The start of a new year – how many business owners have been mulling over their plans for 2020 and the coming decade while they were at home celebrating with family? I know I was!

Here is the thing.

To achieve growth, to scale your business and to more importantly – increase revenue – what you need is a great team.

Some people go as far as saying that your team are as equally as important as your customers. No successful business has ever made it with a sub-standard team in place, and engaged employees are widely considered to be essential to higher efficiency, productivity and profits.

The cost of a bad hire, while expensive in monetary terms (estimates range from £12,000 to up to tens of thousands of pounds) will potentially send shockwaves which will be felt throughout your business.

And the smaller your company, the more impact making the wrong hire will have. Increased workloads and stress for current employees, low morale, decreased productivity…all of these put a strain on your business in a time when you were planning on growing.

So, with this in mind – what are you doing to ensure the hires that you make in 2020 will be the right ones to ensure your business grows and moves in the right direction?

Make 2020 the year that you put your recruitment process in the hands of the experts by working with a specialist recruiter; and here is how it will benefit your business.

Unrivalled Expertise

Unfortunately, many business owners who are not well acquainted with the world of recruitment don’t realise the vast difference in service they will receive between a specialist and a general recruiter.

This is understandable, as those who don’t live and breathe recruitment (unlike us!) have less of an understanding of what different recruiters provide within their service.

Most people don’t realise the extent of the knowledge gaps that a general recruiter can have, and the impact this will have on your eventual hire. Every employee in your organisation has a bearing on your success, and so each employee must be hired for the value that they can add to your business.

You can only achieve this by working with a recruiter who has an in-depth understanding of your sector, and sadly, this is not what a general recruiter will provide.

Local Knowledge

As well as extensive sector knowledge, one of the most crucial elements of working with a specialist recruiter is their geographical location. Can you expect your recruiter to understand current issues affecting your town or city when they are based elsewhere in the country?

Understanding, and having a good knowledge of the businesses in the area is an added benefit that people often overlook when choosing a recruiter.

If your specialist recruiter focuses their recruiting in one geographical area, this means that they can give a vastly improved service. Understanding your local area, the current economic and job climate, and the local candidate base is an added layer to your specialist recruiter’s service, which strengthens their hiring process.

The Skills Shortage

A recent survey of recruitment in the accounting and finance sector found that there is a current ‘moderate’ skills shortage in pivotal roles. Another accounting survey found that 95% of recruiting partners have struggled to find skilled accountants – does this sound familiar?

There is a distinct lack of talent in the active accounting candidate market. Firms who attempt to recruit by themselves, or use a general recruiter, are failing to interview candidates who possess the right skills and attitude.

A niche specialist will have access to the broader talent pool and will have contact with candidates that would not otherwise be looking to apply to your organisation.

An Efficient Process

How fast is your recruitment process? How many stages are there to ensure that the candidate is right for the role?

Or is it more of a relaxed affair that can take weeks depending on when the senior staff can get together? Is it more a case of hiring the person who can start the soonest? Your specialist recruiter will have every stage, and more importantly – the time frame already in mind.

One of the biggest complaints I hear from candidates, and sadly, one of the reasons many businesses miss out on great candidates is that ‘the hiring process took too long’.

The speed and efficiency of your hiring process is something which many business owners fail to recognise as essential to the candidates. Your specialist recruiter has the time to keep in touch with candidates at every step of the way, ensuring that they don’t switch off or worse – get approached by a rival company..

The Right Hire – First Time

Finally, but certainly not least – perhaps the most value-adding aspect of working with a specialist recruiter is the guarantee that the right hire will be made for your organisation.

As I have highlighted in this article, it is so essential to make the right hire, the first time around, and working with a specialist recruiter will ensure that this happens. It reduces the chance of being left for weeks (or months) of uncertainty as you attempt to carry out the recruitment process around your businesses daily tasks.

Or the worry that a sub-standard hire might be made, as a result of working with a recruiter who doesn’t understand your businesses and your sector-specific needs.

About Clayton Recruitment

Clayton Recruitment has been partnering with organisations across the country since 1989, and during that time has built up an excellent reputation for trust and reliability.

With specialist divisions covering Commercial, Financial, Industrial, and Engineering appointments, on both a permanent and temporary basis. If you are looking for your next career move, we can help. Call us on 01772 259 121 or email us here.

If you would like to download our latest interview checklist, you can do so here.

How many millennials do you have in your organisation? If you’re not sure as to what constitutes a ‘millennial’ – it is generally accepted that this generation was born between 1981-1996, meaning that their current age is from their early 20s to late 30s.

As a Manager, it is vital to understand the needs of all generations in the workplace, but as of 2020, millennials will make up the most significant section of the UK workforce, so it pays to understand what they’re really looking for from their job.

Managers who understand what millennials want, and who offer them the opportunities that they’re looking for, will reap the benefits in the long run – these employees will stay and grow with your organisation rather than moving on in a year.

So, what exactly is it that millennials are looking for from their job?

Innovative Technology

Millennials have grown up around technology, and figuring out how to make the lives of everyone in the office a little easier is part of their DNA.

You might be thinking ‘, but we’re a small accountancy company, we don’t have any innovative tech’ – but this is not as complicated as it might sound.

Any office with a computer system will have processes in place – the organisation of files, the procedure of dealing with a client, even updating your website; these are all examples of conventional technology which millennials are adept at working with.

If your cloud filing system is a mess (or non-existent), if you have held back on upgrading your website or even your internet speed, these can all put millennials off from wanting to join your company.

