You have interviewed the perfect match and you want to be sure that the offer you put in front of the candidate is tempting enough for them to bite the first time. How can you be sure that they’re as enthusiastic as you are? When you’ve worked so hard to recruit the ideal candidate you want to get them into the role without delay.

This guide gives you the lowdown on putting the right offer together handling the offer stage efficiently, effectively, ending with you employing the very best talent for your business.

Communication

According to research carried out by CareerArc, 60% of candidates think that better employer communication would improve their experience. Don’t leave your candidates guessing what might happen: explain the next steps at the interview stage, manage their expectations and ensure that if you say you will follow up by a certain date, you do – even if it’s just to say that there’s no decision yet.

When you’re ready to make an offer, a phone call will give you another chance to speak with the candidate and gauge their interest level. If they seem pleased and verbally accept an offer of employment, you can feel reassured that it’s the right time to make a written offer.

Speed

As with communication, the speed with which an offer is made affects the employee experience. And even if you decide not to make an offer, let the candidates who interviewed know. CareerArc also found that those who never heard about a job were three and a half times less likely to apply to that business again. A week allows time to consider your options, two weeks might see the candidate starting to lose interest.

It’s also a good idea to stipulate how long the offer of employment stands for. Seven days is usual, although you may wish to adjust this as per your company’s circumstances. If a candidate hasn’t accepted within a week, it could well signal that they weren’t quite as bought in as you’d hoped.

Use employer branding to your advantage

Treat your employees – and potential employees – as you would your clients. Demonstrate why it’s so good to work with you and what other employees have gained, both professionally and personally, from working for your business. Not only will a strong employer brand attract candidates to you, it’ll encourage them to accept your offer, and it will also help to retain them once they come on board. Check out our extensive guide for more on employer branding and why it’s so important.

Avoid the minefield of counter offers

You’ve found an outstanding candidate, made an offer and are eagerly awaiting them to return their signed contract. What you get in return is a counter offer. Maybe the candidate has had more money offered by their current employer or a competitor. Maybe they’re requesting a more extensive benefits package. Counter offers aren’t the end of the world and can be very revealing about what motivates the candidate you’re interested in.

But don’t get drawn into a bidding war. You may win the battle, although candidate indecision raises a red flag, and if they are playing off two parties for their own gain it begs the question as to whether they’re the kind of team player you want in your business. A trusted recruitment partner will be able to screen candidates for motive initially, which will help to avoid a counter-offer situation and make a first initial successful offer considering all motivations.

Non-starters

It’s frustrating, although keep it in perspective and remember that life happens. Give the benefit of the doubt to the candidate and – maddening though it may be – resist the urge to go in guns blazing if someone doesn’t show as there may be a simple explanation. And keep your employer brand in mind: if the candidate has a bad experience they’ll tell their network and that might make recruitment difficult in future.

The best offer

All stages of the recruitment process require careful thought and planning, and none more so than the offers stage. This crucial final hurdle to placing the right candidate decides the success of the whole operation.

If you’re in need of some support in navigating this – or any – stage of your recruitment process why not contact Clayton Recruitment, either online using our call scheduling service or contact form.

Alternatively, you can phone us on 01772 259 121 – we’d be happy to help you seal the deal with promising candidates.

And if you do find yourself in the position of having to deal with a counter offer, you may find our blog ‘How to handle a counter offer situation’ helpful.

You may also like to download our latest report on trends in recruitment: The 7 critical recruitment trends for businesses that will impact your talent pipeline in 2019.

Long-winded, time-consuming and hard work; if any of those words spring to mind when you hear the phrase ‘interview process’, you’ll be relieved to know that there is a better way.

An interview checklist streamlines the process – whether you’re hiring managerial or support staff, a clear process and list of requirements ensure you take on the best candidates for your business.

