what a potential candidate or client is looking for.

The new sites have only been live for a month now. Both Enteghami and Spiteri say that quality of visitors is the most important thing. “The right traffic, not the amount of traffic,” Spiteri said. “Those visitors who had the most intent.” Already, traffic is up by nearly 1,000 users and the average duration of a session on the site has doubled compared to October’s metrics.

Enteghami said that trust was a key element in the project. “The trust element was key,” she told Recruiter. “Zoe helped explain the solutions and ideas. If something wasn’t quite working, Nick would come up with another solution. It was a delight to work with them — I would recommend them definitely.”

Spiteri added: “It was a very good partnership. Most clients can get ‘over involved’ in the process. Kerr let us get on with it.”

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04/12/2014 11:25

Insight

Research pinpoints Great Britain’s skill hot spots New research by professional networking site LinkedIn identifies a “growing business belt” across the North of England featuring pools of skills such as financial planning, customer service and business development.

FINANCE

Evidence of the developing business belt was one of LinkedIn’s research findings about concentrations of certain skills in specific ‘hot spot’ cities and regions of Great Britain.

Pierre Berlin, senior director, Talent Solutions – EMEA, said: “It’s interesting to compare the different skill sets across each city, but these insights also demonstrate how access to new data is changing the way that employers should be thinking about their recruitment strategy. You might expect finance to dominate unique skills in the capital given the status of the City as the economic engine room of the UK. However, we found that E H GL LA AS SGOW OW W EDINBURGH GLASGOW entertainment just pipped other skills to the post.

“Compared to other major cities, London seems to have the largest concentration of theatre, drama, TV and film industries, with the likes of the BBC, ITV, Sky and Discovery International all based in and around the capital,” Berlin went on to say.

Referring to the Northern cities of Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester, Berlin said the data pointed to them as “a growing ‘business belt’ across the North of England. Financial planning, customer service and business development all feature among the most unique skills in these cities. This is interesting in light of the current debate around [high-speed rail services] HS2 and HS3, LIVERPOOL VERP VER RPO R P PO O L OO OOL and how growth can be encouraged in the North”.

MANCHESTER ESTE ER He added: “It looks like the skills are there.”

BUSINESS

OIL & GAS

Top skill category: Oil & Gas

Top skill category: Finance

Top skills: • Oil & gas, sub-sea engineering, offshore operations • Electricity power generation and management • Building construction • Workplace safety • Financial planning • Community outreach and development • Customer service • Military • Drilling and well management

Top skills: • Financial planning • Community outreach and development • Non-profit, fundraising and grant-making • Building construction • Software and user testing • Ecology and environmental science • Real estate rental • Military • Workplace safety • Drilling and well management

LONDON

Top skill category: Entertainment LEEDS L EE

BIRMINGHAM BIRMIN NGHAM M

Top skills: • Workplace safety • Building construction • Oil & gas, sub-sea engineering, offshore operations • Community outreach and development • Counterterrorism and emergency management law • Crime prevention and security • Retail store operations • Customer service • Financial planning

MANCHESTER

Top skill category: Business Top skills: • HR recruiting • Building construction • Radio broadcasting • Customer service • Community outreach and development • Legal advice and service • Financial planning • Retail store operations • Business development and relationship management • Real estate rental WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK

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ENTERTAINMENT

EDINBURGH

GLASGOW

LIVERPOOL

Top skill category: Business

CONSTRUCTION

LONDON LOND NDO ON

Top skills: • Non-profit, fundraising, and grant-making • Trading and investment • Theatre and drama • Marketing campaign management • Real estate rental • TV and video production • Community outreach and development • Channel marketing • Writing and publishing • Fashion clothing

BIRMINGHAM LEEDS

Top skill category: Finance Top skills: • Financial planning • Building construction • Printing • HR recruiting • Community outreach and development • Retail store operations • Database and direct marketing • Real estate rental • Customer service • Business development and relationship management

Top skill category: Construction Top skills: • Building construction • Financial planning • Community outreach and development • HR recruiting • Automotive services, parts, and design • Crime prevention and security • Business development and relationship management • Customer service • Account management • Purchasing and contract negotiation

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Profile

Matthew Jeffery COLIN COTTELL SPOKE WITH THE VICEPRESIDENT — HEAD OF GLOBAL SOURCING AND EMPLOYMENT BRANDING AT SAP

Even the most outspoken recruiter would shy away from using the word ‘revolution’ when describing their work. But it’s not a word that the ebullient Matthew Jeffery is afraid to use.