They are looking for forward-thinking and innovative workspaces; however, it isn’t all about how futuristic your office is, it is more a state of mind – which brings me onto my next point.

Collaboration and Flexibility

The millennial workforce is known for their love of collaborative working, of pushing boundaries and of rejecting the style of work where you basically get your head down, do as the Manager says and don’t ask any questions – this is seen as a ‘baby boomer’ trait, and is now less common in the world of work.

When you harbour and encourage an atmosphere of collaboration and shared knowledge, this is an attractive trait to high-performing millennials. Equal partaking makes millennials (and indeed employees of all generations) feel that they are valued, rather than simply a ‘cog’ in the wheel, and gives them a sense of purpose – let me explain this in more detail.

Purpose

Millennials want to undertake work which gives them a sense of purpose. Whether that’s on updating a mortgage administration process, taking ownership of their bookkeeping role, or doing an excellent job of pulling together contracts for your contracts administrator role.

Older millennials might be old enough to have experienced the world of work before open-plan offices and when being an ‘angry Manager’ was still seen as a reliable leadership quality – not any more.

The workplace is a much more open and forward-thinking place these days, with companies of all sizes and in all sectors striving to show their clients and their employees that they are purpose-led. A recent Forbes article even highlighted that purpose-driven companies evolve faster than others.

So, to attract the best millennial talent, make sure your company not only has a mission and a vision statement but that all employees are committed to the cause. If you are an accountancy firm who has honesty and customer service at the heart of your ethos – highlight this to your millennial candidates; it will make them consider working for your business even more seriously.

To Be Developed

Lastly, I want to talk a little bit about millennials and their long-term career plans. Many employers wrongly believe that this generation of workers are ‘job-hoppers’ and they have gained a reputation for being more likely to leave their jobs than their boomer predecessors.

But how true it this?

In reality, millennials are actually no more likely to leave their job than any other employee of different age.

Yes, it is true that the workforce, in general, changes their jobs more often now than previously, but this is the same across all ages. The average employee now changes their position up to 12 times throughout their career, but this is not because they are flighty. It happens because the idea of a ‘job for life’ is not in practice anymore, because of the unstable economic times of the last ten years in the UK and because there is more choice for employees.

A recent study on millennials in the workplace found that the number one factor that they consider before taking a new job is if they will be trained and developed in their role.

Millennials want to develop and grow with your company – they will be put off any role which does not offer scope for growth, and this is not just for the increase in salary; they want to feel the sense of accomplishment that comes from personal growth and pride in doing their job increasingly well.

Finally

Do you need help locating quality candidates for your finance or accounting vacancies? We work with accounting talent for roles in the North West and have been recruiting in this sector for 30 years – get in contact with our team today to find out more.

About Clayton Recruitment

Clayton Recruitment has been partnering with organisations across the country since 1989, and during that time has built up an excellent reputation for trust and reliability.

With specialist divisions covering Commercial, Financial, Industrial, and Engineering appointments, on both a permanent and temporary basis. If you are looking for your next career move, we can help. Call us on 01772 259 121 or email us here.

Your accountant has a central role within your business, so the notion that they might be about to leave can be an alarming one.

But the reality is that accountants rarely stay in the same place for a long time; they are often recruited onto bigger contracts and higher salaries elsewhere – you probably won’t even know if your accountant is planning on leaving.

However, there are some signs that you can look out for.

As a recruiter, I am used to hearing the reasons that top accountants give when leaving their jobs. Starting a family is a primary example – considering leaving for a higher salary in preparation for an addition to your family, and also planning on a reduction of hours to accommodate new parental responsibilities are both reasons candidates regularly give.

Perhaps they have simply been given a better salary and compensation with a firm they have been on the radar of for a while – this article contains the signs to look out for which might indicate your accountant is about to leave.

1. Their Performance Has Dropped

A drop in performance indicates that your accountant is either less engaged with their role, which often leads to the desire for a new role, or worse still, that they are actively looking for a new job and they have mentally checked-out of your business.

Have they started giving less detail in their financial statements, making careless mistakes or missing deadlines which is out of their normal character?

Keeping regular reviews and even informal chats every couple of weeks to discuss your accountant’s projects and how they are generally feeling at work can prevent negative emotions from harbouring, and solutions can be worked out for problems before they become serious.

2. They Have Closed Themselves Off

Any good leader will be able to recognise a change in their employee’s behaviour. An unfavourable change in behaviour might mean a few different things – your accountant might be going through personal issues, they might be finding their current work too stressful, or not challenging enough; or it might mean that they have disengaged from your company.

An informal chat with your accountant who appears to have shut down might reveal that they are struggling – and this is something you can help them with. Likewise, if they tell you that everything is fine, but continue to be secretive with phone calls and checking their phone, or missing work without any good reason – more on this next – it could signal that they are about to leave.

3. They Have Begun an Irregular Working Schedule

A sudden irregular working schedule might mean that your accountant has things going on outside of work – it is not up to your employees to tell you every detail of their personal lives, but a sudden or drastic change to their once steady routine could be a sign of imminent disruption.

Working late to reconcile the accounts and coming in late regularly over consecutive weeks are two different things – the latter might mean that your accountant has been attending interviews elsewhere.

4. They’ve Got a Big Life Change Going On

If you share a great relationship with your accountant, there’s a good chance that they will divulge their personal news with you. You will probably be aware of any significant life changes your employee has going on – a house move, planning a wedding, looking after a family a member, etc.

Sometimes the personal circumstances of an employee mean that they are forced to reassess their career. Your accountant might not necessarily want to hand their notice in, but a significant change in their personal life might make it the only option.

