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In this month's newsletter...
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Welcome to our August newsletterBest wishes to all from the Recruitment Matters team! This is our July/August newsletter featuring a mix of industry news, helpful information from recruitment industry experts, tips to help you improve and grow the profitability of your business and, of course, news from ourselves at Recruitment Matters about our training courses, products and services. Harry Potter almost stole the headlines at Waterstone’s in Piccadilly, London last month but Warren managed to upstage him by having his very own book launch there the day before. Thursday, July 19th saw a great crowd of recruiters, many of whom were old friends from previous courses as well as some new ‘recruits,’ come to hear Warren give some great sure-fire tips on recruitment as a sample of what is contained in ‘Don’t Become A Frog!’. Sales for the book on pre launch alone were well ahead of expectations with several companies buying copies for all their staff. For those of you who didn’t take advantage of the pre-launch price, while we can’t say that we’ve been able to discount it as per JK Rowling’s offering, we can offer you a guarantee that if you don’t make a minimum of 100 times the cost of it you can have your money back! A survey of 1297 workers in the UK by Peninsula, the employment law consultancy, has shown that 87% believe that they should be allowed an extra hour off work to have a siesta. - 87% of workers believe that a siesta would enhance work performance - 78% of bosses consider siestas to have a negative effect on workplace productivity. We want to know why workers feel so strongly & bosses so negatively – and who’s been allowed to trial it. Could be too many fat cats having a post long lunch snooze and feeling guilty? Have you ever slept on the job? Write to us with your confessions. We promise to keep your name confidential if we print your story! A recent survey of recruiters in the London region carried out by Recruitment Matters showed on-line networking continuing to gain more users as a tool for accessing potential candidates. Over 65% of those surveyed said they were now actively using one or more social networking forums with facebook.com being the firm favourite (50%) and linkedin.com (27%) being the next most popular. How your candidates perform at interview is crucial. Do you find taking and getting the time to give your candidates interview training is often very difficult? How would you like to be able to give them an audio CD in your own company name to take away so they can learn effective interview skills and tips in their own time? We can record it for you, voicing it with your company's name and telephone number and then printed with your company name and contact details. Listen to the Recruitment Matters version of "How to increase your chances of success at interviews" now and then buy your own branded copies. Prices available for quantities of your own CD in quantities of 100 and more upon request. It’s cheaper than you think and a great chance to add real value to your candidates’ image of you. Ask for a free sample copy at info@recruitmentmatters.com. Thank you to all who have entered our ‘Quote of the month’ competition during 2007. We’ve now decided to start a new competition - see our ‘Tip of the month’ section for further details. A reminder that this is very much an interactive newsletter and we welcome your comments and feedback and will be happy to feature your contributions on important industry issues and your advice on how to improve the success and professionalism of our marketplace. As you will see below, in return, we will show our gratitude by featuring a link to your company, as a contributor to this publication. We at Recruitment Matters have a simple underlying philosophy to everything that we do, and that is, by helping each other to improve, we all stand to benefit in this large, dynamic and fast-growing industry. Please send your potential editorial contributions to ken@recruitmentmatters.com.
"Faceblocking" on the increaseFollowing on from our earlier observations about social networking sites such as Facebook being a potential source of candidate information for recruiters, the results of this survey caught our attention. Over two-thirds of organisations have banned the social networking website Facebook because employees are wasting time 'poking' people when they should be working, a survey reported in ‘The People Bulletin’ has found. Several companies have also warned employees that accessing the site during office hours is a sackable offence. More than 70% of businesses, including banks and law firms, have barred the sites. City firms are taking the lead, with Credit Suisse and Dresdner Kleinwort both banning employees from accessing them. But "Faceblocking" is spreading. The Metropolitan Police, British Gas and Lloyds TSB are using internet filters that prevent sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and Hotmail from being viewed at work. A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said staff were not allowed to use social networking sites at work. "Access to some websites is blocked as there is no business need for employees to access them. Facebook is one of those sites," he said. "Access to blocked sites is granted when required for business needs only." A spokesman for British Gas said the company’s firewall blocked Facebook and other similar sites, but employees could access the internet freely in the company’s cafes. "Like most other large companies we have a firewall which stops things like spam and porn, and Facebook is caught up in that. We do have special rest areas where people can go to and do whatever they like in terms of surfing the net." London has recently overtaken Toronto as the city with the most Facebook users in the world. More than 826,000 people in the city are registered on the site, a figure that has doubled since May.
