What appears to be happening is that organisations are looking to temporary employment arrangements in order to be more strategic in their operations – rather than just to fill gaps in their staff. Across the survey, 11 per cent of organisations described their freelance use as a move to help drive innovation, while 13 per cent use interims to fill strategic gaps to drive productivity.

At the same time, employees view the freelance lifestyle as one which gives them control of their lives in an uncertain economic climate – and that view is catching. An impressive 48 per cent of permanent workers included in the survey said they planned to explore temporary working arrangements when they were next searching for employment.

“The ongoing weakness of the economy is driving an increased interest in contract and temporary working,” said Mark Bull, CEO of Randstad UK. “Clearly, many people are turning to this work style because there are less permanent opportunities, but the lack of job security during this slow recovery is also encouraging people to think seriously about temping or contracting for the first time. Those that do are enjoying a warm welcome in many organisations – as they seek to harness much needed skills within a flexible employment contract.”

Interestingly Randstad has found the increase benefits now given to agency staff – staff parking, crèches, canteens and transport – have done little to dent the demand for temporary workers. Among the organisations surveyed, 78 per cent claimed to be already providing temp staff with these benefits before the Regulations while two thirds stated that full access to these benefits was now available to all staff.

There has been a mixed reaction to the benefits of extending rights to temporary workers after twelve weeks however, with 53 per cent of temps believing pay parity with permanent colleagues is an advantage and 47 per cent believing it is not. The survey found in the education sector there was concern on this issue since more highly qualified teachers feel they are less likely to secure employment because they think schools might not be able to budget for the higher wages their skills demand.

Auto enrollment into workplace pension schemes, due in October this year, does not seem to have made much of a impact on the temp population. The Navigator research found only 34 per cent of temps aware of this new right and of those who were aware, only 36 per cent are interested in taking up such a scheme.

“The right to a pension also signifies an important step in the ongoing professionalisation of the temping and contracting industry,” notes Mark Bull.

“The UK already has the greatest penetration of temporary and contract workers in the EU, at about four per cent of the total workforce, and our expectation is that over time, the economy will see a gradual development of interest in the benefits of temping and contracting by both job seekers and organisations,” he concludes.

Source : www.theglobalrecruiter.co.uk

Managers are becoming more favourable to flexible working arrangements and allow staff to carry out personal tasks at work, but expect staff to work outside of office hours in return, a study of 1,000 bosses has revealed.

Employers may be wasting as much as £270 million a year on failed recruitment, according to a report from Learndirect.

This follows the news, reported earlier this week by recruiter.co.uk, that the number of new roles in the UK showed a slight month-on-month decline in February.

The ‘Reed Job Index’ shows particular growth in the construction, engineering, IT, motoring and purchasing sectors, and growth present in every region of the UK apart from Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Martin Warnes, managing director of reed.co.uk, says: “The latest ‘Reed Job Index’ shows that job creation has been strong during the first three months of the year.

“But we mustn’t forget that, for a lot of people, finding work continues to be a real struggle, while the cost to business of employing staff remains a barrier to recruitment. The budget may have been seen as friendly to business, but the taxation burden of actually employing staff remains high which needs to be addressed by policy makers to assist continued job growth and a sustained job-led recovery.”

Source : www.recruiter.co.uk

More than one million UK workers are ‘sleep drunk’ due to a lack of shut eye, new data of nearly 39,000 employed people from Vielife has shown.

And yet, let’s face it, most sales people are crap. Apart from the usual paranoia around the just a suit and gift of the gab themes, you know the complaints: they don’t listen, they’re lazy, they don’t understand their products, they’re not organised and they hate admin (oh, and they get paid far too much and I can do it much better myself anyway).

But we all need them. In the brief space available, I shall fire off some of my pet hates and loves about salesmanship and some hiring tips.

Selling has been called the art of persuading other people to have your way. Rapport skills are important and first impressions are always the longest (you only have one chance to make a good first impression, so you make all those jokes later!). The key technology in getting other people to have your way is simply this: asking good questions. Bad people pitch too soon, so eager are they to flip the laptop and dip into PowerPoint slides which extol what they have been trained, parrot-fashion, to explain are the features and benefits of their products. How do I know why you should buy my house unless I know what you’re looking for? (Which is different from why anybody else would buy it.)

Try it now: ask your salesperson to sell you their house. 9 out of 10 will tell you how fab it is (i.e. why they like it). Your needs and wants will be pretty much ignored! The Real Business model sales person will reply: what are you looking for or what’s important? Get the idea? When I interview sales people, I always assess their questioning technique by seeing how deep candidates dig, not just about my company and products, but about what it’s like to be here, how to be successful, what the issues are, what I’m looking for etc. Bad salespeople ask about the product, the competition and then say what do you want to know about me? I always reply: why should I give you the job? And of course, they haven’t a clue, they never asked and we finish the meeting. Another excellent sign is whether or not they take notes: no notes, no job. How else can they remember what you (and eventually your customer) think?