Have they been mentioning starting a family recently, have they been decreasing their hours to take care of an elderly parent? Life comes at us all fast, but being mindful of at what stage your accountant is at in their personal life should mean that you are better equipped to predict their career movements.

Unfortunately, however, sometimes when employees leave there have been warning signs, but their employer has failed to notice them.

5. They Have Demonstrated That They are Less Fulfilled

If only every employer listened to their employees! Many times, when a great employee like your star accountant leaves, they have been exhibiting visible warning signs that their employer has overlooked.

Quite often, candidates who we work with tell us that they are planning on leaving because they have been unhappy in their accountancy role and have tried to offer solutions to the company to no avail. A recent accountancy candidate who I placed in a great new role had been vocal about their previous company updating their recording systems for over a year, and nothing was ever implemented to help her out. In the end, she left to work for a more dynamic company and her old employer was surprised to receive her notice – he simply hadn’t been paying attention to the needs of his staff!

Finally

Actively listening to your key employees can prevent a surprising notice on your desk, but unfortunately, sometimes your accountant will leave for a career move, and there is little that can be done to avoid this.

If you need help in locating talented accountants or building your talent pipeline so that you have a great candidate in mind for the future of your business, get in touch with us to discuss our recruitment solutions.

About Clayton Recruitment

Clayton Recruitment has been partnering with organisations across the country since 1989, and during that time has built up an excellent reputation for trust and reliability.

With specialist divisions covering Commercial, Financial, Industrial, and Engineering appointments, on both a permanent and temporary basis. If you are looking for your next career move, we can help. Call us on 01772 259 121 or email us here.

If you would like to download our latest interview checklist, you can do so here.

A recent survey by the accounting resource company Karbon found that 95% of accounting firm partners said that they had experienced challenges when attempting to recruit Accountants.

What’s even more shocking is that only 22% said that they are confident that their recruiting strategy is reaching the very best applicants.

It’s that word – ‘reaching’ where the importance of a good recruiter comes in. You might think your recruitment process is as slick as possible, with excellent salary and remuneration packages and your company culture is on point, so why aren’t you getting any takers?

The truth is that in the current tight employment market, the best candidates are not few and far between – they’re not even looking.

The ‘war for talent’ is much documented at the moment across many sectors, including finance, as the number of vacancies advertised continue to grow as firms ramp up hiring activity after a tumultuous 12-18 months. And, according to statistics from Broadbean, despite a 20 per cent rise in vacancies advertised in Q1 2021 compared to the last three months of 2020, applications to those roles rose by only 4% in the same period.

Businesses are one again competing for the same, sometimes scarce, pool of talent; some of whom are reluctant to move roles against the backdrop of a pandemic and perceived market uncertainty, and those that do have the confidence, have a whole host of options available to them.

I want to use this article to tell you about the issues facing hiring managers who are looking to recruit Accountants and how managers and recruiters across the country are attempting to remedy the problem.

Changes in Recruiting for Accountants

If you have faced challenges in your search for accomplished and suitable accountancy candidates – you’re not alone. Companies across the board are struggling to attract great accounting talent and are being forced to think outside the box, which has resulted in some unusual candidate attracting methods such as this archived LinkedIn accountancy job advert.

The job vacancy has long since gone, but LinkedIn has kept the advert up as an example of extreme advertising – the specification uses words such as ‘kick-ass’ and ‘misfits’ to describe their ideal candidate – a real deviation from the accountancy job descriptions from the past!

Many other accountancy firms who recruit in-house, as well as accounting recruiters across the board, have overhauled their recruiting process, and it is now the norm to ask prospective accountancy candidates to apply initially via video rather than the standard CV and cover letter – even more so over the past 12 months as video technology utilised in recruitment processes has accelerated.

Gone are the days of simple processes for hiring Accountants – hiring managers and recruiters are having to change their processes dramatically to have a chance of attracting the best Accountants.

Changes in the Industry

Not only are hiring managers struggling to find the number of candidates to provide a comprehensive interview process, huge changes in the accounting industry have left some managers wondering what kind of candidates they should be searching for.

The advent of cloud computing, automation and the millennial-age workforce has meant that the industry is unrecognisable to what it was just a few years ago.

This younger generation of Accountants has changed what it means to be a stand-out accountant. Alongside the quintessential traits such as excellent organisational skills, a true passion for numbers and an obsession with detail; millennial Accountants are active problems solvers, they are creative, and they are not afraid to ask difficult questions.

If your company is seeking to replace a boomer-aged accountant who was methodical, steady and old-school, it can be worrisome when every accounting candidate that you encounter seems completely different.

What companies must remember is not only that change is necessary; it is a good thing. The accountancy candidates that we are seeing coming through the ranks are a new breed – and this can seem scary – but they will bring skills to the accounting role that you didn’t know were missing!

Why Recruiters Are Needed to Find Accounting Talent

As you can see, there is a perfect storm of problems affecting the accounting world currently, with multiple reasons culminating in the inability for companies to find the accounting candidates they are looking for – with financial analysts and reporters, as well as mid-management candidates in highest demand.

How can recruiters help? A general recruiter might not have the network in place to know where the best veteran and upcoming accounting talent is – but a dedicated accountancy recruiter will – it is in this network of passive candidates that the best talent lies.

Not only this, but as accounting recruiters know which kind of candidates have worked, and not worked previously in different firms, we can source talent that a hiring manager alone might not have considered.

If you need help in finding accounting talent for your business, talk to a dedicated accounting recruiter today to discuss your options.

About Clayton Recruitment

Clayton Recruitment has been partnering with organisations across the country since 1989, and during that time has built up an excellent reputation for trust and reliability.