Because it’s not just how the candidate performs in the face-to-face interview that matters. HR Departments and recruiters need to prepare too. According to Leadership IQ, 46% of hires fail within the first eighteen months, with ‘poor interpersonal skills’ rather than technical ability being the main reason. It’s clear then that interviewers have a lot more than just qualifications to consider when interviewing potential employees.
From the very start of the process to the end, an interview checklist will prepare your company and recruiter, help you ask the right questions at interview and make the right decision. We’ve broken down the ‘interview process’ into three steps to success: preparation, the interview itself, and decision making.

Preliminaries/Preparation

Successfully hiring the right team member requires preparation. There are two prongs to this:

• Timings – Don’t try and rush the process as you will increase the risk of making a hasty decision. Ensure that the timings of the interviews work for all involved in the hiring process and leave enough time for note comparison and decision making.

• Communication – Make sure there is a good two-way flow of information with your recruiter, whether they are in-house or external. Establish how information about candidates will be passed to the business – and how often. Too infrequently and you may miss out on candidates, too regularly and it may be too piecemeal.

• Pareto Principle – The Pareto Principle is the idea that 80% of possible effects will come from 20% of the possible causes. Also known as the 80/20 rule, the Pareto Principle can be applied to interviewing, with the candidate speaking for 80% of the time and the interviewer for 20% of the time. This allows the candidate to answer questions fully, which helps give a better insight into suitability for the role.

The interview

An effective interview process will help those candidates that fit your criteria to shine and will reveal those that are not such a good match. However, it can only be effective if careful thought has been given beforehand to what’s required of the successful candidate. Think also about the interview format and additional requirements. For example, a business presentation is a popular requirement for candidates to prep for an interview. A word of warning – think about what these requirements are for and what they will reveal about potential staff, before getting bogged down in interview ‘extras’.

Decide what you’re assessing at the interview stage(s) ahead of time: hands-on skills and knowledge, fit, or potential for development if hiring someone in an apprenticeship or training capacity for instance.

Before the interview, look over the CV and note any areas you want to ask about. For example, gaps, achievements and why the candidate is moving. Notice how the candidate talks about their current employer; any unprofessional comments are likely to be a warning signal.

On the day, ask some initial questions to build rapport. This will paint a fuller impression of the individual than is provided by their CV. Enquire about their experience; the more demanding and senior the role, the more detailed the questions. Be clear amongst colleagues and recruiters what skills are ‘nice to have’ and what’s ‘need to have’ – check these off throughout the interview.

Competency-based interview questions give the candidate a chance to answer fully, helping to keep the interview in line with the Pareto Principle. Here are some example questions and responses:

“Tell me about your most difficult work experience? How did you approach it? What was the outcome?”

Listen out for positive action and problem solving – maybe the candidate enlisted help or used their experience to work around the issue. Even if the outcome was not successful, observe whether the candidate maintained a positive attitude or learnt anything.

“Give me an example of where you have had to handle a difficult situation? What was the background? What did you do? How did they react?”

A candidate that vents about the customer is a big red flag. When they are explaining the background look for clues that the candidate can see things from another’s perspective. Positive action and an ability to diffuse a situation are good signs.

“Give me an example of when you had to work to an important deadline? How did you ensure your deadline was met?”

This provides insight into how a candidate copes under pressure, as well as their organisation and time management skills. The reply ‘I was up until 4 a.m.’ might sound dedicated on the face of things but doesn’t suggest good organisational skills.

Finally, asking a candidate about their career aspirations and progression gives you an idea of how they see themselves in your business. An assured answer also demonstrates that the candidate has a clear vision for their own progression – and this clarity of vision could be beneficial to your company too.

The aftermath

Space for reflective thought is important, and it’s a good idea to take some time to compare notes with colleagues and your recruiter. Wait until you’ve seen all of the candidates before jumping to any conclusions – if interviewee number two impressed you and swung your vote, that’s great. But what if the last person on the list is even more suitable?

