CONTENTS

• Weekly Tips (Steve Corbett)
• Article One (Are you winning enough pitches by Heather Townsend)
• Article Two (What else can a Research Business do for you? by David Steel)
• Online Recruitment Update (UK Recruiter Plus Favourites - Hitwise Top 10 Recruitment Sites - Louise's UK Recruiter Blog - Discussion Board Summary - UKRecruiterJobs)
• Don't Miss This (PR: Totaljobs.com partners with COSLA’s myjobscotland.gov.uk portal - PR: eQuest Adds Over 500 United Kingdom Job Boards to its Delivery Network - PR: Upturn is a golden opportunity for the recruitment market to drive up standards says leading recruiter - PR: It’s a career thing launches world’s first Virtual Assessment Centre! - PR: Take the hard work out of matching jobs to candidates. - PR: TriSys Business Software Domain Name Registration of trisys.co.uk)
• Subscribe/Unsubscribe
• Feedback & Advertising Information

Visit http://www.ukrecruiterjobs.co.uk for the latest recruitment industry jobs 

Weekly Tips - If I've Learnt Three Things

1. Building and maintaining relationships is essential, candidates can become clients and visa versa

2. Be as open and transparent as possible with clients and candidates, there is no room for 'white lies' in any recruitment process

3. Be proud and confident of the service you offer

Provided by Steve Corbett, Practice Manager, Harvey Nash Plc www.harveynash.com

Why not submit your 3 favourite web sites. See the guidelines at http://www.ukrecruiter.co.uk/articles.htm

Advertisement

Talisman - web enabled, fully integrated solution for recruiters

- Capture CV's and match with open positions and produce all documentation
- Enter timesheet data on-line with full client validation or enter from fax images
- Rock solid Pay & Bill with PDF pay advices and Invoices and BACS integration
- Sales Ledger with full Credit Control system
- More reports than you can shake a stick at

...and coming soon Managed Services sub-system

Call or email Tony Doherty - 01582 478 888, info@recruitment-software.net  or visit our web site www.recruitment-software.net

Article One:  Are you winning enough pitches? By Heather Townsend

I was with a client recently who had found that over a period of twelve months instead of winning 1 in 3 pitches they had slipped to winning 1 in 7 pitches. There were all sorts of cultural and economic reasons why their conversion ratio had slipped. I had been hired to help them with their presentation skills, and how they came across to the client, once they got to the pitch stage.  This got me thinking, your pitch conversion rate is a good key indicator of how efficient your business is. So, here are our top eleven tips on how can you achieve more with your pitches – and make sure you are winning more than you are losing.

1. Avoid getting into a competitive tender
If you can avoid the need for a competitive tender then you can save yourself huge amounts of time, energy and money. Easy to say, less easy to do! Don’t get complacent with existing clients – ask them regularly, how are we doing? Keep your relationship warm with existing prospects. You never know, they may not be considering anyone else for the work…

2. Pick your battles
Sometimes you just know you are not going to be in a chance of winning. Perhaps the previous incumbent is very well entrenched and the company is only re-tendering because they have a policy to retender after a certain amount of years. Is it worth you spending your time, energy and money on this tender?
I heard yesterday how some of the public sector procurement teams are asking 30 or 40 suppliers to tender for a contract. Unless you really want (or need) this contract, how likely are you to win?

3. Make the call
Unless you are in a closed tender process, such as for the public sector, then pick up the phone and speak to the person running the tender. Find out what is really important to them, and what is nice to have. Explore how the tender came about, who are the decision makers, what is the top 3 (or 5) buying criteria, who else has been asked to tender, who will be on the panel for the pitch…. You will be amazed how much people will share if you just ask the question. You can then focus your proposal and pitch document on what’s really important for the client and your key differentiators from the competition.

4. Bring the team
Most people are reasonably clued up that the business development director, partner or business owner (unless you are a very small firm) are unlikely to be the day-to-day person that they will be working with. Make sure you bring along key members of the team, which will be servicing the account, to the pitch.