“We have enough work to be going on with for the next two or three years in our ideas set — sparking a revolution. That’s a revolution in recruitment — not a Russell Brand revolution,” laughs Jeffery, vice president — head of global sourcing and employment branding for enterprise applications and software provider SAP. Whether the work Jeffery has embarked on at SAP is revolution or evolution, innovation and change are in Jeffery’s recruitment DNA. In 2013, he was recognised by Recruiter as one of the UK & Ireland’s 11 Most Influential In-House Recruiters for his visionary approach to the future of recruitment and employer branding. Recruiter reported that in a series of papers entitled Recruitment 3.0, Recruitment 4.0 and Recruitment 5.0, Jeffery “has ruffled feathers by contending that recruitment had to move from a cost centre to one of profit — among other things”.

Despite the mirth over Brand the comedian, as he sets out the changes introduced at SAP in the past year, Jeffery appears deadly serious — rattling through a plethora of initiatives involving big data and gamification, as well as the wholesale transformation of SAP’s sourcing and employment branding and sourcing strategies.

According to Jeffery, who joined SAP from Autodesk in March 2013, the changes have revitalised SAP’s global talent pipeline, improved the quality of hires and allowed hiring managers to make decisions based on hard information rather than hunches. University hiring has been ‘democratised’, and the employment brand team has developed a more commercial focus.

“We are on a journey,” says Jeffery, putting his work at SAP, which has ambitious growth plans as well as plans to move its activities to the cloud, into context.

“The key thing we are trying to achieve is to go direct. Around 80-85% of the talent pool are passive, not looking for another job… We need to attract the best people to SAP,” he explains.

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PHOTOGRAPHY: PETER SEARLE

“THERE IS NO POINT HAVING A FANCY MARKETING AND EMPLOYMENT BRAND TEAM UNLESS ITS PURPOSE IS TO DRIVE CANDIDATES THROUGH”

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Profile

“THE EMPLOYMENT BRAND TEAM INFORMS, EDUCATES AND MESSAGES DIFFERENT TALENT PIPELINES, AND BOOM — THE SOURCING TEAM PICKS UP THE PHONE AND TRIES TO DRAW THOSE PEOPLE IN”

After going out to the business and listening to hiring managers, the message came back loud and clear: “We need a pipeline, we need to know who the best candidates are, and when we want to expand in a certain region we can push that button and hire those people as quickly as possible.”

The first step was to integrate SAP’s employment brand and sourcing teams. “There is no point having a fancy marketing and employment brand team unless its purpose is to drive candidates through,” says Jeffery. The two are now working hand-in-hand, he says.

“The employment brand team informs, educates and messages different talent pipelines, and boom — the sourcing team picks up the phone and tries to draw those people in.” Three regional hubs in Boston (US), Manila (Philippines) and Prague (Czech Republic) have been established, where gamification techniques have introduced a degree of internal competition by allowing teams to compare their performance against that of their colleagues in other regions.

Building community Revitalising SAP’s talent pipeline has been one of Jeffery’s priorities. Setting out to build an online talent community, Jeffery eschewed the traditional way of collecting candidates’ data only when they apply for a job. Instead, candidates are free to enter their details on “a 30-second business card” at any time of their choosing.

Once registered, candidates receive relevant job alerts, as well as other information. “It is not just about people

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looking for a job now. People want to feel valued and to be kept up to date,” says Jeffery. Working in partnership with RMK, SAP’s recruitment marketing suite, numbers have grown from zero to 250,000 in a year.

SAP is not just using RMK to build numbers, however.

Indeed, according to Jeffery, “it is revolutionising what I and the business can do”. Instead of recruiters “posting and praying” as in the past, Jeffery says the tool’s capacity for big data analytics allows his team to make truly informed decisions. For example, SAP’s recruiters can now see how successful Facebook and Twitter are in driving traffic to the career site: “Rather than taking a little bit of a guess that Monster could be good here, they can see which job boards are most effective for different types of role, in different countries and different regions.”

Testing the message SAP’s employment branding team can also test the effectiveness of different messages and online banners and measure the response. “RMK has revolutionised what we are doing because we can finally go to the business and show what we can really do, and what they can get as a return on their investment. It is guiding us in a scientific way that previously wasn’t possible,” says Jeffery.

“We can say that ‘if you invest with this we can say with confidence from our data you will get this response’, and we can see that you will get this quality of candidates coming through. So this is a pretty revolutionary thing.”

