Recruiter August 14

August 2014

www.recruiter.co.uk

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE FOR RECRUITMENT AND RESOURCING PROFESSIONALS

GET ON BOARD WITH ONBOARDING

SEARCH IS ON FOR TECH SPECIALISTS

Ownership comes out on top in getting your new recruits up and running when they join the business

With the ‘internet of things’ taking over our daily lives, where is the talent coming from to sustain the growth?

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SUMMER TRENDS Recruiting for in-house and recruitment consultancies has been as hot as the weather this year

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Contents

Recruitment is booming — in recruitment!

This month we looked at recruitment trends in both the agency and in-house worlds, and the news was good on both fronts. There was so much to say that we needed two pages to share this insight with you. See what leading recruiting experts had to say about the current climate for recruiting recruiters in our feature on pp44-45.

We’re especially proud of this issue, in which we bring you eight more pages of editorial content than usual.

You’ll want to see who made our list of 11 Most Influential In-House Recruiters 2014. Then, the public sector gets significant attention this month, as we’ve covered issues and concerns stemming from the Contingent Labour One framework put in place to deal with the recruitment of workers into the public sector, and also included a report from totaljobs.com about hiring into the public sector.

Are you au fait with FinTech and the internet of things? Get current quickly as these new disciplines within the financial services and technology arenas take off like rockets. Leading executive search firms Egon Zehnder and Heidrick & Struggles let us tap into their expertise in this exciting new turf; we hope you’ll find it just as mind-boggling as we did.

NEWS Staffline helps unemployed in Northern Ireland

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Staffline is to provide a Welfare to Work programme for Northern Ireland

Jagex is game for talent Marks & Start Logistics

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M&S initiative sees growth in hiring of disabled workers

Bring techies to the board

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Headhunters urged to find tech expertise for boardroom 8 Tech & tools 10 Special report

Quality not quantity in public sector recruiting, finds a totaljobs report

nued heatwave — in life and business!

Here’s to a continued

FEATURES 26 COVER STORY The 11 Most Influential In-House Recruiters in the UK & Ireland 38 Welcome on board Are employers doing all they can to onboard new recruits?

41 Brave new tech world And firms need to find the talent to take advantage of it 43 Into the frame Are SMEs getting a fair go of the public sector jobs?

44 Hot times for hiring We highlight the summer trends in recruitment

REGULARS ANALYSIS 14 Sector Analysis Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) 17 Global Spotlight on The Caribbean 23 Insight Why it is important to customise global KPIs

DeeDee Doke, Editor

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13 On tumblr this month 19 Interaction

Soapbox: Gary Chatfield Ricky Martin Soundbites 24 The Challenge 19 19 21

Dartmouth Partners and Kepler Associates 49 Movers & Shakers Industry moves 50 Bloggers with Bite:

Mitch Sullivan

Scan here to get your own copy of Recruiter

WHO’S HIRING? 46 Channel 3 Resourcing, 44

Integra People, Pertemps 48 Recruiter Republic

EDITORIAL Editor: DeeDee Doke T: +44 (0)20 7880 7601 deedee.doke@recruiter.co.uk Reporter: Sarah Marquet T: +44 (0)20 7880 7606 sarah.marquet@recruiter.co.uk Contributing writers: Scott Beagrie, Colin Cottell, Christopher Goodfellow, Mike Nesbit, Nicola Sullivan, 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 7608 lisa-jane.parker@recruiter.co.uk Recruitment advertising: Amalia Zafeiratou +44 (0)20 7880 7608 amalia@redactive.co.uk Fax +44 (0)20 7880 7553 PRODUCTION Deputy production manager: Kieran Tobin T: +44 (0)20 7880 6240 kieran.tobin@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 2012 & 30 June 2013 – 19,289. Recruiter is also sent to all REC members

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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

STAFFLINE HELPS UNEMPLOYED IN NI Following Staffline’s success in delivering the Welfare to Work programme in England, it is to begin the equivalent in Northern Ireland.

The blue collar specialist recruiter’s subsidiary EOS was recently awarded one of three Northern Ireland Steps to Success contracts that will see it administer the Department of Employment and Learning’s adult employment programme.

The programme, like Welfare to Work, aims to help the long-term unemployed get back into permanent work.

“Lots of these people actually want to work but there’s something stopping them from getting a job — lack of confidence, qualifications … once you’ve not had a job for a while, it’s harder to get a job,” Staffline chief executive Andy Hogarth told Recruiter.

With government funding, the company helps the unemployed by providing “employment training” which includes getting them to go into Staffline offices everyday for a month to three months to help them get back into the pattern of work.

EOS will be responsible for delivering the programme in the Northern area of the province, including Derry/Londonderry and Newtownabbey, with Ingeus responsible for Belfast, and Reed in Partnership for the South area. The programmes are funded by different governments.

Hogarth said it was an exciting win for the company but it did not necessarily represent a change in direction. Instead, it is more of an expansion of one arm, he said, building on the

DON’T MISS THE TALENT AWARDS

THE DEADLINE FOR entering •Recruiter’s inaugural Investing in Talent

Staffline’s EOS moves into Northern Ireland

skill set the business already had in serving the recruitment industry.

The company recently added three UK Welfare to Work contracts to its existing one, by the acquisition in late spring of Welfare to Work and skills training services provider Avanta Enterprises. “The skill set we have to get people jobs in our recruitment business is actually pretty much the same [for the programmes] … that’s why we went into it, because it was the same skill set, and to grow that side of the business.”

Staffline also runs a similar programme in Saudi Arabia across nine cities.

Asked about potential challenges in Northern Ireland, Hogarth laughed. “Hundreds,” he said, though he did not know yet what they might be.

“But we will be successful.”

He said the company was “in the implementation stage” in Northern Ireland, which included hiring about 60 staff.

He hopes to have the programme up and running within a few months.

Awards is nearly here.

Entrants have until 5.30pm on 20 August to submit their entries and any supplementary information in 18 different categories, 15 for companies and three for individuals.

In other Investing in Talent Awards news, specialist accountancy firm Brookson has signed on as the newly launched honours’ first sponsor and will sponsor the Best Contractor Care (UK) category. Brookson marketing manager Victoria McDonnell told Recruiter that the company liked how the new Awards will recognise companies’ focus on talent at “a much more granular level”.

The Awards will be presented at a lunch event on 22 October at the Congress Centre.

To enter the awards, find out about the judges or book a table for the lunch, visit www.investingintalent.co.uk.

SARAH MARQUET sarah.marquet@recruiter.co.uk

‘EVOLUTIONARY SHIFT’ IN JAGEX RECRUITMENT Jagex Games Studio has added a talent community co-ordinator to its recruitment team, a move labelled an “evolutionary shift” in recruitment practice.

Recent Staffordshire Connor Thompson University BSc graduate Connor Thompson was awarded the position and has been tasked with spotting emerging talent, keeping tabs on

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those people, and recruiting them when the time is right.

He told Recruiter it was about forming proper relationships with people and watching them evolve, as it was not easy to spot the perfect candidates by CVs alone.

He will liaise with universities, colleges and campus outreach initiatives, be active on social media and host events such as games jams, where small teams of people are given 48 hours to make something creative.

Jagex head of talent acquisition Peter Lovell described the creation of Thompson’s role as an “evolutionary shift” in the company’s and the recruitment industry’s

practice. “It’s more about marketing than traditional recruitment. [We’re] demonstrating our commitment not just to applicants who are suitable for jobs here, but also in giving careers guidance and support to those many thousands who may not be.”

Recruitment manager Sara McNaught said the creation of the new position would allow the rest of the small recruitment team to concentrate on attraction of other, more experienced talent from around the world, “it gives us a wider reach”.

Thompson said he had had a passion for games since he was young, and had studied games design at university so “this role just seems to suit me right”.

The Cambridge-based company employs 480 people and specialises in MMO (massively multiplayer online) games.

SARAH MARQUET sarah.marquet@recruiter.co.uk

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News

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

“I think we live in beta version now — there’s always something else to come” IMMO FUTTERLIEB, PARTNER, HEIDRICK & STRUGGLES/INDUSTRIAL PRACTICE, MUNICH

Events Work Match Recruitment Roadshow, part of Wandsworth Council’s local employment drive 10am to 2pm 14 August by Jamie’s Recipease, St Johns Road, Clapham Junction; 27 August, Tooting [location TBC]

Return on Investment in HR 2014 12 September, TMP Worldwide, 265 Tottenham Court Road, London eventbrite.co.uk/e/ understanding-the-returnon-investment-for-hrtraining-tickets

The HR Society: Transforming Your Workforce 18 September, London Metropolitan University, 84 Moorgate, London eventbrite.co.uk/e/ transforming-yourworkforce-1-day-conferencetickets

M&S INITIATIVE SEES GROWTH IN HIRING OF DISABLED WORKERS A Marks and Spencer initiative that specifically recruits people with disabilities or health conditions has resulted in its East Midlands warehouse having a workforce where 20% of the people there face one of these challenges.

SourceCon 1-2 October, Denver, USA. Crowne Plaza Denver International Airport Convention Centre. Visit 2014denver.sourcecon.com

Recruiter’s Investing in Talent Awards 22 October, Congress Centre, 28 Great Russell St, London www.investingintalent.co.uk

Institute of Recruitment Professionals (IRP) Awards 5 December, Park Plaza Westminster Bridge Hotel, London, rec-awards.com

FOR MORE NEWS AND COMMENTS, GO ONLINE

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When building its Castle Donington distribution centre, opened in May last year, a learning centre was developed to provide tailored support and training for people to ensure they had the right skills before moving into roles in the warehouse.

The centre as a whole was designed with disabilities in mind — a special IT system, for example, uses a different font size, colour and style to help people with sight impairments and/or dyslexia.

So far 154 people have gone through the Marks and Start Logistics four-week long training programme and the company is just about to recruit another six.

The programme is run in partnership with Remploy, the provider of specialist employment services for people with disabilities and health conditions, and

is overseen by an employability manager.

That manager is Anita Thomas, who told Recruiter she needs a very broad range of expertise to fulfil her job description, including HR, training, and knowledge and understanding of disabilities and health issues.

The range of disabilities she encounters is vast — deafness, people without speech, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, epilepsy, cerebral palsy, dyslexia, dyspraxia and more.

Some have combinations of disabilities.

“The most important thing is that anything is possible and

Anita Thomas

anything is do-able if you have the commitment,” she said, when asked about lessons learned.

As an example, she offered an anecdote involving a profoundly deaf man with no speech. He turned up to the centre without an interpreter.

Thomas and other staff managed to figure out a way to communicate with him.

Within three months, he was on the next available programme and is now one of the centre’s most committed staff members.

Thomas said the company had done “quite a lot” of showcasing the programme to other interested organisations, both public and private.

The aim now was expansion, “we absolutely want more people on site”, she said.

They aim to run five or six programmes a year with each providing seven job opportunities.

Every candidate who successfully completes the programme and meets the standard employment eligibility checks, such as proof of the right to work in the UK, progresses to employment.

SARAH MARQUET sarah.marquet@recruiter.co.uk

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News

“If you can think flexibly, if you can do things in a slightly different way, anything is possible”

“You go to Belfast and there’s a real sense of ‘can do’, an exuberance, and that’s filtering out to the rest of the province”

ANITA THOMAS, MARKS AND START LOGISTICS EMPLOYABILITY MANAGER

STAFFLINE CHIEF EXECUTIVE ANDY HOGARTH ON THE NORTHERN IRISH ECONOMY

BRING TECHIES TO THE BOARD As the impact of technology on business widens and grows, organisations increasingly want new board members who can bring technology expertise to the table, leading headhunters tell Recruiter.

“We’ve seen boards coming to us and saying, ‘We need technologists, a technology-savvy person on board’,” said Axelle Sznajer, who leads the FinTech [financial technology] segment of leading executive search firm Egon Zehnder in the UK. “Boards need to be able to understand and think about technology, and what it means to their business,” Sznajer said.

“The regulator is putting a lot of pressure on boards: ‘do you have someone who understands technology on your board?’ Not

just the technical side, but the implications that technology has for the rest of your business — that’s a whole other set of topics.”

Sean Carroll, a partner in leading executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles’ New York office, agrees that the search for board members with technology knowledge is “absolutely happening”. Carroll is a member of the firm’s global Technology & Services practice.

Sometimes, Carroll noted, more than one new board member may be needed to ensure that different types of technological expertise are on hand. He shared an anecdote of a manufacturer

that needs “somebody from the software community and the big data community to join their board. “Is it going to be one person to join the board who understands all facets of these things? Probably not. Will they bring in multiple people on their board to cover different segments?

I think that’s probably the most likely scenario,” Carroll said.

These new board members will not necessarily be found in the traditional hunting grounds of the past. Sznajer said: “They are not traditionally non-executives, but sometimes they are executives in place. They may not be fully formed… but still have a lot to contribute. It depends on what aspects you’re looking to bring on board.”