5. Ask yourself ‘so what’
Time and time again when I work with clients helping them with a pitch presentation I hear a very smooth rendition of the client’s capabilities and key services. If you are going to say, we have a national presence – great – but what is the benefit for the client? When writing your pitch presentation put yourself in the client’s shoes and make sure that every capability or feature described has a benefit attached.

6. Prioritise
You live and breathe your business 24/7. It is what makes you, you. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but your potential client or customer is not as interested as you are in your business. When you are writing your pitch make sure you focus on how you propose to solve your client’s problems, and how your business will (succinctly) add value to the potential client’s business.

7. Don’t lecture the client
Potential clients don’t like to be told what they do or don’t need. It’s simple, really. So, when you are pitching use phrases like – ‘in our experience’, ‘you have told us’, ‘one potential solution is..’, ‘may we suggest’, ‘in our research’…. One of my delegates yesterday said, when tying up a presentation, told the panel – ‘you need a partner’. It didn’t go down too well with the panel…

8. Questions, questions, questions
Leave a good half to two thirds of your allocated time slot for questions. Your pitch presentation should be succinct and to the point. Your objective at a pitch is to show that you truly understand the client’s needs (and can meet them), and to engage with the client. Answering questions is another opportunity to increase your credibility with the client AND increase engagement. After all, when I was the other side of the table, I was asking myself – do I want to work with these people, and are they able to meet my needs?

9. Practice, practice, practice
If your first run through is on the morning of the pitch, in the car at the client’s premises ,or in the back of a taxi on the way to a pitch – this is too late! In our experience, people who have run through their pitch presentation a couple of times will come across significantly better to the client. After all, in a pitch a client is looking to see who has taken the time to prepare.

10. Ditch the slides
Unless specifically asked for slides, ditch them. Your objective is to engage fully with the client. Slides, handouts, talk booklets all divert attention away from you and what you are saying. I’m not saying don’t prepare a talk book, brochure or pitch presentation booklet – just give a copy to the client after you have finished the presentation.

11. Follow up afterwards
It’s an unfortunate fact of life for every pitch winner there must be a loser. Whether you win or lose the pitch always get feedback on why you were or weren’t chosen. Use this information to inform how you go about pitches in the future.

If you think you could achieve more in pitches or are worried by the pitches you are losing, give us a call, 01234 48 0123 or visit www.theefficiencycoach.co.uk. We take pride in giving our client’s businesses a competitive advantage.

Heather is also a contributor to UK Recruiter Plus.  You can use your free trial to view up to three articles on the site including those from the series Heather has provided for us.  These include How to negotiate with a client you can't afford to lose and How to be briefed first about a new vacancy

Advertisement

The economy: the good news and the bad news

The good news is chief banker Mervyn King has said: ‘there are pretty solid reasons for supposing that there will be a recovery next year’. The bad news is that he also said there are ‘pretty solid reasons for questioning if that will be sustained’. In other words, he doesn’t know. But we can be sure recovery won’t be easy. Complacency could destroy unwary businesses. It is more vital than ever that you stay ahead of the competition by adding value to your client service and by expanding your client base. Insight 3.0 can help you can do both with just the click of a mouse.

For a product demonstration, register at www.innovantage.co.uk/trial

Article Two: What else can a Research Business do for you? by David Steel

Most recruiters will only know and utilise research businesses for one thing – candidate generation. Most research businesses will market themselves in such a way that they’re fundamentally a ‘one trick pony’ – “cheaper than advertising, better than your database” and so on. Fair enough, as a lot of research businesses will do just nicely from providing you that service.

If you ask the question, however, you might find a research business can be of great use to you in many other ways beyond throwing approach reports and CVs at you. 

Let me explain…

Salary Surveys – Any research business worth it’s salt should be able to provide recruiters with solid salary surveys. I take queries from clients on a regular basis where a particular business, often either a start-up or an organization setting up a new division, has asked said recruiter to provide them with salary/package information for a particular role in a certain location.

