As the year draws to a close, a large numbers of managers across the country will be approaching their “Review Period”, looking to arrange annual reviews or appraisals with each of their employees. For those who are looking to get the most from this process or perhaps haven’t received formal training in this area, Steven Kirkpatrick, Managing Director of Adecco Staffing in UK and Ireland offers some advice.

Prepare
It may sound obvious, but it’s essential to prepare for each review well in advance. Every member of staff needs to be treated as an individual and their review should be prepared for separately. Consider each person’s progression since their last review, identify the good work they have done, any issues that you have come up against and how you see their career progressing. By looking at their previous review you can make sure targets have been met and both parties have kept to their side of the agreement. By attempting to run reviews ‘off the cuff’ and without correct preparation the review process is likely to become a waste of time.

Get feedback – don’t just talk
Reviews should be a two-way process; not just an outlet for managers to express their opinions of their employee. Be sure to have some questions lined up that you would like to ask and take note of what your team member is saying. Always get your employees’ view on how they felt their year has gone, things they liked or disliked, and where they would like their career to be this time next year. Understanding their feelings towards their career and the business, will inevitably make it much easier to manage them in the future.

Be constructive
Part of the purpose of a review is to highlight any issues from the past year. However, it is important not to use the session as a way of endlessly criticising an employee’s weaknesses. Be sure to match every problem or issue with an action or solution. This should be a joint exercise, so find out whether or not your employee agrees with you and also what they think could be done to resolve the issue. By doing this you are offering constructive feedback and creating solutions to any problems as a team. These can be agreed upon with a plan of action, rather than being an enforced measure put in place by the employer.

Set targets
It’s important that every review results in clear targets being set in agreement with the employee. The targets should be measurable and on a clear time-scale, focused towards them, their career progression and overall job satisfaction. The targets need to be agreed to on both sides rather than dictated by the employer.

Take action
Reviews should not end once everyone has left the room. The idea is to take a look back at recent months, but also to plan for the forthcoming months. Ideally, the actions that are agreed in reviews should be referred to on a monthly basis in order to make sure that both parties are heading in the right direction. For this reason, set short-term, monthly goals as well as longer term targets.

Leave staff motivated
Whatever the outcome of a review, and with promotions, bonuses and pay increases aside, it’s important to leave staff feeling motivated and with a view that the appraisal was a worthwhile exercise. For this reason, end the meeting on a positive note, highlight their good work and the areas that you will be aiming to improve and cover off some of the interesting things that are planned for the year ahead.

Write it down
Always write things down. The whole review process will become completely unproductive if nothing is documented in terms of what has been discussed, what actions need to be taken and what both parties have agreed to. By doing this, both you and the employee can quickly and easily refer to their previous review in order to highlight their progression or short-comings. Most reviews should be summarised and shared with the employee within a week or so, to be signed and agreed upon. This way you both have something measurable and agreed for the next twelve months.

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Source : On rec

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Rec-to-rec recruiters are experiencing an increase in demand for multi-lingual consultants as UK-based agencies target international business.

Vic Chuntz, chief executive at rec-to-rec consultancy Aston Taylor, told Recruiter diversification had caused the demand.

“In IT for instance, the market has been saturated in terms of the number of recruiters and it’s natural for people to start looking abroad.”

For example, IT recruiter SThree’s results for year-end 2008 showed the group’s international business grew by 64% to £97.4m (2007: £59.3m), representing 45% of the group total revenue (2007: 32%).

Robin Huggins, division manager of NetworkersMSB, told Recruiter the company has recruited multi-lingual consultants after identifying a need for IT workers with language skills in the Glasgow area.

“The most highly sought language skills include French, Spanish, Dutch, German and the Nordic languages.  There is now also a need emerging for Eastern Europe languages such as Polish, Russian and Turkish.”

Huggins added the demand was experienced elsewhere in the UK particularly in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Tim Connolly, director of rec-to-rec A La Carte Search and Selection, has also noticed an increase in demand, telling Recruiter:

“Recruitment companies are looking to do more work overseas to spread the risk. It pays to have languages speakers, preferably native, as that really helps candidates and clients buy in to the business.”

Source : Recruiter

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While many recruiters may be quick to chastise clients for their lack of expertise in hiring techniques, it seems that the industry is not necessarily practicing what it preaches.

During the first quarter of 2008, Perriam & Everett which places recruiters, headhunters and in house recruiters world-wide surveyed almost 1200 recruitment professionals to find out what they really felt about the industry they worked for and has produced a white paper on the findings:

• Almost 40% were dissatisfied with their interview process and over a third of respondents were looking for more structure at their own interview stage and experienced recruiters felt that the process was far too informal. As one respondent put it: “Get over the chat over a cup of coffee – put me through my paces.”
• Over a third (35%) felt that their current role and firm had not been accurately described.
• Almost a third (33%) were not satisfied with the level of training they received and almost half (48%) felt that they needed to develop business development skills.
• Over a third (35%) felt that the organisations goals and values were not in line with their own personal goals and objectives:

“The business is very results orientated but they pretend to be value focused. The values talk about behaviours that do not fit the aggressive financial results/goals for the year,” commented one respondent.

Commenting on the results, Aisling Tighe, Managing Director of Perriam & Everett said:

“There is some good news – induction programmes seem to be much more formal than in previous similar surveys we have undertaken and on boarding in general is much better. In previous years many recruiters have felt that after a ‘big sell’ they were left to sink or swim. However it’s important to remember that one of the main reasons recruiters join (and therefore leave) an organisation is the calibre of management and companies should therefore be investing in management development programmes to ensure that they not only keep their high performers – but attract other peoples.

If the recruitment sector is going to win its own war for talent, it needs to start taking some of its own medicine” she added.

Source : Recruitment Times

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