Sustainable Solutions Series Edition #2: Candidate Experience

How do you effectively and sensitively attract and retain applicants during the recruitment process, instead of having to make a peace offering of a large salary at the end of a tedious journey?

In response to the recent Labour Market Statistics, this series will offer examples of ways in which recruiters and employers can thrive during low candidate availability. In this, the second of our series of articles demonstrating how you can manage the dwindling talent pool, we explore the lasting value of creating a good candidate experience.

A candidate’s experience is one of the most powerful tools of retention in the Hiring Manager’s arsenal. It is the quality of their recruitment journey, from beginning to look for work to settling in at their new job, and the relationship their prospective employer builds with them throughout that journey. First impressions can make or break a working relationship, and hiring managers must put themselves in their shoes to empathise with their goals and anxieties.

An excellent candidate experience will include:

• A well designed, interesting career site which promotes you as an employer and clearly communicates your Employment Value Proposition (EVP)
• A compelling advert which promotes the features of the role and is clear on the skills and experience required
• Enthusiastic and reassuring Hiring Managers who are trained in interview skills
• Useful guides, blogs and eBooks explaining, for example, how to prepare for interviews
• Making it easy to search and apply for the position
• Acknowledgement of their application
• Human interaction as well as automated messages 

By implementing these factors, you can ensure your candidate’s peace of mind. This is not something to be underestimated; 42% of candidates who receive a poor candidate experience will never seek employment with you again. In the current climate, no one can afford to lose perfectly good talent to such avoidable things as a late phone call or an apathetic tone of voice.

The optimum achievement is that, during the interview, your candidate feels like you want them to be themselves. Rather than having to jump through invisible hoops to appear to be the person that you are looking for, the candidate should feel comfortable and prepared. If you can help them to feel assured and confident enough to be themselves, then you are sure to receive a more accurate self-portrait of your prospective employee.

High Risk, High Reward (Part 2): the challenges and potential solutions for flexible workers

Read the first instalment “High Risk, High Reward (Part 1): 5 reasons people are choosing temporary work” here.

The UK labour market has experienced a structural change; flexible working is here to stay with freelancers, contractors and agency workers contributing to an increasing percentage of the modern workforce. ​We have already explored workers' motivations for this kind of work, and it is important to consider the pitfalls, risks and challenges of electing to bypass traditional permanent employment.

1. Job and income security 

Whilst there may be opportunities for higher earning potential, flexible working can struggle to provide the same consistency of income and employment of permanent working. The frequency and duration of employment will vary and for many, continually searching for their next job is a daunting prospect.

Income fluctuation makes financial planning difficult and can leave people feeling vulnerable. There are security issues to consider, as a temporary worker's ‘​psychological contract’ (the perceptions of the two parties, employee and employer, of what their mutual obligations are towards each other) leaves room for interpretation and confusion.

2. Vulnerability

With the responsibility of negotiating and re-negotiating contracts, passive individuals who lack the natural resources to effectively promote themselves are at a major disadvantage. Of those who do get employed, large percentages are unclear about their rights; in fact, in a recent agency working focus group, only 1 in 25 understood where they stood. 

Further vulnerability stems from tax issues, as managing your own tax can be difficult due to the complicated regulations. In addition, independent workers miss out on tax free expenses that companies pay their employees.

3. Training and progression

With no permanent position held, promotions are rarely possible. Many managers are reluctant to invest money or time into developing and training ephemeral employees.

When flexible workers begin a new role, some companies overlook a proper induction and by failing to comprehensively introduce new employees into the business, flexible workers can start off on a weak foot, unable to feel satisfaction and loyalty to their company. This can impede productivity.

4. Job satisfaction

The lack of a sense of belonging can put a strain on the employee/employer relationship in a way which is not necessarily the case for permanent staff. Contractors often testify to being allocated the majority of the hardest or dullest tasks, exacerbated by the ‘domino effect’ of other employees following the example set by management. This is likely to isolate temporary staff and create an ‘us and them’ divide. 

Solutions?

This relationship should work for both parties, alleviating these challenges to enjoy the benefits. If companies invest time, money and effort into temporary workers, then in many cases they will reap the benefits of a loyal, satisfied and committed individual with an increased productivity.