With specialist divisions covering Commercial, Financial, Industrial, and Engineering appointments, on both a permanent and temporary basis. If you are looking for your next career move, we can help. Call us on 01772 259 121 or email us here.

If you would like to download our latest interview checklist, you can do so here.

Is your company paying attention to its employees, as well as your customers?

Your employer brand might be the silent reason between attracting the accountancy candidates you want and being left wondering ‘where are all the great candidates?’

Currently, three in four employers state that they find it hard to fill vacancies. It is a candidate-driven market, and the best candidates invariably flock to the ‘best’ companies.

Your employer brand is a tool which you can use to attract the kind of people who will enrich your company and who will be good for business – so what exactly is an employer brand? And how can you use it to your advantage? This article will show you how.

What Does Your Employer Brand Say About You?

Before you can decide how your employer brand needs to be tweaked (or overhauled), you first need to understand what kind of employer brand you currently have.

When you think of a company – take Google, for example – what is the kind of ethos that you associate with this brand? They’re forward-thinking, have a famous reputation for their incredible workspaces and are at the cutting edge of most software technologies.

What do you think would be the first things that pop into potential candidates’ minds when they think about your company? Do you have a strong market presence? Are you active on social media? What kind of people works for you?

You can create an audit using a variety of sources – ask your current employees to take part in surveys, hold stakeholder interviews with key figures, and send questionnaires to people who have rejected your job offers.

When you have compiled an analysis of your current employer brand, you can start to see where you might like to improve.

Size Up The Competition

In your quest to win the best candidates, your main barrier is your direct competitors.

When you are based in a big city, there can be several firms all competing for the best talent, but over a smaller area, the numbers can get uncomfortably close. You might even personally know the accountants working for other firms – you might have lost out to them previously.

If you have one, or a few, direct competitors (be that geographically or in your sector specialism) how does your firm measure up?

I’m not suggesting you copy mission statements or logos from your competitors, but you can take inspiration from organisations you admire. Has a rival firm recently upped their marketing with physical and online adverts? What are their job descriptions like? These are places where you can take inspiration from.

Create a Plan

Once you have identified the issues with your current employer brand, how would you like these to improve?

If you are attracting X kind of candidates, but you want Y candidates, how can you get these candidates to interact with your business more?

It is here that you can develop your ‘Employer Value Proposition’. Your EVP describes the salary, compensation and benefits that you provide to your employees.

In today’s job market, EVP’s are becoming increasingly competitive. Driven by a younger workforce (millennials are set to make up a third of the global workforce by 2020), employers are increasingly offering health insurance, dental plans, childcare, and health and wellbeing programmes.

Recent research from the United States shows that 80% of employees think that workplace benefits are more important than salary, and it’s a similar picture in the UK too. Get your benefits package right, and the great candidates will follow.

Review your candidate avatar and direct your online presence toward the kind of candidate you want – starting with your online content.

Upgrade Your Online Presence

Updating your online profile is a great way to cultivate your employer brand. Gone are the days of dry finance websites full of blocks of monochrome text.

While accountancy might have once had a reputation for being a sector which operates strictly behind the scenes, this is now changing.

A desire for transparency in all areas of the workplace has meant that companies are now more forthcoming with information which was previously only ‘behind the scenes’. An example of this is CEOs of companies getting involved in online videos that can be shared as advertising – think of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. Twenty years ago we never knew the directors of large multinational companies: now they are never out of the news.

Some of the biggest news stories in the last few years have included accountancy – there is rarely a week where the global financial powers are not in the news.

Adapting your online presence is an easy way of remodelling your employer brand. Most job seekers will now check your website as their first port of call before applying to your firm, and they have certain expectations. They will be looking for active social media accounts, a modern and informative website containing blogs and other forms of content.

Encourage Advocates

Thanks to our hyper-connected world, review culture have made it possible to ‘try before you buy’ for almost anything and everything.

Your current employees should be involved in your employer branding strategy, and this is an opportunity to build the kind of team you want.

LinkedIn is a great way to involve your current employees to act as advocates for your firm.

Use your company’s LinkedIn company page to share articles, give company updates and engage with your staff and other companies whose values align with your own.

A company with a robust online presence with actively engaged employees is a crucial way to impress prospective candidates. Job seekers are far more likely to apply to a company that has provided them with some credible information and can demonstrate a good employee experience.

Remember – you can’t make your employees engage with you on social media, but they are far more likely to if you are providing them with a great employee experience!

About Clayton Recruitment

Clayton Recruitment has been partnering with organisations across the country since 1989 and during that time has built up an excellent reputation for trust and reliability.

With specialist divisions covering Commercial, Financial, Industrial, and Engineering appointments, on both a permanent and temporary basis. If you are looking for your next career move, we can help. Call us on 01772 259 121 or email us here.

If you would like to download our latest interview checklist, you can do so here.

Every company, from the smallest start-up to a multinational organisation, needs an effective development plan.

The phrase ‘development plan’ can mean something different to each company, but in this article, we will set out what we believe are the most critical elements of a company development plan and how it can help drive your business.

What Is a Business Development Plan?

Scott Pollack for Forbes describes a business development plan as “Business development is the creation of long-term value for an organisation from customers, markets, and relationships.”

Does this sound like the kind of development plan you have in place in your organisation? Alternatively, is yours defined as something different?

We have used this definition as we believe it the most encompassing, as many businesses focus too much, or sometimes not at all, in certain areas. It is no good putting all of your efforts into increasing revenue and ignoring your customers or staff, and vice versa. More on this later.

