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Welcome to issue 337 of the ukrecruiter newsletter. We've confirmed our dates for the networking in 2008. First one is 31st Jan. If you want to come along you can register now. | 
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CONTENTS
Visit http://www.careersinrecruitment.com for the latest recruitment industry jobs. |
The Seven Deadly Sins - Part Two: Gluttony As discussed in the last article, by thinking just that little bit smarter about what will motivate a candidate to move you can reap great dividends when it comes to presenting your shortlist. Last week we looked at lust. Now it’s time to look at gluttony, the next deadly sin that could just be the trigger to ignite a candidate’s interest. Gluttony is all about over indulgence to the point of waste. In our culture it’s something we do a lot. And lots of us enjoy it. Our question is how will gluttony attract candidates? For sales people, there’s the annual quota club trip. If you know about it, tell them about it. Many people wouldn’t consider a long weekend in Dubai as a holiday, but few would turn their noses up at it if the company’s paying for them to go party. And lots of companies do more to appeal to candidates – Christmas parties, summer parties, staff nights out, after work drinks… the list goes on. Lots of companies do these things, but plenty of them don’t. And telling your candidate about it also lets them know that this is a company that thinks about its staff and doesn’t just regard them as wealth creators. So if you think appealing to the candidate’s inner glutton is going to make your opportunity more attractive to them then get on and do it! Dan Atkinson is a director of Accite Executive research. He has been in international search for over ten years as a provider of research and researcher training services. He holds a BA in Behaviour in Organisations from the University of Lancaster. contact
dan@accite.co.uk, www.accite.co.uk
or 01423 565 999. The "My Favourites" feature will be back soon. Why not submit your 3 favourite web sites (see the guidelines at http://www.ukrecruiter.co.uk/articles.htm) via contact2@ukrecruiter.co.uk |
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Article One: Job Orders: Better, Faster, Smarter By Bill Radin There’s both an art and a science to writing job orders. The science involves information: getting a description of the position, the selling points of the job, the company’s sense of urgency, and an idea of where to look for candidates. The art has to do with gathering all this information quickly while building a rapport with the hiring manager and nailing down a fee agreement. In theory, each new job order would read like a Michelin travel guide: a detailed roadmap of the position, the work environment, the manager, the company, the industry, the salary, the reporting relationships, and so on. But in reality, it’s unrealistic—and impractical—to get a huge amount of detail, especially in your first conversation with a new client. I’ve found that even the most patient employers tend to get fidgety after about 20 or 30 minutes. So, my approach is to keep the job order—and the worksheet I use to gather information—simple. I try to hit the major points and get the most data possible in the least amount of time. That way, I can get a snapshot of the employer’s needs, evaluate the quality of the assignment, and in the process, prepare a list of follow-up questions to ask later. Hit the Major Points If you work from your job order checklist too literally, the sheer volume of questions might make it sound as if you’re putting the employer on trial. To keep things short and sweet, a typical first-round sequence of questions may sound something like this: “Mr. Employer, to better understand the job and my ability to help you, let me take you through a very brief series of questions. Are you ready? Good. “First, tell me why the job is open. What problem do you want the person to solve? Isn’t there anyone on staff who can do this? I mean, what would happen if you couldn’t find the right person for the job? “You say you’ve been trying to fill the position for several weeks. How many people have you interviewed? Where did you find them? And you never reached the point of making an offer? How come? “What sort of compensation package did you have in mind? Is that what you’re paying other people in a similar capacity? And you’re finding qualified candidates in that price range? “If you don’t mind, I want to play devil’s advocate for a moment. Why would someone quit a perfectly good job and go to work for your company? “So, let me see if I understand the situation. If I found a qualified candidate and we scheduled an interview for next week, and there was mutual interest, you could make a competitive offer and have that person start in about two to three weeks. “Great. Now let me take care of a little business. I charge a placement fee for my service, which will be due once the candidate I refer accepts your offer of employment. We’ll discuss the exact amount of the fee in a moment, but once we agree to the terms, I’m going to send you an agreement to sign and fax back before I can begin the search. Do you have the authority to sign an agreement and pay a fee? Excellent.” See how it’s done? You hit the major points first to qualify the job order. Once the job’s been qualified, you can go back and fill in the blanks, with additional information about the company, the specifics on the technical skills or experience needed, what the short and long term results would be if the person did a superlative job, who the person reports to or supervises, how much travel is involved, what the hiring process is, and all that good stuff. An artful job order interview not only allows for a more objective evaluation of the company’s needs; it also puts the employer at ease by starting a conversation—not an interrogation.