DEEDEE DOKE deedee.doke@ recruiter.co.uk

PWC’S PUSH FOR IN-HOUSE EXEC RECRUITING TEAM This year will bring “a really big push” for professional services multinational PwC’s four-yearold in-house executive search team as the business becomes more aware of what it can offer, the team manager has predicted.

“2012/13 was about raising our game and developing further capability and more research support, as well as reducing our reliance on external search firms. Now it’s about accelerating that growth,” Nicholas Dabinett recently told a London audience in a talk about building an in-house executive search function.

“I see 2014 as being a really big push for the in-house executive search team,” Dabinett continued.

“That includes making sure that each line of the business is aware of what we’re doing. We’d like to have a complete overall governance structure in place in a couple of years’ time where all four lines of client service are using

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us exclusively for senior recruitment.”

Speaking at a July seminar hosted by events organisation Nicholas Dabinett Reconverse, Dabinett spoke about being part of an initial team of two charged with setting up the function.

“We came into being after senior stakeholders in HR saw a real need for in-house executive recruitment,” he said.

It was no mean feat. The team was up against a mass of specialist executive search agencies and an external culture of senior executive recruitment that often began on the golf course. “The first few months were tough but we got our first big partner search in early 2011,” said Dabinett. “Then our client base starting opening doors to different parts of the business.”

The internal team took on three primary responsibilities when it was set up over 2009-10.

One objective, although not the primary reason, was to cut down on PwC’s reliance on headhunters and the ensuing costs.

Finally, the team was charged with managing risks, specifically the company’s brand and what its competitors, peers and clients were saying about it in the marketplace.

Dabinett believes there are compelling reasons for taking the responsibility for executive recruitment in house. “It improves candidate experience and reduces search cycle times,” he said. “It boosts brand awareness, increases executive retention and reduces internal costs.

“We don’t measure ourselves just against cost savings … We need to consider client experience and internal partner experience, the candidate experience, the knowledge and the networks that are gained internally.”

Contract News Air Energi: The global oil & gas workforce solutions provider has bought South Korean firm Kitco… Allegis Group: Has completed its acquisition of Talent2… Berry Recruitment: The company has acquired Croydon-based agency PRC Employment…

Bubble Jobs: The digital jobs board has become an official partner of Manchester Creative Studio.… Castlerock Recruitment Group: The health service provider has secured a tier one staffing contract with Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust… cube19: Has integrated its cloud-based application with Microdec’s Profile RPM… Datum RPO: Has won a contract with infrastructure company VINCI to provide temporary staff nationwide…

First Hand Recruitment: The start-up firm has selected Microdec’s Profile EPM… gap personnel: The industrial recruiter has secured a £20m funding facility with Close Brothers Invoice Finance…

Hays Procurement: Agreed a three-year ‘knowledge partnership’ deal with the Chartered Institute of Purchasing & Supply… Key

Recruitment and Training: The training organisation has been chosen as a service provider for TEAM… LaSer UK: The consumer finance provider has extended its resourcing contract with The Curve Group… NRG: The recruiter was chosen as resourcing partner by Atom, the firm creating a Durham-based digital bank…

Oxford International: Is to expand its office after gaining approval from Cork City Council… Search Consultancy: The agency is hiring construction workers after securing a contract with the Mersey Gateway Project for a six-lane toll bridge…

Wild Recruitment: Won a contract to supply 70 staff to car component manufacturer Gestamp in Fareham.

MIKE NESBIT

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Tech & tools

AUTOMATIC TRACKING TO MANUAL? BOTH COULD WORK ata, big or otherwise, has taken over from social media as the hot topic in recruitment circles. One topic that frequently features in a debate on the subject centres around candidate source tracking.

Technology providers are at pains to point out the importance of automating and optimising this process so that recruiters are able to make far more informed decision over spend and which channels are likely to prove most effective for them. Some recruiters believe otherwise though.

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Power to automation In a recent Recruiter webinar on the subject, Gerard Murnaghan, senior director of sales, international business, at the jobs search engine Indeed.com, claimed that 70% of recruitment agencies self-report but 83% of source data is not accurate and £3.2bn of annual recruitment advertising spend is not tracked accurately. More recently he told Recruiter that he believes fear and resistance to change are among the factors that hold agencies back from taking a more automated

the data that is then put into a spreadsheet, and piecharts produced showing the different channels from which a candidate has come. He believes obtaining the information direct from the consultant’s mouth gets over the key challenge of separating out the original source of the candidate and the source from which they have ended up on a shortlist. He contends that some technology-based trackers aren’t able to take into account the nuances of the recruitment process, which can lead to inaccurate results. “The more generic the [tracking] solution, the less accurate it is in my view,” he said, justifying his actions with the same argument as the technology providers put forward: “So if you aren’t careful you could make a decision on incorrect data.”

Meanwhile, Murnaghan reports that recruiters sometimes credit the wrong original source. He explains that its Indeed Apply platform will clearly show that a person has applied to a role for a particular position through the jobs search engine, but because they are on the agency’s database from a previous conversation, a recruiter will categorise it under ‘general headhunt’, for example.

Looking at it analytically

approach but those who make the shift are often taken aback when they see the metrics.

“Some of the sources they think have performed well haven’t, whereas others that had done better hadn’t had the investment to ensure good conversion rates,” he said. “Because some recruiters are working from perception and feeling, time and time again we see that what a client thinks happens and what actually happens can be very different.”

Doors to manual Jon Dweck, founder and managing director of Pod Talent, which specialises in recruiting for the supply chain, procurement, logistics and manufacturing and technical sectors, is among those who believes the manual approach is preferable. He simply believes it’s more accurate. The firm recruits from graduate to board level and nationally and internationally, so no one style of candidate sourcing suits all. Tracking information is therefore vital.

Dweck told Recruiter that team managers collect

Wendy McDougall, managing director of Firefish Software, whose recruitment platform of the same name was developed from the outset with data gathering and analytics built in, agrees that a key issue is ensuring the original source and channel are clearly identifiable.

Firefish has the capability to do this, but she adds that increasingly recruiters need to collect data “on all touchpoints” of the recruitment process from advertising to placement and not be totally preoccupied with the source. She claims that the availability of such data is making many clients see the opportunities that investing in recruitment marketing brings. “It is becoming a real instrument of change,” she said. “Organisations are seeing the efficiencies made in administration and are proactively hiring marketing people who understand data and know what they are looking for. They want analytics of the entire lifecycle.”

The right formula Recruiters are likely to have more rather than less sourcing channels to manage in the future and working out where to invest money and effort will continue to be a priority. Finding the right formula will ultimately boil down to the simple truth that in some cases people will be superior to technology and in others technology will out-perform people.

As with many challenges in the digital age, it will be best met by a blend of both. ● To see Recruiter’s Indeed-sponsored webinar on candidate source tracking, visit http://view6. workcast.net/?pak=33093393629479

In brief Interviewee and interviewer insights HireVue, which specialises in social, mobile and video-based recruitment tools, is launching an analytics engine that claims to predict which candidates will become the top performers and which interviewers are making the best hiring decisions.

HireVue Insights is powered by the HireVue Iris engine, which is based on more than 3m interview responses.

It examines attributes in three categories: interview, behavioural and performance. It then identifies patterns and learns which of these predict performance. Each candidate is given a score on how they compare to existing top performers.

Meanwhile, Iris scores interviewers based on how their historic ratings and feedback correlate with hiring performance outcomes. www.hirevue.com

Newton screens partner Newton Software is partnering with background screening services company EmployeeScreenIQ to integrate paperless employment background checks into its applicant tracking system (ATS).

It provides a one-click background check request, real-time background check dashboard, branded applicant self-service portals to collect release signatures and sensitive personal information, and automatic updates on an applicant’s background check update. Newton Software’s cloud-based ATS is aimed at the SME market and was developed by recruiters. www.newtonsoftware.com

SUE WEEKES

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SPECIAL REPORT

Web comments Warm up a ‘cold call’ with a personal touch, recruitment expert urges (10 July) I’d love it if a recruiter took the time to find my needs, to get to know me and to take more than a cursory glance at my CV before calling. If I knew a recruiter had my goals and needs in mind I’d trust them so much more.

Brian Hartman

Falling numbers of skilled migrants ‘raises alarm bells’ with leading recruiter (3 July) There are plenty of STEM graduates in the UK, same as in the US. The problem is that the Powers That Be don’t recognise these graduates as adequately skilled, despite their academic credentials. We should just throw up our hands and stop sending our kids to college; that will show the Power Elite!

Senator JPO

Bonus bashing rule could put off top banking talent (6 August) Of course the British Bankers’ Association wants bankers to continue without sanctions for misconduct.

However, what talent are they worried about losing — the greedy clowns who broke the system only a few years ago yet kept their bonuses and pensions?

D James

QUALITY NOT QUANTITY: PUBLIC SECTOR RECRUITING DESPITE CUTS TO BUDGETS AND SIGNIFICANT STRUCTURAL CHANGE, THE PUBLIC SECTOR IS STILL HIRING BUT NEVER BEFORE HAS THE NEED FOR ‘QUALITY OVER QUANTITY’ BEEN MORE CRITICAL. TOTALJOBS.COM’S KATE KAVANAGH EXPLAINS Moving in the right direction The UK economy grew by 0.8% in the second quarter of 2014 — the sixth consecutive quarter of GDP growth. These promising figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) put the economy past its pre-crisis peak, and as a result, UK unemployment is at its lowest level since 2009.

However, while the private sector booms, the pressure of job cuts and reform continue to challenge the public sector. The unprecedented scale and pace of change of the coalition’s reforms have created huge challenges for workforce planning. This is demonstrated by a report from the Institute for Government, which states: “Whitehall is changing beyond recognition … 54,000 staff have been cut from the Civil Service in 18 months, more than was achieved over four years in the 1980s. Many departments are now fundamentally changing how they work to maintain their effectiveness and, in some cases, building whole new capabilities, changing the face of Whitehall as we know it.”

While redundancies have followed cuts to departmental budgets, a number of job opportunities have been created in light of recent changes. In 2012, totaljobs. com predicted that 1.5m public sector placements would be made by 2017.

Based on our data, the sector appears to be on track to deliver these opportunities and ONS statistics show that the public sector accounted for 18.2% of total employment at the end of 2013. We’re clearly moving in the right direction.

A public sector skills gap?

As the economy moves out

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of recovery and into growth it is important to better understand how to ensure that hiring into the public sector is fit for purpose.

A recent report by totaljobs. com and Dods Research — ‘Recruiting for Today’s Public Sector’ — identified that the public sector believes it lacks essential skills to meet objectives and deliver public services.

Given the reductions to workforce headcounts, made necessary by budgetary constraints, it is crucial to ensure the workforce is made up of those with critical skills and that the public sector attracts diverse workforces with the necessary agility, business acumen, attitudes and technical skills.

Our report found that while the public sector workforce in general feels that cuts to staff numbers hamper their ability to carry out the government’s reform agenda, HR professionals — perhaps closer to the hiring and personnel needs of an organisation — feel that it is not staff numbers, but rather skills shortages, that hold back the sector’s ability to deliver public services effectively.

The four areas that were highlighted as having the biggest ‘skills gaps’ were: the perceived lack of leadership, IT, commercial and project management skills.

According to our report, greater fresh talent is needed to breathe new life into leadership roles responsible for providing a clear strategy.

While many public sector respondents agreed that external recruitment is needed to bolster talent (43% of the senior central government workers), hiring for such roles

is still quite limited to those already in the sector.

Attracting the right talent How can the public sector ensure it attracts the people it needs to move forward?

It’s no easy task, but a recent example of successfully bringing talent in from outside the public sector is Bank of England governor Mark Carney, who enjoyed a 13-year career with investment banking, securities and investment management firm Goldman Sachs before entering the public sector through the Bank of Canada in his home country and subsequently the Bank of England.

This is a positive sign and highlights the argument for external recruitment.

The public sector can also draw inspiration and examples of best practice from innovative programmes, such as the London Councils project-based internship scheme or the National Audit Office’s (NAO) apprenticeship programme to make sure it’s developing the talent of the future.

The sector must continue to ensure it has a more positive employer brand to improve its appeal and attract the highest calibre candidates. A survey of jobseekers in 2014 by totaljobs.com found that 52% of jobseekers are actively looking for a job in the public sector, compared to 87% in the private sector.

These figures echo previous research carried out by totaljobs.com and the Centre for Economics and Business Research, which found that “poor perception of the public sector” was the most common issue recruiters faced when scouting for new talent.

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News

SPECIAL REPORT

%

52 TOP

of senior-level executives are satisfied or very satisfied with their worklife balance, according to the 2014 BlueSteps Work-Life Balance Report released by the Association of Executive Search Consultants

5

MOST VIEWED JOBS ON OUR WEBSITE

1. Alexander Mann

Solutions, Onsite recruitment specialist

2. GradWeb, Senior recruitment coordinator

3. Nigel Frank

International, Germanspeaking trainee consultants

4. Recruiter Republic, Consultant

5. Hudson, Manager, TOP

Wellington, New Zealand

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MOST VIEWED ARTICLES ONLINE

1. Recruiters sought However, there has been significant progress with emerging talent initiatives.

In fact, another recent report totaljobs.com conducted showed that 87% of graduates are willing to consider a career in the public sector.

