Recruitment Matters International Newsletter: July 2017
Contents
Welcome to our July newsletter
Proactive Calling - Energiser
Recruitment Marketing Matters
Benefits and Consequences
Challenge yourself
Minimum wage staff underpaid by £10.9m
What's new?
Contact us
Unsubscribe
Welcome to our July newsletter
Welcome from the Recruitment Matters International team!
As ever, there are some updates on what we’ve been up to and our plans for you over the coming months – for example, you'll see we have a new two day in-house course by Andrew Carr, ‘Proactive Calling - Energiser.’ We feature external contributions, too, and would welcome more from you for future newsletters.
Next we have ‘Recruitment Marketing Matters,’ our monthly column from The Ideal Marketing Company. In this article, Hannah Wellings looks at SEO and what you can do to improve your search rankings.
This month our CEO Warren Kemp looks at benefits and consequences – and, no, it’s not a dodgy party game..
I’ve written an article sharing some thoughts on not being frightened of failure and challenging yourself to move out of your comfort zone.
We also have the latest article from our legal expert, Simon Bloch, Partner, Knights 1759 along with his colleague Alexandra Bullmore who look at some aspects of the National Minimum Wage, and how not getting it right can get you on the wrong side of HMRC.
We very much like this to be an interactive newsletter and 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 know, in return, we show our gratitude by featuring a link to your company as a contributor to this publication.
Recruitment Matters International has 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 ever evolving industry
Please send your potential editorial contributions to ken@recruitmentmatters.com .
Proactive Calling - Energiser: two day in-house training course
Who is this for?
This two day in-house training course is for business owners who want their managers, recruitment teams and individual recruiters to become more structured and assertive over the telephone with either their clients or candidates.
Aims & Objectives
By the end of the course you will be able to:
- Understand the importance of proactivity within a fast-moving recruitment sales environment.
- Discuss and implement proactive actions, which focus on building long-term consultative customer relationships.
- Develop a ‘curious brain’ approach to gathering specific and business focused information, which facilitates, develops and progresses customer loyalty.
- Develop a positive, confident, assertive and enthusiastic calling manner.
- Deal confidently and proactively with customer objections.
- Proactively respond to closing signals and ask for commitment.
- Plan, structure, make and analyse results focused calls which meet agreed objectives.
NOTE. Day Two is a practical day focusing on using the techniques from Day One to gain agreed results. For the full course overview please visit Proactive Calling – Energiser.
For a brief introduction to our highly experienced Associate Trainer, Andrew Carr, click on Meet The Team.
Whatever your in-house recruitment training objectives are, why not give us a call for an informal preliminary discussion about your potential requirements? We would be delighted to hear from you.
Recruitment Marketing Matters
Contributor: Hannah Wellings, Account Manager & SEO Specialist, The Ideal Marketing Company
Monthly ideas on ways to market your recruitment business and achieve better results.
10 tips to improve recruitment agency SEO
Having a presence online in the form of a website does not mean that the people you want to find your website will do.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is how you ensure that your website is found for the recruitment services, sectors and locations that you specialise in. In an ideal world, your website would rank in position 1 on search engines such as Google, so that people who are searching for a certain term find your recruitment agency’s website because it is most relevant to what they are searching for.
Here, SEO specialist Hannah Wellings shares her top tips for working towards the first page of Google search results when people search for recruitment agencies online.
- Use the word ‘recruitment’ in your URL. It sounds simple and that’s because it is – you’re a recruitment company – when Google is choosing who to put at the top of its search results, it’s most likely to choose URLs that include the relevant words that people are searching for.
- Say what you do on your homepage. This is usually the most important page of your website in Google’s eyes, as it’s the one where most people will land when they come across your site. When Google crawls pages to take in what the company does, it’s going to crawl the homepage to find out what you do, so if you specialise in a particular type of recruitment, it’s important to say it here.
- If you focus on certain sectors, say so. Ideally, each sector should have its own page so that you can provide people with a decent amount of information about how you excel in that sector. This will help your website to be found above other more generic sites, because by creating sector pages, you’re putting your agency out there as a specialist in that sector.