Recruiters’ Guide to handling researchersStep Two - Identification The myth that surrounds the identification part of the research process is that it’s some kind of black art, that researchers use a mix of devilishly evil techniques to get names and that the whole thing is, by and large, smoke and mirrors. The truth is actually much more mundane. For a senior recruit, and for some specific mid-level recruits, often the best way for a researcher to establish an individual’s name and job title is to simply ask. Often, a researcher will waste time thinking up elaborate disguises and stories, only to confuse themselves, and the person on the other end of the line and the net result is often disappointing. After all, the easiest way from A to B is often a straight line. Granted, it isn’t always as easy as asking “What is the name of your Finance Director? Terry Jones? Thanks very much!” as often the requirement is to map a structure around a job title, so more digging is needed. Also, a lack of talent for more junior roles has lead to many recruiters turning to research to source candidates at a much lower level than previously. The further down a structure a researcher needs to go, the harder the assignment can become. A receptionist of a large business will often know members of the SMT and above, but won’t know the names/titles of everyone in Accounts, who their Marketing Executive is or who their Field Sales Representative is for the Bristol area, which then makes it necessary for the researcher to have to get past the ‘gate keeper’ and into the department he or she wants to map. Once a name or two has been established, those names can then be used to find out who reports up/down and very quickly a structure can be identified. This then allows both the researcher and the recruiter to make judgements on who the best person to approach would be. That said, identification can often be very tricky and it shouldn’t be assumed that it’s simply a case of picking up the phone to find out exactly what you want. A lot of companies are geared up to counteracting this part of the research process by not giving receptionists employee’s names/job titles or issuing clear instructions not to put anyone through that doesn’t know the name of a particular employee. To appreciate the difficulties researchers often come across, the next time you get five minutes, just try finding out who the M&A Corporate Finance Analysts are in any of the major commercial banking firms or who the Product Managers are within any of the pharmaceutical majors. It may help you understand our occasional frustrations! David Steel is Research Director at Exacta Research, a recruitment research company who provide a candidate research service to help clients find the best possible candidates across all sectors and levels. For further information email hannah@exactaresearch.co.uk, visit www.exactaresearch.co.uk or call 08000 856 618.
Digging fieldsIt’s a lot easier to dig a field that has been dug before. Here’s a quick project for you to do. Write down your top twenty clients or as many as you have, if less. Now write a number next to each one that relates to the number of contacts that you have in each one. Define a contact as someone who you send CV’s to who has given at least one candidate an interview in the last 12 months. That’s a great indication of the strength of your relationship with your client companies. Next, put a figure next to each company name that relates to the revenue generated from it in the last 12 months. Relate the number of contacts to the revenue and find which client company relationships need strengthening by expanding the number of contacts. Don’t build your business on weak foundations. This exercise should provide you with a prioritised hit list to phone for internal referrals. “Hi John, I hope you have been pleased with the help I have been giving you – I wonder if you could help me…” NB. A client is a company that has paid you a fee and anything else doesn’t qualify! Warren Kemp is principal and lead trainer with Recruitment Matters. For more tips, advice and information on Recruitment Matters visit www.recruitmentmatters.com/free.php, telephone 0800 0749 289 or email warren@recruitmentmatters.com.