Either via honest means or with a bit of ‘poetic licence’, we’ve found out all sorts about employees remuneration and benefits from call centre staff to chefs, from banking branch staff to MDs. This information can often help an organization grade a salary for a specific role, beyond simply sticking one’s finger in the air and hoping for the best.

Satisfaction Surveys – Similar to the above, though with a twist. We’ve helped recruiters help their clients with retention issues by carrying out ‘third party’ employee satisfaction surveys. In conjunction with the client, a research business will be able to pull together a brief questionnaire to ask staff covering key areas – views on colleagues/line managers, thoughts on salary/package, motivational issues, range of work, promotion/progression opportunities and so on. These can be kept confidential and the employee need not give a name, so the recurring patterns become the focus as against who is happy and who isn’t. I know for a fact that an employee satisfaction survey we carried out in 2005 helped a recruiter convince a major client of his to seriously look at it’s base salary levels for employees sat in mid-level roles for the first 12 months of their employment.

Market Intelligence – Given the target listing and company analysis that research businesses have to do day-to-day to complete headhunt assignments, they amass great quantities of sector/market information, hence it’s not such a leftfield idea to utilise a research business when good old fashioned competitor analysis is needed. A research business could find out an organisation’s turnover, staff numbers, locations, markets served, main clients, it’s key players, it’s reputation, etc, fairly easily, which is gold information to an organization looking to grow beyond it’s competition, move into a new market or make a key appointment from a rival.

Mergers & Acquisitions – Not a common one, granted, but we’ve handled a couple of assignments over the years where clients have asked us to approach a number of businesses, speak to their owners/MDs and uncover those that would be open to talking about a merger with or a buy out by another business. In terms of approach, it isn’t too dissimilar to the standard headhunt call, though it obviously requires a level of discretion and sensitivity beyond simply changing the direction of an individual’s career. A research business can be a good ‘third party’ player in this instance, breaking the ice to allow the recruiter to meet with interested businesses to talk further on behalf of their client.

Next time that slightly unusual request pops up from a client, it might be worth giving a research business a call to discuss it – you might be surprised to find you’re not the only one who has asked before!

David Steel is Research Director at Exacta Research, a recruitment research company who provide a candidate research service to help clients find the best possible candidates across all sectors and levels.

David is also a contributor to UK Recruiter Plus.  You can use your free trial to view up to three articles on the site including those that David has provided for us.

Advertisement

Focused on the executive jobseeker audience in the UK, TheLadders.co.uk has quickly established itself as the 'premium' UK site for £50k+ candidates to connect with senior job roles and executive recruiters.

Engage with the UK's best candidates:
- 295,000 registered and approved £50k+ job seekers
- Search the CV Database and post your £50k+ jobs

For information call us at 0800 158 4441 or visit http://recruit.theladders.co.uk/ukrecruiter.

Online Recruitment Update  

UK Recruiter Plus - Favourites
These are this week's favourite articles from UK Recruiter Plus as chosen by the UK Recruiter team: 
Getting Paid
How to achieve your goals
Practical People Management
We are currently offering a £25 discount when you sign up to UK Recruiter Plus; the definitive online guide for the UK recruitment industry.  www.ukrecruiterplus.co.uk and a free trial  - www.ukrecruiterplus.co.uk/trial

UKRecruiterJobs: Traditional, On-line and Corporate HR Recruitment Job Board 
The UK Recruiter job board is run in conjunction with Changeboard.  Here is a selection of the latest vacancies on the site:
- Recruitment - Branch Manager - Construction Trades - Nottingham
- Rec to Rec Consultant, M3 Corridor
- Recruitment Consultants - Accountancy and Finance - London
- Junior Researcher - London 
- Senior Recruitment Consultant - Executive level- Manchester
The UK Recruiter job board is run in conjunction with Changeboard. We are currently offering free trials for recruitment consultancies to post their recruitment jobs. To set-up a free trial, please contact Bekki at Changeboard on 020 8675 8851 or email bekki@changeboard.com and quote UK Recruiter.