Finally, relaying the information to candidates – and being able to make a swift offer once the decision has been made – is the last piece of the puzzle. Decide what the process will be for feedback to unsuccessful candidates – and who will deliver it. And once you’ve reached the end of your checklist and are ready to say a resounding ‘yes’ to one lucky candidate, who is the best person to make the offer? Your recruiter will be able to help, although it may be more personable coming from the company.

Working through a process before, during and after will ensure the interview goes smoothly and provides the result you’re looking for. Our interview checklist is full of tips to help you add another effective team player to your business. Click here to contact us or call 01772 259 121 to request your free copy.

And if you enjoyed this blog, you may also like to read our blogs on ‘8 steps to successfully recruiting new staff’ and ‘How to shortlist candidates effectively and efficiently’. Don’t forget you can register a vacancy with us online or give us a call to see if we can assist.

Senior workers are often given short shrift in the working world. Many are seen as technophobes, grumps and various other redundant and generally untrue stereotypes. However, we believe employers should be doing much more to value the silver end of the workforce, and here’s why.

The most powerful position in the world has been filled by 72 year old Donald Trump since January 2017. That’s not to mention in this country where the leader of the Labour party, Jeremy Corbyn is 67 and the Queen is 90. In the business world the likes of Warren Buffett make a mockery of the idea that senior professionals can’t be effective and with people likely to live considerably longer in the future it makes sense for firms to take advantage of these skills much more than they currently do.

One of the reasons is that, naturally, senior professionals will have considerably more experience than the rest of the workforce. This means that they’re highly valuable assets to have on board because they’ll have a stronger understanding of the long term effects of specific actions. Rather than thinking in the short term, older workers are likely to think more strategically and over a longer timeframe. As we all know, diversity can be the key to business success and having these different perspectives in your team can be immensely valuable. Experience also brings a wider network and older employees are likely to have built up a greater array of potentially useful business contacts than a more junior professional.

Another major factor is loyalty. While it may sound like a sweeping generalisation, it’s very often true. Younger generations tend to job hop – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing – more regularly than their predecessors, while senior professionals are more likely to be loyal to their employer, if you treat them well that is. Part of this stems from the fact that they’re much more likely to have a clearer idea of what they want from a job, rather than eyeing up their next potential opportunity. In fact, a report published by BLS (Bureau of Labour Statistics) found that the average tenure at a specific organisation was considerably higher (10.2 years) for older professionals, than it was for younger employees.

More organisations should also channel the experience held by these professionals to mentor other employees, particularly in communications skills. Older workers will have been around at time when we people communicated face-to-face considerably more than they do now where e-mails, texting, social media and apps like WhatsApp are common place, even in the working wold. They’ve therefore generally got much more advanced communications skills which are essential in the business world, even today.

What attributes do you believe older workers can bring to an organisation? Share your thoughts with us below.

Call the office on 01772 259121 for some expert advice or read our other blogs here.

Commercial talent; often it feels as though there isn’t any! And it’s not just a feeling either; in January, the British Chamber of Commerce published findings that skills shortages in both service and manufacturing industries were reaching ‘critical levels’. The headlines make for sobering reading, although it’s not all doom and gloom. Businesses can take specific steps to give themselves a much better chance of attracting, and retaining, the very best talent: a strong employer brand and a reliable recruitment partner could make the difference your company needs.

Building a brand: need to know

If asked to name a famous brand, there’s probably half a dozen or more that you could name off the top of your head. We’ve all heard of consumer brands like Coca-Cola, but what about employer brands?

An employer brand should be to your potential employees what your market branding is to the people that buy your products and services. It should be appealing and should essentially portray your business as a desirable place to work – as it is, no doubt. An employer brand might showcase the following aspects of your company:

• Success stories – what kind of achievements have your staff made since working in your company?
• Culture – is it work hard, play hard, or do you encourage staff to pursue a healthy work/life balance?
• Quality of work – is the work varied, challenging and interesting?
• Training and development – what opportunities are there to enhance skills, and how might a candidate grow their career with you?
• Benefits – apart from salary and financial reward, what are the benefits of working for your business over and above another?

