Former recruiter Neil Shah, now director of the Stress Management Society, shares his top 10 tips to avoid burn-out

1) Avoid nicotine, alcohol, caffeine and refined sugar products.
They are all stimulants, so therefore they cannot calm you down. If you’re stressed, steer clear of them and keep yourself well-hydrated by drinking water instead. The quality of the water you drink can also have an impact on your wellbeing.

2) Work off stress with physical activity.
Have you been let down by a candidate who didn’t show up for the interview with your most important client?  Feel the blood boiling? Pressure or anger releases adrenaline in the body.  Exercise helps to reduce it and produces ‘good mood’ substances in the brain. So go for a brisk walk around the block when you feel tense, and try some regular exercise after work.

3) Relax with a stress reduction technique every day.
Try creative visualisations – it’s very easy and can even be done at your desk. Just slow your breathing and use all of your senses to remember your last holiday, hear it, see it, feel it, smell it and taste it.  Book yourself on a workshop or book in for a massage.

Or think up a self-affirming mantra to repeat to yourself (eg ‘I deserve calm in my life’, or ‘I have a choice in every situation’). Repeat it to yourself whenever you feel tense.

4) Get enough sleep.
Sleep is essential for the body to function properly. Sleeping pills are not necessary if you change your life-style. If you’ve habitually skimped on sleep, you probably won’t even remember how it feels to wake up fully rested. Give it a go for a week, and see if there’s a difference in how you perform during the day. If you are struggling try some sleep aids that will ensure a restful night’s sleep.

5) If you’re ill, rest.
Don’t just carry on regardless. Working will tire the body and prolong the illness. So recognise that you have limits and don’t carry on as if you were firing on all cylinders.

6) Agree with somebody, once in a while!
Life shouldn’t be a constant battleground. So even if you disagree with someone, avoid conflict by just agreeing or keeping quiet. After all, they have a right to their opinion, just as you do.

7) Learn to accept what you cannot change.
A well known prayer asks for the serenity “to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference”. This philosophy will help you avoid unhappiness, cynicism and bitterness. A perfect example of this would be the weather – no matter how much we complain it will not make the sun come out!

Listen to your body.
When you are tired, hungry or thirsty, do something about it. Also recognise stress and anger in your day and counter it immediately with a brisk walk, 10 minutes in deep relaxation or whatever works for you.

9) Learn how to say ‘no’.
Simple, but effective. Where a ‘no’ is the appropriate response, say it without guilt.

10) Manage your time.
Take one thing at a time. Don’t overdo things. Create time buffers to deal with unexpected emergencies. And, recognise that your day to day problems and responsibilities are the things that cause stress in your life. Tackle them with a system that works for you.

Stress often results from a general difficulty in coping with day-to-day problems and responsibilities. A useful strategy for dealing with a sense of being overwhelmed by all the things that need attention is prioritising and diarising:

Make a list of all the things that you need to do. List them in order of genuine importance, noting what you need to do personally and what can be delegated to others, and noting what needs to be done immediately, in the next week or next month etc.

What starts out as an overwhelming and unmanageable list which was the source of the stress and anxiety, is transformed into a more realistic and manageable set of tasks, spread out over a more achievable time frame, with some items removed from the list altogether, either through delegation or the realisation that they are, after all, unnecessary or unimportant.

Neil Shah is director of The Stress Management Society, an organisation dedicated to helping people tackle stress at work and at home.

Source : The Recruiter

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Vacancies can’t be filled successfully unless the job has been accurately defined in the first place. This is as helpful for you, the employer, as it is for potential candidates. Think about what skills, knowledge and experience you are looking for.

Writing a job description
Preparing and writing a job description is not a legal requirement but it can be useful for:

-deciding the scope of the job
-making clear to job applicants what they will have to do in the job
-writing a job advertisement or briefing an employment agency
-assessing a job holder’s performance
-working out a new employee’s training needs

A job description should include:

-the job title
-the position in the company including the job titles of the person the employee reports to and of those who report to them, if any
-the location of the job
-a summary of the general nature and objectives of the job
-a list of the main duties or tasks of the employee

The person specification
You might find it helpful to write down the qualities you are looking for in a person to fill the job that is vacant. This includes the knowledge, experience and skills you would like them to have. Separate these into those which are essential for the job and those which are not essential but would be helpful. It’s essential not to discriminate unfairly – see the Business Link guide on how to prevent discrimination and value diversity.

A person specification is not a legal requirement but will be useful in:

-writing a job advertisement or using an employment agency
-defining the essential factors you are looking for so that you can reject unsuitable applicants
-defining desirable, but not essential, features so you can choose the most suitable candidate
-making sure the individual will help to fulfil the aims of your business

Managers
If you are recruiting a manager you will also want to identify what level of responsibility they will hold and draft the job description to reflect that.

The recruitment process should be structured so as to help you to identify the candidate most able to do a job at this level, for example whether they demonstrate leadership and strategic thinking.

Directors: executive and non-executive
The first directors are appointed when the company is registered. Subsequently a nominations committee of the board of directors will need to oversee the recruitment and interviews of new directors and non-executive directors.

Source : Recruitment Times.

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What qualities do you need?

Well there are no formal qualifications, no natural progression into the trade, there is no training that can prepare you. The only things you need is to be able to think quickly on your feet, to be able to sell, have a nose for gossip, an ability to talk to people and get them to open up, a desire to win and to be able to take many, many knock backs.

Why would you want to be a recruitment consultant?

There is only one reason…… Money. There is no other business (other than Politics) where someone with no qualifications can make a lot of money. There are very few people who get into this business with honourable intent of wanting to help people.

So what’s it like?

Its a very tough job, in fact one that you are never able to switch off, for example I am always listening to people to hear what they do for a living and if it’s relevant to me either them as a candidate or who they work for.

In the first two years you can expect low pay, and bad conditions. For example in the first year you can expect to work 10 or 12 hours days. After a few years in the business you are able to relax but you can never take your foot off the pedal as there is always some young buck ready to take your place.

The are a lot of highs and a lot of lows. But the highs are very high and the lows, very low. For example the day your client calls you to say that they are cutting heads in the business and the first to go are your 10 contractors.

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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.

View our latest Recruitment Manager Jobs.

Source : On rec

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Digital camera phones should be banned from Christmas parties to avoid employees being fired due to photographic evidence emerging of party high jinks this year, according to employment lawyer Jonathan Whittaker.

The firm advises bosses to tell staff that snaps taken with a digital camera are fine, but not with mobile phones.

Jonathan Whittaker of law firm SAS Daniels, says: “The speed with which an embarrassing or even unlawful photo can make it from phone to internet is breathtaking – digital-savvy types can take a photo and post it on a blog, website or social networking site for the world to see within seconds.

“Under the European Convention of Human Rights, everybody has the right to respect for their private life. Employees should seek permission from each individual before posting their photo on a website or blog, otherwise it could give rise to problems for staff and employer.”

Source : Recruiter

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