- Use images and videos on your website and name these so that they are relevant to what you do and to what is in the image or video. For example, an interview on a construction site could be named ‘construction recruitment agency interviews’ or similar. This helps Google to see what you specialise in and to also index your images/videos for search, like they would the wording on your pages.
- If you do use images and videos, make sure that when you upload them to your website, they’re not too big. This could slow down your page load times, and waiting for pages to load is a big turn off to people landing on your site.
- Have a clear journey. User experience is extremely important when it comes to keeping people on your website because if they bounce straight back off of it (usually if it looks like it doesn’t have the information they’re looking for, from your homepage) then Google’s going to think that whatever your website says, is not relevant. Encourage people to follow a journey from page to page, with a call to action like contacting you, as their end destination.
- Write blogs. These are great for showing that you are an expert in recruitment and helps you to add wording that people are likely to be searching for. For example, if your recruitment agency specialises in construction, adding an article relating to ‘average pay when recruiting construction workers’ or similar, will help you with your expert positioning as well as your search engine optimisation.
- Link to your blogs. It will take a while for Google to notice they’re there, unless you manually request that it re-crawls your website, so capture peoples’ attention by posting links to your blogs on social media. This will get them onto your website and hopefully have them looking at other blogs and pages, whilst they’re there.
- Write for other people. If you know that something like construction workers pension arrangements are a hot topic in the industry, offer an expert comment or an opinion article to relevant construction media. If they include your website name or URL in an online article, then it helps to show Google that your website is credible.
- Don’t copy other people’s work. This one might seem obvious, but duplicating content from other agencies’ websites will annoy whoever first wrote it and it won’t do you any favours either. Because the content was already published elsewhere, Google is highly unlikely to take it into account when it’s deciding what search terms your website should rank for, so it’s a total waste of time. Only unique and interesting content will help you climb to the first page results of Google.
Hannah Wellings is Account Manager and SEO specialist at The Ideal Marketing Company, an award winning full service marketing, digital and PR agency that works with the recruitment sector as well as many others. For further advice visit www.idealmarketingcompany.com or call 01858 445 543.
Benefits and Consequences
Contributor: Warren Kemp, CEO & Trainer, Recruitment Matters International
Now I know this headline sounds like it could be a good party game, but as this is a blog offering recruitment advice, I’d better stick to the script!
When speaking to clients and candidates, always have benefits & consequences in mind. As human beings we take action and make decisions based on those two things. If you can quickly convey the benefit of speaking with you or taking a certain action with you then you are off to a flying start. On the other hand, if there is no clear benefit for your contact they won’t make the decision or take the action that you want them to.
Now this is fine a lot of the time if it’s a small step they have to take or they are already committed to finding a solution to their issue. Sometimes, however, that is not enough. And that’s when you pull out the heavy artillery – consequences. What are the consequences for your contact of NOT speaking with you or NOT taking that action? Typically, that will be the key.
Let’s take the scenario of a candidate semi-active in the market, looking for work. If you can uncover the reason for them considering a move e.g. let’s say they are lacking promotion prospects, decent training where they are right now and they would like more money. Then the benefit of talking with you and considering your vacancy may be a strong enough pull for them to take that action. However, let’s say that, despite their stated early interest, they have failed to send you their latest CV by the end of the week as promised.
Now you could argue that they are not keen enough and you shouldn’t push it. Or, maybe they haven’t appreciated the consequences of not doing it. That’s when you should contact them again and explain that the choice of taking the next step is obviously theirs but you feel it important to explore things a bit more with them. Fast forward 6 months – if they still haven’t found a job with genuine promotion prospects, they still haven’t been receiving quality training and they haven’t gained that increase in salary, how would they feel then? The answer to that question will decide whether you have a candidate you can work with and who will take action, or not.
Warren Kemp is CEO and trainer with Recruitment Matters International. For more tips, advice and information on Recruitment Matters visit http://recruitmentmatters.com/ telephone 0800 0749 289/ +44 (0)1529 410586 or email info@recruitmentmatters.com.