As people often say, you have to know where you are going before you can start a journey, so let’s start here;

Define Your Goal

The lack of a clear goal is often associated with smaller and newer companies who might not know or be sure of their potential, but you might be shocked at the number of larger companies who either don’t have a clear goal or lose sight of their aims along the way.

A goal does not necessarily have to be a purely financial aim; it can be to sell a certain amount of units, have recruited and on-boarded a defined number of new employees, or have moved to new premises by a specific time next year.

Managers in companies, small and large, need to communicate the aims of the business as a whole to those working in their teams. Poor communication or a lack of communication is frequently one of the biggest problems organisations face.

When employees lack an understanding of where the business is heading and what they are looking to achieve, staff can become disengaged and demotivated. As a result, this can impact productivity. Disengaged staff can potentially mean that they decide to pursue their career elsewhere. Retaining staff is something every business should aim to achieve.

Use the 90-Day Action Plan

After deciding on your yearly goals, break these down into smaller segments – 90 days is the most effective amount. The 90-day plan is effective because it is the range in which aspiration and development meet each other perfectly.

Even a year can seem a long time frame to set attainable goals; it can all feel overwhelming. If you want a new product launched by this time next year, then where do you need to be in three months, six months etc.? Research demonstrates that having goals that are nearer to you makes them more achievable.

(Re) Evaluate Your Market

It can be easy for businesses who do well at first or are still sailing on the back of previous successes to become complacent.

Take Phillip Green’s Topshop empire Arcadia, for example. For years his brands were leaders of the high street fashion sector, but earlier this year the company had to be saved from administration by way of a deal with its creditors and landlords.

An industry insider said at the time that the reason the chain came so close to dissolving was that those at the top “sat back and milked the cow”.

The moral from the Arcadia story is that no matter how unsinkable a company can seem, failure to change and evolve with your market and assess what your customers want could be your unravelling.

Whether you have just celebrated your first anniversary, or you are in a managerial role in a company that has been going for 100 years, constant evaluation is needed to keep yourself relevant in your customers’ eyes.

Use KPI’s to Track Progress

You might be thinking, But ‘our organisation does track KPI’s’. The question is, how often do you crunch the numbers? On top of other daily tasks, it can often seem like an unwanted extra job if you don’t have practical software tools to let you analyse the data correctly.

There are many effective programmes you can use to track KPI’s, but if you aren’t monitoring them consistently, the data is essentially meaningless.

Are you monitoring the right KPI’s? How long ago did you last assess which KPI’s are essential to your business and at what level they need to be growing to meet your targets?

We recommend a monthly KPI meeting to re-evaluate these stats.

As mentioned at the start of this article, every good business development plan should aim to give long-term value to the company.

So many businesses think this means increasing revenue and nothing else. Many companies fail to include their staff in their business development plan and see them merely as a tool for their goals, rather than being intrinsically involved.

Find a Recruiter Who Understands Your Business

Staff shortages are affecting every sector in the UK as demand exceeds supply. Many businesses are short-sighted when it comes to recruitment and take the ‘cross that bridge when we come to it’ approach.

As recruiters, we know the value a great recruitment company can add to your business. They don’t merely find staff for you as and when but can work alongside your business on an on-going basis, looking for candidates who would be a good fit for your company and culture.

Including partnering with a recruitment company in your businesses development plan means, you will always have an impressive talent pipeline when you need to;

• Recruit to fill a role as a result of a promotion
• Expand a team

Next Steps

If you would value a conversation about how partnering can work for your company, call one of the Clayton Recruitment Team on 01772 259 121 and let’s have a chat to explore what’s possible.

About Clayton Recruitment

Clayton Recruitment has been partnering with organisations across the country since 1989 and during that time has built up an enviable reputation for trust and reliability.

With specialist divisions covering Commercial, Financial, Industrial, and Engineering appointments, on both a permanent and temporary basis. If you are looking for your next career move, we can help. Call us on 01772 259 121 or email us here.

If you would like to download our latest interview checklist, you can do so here.

Does it feel like your company is forever going back to the drawing board in attempting to fill vacancies? Many companies wildly underestimate both the time and the cost of recruiting the wrong candidates again and again. At Clayton Recruitment we are experts at finding the right candidates for the right clients, and we can easily spot the mistakes companies continue to make in their hiring process.

In this article we share five of the most common big mistakes we see hiring managers make in hiring the wrong talent.

1. Hiring On Your ‘Gut Feeling’

There can be a lot to say for basing decisions on ‘gut feeling’ and it isn’t the panacea we sometimes think. Yes, hiring managers need to be interested in people, but they must also look beyond the shiny exterior candidates often present to them. Candidates can often be over, or under friendly on the day of the interview, as is familiar with nerves.

A skilled interviewer can see past the veneer and ask relevant questions that dig deeper to reveal what a person is like beyond what they are presenting.

If your hiring manager has a tendency towards one particular type of person (we all do, we’re all human) this can sway them one way or another, but they should be mindful of what will be good for the business as a whole, not just who they think they will get on best with.

2. Rushing the Process

We are currently in the lowest period of unemployment we have seen for 40 years. While this is excellent news for candidates, it means that many companies are struggling to recruit not just the right candidates but any candidates at all.

As a result many employers are taking what they can get – literally, even if they know straight away that this person is not right for the job or the business. The cost of hiring someone because there is a vacancy that needs filling urgently only accentuates the problem.

When the candidate doesn’t work out, it means investing more money on advertising the position as well as hr and the hiring managers time to go through the whole recruiting process again.