Reassurance

Post-recession and post-Brexit, those on the lookout for a new job want to know that the company they decide to work for is a solid investment of their professional time and skills. Businesses need to reassure potential candidates that their prospects are good and that the company offers a good fit in terms of values.

A strong employer brand shouldn’t just work to attract new talent, it should help to retain existing talent. In fact, one of the most effective ways to devise a strategy for creating an employer brand is to communicate with your existing staff. Find out what motivates them, what they would like to see more or less of, and how their experience could be improved upon and you’ll have a good idea of what potential employees are looking for.

Getting the right support for your employer brand

Having an employer brand is valuable and should pay dividends in the long term. A great employer brand, however, takes time to create, establish and maintain. And all the while the war for talent rages on. The very best talent work hard and it’s hard work to attract them to your company too!

A recruitment partner that works in the background while you concentrate on your own brand-building activity can be incredibly beneficial. An established recruitment agency will already have their own brand and a good reputation, which reflects well on your business and provides reassurance to the candidate. What’s more, a recruitment agency, especially one with a broad spectrum of commercial experience, will have their ear to the ground and be able to keep you informed of candidate feedback and motivations to be aware of when establishing and maintaining an employer brand.

Not just a helping hand

Clayton Recruitment’s regional analysis of recruitment trends in the North West found that vacancies are on the increase across all industries from commercial finance to logistics: it doesn’t appear that the skills shortage will be coming to an end any time soon. The benefit of working with a recruitment partner is that while you’re busy building up your employer brand, the agent can access their existing pool of talent to find you the best candidate.

An agency that understands and has plenty of experience in commercial recruitment is key too. They can use their extensive and wide-ranging sector knowledge to filter out the very best talent that matches up with your needs. And while the skills shortage isn’t likely to disappear overnight, it can take a weight off your shoulders knowing that a professional is handling your company’s recruitment.

If you’re thinking of creating an employer brand or think that your existing brand needs re-developing, then why not get in touch with Clayton Recruitment? We’d be happy to chat about employer branding or help with finding the best talent for your business.

If you’d like to find out more about building an Employer Brand, please download our guide here.

If you’d like to find out more about the benefits of using a specialised recruitment company, have a look at our blog on how to get the best out of your recruitment company.

It’s no secret that businesses want to recruit the best talent. The right skills combined with several years of industry experience is invaluable; a suitable candidate makes a big difference not only to the quality of work but the bottom line too. Yet many businesses are struggling to recruit individuals that have the necessary experience or the relevant skills – and just the right combination of the two. Skills shortages, tough competition and an unstable political and economic climate combine to make the recruitment market extremely tough across all industries – though not impossible with the right help.

Why experience matters

In any industry or line of work the more time someone has spent carrying out tasks successfully, the less supervision they will require and the more effective they will be. Once an individual has three, five or ten years’ experience under their belt they will have encountered many different scenarios, have experience handling clients and varying workloads. At this point the employee may become more useful generally to the employer, as they start to think about developing their career in terms of management or specialising in a certain area that delivers a competitive advantage.

And it’s not just well-honed practical skills that form the backbone of experience. Take the engineering sector; EngineeringUK reports that annually the UK is ‘at least’ 20,000 short of the graduates required to fill engineering posts. The chronic skills shortage is a difficult hurdle for many different businesses to overcome yet it may not be as simple as hiring someone with a degree. Speaking to Director magazine Helen Atkinson, engineering professor at the University of Leicester, says that recent graduates often lack the commercial know-how that is the sum of technical ability and knowledge of how businesses stay profitable.

Experience delivers on the bottom line: businesses need well-rounded candidates that are capable, commercially savvy and have seen most it before. And once they have them, they need to hold on to them.