The elephant in the roomI don’t know if you’ve come across this expression, but I’m sure it’s something that you’ve come across. Have you ever been in a meeting when there’s an issue that’s not being discussed? Everyone is aware of the issue, almost hanging over the meeting, but no one will bring it up. As a result you skirt around the issue, leaving many people dissatisfied. You may experience the same thing yourself. Maybe there’s something that you are uncomfortable with? Sometimes we hope that by ignoring it, it will go away. This can go on for a long time. But it rarely does just go away. Do you have any elephants? If so, acknowledge them – recognise that an issue exists. What will be the consequence if you do nothing? How will it affect you and others? How can you resolve it instead? The Inner Game
If you have any questions or comments on this article or issues you face, please contact me (in confidence) on 01707 395850 or email me at neil@neilkirby.co.uk. There’s no obligation. Neil Kirby is a life coach and a leading practitioner of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP).
Winner of ‘Quote of the Month’As recruitment trainers, we are always keen to promote and learn motivational techniques, including maximising the power of words. Visitors to our website will know that we are big fans of quotations which succinctly capture our beliefs and objectives, hence our ‘Quote of the Month’ competition, inviting you to send us your favourite quotes which inspire, or amuse, or simply make you stop and think. Each month, we have chosen a submission to feature in this newsletter and the winner is offered a free day on a Recruitment Matters training course of their choice. We are delighted to announce that our latest winner is John Naber of Naber & Associates, Inc., in the USA. Amongst his many talents, John is an Olympic champion, sports broadcaster and motivational speaker. John is also an author and was pleased to accept a prize of a set of Warren’s books and CD’s as he wasn’t able to take up our offer of a free day’s training in the UK! John’s submission was as follows. ‘During a conversation with a sports television director, he mentioned a quote that has stayed with me for a long time. He said, in the frantic moments of a live broadcast, it is easy to say something that might be wrongly interpreted, and that command, wrongly interpreted can cause a huge problem. Therefore, he said “When sending a message, it is not enough to be understood. I make certain that it is impossible to be misunderstood.” If I may add another, my father was a management consultant (efficiency expert), and with each final report, he placed a quote on the report’s front page. It said “Your system is ideally engineered to produce the results you are getting now.” The unstated assumption was if you don’t like the results you are getting now, something has to change.’ Please see below for details of our new competition ‘Tip of the Month.’
New competition ‘Tip of the Month’We’ve had great feedback from many of you, saying how much you enjoy and benefit from the various tips that we feature in our newsletters, not only from our trainers Matt & Warren, but also from other regular contributors like Neil Kirby. As ever, you will see several in this issue. To reiterate one of the statements in our introduction - ‘We at Recruitment Matters have a simple underlying philosophy to everything that we do, and that is, by helping each other to improve, we all stand to benefit in this large, dynamic and fast-growing industry.’ Which is, hopefully, where you come in…. We are now inviting you to submit your favourite tips, whether they are about recruitment, business, life – you decide. Like our previous competition, we’ll publish the winning submission every month and offer the prize of a free day’s training on one of our open training courses. To stimulate some ideas, why not visit our constantly updated ‘Free Tips’ section in our website, which is our most popular page http://www.recruitmentmatters.com/free.php Please send your submissions to ken@recruitmentmatters.com .
Managers could be better decision makersMore than 80% of bosses say that managers in their companies are in fact good decision-makers, according to research conducted by YouGov for Investors in People. The research found that these employees also believe that poor decision-making is detrimental to the performance of the business, 83% claim it damages morale, 51% say it reduces productivity and 19% say it allows competitors to get ahead. It found that 51% of employees who think their managers are indecisive, point to lack of competence and 34% to lack of confidence. The survey found that 26% say managers are not sufficiently empowered by senior management and 21% believe that they haven’t had enough training. Simon Jones, acting chief executive at Investors in People UK, says: “This is a worrying problem for UK organisations. Effective decision-making is a vital skill for any manager, and critical to the smooth operation of the organisation as a whole. Indecisive managers are a drain on the company and a major frustration for their teams, damaging employee motivation which can in turn undermine productivity and affect the organisation's progress.” According to the research, when managers do make important decisions, employees feel that their views aren’t properly considered. Whilst 51% of senior managers surveyed thought that management sought the views of others in their organisation before making a decision, only 22% of employees believe this is true. It found that sectors in which employees believe their managers are most decisive are retail (58%), finance (59%) and leisure (56%). We wonder how the recruitment sector would rate on management competence, confidence and training - what are your views?