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Profile

However, Jeffery believes that there are wider implications too. “The great thing is that when you can back things with data and prove what you are doing works, nobody can argue with that,” he says. This drives change and innovation by making it difficult for those that prefer the status quo, he says. Not only this, but even when something doesn’t work out as planned “you have the data so you know for sure that was the wrong direction”, he adds.

Hand-in-hand with data analytics, Jeffery is equally excited about another initiative that he says is “huge for the industry”. Instead of providing all recruitmentrelated services free of charge, SAP’s hiring managers are offered a menu of services, some free and some paid-for.

Jeffery terms this “Freemium to Premium”.

So while job postings, many elements of social media and talent community building are free to hiring managers, other services, such as some complicated videos, RMK and some branded marketing materials are charged out. “We will provide hiring managers with the optimum approach, explain that this is what we can do for free, but that this extra bit requires you to sign off this budget,” says Jeffery.

Jeffery says the new approach comes in to its own in “areas where it is tougher to recruit” such as the California’s Bay Area, “where all the top technology companies are trying to recruit the same talent”.

He adds: “This is helping us to go to the hiring manager and say ‘the free approach isn’t going to work, probably we need to do more so we recommend you also do this’.”

He sees this as a significant step towards making employment branding self-sufficient, and ultimately a profit centre rather than just being a drain on cost. If we get a lot of demand for video, for example, we can get to employ another video editor, he explains by way of example. “It means that you are more commercially focused,” he says.

KEY FACTS — SAP More than

68,800 employees in more than 130 countries

Diversity boundaries The changes at SAP don’t stop there, however.

Elsewhere, outside Jeffery’s domain, SAP is also pushing the boundaries within the sphere of disability employment. Launched last year [in 2013], the company has set ambitious targets to train and recruit 600 people across the range of autism spectrum disorders (ASD), including people with Asperger syndrome — that’s nearly 1% of its global workforce — by 2020. Jeffery says people with this condition have been identified “for their ability to see through very complex problems and to dissect things in a very methodical way”, traits that are hugely attractive to the company. “It’s probably one of the big game-changing diversity programmes that we have,” he adds.

The programme entitled Autism at Work is being run by SAP’s diversity department in partnership with Specialisterne, a Danish social organisation that helps people with autism find work with information technology companies. At the moment, SAP is running pilots in Germany, India, Canada, Ireland and the US. Jeffrey says the aim is to involve other countries, including the UK, as the programme builds towards its 2020 target.

Back in Jeffery’s direct sphere of influence, SAP’s university hiring has also undergone a huge transformation — what Jeffery describes as “democratisation”. Instead of targeting a limited number

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Annual revenue

€16.82bn (£13.47bn) 14,000 hires a year (projected for this year) 35,000

of “preferred universities”, SAP has opened its sales opportunities to all and sundry through social media.

“We realised that we could be missing out on key talent and sales talent in particular,” says Jeffery. At the same time, this meant designing a selection process that could cope with an expected massive increase in applications.

The answer was an initial two-stage selection process, developed in partnership with Chemistry Recruitment.

The first stage measures cultural fit, and the second focuses on situational judgement. Candidates are given an immediate answer — pass or fail at each stage. And should they wish they can get feedback from SAP’s recruiters. “Imagine that Utopia that a candidate knows if they have passed or failed straight away,” Jeffery enthuses.

The response of the business has been positive, he says. “They loved the fact that they were now seeing very high quality candidates from areas they hadn’t seen before.”

Facebook likes

Socially speaking 10 employees in employment brand team

40 in SAP’s sourcing team (globally) 250,000 members of SAP’s talent community

137,000 Twitter followers

Social media has been another key area of change, says Jeffery. After merging the company’s five Facebook pages into one, the company launched ‘Life at SAP’ through which employees share their stories and experiences.

This is also a feature of SAP’s revamped careers website, which includes 40 employee videos. “This is all about humanising and personalising the brand. Let those people tell their story and then people can decide if they want to work at SAP,” says Jeffery. “People see through the old marketing spin ‘this is a great place to work’.

They want authentic, real stories from employees.”

Taken together with all the other changes introduced at SAP, this may or may not add up to the glorious revolution in recruitment that Jeffery espouses.

But one thing is for sure. Jeffery is set to continue to ruffle feathers.

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Game changers 2014

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Game changers 2014

Game changers 2014

THIS YEAR WE HIGHLIGHT THE RECRUITMENT TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENTS THAT ARE SET TO CHANGE THE RECRUITING LANDSCAPE NEXT YEAR. SUE WEEKES INVESTIGATES Welcome to Recruiter’s Recruitment Technology Game Changers 2014!

