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Boost Recruitment

The importance of time in the recruitment process

One of the most important things in recruitment is time.
This is something which is easily disregarded from both the candidates and clients point of view.

Often we hear “just let me know if something comes up that I’ll like” from candidates who have yet to go through their requirements and what they would actually be interested in. Clients similarly often reply with “just send me relevant CV’s” for a position that we do not have the details for.
Working in recruitment, we understand the value of your time and the organisation that a busy schedule takes to manage and are more than happy to take calls out of hours or arrange calls for specific times of the day to ease the stress of this.

Recently, one of the biggest things that I have come up against is people working on different time scales. This has meant that companies have missed out on great candidates because they took too long making a decision and didn’t fully appreciate how in demand that person was.
The same thing has happened the opposite way around where candidates have taken too long in deciding whether the role is right for them or changed their mind last minute only to miss out because by the time they wanted to accept, the company has interviewed and hired somebody else.

Recruitment is a fast paced environment and this is something that people need to be aware of. In a candidate led market, engineers are not unemployed for long and if they are headhunted and not actively looking the length of time it takes for them to go off an opportunity is even shorter. In the same respect, companies look to hire because they have a genuine need to take somebody on and often times want to move through the process as quickly and easily as possible.

If you are looking for a new opportunity or have a vacancy that you would like us to look at for you- Please feel free to give us a call at a good time to speak or let us know when would be best to call you back- this way we can all be winners!

BOOST your career or your recruitment drive today!

Shawnie at Boost Recruitment.
02392 985 782

Who’s Interviewing Who?

You want to hire a new member of staff, what do you do next?

What you do next is the most important part of the recruitment process. You need to develop a strategy, a master plan.

 Whether you chose to include a recruitment agency or go it alone you need to be thinking about the following. 

How attractive and marketable is our business to the outside world?

If you chose to go it alone and manage the recruitment process yourself ensure that you are able to and can confidently answer that question?

Alternatively, if you’re working with a recruitment agency, are they able to answer the same question about your business?

 

The recruitment market is very candidate driven at present.

With over 5.5m business’s in the UK to choose from why should they pick yours?

So how do you stand out in the market place with that much choice?

These are my top 3 tips to ensure you stand out in the job market and secure your new employee.

 

Who are you?

When you are planning a recruitment campaign you need to create a brand, one that stands out and peaks the interest of potential new employees.

Are you XYZ ltd who install and service pumps?

Or

Are you XYZ ltd who are a leading specialist in pumping solutions who work with major Blue-chip organisations across the globe providing the very best service in the market with a team of highly skilled and time served Engineers ready to solve your technical needs?

I know who I’d rather work for.

What makes you different?

When you decide to go out to market for that shiny new employee you are doing battle with other local business and sometimes you biggest competitors.

What makes you any better that ABC ltd, your major competitor, who are also recruiting for the same kind of Engineer that you are?

Again, if your choosing to work alone on your campaign or working with an agency you need to be

shouting from the rooftops why your business is so much better that anyone else’s.

 

A good example of this, bear with me, is the Godfather!

The Godfather is about family and loyalty ( if you take the guns and mob boss’s out of it)

Remember your values – or you could end up sleeping with the fishes

Have standards and values you can recruit against – hand pick from the available candidate that come in for interview with your personality traits, DNA of your staff and your company ethos.

 

Family – Personality fit

  • People leave their boss’s not their companies – around 50% ( 1 in 2 ) of employees leave their company to get away from their current bosses.
  • The working world has changed, there are lots of option out there for candidates.
  • What are you like to work for?
  • Do you provide guidance and training
  • Promote a hard working yet open door policy

Make them an offer they can’t refuse

Don’t offer under market value and then follow it up with a list of dated and irrelevant benefits ( standard pension that will leave the employee eating tins of bean when they retire also a ridiculous OTE that you have to jump through hoops to achieve ) offer things like childcare, gym memberships, incentives. Things that people actually can use and “benefit” from.

Who’s interviewing Who?

When you have found a shortlist of potential candidates that you are interested in meeting, next up is arranging interviews.

You are interviewing them, right?

Wrong.

 If you’re the sort of hiring manager who takes the Sargent major approach to interviews and drills the candidate for 30 mins, with some abrupt questions thrown in and the kicks them out of the room to find their own way out.

Stop doing that!!!

An interview is the first impression that a candidate gets when they come to your business. If they have made the effort to do research, dress appropriately to make them as employable as possible. You should be doing the same.