Challenge yourself
Written by RMI’s MD, Ken Kemp.
“Learning is the only way to turn failure into success.”
The above statement is the introduction to the website for the recently-launched Museum of Failure in Helsingborg, Sweden. As it explains:
“The Museum of Failure is a collection of interesting failures. The majority of all innovation projects fail and the museum showcases these failures to provide visitors a fascinating learning experience. The collection consists of over seventy failed products and services from around the world. Every item provides unique insight into the risky business of innovation.”
Apart from the exhibits themselves, they are planning themed events including a ‘Failed Beer Tasting’ and a concert by renowned pianist Per Tengstrand performing some of the less successful music from famous composers. For example, the first versions of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony were far from perfect.
Products featuring in the museum’s exhibits include Harley-Davidson perfume, Kodak digital camera , Sony Betamax and Lego Fibre Optics. Check out http://www.museumoffailure.se/ and, in particular, their media coverage which is quite impressive
Now it may seem a bit strange to celebrate failure but, after all, where would we be without it? Where would the challenges be? Failure is fine as long as we do something to turn it around into something positive. If you don’t push your boundaries to the extent of reaching the point of failure, how do you know how far you can go? And then, by learning how to solve it, you can deliver a better product, a more innovative service, a faster marathon, an improved sales pitch, a more satisfying relationship, perhaps.
For example, Sandler Training encourages sales people to fail faster. It makes sense, doesn’t it? The faster you fail, the quicker you learn and move forward. It’s the fear of failure that holds us back.
However, I’m not suggesting that all failure is good – it’s only productive if it happens for the right reasons such as trying to innovate or introduce something different into the mix. To quote Benjamin Franklin: “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
Here’s another quote for you, this time from Bill Gates: “It’s fine to celebrate success, but it is important to heed the lessons of failure.”
Reaching the point of failure shakes things up, challenges traditional thinking, breaks new ground. Why do so many people expect new and better results at work when they’re doing the same thing, the same task in the same way? It just doesn’t make sense does it?
Now, of course, I would suggest that training could be one solution – by being introduced to new ideas and techniques by a third party, it can equip and empower you to move on to the stage where you are celebrating success again and again, even if there is a hiccup or two along the way.
Do not be afraid of failure – embrace it, learn from it and move on to achieve great things in your life. Challenge yourself. Move out of your comfort zone into where the magic happens.
Ken Kemp is MD of Recruitment Matters International. For more information on Recruitment Matters visit http://recruitmentmatters.com/ telephone 0800 0749 289 / +44 (0)1529 410586 or email ken@recruitmentmatters.com.
Minimum wage staff underpaid by £10.9m last year. Time to put your house in order?
Contributors: Simon Bloch, Partner and Alexandra Bullmore, Paralegal, Knights 1759
It is not only a company’s reputation at stake when it pays workers below the National Minimum Wage (NMW). Underpayments currently carry a penalty of 200% of the value of the arrears, capped at £20,000 per worker. The penalties are paid in addition to the underpayment, as the underpayment will be need to be repaid to the worker. According to recent research at Middlesex University, recruitment agencies are amongst those most likely to be incorrectly paying staff. The total amount recovered from employers over 2015/16 was £10.9 million, more than triple the £3.3 million that was recovered in 2014/15 period.
Recent reports suggest that HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) are focusing their compliance investigations on the retail sectors and employers who get it wrong face being named and shamed publically. Our experience suggest that HMRC will be focusing on recruitment agencies, as this has already happened to a number of companies, including the well-publicised national agency that was supplying Sports Direct, which was recently saved from going into administration. Employers in these sectors need to be aware of the legal requirements when it comes to NMW or face the ramifications from the HMRC, which could cause serious damage to the company and even threaten the company’s existence entirely.
Although some employers will understand the law and ignore it, most employers will be caught out where they do not understand the legal elements. John Lewis is one example of this, when they recently announced that they had breached the NMW by averaging pay so that employees received the same pay every month regardless of the hours they worked in that period. It was found that this method meant that sometimes employees were not being paid NMW for the hours they actually worked in a particular month, even though in other months they were being paid for more hours than they worked.