In our annual look at technology that is changing recruitment practice, we focus this year on five areas of development that we have identified as having the potential to radically alter the game for recruiters.

Some already have several key players that are bringing about change; others are more embryonic.

Over the coming months, it will be interesting to observe whether more products under these headline banners appear to add momentum to this change and ultimately what their long-term effect on recruitment will be.

Recruitment has been rocked by massive technological development in the last five, let alone 10, years and much more is to come. Indeed, January looks set to see one of the biggest events of the year with Facebook at Work due to launch reportedly next year. Human interaction remains at the core of recruitment, but it is a fast-moving industry and technology an ever-increasing part of it.

Alastair Blair

Alex James

PEOPLE AGGREGATORS WHAT ARE THEY AND HOW DO THEY CHANGE THE GAME? These are websites that tap into an individual’s social graph to gather publicly available data and put it into one profile. Such websites put a massive talent pool of passive (and active) candidates within the recruiter’s reach and give them a much more well-rounded picture of the candidate. In short, it makes social recruiting more practical and meaningful.

Andy Headworth

GETTY

STAND-OUT PRODUCTS

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TalentBin and Entelo are among the big names but some top examples are in the IT world simply

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Game changers 2014

because there are more online hangouts for technology professionals from which to aggregate the data.

They include TrendyCoders.com, started by longtime programmer Ben Ritchie. Ritchie says interest comes from recruiters who want to benefit from “a deeper window” into the world of specialist techie sites such as GitHub and StackExchange. TrendyCoders also has a peer-review element built into it, and individuals are ranked and rated.

Another major player is Open Web, launched earlier this year by The IT Job Board. Open Web tracks publicly available data from 130 social sites, which is then enhanced with CV-sourced information from The IT Job Board’s proprietary CV database.

JOB-MATCHERS

POTENTIAL IMPACT IN THE LONG-TERM

STAND-OUT PRODUCTS

As long as people aggregator companies have a robust business model behind them to compete with the job boards, they will be an important part of the recruiting landscape. Andy Headworth, founder of Sirona Consulting and author of the forthcoming book, Social Media Recruitment, sees them as a key part of the recruiting future. “They are still developing and indexing more social profiles every day, but they are a great additional tool for recruiters to find more social media contact points for potential candidates,” he says.

MyJobMatcher.com and Jobandtalent.com are two such sites that trawl hundreds of sources of vacancies and hundreds of thousands of jobs and then use intelligent algorithms to match them to candidates.

The smart searching built into them means they are far fussier about the results they return.

Arran Stewart, chief technology officer of the Opinio Group, which developed MyJobmatcher, claims that one of the job boards it sends traffic to says it has the highest click-to-application conversion rate of 74%. “It changes the behaviour of the jobseeker and it’s about job-matching, not jobseeking,” he says. While such sites are all about automation, they also make a genuine attempt to form a relationship with the candidate via regular contact. “Aggregators can seem like cold places to be. Our aim is to become a career brand and part of the jobseeker toolkit,” says Stewart.

RECRUITING FOR POTENTIAL WHAT IS IT AND HOW DOES IT CHANGE THE GAME? It allows candidates to access assessment tests that would normally be carried out by the employer further down the recruitment process. It provides individuals who lack experience, or an employment track record, with an opportunity to demonstrate their potential and gives the employer a more well-rounded view of the candidate.

STAND-OUT PRODUCTS Aptood.com allows individuals to access market-leading psychometric tests for free and build their results into an online profile that can be seen by employers who are hiring. Employers pay a fee to use the service and filter the candidate profiles. Founder Martin Gibson wants the service to help tackle youth unemployment, and encourage small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and start-ups to see the potential of less experienced candidates and so expand the jobs market for these people. The idea occurred to him when travelling and meeting graduates who had been forced to take a year off because they couldn’t find a job. So he set about finding a way of enabling the candidates to do the testing upfront, and in doing so, remove the administration of this for employers so the two sides could “meet in the middle”.

POTENTIAL IMPACT IN THE LONG-TERM? If enough employer success stories on ‘recruiting for potential’ emerge, the result could change where psychometric testing sits in the recruitment process and how it is bought. It’s a big ask for Aptood to manage this shift on their own though, so more players may be needed.