 

When the candidates come to your building, think about what they are greeted with. Do you have a reception or receptionist? Do you have visitors parking? What does your reception area look like?

All things to think about, even before you meet them.

When they meet you, are they greeted with a grubby handshake from someone in dirty overhauls and scruffy hair? Or are the greeted by a friendly face that looks like a professional that really wants to meet them?

During the interview, what are you saying? If all your questions are about whether they can do the job or not.

You’re doing it wrong.

Correct you should be asking those questions but you should also be telling them how amazing your company is and what the employees are like, some key achievements that the business has done.

Basically, why should they come and work for you.

After the interview walk them to the door, make sure they leave the building ok.

There is a lot of competition out there, if a candidate leaves with a positive attitude when it comes to an offer they should be biting your hand off.

Written by Louis Bye – Boost Recruitment

 

Skills Shortages; Could Training be an Option? – A Case Study

Skills Shortages; Could Training be an Option? – A Case Study

I’ve been recruiting in the Commercial Catering industry for the past 3 years; it’s an exciting industry with lots of highly skilled and hardworking individuals. Unfortunately, I’ve noticed a severe skills shortage in terms of fully COMCAT qualified engineers. Too many kitchens and too few experienced pairs of hands to fix them!

In the battle of the Commercial Catering firms I have witnessed quite a few underhand tactics taking place. For example, some companies are offering outlandishly high salaries (when the rest of the package and working conditions really aren’t that great), resulting in very well paid but very unhappy engineers. This is pricing engineers out of the market and making it near on impossible for other companies to compete.

So what do you do when you have solid service contracts coming in, and not enough engineers to honour them? Let me tell you a story…

The Conundrum

One of my top Commercial Catering clients have just received a large injection of cash into their service department from their parent company and are looking to double or triple their engineering workforce in the next couple of years. When they came to me with exclusivity on all roles, I was elated! For a short time, and then I started to panic. Where on earth was I going to conjure up all of these engineers from? Don’t get me wrong, this company are an easy sell. They are one of my favourite clients to work with, they offer a great package and treat their engineers really well. I’d already placed several engineers with them and the feedback I receive is great.

I was in a quandary – I didn’t want to disappoint a loyal customer who were putting all their faith in me, but I also didn’t want to over-promise and not be able to deliver. So that got me to thinking, there must be another way around this…

The Idea

I was honest with my contact and we decided that we needed to think of a workaround. After much research, conversation and deliberation we started to wonder whether it would be feasible and cost effective to actually take on some un-qualified engineers and put them through their training. My contact went away to speak with a local gas training centre and I waited with baited breath.

When he came back to me, it was the news I was hoping for. If I could find engineers with transferable skillsets, who were willing to take a slightly lower salary while undergoing their training, it looked as though this could work!

Next we had a long think about the kinds of engineers that would be suitable – we decided that the best kind of person would be a Domestic Appliance Engineer with an electrical background (even better if they had their core or domestic gas already as this would lower costs)

My contact loaded me up with the first territories that he needed filling, and I went to work!

The Result

4 months later and I have already filled the first 6 roles. My candidates come from a range of different backgrounds but they are all enrolled on their gas courses and doing incredibly well.

My Point

I’m not saying that this is going to be a feasible solution for all companies, but I do believe that there is a whole pool of talented engineers out there that, with a bit of training and guidance, could be moulded into the perfect Commercial Catering Engineers to solve this crisis!

Paying an unqualified engineer a lower basic salary and putting them through their gas courses might actually end up working out more cost effective than employing an in-demand, fully qualified COMCAT one.

If you’d like to discuss this with me in more detail, please get in touch. Equally, if you’re in a different industry that is suffering from a skills shortage, perhaps we can come up with a similar solution!

By Hannah @ Boost Recruitment
T: 02392 985 782

Unsuccessful Candidates are Important Too!

Unsuccessful Candidates are Important Too!

Being unsuccessful following an interview is an inevitable part of all job searches. While it isn’t the best feeling in the world, most people will graciously accept the fact that they aren’t going to be the best fit for every role they apply for.

When looking into candidate interview experience, research has shown that all candidates are really looking for is to feel valued, and to get honest feedback on the reasons behind them being unsuccessful.
This seems reasonable, but unfortunately it’s all too common for candidates to receive no useful feedback, or sometimes no feedback at all!

