Welcome to issue 204 of the ukrecruiter newsletter. If you'd like to be a "guinea pig" for a couple of psychometric product reviews please drop me a note. 

CONTENTS

Visit http://www.careersinrecruitment.com for the latest recruitment industry jobs.

My Favourites

The three sites I focus on to help me with my sector are:

www.ispe.org - it has a lot of great information for the Pharmaceutical Sector as well as upcoming technologies issues that are extremely important to the sector. It is a great way to keep up to date with the issues facing my clients. 

www.pharmaventures.com - it has a lot of information on the new deals in the market of Pharma and BioTech which helps me keep ahead of the game and understand who and what is moving in the world.

www.themanufacturer.com - this helps to focus on the new and upcoming trends in the General Manufacturing sector. It has brilliant sector reports and articles. In order to truly help my clients I need to know what it is they do and what's happening in their world so I am able to better qualify needs and resources.

Kami Evans is Client Director, Life Sciences and General Manufacturing Division at Alexander Hughes Interim Management (AHIM)

Have you got favourites for your industry specialism? If so please send them in (see the guidelines at http://www.ukrecruiter.co.uk/articles.htm)

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Article One: Psychometric Product Review: Discus Online

Company Name: Axiom Software Limited
Product Name: Discus Online
Website Address: www.discusonline.com

Description (provided by Axiom): 
“The most advanced DISC profiler available: A highly cost-effective and time-efficient work style assessment tool for use in selection, training and personal development.” The DISC factors are Dominance, Influence, Compliance and Steadiness.

Cost: Pay per profile, starting at £19 for a one-off report (volume discounts available). There are no set-up or licence fees.

Do you have to be qualified to interpret the questionnaires?: If you are British Pyschological Society Level B or DISC trained then you are qualified to use Discus. However, they strongly recommend the Discus specific training course in all cases. The one day Discus training course costs £295 (including materials). 

Candidate Experience (guinea pig candidate was Camilla): It took about 10 minutes to complete the questionnaire. The instructions were easy to read and understand. They gave you an example questions to practice on as well. There were 24 questions which each had 4 statements and you had to answer which one was most like you, and which one least like you. For the most part this was simple and easy to understand, although you did have to think about some of the statements due to the way in which they were phrased (e.g. double negatives in sentences). It was also frustrating at times as I often felt the same for all the statements, and it was frustrating making a snap decision. The content of the questionnaire made sense and seemed relevant to a work based personality questionnaire.

Although the questionnaire only took 10 minutes or so to complete, I felt the outcome was quite accurate (75-80%). It mentioned most of my major personality traits and how they come across in a work environment. Some areas didn't seem to hit the mark, but this could be because of the frame of mind I was in when I completed the survey, or potentially because it was a short test, and the questions weren’t probing enough.

Overview of Feedback Report: In my case the feedback report was emailed to me. However, registered users of the system can view and print reports directly online from within their own Discus Online management account. There are two levels of report; the ‘Classic’ (about 7 pages) or the ‘Enhanced’ (about 12 pages). Additionally you can buy Job Match reports for specific Job Profiles, which provide a comparison of the DISC graphs, strengths for the job, possible training requirements, plus a description of the Job Profile itself, as well as relevant matches for a list of other Job Profiles. The report I printed for Camilla started off with the DISC profile. This showed her “internal profile” (reflecting her true motivations and desires), her “external profile” (perception of the type of behavior she thinks she should project in her work environment) and “summary profile” (describing her normal behaviour). The next section of the report gives the candidates “style” (eg, communicator, planner, open, etc) and some descriptive words for this type of person. There is a Trait Analysis that looks at permanent, transient, potential and inactive traits shown from her profile. I found this a useful and (in my opinion) accurate portrayal of Camilla. The rest of the report is textual, looking at different competencies such as communication style and motivation as well as “guidelines in management” (management style and development areas) and sales style.  This section also contains a number of exploratory questions for use in  interview. These questions could be useful when probing a candidate further about areas of potential strength or weakness seen on the questionnaire.