WHAT IS IT AND WHY IS IT A GAME-CHANGER? Using intelligent search and push technology to regularly deliver a choice of well-matched jobs to the candidate, these are a new breed of sites. Job boards have always hooked up jobs and people but not always that well. Most big sites use some form of semantic or contextual searching, but activity is still restricted to their databases. Meanwhile some of the big original job aggregators sites often delivered quantity but not quality. This new generation of aggregators mean jobseekers have to search less because the right jobs are coming to them.

Katharine Robinson

Martin Gibson

Wendy McDougall

POTENTIAL LONG-TERM IMPACT? Jobseekers will expect to be far more accurately matched with jobs. Stewart’s words echo the views of Nathan Perrott, head of digital strategy at recruitment advertising agency AIA Worldwide, about what is already happening in the consumer space. “Our social feeds are tailored to us based on algorithms defined by the platforms. Our search engine results are tailored to us as individuals. Our news consumption is personalised.

When, where and how we watch TV and film is up to us,” he offers as examples. “It’s only natural that the job search will change as we become used to this information coming to us when and how we want to.”

Nathan Perrott

AGENCY CROWD RECRUITING WHAT IS IT AND HOW IS IT CHANGING THE GAME? Using crowd-sourcing techniques to help recruiters fill vacancies. It brings an element of collaboration into the competitive world of recruiting. And because the concept is based on a marketplace, it also opens up far more opportunities for smaller and independent recruiters and starts to shift the balance of power away from bigger agencies.

Richard Hamilton

STAND-OUT PRODUCT US-based Crowd Recruiting was launched by Mike Achilles who also founded two staffing companies. He found it tough to balance the recruiters’ need for Ben Ritchie

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Game changers 2014

candidates and the need to find jobs for the candidates the recruiter already had. Typically, he was unable to fill 80% of job orders and so turned to other recruiters to help him — and they did. Managing the workflow proved difficult so he developed a platform to handle it: crowdrecruiting.com, which now has more than 1,000 recruiter subscribers in more than 50 countries.

“Our focus is recruiters helping recruiters,” says Achilles who claims the marketplace model and fee structure is lowering a hiring company’s costs by 75% in some cases.

What’s ahead in 2015? Those who work in the heart of the industry tell us how they see the future Katharine Robinson, aka The Sourceress “Aggregators have been big news in 2014; tools like OpenWeb and TalentBin that piece together information from multiple online platforms to make it easier to find and contact candidates. For in-house sourcing, I definitely see more experimentation and branching into executive sourcing and expect to see the big search firms getting squeezed a little. I think a lot of recruitment businesses are eying up ways to take business from those big search firms.”

POTENTIAL IMPACT IN THE LONG TERM? More and smaller recruiters will likely get more work.

Will Blaze, founder of Esultant in the US, left his job to start his own firm but doesn’t want to grow beyond four to five recruiters. “I see a world where there are a ton of independent recruiters at smaller fees,” he says, adding that more employees from the big agencies will see the sense in working for themselves.

Andy Headworth, founder, Sirona Consulting “We could see a real challenge to LinkedIn’s dominance emerge with the Facebook at Work product being launched next year. It has such scale that if the anticipated work/private life separation of the product works well in terms of privacy, then we will see many more candidates putting their professional information on their Facebook profiles, and subsequently there will be more recruiters using it.”

Alastair Blair, managing director, The Potent Mix

PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS WHAT IS IT AND HOW DOES IT CHANGE THE GAME? Using data and analytics software to predict everything from candidate behaviour, candidate fit, competencies and even career paths. In theory, it can help to make big data more meaningful and help recruiters make more informed decisions before, during and after the recruitment process.

STAND-OUT PRODUCTS There is huge development in this area and more recruitment software will have predictive analytics incorporated in the future. One of the global leaders is US-based Chequed.com, which has integrated analytics into each step of the recruitment process based on its proprietary assessment science and selection technology. It recently processed its five millionth candidate using this technology. Closer to home, Wendy McDougall, CEO of Glasgow-based Firefish Software, says the developer is looking at predictive analytics in a number of areas including what it means when a candidate’s behaviour changes and they start looking at different kinds of jobs. “This can help a recruiter know when and what sort of opportunities to talk to the candidates about and get them engaged,” she says. “We’re also monitoring and building on areas such as clients’ hiring preferences and the data opportunities that this will bring to the sector.”

