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Welcome to issue 340 of the ukrecruiter newsletter. We are pleased to announce the launch of our new job board - ukrecruiterjobs.co.uk! More information in our Online Recruitment Update section. | 
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CONTENTS
Visit http://www.careersinrecruitment.com for the latest recruitment industry jobs. |
The Seven Deadly Sins - Part Four: Sloth This week’s look at how we can use the Sinful Seven to get candidates on board brings in the motivator that is often overlooked, both by recruiters and line managers alike, namely Sloth. Or, as we like to call it these days, ‘work life balance’. There must be few people that don’t sometimes feel even a little bit resentful of time that is wasted unnecessarily on aspects of their jobs that don’t really require several hours of travel. Why expect a recruitment professional to spend two hours each day commuting to an office when even one day a week working from home would make them feel a whole lot more positive towards their employer? Why shouldn’t a sales director rather be working closer to home? Most people would rather spend more time being productive (or just staying in bed half an hour longer) and less time travelling. So don’t overlook maximising their work life balance when speaking to candidates. Remind them that as potential country manager of a start-up operation that they’re going to be the one that (within reason) could be choosing the location of the new office. It’s amazing how candidates ears will prick up then they start thinking how they could be spending less time stuck on a motorway each day. When picking up a brief, discuss with your client what sorts of home working opportunities are going to be available for new starters to their business. Companies that don’t expect needless time to be spent in the office are always much more attractive than those that do. Again, if you’ve got more than scant knowledge about your candidate then use it. If you know that they currently have a long commute then play up the advantages of a more local position. If there is going to be a whole lot of travel involved then talk about proximity to their local airport and the benefits gained from working from home in between times. The message I’m trying to get across every week is this. Thinking just that little bit harder about what’s going to motivate a potential candidate is a no lose technique. Even if they’re not eventually interested they’ll be impressed by the quality of your pitch and more inclined to help you find the right person. And when you put the phone down you’ll feel better about a call well made. 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 |
Advertisement Register for your free place – “Generating Strong Candidate Shortlists in 2008” Top-Consultant’s annual recruiter event takes place on 29th February – and UK Recruiter readers are invited to register for complimentary places today. Full details of who the event will benefit and what will be covered on the day can be found at the
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Article One: Voice Mail and E-Mail: Eight Simple Rules By Bill Radin Voice mail and e-mail can be powerful recruiting and marketing tools - but only if you treat them like their first cousin, direct marketing. Until a few years ago, the term “direct marketing” referred mainly to direct mail and telemarketing. Now that voice mail and e-mail are in common use, you can add them to the list of direct marketing techniques. Direct marketing is based on the assumption that your message needs to reach so many people, it can’t be personally delivered (or least, not delivered with any real quality of interactivity). The number of prospects is simply too great, and therefore too expensive to “hand deliver” to each person. However, in recruiting, there’s another—and possibly more relevant—basis for direct marketing: the belief (real or imagined) that none of your prospects can be reached directly by telephone. I’ve been told by several recruiters that so many prospective candidates and employers filter their phone calls that it’s virtually impossible to get through to people to make a real-time presentation. If this is true, then outbound voice mail and e-mail may be the only viable way to reach new prospects. A One-Way Ticket That means if you broadcast your message by voice mail or e-mail, you have to accept the limitations of the medium, and trade quality for quantity. Since you’re playing a numbers game with a low rate of return (two percent with voice mail, far less with e-mail), you have to offset the inherent inefficiency of the technique by increasing the number of prospects. Which means that unless you have lots of prospects—or your message is truly important—don’t leave a voice mail message or send an e-mail. Here are some tips when launching a voice mail or e-mail campaign: 1. Beef up your list. To offset the inefficiencies of the medium, you’ll need a large number of names, numbers or e-mail addresses in order to get a reasonable return. 