An inevitable eventuality of the improving economy is an increase in demand for skilled people; and a resultant shortage of good people available on the “open job market”.
So – ask yourself this. As the economy improves, can recruitment agencies, CV websites and advertising really find you the skilled people you desperately need for your business to survive and grow? More and more we are finding the answer to this question is “no”.
According to a recent report, salaries are rising at their fastest pace in 7 years as companies fight for skilled workers.
A major part of our success strategy is ensuring that anyone going for a job interview through Wynne Consulting is prepared as much as possible.
Unusually it’s rare that the absolute best candidate gets the job, it’s usually the candidate that delivers the best interview who is subsequently recruited.
Interview preparation is absolutely key. Our template to success is as follows:
“The job market in 1990 was a very different place to what it is today. Every town and city had numerous newspapers with reputable career sections where pages of job adverts appeared. If one caught your eye, common practice was to write a nice covering letter accompanied with a CV posted off to the advertiser. Most of the time you got no response, occasionally a polite company would send you a letter thanking you for your reply. There was the odd Recruitment Agency servicing the local area, but they tended to specialise in temporary workers and office staff………………………………………………………”
The advent of the internet has revolutionized the job market in the last 15-20 years, however another major evolution that has changed the job market has been the growth of the influence of the Recruiter (Recruitment Agency & Headhunter). Although Recruitment service suppliers have been around for many years, it is in the last 20 years that their influence and dominance in the job market has reached significant levels.
Each recruitment process is unique, but there are some normal things that occur in the majority of cases. From a headhunter’s perspective, being aware of what’s happening can help you deal with the process and ensure you have the best chance of success. The top 10 things you should be aware of are:
I was out with some friends over the weekend and an interesting conversation developed.
One friend was exalting the virtues of his lovely German saloon with leather interior, cruise control, faultless driving experience,etc. Another friend was championing how cheap his “Far East” manufactured car cost was “to buy and run”, the low cost for spare parts, servicing, etc.
Although the conversation was about cars – the two friends were coming from opposite ends of the scale in terms of car needs and wants. Kind of similar to comparing apples & pears.
This set me thinking about our clients; “Transactional” and “Value-add”.
Although there have been some major macro-political shocks in recent months; the key UK economic indicators have remained pretty stable, with strong growth reported across many sectors of our economy. As a result many companies are looking to grow and a clear barometer of this is the tightening of the labour markets as job vacancies increase and unemployment drops. Most of our sectors that we service are now “candidate short” markets.
Every day a new headline emphasizes the strengthening in demand particularly in the engineering, manufacturing and the service industries.
As a leader and manager of any successful business, a key component is the successful acquisition of the right people at the right time, with the minimum amount of time and effort expended.
We encounter countless fundamental errors that companies big & small make on a daily basis that are massively hampering their ability to attract and recruit the “hidden elite”. This is the best talent in any market sector.Make sure you don’t fall foul of our top 5 hiring howlers:
Job interviews are a necessary part of any recruitment process, however with the right planning and approach even the most nervous of interviewees can avoid difficult interview questions and give a good performance (see our earlier article http://www.wynneconsulting.co.uk/interview_preparation/ on how to prepare effectively for any interview).
Conversely – we regularly encounter situations where seemingly excellent job candidates have failed at an interview as a result of answers to one or two difficult interview questions.
Dealing with difficult interview questions that have a “negative” answer:
A scenario we experience regularly goes something like this. A client wants to recruit a key individual, so they assume the best strategy is to put the job out to 20 different recruiters. “Surely, if we put the job out to lots of recruiters, we’ll get a good coverage of all of the job seekers at that moment in time and we’ll then be able to recruit the best people available.”
The problem with this strategy is like you, a recruiter has to put hard work and effort into any inquiry to turn it into a result.
Any efficient, well run business knows that the key to success is to pick and choose the business they target, rather than working on every client enquiry.
Despite the uncertainties over Brexit; there are a lot of companies recruiting throughout the whole of the UK. That’s a fact. After years of recession and stagnation following the global financial meltdown of 2008 we are seeing strong demand from the majority of the markets that we service.
Over the last few years, employers have held the power and have tended to be very selective in their hires; and insistent on interviewing multiple candidates for a particular role. Decision-making has typically been quite long and arduous – as hiring managers see a wide selection of candidates as a good reason to “take their time” and make decisions slowly.
Fast-forward to 2019 and we are seeing what we call “candidate short” markets in the majority of our sectors. This means that in many instances there are more jobs than candidates, and this causes employers to have a different approach.
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