One of the recruitment industry’s most inspirational figures, Marcia Roberts, has died following a long battle with illness.

Marcia was formerly the Recruitment and Employment Confederation’s CEO and was awarded the MBE in 2009 for her tireless championing of the industry.

A spokeswoman for the REC said she was an inspirational leader and added: “She will be sorely missed by all that worked with her.”

She added that Marcia was a strong advocate of the recruitment industry and its ability to positively change people’s lives.

Angela Masters, REC chairwoman said: “Marcia was a champion of our industry, a great leader and an inspiration to members and the staff at the REC. I enjoyed her company and came to consider her a good friend.”

Gary Irvine, former REC chair, added: “It was a pleasure to work closely with Marcia during my time as chair of the REC. As well as her drive and vision, she will also be remembered for her empathy and kindness.”

“Marcia was a pleasure to work with and for,” added Judith Armatage, the REC’s director of professional development, “She had a wonderful sense of humour that could inspire those she worked with. She became a friend as well as a colleague; she made a significant contribution to improving our industry.”

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Some say that the difference between a recruiter and a recruitment consultant is in the way that the recruiter simply makes placements whereas a true recruitment consultant is someone that makes placements and, in addition, adds value to both his candidates and end user clients by consulting as well as closing the deals. One example of failing the ‘consultant test’ would be the recruiter who promotes accountancy or umbrella organisations purely on the basis of arbitrary criteria such as the pen they provided him or her with or, worse still, whether a financial inducement was offered! Experience shows that this can have significant consequences.

Credibility within the recruitment sector needs to be enhanced so that it can truly call itself a profession. Some suggest licensing or even qualified recruitment practitioners. Whatever your view most would agree that our people must ‘add value’. Yet many recruitment businesses avoid compiling and maintaining a panel of service providers. Some suggest it is a commercial risk, that it prevents impartiality or that it may lead to service issues. Whatever the sentiment, commercial logic dictates that there is a far greater risk in avoiding addressing the issue.

Source : Recruiter.

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A tenth of employers believe degrees are pointless, while three out five would choose experience over qualifications.

According to a poll of 1,561 managing directors across the UK by studentgems.com, 61% of recruiters are more likely to hire an applicant with relevant experience rather than one with a degree or other qualifications.

With more than three million students currently studying for degrees in the UK, studentgems.com estimate nearly half will struggle to find themselves a job relevant to their chosen career path.

The survey shows 19%, of employers would hire an applicant with two years’ experience but no qualifications in preference to another applicant with no experience but an honours degree. Of those employers, 11% said qualifications bore little importance in their shortlisting process.

But less than a quarter (23%) of employers would not consider someone without qualifications for a role if they did not have qualifications, according to the survey.

Sue Harrison, co-founder of studentgems.com, said: “With the current economic climate, job vacancies are receiving large amounts of interest and it is becoming more and more competitive – a reason many graduates are struggling to find jobs relevant to their degrees.

“One of the core aims of our site is to put those in education in front of employers, to encourage students to seek out relevant part-time work rather than retail or bar work. We recommend students spend time on preparing their CVs and put great care into improving their experience in their chosen study field in order to make them as employable as possible.”

The results highlighted five specific industries that value experience over qualifications:

1 Sales – 72% admitted they preferred relevant experience over qualifications

2 Catering – 70%

3 Graphic design – 69%

4 Photography – 67%

5 Care work- 64%

Source : HR Magazine

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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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Premium UK food store Waitrose is using a new online sifting tool which aims to progress the  highest calibre candidates through to its graduate Selection Centres.  

Waitrose’s graduate scheme has received over 2,500 applications already this year.  Graduate Dilemmas from talent management provider A&DC, an online Situational Judgement Test, assesses graduates’ judgement and decision-making skills around common work situations.

Waitrose’s graduate recruitment team is aiming to narrow down the number of candidates getting to its centres to around 150.
 
Anglie Johns, manager, recruitment services at Waitrose, says: “We anticipated an uplift in applicant numbers this year, and therefore wanted to introduce a new, robust selection tool to our Graduate Assessment Process, to address the challenges of the recruitment market, and the growing numbers of applications.”
 
A&DC has also created a bespoke scoring key for Waitrose.
 
Natalie Livings, managing consultant at A&DC, says: “Successful Waitrose graduates are placed into store-based retail management roles and have the opportunity to reach department manager level within 12-24 months.  

“It is essential for Waitrose, however, to ensure it is firstly finding future employees who want to work for the company, rather than just ‘get a job’, and secondly, making sure they have the best possible fit for the available roles.”

Source : Recruiter

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Checking publicly available information, such as a prospective candidate’s social media page, might be technically lawful but may not be best practice, said Adrian Marlowe, managing director of Lawspeed.

Speaking at a Recruitment Society event earlier this month, Marlowe said that pre-employment ‘processing’ of applicants is covered under the Data Protection Act. This means that looking up information about a potential candidate on a social networking site is classed as processing. And processing would need consent from the applicant. However, the fact that it has been posted on a public site could lead you to conclude that consent has been impliantly given.