Hitwise top 10 Recruitment Sites, week ending 11 September 2009
The most visited UK recruitment sites last week, starting with the most popular, were www.jobcentreplus.gov.uk, www.linkedin.com, www.jobs.nhs.uk, www.reed.co.uk, www.totaljobs.com, www.jobsite.co.uk, www.monster.co.uk, www.tes.co.uk, www.jobrapido.co.uk and jobs.guardian.co.uk.. For more information about Hitwise, visit http://www.hitwise.co.uk

Louise's UK Recruiter blog
You can read Louise's UK Recruiter blog at http://ukrecruiter.typepad.com. She has recently posted about Results of the Voyager Professional Bodies Poll. You can also keep up to date with other recruitment blogs from the UK via the UK Recruiter blog watch page at http://www.ukrecruiter.co.uk/blogs.htm. 

Discussion Board Summary
Don't forget to visit The Discussion Board. Current topics on the site include:
- REC RIP?
- Recruitment databases - help please?
- Job Sites
You do not need to be registered to post or view messages on the discussion board.  Visit the site, ask questions and share your knowledge.  
 

Advertisement

UK Recruiter Plus - FREE TRIAL now available

The definitive online guide for the UK recruitment industry, UK Recruiter Plus, has been designed exclusively for recruiters, researchers, Recruitment Process Outsourcing specialists and in-house recruitment specialists.

UK Recruiter Plus is a comprehensive set of recruitment guides, advice, training tools and solutions written and provided by industry experts.  The site has a number of additional benefits - http://www.ukrecruiterplus.co.uk/signup/benefits-of-membership.php 

We are currently offering everyone a FREE trial of the site - http://www.ukrecruiterplus.co.uk/trial.  In addition there is a discount of £25 available to the first 100 subscribers to the site.

Don't Miss This 

Totaljobs.com partners with COSLA’s myjobscotland.gov.uk portal
'Totaljobs.com has announced its partnership with COSLA’s myjobscotland.gov.uk portal; Scotland’s Local Government Recruitment Portal.  The partnership will see all current local authority jobs from COSLA’s myjobscotland.gov.uk portal go live on totaljobs.com starting from September 14th 2009, adding to over 3,000 jobs in Scotland already on www.totaljobs.com.  Whilst expanding totaljobs.com’s reach in Scotland and the Public Sector, the partnership will give COSLA’s myjobscotland.gov.uk portal access to over 143,000 visits from jobseekers looking for work in Scotland per month (source: Webtrends, August, 2009).  Nick Goldstein, Sales Manager for totaljobs.com in Scotland, says: “This partnership is superb news for jobseekers in Scotland and throughout the rest of the UK. The increase in jobs this agreement brings cements totaljobs.com’s position as the market leading website with the widest choice and biggest reach for vacancies advertised in Scotland.”'

eQuest Adds Over 500 United Kingdom Job Boards to its Delivery Network 
'eQuest Strengthens Support for its International Customer Base.  eQuest, the international leader in job posting deliveries and Internet recruitment management services, announced today that it has added more than 500 UK job board and media destinations to its already vast job delivery network. eQuest, which posts jobs on behalf of the majority of the Global Fortune 100, continues to increase its EMEA delivery footprint as part of its expansion plans.  Peter Casey, Senior Vice President of eQuest’s European Operations stated, “We are expanding job board delivery service in the United Kingdom based largely on requests from our existing customers. This expansion is on track with eQuest’s philosophy of providing our users the convenience of a borderless delivery network.”  Casey continued, “Another benefit of the UK expansion is to significantly increase eQuest’s job board performance statistics in that region. Job board data will be captured by eQuest’s Prophesy™ analytics database; providing eQuest subscribers with important performance metrics for each job board for all job titles, locations and job classifications. This will give eQuest customers the ability to reduce costs and improve advertising and hiring performance.”'