We understand that it might seem like the logical thing to do at the time, but it really is detrimental to your company in the long run, costing more money and time overall.

Hold off for the right candidate and you will not end up paying twice for the privilege.

3. Taking Too Long

One of the biggest mistakes hiring managers make in their process is taking too long to get back to interested candidates. The Balance report that the average time to hire is around 38 days – this is far too long considering the shortage of candidates in many sectors.

A job-seeker will probably have applied to a handful of positions in their initial job search – can you afford to be the last company that gets back to them? If you have legitimate reasons for taking more than a couple of weeks to get back to candidates, tell them there will be a delay.
Candidates appreciate honesty, and it stops them from wondering if they have been rejected without so much as a callback. They might be setting up more interviews in the time you are taking to reply, and are likely to accept an offer from a responsive employer.

Lack of communication is a problem which is so easy to solve, yet it can be so costly if done wrong.

4. Searching For a Unicorn

You want the very best candidate for the job, we understand. But is your search for a specific person and their talents causing you to reject hidden gems?

You might be delaying your search for a person that doesn’t exist. In recruiting we refer to these candidates as ‘unicorns’, and a hiring manager’s fixation on finding one could be to your company’s detriment.

If you haven’t captured the exact candidate that you want, take a look at the soft skills of the ones who have applied. Have any of the candidates got a strong track record of turning their hand at a variety of skills? Are they exceedingly bright?

A proven track record of the skills you desire might be your first choice, but in the skills-short job market we are currently in, now is the time to start looking to develop talent rather than pluck it out of the hiring process.

5. Ignoring Company Culture

Each time you have a vacancy that needs filling, this is a new opportunity for you to shape your company culture in the way you want. One of the main reasons people cite when deciding to leave their job is their relationship with co-workers. Do you have a harmonious workplace where everyone respects each other and gets along? Or are there often issues and disagreements?

If you are interviewing a candidate and they have a perfect set of skills, but they clearly would not get along with the rest of the staff, are they the best hire for the job?

Are you a hiring manager struggling to identify the best talent for your company? Clayton Recruitment is a trusted expert with 30 years of experience in the field. Get in touch with us today to take the stress out of boxing-off those hard-to-fill positions.

About Clayton Recruitment

Clayton Recruitment has been partnering with organisations across the country since 1989 and during that time has built up an enviable reputation for trust and reliability.

With specialist divisions covering Commercial, Financial, Industrial, and Engineering appointments, on both a permanent and temporary basis. If you are looking for your next career move, we can help. Call us on 01772 259 121 or email us here.

If you would like to download our latest interview checklist, you can do so here.

In today’s hyper-connected world, every company has a reputation, whether they actively cultivate it or not.

In a similar way that a commercial brand can affect the way a consumer feels about you, so too can your employer brand impact a candidate’s decision on whether to work with your company. That’s why leaders across every sector are now investing more time and money into effective employer branding exercises.

For example, your employer brand image can play a key role in getting the right kind of candidates for your organisation. The best candidates will naturally gravitate towards organisations that put their best face forward both online, and offline.

So, how can you create an employer brand that attracts the talent that’s right for your company?

1. Evaluate Your Current Reputation

Before you can begin making changes to your employer brand, you need to know where you stand. A survey or poll of key employees can help you build a foundation for your future employer brand.

Finding out what your current staff think about your organisation will help you identify the gap between where you are and where you want your employer brand to be.

2. Personalise Employee Experiences

You’ll also want to establish your Employer Value Proposition, by determining what you (can) offer your team that no-one else in your industry does.

In order to stay competitive, finance companies need to offer their employees an employment experience unlike any other. The key to attracting the best talent is being able to demonstrate that you have a healthy company culture and that you understand and accommodate modern needs.

For instance, as well as offering exceptional support and development opportunities to your employees, you can also promote work/life balance through remote-working or flexible scheduling and offer employee wellness programmes that include family days and partner events.

Find what makes you unique to the specific types of talent you want to attract, then keep those features in mind when you start working with a specialist recruitment agency.

3. Celebrate (And Market) Your Company Culture

Make sure that you’re continually demonstrating your value to top-tier talent.

Today’s professionals begin the search for the ideal position online. If you’re looking for a great accountant for your team, then you need to make sure you’re posting ads on all of your social media channels as well as the specialist job listing sites where prospective finance professionals are looking.

In addition to your presence on social media, your website also needs to be packed full of useful information about what your business does for both employees, and the industry overall. At the same time, your recruitment agency can help you to develop job specifications that highlight the most attractive parts of working for your company.

Though a great listing is a great way to inspire top-performing talent, showcasing your company culture doesn’t have to stop there. Demonstrate what applicants can expect when they come to you by publishing blog posts, recording videos to share on social media, and generating case studies about your recent projects.

The more information you make available to your candidates, the more confident they’ll feel applying for your position.

4. Develop an Advocacy Programme

If you’re hoping to use your online presence to share information about your employer brand with possible future recruits, then the best things you can do to showcase your value is through your existing employees.

Advocates among your staff can share stories about their experiences with your company in videos, case studies, review websites like Glassdoor, and across your organisation’s social media platforms. This primarily involves asking your existing staff to share their thoughts, opinions, and experiences related to working for you with their social networks.

Advocacy is a powerful way of building your brand because the words of your team are far more believable than the messages your business creates to attract new talent. Therefore, make it as easy as possible for people to join your advocacy programme and offer rewards for the professionals who get involved.

5. Make the Hiring Experience Count

In our highly-connected social world, it’s important to make sure that the conversations you inspire are as positive as possible. This means that every aspect of your recruitment process, from your job specs to your hiring interviews and onboarding process, must support your image.