Candidates are starting to see the benefits of a career in the public sector in terms of progression, flexible working and health and well-being programmes offered by employers.

In addition to this, the public sector is getting better at selling the benefits of

working in the sector through improved job copy and targeted candidate attraction campaigns.

Riding the growth wave Looking forwards, it’s important that the public sector reinforces an agile approach to its hiring.

With the Scottish Referendum later this year and a general election looming, further changes and announcements to how public services are run and managed will undoubtedly follow.

to star in TV documentary

After all, it’s in everyone’s interest to have an effective public sector. The burden of recruiting and retaining an effective workforce needs to be shared by the public and private sector alike.

2. Recruitment firms

• About the ‘Recruiting for today’s public sector’ report Dods Research surveyed 1,619 public sector workers on behalf of totaljobs.com in 2013.

4. Relax dress codes to

• About totaljobs.com Totaljobs.com is a UK job board, attracting over 5.9m jobseekers every month.

in breach of auto enrolment legislation

3. Expert Advice on

health enquiries in recruitment help staff cope with heatwave says TUC

5. High court ruling gives employers victory over staff poaching by competitors

KATE KAVANAGH is manager of totaljobs.com’s public sector team

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News

On tumblr this month On recruitermagazine.tumblr.com, Recruiter magazine’s tumblr feed, we showcase what recruiters get up to when they’re not recruiting

Career Moves Group Last month, five members of boutique recruiter Career Moves Group completed the British 10k as part of Leukaemia & Lymphoma’s Unit (LALU) at University College London Hospitals fundraising running team. Eleanor Karadimitriadis, Rich Watson, Steven Mason, Billy Lane and Amy Wolfe (pictured) made up five of the roughly 30,000 runners who ran in the capital’s 10km event to raise money for charity. LALU is currently raising funds for complementary therapies that will be available to haematology patients and families at their new cancer centre on Huntley Street, London and on the wards at UCH. The Career Moves ‘Speedy Runners’ team have so far raised a total of £600 for the charity.

Streamline Financial IT specialist recruiter Streamline held its second networking and drinks event of the year, with around 70 senior clients and candidates coming along during the evening.

The company said the evening was another good chance for people to catch up, make new friends and draw some businesses closer together — along with a few beverages as an added bonus.

iMultiply Resourcing Accountancy and finance recruiter iMultiply Resourcing literally walked on broken glass to raise more than £700 for the son of one of their candidates who has cerebral palsy and requires treatment in the US to help him walk. As a ‘surprise’ the team got the chance to break (real) arrows with their necks. (Mmm, thanks, just been put off my lunch – Tumblr Ed!)

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

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RECRUITER

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Sector Analysis

FMCG

Views from the market

THE FAST-MOVING CONSUMER GOODS MARKET HAS WEATHERED THE STORM AND EMPLOYERS ARE NOW BACK ON THE TALENT TRAIL

Simon Walton Managing partner and head of consumer and retail practices, Berwick Partners

The recruitment needs of the fast-moving consumer good (FMCG) sector are starting to change as increased economic stability has shifted the focus onto innovation, product development and marketing.

“I don’t think anybody thinks we are quite out of the woods, but if I think of all the clients that we are talking to, they are all having to work really hard run their businesses very lean.

The vast majority are very cautiously saying ‘things are looking good and we have optimism – we aren’t just replacing people that leave we are adding and we are investing’.”

After battening the hatches and weathering the storm for so long, many employers in this sector are now in a position to recruit the talent they need to stay hot on the heels of their competitors.

Simon Walton, managing partner and head of consumer and retail practices at Berwick Partners, tells Recruiter: “If a business is trying to achieve growth and differentiate itself, they need good people in the [sales and marketing] arena.”

He adds: “If a business is going to set itself apart from the competition, not just on price but on innovation, it needs good technical and research & development people.”

According to Scott Hutchinson, head of practice, FMCG manufacturing at Alium Partners, innovation in the food and drink industry is centred around healthy eating, and reducing fat and sugar.

The challenge, however, is getting people with the right skills into these types of roles when there is what Hutchinson describes as a “massive lack of food science students and engineering students”.

In addition, the “price wars” between retailers in the early 2000s meant that many manufacturers had to make savings with some having to axe graduate schemes. This combined with an increased number of interim technical roles, says Hutchinson, has left gaps for midcareer management roles.

Making a similar point, Adam Bailey, retail consultant – buying and merchandising at Exsurgo, says there is an “abundance” of jobs attracting salaries between £20k and £30k (such as assistant buyers and merchandisers) or

Adam Bailey: lack of jobs the next level up

between £40k and £65k, but fewer vacancies in the middle. “The young workforce is taking a lot of responsibility and there are not enough jobs in the next level up,” says Bailey.

But to attract the talent they need, many organisations are starting to realise they need to pay more, says Walton. He also noted an increase in golden hellos and counter offers to retain existing staff.

There are also skills shortages at the lower paid end of the FMCG market. Andy Hogarth, chief executive at national recruiter Staffline, says that organisations are struggling to recruit HGV drivers. The cost and complexity of acquiring a licence and new regulations that will require existing drivers to undertake five days’ study to achieve a Certificate of Professional Competence to keep their licence are making it more difficult to attract and retain drivers, says Hogarth. “The shortage is getting worse. It is really expensive to get a HGV licence now so less people are coming into the sector,” he told Recruiter.

Sometimes employers pay for the licence but in many cases the cost is borne by the individual.

If an FMCG employer wants to fully exploit the upturn, it will have to do everything it can to attract candidates into areas of the business that are suffering from skill shortages.

Adam Bailey Retail consultant – buying and merchandising, Exsurgo “Last year on FMCG we were job short and candidate short. We have definitely found that we have now got a lot of jobs.”

Scott Hutchinson Head of practice, FMCG manufacturing, Alium Partners “That brief era of transaction recruitment is over with clients playing recruiters off against one another. They will struggle now that the pendulum has swung in favour of a candidate-driven market.”

The next Sector Analysis for September’s issue of Recruiter will be on Emerging Talent (graduates, school leavers, apprentices).

Please email recruiter. editorial@redactive.co.uk for editorial or advertising opportunities

Scott Hutchinson: lack of food science students

Andy Hogarth: a struggle to recruit HGV drivers

NICOLA SULLIVAN recruiter.editorial@redactive.co.uk

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Market Indicators

Global Spotlight on the Caribbean

PARADISE ISLANDS THEY MAY BE, BUT FINDING TALENT CAN BE CHALLENGING DEPENDING ON WHICH ISLAND AND WHICH SECTOR RECRUITERS ARE FOCUSING ON “Everybody thinks the Caribbean is laid back, but it is a very interesting and fast-paced recruitment market for sure — it is world class, exceptionally fast-paced,” says Abbie Thompson, senior manager, recruitment, people, performance & culture, who heads up KPMG’s recruitment in the region.

Certainly, whether it is the tax-haven of the Cayman Islands, more industrial Trinidad or the tourist island of St Lucia, the Caribbean is not without its challenges for recruiters.

“The day and age of just being able to sell KPMG to candidates on the fact that we are one of the ‘Big four’, and that we have beaches and sunshine on offer are gone, gone, gone a long time ago. Candidates are driven by very different measures these days,” says Thompson.

“They also want career progression, complex challenging work that they know is going to be important for their future, and that one day they can settle down and be comfortable and have a family.

Years ago, no one would have mentioned these sort of things to me. This is a much more forward-thinking generation that’s for sure.”

However, away from the high aspiration, candidateconfident end of the Caribbean labour market, Lara Quentrall-Thomas, chief executive of Trinidad-based Regency Recruitment & Resources, complains of “an alarming tendency for some people to prefer not to work than to work”. Rather than do a job that is “not ideal”, such as a commission-only sales job or shift work, she says many people prefer to remain on paid government training programmes. “In some ways, it is a very spoiled workforce… these programmes were only meant to be temporary, but lots of people are still on them after 10 years,” she says.

For Dotsie Gordon, managing director of Jamaica recruiter Dot Personnel, the Caribbean’s talent pool is limited by the outflow of many of the region’s well-educated and talented people into seasonal work overseas. This is not surprising, says Jacqui Raveneau, managing director of Mampa Employment Agency, which operates in a number of islands. “If people with a Masters or a first degree have an opportunity to go abroad to a different country of course they will want to go,” she says. If it is to hold on to its best talent, “the Caribbean needs to be developed, but the bottom line is that it hasn’t got the money”, she adds.

Francisco Diaz, director, Manpower Group Solutions, says the Caribbean faces many of the same challenges as those of Latin America and Mexico, the other territories for which he holds responsibility. “There is a bit of a mismatch,” he suggests, with lots of young people looking for work, but employers only looking for people with experience. “Employers don’t want to

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Key indicators Population Bahamas 347,000 Jamaica 2,709,300 St Lucia 176,000 Trinidad 1,346,000 Average years in education Bahamas 9.3 Jamaica 9.6 St Lucia 8.3 Trinidad 9.2 Gross national income per head (US dollars) Bahamas NA Jamaica $4,980 (£2,951) St Lucia $6,680 Trinidad $15,040 Sources: Population figures – World Bank. Income per head and average years in education – UN

Average percentage of the labour force that migrated to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries from the Caribbean between 19652000 by education level Primary 15% Secondary 42% Tertiary 70% Source: Academic research (Docquier and Marfouk [2005])

invest in developing these young people,” he adds.

“There is also a problem with the educational system, which is not very connected to the companies and what they expect from students when they get out of university,” says Diaz, with employers particularly needing people with more foreign language skills.

International companies, many of whom don’t have an office in the Caribbean, also need schools and colleges to foster people with enough selfreliance to be able to work “far away from their company’s headquarters”, he says.

Allowing in more workers from abroad might be a solution. However, because of a desire among politicians to provide local people with opportunities, this option is limited. KPMG, for example, is only allowed to bring in qualified staff from overseas, says Thompson, who says this highlights why KPMG’s graduate programme that includes sponsoring students to study abroad before they return to the Caribbean to qualify is so important to the firm’s talent pipeline.

Rules that require foreign workers to train a local person to replace them, and the majority of workforces to be locals, as well as requirements that jobs are advertised locally first, also work against the employment of people from outside the region, says Quentrall-Thomas. This can be detrimental: “We are putting bums on seats rather than based on skills,” she says. Similarly a scheme to transfer workers between the islands is limited in its usefulness. “What we need is for junior and middle-level staff to be able to move up and down the islands,” she says.

Despite its enviable backdrop, recruitment in the Caribbean is clearly not all plain sailing.

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RECRUITER

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EXPERT OPINION

Why there’s never been a better time to strike out on your own

By Graeme McKinnon, Managing Director, Select Appointments

T

hey say it’s lonely at the top but it’s even scarier at the bottom! Perhaps you have thought of striking out on your own in the past and then put the thought to one side and carried on with the 9 to 5 or 9 to 9 if you work in recruitment!

What if there was a way to set up your own business but with the safety net of a large well-regarded organisation to support you?

Twenty-two years ago we realised there was a huge pool of recruitment talent out there who given the right tools and support could build highly successful and profitable recruitment businesses. We set up a franchise operation because we found that our systems, processes and operational methods could help others become their own boss.

We are now over the worst of the recession and all the economic indicators are looking positive for the future. This is not only great news for the economy but it means that the provision of high quality professional recruitment services is in high demand.

Select is looking for the most talented and driven individuals from within the recruitment industry to join us with their very own Select Appointments franchise. What we offer recruitment consultants and managers is a complete business start-up package to ensure they are fully equipped with all of the systems, knowledge and experience required to confidently take that step into running their own recruitment business under the Select Appointments brand.

This package includes induction training in the Select Way of working, access to a 12 month development training programme within Select’s own training academy, marketing support, admin, payroll, invoicing, business mentoring and back office business support. What you bring to the business is your passion for recruitment, business acumen, people skills and the ability to establish relationships with employers and candidates alike.

We want to make the transition from employment to self-employment as easy as possible so we have put in place a number of different flexible franchise packages. These range from running a low operating cost permanent vacancy recruitment home office, to one which allows current recruitment agency owners to transition to the Select brand and tap into Select’s accelerated growth programme and back office business support and marketing systems to realise the full potential of their business.

Someone who has recently taken the plunge is Chaya Malhotra who owns the Select franchise covering the Watford, Hemel Hempstead and Rickmansworth areas. Within only three months Chaya, with the support of Select, has already established her first bank of clients and has recruited a full-time consultant.

She is no stranger to the world of recruitment. Her first job after leaving university with a computer science degree was in IT recruitment where she excelled.

