Stressed Out!

I was concerned by the recent report from the Stroke Association that cited recruitment as a highly stressful job. At least I was worried until I saw that in second place came the legal profession; I can only assume they suffer stress from the constant increase in their fees and from worrying about the choice of colour for the next Porsche.

Now I readily recognise that recruitment is a highly charged, target driven and fast-paced industry but I am worried that it all too often suffers from the headless-chicken syndrome rather than the wise old owl. As someone who suffered a brain tumour at forty, which ‘may’ have been stress induced, I can confirm that chasing your own tail all-day-every-day is less than effective and eventually leads to structural collapse.

I think it's time the REC started to do some work into the effectiveness of the general recruitment model; that has staff chasing numbers; phone calls, registrations, interviews, placements and fees in a regime that thinks you are a part timer if you leave the office before 8pm, and researched a more intelligent way to do the business. Wh knows it might even lead to a reduction in the ridiculous levels of staff turnover in the industry.

The Stroke Association Report could be just the spring board we need to professionalise the profession.

Gareth

Niche Job Boards

After serving as the MD of REC's technology subsidiary and doubling up as their acting technology director during the highly innovative and productive 'Osborne years', I developed a specialism in online recruitment and recruiting technology.

I saw everything from the existing to the truly innovative, however, one technology stood out from the crowd and I am delighted to be heading up its penetration into the UK marketplace for many reasons.

Brainhunter provides its proprietary job board technology to professional body's and membership groups in partnership, to enable them to add a new member/audience service and capitalise on the myriad of benefits of operating a professional niche job board.

These include, adding a specialist membership/audience service to support its career aspirations, injecting a number of ways of generating new revenue streams, driving additional individual and corporate visitors to the host site and enhancing search engine ranking due to the dynamic content created by the job board.

I chose the picture above because it highlights one of the key areas of negative feedback I was given continuously at REC regarding the excessive volume of unsuitable applicants provided by online channels, a problem solved by all Brainhunter powered job boards.

One of the main reasons I was bowled over by Brainhunter's technology was that it matches each online applicant to the posted job specification across 200 data points and separates applicants into 'A' and 'B' matched lists. This ensures the best candidates on paper are not buried at the bottom of the pile. In addition, Brainhunter only works with organisations with an established professional membership, so advertisers know in advance they are targeting their efforts to the correct audience.

In addition, the advertiser desktop operates as a mini ATS and enables all candidates to be communicated to at the click of a button and suitable candidates routed within the recruiter and employer with ease.

Job seekers are the main focus of Brainhunter's attention, which is why they are given four levels of data security to ensure they are in complete control of who does and does not have access to their personal details.

Finally, Brainhunter has bridged the gap between online recruitment and print advertising by enabling all advertisers to surround each job posting with a four sided template to promote their corporate and employer brand and communicate their key recruiter/employer messaging.

During my years before, during and after REC I watched and commentated on the development of the online recruitment industry and in my opinion the only real change is the mass of boards that have developed without a tremendous amount of innovation or methodology to serve up suitably matched candidates to recruiters and employers.

The result is the propensity for recruiters and employers to have to purchase costly matching and parsing technology or spend valuable man hours matching more CV's than ever to job specifications.

Surely the job boards should take some responsibility in supporting their clients to achieve maximum efficiency. Brainhunter certainly does!

Toothless Tiger

Again this week someone felt compelled to tell me what they thought was wrong with our professional body and concluded “The trouble with the REC is that it has no teeth!”

In my normal, less than tactful, way I was quick to climb onto my soap box and exercise my theory about the reality of trade associations, which is that: All Trade Bodies (from the CBI to the Association of Acorn Crafters) have whatever power their membership chooses to give them. They can be as toothy and voracious as the Membership demands and the good ones (backed by their Members) have bite and the weak ones invariably get bitten. Put simply: “Members get the Trade Association (or Professional Body) they deserve.”

My headmaster’s report on REC Members would say “Good when present!” Sadly all too many recruiters abdicate their corporate responsibility and leave it to the few to get involved. I promise that if more took an active interest in their REC they would see the returns come back to them, ten fold. There would be far less legislation level against the industry, far fewer complaints about it and much higher margins across the board (and yes, it is that important!).

This is just another justification of my belief that “Recruitment is the spotty youth of British business” – see earlier Blog.

Gareth

Reed on!

Congratulations to REC on winning Reed back into the fold; after an 8 year absence. This is a major achievement and one that will bring considerable kudos to the Confederation. I am sure Kevin Green, as the new CEO, is delighted. I couldn’t do it during my time there and it took me leaving the REC to even get a meeting with James.

However I guess the greatest pleasure will be felt by the ex-Acting CEO, Helen Reynolds; who must be thrilled to have achieved what I always suggested was, the unachievable. Now she's gone I hope someone, at least in part, attributes the success to her. Its rather like REC winning Trade Association of the Year soon after I left and knowing it takes two or three years to be eligible to win; you hope a little reflected glory rubs off.

Winning back Reed certainly proves that ‘you should never say never’ and I hope this means that the other great target is now in REC's gun sights.

Gareth

Temp from Chiswick saves the World

Yes, OK, I know it’s only science fiction but Donna Noble (aka the brilliant Catherine Tate) may have done the Recruitment Industry a massive favour yesterday when she became the first female Time Lord and defeated the Daleks all in sixty minutes; and at an amazingly good hourly rate! Now if that doesn’t prove the value of a good temp, nothing does.

On a more serious note, I really hope Recruiter picks up this obvious marketing boon and invites Ms Tate to present an award at its next industry celebration, and only then if not beaten to it by the REC which should use her to present the One-in-a-Million award for the best Temporary Worker. I might have personally been tempted to create a parallel award for the ‘Best Temp in Chiswick’.

Mind you, having left the REC over 18 months ago, I am in little doubt that there are those out there who refer to me as ‘Dr. Who?’

Gareth

'Throwing a McQueen'

Well I have to say I was pleased by the number of recruiters who agreed with my comments about the wayward Mr. Lee McQueen and his dodgy dealings in The Apprentice. Recruiter gave it a good airing, on the website and in the magazine, and I’m pleased that under Dee Dee’s stewardship they are strong enough to come out on the side of professionalism (previous staff would have preferred the sensationalism and had him as their guest speaker at the next Awards ceremony).

I do however have one comment for Phil who, almost anonymously, suggested I should ‘Get a life.’ Actually Phil, if I had still been at the REC at the time I would have asked the Membership Department to see if Lee is an individual Member and if so referred his activity to the Standards Committee under the Code of Ethics; where it says, ‘They [the Member] should represent themselves fairly, honestly and courteously at all times, and should not engage in any activities, which would bring the recruitment industry or the REC into disrepute.’ And request that he be expelled.

Lee’s cavalier attitude has been proven once more, if the press is to be believed, where today they claim that Lee called in sick yesterday; his first day. A ‘spokesman’ for Sir Alan’ said “He won’t be pleased.” Which I think must be a rough translation of the phrase ‘Recruiter place thy self’. Wouldn’t anyone who was really serious about proving themselves crawl over burning coals to get in on the first day? I bet Claire Young would have done!

Have no fear Lee, if you fail with Sir Alan, there are still one or two recruiters out there who will welcome you with open arms.

Gareth

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