The three-year itch

Once an employee reaches a point where they are trained and they have some relevant industry experience they become a valuable asset, hence the reason why it’s so difficult to recruit candidates at this stage of their career. The business that spent time and money training the individual is faced with the prospect that they may jump ship, taking valuable knowledge and experience with them. It’s in the company’s best interests to keep hold of those individuals and retain those valuable skills. Simultaneously, they need to attract more staff at that crucial stage of their career in order to keep growing – and competition is high.

Competition isn’t just rife from other businesses within comparable industries, it’s an issue facing all industries. The IT sector is a good example of this: as technology changes and develops the need for people with those skills increases. An IT expert isn’t just needed at Microsoft or IBM, they are potentially needed by any industry or by any company that employs its own IT personnel and requires those skills. So now the competition doesn’t just come from Hewlett Packard or Dell, it could come from the banking and finance industry, healthcare, retail – anywhere.

If a candidate feels tempted by an offer elsewhere there needs to be good incentives for them to stay. Globalisation is another key factor in competition for candidates. An increasingly connected world brings new opportunities for work as well as potential overseas employment that may prove tempting. If businesses are to remain competitive it’s essential that they attract and retain employees that are highly desirable to other businesses both in the UK and abroad.

How to beat the competition and recruit the best candidates?

Recruitment can be a stressful affair at the best of times and especially so in the midst of a skills shortage. Posting an ad on job board or the company website can feel like sifting through an awful lot of sand to find a small amount of gold. It’s time-consuming and takes the focus off running the business, winning new work and delivering existing work. This is where a recruitment agency can really prove its worth.

A reputable, experienced agency will have an extensive network of contacts and a large database of potential candidates at their disposal which can save a lot of recruitment legwork. Any agency worth their salt will have developed good relationships with their candidates and will be able to act as an effective, trustworthy middleman between the two parties.

While there is no magic solution, by being alert to issues surrounding competition and retention companies stand a better chance of attracting skilled, experienced individuals. A professional recruitment partner doesn’t just present a list of the best candidates, they can offer advice on how best to retain them: an investment that pays dividends now and in the future.

If you found this blog interesting, check out our other blog on Where’s all the talent gone?.  Furthermore, contact our team to speak about your recruiting needs, call 01772 259 121.

You place an ad with a recruitment agency, excited to see who will apply and what the crop of candidates will bring. Your business has a great reputation, an attractive benefits package and you offer a generous salary, so why aren’t quality candidates queuing up for an interview?

It’s a familiar story. Plenty of undergraduates show an interest in degrees such as engineering, design, and media, to name but a few. And while the number of students applying for higher education courses are down by 5% according to UCAS, the figure still stands at over half a million. While the numbers appear healthy at first glance, the reality is that businesses in an array of industries are struggling to keep pace with changing demands, and to find the candidates to meet those demands.

What does a talent shortage mean for business?

A lack of talent can sometimes feel like something of a vicious circle for businesses. Training a new staff member or apprentice from scratch incurs costs: the cost of recruiting them in the first place, not to mention the time and money put into expanding their knowledge, skills and experience.

Then there’s the fear that the individual will leave, taking all of that know-how with them, and resulting in further costs as the recruitment and training cycle begins again. And yet if companies don’t have the people to do the job, they’re unable to meet client demands and their bottom line suffers. It’s a catch-22 situation which puts businesses under pressure to retain existing talent and attract new talent from a shrinking pool.

Businesses must take action to remain competitive

When it comes to attracting and retaining talent, investment and training are vital. Whatever sector you work in, technology offers new ways of doing things that simply didn’t exist five years ago: from health and social care to aerospace engineering, technology is playing an increasingly important role in the workplace. If companies don’t move forward by investing in new technologies, they risk alienating candidates that are keen to be at the forefront of developing new processes and innovation.