The mother of two then went on to build a substantial business specialising in preparing medical reports for lawyers. The company generated annual revenues of almost £2m and employed 30 people.

Her interest in the medical field subsequently spawned a new career in pharmaceutical sales using her business development skills to convince GPs and consultants of the efficacy of a range of drugs. A spell in property investing followed but the pull of running her own business proved too strong.

Chaya explains what attracted her to Select Appointments: “I did a lot of research into franchising and looked at various sectors. However, I had previously done very well in recruitment so I narrowed my search down to four or five recruitment franchises. Something just clicked with Select.

They seemed to offer great levels of support to franchisees and have a great deal of integrity. I feel I will have the support of a large corporate but still have the freedom of being my own boss. I am very ambitious so I want to grow the business quickly. I’ll be taking on another consultant and would like to buy another Select franchise within the next few years. Having the back office functions and centralised billing taken care of means I can concentrate on developing relationships and business development which is where my real skills lie.”

She added: “Select offer fantastic marketing support for the brand with databases, websites, PR, social media, case studies and direct mail campaigns. It would have been difficult to replicate this under my own steam. I’ve also had one-to-one mentoring from an experienced recruiter within the Select franchise support team, in how to set up the business and guidance on the latest employment and recruitment legislation, which will prove invaluable. They have also introduced me to external resources such as factoring and credit reference companies who will be able to help me as the business becomes established.

Overall I’d say the support I’ve had so far is second to none.”

For further information about Select Appointments franchise opportunities please contact franchiseteam@select.co.uk or call Suzie on 0115 828 1263 or 07793 054 233.

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Interaction

SOAP

BOX

Minister: listen to social workers

We recently published ‘Voices from the Front Line: Supporting our social workers in the delivery of quality services to children’ — a comprehensive research report and the result of our collaboration with the Victoria Climbié Foundation UK (VCF).

Anyone who knows even a small amount about social work will be familiar with the massive caseloads and too few staff scenario. As a leading supplier of both permanent and temporary social workers to local authorities, this is a situation we are unfortunately all too familiar with.

Daily we speak to our social workers who keep what is widely regarded as one of the best child protection systems in the world on its feet. They support a system that is lauded for its accountability, stability, continuity, local collaboration with local organisations and experienced and committed leadership. The reality of social work, however, couldn’t be more different.

With the assent of the Children and Families Act in April, VCF and HCL Social Care collaborated to take a closer look at the critical workforce that underpins our best-in-class system. At the same time, severe budget cuts across local authorities subsequently have overwhelmed an already struggling workforce.

Moreover, these budget cuts come at a time when demand for child protection has never been higher. The number of children coming into care has increased by 25% since 2009-10 and the amount of children with protection plans has increased by almost 40%. Social workers are being left to take the strain, working long hours with ridiculous caseloads — and now the Act has tightened the screws still further by placing tight deadlines on procedures from adoption to taking a child into care.

Undertaking the research, to which almost 500 locum and

RICKY MARTIN

GARY CHATFIELD is managing director, HCL Social Care

Put yourself in your jobseeker’s shoes and give them a hand

With confidence in the job market picking up, I am starting to see a clear increase in the number of job applications. If you are a specialist recruitment professional, this is proving to be the best time in recent years to help more people than ever.

However, the increase in job applications has highlighted just how unequipped some of these jobseekers are to handle the recruitment process.

I share this to raise awareness of our responsibility to jobseekers; we should do all we can to make the recruitment process as easy and successful as possible for everyone. In simple terms if you are a scientific research manager, for example, your forte is in scientific research. It is not necessarily in CV writing. However, recruitment consultants should share their knowledge and make this information as readily available as possible.

What about a job application that does not include any contact details? It is frustrating for any recruiter to see an application from somebody they feel like they could really help, but then cannot get in contact.

To we recruiters, knowing to put your current contact details on your application is obvious. But some jobseekers might be putting together their CVs for the first time in 1520 years! You could spend hours putting your heart and soul in to the detail of dates/skills/achievements and so forth, and simple things like the correct contact number could seem trivial and be easily forgotten. There are times when I have personally been frustrated by this point, but when I actually put myself in the

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permanent social workers responded, was a humbling experience, with their frustration palpable. Again and again we heard of the lack of management support, overwhelming bureaucracy and administration, desire to be consulted and listened to, lack of training and the massive inconsistencies in recruitment and retention practices across the country, which we are, of course, familiar with.

It is galling to receive feedback from locum candidates that they were interviewed in a rushed half hour over a cup of coffee.

Within the locum market, the responsibility for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) rests with the individual social worker. This means that in the current climate of local authority budget cuts and cost efficiencies, locum social workers are often excluded from in-house training initiatives that are widely available to their permanent colleagues. The social worker is then faced with the dilemma of working and getting paid or training and losing wages.

We can only hope that incoming Secretary of State for Education Nicky Morgan take the recruitment and retention challenge within the social work system seriously — starting with its people — and make it an immediate priority. Voices from the front line tells us that the workforce is in a pressure cooker and it is only a matter of time before the lid blows.

As an experienced social worker explained anonymously in a comment in the report: “There is a lot of paperwork, unmanageable case loads, you will get paid for 37 hours per week and do a minimum of 50. You will not get rich, be liked and there is very little time for your own family.”

jobseeker’s shoes, I can empathise and realise my need to help as best I can.

As a recruitment industry we should be doing all we can to show jobseekers how to best present their profile. We are consultants in recruitment and the more we empower a jobseeker, the greater chance of getting a job. The reality is, if you have provided a service that has actually helped somebody, that will not be forgotten. That jobseeker could become your client or may come back to you again if their circumstances change.

Does your company website have a CV writing section on it? Does it include advice on how to work with a recruitment consultancy? Advice on how to prepare for an interview? If the answer to any of these questions is no, then I would say it should be looked at as soon as possible.

That is where our profession should kick in and step up to the plate. It is why we should all take the time to realise our responsibility and show that the recruitment industry is a professional service provider that actually adds value.

How many times has a jobseeker told you that you are the best recruiter they have ever worked with? That you provided more support and advice than any other recruitment company? I bet most of you have heard these things. However, if you have then it means that some recruiters are not. We all need to be more aware of our responsibilities for the jobseeker.

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

WEB

SOUND

CHAT

BITES

“What should recruiters do to assist schools in helping students with their career choices and employability?”

Christina Ashcroft Regional manager, Drake East Midlands We definitely need to prepare our school leavers more. I believe we have a responsibility to students of 14 years and above to educate them as to what they want to do when they leave school or university and give them knowledge of the business world. Through networking, we can get companies who have had a wealth of experience managing their own organisations to go into schools with us and advise sixth form students on CV writing, for example. Personality assessments, which we use at Drake, can be a good pointer to help the student, along with a tutor, to make up their minds as to what they want to do.

Drake is also at the early stages of getting involved with STEM Ambassadors — a programme to promote and inspire STEM careers for our young students.

Steve Hallam Managing director, Page Personnel Human Resources and Secretarial & Business Support It is important to link schools and businesses together to help equip students with valuable skills, aspirations and experiences. On previous visits to colleges in South-West and Central London we have given presentations on interview techniques and CV writing to help prepare students for future job interviews. Petts Hill Primary School recently sent 20 students to us to give them exposure to a corporate working environment.

This was the first time PageGroup had conducted a school workshop and we were delighted by the students’ enthusiasm and willingness to learn. Many students didn’t know about the world of recruitment and the array of different careers available to them. We showed how recruitment consultants help candidates find employment in numerous industry sectors and what the students can achieve if they work hard and have a positive, self-motivated mindset to reaching their goals.

Rob Ryan Recruitment manager, Tesco Telecoms, Tesco Mobile and Phone Shop Recruiters represent their brand and we have to be accessible to all levels of talent — to describe what our business needs now, and what our business needs in this new era of retail. Gen Y, Gen Z and the Millennials are very fast paced — they work in an instant, they are responsive to what they like and what they don’t like.

But ask them a structured, competency-based question and I think some may struggle. We need to support them and encourage them to enhance their skills at an early age, so that they can bring that to an organisation — they are the future. Recruiters need to get into school career days and show them that a career — any career — can be exciting and rewarding. From working with the Making the Leap Charity, I see this potential and how responsive they are to my advice. I find keeping it honest and realistic is far more rewarding to them than painting a picture of a future that doesn’t exist for some of them. They may be our future, but we are the link that will make that future great.

Karen Silk Managing director, Capital International Staffing I have worked in engineering recruitment for over 30 years and I still enjoy listening to our clients talk about exciting innovative projects. So why do we have a shortage of engineers? The answer is the general perception of engineering among young people. Capital International has produced a video to take into schools featuring three young female engineers talking about why engineering is a great career choice.

As well as the video we talk about different areas and opportunities a degree in one of the STEM subjects opens up. For recruiters, today’s students are tomorrow’s candidates; it makes sense to start educating these young people now and inspire them to look at the different options open to them and secure our candidate pool of the future.

Richard Taylor Senior divisional director, Reed Education Helping with students’ career choices is an opportunity for a recruiter in the education sector to give something back to their clients, particularly as funding for careers advice has been significantly reduced over the past five years. It gives us the chance to use our expertise in the commercial environment to assist students making important decisions, offering them insight into the recruitment market. We’ve found that recruiters who operate in a broad spectrum of specialist vertical markets are able to draw on varied experience to offer wide-ranging support.

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New standard for social work recruitment firms launched with APSCo (31 July) “Does the best practice quality standard for social work recruitment firms include meeting candidates face-to-face to verify documents or are the agencies still taking unverified documents to place front line social workers with the nations vulnerable adults and childrens. From experience the APSCO agency members don’t have the facilities to meet each candidate before putting them into placement.”

Top Biller “APSCo’s Compliance+ Social Work standard does require that all candidates are interviewed face-to-face before being being placed in assignments. Such registration interviews will include the verification of all safeguarding documentation. In fact, this does not represent a policy shift for APSCo members, as the requirements of APSCo’s Social Work Sector Group has always been that members must meet candidates face-to-face.”

Samantha Hurley, head of external relations, Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo)

Public sector job vacancies in North-East have been hit by cuts, claims Venn Group (22 July) “Totaljobs.com data shows an uplift in public sector jobs in the North-East, with three times as many job adverts as the same period last year. In the health sector alone we have seen a 64% increase in applications. We’ve also seen a notable increase in the volume of vacancies in the areas of support workers and carers, as well as IT and project management — a key area experiencing skills shortages across the UK public sector.

The data suggests that there are still job opportunities as local authorities work hard to avoid a decline in service levels.”

Kate Kavanagh, public sector manager, Totaljobs

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Insight

Why it is important to customise global KPIs KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS ARE ESSENTIAL FOR MEASURING RPO SUCCESS, ARGUES JEANNE MACDONALD When it comes to measuring the success of recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) for global businesses, the need for a tailored approach to goal-setting is becoming apparent.

How do talent management professionals ensure they are defining the right objectives in all territories to drive success?

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are vital navigation tools that show managers and leaders whether they are on course to success. The right set of KPIs will shine a light on performance and highlight areas that need attention; without these, managers are flying like a pilot without instruments.

As businesses extend their global offering, how they measure success needs to be adapted to fit the territories they are in. Regional customisation is key — and it’s no different when it comes to goalsetting with an RPO provider. Whether it is talent acquisition, performance management, employee training and development or succession planning, businesses should have consistent global service level agreements (SLAs) that focus on what they want to accomplish and map out KPIs to measure this.

Adapting KPIs to suit each situation means bearing in mind targets for both country and region. Additionally, local hiring type and talent availability must also be considered. Take South America, for example, which has a rich heritage and plethora of languages and cultures. Clients engaging RPO providers in South America need to work with them to adjust KPIs to the different countries, languages and cultures, which creates an opportunity for RPO providers to individualise their offer. At the same time, SLAs must be maintained to achieve the overarching alignment of talent acquisition to business impact.

A large global technology innovator we work with sets the standard for KPI customisation. This company strategically assigns different measures of success for each of the nine countries we support them in, as well as tailored KPIs for the three hiring types we recruit for them. On the whole, these KPIs are driven almost entirely by the labour availability for the types of role we hire and the way in which you need to access that talent.

In Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the variety of labour market dynamics and cultures drives KPI customisation. This is also true of Japan, where even the most common KPIs — such as time to hire — must be based on the country’s cultural nuance of taking the applicant’s family

into consideration, not just the candidate. This makes hiring a much more in-depth and lengthy procedure in comparison to countries such as North America, where time to hire is relatively quick due to flexible labour laws and shorter notice periods. These examples show why recruiters need to have country-specific knowledge — which is considerably bolstered by a physically presence there — to create the most suitable KPIs. A popular KPI concerns how a business is perceived in its key markets, with RPO providers helping to hone an employer brand. This is more important now than ever, with the continued breakdown between a business’s consumer and employer brands. Organisations need to ensure they are seen in the best possible light and as a desirable employer. Often this is achieved by selecting a company’s key competitors in a country and calculating the number of candidates targeted from these companies who were onboarded.