WHAT WILL BE THE LONG-TERM IMPACT? Potentially, predictive analytics could underpin a wide range of recruitment processes in the future but developers must help recruiters cut through the hype. Kevin Hough, head of resourcing at LV=, says that the company is always looking for ways to assess and select candidates but he won’t be the only one that tempers enthusiasm with caution in areas such as predicting candidate fit, and wants to see effectiveness demonstrated first. “Predictive testing is definitely becoming a big thing in the recruitment industry — and we’re always innovative and willing to try new things — but we wouldn’t want to remove the ‘human’ element from our recruitment process. That’s so important.”

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“Internet recruitment advertising will grow in the specialist media and in some regional publishers’ online offerings, but the generalist job boards may find it difficult. Crucially, no one has yet worked out how to weave relevant content into a job board in such a way as to attract the so-called passive market. The first job board to do that well has a great opportunity to distance itself from the competition.”

Nathan Perrott, head of digital strategy, AIA Worldwide “For me, the next year is all about quality, contextually relevant content tied very closely to the jobs on offer, delivered through software such as TalentBrew.

Content that will attract, engage, convince and convert talent that the company is the right fit for them, professionally as well as culturally. I also envisage disruption in the job description space. But expecting tech alone to solve the problem is naive. The goal is to establish relationships with jobseekers and passive talent underpinned by a solid content marketing strategy.”

Wendy McDougall, CEO, Firefish Software “Personalisation to the client and candidate will be really important and is a big part of engagement. Now recruiters better understand the channels they use, they need to make sure they communicate effectively with their communities and give people relevant information that will engage them. Behind the scenes at a data level we have the tools to do this quite easily but the challenge is how you can personalise it on the web journey.”

Richard Hamilton, marketing director, GuruCareers “Recruiters have to be marketers, brand champions, social engagement specialists and more. The average in-house recruiter role has so many marketing crossovers: brand champion when attracting and selling the vacancies, engagement specialist when building talent pools on social media, acquisition and retention marketing when targeting candidates through email. 2015 will see a big rise in social hiring and advertising systems to help recruiters isolate trends and discover the best ways to optimise hiring methods. Think ‘big data’ meets ‘recruitment intelligence’.”

Alex James, director of product development, Dillistone Systems “The biggest change that is affecting recruiting technology is the ability to work from anywhere, on any device, at any time. No one would consider an email system that isn’t available anywhere so why would they consider a recruitment management system that isn’t available from every device? A good example is Microsoft Office. Historically, Microsoft sold Office as a desktop product. Over the years it’s grown, and with Office 365, you can access your data pretty much anywhere. If a recruiting business wants to better service its client — and enhance the working life of its team — access to information anywhere is fundamental.”

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04/12/2014 16:16

SEARCHERIM Mix it up at Penna.

Sector Leads, Senior Consultants & Consultants Executive Search & Executive Interim Our Executive Search and Interim consultancy teams have different names.

That’s really about it. We’ve found that when we collaborate, we achieve better results. In fact, many of our clients have noticed that we genuinely enjoy working together. If you’re an experienced or aspiring executive level recruitment consultant and want to work somewhere a bit different visit: penna.com/mixitup

Resourcing | Executive Search | Executive Interim | Assessment | Coaching | Learning and Development | Performance and Change | Outplacement

Recruitment Director Salary: £100,000 including commission

Following the award of a number of major international recruitment contracts, Gabbitas, the global experts in British independent education (part of the Prospects Group), are seeking an inspirational recruiter to develop and lead their recruitment team. The appointee will be part of the senior management team of Gabbitas and involved in developing company strategy.

He/she will be educated to degree level and be an experienced recruiter, preferably with an understanding of the independent education sector.

The appointee will be innovative, with excellent communication and organisational skills, able to represent this prestigious company at all levels, in the UK and internationally. This directorate within Gabbitas will grow rapidly as a result of contracts already won, and in the pipeline.

A remuneration package of up to £100,000 including commission will be available to the successful candidate.

This is an exciting opportunity to join an ambitious and fast-growing company at senior level. Closing date: 7th January 2015.

To apply for this position please send your cv to nina.hardy@cfappointments.com For an informal discussion about the post, please contact Nina Hardy on 020 8315 1234 Prospects is committed to promoting equality of opportunity, valuing diversity and eliminating discrimination, as a core value. We are determined that the principles of equality and diversity will underpin all our activities. We welcome applications from every section of the community, particularly from people with disabilities who are underrepresented in the Company.

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If a career change is at the top of your Christmas list, don’t write to Santa… ring us!

