The future looks bright

“The outlook for the UK economy is less than rosy, but a recession is not looming” according to the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM). I personally suport this belief and while things will get tough for a while, recruiters who have a positive cash flow and are able to weather potential client payment problems could do extremely well.

According to the latest growth forecast by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) the UK's gross domestic product (GDP) should increase by 1.7 per cent this year and 1.3 per cent in 2009. While both of these figures are lower than previous estimates, the CBI warns against being overly cautious. Richard Lambert, the CBI's director-general, said: "We should avoid believing a recession is inevitable, or talk ourselves into unnecessary trouble."

I say, "If there is grow to be had, it had better be mine!"

However, and of much more of a concern to recruiters, the report also predicts that unemployment will increase to 1.79 million by the end of 2009, meaning around 150,000 people will lose their jobs between now and then. Recruiters need to be fast on their feet to offer solutions for employers and workers alike.

One initiative to pre-empt approaching issues might be to implement a confidential ‘Staff Flow Forecasting’ exercise with your major clients and help them flex if times get tight. Feel free to contact me if you want an insight into what you could do here.

I worked with one agency recently that was wonderfully innovative in the way it worked with one of its key clients that had just lost a major order and needed to make staff redundant. The Agency agreed to take excess permanent staff onto their own books as Temps and give them assignments (some back into the original employer) until the situation improved. The client underwrote any downtime and preserved key skills and good people until replacement business was found.

Complacency is the chief killer in an economic down-turn, creative thinking is the key to survival.

Gareth

Dumbing Down Recruitment (again)

Well I have to say I was stunned when Sir Alan hired ex-recruiter Lee McQueen in the finale of The Apprentice last night and passed on the ballsy and talented Claire Young. I can only think AMS is going to find a role for him in football; I’m thinking Wide Boys United.

There can’t be many Recruiters (especially Capita) who can be proud of Lee’s achievement after the damning interview session in Week 11 when Sir Alan’s ‘aids’ determined that he lied on his CV (Was anyone else desperate to know what he was doing for the unaccounted for 20 months?) and made more spelling mistakes than the ‘pimp who bought the warehouse’. Surely these are the two Cardinal Sins for any Candidate!

What a damning indictment for the Recruitment Industry that one of its own could get it so terribly wrong! Surely this is going to give every one of our Industry’s critics a field day when they want to suggest we don’t do an honest or professional job.

Perhaps we will even see the establishment of a new defining term for CV abuse; ‘Doing a Lee McQueen’.

Recruiter Magazine (who recently described him as ‘Recruitment’s champion’ yet dropped the word Professional from its own title some years ago) could now introduce the Lee McQueen Award for Outstanding Professional Achievement to acknowledge occurrences where Standard’s reach a new, all-time, low.

Now I have to confess to making the odd grammatical gaff myself but I would certainly make a good attempt to ensure my CV was spot on if I was going to have it exposed to 12 million TV viewers and might lose the contest; needing to use it again in the future. Surely he knows someone who could have checked it for him; perhaps not!

For Claire, I hope Karen Brady is true to her word when she told Sir Alan, “If you don’t hire her, I will!” I think this is definitely a case of Sir Alan Sugar 0 Karen Brady 1.

Having said that … I have no doubt that Lee will fit in perfectly at the AMS Empire and do a few good deals for the Chief Geezer.

Gareth