Analysing public perception can yield interesting insights, particularly when comparing attitudes in different countries. One of our clients looked at how it was perceived in its three key markets — China, North America and Brazil. In China, it had a lower brand perception, while in Brazil, where it was not yet as well known, it had a much higher brand perception. The underdeveloped awareness provided a great platform to set KPIs to build the business’ employer brand and shape public perception of the company, as opposed to executing damage control to shift negative opinions. This is a great example of how global KPIs need to be adjusted for each region.

How do organisations keep track of measuring KPIs, particularly when working on a global scale? Implementing HR technology can help to streamline this, capturing and presenting critical data in a digestible way. Analytics is changing rapidly and displaying data is becoming a basic building block in operating a sophisticated talent acquisition initiative. Technology allows RPO providers to identify pain points in an organisation’s workforce, as well as which areas are successful.

Organisations need to get down to the nittygritty to determine their KPIs and identify what success looks like on a country-by-country basis.

Organisations working with an RPO provider that has an in-depth knowledge of a location must consider not only each region’s but also each country’s distinctions to get the best out of the partnership.

Power Points When measuring the success of RPO for global businesses, a tailored approach to goal-setting is critical While global consistency matters, regional customisation is key. Country specific as well as regional targets, alongside hiring type and talent availability in the location in question, must be considered HR technology can help organisations keep track of measuring KPIs, streamlining the process and capturing and presenting important data in a digestible way Measuring public perception has become a popular performance indicator, which involves analysing how a particular business is perceived in its key markets

JEANNE MACDONALD is the president of Global Talent Solutions for Futurestep

Share your insight and blue-sky thinking. Contact the editor: deedee.doke@recruiter.co.uk

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The Challenge

Building a brand pays for growing consultancy Ed Mottley

Terri Loska

Principal

Principal

REMUNERATION CONSULTANCY KEPLER ASSOCIATES FOUND COMPETING FOR THE BEST GRADUATE TALENT A CHALLENGE, UNTIL DARTMOUTH PARTNERS HELPED OUT THE CHALLENGE With the furore in the press surrounding executive pay and bankers’ bonuses still fresh in the public’s memory, many companies have come to realise that not only must their executives’ salaries be aligned with the longer-term objectives of the business, there is also a need to incentivise and promote ‘good practice’ in the behaviour of executives.

Kepler Associates is an executive remuneration consulting firm that deals with these issues and helps companies see that the way they remunerate their executives and staff can be a potential source of competitive advantage. For around 10 years, Kepler has been the ‘go-to’ consultancy for remuneration advisory issues, and although the firm was small it was looking to expand and grow steadily. In the era of

“We have a really close relationship with Kepler so we understand what they’re looking for” TERRI LASKA

public outrage at executive pay levels, Kepler was definitely positioned at the right place at the right time. Early this year, the firm moved into new offices overlooking Trafalgar Square in the heart of London, doubling its office space and therefore having room to expand the number of employees.

The firm has always been “firm believers in bottom-up recruiting”, Ed Mottley, principal at Kepler told Recruiter. That means recruiting graduates and training them internally. The problem was finding graduates who wanted to do remuneration consultancy — and who knew about Kepler Associates. After all, when you’re a small firm in a niche marketplace and your competitors for talent are the likes of professional services and accounting giants Deloitte, KPMG and PwC, then you have to make your voice heard on campus.

Another challenge for Kepler, Mottley explained, was that there was an “ad hoc approach to recruitment”, with the firm relying on people stumbling across its website or applying through recommendation.

With just 20 employees in the firm — 98% of them consultants — recruitment was a “massive time commitment”, Mottley said.

THE SOLUTION London-based boutique recruitment consultancy Dartmouth Partners was founded in 2012 by chief executive Logan Naidu dedicated, but not limited, to finding the best graduate talent for its clients. Having worked with members of the management team at Kepler in different guises over the years, Dartmouth Partners seemed the ideal solution to help the remuneration consultancy find exceptional talent and be recognised by graduates at the top universities.

Principal Terri Loska told Recruiter that to help Kepler expand from around 22 to 40 people Dartmouth had to help the consultancy build a brand on campus. Although the aim was to have a presence at the top universities, the decision was to focus on the Oxbridge Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Mottley told Recruiter that Dartmouth organised informal campus evenings, which were invitation only but not aimed at any particular subject. The emphasis was on the culture of Kepler.

“Dartmouth Partners knows us well enough to find people who will fit in with us,” Mottley explained.

Loska added that to differentiate Kepler from other more well-known employer brands, the emphasis was “more hands-on than the big firms”, with

directors attending the events as well as more junior consultants.

“Students appreciate the investment in time,” she said.

“It makes them feel special.”

Mottley echoed that approach: “Dartmouth is very good at establishing a way to set us apart from competing with the Big 4.

And students can relate to the collegiate atmosphere at Kepler.”

As a result of the two campus events, 30 applicants from each university applied, with Dartmouth Partners sifting through the applications for the first stage. Mottley added that “diverting the flow of CVs away from Kepler” really helped.

Dartmouth conducted a rigorous interview process to find the top nine applicants and set up an assessment day at Kepler’s London offices. The result was four graduates, starting later this year — an impressive 16% increase in consultant numbers.

Speaking about Dartmouth Partners, Mottley said “their process is slick … They know our needs, who we are”. Before the recruiter came on board, he said, “we were reactive rather than proactive” in recruiting. “Not the best way to find talent,” he admitted. And Loska said that working with Kepler has been a great process. “Being able to help a small company really grow makes a huge difference,” she explained. “We feel more involved, like we’re part of the business when we represent Kepler.”

Would you like to be involved in The Challenge? Contact Vanessa Townsend at vanessa.townsend@recruiter.co.uk

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07/08/2014 14:03

EXPERT OPINION

Recruitment agencies can up their game with IP telephony

By James Passingham, Technical Director of Foehn

W

ith the UK employment market on the way back up, recruiters will be exploring how modern communications technology can help them compete effectively - attracting employers and good candidates whilst enhancing the productivity of their consultants.

Technology has advanced significantly during recent recessionary times and telephony systems are light years from what their historical counterparts could offer back in 2008. With a modern set up, recruitment agencies can now answer questions such as: - Just how productive are my recruitment consultants?

- Could they operate even faster and more efficiently, given the right telephony tools?

- Can I get visibility of our telephony activity with accurate and timely call logging and reporting – on a daily, weekly, monthly basis?

Cloud computing has had a major impact on modern IT infrastructure services, facilitated by affordable access circuits enabling companies to connect at high speed to the Internet. Many of the issues associated with traditional infrastructures have been removed and this means businesses can manage technical operations without specialist skills in-house.

The same is true of telephony because the cloud removes many of the traditional logistical challenges associated with building and managing telecoms infrastructure.

The major differences between modern telephony and what companies might have invested in previously are cost, flexibility and a host of new features.

Employment up, costs coming down Hosted telephony requires no capital outlay which means minimal upfront expenditure as there is no need to invest in an onsite telephone system.

Because hosted systems scale up and down, recruitment agencies need not build in capacity for growth or try to predict business needs to protect their investment. If fewer extensions are needed, costs come down. If an agency is growing the system can be scaled up.

Easy, flexible and reliable Unlike traditional systems, hosted telephony is easy to set up.

Extensions and fully featured systems are deployable in just minutes – not days or weeks - reducing lead times. Furthermore, a hosted deployment is less likely to experience implementation issues as the system is already built.

circumstances. For example, if something happens, like an office flood that would incapacitate a traditional system, consultants continue to operate because there is no dependence on a physical PBX.

Integrate, log, report and save time With modern telephony systems, feature richness often comes as standard and a good hosted system will provide all the features of ‘on premise’ systems which will also come with a far lower cost.

Such features provide recruitment agencies with a plethora of communications tools that they can use to good effect.

• Accurate and Timely Call Logging and Reporting Complete visibility of detailed reports of telephony activity with an easy to use management portal that can be accessed from any location. Foehn’s telephony solution, for example, has comprehensive monitoring with 150 metrics available for issue identification. Run reports by single queues, or by user-created queue groups, with activity statistics and duration by call stage, with daily, hourly (or shorter), weekly breakdowns. This helps you measure business targets and your consultants’ effectiveness.

• Cross platform integration to increase consultants’ productivity - By integrating telephony with other desktop applications and systems, such as CRM, an agency can have a better view of its candidates and prospects rather than using a static database.

• Click to Dial - Consultants spend less time entering phone numbers, instead clicking to dial numbers from their desktop to reach candidates faster.

• Record calls and instantly retrieve them any time - Record calls securely with instant retrieval, enabling consultants to keep accurate records of enquiries and preliminary interviews with candidates.

Time to employ new IP telephony?

Statistics issued by the Office for National Statistics show that the number of people out of work fell by 161,000 to 2.16 million, bringing unemployment down to 6.6%. The number of people in work rose by a record 345,000, to 30.5 million, most of which are in full-time employment.

These welcome trends are set to continue as September and October are the next busy months for recruitment agencies. The time could be right to review new communications technologies to help them to gain share, empower consultants and improve the performance of their business.

Foehn provides a range of IP Telephony solutions to recruitment companies.

Inherent flexibility also means that businesses can adapt to changing

For further information please visit: www.foehn.co.uk/recruiter Telephone: +44 (20) 3199 7165 Email: sales@foehn.co.uk

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RECRUITER RECRUITER FEBRUARY AUGUST 2014 2014

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Profile

Heading the in-house list IN THIS OUR SECOND YEAR OF LISTING THE TOP IN-HOUSE RESOURCING TALENT BASED IN THE UK & IRELAND, SCOTT BEAGRIE INTRODUCES THE LATEST 11 TO STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD

Welcome to Recruiter’s 2014 list of the 11 Most Influential In-House Recruiters, which follows our inaugural showcase of talent last year. When reviewing the priorities, responsibilities, achievements and challenges of those in the list, it was interesting to see how many of these had changed from 2013.

A candidate-driven market has returned, with all of the challenges that brings. Employers have to accept that they may be outbid for talent if they do not have the best attraction and retention strategies in place. For organisations that have reduced agency reliance by switching to a direct sourcing model, the next year is likely to form the sternest test yet for their in-house people.

To reflect the more positive economic outlook, we have also considered the size and scale of the challenges ahead for many of those listed as well as their achievements to date. Recruitment is undeniably evolving and industry commentators have underlined the growing need for in-house resourcers to consider both strategic and stakeholder capability instead of focusing purely on delivery. Inhouse resourcers at organisations with ambitious plans for growth or who face specific challenges — talent shortages, for example — will need to draw on extremely broad skill sets to serve the needs of the business adequately.

One in-house recruiter in the 2014 list also appeared in 2013’s.

Last year, Paul Maxin made the 11 for his achievements as global resourcing director at Unilever. In February this year, he took on the talent and resourcing brief at the recently set up Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). It was felt that his task of bringing about culture change and rebuilding trust in one of the UK’s most important sectors was not only a momentous one, but also one that reflected the fundamental importance of resourcing in the wider picture. His inclusion was therefore justified for a second time.

On another note, this year’s list heralds the inclusion of two resourcing interims for the first time. This reflects the view of some organisations that to effect change or gain a fresh perspective to their resourcing strategy, it is best to bring in an external consultant.

The comments and debate that followed publication of last year’s 11 were welcomed and we look forward to hearing your views on this year’s showcase of talent, even if you do not agree with all of our selections. By singling out these individuals for praise, it is our intention to elevate the overall profile of in-house resourcers.

We will be delighted to hear from anyone who wants to join the conversation.

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METHODOLOGY The methodology used is consistent with that of last year. Whenever possible, metrics such as cost and time savings have been detailed but this has not always been practicable or relevant. There will always be a degree of subjectivity in a list of this nature.

One set of criteria was applied to each individual. This was based on information that was gathered in the public domain and through discussions with resourcing experts and peers.

The criteria for selection was primarily based on the following: the size, scale, scope and challenge of the position and effectiveness in the role; the ability to be strategic and add value, and position the resourcing function central to the business; the degree of innovation or change brought to the current and/or previous organisation; perceived influence both internally and externally; and the extent to which an individual is considered an industry visionary, trailblazer or thought leader. Occasionally, other factors were taken into consideration, such as challenges brought by specific industries.

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Profile

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THE LIST Jill Duthie Head of direct sourcing, UK and Europe, Royal Bank of Scotland Two years after establishing direct sourcing as a separate business function to serve Royal Bank of Scotland’s recruitment needs, Duthie and her team have been busy embedding best practice and creating broader talent pipelines and communities.

Banks tend to rely heavily on recruitment agencies and she began by targeting the business areas where dependency was highest, such as finance, risk, operations and HR. Agency use for specialist roles has been reduced by more than half and her team has a “very stretching” single-figure target for overall use in 2014. She is not anti-agency but intends to eliminate what she calls “lazy recruiting”, where the default position is to call an agency. Instead, actively identifying candidates and making the candidate experience a positive one is at the heart of what she does. Her appointment, one of the first of its kind, reportedly led to a huge number of enquiries about the set-up.