A good company will conduct internal workshops to brainstorm, structure and document a formalised approach to sales questioning. You’ll be wondering now how to arrive at what questions to ask. Well, you know what are the unique propositions of your product or service (I hope!). I like to define these as a set of features, advantages and benefits and the value of that benefit to the individual. The classic example is the big golfing umbrella. Feature: it’s big. Advantage: it covers more of you. Benefit: keeps the shade off? Keeps you dry? Hides you? All depends on what’s important to you about (golf) umbrellas?

Then you just work back from these propositions, setting out questions that would get the prospect to feel the full value of your offering in their context. (Sounds easy, but it actually take a long time and often generate heated debate). Plus, there are loads of questioning funnels you’d wish to explore, including economic, technical, emotional, political and so on  the more expensive your offering, the broader the question set. I know people who run specialist workshops to help get at this stuff usually buried away in Founders brains or selling anecdotes.

At the end of the day, selling is about direction, quality and quantity. The direction is who you talk to, the quality is how you do it and the quantity is how often and how much to achieve your targets. To illustrate the latter: (and this how some commoditised businesses work): my sales goal is 500k; this is made up of 20 orders (based on my average sales value of 25,000). I get one order for every 10 leads. It takes 2 meetings and 4 phone calls on average to close an order. Go figure the activity levels to accomplish the goal. Managing time and activity is incredibly important: the vast majority of selling time is spent chasing deals that you won’t win. Depressing thought! When hiring then, I look for hard evidence of analytical and measured approaches to managing selling time effectively, which means looking at processes, diaries, systems etc.

But the odd thing about all this is that you spend a few hours with this person in interview situations  where you’re obviously both selling to each other – and then you entrust this stranger with your single biggest issue. Rather like getting married really: just make sure you take as many references as you can.

Source: I love media sales.com

If  you are looking for on the ball sales people contact Mel Remington today on 0845 199 1929 or email mel@yessalesrecruitment.co.uk. 

The recruitment market in these areas remain highly competitive, and attracting the talent with the right skills and experience is key, especially in the rapidly expanding new media marketing area.

Thiloni Fothergill, talent acquisition business partner at cereal manufacturer Kellogg’s, confirms: “Business leaders are looking for low-cost, innovative recruitment solutions.” Large budget cuts, with marketing particularly badly hit, have also been seen in Ireland by Colm Buckley, managing director of sales, marketing and management specialists People Group

Agencies seem to be saturated with the same candidates and … it is a challenge to be confident they are working in the best way for us

Fothergill continues: “These markets are highly competitive the level of negotiation with agency fees, however, still remains high.” She adds that the use of social media is “a benefit for ourselves to reduce agency spend”, but it also presents a challenge for a company looking to find the right balance of “appealing to new generations, while also maintaining appeal to traditionalists”.

Remaining an attractive employer to a wide variety of candidates is one thing; having too many candidates is another. Fothergill explains: “Agencies seem to be saturated with the same candidates and as they are so competitive it is a challenge to be confident they are working in the best way for us.”

The best way of working for many companies doesn’t involve hiring, according to Anita Stubbs, director of education at the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM). In the current austerity climate this often means “developing the skills of existing staff: whether it’s a focus on social media or digital content”, rather than recruiting new staff.

Cost is often prohibitive in the digital media marketing niche, where talented individuals, confirms Marco Corsaro, founder and MD of new media marketing specialist, 77agency, “are either hard to find or expensive to find if someone is skilled in these areas he is probably working”.

Corsaro does not insist on a particular professional background for entry into his firm’s ’academy’, which looks to plug this new media marketing talent shortage, finding a good amount of talent from conventional marketers: “There is still a lot of talent, but it needs to be trained.”

Taking marketing as a whole into account, CIM’s Stubbs sees low employability of university graduates: “With more and more graduates entering the job market with degrees focusing on the theory side of marketing, employers are finding it difficult to get staff who can demonstrate practical experience in marketing.”

As for more experienced marketers, Stubbs believes the CIM accreditation increases the strength of a candidate: “September’s Marketing Rewards Survey showed that CIM members earn, on average, £500-£1,000 more than their non-affiliated colleagues. As businesses continue to recognise this, the natural trend will be for job adverts to specify them as necessary.”

Of clear value to those employed in sales is the ability to adapt to present needs, with Diane Kilkenny, operations manager of the Sales Leadership Alliance, describing a change in the role of sales reps (see Stakeholder comment).

In this new era of sales Kellogg’s told Recruiter that it has a large number of field sales roles available nationally. Senior roles remain far and few in between.

The manufacturing industry is a particular target of the fund, as evidenced by previous awards and resultant job creation, as reported on recruiter.co.uk.

As well as providing a boost for recruiters as new companies – which can be from any sector – create jobs, a spokesperson for co-ordinating agency the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) tells Recruiter that recruitment agencies themselves are eligible to apply for money, as long as they are in some way innovative and aim to add new jobs to the company.

Information on how to apply can be found on the BIS website.

Business secretary Vince Cable (right) says: “Many of the successful projects from rounds one and two were manufacturers and the sector remains one of our national success stories.

“Manufacturing lies right at the heart of the government’s strategy for economic recovery and growth.”

Source: Recruiter.co.uk

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