Three parties that can help be part of the solution are:

Recruitment Agencies:

• Have a vital role as a broker between candidate and employer who can help address power imbalance
• Provide information and access to training, manage paperwork and endorsements for mortgages etc.
• Explain income/tax liabilities and employee rights and responsibilities
• Go the extra mile by offering career support and advice

Employers:

• Provide thorough inductions for temporary staff as part of the integration process
• Evaluate and give feedback
• Encourage and motivate just as they would their permanent employees
• Lead by example
• Provide training and development opportunities

Government:

• Commission independent parties to provide income protection information
• Offer Universal Tax Credit, can explain the tax system and provide guidance

Facts and figures taken from: Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) Report – “Flex Appeal: Why freelancers, contractors and agency workers choose to work this way”

The ‘No’ vote doesn't mean no change.

 

It’s business as usual as a sense of relief washes over the UK PLC. The Financial Services sector is particularly reassured, as it will now be spared a bank run, the difficulty of adapting to trading in different currencies, the loss of the big corporates’ headquarters back below Hadrian’s Wall and a loss of faith in the pound from foreign investors. But the UK must not mistake relief for a sense of anti-climax; this decision will mean change.

David Cameron has promised that a ‘devolution revolution’ is to follow, but as the debate about which powers will be devolved to Scotland begins, we can expect a significant impact on employment, and potentially on contractors. I anticipate a degree of uncertainty in our field as the politicians begin to establish a framework around which decisions will lie with the Union and which with Westminster.
Despite this, the rejection of independence is good news for recruiters and the job market across the UK. Had it been a ‘Yes’ vote we would likely have experienced a spike in contractor usage, although the short term boosts which the world of recruitment could have expected would have quickly been eroded by the potential long term economic impacts of separation.

But the ‘No’ vote doesn’t mean no change. Hours before the votes were counted, Gordon Brown stated that Scotland “want a promise of change they can trust – without the risks and uncertainties of an irreversible separation”. And never before has such an accurate representation of a nation’s opinion been captured; an enormous 84.6% of Scots voted (a level of engagement rivalled only by universal suffrage and the 1950 general election), and the referendum has “touched sections of the community who have never before been touched by politics”. With this many people calling for change, a realignment of our national values with this emerging attitude will be inevitable.

But some are questioning whether or not these issues are merely delayed. Although Salmond has stated that Scottish independence will now be ‘off the agenda for a generation’, the proximity of this morning’s result was so close that a second referendum is far from impossible, according to The Guardian’s economic editor Larry Elliott. He also speculated that in the few weeks and months following this decision, a minority the big corporates who were poised for change may not want to waste their preparation efforts. As the outcome was so close, some companies may choose to move south into England anyway, choosing to go ahead with their contingency plans. Everyone is feeling the need for change.

Overall, most of the UK can breathe a sigh of relief, for the time being. This is, in my opinion, good news for England and Wales, for Scotland, employers and recruiters. We are now in a position to create some long term solutions to our national concerns, and continue the consistent recovery from recession which we are currently enjoying.

Nick Walrond, Managing Director

Scottish Independence; what could it mean for the UK job market?

The outcome of the Scottish referendum is becoming less and less predictable, but either way there will be an impact on the job market which we would be wise to prepare for. Scotland is the best performing of the four UK nations in unemployment rates. If Scotland votes ‘No’, then we will keep the 1 in 10 Scottish jobs linked to trade in the UK, that’s ‘nearly 1 million Scottish jobs’ which are closely woven into the fabric of the UK’s labour economy. But what impact would the unravelling of this relationship have on the UK job market?