Only time will tell if she has truly blazed a trail that others will want to follow.

Kevin Hough Head of group resourcing, LV= We could fill this space listing the awards for excellence that Hough and his team have notched up at Recruiter’s awards for the past three years running — but anyone who knows him will be aware he is more interested in performance than plaudits. The effort ploughed into building employer brand, moving to a direct hiring model as well as astute use of technology are among the reasons LV=’s resourcing team enjoy a high profile internally and externally. Hough’s team sits at the heart of the organisation, having helped to grow the business and the workforce threefold to some 6,000 employees over the past five years. The highly consultative approach it takes to working with other departments in the business is credited with delivering savings of £2m and gaining boardlevel recognition. This is impressive stuff — positioning resourcing precisely where it ought to be — but it is important not to overlook the innovation within the overall strategy that has also helped to mark it out.

A case in point is its “owning the town” concept, with resourcing communicating and connecting with candidates and communities at local levels.

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Jill Duthie HER APPOINTMENT, THOUGHT TO BE ONE OF THE FIRST OF ITS KIND, REPORTEDLY LED TO A HUGE NUMBER OF ENQUIRIES ABOUT THE SET-UP. ONLY TIME WILL TELL IF SHE HAS BLAZED A TRAIL OTHERS WILL WANT TO FOLLOW Kevin Hough

HIS TEAM SITS AT THE HEART OF THE ORGANISATION, HAVING HELPED TO GROW THE BUSINESS AND THE WORKFORCE THREEFOLD TO 6,000

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Profile

Jon Hull Head of resourcing UK and Ireland, Sodexo Ambitious target-setting is one way of securing a place in Recruiter’s Most Influential list. Hull merits inclusion for introducing a 50:50 target for the proportion of men and women on the facilities management company’s shortlists for senior executive positions. At the time of writing, suitable roles where this policy could be implemented were yet to emerge, but Hull envisages it would be applied annually to five to 10 roles at senior executive level, as well as the immediate level below. Hull is also keen to build on the work by his predecessor Melanie Hayes (named in 2013’s list) on employer brand.

Sodexo’s employees could find themselves working at high-profile client sites for big brands and he reckons the company could leverage this association more to augment its own employer brand. Sodexo employs approximately 35,000 people at more than 2,000 locations across the UK but this won’t faze Hull — he was previously global head of recruitment for RS Components, the world’s biggest distributor of electronics and maintenance products.

Jon Hull

AMBITIOUS TARGETSETTING IS ONE WAY OF SECURING A PLACE IN RECRUITER’S MOST INFLUENTIAL LIST, SUCH AS HULL’S 50:50 TARGET FOR MEN AND WOMEN SHORTLISTS Mark Linden

HE IS RAPIDLY ESTABLISHING HIMSELF AS THE GO-TO INTERIM FOR THE BIG NAMES IN THE FAST-PACED PRIVATE AND INDEPENDENT HEALTHCARE SECTOR

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Mark Linden Head of recruitment – interim, Allied Healthcare Healthcare is seen as one of the hardest areas in which to deliver operational excellence and those involved in recruitment and talent management have to manage a mix of permanent, bank, flexible contract and agency workers as well as ensuring a talent pipeline for critical and specialist roles. Linden is rapidly establishing himself as the ‘go-to’ interim for the big names in the fast-paced private and independent healthcare sector, which is as competitive as its complex. He completed a year-long assignment at Bupa in May where his remit was to deliver transformation of every aspect of resourcing and contingent staffing across its UK businesses. Linden, who has also worked in the pharmaceutical, fast-moving consumer goods and finance sectors, is regarded by many as a resourcing heavyweight with real commercial flair.

His ability to effect change makes him highly sought after by organisations looking for help with business transformation programmes.

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09/07/2014 12:36

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Chris Marsh Director of resourcing, Atkins The UK is on the verge of an infrastructure building renaissance thanks to the government’s National Infrastructure Plan, but the entire engineering sector is facing a severe skills shortage. Atkins is among the firms that will be central to ensuring the sector can deliver on this strategy which means Marsh, chosen as Recruiter’s 2014 In-House Recruitment Leader of the Year, is directly charged with tackling this scarcity of talent that threatens to impede progress. Thanks to a revamped recruitment strategy, 4,000 new hires were found across the UK, the US, the Middle East, Europe and Asia Pacific to cope with new global projects. Few can doubt his credentials or resourcefulness to seek out talent but, as he points out himself, the UK simply does not produce enough engineers.

Marsh’s efforts to date are likely to see his influence grow beyond the engineering services company.

Chris Marsh

THANKS TO A REVAMPED RECRUITMENT STRATEGY, 4,000 NEW HIRES WERE FOUND ACROSS THE UK, THE US, EUROPE, THE MIDDLE EAST AND APAC Paul Maxin

FIVE MONTHS INTO HIS ROLE A THE FCA, HE HAS A MAJOR ROLE TO PLAY IN EFFECTING A FUNDAMENTAL SHIFT IN THE INDUSTRY’S CULTURE TO RESTORE PUBLIC TRUST

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Paul Maxin Head of talent and resourcing, Financial Conduct Authority Huge swathes of the press and public are deeply sceptical of the entire financial services industry thanks to the constant stream of scandal and widespread leadership failings. Five months into his role at the FCA — a regulatory body created last year — Maxin has a major role to play in effecting a fundamental shift in the industry’s culture to help to restore public trust. There are two aspects to his new role. As head of department, he is charged with devising a talent strategy that will identify, attract and develop candidates with the capabilities required. In addition, industry commentators point to a potentially wider remit where the FCA works in tandem with the community it regulates to ensure new recruits will ultimately play a part in redefining the sector for the better. So, it looks as if one thing Maxin can bank on is a busy future.

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05/06/2014 08:22

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Karen Moran HR director (talent management), BBC The UK’s highest-profile public sector organisation has endured probably the most turbulent period in its history. However, this gave the organisation a platform to “make the changes we know we need to make”, Moran told an audience last year at Harvey Nichols. Notably, when most organisations were focusing on development of senior leadership, the BBC last year devoted considerable resources to developing the skills of its 1,500 middle managers. “These are the leaders that are at the coalface — they are dealing with the issues on the ground and need all the practical support we can give them to manage and engage their talent” she has said. It also saw the managers form a collaborative community where they feel they have a say in how the BBC is run, Moran said at the time. Testing times lie ahead for her, though. Tough new targets of one in six people on air to be from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds by 2017 means she will need to call on all of her resourcing prowess to meet them.

Karen Moran

TESTING TIMES LIE AHEAD FOR MORAN, WITH TOUGH NEW TARGETS OF ONE IN SIX PEOPLE ON AIR TO BE FROM BAME BACKGROUNDS BY 2017 Roopesh Panchasra

HE HEADS THE FIRST RECRUITMENT TEAM THAT WILL GO LIVE WITH THE WORKDAY RECRUITING SOFTWARE IN THE UK, SO HE COULDN’T BE CLOSER TO THE HEART OF THE BUSINESS

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Roopesh Panchasra Director, talent acquisition EMEA/ APAC, Workday The corporate recruitment software industry could be on the verge of a radical shake-up following the long-awaited addition of the potentially transformative Workday Recruiting application to the enterprise software developer’s suite of HR and finance products. Panchasra heads the first recruitment team that will go live with the software in the UK so his site could be a key reference site for prospective clients.

Previous roles with companies such as Expedia and VMware means that he has unrivalled experience of the demands of online worlds including cloud computing, which ideally positions him not only to deliver Workday’s talent strategy successfully but also to demonstrate the full extent of its software’s capabilities to the rest of the resourcing world. As Workday likes to involve customers closely in development, it effectively makes Recruiting a product for the people by the people to acquire the right people.

Panchasra couldn’t be closer to the heart of the business if he tried.

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Profile

Cath Possamai Director of strategy, Army Recruiting Group, Capita In terms of sheer volume, British Army recruitment is arguably one of the biggest jobs in the country: 10,000 regular soldiers and anywhere between 3,000 and 7,000 reservists annually. But the army has struggled to meet recruitment targets and an improving economy combined with the organisation’s withdrawal from conflict zones makes things even more difficult. Since March this year, Possamai has conducted a root and branch analysis of the processes, structure and “what needs to change” to “drive a serious step change in recruitment performance”: also known as the Enhancement Programme.

As it’s a partnership deal as opposed to a regular outsourcing one, she has also had the tricky job of “knitting together” 400 civilian Capita staff and 800 serving military personnel into a single harmonious unit.

Additionally, Possamai has overhauled the senior management team, bringing in two ex-RBS specialists: Nimai Swaroop and David Mason (who appeared in last year’s list) to focus on attraction and candidate experience respectively.

Adrian Shooter Director of talent and resourcing, Co-operative Group One of the “great national business calamities” was the stark assessment of former City minister Lord Myner’s review into how the troubled 150-yearold mutual was run. In the past year, it has posted record losses of £2.5bn, its new chief executive quit after only 10 months in the post and the drug-taking, religious chairman of its former banking arm was removed. The report highlighted failings in the group’s culture, senior management structure and practices, raising serious questions over the board directors and poor succession planning. The Co-op has accepted it needs urgent reform and, although this has not been said publicly, Shooter must have a key role to play in the future appointment of strong leaders who are able to tackle the serious business performance challenges and restore the group’s fortunes. Identified as a rising star by sector peers, Shooter has previously admitted to being suited to “change, challenge and transition”, so all eyes will be on him to see if he can work his magic here.

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Cath Possamai

IN 2015 SHE TAKES UP THE NEWLYCREATED ROLE OF DIRECTOR OF TALENT FOR CAPITA, WHERE THERE WILL BE ‘ENORMOUS BUSINESS-FACING RESPONSIBILITY’

Adrian Shooter

HE PREVIOUSLY ADMITTED TO BEING SUITED TO ‘CHANGE, CHALLENGE AND TRANSITION’, SO ALL EYES WILL BE ON HIM TO SEE IF HE CAN WORK HIS MAGIC HERE

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07/08/2014 15:50

Profile

Dorian Webb Interim In the mid 1990s, so-called change agents in the form of interims and internal consultants swept through HR departments as organisations heeded the clarion call of industry gurus including Dave Ulrich who urged the function to transform itself. While it may be an overstatement to suggest the same is happening in recruitment, Webb is certainly one of what could be termed a new breed of in-demand interim ‘SWAT’ executives effecting strategic change. His CV reads like a litany of top resourcing roles: group resourcing lead at BP; global head of resourcing at DTZ; head of resourcing at the BBC; head of talent at BAA; talent management and acquisition at Ericsson; and programme manager, emerging talent, Telefonica. Webb, currently consultant for global implementation for Pontoon Solutions, is attracted to assignments with the words ‘change’ and ‘transformation’ in the brief and his track record demonstrates an ability to deliver on any change agenda.

Dorian Webb

HE IS ATTRACTED TO ASSIGNMENTS WITH THE WORDS ‘CHANGE’ AND ‘TRANSFORMATION’ IN THE BRIEF AND HE CAN DELIVER ON ANY CHANGE AGENDA

Scott Beagrie is a regular contributor to Recruiter. He launched Personnel Today’s Top 40 Power Players in HR in 1999 and continued to compile the annual list for several years after he left the magazine in 2003.

2013’S MOST INFLUENTIAL IN-HOUSE RECRUITERS Last year was the first time Recruiter saluted the UK’s best in-house resourcing professionals and devised the list of the 11 Most Influential In-house Recruiters. Here are the 11 who made 2013’s list Matt Berry, resourcing director, Centrica (no longer with Centrica) Jennifer Candee, head of global talent acquisition, SABMiller Ali Gilani, global head of resourcing, ArcelorMittal Melanie Hayes, head of resourcing and talent, Sodexo UK & Ireland (now head of resourcing, healthcare, Care UK) Isabelle Hung, head of talent acquisition, Alexander Mann Solutions (now senior director, talent acquisition EMEA, ADP) Matthew Jeffery, global head of talent acquisition, strategy and innovation, SAP (now vice-president, head of global sourcing and employment branding, SAP) David Mason, global chief operating officer, resourcing, RBS (now director – projects, Capita) Paul Maxin, global resourcing director, Unilever (now head of talent and resourcing, Financial Conduct Authority) Anne-Marie O’Donnell, vice-president recruitment EMEA, Oracle Grant Weinberg, director of international talent acquisition, Gilead Sciences Lee Yeap, head of talent acquisition, BSkyB

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Onboarding

Come on board THE EXPERIENCES OF NEW RECRUITS EN ROUTE TO THEIR NEW COMPANY CAN BE MANY AND VARIED; OFTEN THE JOINING PROCESS LEAVES A LOT TO BE DESIRED. DEEDEE DOKE INVESTIGATES Creating a smooth path for new recruits to follow when they join an organisation so that they get off to a barrier-free, flying start is a practice few employers get right. And to be frank, too few even pay it lip service.