We would like to take this opportunity to wish all our clients and candidates a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

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Neil Prestwich Director

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Francesca Macauley Director

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RECRUITMENT AGENCY RECRUITER

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PLAN YOUR NEXT MOVE

on the move

New features available through your smartphone See the latest job listings View all the jobs from the website Search or browse to find the right opportunities Create and update your live email job alerts View jobs directly from your email alerts Save and apply for jobs Save jobs to your profile Email jobs to yourself or friends Apply for the right jobs first using your saved CV Keep track of all your jobseeking activity

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Movers & Shakers

AMROP: The global executive •search network has appointed

The energy company •hasCENTRICA: appointed Simon O’Farrell as head of group HR.

appointed Abigail Simpson as managing director for Elevation Recruitment Leeds.

BRIDGE PARTNERS: •TheETON interim management and

executive search specialist has appointed Ellie Rich-Poole as partner within the HR team.

•

executives recruiter has made Christine Buccella director.

FASTSTREAM RECRUITMENT •GROUP: The global recruiting

specialist has promoted Adam Graves to associate director of oil & gas, and Kelsey Connolly to manager of ship management.

•

FIRCROFT: The global recruiter has hired Michaella Rogers as country director for Australia.

FLO SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS: The •temporary recruitment software

provider has hired Phil McDonald as MD.

• FUTURESTEP: The recruitment process outsourcing company appointed Chong Ng as president of Futurestep Asia Pacific; Sue Campbell as MD for Asia; and Tim Powell as MD for Futurestep Australia and New Zealand.

HEIDRICK & STRUGGLES: The •global executive search company

has appointed Angela Gardner as partner within the global consumer markets practice.

Hydrogen Group has appointed Mirzan Mahathir to its board.

of its SuperCommunications division.

• IMPERIAL TOBACCO GROUP: Tom Baker has been appointed global

• PEARSON: The global learning company has appointed Susan

head of resourcing.

White as vice president for global talent acquisition.

LOCKHEED MARTIN: The global •defence and space company

has promoted Jonathan Young to director, international talent acquisition.

•

MACMILLAN DAVIES: The specialist HR recruitment consultancy has made Catherine Osaigbovo associate director.

MICHAEL PAGE: The global •specialist recruiter has appointed

Steve White as senior MD for Canada, Boston and Chicago. It has also promoted Rashi James and Richard Turner to regional directors within the UK.

Bretherton Associates Recruitment consultant Commercial, engineering, generalist, legal, sales sectors Competetive + bens Central Manchester

PEDERSEN & PARTNERS: The •global executive search firm

has appointed Caroline Lim as client partner and head of legal, compliance and regulatory and corporate governance in AsiaPacific.

For more jobs, people moves and career advice go to • recruiter.co.uk/jobs • inhouserecruiterjobs.co.uk • internationalrecruiterjobs. com

• RECRUITIVE: The recruitment software solutions provider has appointed Oliver Burke, Ryan Sliz, Jan McCulloch and Chloe Black as business development executives.

•

RECONVERSE: The events

STRATEGIC RESOURCES: The •energy sector recruiter has

Sharon Bullock as board director of its regional education division.

SHEFFIELD HAWORTH: The •global executive search firm has

•The financial firm has appointed

appointed Christopher Smailes as exec director, asset management practice, New York and Hong Kong.

UBM: The global events-led marketing and communications services company has made Eleanor Phillips group HR director.

MORGAN HUNT: The multi•sector recruiter appointed

NATIONWIDE BUILDING SOCIETY:

Ann Brown as HR director.

Paul Gilbert as chairman and James Rust as non-executive director (NED).

Rene Berende new group chief information officer.

•

Pareto Law Senior recruitment consultant/business development manager Digital, HR, marketing, commercial, public sector c£40k-£50k+comms+bens North-West

promoted Gary Gray to operations and recruitment director, and Brian Robertson to finance director.

• PAGEGROUP: The specialist recruitment firm has appointed

Malaysian entity of London-listed

Morgan Law Business manager/director Generalist £100k + OTE West End, London

company working for the in-house recruitment sector has appointed Melanie Hayes as NED.

• HIRING-HUB.COM: The online recruitment firm has appointed

HYDROGEN SDN BHD: The

A selection of vacancies from recruiter.co.uk

Global recruiter Morgan McKinley has appointed David Leithead as managing director for Morgan McKinley London.

He joins the firm from Michael Page where he held a variety of roles from graduate recruiter to head of the firm’s Japan operation, and most recently MD for the banking and financial services division in London.

In his new role, Leithead has full responsibility for the leadership and development of Morgan McKinley’s London business, as well as playing a key role in meeting the company’s growth goals.

RECRUITMENT: •TheELEVATION talent solutions group has

EXECUCARE UK: The senior

Your next move?