Marlowe warned that if employers base their decisions on information gleaned from a social networking site, they could be in line for potential claims of discrimination, should the unsuccessful applicant discover this is the case. Yet he admitted that in the real world, this scenario [where the candidate realised their profile was hacked into] would be rare.

Source : Recruiter

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The Recruitment and Employment Confederation is responding to a report from Oxfam entitled “Who Cares?” which looks at dealing with exploitation of workers in the care sector.

Anne Fairweather, the REC’s Head of Public Policy,  said “Boiling down a series of complex issues, which in virtually all cases involve breaches of the law, to a call for an extension of the licensing of recruitment agencies is missing the point.  The REC is committed to an effective enforcement regime and agrees that while the existing regime is not perfect, the Gangmaster Licensing Authority is not a silver bullet which can solve every enforcement issue.  If we are going to be serious about tackling issue of exploitation, in both the agency and directly employed sector, then we need to get to the root of the problem.”

Peter Cullimore, Chair of the REC Nursing and Social Care Group which represents 300 agencies in the sector, said:  “Social and domiciliary are agencies are highly regulated.  In addition to the Conduct Regulations which govern all recruitment agencies, our members have to be registered with the Care Quality Commission and are regulated and inspected by them.  Adding another layer to the inspection regime will simply add complexity and cost to legitimate businesses and would not necessary lead to better enforcement against those who break the rules.  Care work can be very rewarding and we would encourage better funding to enable the workers in the sector to be better rewarded financially for their work.”

Anne Fairweather concluded:  “Initiatives such as the Pay and Work Rights helpline to make it easier for workers to report abuses in the workplace, are an example of a measure that could have a real impact. The REC also supports the extra resource which has been given to the Employment Agency Standards inspectorate.  It is vital that those who exploit workers are caught and the REC will be considering how to further improve enforcement in our sector without adding complexity or costs on those operating correctly.”

Source : Recruitment-International

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The REC is hailing victory after a new report was published today aimed at boosting standards in social work, which will include the establishment of a new national College for Social Work.

The REC had been invited by the British Association for Social Workers (BASW) to be part of a working group looking into the possibility of creating such a College.

In welcoming the proposal, Raluca Boroianu-Omura, Policy & PR Executive for REC Nursing and Social Care, said: ‘The College would promote the status of social work and would create a powerful voice for the profession. The REC is a strong advocate for raising standards and promoting good practice in social work, and sees this as the College’s main mission.

She added: “Social workers would benefit greatly from having the support offered by a national college. It would provide workers with post qualifying support and career structure. It would allow social workers to have the help they need to deliver first class services.

“This is a fantastic opportunity and to this end, the REC is committed to working closely with BASW and other key stakeholders to ensure that we keep up the momentum in achieving this aim.”

www.rec.uk.com

 Source : OnRec

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Its official, Taplow recruiter Mandeville is home to the Best Recruitment Consultant in London & The South East

Specialist Sales Recruiter Jadie Whitehead-Patey, from Burnham in Berkshire, was delighted to be awarded given the prestigious title of ‘Recruitment Consultant of the Year’ in the REC sponsored London and South East Recruitment awards this weekend. The judges unanimously voted Jadie, who works at specialist recruitment company Mandeville Recruitment, the best in her industry in Friday night’s glittering award ceremony, hosted by TV presenter Paul Ross. Jadie received the accolade due to her outstanding efforts and proactivity in seeking market opportunities, networking and proven evidence of delivering great staff for businesses time after time.

Jadie, who started at specialist recruiter Mandeville just 3 years ago with no sales or recruitment experience, is delighted that her hard work and commitment to finding talented people jobs and fulfilling businesses recruitment requirements, has been recognised in this way.

Mandeville themselves were also delighted to be nominated as finalists in three other categories, taking ‘Certificates of Merit’ accolades for both “Recruitment Team of the Year” and “Recruitment Agency of the Year” from 16 other finalists, including large national recruiters – a great amount to celebrate in a market that most people would believe is all doom and gloom.

Jadie beat off strong competition to take home the ‘Recruitment Consultant of the Year’ accolade, taking the upper hand over 12 other top performing finalists to be crowned, including regular entrants such as Aston Taylor & Spring Group. Jadie was put forward by Mandeville senior management for this award following her leading performance in the first 6 months of 2009, topping the Mandeville bill in terms of revenue and client generation.

A team of consultants and managers from Mandeville, which has its UK head office in Taplow, Berkshire, attended the final awards ceremony on Friday 13th November 2000 to find out if its hard work in the recruitment field was rewarded with the top prize. They were delighted to win both one top spot first time around and be second overall across London and South East for their agency overall, and one of their leading recruitment teams

David Riley, Mandeville’s Managing Director, said: “I am thrilled that Mandeville has yet again been rewarded as one of the top recruitment teams and agencies in London and the South East and that Jadie, who has performed fantastically for us over the past 3 years coming up the ranks from trainee to senior consultant, has lifted this prestigious award. This accolade reflects the dedication, professionalism and commitment of Jadie and the whole team throughout 2009, keeping our company performing in a tougher recruitment market than last year.

Source : Recruitment-International

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