Summary
I should admit that I am not that familiar with DISC based psychometric reports and as a result didn’t find the format of the report easy to follow. However, the depth of information and potential for using it as a tool to probe candidate further is good. I would be less sure how to use the report to “compare” candidates based on competencies (or as a match to a specific competency profile) as I have done with other reports I’ve previously used.

For more information: Adrian Vincent was my contact at Axiom. He can be contacted on 0161 877 2199 or via adrian.vincent@discusonline.com. He would be happy to provide any ukrecruiter subscriber with a free trial on Discus Online: simply email or call him

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Article Two: How to use a Searching Strategy by Darren Revell

Searching the Internet is a hybrid skill. It is part creativity and part science. While riding upon the surf, your search success or failure depends upon your sector knowledge, internet search technique, experimentation, creativity and luck. Combine this with a clear and methodical approach and success should quickly follow.

Different search engines find different information on the web, so to utilise your web searching to the maximum, you must first learn which one to use. There are hundreds of search engines available on the Web, however, 2 or 3 dominate the Web researcher's world: www.google.com, www.altavista.com  and www.alltheweb.com 

These engines have references to an immense number of web pages and they provide us with the ability to tailor our searches so that we can find what we are looking for in our results.

Defining a process
The degree of disorganisation on the web means in general, that the average user of a search engine will often settle for what they can get rather than what they actually wanted. To improve the odds of searching success, a clear definitive plan or a search strategy is needed. Having a strategy will make all the difference between regular search success or failure. Here is a strategy in six basic steps.

1.Determine the type of information you need. Determine the type of information you are trying to find (CV, staff directory, client vacancy, case studies for example) and then try and pinpoint the specific skills, company or job title you are trying to find 

2.Create a list of potential search terms. Search terms are those specific words or phrases that best describe the person or company that you are trying to find. The free text nature of the internet and lack of controlled vocabulary that is used, means that you must posses the widest range of potential search terms possible. 

3.Choose specific search tools that will retrieve the type of information you want. Successfully searching the Internet is dependent on you choosing the right search tool for the job. 

4.Construct a search string and conduct your search. These are the words or strings that you actually type into the search engine to control the results that are returned. You can search using a combination of individual keywords or phrases that best match your criteria. Ensure that you make the best use of the Search Engine's advanced features, allowing you to search for example, for keywords in the title or in the url of a web page.

5.Evaluate your results. Even the most carefully constructed search terms will often retrieve irrelevant information or results with thousands of hits. If you cannot find what you want in the first 15 or so results, then move straight on to the next step in the process. Also don't be surprised if occasionally you click on a promising looking link to find that the page has been moved or deleted. 

6.Revise your search terms if necessary (and it probably will be). Change your search terms using different combinations of words and phrases and you will in turn get different sets of results. Add or remove words that you feel may be influencing your search negatively.

Article provided by Darren Revell of Attract Spider. http://www.attract-spider.com

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Don't Miss This

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Free Contract Reviews from Penn Legal 
If you aren't sure that your contracts are fully complaint with the EAA Regulations Penn Legal Solicitors have agreed to provide a free EAA Regs compliance check upon recruitment contracts for uk recruiter subscribers. For further details call 0870 043 4361 or email agency@pennlegal.co.uk quoting ukrec

UK Recruiter Discussion Forum - Are you using it? 
Don't forget to visit http://www.ukrecruiter.co.uk/forum. Current topics on the site include "Re: Jobs on the Forum", "Saving Money" and "Can a company change commission without warning?". It is free to use the discussion board and you don't have to register to view messages. Visit the site; ask questions and share your knowledge

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Statistics

Hitwise top 10 Recruitment Sites, week ending 5th March 2005
The most visited UK recruitment sites last week, starting with the most popular, were Jobcentreplus.gov.uk, Jobsite.co.uk, Reed.co.uk, Totaljobs.co.uk, Fish4.co.uk/jobs, Monster.co.uk, TESjobs.co.uk, National Health Service - Careers,  jobs.guardian.co.uk,  and  eteach.com. For more information about Hitwise, visit http://www.hitwise.co.uk

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Regards
Louise Triance
UK Recruiter http://www.ukrecruiter.co.uk - 01635 254881 (UK)

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