While a specialist recruiter like Clayton Recruitment can make it easier for you to track down the perfect candidates for your team, it’s up to you to convince the talent you speak to that they should want to work for you. Personalise the questions you ask potential hires according to the roles they’ve applied for, and make sure that they know how you’ll be keeping in touch with them when the interview is over.

Once you’ve brought someone new into your company, make sure that you nurture the relationship you’ve begun to build by offering plenty of clear communication and recognition. Providing a stress-free onboarding process with regular feedback will improve morale within your company while motivating your employees to continuously give their best work.

6. Ask for Feedback and Adapt

If you want to know how you can convince a new fees administrator or purchasing coordinator to join your team, why not simply ask for guidance from an existing professional on your staff? If you can figure out what compels your most valuable hires to stick with your brand, then you can draw more attention to those features the next time you advertise a role, or conduct an interview.

Avoid the mistake of not listening to your team; asking for feedback doesn’t necessarily mean listening to all the good things your employees have to say about your business and ignoring the rest. Consider sending out surveys to find out more about what’s working well for your company, and what you might need to change.

While it’s a good idea to stick to your core values and vision, it’s always important to be flexible if it means attracting the best skills for your team. Maybe you need to give your finance professionals more options for remote working, or invest in new tools for your engineers? A simple change can make a big difference.

7. Monitor Your Reputation

The most important thing you can understand about your employer brand is that it will continue to change and grow with time – regardless of whether you’re refining it or not.

Employer brands are organic things. They require frequent attention to ensure that they don’t veer off in the wrong direction. The best companies know how to manage the perceptions they build around their business as it grows, carefully monitoring their reputation on everything from social media to satisfaction surveys.

There are always going to be people out there talking about your company, and being aware of the conversation ensures that you can start to steer it in the right direction. Failing to monitor your efforts may mean that you miss out on some of the best talent on the market the next time you need to fill a gap in your team.

Maintaining a great employer brand takes a lot of effort and focus, but it can be the key to building a high-performing team.

About Clayton Recruitment

Clayton Recruitment has been partnering with organisations across the country since 1989 and during that time has built up an enviable reputation for trust and reliability.

With specialist divisions covering Commercial, Financial, Industrial, and Engineering appointments, on both a permanent and temporary basis. If you are looking for your next career move, we can help. Call us on 01772 259 121 or email us here.

If you would like to download our latest interview checklist, you can do so here.

Business can often be very fast-paced and demanding, but that doesn’t mean you have to neglect the wellbeing of your employees. A stressed employee is often an unproductive employee, which can ultimately hurt your company’s bottom line.

There’s a growing body of research that confirms the link between employee happiness and workplace productivity. For example, a recent study at the University of Warwick revealed that happy employees work harder and are 12% more productive and motivated than those who are unhappy or stressed.

Workplace stress can often be alleviated simply by providing opportunities to fulfil basic human needs. In addition to being less stressed, employees who feel their needs are being met in the workplace, feel more comfortable, confident, and motivated to work productively.

Here are five simple practices that will help foster a stress-free culture in your company.

1. Develop a Wellness Programme

This is something Japanese businesses have known for some time: the company that exercises together, stays together. Working out as an office will not only build camaraderie; research shows that daily exercise out can be extremely effective in lowering stress.

Whether it’s a lunchtime yoga class or an office sports team, your company’s exercise can take many different forms. You could even arrange to have monthly matches against other companies – imagine competing in a football match against your leading business competitor! Working together to achieve a common goal on the field will translate to having a high-performing team in the office. It’s also a great way for people to get to know everyone in the company better.

In addition to providing opportunities for group exercise, you could bring in a wellness coach to speak to staff on ways they can fit daily workouts and proper nutrition into their busy professional lives. Having a healthy diet and regular physical exercise will not only reduce work-related stress; it will also lead to clearer and more creative thinking.

2. Mentor Young Talent

Research shows that employees who benefit from mentoring programmes have higher job satisfaction, which often correlates to increased productivity and reduced turnover. Frustration and stress over not knowing how to correctly do a job are some of the leading causes of turnover for many organisations; therefore, providing new talent with the scaffolding and feedback necessary to carry out their work correctly and effectively will increase both workplace efficiency and retention.

So, if you’ve recently hired an assistant accountant, it’s crucial to ensure that a more experienced member of your accounting team will be assigned to answer any questions they might have about using the SAGE 200 software your company just purchased.

Workplace mentoring programmes not only help new employees learn the ropes; they also help them to build strong professional relationships with senior members of staff. In addition to helping them perform more effectively, mentorships also give younger new team members a sense of belonging and worth.

3. Encourage Open Communication & Employee Feedback

Ineffective communication is one of the leading causes of workplace stress and discontent. One of the best ways to reduce anxiety in the workplace is to improve employer to employee communication channels as well as encouraging open communication between all team members. This will help to ensure that all employees are clear on their purpose and what their role is in the company’s shared vision, which will facilitate a reduction in work-related stress.

Another great way to help improve workplace culture and reduce stress is by implementing an employee feedback system, where all employees can provide feedback to your company’s leadership team. An employee feedback system will give your employees a sense of importance, allowing them to feel understood by giving them an outlet to voice their opinions and concerns.

4. Focus On Work-Life Balance

The secret behind many highly successful companies is their promotion of work-life balance. In addition to encouraging staff to make the most of their personal time, there are many things your business can do to promote a healthier work-life balance amongst your team.