So from ensuring that an email login is operational on the first day to explaining the new recruit’s 30 to 90-day goals, in-house recruiters are increasingly having to take the lead on the practice known as onboarding — a minefield that really needs the full participation of a variety of integral players within an organisation to clear.

Onboarding generally begins between the signing of an employment contract and a new starter’s first day, continuing through the period of the recruit’s beddingdown within the organisation. However, there is little agreement about precisely when onboarding ends.

In fact, there is little agreement about much to do with onboarding except that there are a number of missing links. What are those missing links? And where is it all going wrong?

Lack of ownership and consistency, to start with, says Emma Mirrington, co-founder of The Forum for In-house Recruitment Managers (The FIRM) and talent director at Write Research: “We need consistency in terms of how candidates are engaged with and the importance of the business’s buy-in.”

To fill in the missing links is a global problem facing global businesses. And with that in mind, in association with insurance company Aviva, The FIRM recently held a focus group for in-house recruiters about onboarding to explore existing practices and to begin building a global onboarding framework.

The 18 participants came from companies including

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Arcellor Mittal, HSBC, Microsoft, 02 and Premier Oil, and most felt that onboarding should fit within the resourcing team. “However, the hand-over to the line manager is where it often falls down. That’s where the lack of ownership from a line management point of view could be an issue,” Mirrington says.

At the same time, participants agreed that technology was “where most failure exists in all organisations”.

One situation described by Mirrington was, sadly, not unfamiliar to many participants. A new starter had to leave the workplace on their first day only to return the next week because the necessary security pass and IT essentials for new employees had not been prepared.

“The IT infrastructure isn’t always in place,” Mirrington says diplomatically. “People join, and they don’t have a laptop, they don’t have an email login, and that impacts on people’s ability to hit the ground running, when they don’t have the tools to help them with their role.”

Whether the onboarding offering should be the same for employees at all levels was one of the hottest topics of discussion. For instance, at multinational RSA Insurance Group, “our focus is to ensure that our onboarding is extremely well developed for senior

WHAT’S NOT WORKING? • Lack of consistency • Lack of or too much content • Lack of ownership • Business sees onboarding as HR’s problem • Technology

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Onboarding

WHAT DOES ‘GOOD’ LOOK LIKE IN ONBOARDING? When new recruits join, is there anyone there to welcome them on board?

• Continuity through pre-onboarding, onboarding and employment • Roll out the red carpet — get the brand right!

• The employee experience should be the same as the customer experience • Don’t show the plumbing!

• A new entrant charter • It should be clear where and how to find information, eg. learning and policies • Toolkit for provision of key information • IT access and kit — fully equipped from Day One • Buddy system for all levels • Ongoing governance • Personal touches

Emma Mirrington

executives”, Mariya Gibb, the firm’s talent acquisition manager, tells Recruiter.

An idea shared with the group that could be especially helpful for new executives and managers was to put a few questions to the team that the manager was to be joining such as ‘What’s the key challenge facing the team?’, ‘What’s the biggest priority for the team right now?’, ‘What do you know about [the new manager]?’, ‘What would you like to know about [the new manager]?’. The responses would then be collated and sent to the new joiner.

“They could join the organisation then with a bit of insight and context and hit the ground running,” Mirrington explains. “That was a nice example of something that was really easy to implement and yet incredibly valuable to both the team and the manager that was about to join.”

For newcomers in more junior roles, similarly bespoke offerings would be harder to provide, participants acknowledged. “There should be some common themes [between junior and senior new starters],” Mirrington says, “but for your more senior staff, there should be a more tailored and personalised approach because your investment in those people is going to be significantly more, and their impact on the organisation is also significantly more.”

RSA’s Gibb adds: “Very often they [new executives] are joining to change the status quo. We want to make sure there is more clarity around the company and future stakeholders and the people they will be working with. We want to highlight the culture and values of the company.”

Providing new starters with a ‘buddy’ or peer to help them navigate the organisation was raised as a useful and helpful part of successful onboarding offerings.

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At innovation consultancy Promise Communispace, new starters are set up with buddies at roughly the same seniority level but who work on a team different to the newcomer and are “leading lights” in the company, the company’s recruitment specialist Elisabeth Bucknall tells Recruiter.

The initiative, known as Peer-Assisted Learning or PAL, is part of Promise’s newly revitalised induction offering. Induction, while at the start of an employee’s tenure, is key to retention, Bucknall says: “Retention is super important to us.”

Promise’s London operation has doubled to 120 employees in the last 12 months. Globally, Promise employs around 500. As a result of growth, some snippets of its onboarding have had to change, Bucknall acknowledges. For instance, she says, “sometimes it’s not always practical to walk someone around the office”.

The findings from the session suggest that getting line managers more involved and committed to successful onboarding is “one of the biggest challenges”, Mirrington emphasised. “That’s just in terms of trying to get line managers to take more accountability for their new starters.”

Asked what line managers should contribute, Mirrington says: “I think the most important thing they can do is provide them [new starters] with a safe and supportive environment in which to join the organisation and the team. It’s also about some very clear guidelines and KPIs [key performance indicators] for the first few months.

“Every new starter joins wanting to make a difference. If they don’t know what they’re supposed to be doing… then actually it’s very difficult for them.

They can lose confidence and disengage quite quickly.”

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Sector development

Techno-talent GLOBAL HEADHUNTERS ARE CAPITALISING ON THE NEED FOR COMPANIES TO TAKE THEIR BUSINESSES TO NEW TECHNOLOGICAL HEIGHTS. DEEDEE DOKE EXPLAINS So easily lumped into the one catch-all category of ‘technology’, new disciplines of disruptive developments are buffeting the technological world by the minute.

Two new groups of technological specialities are in vogue at the moment, and leading global headhunting firms are capitalising on the new opportunities in technology applied to financial services, or FinTech, and ‘the internet of things’ to take their businesses, and those of their clients, to exciting new heights.

FinTech is the intersection of financial services (FS) and technology — “where the FS industry and its talent needs touch technology and digital and vice versa”, explains Axelle Sznajer, who leads the FinTech segment in the UK for Egon Zehnder.

“The term covers this whole area, and everything surrounding it — an ecosystem which is becoming more and more important in the FS sector,” Sznajer told Recruiter.

As an industry, FinTech is already so high on the economic radar that it was the subject of a UK Trade and Investment-commissioned (UKTI) report published early this month by professional services consultancy EY. The report estimates the value of the FinTech market at £20bn in annual revenue “and growing”, with the highest growth areas in peer-to-peer platforms, online payments and data and analytics products (credit reference, capital markets and insurance).

Its growth is reflected in Egon Zehnder’s balance of work. “In the last 24 months around half of [EZ’s] work in FS has fallen into the FinTech area, and client demand is growing,” Sznajer says.

In terms of headhunting for this dynamic sector, Sznajer says the nature of the roles’ demands and expectations for the new recruits mean the recruiting rulebook has changed. “You don’t necessarily hire on experience anymore; you hire on competency and the potential to think through topics and ideas in a different way.

“It’s not the ‘what’ that defines you; it’s the ‘how’,” she continues. “It’s important to know what you’ve done, but the key is to understand how people have done.”

The ‘internet of things’ refers to leveraging the internet to create ‘machine to machine’ connectivity.

Figures quoted by global executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles (H&S) suggest that the trend toward interconnectivity of everyday devices could yield $1.9tr (£1.1tr) in global economic value add by 2020.

With such momentum in mind, H&S launched a global specialty practise in the field last month after already having undertaken a number of related headhunting projects.

Key industrial sectors for this arena are automotive and

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energy, according to Sean Carroll and Immo Futterlieb, the H&S partners who lead the practice from, respectively, New York and Munich and spoke with Recruiter. In the future, healthcare is likely to also be a critical sector for development, Futterlieb adds.

From both a talent and business perspective, Futterlieb says, the pressure is on. “Talent needs to be much more agile, and needs to be able to learn very quickly, be adaptable, and maybe even have the thinking that we live in ‘beta version’ — things are going to change much more quickly, communications will happen more and more in real time. It’s going to put even more pressure on the C-suite and core decision makers.”

Carroll predicts that top hunting grounds for candidates to take on C-suite level roles in the new ‘internet of things’ environment will be organisations that were early adopters of this way of thinking. He says that the US is currently “a hair behind” other parts of the world such as Europe in development of the internet of things products and services.

A blend of skills and expertise, from traditional business operational know-how to digital facility, is needed in this evolving space. Says Futterlieb: “The most successful talent we place is the talent that understands both worlds.”

Adds Carroll: “We’re seeing a marketplace that’s constantly shifting – that’s no different than what’s been happening for the last couple of decades.”

Sean Carroll

Immo Futterlieb

Axelle Sznajer

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06/08/2014 11:15

Frameworks

Getting into the frame RECRUITERS LOBBY FOR PUBLIC SECTOR FRAMEWORK TO GIVE SMES GREATER ACCESS, REPORTS NICOLA SULLIVAN AND CHRISTOPHER GOODFELLOW Questions are being asked about whether a new public sector recruitment framework, which dictates how recruitment agencies place temporary staff, is accessible to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Long-standing relationships There were also fears the framework could affect longstanding direct relationships between employment agencies and public sector employers, particularly for specialist roles. An investigation is underway to see how the framework can be flexed to ensure open dialogue between the client, Capita and the employment agency supplying the workers.

One of the key changes since the introduction of the framework is the more robust approach to background and security checks carried out on candidates, according to Simon Brown, client services director at Morgan Hunt.

This includes Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks being carried out before candidates are offered jobs.

“There are a lot of checks compared with some of the other frameworks. A lot of these checks have to be done upfront which makes it quite challenging. In the current market, candidates don’t necessarily want to complete all of the checks upfront, as at the end of it they may not get the job opportunity,” says Brown.

The Cabinet Office, Crown Commercial Service, Capita Business, the REC and the Interim Management Association (IMA) are in the process of finalising changes that would ensure doing business through CL1 is commercially viable, with an announcement expected in the next few weeks.

GETTY

Contingent Labour ONE (CL1) went live in October 2013 and aims to provide a homogenous approach to recruitment, including technology, contractual terms and key performance indicators, and acts as an interface between employers and agencies.

The framework has been heavily debated since its introduction, and recruitment industry representatives are trying to force changes that will open the process up to smaller providers. The concern is that low margins and the lack of direct contact between agency and employer will create risks for SME agencies, particularly around niche and high-level placements.

Amanda Ciske, a policy and public affairs adviser at the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC), told Recruiter talks with the Crown Commercial Service are progressing: “We are confident that the framework will be allowed to flex so it can better meet the needs of SME recruiters.”

Outsourcing company Capita Business was awarded the three-year contract as a ‘neutral vendor’ service provider, acting as a go-between for public employment agencies and employers. These include high-value placements, such as managers, directors and specialist contractors, and there is a 20% cap on the amount of roles Capita Business’ affiliates can supply. Capita has declined to comment to Recruiter pending the conclusion of the discussions.

The other two smaller parts of the framework operate as managed services, with administrative roles overseen by high street recruiter Brook Street and Hays Specialist Recruitment, managing the recruitment of operational roles.

The REC and professional contractors group PCG, which is not part of the formal discussions but is weighing in on the matter, worry that the framework places a greater number of contractors operating as personal service companies (PSCs) within the scope of IR35 legislation, which was introduced in 2000 to ensure

contractors do not pay less tax than if they were directly employed or disguise employment income by using an intermediary.

Andy Chamberlain, senior public affairs manager at PGC, said: “The original contract tried to deny that the contractor was a business and kept referring to them as a temporary worker.”

Ciske said there’s been some progress in resolving this issue through the creation of a second contract, and a set of terms and conditions for those operating through PSCs: “[The network] was placing a lot of contractors within IR35. It didn’t recognise how contractors and businesses operate through limited companies. Although it hasn’t been finalised yet, we are quite satisfied in terms of the draft [contract and terms] that we have seen — a lot of the concerns that we had have been ironed out,” said Ciske.

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Recruiting trends

Hiring? It’s hot out there Recruiting trends for recruitment agency staff With the recruitment market heating up, rec-to-rec agencies are in ever-increasing demand. Industry experts tell Recruiter about the types of candidates that are being snapped up this summer.

Tara Lescott, director, Recruitment Republic, says: “There continues to be a surge in all specialist areas. There’s a real peak in the East of England, the Home Counties and London. Construction, property, engineering and energy are really, really busy, and financial services and procurement are also sticking out.

“Everyone is looking for consultants with 12 to 36 months’ experience — this is probably about 70% of what we are looking for at the moment on behalf of clients. What is really nice to see is the growing emergence of management roles. They had really slowed down over recent years but are now coming back strong. I think we are going to get a higher proportion of the strategic roles coming out on top of that too.”

Nicholas Kirk, regional managing director, Michael Page, echoes Lescott’s assessment: “The general trend is continued positivity and the first six months have been positive and I don’t see anything changing to be honest.

