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 2017 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.
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.
One of our top clients came into the office this week to talk about a major project we are undertaking to set up a new business unit for their organisation. Chatting away, he told us the story of his best friend who insists on doing all of his recruitment himself to save money.
He talked about how proud his friend is of placing job adverts in lots of different media, then taking all of the CV’s from “applicants” that he receives, all the phone-calls he gets from interested people who just “want to have a chat” about the job, etc. He then spends the next few evenings & weekends going through the CV’s, calling up the 15 or so interesting candidates and chatting to them about their background, experience, etc.
It’s been a very tough last few years. The toughest period in living memory for the majority of people. Following the banking crisis of 2008 very few public and private sector organisations were unscathed by redundancies as management fought with keeping costs under control as income plummeted.
Many people were faced with an unemployment situation for the first time in their career, and sought advice and support from us. We were happy to help by giving good, honest advice at the most troubling of times.
Fast forward to 2016 and although the job market is much healthier there is still many individuals who approach us in an unemployment situation looking for help.
I was sat in a coffee shop over the weekend and overheard two friends talking about cars.
One was exalting the virtues of his lovely German saloon, with leather interior, cruise control, faultless driving experience,etc. His friend was also exalting how cheap his “Far East” manufactured car cost was to buy and run, the low “upfront cost”, 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 clients “buying” recruitment services and their wants & needs; be it “Transactional” or “Value-add”.
We are all in control of how we spend our time. After all, it’s our life and we are the ones making decisions on how we spend each and every minute of each day.
But in reality, most of us fritter away our time on many different things that truly add no real benefit to our lives.
We live in an unprecedented age of information technology. The internet and “social media” now means we could all spend 24/7 working through the mountain of information that invades our lives from every conceivable angle. If you don’t believe this – just take a look around you on the train, in the coffee shop. How many people are using the “window to the world” that is the smartphone?
With all these new distractions adding to the “old fashioned” attention grabbers of incoming phone-calls, e-mails and colleagues asking for your time – it’s no wonder anyone can actually get any meaningful work completed. So – let’s look at some easy to use ideas to double your daily productivity:
Practical Time Management ideas:
The No1 advice is to be in control of your working day. You make the decisions on how to spend your time, don’t let events overly influence you. So – don’t take that phone call, don’t look at that e-mail, don’t deal with that colleague until it’s the right time for you. It’s not 100% possible to do this, but if you work at improving your control over your time the results will be remarkable. Continue reading Timestealers – overcome your time management demons and double your productivity.
Interviews aren’t a scary experience if you focus on some simple preparation. At Wynne Consulting we have many years’ experience of helping high quality people to be successful at interview, so here are a few easy tips to help you succeed:
