Comparison sites for recruitment agencies are on their way, recruiters have heard. Don Leslie, co-director at BLT Recruitment, told Recruiter’s 4th Annual Forum in London last week that the recruitment industry was set to follow the example of the travel and leisure industry where comparison sites such as Trip Advisor were widely used by customers and potential customers. Comparison websites such as Contractor Supermarket are already used by contractors to compare umbrella companies. Brands are being defined by the voices of  strangers,” said Leslie. And this would soon be the case for recruitment agencies, he predicted. “A bought ledger clerk will be able to see what other people are saying about your agency. It’s going to be happening in recruitment and very shortly.” Source : Recruiter

Recruiters must do more to earn their fee, says BT’s head of recruitment, Martin Thomas. Thomas told Recruiter: “Agencies that do more to screen and assess out the average candidates add the most value – giving us fewer but better candidates. This means understanding niche areas of the market and building up a pipeline of candidates for when we need them, not using the ‘vanilla’ recruitment channels – we can access them ourselves in-house. Go for the harder candidate to really earn your fee.” Source : The Recruiter.

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.”

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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