2. Craft your message to get a response. Your “sale” will take the form of a callback, an e-mail reply, a resume attachment or a visit to your Web site. 3. Repetition is key. Even if you get a disappointing response, keep sending your message. Over time, you’ll build brand awareness and increase your chances of getting a response or making a sale. 4. Be prepared for success. Your only real opportunity to “sell” is when you get a call back, so have a script (or a strong presentation) ready for when people start responding. You may not get a second chance. 5. Don’t fatigue your list. Repetition is good; suffocation is bad. If you deliver the same message too often, people will get annoyed, and your response rate will decline. 6. Always test your message. If you have a list of 1,000 e-mail prospects, send your message to the first 250. If the response is good, send the rest. If the response is bad, rework your message or make corrections and send it to the next 250 prospects. Same thing with your voice mails: test your message with 10 people. If they all hang up on you, they’re telling you what they think of your message. 7. Clean your list. Direct marketers call this “list hygiene.” De-dupe and correct your list as often as you can, and make sure to honor all requests from those who want to be removed. 8. Be vigilant with your removes. It’s a common mistake to add new names you removed a couple of months ago. A simple clerical error on your part may offend a privacy fanatic. As a safeguard, keep a DO NOT SEND list, and cross reference it before you start a new campaign. Even though voice mail and e-mail are non-interactive, they can still get terrific results—if you follow the rules
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Article Two: Employee Satisfaction Surveys – The Pitfalls by Pilat Europe Limited Surveys on employee satisfaction rarely hit the mark at measuring the real factors that cause employees to engage, perform and stay with an organisation. They can undoubtedly give an appreciation of the climate or culture within an organisation, but are the factors highlighted as areas of dissatisfaction actually critical to the employees’ commitment? And secondly, do the issues identified apply to the whole organisation or do the critical factors for one area or team vary greatly from others? As a result, organisations frequently fail to achieve the best results from their surveys, which often leads to the creation of broad organisational strategies for improvement that may only really be required in certain areas of the organisation. In addition, organisations have historically put significant time and resources into areas that are seen as important to improve but are actually not critical for engagement. 5 Main Reasons Satisfaction Surveys Fail to Deliver Real Business Results The collection of data is difficult, time consuming or just unattractive for employees to engage with. Technology has come a long way to support quality data collection, but how the survey is launched and the key messages it sends are equally critical. The survey fails to measure all the important factors that really cause a person to engage, perform and stay in an organisation. Extensive research shows that there are 50 key factors that really make a difference in this area. These can be clustered into 4 categories: The scales used only measure an individual’s perception of the organisation’s performance. Individuals are rarely asked to identify those things that matter to them the most. Often the surveys give a summary at organisational level and possibly at departmental level. It is then usually up to HR departments and/or senior managers to create policies/programmes to make changes. Research shows that one of the most significant players involved in engaging and retaining employees is the manager. To make a real difference, each manager needs to know what the score is for his team and how that compares to the department or organisation. A manager needs to know where to focus their efforts and be held accountable for their own balance scorecard on engagement. Organisations fail to engage or provide the tools that will really help managers make a difference in the race to improve engagement and retention. While it is true that certain groups of individuals (new starters, high performers) have common critical needs that need to be satisfied in order to show real commitment and performance, it is also true that each individual’s critical needs vary significantly. In a recent exercise we asked a group of managers to predict, from 50 variables, what they thought were their employee’s 10 most critical needs. On average, the managers were only able to pick 2 out of 10. This showed they were potentially wasting a lot of effort on motivation that was not going to hit the mark for their employees. All the evidence shows if you identify the key engagement factors and engage managers to take action on these factors, you can make a significant impact on an employee’s engagement, their performance and their retention.
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Online Recruitment Update UK Recruiter Launches
Recruitment Industry Job Board Hitwise top 10 Recruitment
Sites, week ending 12th January 2008 Louise's UK Recruiter blog Press Release: Innovantage Celebrates 1st Birthday with World First Launch Discussion Board Summary Press Release: A New Look for Jobs2seek |
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Regards
Louise Triance
UK Recruiter http://www.ukrecruiter.co.uk
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