Upturn is a golden opportunity for the recruitment market to drive up standards says leading recruiter
'A leading recruiter has told the industry that current economic conditions are a golden opportunity to raise standards in staffing and bring in new levels of professionalism to the market.  John O’Sullivan was addressing delegates at Success in Tougher Times II: Preparing for the Upturn, an event hosted by two of the leading industry suppliers, IT specialists Kamanchi and online marketing consultancy 4MAT.  Non-Executive Director of pfj and The Rethink Group, John O’Sullivan is also MD and owner of Elite Leaders, an organisation which specialises in fostering management talent in recruitment.  The event was hosted by Jeff Grout, formerly UK MD of Robert Half and now a leading motivational speaker, author and performance coach.  It also featured James Howells of Redgrave Partners who stressed the importance of having a clear business plan as market conditions begin to change.  For further information, or to access a podcast of the event, please contact Raymond Pennie on 0871 277 0341 or email rpennie@kamanchi.co.uk'

It’s a career thing launches world’s first Virtual Assessment Centre!
'It’s a career thing launches the first Virtual Assessment Centre; enabling managers, recruiters and trainers to carry out live assessments, competency based interviews and interactive surveys via telephone and webcam!  London, August 2009: The Virtual Assessment Centre from www.itsacareerthing.com allows companies to manage their entire interviewing and assessment process live online. By utilising the Virtual Assessment Centre companies will be able to shave 80% of time, money and CO2 emissions from the typical selection and assessment process.  A company can set up their own private virtual assessment space on it’s a career thing, build as many live assessments or interviews they need through the live assessment wizard and manage or store the results in their space. The assessments have a unique evaluation system that means the assessors or interviewers don’t need to be highly trained or experienced to evaluate individuals objectively.  For additional information on It’s a career thing contact Fi Haywood (Fi.haywood@itsacareerthing.com) or visit www.itsacareerthing.com.'

Take the hard work out of matching jobs to candidates.
'Users of Chameleon-i online recruitment software can now have Job board functionality from their own recruitment database with the newly launched Jobs by Email feature.  The time-saving Jobs by Email module enables recruiters to tap into their existing database and target active candidates with relevant opportunities providing recruiters with a strong resource to quickly fulfil positions.  Chameleon-i customers that have already signed up to the Jobs by Email module have reported an increased level of response from their publicised opportunities and have found the functionality helps to secure the right vacancy for the candidates needs.  More details are available at www.chameleoni.com'

TriSys Business Software Domain Name Registration of trisys.co.uk 
'TriSys Business Software, one of the UK's fastest growing software and services providers, has procured the trisys.co.uk domain name. The www.trisys.co.uk web site is the central portal for all existing and prospective TriSys customers including the interactive help desk and numerous product demonstrations.  “Utilising the www.trisys.co.uk domain name further establishes the TriSys brand and its relevance to the UK recruitment sector. Our software plus services strategy means that we can offer our customers the choice of an on-premise or fully managed cloud based deployment. Coupled with our strong recruitment industry and IT industry partner network, we are able to ensure that TriSys can deliver highly functional and tightly integrated recruitment systems whilst ensuring limitless scalability and availability” commented Garry Lowther, Chief Executive Officer, TriSys Business Software.  For more information call 01223 393 519, email info@trisys.co.uk or visit our website – www.trisys.co.uk.'

Subscribe
Don't forget to let your colleagues know about this newsletter. Anyone can subscribe - it's completely free of charge - all they need to do to receive their own copy of the ukrecruiter newsletter is complete our simple form 

Unsubscribe
To unsubscribe from the ukrecruiter newsletter please reply to this message with the subject line "unsubscribe".

Feedback
Please email your comments on the newsletter: the sort of articles you like, the sort you don't read, new features you'd like to see, etc.  Feedback from everyone is always welcome!  

Advertising
If you are interested in advertising a product, service or internet site in the newsletter please contact Louise at contact2@ukrecruiter.co.uk

If you want to see back issues of the newsletter visit http://www.ukrecruiter.co.uk/recnet

NOTE: This newsletter may be copied and distributed free of charge in its entirety. Individual sections may NOT be copied or distributed without prior written agreement.

Copyright (c) 2009, UK Recruiter Ltd