Don’t do the work for your candidateCandidates need to do their fair share of the effort needed in obtaining a new role. That doesn’t mean you don’t help them by supplying a template for a CV or that you don’t send them any info you have on the client – far from it. However, putting an almost finished CV in front of them following your 10 minute chat, doing all the chasing when they fail to show up for a meeting or if they aren’t in when you call for a prearranged telephone call isn’t good practice. Just for a moment or two, think back to a couple of times when your “star” candidate (or your only blinking candidate!) failed to show up for their client interview. Perhaps remember one who stalled when the offer was made and ultimately didn’t take the job, or perhaps you had one who went missing completely at a crucial moment in the process. Now, I’m no mind reader but I reckon that, once you have thought of a couple of examples, they were ones where you did more of the running and wanted the job for them more than they wanted the job for themselves. Work with candidates who are willing to work with you and do a lot of it for themselves. Matt Wilson is a consultant with Recruitment Matters with a current focus on our Two Day Induction, Telephone Skills and Interview Skills courses. For more information on Recruitment Matters, our training courses, services and products visit www.recruitmentmatters.com, telephone 0800 0749289 or email info@recruitmentmatters.com.
Recruitment Matters newsFirst an unashamed plug for our Barcelona training and networking event on Oct 4/5th. Just in case this passed you by, please click on the following link http://www.recruitmentmatters.com/news/barcelona/. Ideally, we’re trying to confirm numbers with the hotel by the end of August, so if you are interested, please let us know soon. We had an excellent launch in July of our new seminar ‘Don’t Become A Frog!’ which also coincided with the first outing for our other new half day course ‘Winning Retained Assignments.’ Why don’t you come along to the next one and reserve your place now? Here’s the booking form. http://www.recruitmentmatters.com/docs/e-mailbookingform.doc. On behalf of Warren, thanks go out to many of you for your kind and enthusiastic comments about his ‘Frog’ book. Don’t forget that the 2007 edition of ‘25 Ways (And More) To Grow Your Business’ is also now available, so here’s the form for that and our other products, too. http://www.recruitmentmatters.com/docs/Productbookingform.doc At last, we have finalised our Q4 2007 open training course schedule which is featured at the end of this newsletter. For our Scottish subscribers, look out for our ‘Successful Head-Hunting’ date in Edinburgh on Nov 12th – we’d love to welcome you there. Unless you attend ‘you dinnae ken whit yer missin!’ Also look out for another great new course, ‘Building & Running An Effective Search Desk,’ from Warren, starting on November 20/21st in London – more information on this shortly. Incidentally, an increasing number of our clients are signing up for a package for their new recruits, starting with our ‘Two Day Induction’ course then following on with ‘Interview Skills For Recruiters,’ typically one month later, and then a month after that, attending our ‘Telephone Skills’ course. If you wish to discuss this further then please get in touch. If you require more information or have any ideas for new courses, locations, or topics that you feel that we should be covering, or if you would like to explore what we could do for you on an in-house basis, we would be delighted to hear from you. For more information on Recruitment Matters, our training courses, services and products visit www.recruitmentmatters.com, telephone 0800 0749289 or email ken@recruitmentmatters.com.
RECRUITMENT MATTERS: August – December 2007 Training ScheduleSUCCESSFUL HEAD-HUNTING
TWO DAY INDUCTION
Investment £495+VAT INTERVIEW SKILLS FOR RECRUITERS
Investment £245+VAT TELEPHONE SKILLS Investment £245+VAT WINNING RETAINED ASSIGNMENTS
Investment £149+VAT DON'T BECOME A FROG - 250 TIPS FOR BUSY RECRUITERS
Investment £149+VAT *NEW! BUILDING & RUNNING AN EFFECTIVE SEARCH DESK* Investment £595+VAT. More information shortly.
And FINALLY, please consider our special recruitment training event in BARCELONA on OCT 5TH. For more information on all these courses, visit www.recruitmentmatters.com.
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