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Article Two: Telephone Systems for overseas offices – part 3 By Chris Malcolm I have lived and worked in Fuerteventura, Canary Islands for the past 6 years, operating deAnsaPlus a research company for headhunters and executive recruitment consultants. Although we do research worldwide, 100% of our assignments are for UK based firms. Last time we discussed hardware possibilities used in an internet based telephone system for your new office abroad.. This time we will summarise some of our recommendations. 1. New to VOIP? Then start out with a softphone and headset or USB phone. Set up an account with a supplier and play with it, getting to understand the concept. Call your relatives in Australia. Think of it as a business call. It won’t take long to see where the problems are. 2. There is nothing wrong with Skype, but you must make a decision at the outset which system to use and if you go with the SIP technology then DO NOT buy anything advertised as a Skype phone as it will be programmed to only work with their technology. You cannot combine the two technologies. Another point to remember is if you buy hardware from your VOIP provider make sure it is not locked to only work with their service. Doing this only obligates you to one provider, and believe me, as you progress along this route, you will have times when it is prudent to change suppliers. 3. If you are slightly technical with some computer skills then before heading abroad learn how to set up your system. This really includes understanding things like IP addresses, modems, routers etc. If you are unsure, hire a local computer buff to give you a few lessons. It may well pay off in the long run. It is not a difficult concept and can be learned in an hour or two. If you do not understand the concept of how these systems work then you will need to find somebody in your new country of residence to set things up for you. Not always an easy solution in a foreign language 4. Set up accounts with two suppliers. This technology is changing daily and it is surprising how often through no fault of your own your system will crash, quite often because of either internet routing problems or a system failure with your supplier. Also, it is a fairly well agreed concept that as this technology is a high volume low margin undertaking there will be a number of casualties in the marketplace. Nobody wants to wake up in the morning with your main supplier out of business and you out of telephone service. 5. The thought of sitting on the terrace in your villa in sunny Spain while talking on a cordless phone to clients in the UK is very alluring. Cordless DECT phones work very well with telephone adapters on a VOIP system BUT try it out before you go. In my opinion, again great for ringing Granny but not up to much on a business call. Even the slightest delay in transmission can magnify, sounding like you are talking inside a barrel – not something to impress the clients. 6. There is a new generation of VOIP mobile style or mobile combination phones. Again, in my opinion, these are the wave of the future in mobile calls, but the technology is still pretty new and subject to lots of little problems. We have a dedicated VOIP mobile phone which connects to our system via our wireless router. In truth it works no better than a DECT (Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications) phone. We now use ours on holidays to ring home from WIFI hotspots! (also read as “another useless boy toy”!) 7. Consider taking an answer phone from the UK. Any old one will do. We use a left over base station from our DECT phone trials. Some of the VOIP providers that offer an answer phone system have the number of rings before the answer machine kicks in set too high and clients can get impatient and ring off before they get an answer. We have solved this problem using the answer phone. The big problem was we could not find a phone in Spain that had an integrated answer phone and had to buy from the UK. 8. A word about internet connection speeds. VOIP obviously takes up bandwidth and there are simple formulas you can employ to tell you how many phones can be in use simultaneously on say a 3Mbps internet connection. Please remember though that 3Mbps probably means 2.5Mbps download and maybe only 250 Kbps upload. Assuming that you are not uploading some huge file at the same time a 250 Kbps upload will handle approximately 3 calls at the same time. After that call quality drops below the good business threshold. Moving abroad means different rules and depending on the country a lot of what happens in reality is a learning curve. You may find that your initial broadband connection is not fast enough to handle the volume of simultaneous calls you have. Be prepared to be flexible. 9. And a word about buying your hardware when abroad. In many cases the prices from UK internet based suppliers are very good, plus their websites are in English and very often they offer a better choice of products. BUT most do not deliver out of the UK. We use a combination of those that will deliver to Spain (mostly located in Germany and Spain) and those that need to be delivered to Granny’s house in the UK. 10. My pet peeve? Businesses that operate expensive incoming telephone lines. If your business plan is to make money from customers paying over the top rates to ring you, then become a telecom. With VOIP technology there is NEVER an instance when a business should be using premium rate lines. This includes those old 07000 personal numbers.
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Louise Triance
UK Recruiter http://www.ukrecruiter.co.uk
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