The method for calculating NMW can be complex and even where an employer is paying an hourly rate which equates to the NMW, they can still be in breach if certain deductions are made or if it is found that working hours are longer than stated. There are many ways in which HMRC could find that an employer is not compliant, such as not paying for an induction process or for the incorrect use of uniform hire deductions. Similarly, time spent in team briefings or securities checks before or after work attracts NMW and therefore an employee should be paid for this.
The NMW is not just payable to employees, workers are also entitled to this payment. Self-employed individuals are not entitled to NMW. Therefore, if an individual can establish that they are a worker or an employee, rather than self-employed, they will then be entitled to the NMW. That is, in part, some of the reason for the recent cases about employment status. And one of the reasons why employers should be monitoring their use of self-employed contractors to ensure they too don’t get caught out.
The Taylor Review has recently reviewed employment status, amongst other things, and makes some proposals which would mean significant changes for employment law. The proposals include redefining employees and workers by renaming workers who are not employees as “dependant contractors”. It also proposes that the NMW should be amended to make it clear that gig-economy workers would not have to be paid NMW for each hour logged on when there is no work available. Furthermore, it suggests increasing the rate of the NMW for hours worked which are not guaranteed by the employer. Significantly, it also proposes that individuals should be able to bring a claim to an Employment Tribunal to determine their employment status as a preliminary issue without having to pay a fee. This is likely to lead to a significant increase in claims being brought. Employers need to start now in reviewing their relationships with workers and contractors to ensure they won’t be caught out.
Employers need to seek advice and review their pay practices to be proactive rather than reactive when it comes to paying the NMW to avoid significant claims for underpayment and any negative impact on reputation.
This article was prepared by Simon Bloch, who is a Partner at Knights 1759 and specialises in advising recruitment agencies, and Alexandra Bullmore. To contact Simon, please email simon.bloch@knights1759.co.uk or call 0161 667 9205 to discuss any matter in this article or any recruitment issue at further length.
What’s new?
As you will have probably already read, we’ve got a great new two day in-house course offering from Andrew Carr who would be delighted to visit you to deliver his Proactive Calling – Energiser.
We continue to lead the way with our ever-popular one day open course on Executing A Successful Head-Hunting Assignment . Also, the flipside of the coin, Selling Executive Search and Winning Retained & Exclusive Assignments (next date is London on October 11th). These two courses and our Candidate Sourcing course are currently enjoying a high level of bookings.
A reminder that we run a very popular one day management course which has experienced extremely strong demand recently for both open course and in-house training: Stewart Stone’s The Billing Manager – managing people & motivating teams (next date is September 5th). We always enjoy welcoming the continued steady stream of consultants who are moving up to management positions.
Our ‘Recruitment Fundamentals’ one day open courses are just £349+VAT for Candidate Control, Screening & Interviewing (London on August 16th), Business Development & Key Account Management, Running A Successful Temp Desk, as well as for Candidate Sourcing. All of these open courses will be running throughout 2017, including our Two Day Introduction To Recruitment at the outstanding rate of just £549+VAT! Our next induction course is in London on August 23/24th.
In order to optimise your learning experience, our courses are purposely run with small delegate numbers and are generally capped at 12. Book now to avoid disappointment! See here for our latest training dates.
Remember, if you can’t come to us, we can come to you to deliver an in-house version of any of our courses to meet your specific objectives or, indeed, write a training programme specifically for you and your team. Contact ken@recruitmentmatters.com for more information.
For more information on these courses and our other services and products, visit www.recruitmentmatters.com, email info@recruitmentmatters.com or call Julie or Ken on 0800 0749289 or, if you’re overseas, 0044 1529 410586.
Contact us
London Office
Recruitment Matters International Ltd
86-90 Paul Street
Shoreditch
London
EC2A 4NE
Tel: +44 (0)203 697 0360
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Recruitment Matters International Ltd
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Station Road
Sleaford
Lincs NG34 7RG
UK
Tel: 0800 0749289/0044 / (0)1529 410586
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Email: info@recruitmentmatters.com .
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