LEITHEAD IS MD MORGAN MCKINLEY LONDON

Rosa Garcia-Tizón, Marta Garrigues, Christophe Muyllaert, Cecilia Geijron Olrog, Sonia Perdomo, Annie Rothe and Ivo Wetels as partners, and Željko Šundov as principal.

•

PARITY GROUP: The IT and marketing specialist has made Andrew Law executive chairman

•

SONRU: The video interview

specialist has appointed Jeff Jones as chief operating officer and Paul O’Mahony as chief marketing officer.

SPENCER OGDEN: The global •energy recruiter has appointed

Lord Chris Smith as NED.

•

UK: The heating •andWOLSELEY plumbing supplies provider

appointed Joanne Smith as HR director.

•

WORKMATES & DANIEL OWEN: The construction, maintenance and rail industries recruiter has appointed Karl Burnett as MD of its labour and trades division.

Email people moves for use online and in print, including a short biography, to recruiter.editorial@redactive.co.uk

WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK

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04/12/2014 16:22

Bloggers with Bite

WHEN BENEFITS BITE BACK! BEWARE ‘TEAM REWARDS’ Proceed with caution when embarking on new ways to motivate your staff…

I

achilles tendon (12 months off, leg in a cast, taxis to work and home working plus crutches). All in all it seems like a good idea until the massage competitions are no longer a perk but a physical necessity.

VERDICT: Keep but vary the sport. Mixed netball?

Chess?

n recruitment we constantly try to come up with ways to motivate and retain our best employees.

This results in an ever-evolving deluge of ‘benefits’, and it results in the good, the bad and the ugly. Let’s move straight to the juicy stuff: the ugly.

1. Dress-down Friday One of the all-time greats. The opportunity to break free from the shackles of Monday-Thursday couture anonymity and showcase your individuality via piercings, fake tan, crop tops, real fur coats. Not always a good thing. A favourite incident: a certain body part timing a bid for freedom from a braless singlet just as a client was starting a tour of the offices. Fortunately, no piercings were involved.

VERDICT: Keep but install metal detectors.

4. Good attendance rewards Another great idea in principle: reward those individuals who achieve 100% attendance throughout the year and bask in the glory of greater morale and even greater profits. The reality: an office environment so conducive to passing on contagious illness that the World Health Organisation will rock up in their HAZMAT suits quicker than you can say ‘man flu’.

VERDICT: Lose it. Better to have the odd serial sick note than an empty sales floor.

2. Company holiday Ahh, the good old company trip. What goes on tour stays on tour. Unfortunately, it appears that staying has sometimes been taken too literally, with recruiters actually failing to return. There are too many stories around this subject that are unprintable but a brief survey threw up the following teasers: consultants taken hostage, arrests, hospitalisation, inebriated TV interviews and animal theft.

VERDICT: Keep but you know that recruiter who insists on shots for the first round of the night?

Yeah, don’t take that one.

3. Company sports teams Team building, exercise, competition… what can go wrong? An injury list that makes Arsenal look like the gold standard for physiotherapy advancement.

Last season, in three consecutive weeks our five-aside football team experienced a torn hamstring (need to keep leg elevated in the office for the next eight weeks), a knee injury (re-constructive surgery, two weeks’ home working and crutches) and a ruptured

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5. Cycle to Work Scheme Promote exercise, affordable bikes, reduce carbon footprint, a sped-up commute. All sounds great right? Wrong. Try stolen bikes, potential of death, big queues for shower in the morning and the worst of all: sweaty cycling gear. As soon as it becomes too popular the spectre of damp cycling gear raises its ugly head. Cycling gear gets hidden in any possible nook and cranny. A quick trip round our office in the winter months can be akin to a ride on the ghost train: you know the horrors are coming, you can even smell them but you don’t know where they are hidden.

Consultants have been seen pushing others in to the stationary room ahead of them as a human shield.

VERDICT: Keep but ensure you install a sealed storage room in your office.

Matt Churchward is a director with The Green Recruitment Company

In conclusion, it is great to reward your teams for their hard work. It is also great that we have to think of increasingly better ways to retain our staff to improve the workplace environment. However, proceed with caution when testing new ideas. Remember: you are only as strong as your weakest member!

Team building, exercise, competition… what can possibly go wrong?

What would you like to have a rant about?

Tell us at recruiter.editorial@redactive.co.uk

In February: Find out who has made our FAST 50 list of the fastestgrowing recruitment companies WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK

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