Alongside investment in best practice for the future, training is another key factor in offering a competitive edge to candidates. If there are no opportunities to grow and develop it’s unlikely that the top-quality candidates will be keen to invest their time in your business. Demonstrating that there are clear progression paths and supporting staff to find better ways of doing things shows that you’re forward thinking, client-centered and interested in being – and employing – the best.
A skills shortage puts businesses in a difficult situation, as industry-specific skills only come from working in industry. Of course, businesses will always want to attract those who already possess those skills, and it can be frustrating having to develop staff when you need them to have the skills now. As time moves on and client demands change so too must the skills offered by business: flexibility is key. It’s important for businesses not to fall into the trap of thinking that recruiting new staff will always solve their current problems; the responsibility also lies with the business itself to train and bring on the next wave of leaders and experts.

The most important factor for businesses

With ways of working changing faster than they have in decades and technological advances continuing apace, flexibility is the defining characteristic businesses in all industries need to display. Investing in better ways of doing things and training staff is all well and good, but it’s only relevant until circumstances and client demands change next week, next month, or next year. Companies need to have one eye on the future, one eye on the lay of the land, and adjust and readjust as times move on to be in with a fighting chance of attracting – and keeping – the very best candidates.

Contact us today to see how we can assist you with your recruitment needs, by calling us on 01772 259121 or Register a Vacancy directly.

There’s no doubt that recruitment today is very different than it was a decade or two ago. Companies have had to adapt to new hiring processes; online communities, digital meet-ups and candidate data all play a significant role in today’s recruitment.

And with so many different aspects now to consider, the lure of using a big recruitment agency is appealing; the legwork is done for you, the burden is taken away from HR, and in the past it’s proved an effective way to access large pools of available candidates.

Yet all this can come at a cost – aggressive third-party recruiters, increasing placement rates and commission fees, and dealing with recruiters that are only interested in fulfilling their activity quotas pose a potential risk when working with a large recruitment agency.

So, what if using a recruitment giant wasn’t the only option besides taking on the recruiting yourself? What if you could benefit from a more personal touch in the hiring process, enabling you to find and attract unique top talent that could really help your business excel?

Here’s why you don’t have to settle for using only the big recruitment firms:

• Jobs boards are universal – despite what you may hear, jobs boards are accessible for all, and there’s no reason why you need to rely on the biggest firms to advertise for you. Don’t forget that a cleverly written, engaging job description will help you stand out amongst hundreds of job vacancies advertised in exactly the same way.

• You can get the same level of candidate access elsewhere – don’t be fooled into thinking that it is only the biggest firms that have access to the greatest range of candidates. It’s not simply a case of volume, you need access to quality, talented candidates that are the right fit for your company – endless CVs aren’t the answer.

• Smaller firms give the personal touch – smaller recruitment agencies can put in the time, effort and legwork to build relationships over time – both with you the client, and with those all-important candidates.

• Speed takes priority – this isn’t always the case but big recruitment firms will often prioritise filling quotas, meeting targets and making commission over providing you with the service you’re looking for. Time is money as they say…but what if speed over quality costs you more in the long run?

• They come at a high price – as well as charging high fees for their services, you might also find costs mount up elsewhere too. Failed hires in particular are extremely expensive for businesses, highlighting the importance of investing wisely in your recruitment process from the start.

• Sophisticated data analytics aren’t just for the giants – increasingly data analytics are playing a bigger part in recruitment but you don’t have to be using a big recruitment agency in order to access them. Specialist firms will often have a better insight into the data that specifically concerns your business and industry.

• Thinking outside the box pays off – if you want to successfully reach out and recruit a range of candidates, you need to be thinking outside of the box. Not only are millennials more likely to jump ship, research shows that 90% of professionals are interested in hearing about new job opportunities…so it’s important you don’t overlook passive candidates, in search of only active ones.

Finding the right fit for your business is more important now than ever before and having the right recruiting process in place – with a focus on the personal touch as well as just ‘filling the role’ – is essential.

Of course, the most effective way to find, access and attract exceptional talent is by ensuring you’re working with a recruitment provider that understands your business and helps you to get the most out of your candidate search. To find out more about what a specialist firm can bring to the table, just get in touch with us here at Clayton Recruitment.

If you would like specialist advice from experts, get in touch today to find out how we can help you find the right talent.

