Recruiters should push to place as many candidates as they can now, to beat a predicted slow down in recruitment next quarter, according to a new report.

Recruitment firm Manpower surveyed 2,100 employers and found that only one in five of them had plans to hire more workers in the next three months.

This means jobseekers and recruiters need to move quickly to stay ahead of employers’ dampened expectations.

However there are still hundreds of thousands of jobs out there with sectors such as utilities continuing to hire.

According to the report, an East-West divide has also emerged, with employers in the East of England being the most positive about employment prospects and those in the West, Wales and Northern Ireland the most pessimistic.

Manpower’s managing director, Mark Cahill, said: “Employers have now adopted a wait-and-see approach to hiring; they are cautious about the economy and the fear of a Euro-wide contagion is weighing heavily on their minds.

“Of the sectors that are creating jobs, however, utilities is the most positive, with employers in the water, gas and electricity industries reporting hiring intentions of +13%, a rise of 2 per centage points on the previous quarter. This sector has proved particularly resilient, as the only sector demonstrating a positive outlook in every quarter throughout the downturn.

“The manufacturing sector also shows signs of optimism with employers reporting a cautiously optimistic outlook of +5%.”

“We should not lose sight of the fact that there are still hundreds of thousands of vacancies out there. Employers continue to look for skilled and motivated candidates who show a real desire and determination to work. People who are willing to learn new skills are the ones who will succeed in this challenging environment. Those with a refuse-to-lose attitude will find work.”

Photo by Alex France

According to Dan Erwin, dress down days could look set to become a thing of the past as the majority of UK workers want to dress to impress in a bid to save their jobs and win new business because of the current economic climate, according to a survey of 13,000 employees.

Dressing to create the right impression with clients, prospects and colleagues is one area where individuals can influence the outcome of the economy, according to 94% of respondents UK work wear provider Alexandra.

For more information go to Dan Erwin's website.

Photo: Nelson Pavlosky

Social recruiting is something of a hot topic and has become one of the buzzwords of 2011. It can, however, be difficult to know where to start or how to make sure that you get the most benefit from using web and networking sites. There is no right or wrong way to use social recruiting, however. It is a concept rather than a prescriptive way of doing things and as such, employers in many different fields are able to draw on the aspects of social recruiting that work for them.

Social recruiting is essentially a means of identifying and communicating with potential employees and building relationships with them. It is an additional tool rather than a replacement to traditional recruitment methods. It encompasses the basic elements that are required for any recruitment process, using new media as a means of attracting and carrying out preliminary vetting of potential candidates.

The web as a marketing tool
One of the simplest ways to embrace social recruiting is to use the web effectively as a marketing tool. By advertising online on websites that are relevant to the industry or field that you work in, you are able to target a much wider pool of people than by only using traditional methods. Twitter and Facebook can be a great way to advertise jobs, particularly if you work in an industry that is IT or media savvy.

For a more proactive approach to recruitment, it is possible to directly source potential candidates for roles that you are looking to fill. The website, LinkedIn is the largest user-generated database of individuals and holds information on employment history and skills as well as identifying whether the individual is open to approaches. This can be an invaluable way of identifying candidates with a background in areas that are important to you.

It is possible to take proactivity further and fully utilise resources that are already available to you. Many companies regard their employees as their greatest asset yet fail to tap into their knowledge and contacts when looking to recruit. Peer to peer recruitment can be an excellent method of identifying potential candidates. By using employees' social networks, it is often possible to identify candidates with similar values to those already employed. Additionally, such candidates often have a good understanding of the company culture from their existing relationships with your employee.

Degree of caution
This all sounds great but, as with anything, there are some drawbacks and a degree of caution needs to be exercised. Using social recruitment to attract candidates will only ever be successful if your target pool of candidates uses social media themselves. This can depend to a degree upon the industry you operate in. Unless you are employing in an area where aptitude for using social media is essential, it is important to ensure that you don't miss out on attracting excellent candidates. Continuing to use traditional recruitment methods is, therefore, important.

Additionally, whilst using social recruitment gives access to a much wider pool of people than traditional methods, it does not mean that any of them will be suitable for the role that you are looking to recruit for. It is, therefore, also important to have good search and screening criteria in place to ensure that your time is spent concentrating on candidates who have the potential to be right for the role you are looking to fill rather than sizeable numbers of those who aren't.

Notwithstanding these caveats, social recruiting is becoming an increasingly important part of any company's recruitment tools. Whether it is by advertising on social network sites such as Twitter or Facebook, targeting individuals via sites such as LinkedIn or by using employees' social networks, most companies will find that some element of social recruitment is beneficial to their own recruitment process.

Photo by The Next Web

According to UK recruitment firm Astbury Marsden, there was five qualified applicants applying for each job in London’s main financial district in November.

This figure shows a sharp increase in the amount of job competition as it was measured at just 1.7 applicants per job at the beginning of 2011.

The ratio is now at its highest since December 2008 as the number of investment bankers seeking employment rose significantly. New vacancies at financial-services companies fell 16 percent to 2,670 in November from a month earlier as banks battle a faltering economy and a euro crisis, the London-based company said.

Mark Cameron, Chief Operating Officer at Astbury Marsden, said: “For those City staff who are looking for a new job it means they are being pitted against more intense competition then they may have faced for years.

“For many it will mean more interviews and more rejections before they find the right job.”

Supermarket Sainsbury’s is planning to create 50,000 new jobs in the UK by 2020 as part of an ambitious £1b sustainability plan.

According to Sainsbury’s 20 by 20 Sustainability Plan, the supermarket will need to create more than 6,000 jobs a year to meet its target.

The retailer has also set out its intention to build on its existing work with Remploy, Mencap, Shaw Trust and Job Centre plus to provide work opportunities to 30,000 people from disadvantaged groups.

While there is hope of new jobs at Sainsbury’s, today unemployment in the UK officially climbed to 2.57 million.

According to the Office for National Statistics, the unemployment rate has now reached 8.1% – its highest level since 1994.

Centre director at The Work Foundation Ian Brinkley said: “The labour market figures released this morning are very troubling. The fall in employment of 180,000 in a single quarter is comparable to the quarterly losses seen during the depths of the last recession.

“The main mitigating factor in today’s figures is that total hours worked has remained stable, with most of the job losses being part-time. People still in work seem to be increasing their hours at the same time as the workforce contracts.”