“In terms of where we are and whether we see a recovery, the first part of the market that comes back is the temporary market at the junior end, followed by temp recovery in senior positions. Then it’s the return of permanent recruitment at the junior end, and now we’re starting to see the start of the next trend, which is the return of the perm part of the more senior market. We have started that final stage of the process of recovery.”

Jo Scott, manager, Sharna Associates, adds: “Demand for talented recruiters is high. We are seeing a huge increase in demand across most sectors, with a leaning towards the technical, energy and construction, business support, and IT and technology spaces.

“Our clients are aware they need to package up an offering that is enticing and gives recruitment talent the confidence and reason to move. It’s certainly exciting times and we are enjoying being able to offer our candidates a diverse choice of opportunity, particularly within specialist sectors.”

Tara Lescott

Nicholas Kirk

Jo Scott

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HEARSAY IS ONE THING, BUT RECRUITERJOBS JOB STATS CAN PROVIDE THE FACTS FOR THE TRENDS IN RECRUITMENT OVER THE SUMMER The strength of demand for recruitment professionals is demonstrated in the rapid increase in the number of positions being advertised.

RecruiterJobs had 1,705 jobs advertised in July, 11% more than the previous month and almost four times the number recorded in the previous year. RecruiterJobs is Recruiter’s job brand.

The most noticeable thing is how many different sectors are hiring this summer. In August 2013, when RecruiterJobs started tracking statistics, two key areas dominated hiring, with rec-to-rec jobs accounting

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Recruiting trends

for 17% of positions and healthcare 18%. In contrast, five sectors led the pack in July 2014, with IT, sales, healthcare, engineering and construction all having between 7-8% of the jobs on RecruiterJobs. The construction and built environment sector continued to perform well, reflecting the increased activity recorded by industry indexes, and had the largest share of any sector, at 8% of all roles advertised.

Increasing demand appears to have had a knock-on effect on salaries, with a greater share of jobs now falling into higher-income brackets. The trend was most noticeable at lower end of the market, with the share of jobs advertised below £20k falling from nearly a third to 13% over the last year. The slack appears to have been taken up in the £20-30k category, which increased its share of jobs by 14%.

At the top end of the scale, positions earning more than £60k accounted for 7% of roles in July 2014, slightly up on the previous year. In July, there were 35 jobs advertised paying over £100k.

The demand for recruiters is becoming more regionally diverse too, with East Anglia and the West Midlands in particular showing strong demand.

However, Greater London and the South-East remain the driving force of demand for recruitment professionals, accounting for 28% and 21% of jobs advertised respectively in July 2014, compared with 31% and 29% in August 2013.

The most popular job title on RecruiterJobs was ‘recruitment consultant’, which made up 49% of positions advertised.

It’s clear that the recruitment market is hotting up for those working in-house and in agencies, and the summer of 2014 has seen the demand spread to other regions of the UK and across different sectors.

Candidates are keen too, with 1.5 applications per hour during July. ● Visit jobs.recruiter.co.uk to find out more.

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Summer trends in in-house recruiting roles It’s been a hot summer weather-wise — and the in-house recruitment market has also heated up. Five experts in recruiting recruiters for in-house roles spoke with Recruiter about what they are currently in the market.

Jeremy Thornton, director, Oasis HR, explains: “We’ve seen a dramatic increase in interim and contract, and a slight increase in permanent roles across most specialisms.

“There’s a real shortage of top talent. The number of counter offers and the number of multiple offers has increased. We were beginning to see that about 9-12 months ago. It’s taken our customers six months to realise; they have to see it to believe it. We’re beginning to see internal recruiters come back into agencies. The reporting side of the internal market and the financial rewards has made them want to come back.”

James Ballard, director, Annapurna Recruitment, adds: “It’s really busy out there. I’ve never seen it so busy, it’s literally bonkers. Particularly [in-house] IT recruitment is really hot. It’s a really hot marketplace because it’s such a specialist area. We’re seeing lots of people moving [to new roles] but the demand is still there and it’s expanding.”

Darren Hayman, managing director, Macmillan Davies, says: “It [demand] depends on what level.

At mid-level [recruitment managers and similar], candidates seem to be taking a holiday. It’s becoming a candidate-driven market again, especially in in-house recruitment. They’re getting counter offers and multiple offers. Clients are discovering they need to streamline their processes or lose the candidate.”

Beth Miller, associate director, Digby Morgan, says: “It has really picked up. We have seen a lot more activity over the course of Q2. It has dropped off a little bit now, but that’s probably because of the time of year — we are always quiet around August time, but I imagine in September we will be seeing a bit more movement again. We have definitely seen more roles coming through in the RPO [recruitment process outsourcing] environments with people looking for onsite recruiters.

“There has been an increase in the number of in-house roles as well, probably more at the junior adviser level rather than at the more senior end of the market. So really strong operational recruiters, ideally who have got direct sourcing experience. There’s a lot happening in financial and professional services. We have also seen activity within the property and also telecommunications.”

Andrew Mountney, founding partners, Aspen InHouse, explains: “There has been a move from contract hiring to permanent for most positions. That is a real swing from last year, with permanent hiring now representing 75% of our vacancies compared to 59% earlier in the year. There is more intent than for some time to develop executive search functions, but the market remains small and much hiring is sub-£50k salary level.”

DeeDee Doke, Christopher Goodfellow, Sarah Marquet and Nicola Sullivan contributed to this report.

Jeremy Thornton

James Ballard

Darren Hayman

Beth Miller

Andrew Mountney

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AUGUST 2014

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WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK

24/07/2014 07/08/2014 16:35 11:52

Movers & Shakers

The global recruiter •hasAMBITION: appointed James Manders

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AMROP: The provider of services in executive search, leadership assessment and board consulting has appointed three new board members to its global executive board — Henrik Elsig Andersen (Denmark), Hideaki Furuta (Japan) and Sophie Vergnas (Russia). Also, Jimmy Chen (China) was named vice chair Asia Pacific, while Federico Cuneo (Peru) was named as co-vice chair Americas.

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ASPEN IN-HOUSE: The provider of in-house talent acquisition and recruitment professionals has appointed Ellie Swanson as candidate manager.

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CONSOL PARTNERS: The technology staffing firm has taken on Bala Shanmugam as chief financial officer.

•The Norwich, Bury St Edmunds

COOPER LOMAZ RECRUITMENT:

and Lowestoft- based agency has appointed Roan Williams to its energy team. His work specialises in subsea assignments.

•The interim management and ETON BRIDGE PARTNERS:

executive search recruitment specialist has made two appointments. Jonathan Stringer has joined the team as an associate partner interim management for the finance sector. Amelia Jeffery has joined as researcher in the HR team.

•The executive search and EUROPEAN LEADERS:

A selection of vacancies from recruiter.co.uk

Randstad Onsite recruitment consultant 12-month contract, £20k-23k plus performance-related bonus Peterborough

East England timber and builders merchant Ridgeons has appointed Ann Corbyn as HR director.

She joins the team from affordable housing provider bpha, where she was involved in leading growth and improvement projects.

Corbyn has a specialism for HR development strategies and has held a number of HR roles at organisations such as CHS Group, AMP Financial Services and Tesco.

On her appointment, she said she was “massively encouraged by the talent and ambition” in the group, and that she wanted to position the company as a place of choice for work.

ARGYLL SCOTT: The •international specialist recruiter

has appointed Mark Cale as head of the accountancy and finance division’s commerce and industry permanent practice.

It has also appointed Myran Perry as head of the technology division’s commerce and industry permanent practice.

Your next move?

RIDGEONS APPOINTS HR DIRECTOR

as associate director, financial services in London. Scarlette Bagan, former senior consultant for the company’s business development and marketing team, was promoted to divisional manager of the team.

development specialist has hired Stephan Thoma to lead the talent development team.

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HASSON ASSOCIATES: The

specialist market research and marketing recruitment firm has appointed Febe Pritchard associate within the project operations team, and Mat Law as junior associate.

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HENDERSON SCOTT: The IT recruitment firm has appointed Stephen Ball as its EMEA and APAC group director.

•recruitment group has made two HR GO: The Kent-based

senior appointments. Roderick Barrow has been appointed chief financial officer, and Mark Gaisford has been appointed operations director of HR GO Recruitment, one of the group’s subsidiaries.

Phaidon International Recruitment consultant Contracts market £dep on experience + uncapped comm Central London

talent community co-ordinator to liaise with young talent.

LOCKTON: The global insurance •broker has hired Julie Coates as

For more jobs, people moves and career advice go to

London-based people director.

She will cover both HR and associate development.

• recruiter.co.uk/jobs • inhouserecruiterjobs.co.uk • internationalrecruiterjobs. com

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MORGAN HUNT: The multisector recruiter has appointed Sarah Wynn as board director to the firm’s corporate services division.

OAKLEAF PARTNERSHIP: The HR •recruitment firm has appointed

Julia Gausseran to recruit mid to senior HR roles in the oil & gas, mining, energy and utilities, and pharmaceutical industries.

• headquartered recruitment OPTIONIS: The Cheshire-

appointed Mark Sidlin as its finance and operations director.

industry supplier has made two appointments to its management team. Andy Hague has been appointed SME operations director and Andy Gunson has been appointed finance director.

JAGEX: The games studio has •appointed Connor Thompson

RANDSTAD SOURCERIGHT: The •global recruiter has appointed

GROUP: The specialist •IT &ITHR telecoms recruiter has

gap personnel Senior recruitment consultant £20k-25k plus uncapped commission Birmingham

Robert Lopes as its new

president of recruitment process outsourcing.

TIMOTHY JAMES CONSULTING: The •senior appointments consultancy

has hired Paul Nolan as chief executive.

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TOTAL ASSIST GROUP: The UK recruiter, which specialises in healthcare locums, has appointed Julie Smith as its new director of account management.

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VEREDUS: The interim management and assessment development consultancy has appointed Gavin Best as a new director of its private sector practice. It also appointed Julia Roberts as director of education practice.

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

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RECRUITER

AUGUST 2014

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08/08/2014 10:50

Bloggers with Bite

WHAT AGENCIES CAN LEARN FROM IN-HOUSE RECRUITERS Finding what unites recruiters is often the best way to improve what both parties offer

T

here isn’t always a lot of love shown by agencies to their in-house counterparts.

“Failed recruiters” is a familiar taunt.

But this is only as true as the other myth — that agency recruiters are CV-spamming lager louts.

Most people think that in-house recruitment started around 12 years ago. Not true. I had my first encounter with an in-house recruiter in 1990.

So, before I answer the question of what agency recruiters can learn from in-house recruiters, let me briefly tell you about that experience, because it is relevant.

This early in-house recruiter worked for a large company that was one of the top three in its sector. Before being made its national recruitment manager, he’d been their territory sales rep and regional manager.

He ran ads and he sometimes used agencies. But mostly, he found candidates by attending business exhibitions and getting names from shopkeepers, pub landlords and café owners. He’d find out where companies were holding sales conferences so he could sit in the lobby and pick out those he liked the look of.

He’d then get their business cards, call them and pitch the job. If they said “no”, he’d keep a record of this and call them again one day. This was talent pooling before the term had even been invented.

I remember being relieved that other large companies weren’t doing what this company was doing.

Twenty years later and many of them are.

So, anyway, let’s get back to that “failed recruiter” thing.

Many agency recruiters see in-house recruiters as being weak at sales.

They’re wrong.

What many in-house recruiters are trying to get

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Mitch Sullivan is a recruiter and owner of FT Recruitment

away from when they move from agency to corporate is cold-calling. That isn’t selling. Selling is having conversations about something that might benefit the other person. Agencies rarely do this, largely because they don’t have any real intimacy with the hiring company.

That in-house recruiter I met in 1990 was a brilliant salesman. Partly what made him so effective was that he had high-quality information about his product — his employer. This positively affected candidate attraction and retention.

And this is what agencies can learn from the in-house sector — become as good as they are at selling.

I’m not saying that all in-house recruiters are better at selling than agencies — some patently aren’t. But, given the quality of information they have, even the average ones are going to outperform the best agency recruiters.

If the massive rise in in-house recruiter numbers is anything to go by, the market clearly values this service that enables them to hire and keep betterquality staff.

For agencies, this means only working with clients who value the positive impact that recruiting transparently has on finding candidates. The only way they can achieve this is by working through one agency per vacancy — because it makes more sense to give one recruiter lots of information than give a little to five.

Then, as the agency recruiter fills more of that client’s jobs, the more they’ll add to their knowledge of that client, which will increase their effectiveness in attracting and assessing the right candidate types.

It’s only through the acquisition of this knowledge can you ever become a truly effective recruiter.

The kind of recruiter who can deliver all of the time.

The kind of recruiter most clients are screaming out for.

Given the information they have, average in-house recruiters will outperform the best agency staff What would you like to have a rant about?

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

In September: New rules, new game — recruiting in financial services WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK

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