For more advice from the team, check out our other posts.

It’s a common scenario – a sudden departure of key talent in your organisation leaves you panicked and desperately requiring new skills to bridge the gaps left as a result…and fast.

And while you can recruit on an ad-hoc basis and temporarily stem problematic issues from snowballing, there is another way. Recent developments in recruitment mean organisations no longer have to rely on inefficient fire-fighting methods to deal with recruitment challenges as and when they occur.

Analytics to prepare for change

Many of the biggest businesses are already using big data to their advantage by understanding customer needs and desires at a really granular level.

Yet recruitment is lagging behind, and to some extent, this is symptomatic of the dispersed nature of the candidate base – the more we can know about candidate behaviour, the better we will become at matching candidates with roles. Accurate predictive candidate behaviour is, of course, the nirvana but we’re still a little way off that!

So while HR has traditionally been focused on people skills rather than number crunching, only now are organisations realising the potential of using analytics to prepare for any changes, as well as improving their bottom line.

How does it work within recruitment?

The growth of recruitment analytics stems from the age-old issue of supply and demand. When your talent leaves or your business is growing, you will inevitably require new skills – utilising a data-driven approach can help to tackle these hiring issues before they become serious and affect the productivity of your organisation.

Beyond this, HR analytics can be used for very specific needs and requirements – for example, they can be adopted to ascertain when your senior executives are eligible to retire, to recognise current employees’ behaviour, or to reveal certain job roles that are targeted by competitors so that you can better focus your retention efforts.

Identifying skills and talent

One of the most common challenges that most organisations encounter is how to deal with the departure of talent, and how to bridge any resulting skills gaps quickly and effectively.

In these cases, analytics can be used to identify what expertise you have at hand, which can then be cross-referenced with those skills required and the talent you are likely to lose in the short to medium-term future. Details can be based on a wide range of factors including an individual’s propensity to change roles so far in their career, qualitative factors like whether they’ve appeared more disengaged with their work, and even things like whether they’ve recently updated LinkedIn, which could be a sign that they’re considering a new role.

These factors combined – along with a whole host of other information – allow companies to map their entire business, and identify those roles that may need filling in the future. By doing this, organisations are able to effectively implement cross-training, redeployment or hire, and ultimately plan better for potential future shortages.

So, are analytics the solution?

Data and number crunching is by no means a be-all and end-all solution, but when aligned with the ability to understand people skills and challenges, it can make a significant difference to HR departments. What’s more, as the ideas and programmes used to deliver this information mature, analytics will only become ever more effective within businesses.

To talk further about how data can be used to prevent panicked hiring and ensure your organisation is prepared for the worst, talk to us at Clayton Recruitment – we’d be more than happy to help.

Check out some of our other blogs to find career and development advice for both businesses and professionals. Or take a look at some of our current jobs

The New Year is an ideal time for a fresh start and, as a result, more people decide to make a career move than at any other point. So, with companies likely to see a significant increase in the amount of applications from which they must shortlist, how can they ensure that they pick out the right candidates? Here are our top five tips.

1) Before you begin to look at the applications, it’s vital that you define your ideal candidate. Use your job description and person specification to create two checklists: the essential criteria and desirable criteria needed to do the job. The standards are likely to relate to all of the following key areas, plus any others that are relevant:  education, work experience, skills and knowledge, competencies and personality traits. Be very strict about the criteria you term ‘essential’: these should relate to the qualities and traits of top performing employees in the role.

2) The next step is to begin the shortlisting process. At this stage, some employers choose to utilise the services of a specialist recruiter that knows the market inside out: they can identify the right talent quickly and may already have people among their network of candidates that might fit the role.

3) If shortlisting in-house, do so in stages.

Stage 1: Go through the applications and discard any that don’t meet all of the essential criteria. You now have a list of candidates who can all do the fundamentals of the role. At this point, it is also worthwhile noting where applications have come from so that you know where to advertise future vacancies.