John Swinney (Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Employment & Sustainable Growth in Scotland), wrote that independence would boost labour market recovery; ‘independence will allow us to build a more coherent framework for employment and the labour market… quickly matching labour force skills with labour market need’. But this is all speculation and an opinion with which I disagree, as organisations are beginning to question any long term investment in Scotland if it becomes a marginal economy. At first glance, it may be assumed that there will be a boost in job creation south of the border as the big corporates relocate their headquarters, but as the split manifests itself, the job market will inevitably suffer as those corporations choose to invest only in secure business environments, rather than a newly independent country. The UK economy has been in a reassuringly steady state of recovery over the past few years, but that work could be disastrously undone if Scotland votes for independence; I predict an unnecessary knock on to the UK economy. Looking at the recovery, there has been just as much jobs growth above the border as below, but is this thanks to being a UK PLC? Would it continue in that vein should Scotland leave the UK? Unfortunately, I can’t help but doubt it.

If a new border is established, the two different governments will inevitably have two different approaches to employment legislation, making things very difficult for the job seeker. By tax-domiciling themselves, Scotland will have to have a financial barrier, which will create big tax border disputes for the contractors who are based in, for instance, Gretna Green and commute to Carlisle.

From the recruitment industry’s point of view, I suspect a ‘Yes’ vote may push the UK much more to the right, and Scotland reactively to the left. Our conservative government favours a flexible workplace, and the UK (which has the most flexible employment economy in Europe) may become even more flexible, giving UK workers more and more options about how to balance their work and their personal lives. This, of course, would be something to look forward to.

However, I am beginning to think, along with Margaret Curran (Scotland’s Shadow Secretary of State), that Scotland is going to ‘sleepwalk’ into independence. The full economic implications of a split are, for some, being forgotten in favour of a drive for independence. I have to question whether this has been completely thought through; is this really for the good of the Scottish people or is it a sense of nationalism clouding a vision? It seems that they may be guilty of allowing their hearts to make this decision, rather than their heads. For instance, it is more than reasonable to suggest that inward investment would go south of the border along with the big corporates, and while this may not have an immediate negative impact on jobs, it will certainly may do in the long run. With this is mind is independence, from an economic and social perspective, really in the best interests of Scotland? I am far from certain.

The ‘highest hiring optimism in Europe’; the UK’s Labour Market in July 2014

The height of summer is always tricky for business and subsequently, the labour market; lots of people are on annual leave and profitability inevitably slows, but in the recruitment industry huge rises in permanent recruitment and in temporary placements in Social Work and Finance & Accounting totally defy this.

According to SparkHire’s 2014 Staffing Industry Trend Report, ‘the staffing industry is expected to grow at least 6% in 2014’. A significant amount of this could logically be attributed to the new temporary labour force and each sector’s increasing need for contract workers. Temporary hiring more than doubled in 2013 and has been trending steadily upwards ever since. As more and more vacancies for highly skilled and specialised skill sets appear, employers are looking for quick fixes for their workforce gap, making the most of the nature of temporary labour, which ‘can often jump right in and hit the ground running’.

READ MORE: 5 reasons people are choosing temporary work

As predicted, salaries are rising. In particular, salaries for Admin & Secretarial, Education & Training and Transport were trending upwards in July. Based on a three month rolling average, the highest salaries were found in Consultancy & Senior Appointments, Banking, IT, Defence & Military, and Accountancy. This rise in salaries continues a precedent which in particular makes it difficult for management, who often feel they have no other tools of retention than raising salaries. We address this issue in our Sustainable Solutions Series and offer alternative solutions to raising salaries in order to attract and retain top talent.

The UK has seen the ‘highest hiring optimism in Europe’; according to Markit’s Business Outlook Survey. A high demand for new housing will result in a significant increase in construction opportunities throughout the UK, which will consequently offer many recruiting opportunities. Indeed, manufacturers have predicted that employment in their sector will increase at an astonishing rate over the next year.

The labour market itself is buoyant at present with ‘new export opportunities, an improving economic environment, increased consumer confidence and new product developments as key drivers for potential growth’ (Markit). This, however, is not all; the same report warns of ‘increased staff and raw material costs, rising house prices and fragile political and economic conditions in export markets’ which could in itself be an obstacle to future economic growth.

Of course, the result of the Scottish referendum may also result in uncertain shifts in the labour market. There will certainly be some big changes should Scotland vote ‘Yes’ for independence, forcing many companies to relocate below the border.

Keep an eye on our blog for our next article, ‘Scottish Independence; what will it mean for the job market?’