Employers

Today’s guest blogger is John Francis, info@theonera.com, president and senior managing partner of Theonera, Inc. in Waterloo, Ontario (Canada). Theonera is a boutique recruitment firm specializing in engineering and software professionals and sought-after senior managers. Theonera has been a member of NPAworldwide since 2011. John shares his thoughts on a flexible work schedule below.

More CEOs need to look at introducing a 4-day work week

Throughout my 25-year career as a recruitment and retention professional I have known people who are constantly stressed at work. The stress they feel filters down through their life and embeds itself into every aspect of it. There are many stressors today — information overload, work demands, family care, finances, fear of missing out, career stagnation — each one piles unto the other to cause excess stress. Read the rest of this entry »

Recruitment and search have become increasingly more difficult for independent recruiters. Independents are the NPAworldwide constituency; that is my motivation for examining this subject. Let’s take a look…

Employers have taken back the massive quantities of simple-to-fill positions that they shared with recruiters in the early 2000s. These have gone in-house or they have gone to online and AI-based services that can bang out the 15 new sales reps needed in every city across North America or wherever they are needed worldwide. Client companies have taken to job boards (their own and industry applications), low-cost agencies, hourly recruitment, list builders, employee referrals and even off-shore RPO to fill other slightly more difficult roles. What that leaves is the truly unique and especially difficult roles to be shared with independent search consultants. Headhunters are called in to fill these challenging and specialize positions. Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s guest blogger is Alex Fraser, Marketing Director at London based recruitment software supplier Engage Technology Partners. Engage provides a cloud-based platform that allows collaboration of clients, recruitment agencies and contractors throughout the recruitment supply chain process.

Recruiters are always looking for better ways to serve their clients. But sometimes it’s important to step back and look at the big picture: how are clients using recruitment agencies and what really matters to them?

To get a sense of how UK businesses really perceive the recruitment industry, we questioned 100 medium-to-large employers across a range of industry sectors. Read the rest of this entry »

Their Expertise

An external recruitment agency is a specialists in their industry, who has placed that exact candidate role time and time again. Their background and knowledge gives them the edge when learning and  understanding your company’s unique requirements and enables them to match the right specialist with your distinctive needs. External recruiters work many sub–specialties within each specific niche, so they know the entire candidate life cycle for the team 

A Strong Approach

External agencies are committed to a strong relationship-driven approach that takes best-in-class recruiting practices and specialized training to provide an exceptional level of service to every client. They should invest the time to understand your values, your philosophy, and your requirements. They should ask questions. They should advise you as to how to make the relationship even more efficient. As an independent agency, their goal is to treat both candidates and clients with the same level of respect and knowledge to achieve long–term successful hires.

Targeted Solutions For All Clients

External recruiters usually work with clients from start–ups to the Fortune 100. They are as custom as you can find for handling local placements or for multiple hires across divisions and geographies utilizing their network of other independent specialized firms as well as vast databases of candidates. Many times these recruiters can complete searches within retained, engaged, and contingency relationships to fit your budget as well. Allowing the same firm repeat business also allows them to understand the entire scope of your hiring needs.

A locally based external recruitment firm helps you handle the intricacies of international business. Their recruiters not only source and recruit the right talent, but provide you with insight to the local culture to build the appropriate compensation packages to retain the talent. Having an international recruiter with a network of international partners allows them to leverage those partners so that they can learn and understand the relevant information you need to complete the project, and you will still receive one response from the recruiter you have built a trusted relationship with.

For instance, working with an NPAworldwide firm gives you access to local talent in the following countries:

A new report from the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) shows that there were 7 million job openings in the U.S. in December, but only 6.3 million unemployed people looking for work. A full three-fourths of human resource professionals indicate there is a significant skills gap between what employers want versus what job seekers currently have. As the labor market remains tight, this gap is predicted to get worse with many job seekers lacking necessary technical or soft skills. What can employers do to address these challenges?

• Look at alternate candidate pools … this could be retirees, foreign workers, or those with a nontraditional academic background. For example, can you consider candidates who have the right skills, but do not have a university degree? How about a two-year degree or vocational certificate instead of a four-year degree?
• Invest in the employees you already have … how can you provide additional training to your existing employees? Is there a way to enhance their skill sets? Do you offer tuition reimbursement or other incentives for them to further their development?
• Consider alternate work relationships and environments … Can a contractor or remote worker fill the gaps in your workforce? Would a flexible working arrangement make it easier to find or retain the right person?
• Partner with local educators to develop co-op or internship programs … And these do not need to be limited to those who are currently in school! How can you work with local institutions to upskill or retrain workers who are already on the job? What skills are most in need in your workforce? How can you ensure those skills are being taught to students (both traditional and nontraditional)?
• Is your job attractive? There are roles that do not suffer from a lack of qualified applicants, but the jobs themselves may currently offer low pay or benefits that are out of alignment with the current market. If you’re having trouble attracting people to your open jobs, do some research to make sure you are offering competitive pay and benefits. It’s possible that a skills gap isn’t the primary stumbling block to your hiring efforts.
• Is your brand attractive? Over and above pay and benefits, is your company a place where the best and brightest want to work? Are you effectively selling your brand in the marketplace? Perhaps you need to invest in repositioning your brand or the types of roles you offer. For example, there is a perception that manufacturing jobs are “dirty” or unskilled … but this is patently false in many environments.

Whether it’s a direct skills gap or simply a shortage of people, labor conditions are expected to be difficult for a number of years. Employers that are creative and forward-looking will be in the best position to attract and retain the best available talent.

For both small and large organizations alike, satisfied clients can agree that their external recruitment agency has been at times the most time and cost-effective way to access pools of highly skilled workers, especially those who are not actively seeking new employment.

How Recruitment Agencies Save You Time:

Only 10% of the market, if that, is actively applying for jobs. Most of these qualified individuals choose to only work discreetly with a recruitment agency when they are looking for a new challenge and opportunity. A well connected recruitment firm has thousands of candidates within their network, both actively and passively looking new roles. These recruiters are quality specialists within their sectors that have the knowledge to find the perfect fit for any hiring need. These firms pride themselves on presenting the top candidates in each market so a client only needs to make time to view candidates that will be worth considering. An independent firm also addresses all administrative issues such as all communications with the pool of applicants, verifying candidate qualifications and references as well as following up with those candidates not selected. Compared to in-house staff who may require training on best practice procedures, these highly experienced recruiters and agencies handle the process smoothly.

How Recruitment Agencies Save You Money:

Using recruitment agency removes any increased spend on multiple job adverts being posted. For instance, the NPAworldwide network gives recruitment firms allocations on top job boards, so clients can ensure that your job is advertised in all the correct places without managing the spend. Future hiring costs are significantly reduced as the agency will have knowledge of client company growth and culture so the process will be quicker which will result in even faster fills. An international firm part of a global network of recruitment firms locally based on all six continents, can especially reduce the need for in-house resources or putting in place a unique HR team if your organization expands.

With the US midterm elections behind us, it is time for employers, recruiters, candidates and hiring managers to get back to filling important job openings. But what impact will the results of the elections have on the workplace? Here are some things to consider: Read the rest of this entry »