Stage 2: Decide how many candidates you want to interview. Go through the remaining applications, weigh them against each item in your list of desirable criteria and record the number of criteria they meet. Some recruiters like to use a spreadsheet as this helps them to rank candidates at a glance. During this stage, you should also check that there are no inconsistencies in their CV and that spelling, punctuation, grammar, presentation and attention to detail are in line with your expectations.

4) You can now decide who to select for interview. It is important to think outside the box here: you may have a list of desirable criteria, but it’s unlikely that an individual will meet all of them, so decide which combination will have the most impact. Also, if you are replacing a current post holder, don’t have a vision of replacing like with like: think about what they could do when they joined, rather than what they can do now.

5) In addition to notifying the candidates selected for the next stage, ensure that you also contact everyone who applied –even if there were hundreds- to thank them for their interest, but letting them know that, unfortunately, this time they have not been shortlisted for interview. A superior candidate experience is crucial in today’s skills short environment. After all, a candidate that isn’t the right fit for now might just be, in the future.

If you have a vacancy and would like to talk to us about how we can help you shortlist the right person for the job, contact our specialist team of recruiters.

Tattoos are a subject of much debate at the moment and it appears that views towards them have shifted considerably in recent times. Just a decade ago it’s likely that few professional employers would have welcomed them in a work environment, but now they’re seen as commonplace in many companies and views towards them have become much more positive. But are tattoos, as some research suggests, a ‘barrier to employment’?

A study commissioned by ACAS from academics at King’s College London found that body art is still seen as unacceptable at many workplaces. This struck us as odd. After all, tattoos are considerably more prevalent than they ever have been with the latest figures suggesting that 1 in 3 young adults in the UK has one and that we’re not going to reach a tipping point until 2025, when the UK’s supplies of ink may or may not run out.

It’s hard to pinpoint when the craze really took off. Back in the 80s and even early 90s tattoos were seen as a sure fire method to make your mum cry and to steer you away from any stereotypically ‘professional’ roles. Some have suggested that Patient Zero was David Beckham, or Amy Winehouse, but really the trend is buried deeper in the cultural complexities of this country than that.

Tattoos – an issue for jobseekers?

One of the main issues for jobseekers – and employers – is now how to deal with tattoos and their role in the workplace. Organisations, after all, that are completely against hiring anyone with a visible tattoo are essentially ruling out up to a third of young professionals which, in times when skills shortages are rife, doesn’t seem like an intelligent approach.

As Director of HR Diversity Consultancy, The Clear Company, Kate Headley says – “Tattoos are perhaps seen by some as an indication of someone’s background, often associated with criminal behaviour, anti-establishment thinking and a lack of respect for authority. Yet these are all assumptions based on conceptions created by a broader society influenced by stereotypes, like the tendency for people with tattoos being depicted as the ‘bad guys’ in fiction. The issue for people with tattoos is getting employers to see beyond this stereotypical bias.”

A personal choice?

Tattoos are a personal choice, however it’s not illegal to discriminate against someone with one which means it often comes down to bias and the aforementioned stereotypes to drive decision making. You could argue that they’re a choice made by the individual who then has to live with their decision, but the same could be said about religion and we all know it’s illegal to discriminate on the basis of faith.

Feel free to disagree (we’d love to hear your views) but we believe that tattoos, unless they’re particularly offensive or poorly positioned, don’t affect an individual’s credibility or their ability to do their job, so why should they be seen as a negative? Of course, there is another school of thought that suggests that work is a time for professionalism and that all tattoos are linked to personal lives and should be kept under wraps during working hours. But as we all know, life in and out of work is becoming ever more converged so where does that leave us when it comes to things like flexible working, or having the ability to work from home?

Ultimately, it’s down to the employer. The best ones are unlikely to doubt you because you’ve got a tattoo and those that do should perhaps consider the size of the workforce that they’re essentially ruling out from ever working for them by doing so.

If you are looking for further advice then why not check out our advice pages