You could adopt a flexible schedule, allowing employees to start/end work an hour or two later when needed. In addition to this, you could also implement a work-from-home scheme, where employees might be eligible to occasionally work at home in certain circumstances. You could even promote digital downtime by encouraging staff to go for a walk at lunchtime and take ‘digital breaks’.

Allowing employees to take time off when they’re feeling burnt out — or encouraging them to work from home when appropriate — can make a big difference in the health and satisfaction of your team. For instance, if your PA needs to stay at home during the week to look after a sick child, allowing her the option to answer emails and manage your schedule from home will help to reduce her stress while making her feel valued and appreciated.

5. Recognise and Reward Employee Achievements

Employees appreciate sincere and specific recognition of their contributions and achievements. Effectively recognising your team members will not only increase their sense of belonging in your company, but it will also simultaneously reduce any work-related anxiety while increasing their commitment to their role, resulting in a happier and more productive employee.

However, it’s important that employee rewards are not forced or seem contrived. While there are many ways you could show your appreciation, it’s crucial to ensure that your acknowledgements do not become expectations or entitlements. Each recognition should be tailored to the individual employee and the nature of their contribution.

Implementing an employee recognition programme that effectively rewards the successes of your staff, will not only help you to reduce stress and engage your employees, it will also work to attract the top talent you want in your company.

About Clayton Recruitment

Clayton Recruitment has been partnering with organisations across the country since 1989 and during that time has built up an enviable reputation for trust and reliability.

With specialist divisions covering Commercial, Financial, Industrial, and Engineering appointments, on both a permanent and temporary basis. If you are looking for your next career move, we can help. Call us on 01772 259 121 or email us here.

If you would like to download our latest interview checklist, you can do so here.

Every company wants a team that performs well and critically delivers the results the organisation needs. Identifying, hiring, engaging and developing these individuals isn’t as easy as it looks.

Working with different personalities, agendas, and abilities to develop into a single unit devoted towards a specific goal is a task that requires exceptional focus.

So, when you want to build the most productive team for your commercial business, here’s where to start.

1. Decide On The ‘Ingredients’ You Need

In some circles, people call this finding the fit in other words matching roles to requirements. If your department has lots of team members, they will all have specific tasks that they are responsible for. It’s not uncommon that one or two key hires might be missing which leaves a gap in your teams’ capability.

This might seem logical and yet it’s not uncommon for some firms to limp along wondering why everything seems a struggle. When it might be that they need a customer service advisor, or a project manager to ensure everything is working like clockwork.

This needs to be your first start to ensure you have all the right ‘cogs’ in place to enable the engine to work effectively’. Depending on your growth plans you might be able to develop someone from another part of the business or more likely recruit someone into a specific role you create. This is where a recruiter versed in your sector can help.

2. Shared Goals

The goals your team have as an objective need to be clear. If your team doesn’t have a joint mission, then they’re just people working together.

Focused goals connect people as a unit, through passion and understanding. If you have multiple results in mind, then link them to objectives and priorities so that all the members of your team can begin to map their way towards success.

3. Set Clear Expectations

Research suggests that only about half of most teams at work understand clearly what is expected of them. If you want to develop a high-performing team in your organisation, then make your expectations clear from the beginning.

Whether you’re onboarding new hires or bringing internal employees together to work on a specific project, make sure that you highlight clear requirements during your first conversation with each person.

4. Be a Leader and Lead

You’ve heard the term “practice what you preach”, and that phrase fits perfectly into the professional world of business growth. Beyond any high-performing employee, is a confident leader. Think about how you can support your staff and guide them on your joint success journey.

A highly-engaged leader can increase engagement by 39% according to this CIPD report.

Considering this it’s then necessary too:

• Focus on building commitment and trust
• Be solution rather than problem orientated
• Provide opportunities for all team members to achieve
• Be accountable

No matter how skilled and adept your team members might be, there’s always a risk that they’ll run into a challenge or two on the road to success. The difference between most staff and high-performing groups is that the latter know which strategies to use, and which techniques to access to overcome these hurdles.

To reduce your risk of having to deal with constant problems or issues with productivity, set up a few established guidelines for what your people must do if they face a challenge with their work.

5. Provide Coaching and Feedback

The only way for a team member to know whether they’re performing well in their role is to receive consistent coaching and feedback from you, their leader.

Communicating with your employees can help them to understand what they need to do to improve their performance.

If a team is underperforming, it generally boils down to a few key things. It might be the wrong person in the wrong role or more likely an employee that needs coaching guidance and support.

People want to be successful they don’t want to fail. All they need is feedback and guidance. Deploy this strategy, and you will be amazed how quickly your results start to change.

6. Actively Appreciate Your Team

Finally, as human beings, we are happiest when we feel appreciated and recognised at work. The research department at Warwick University conducted a study to validate that happy employees are more productive. No surprises that the answer came out that the two are closely linked.

That being the case how can you appreciate your team? As I write this post, we are gripped by snow across the country. Maybe it’s hot chocolate all round or finishing an hour early.

Alternatively, how about a good old fashioned; ‘thank you, Amanda, I appreciate what you have done for the team this week.’

While creating a high performing team might not be a simple process, it is an incredible way to improve the profitability and potential of your company. If you can unite and empower your staff, then you can achieve anything.

About Clayton Recruitment

Clayton Recruitment has been partnering with organisations across the country since 1989 and during that time has built up an enviable reputation for trust and reliability.

With specialist divisions covering Commercial, Financial, Industrial, and Engineering appointments, on both a permanent and temporary basis. If you are building your team or looking for your next career move, we can help. Call us on 01772 259 121 or

If you would like to know even more about building a high performing team this year you can download our latest guide here.