It is really important as recruiters that we receive valuable feedback from our clients, so that we can feed this back to our candidates in a constructive manner and continue to help them with their job search. Here’s how you, as a client, can help us with this following interview:

Top Tips for Giving Quality Feedback:

-Give feedback as quickly as possible after a decision has been made – it’s unfair to keep a candidate hanging

-Start by praising the candidate on what went well or what you liked about them

-Move on to explain why an offer won’t be made, avoiding being too negative or personal

-Be prepared for further questions – if a candidate needs anything clarifying it could really help them as they continue their job search

-And the most important thing of all —- Leave it amicably – they might be perfect for another role in the future or be able to refer friends or colleagues who are!

 

post by Hannah @ Boost Recruitment

T: 02392 985 782

How To Boost – Field Engineer Recruitment

How to Boost – Field Engineer Recruitment  
(3 Minute Read)

UK Field Service Managers – have you ever:

-Made an offer of employment that was accepted, then later turned down at the last minute?
-Lost out on hiring a lead engineer because a competitor firm offered a ‘better package’?
-Missed out more than once hiring an engineer for a specific ‘hard to fill’ patch?

If so then read on for some simple, practical, effective steps you can take during interviews to prevent this happening in future. I also share some thoughts about how you can successfully hire an in-demand engineer (who has multiple offers on the table) ahead of your competition. And believe me if an engineer is skilled, personable, and currently employed – demand and competition to hire them WILL be sky high.

My name is Matthew Keene, and I am a director at Boost Recruitment Ltd. Throughout my engineering recruitment career I have been surprised at how indecisively field engineers can describe their interviews – even minutes after getting out of them!

Even when a service manager has the best intentions; without proper preparation and practice engineers often leave interviews lacking Certainty of their:

-Suitability

-Value to the company

-Decision they will make (if offered)

Note the key word above:

Certainty.

Certainty IS NOT ‘They have a few more people to see first’
nor is it ‘I’m not sure what they thought of me, I think it went OK though’
and it is never ‘Let’s see if they come back with anything first’

Certainty IS ‘I really want this, it’s perfect for me’
and ‘That was the best interview I’ve ever had’
and ‘Don’t tell them I said this Matt, but after that meeting, I’d pay them to go and work there!’

These are things we hear repeatedly after engineer’s interview with our most aware and astute service managers and our favourite SME directors; those who’ve been receptive to following our pre-interview tips and advice to help them rapidly grow their companies.

HOW CERTAIN ARE YOU? (Really?) That engineers are saying things like ‘I’d work there for free’ after interviewing with you?

In today’s competitive UK engineering services market, it is essential candidates come away from interview in no doubt of their:

Suitability for the opportunity; and how they will add value to your team.
Interviewer valuing them highly; that you appreciated their specific skills and personality.
Strong desire to join the company; to work with you and your team, ahead of anyone else.

And this goes for your 1st 2nd and 3rd choice candidates too!

Those who just miss out:
-May be perfect for future roles.
-Will tell others about your fantastic company.
-Could be motivated to re-apply later, even years down the line.

An interview should ALWAYS conclude with an engineer’s Interest, Knowledge and Confidence all Peaking; leaving them primed and ready to say ‘YES!’ to your offer without hesitation (and to describe your company as ‘top notch’ to their engineering pals).

Fresh from meeting you a candidate must also be able to clearly recall
Your company’s unique story;
The background of their future boss;
and the feel of the team that they will be joining.

The information you give must ensure the candidate is fully informed, intrigued and charmed such that they have strong enough interest (and memory recall) to bridge the (several days/weeks/months) gap from interviewing to the day they start work with you.

This interim period can be a time plagued with personal doubt, uncertainty, and competing offers and interviews, that obscure and cloud the clarity your message and opportunity.

To keep your offer acceptance to new employee conversion ratio high you must take responsibility for your potential new employee remaining interested and confident enough to want to join you ahead of; a counter-offer to stay put with their current employer; and any competing offers they receive from elsewhere.

Remember: Candidate Confidence is KEY.

A candidate who feels Certain they will;
Fit in; be Valued; and have genuine Opportunities to Progress;
Will easily decline a pay rise or promotion offer from their boss when handing in their notice.

An uncertain or unconfident candidate will often stay put where they know the lay of land;
it’s just that much easier to say yes to the familiar when the future is unknown, unclear or uncertain.

An exceptional or rare engineer will have multiple companies pursuing them.
If they are interviewing with you as say company 3 out of 5, you MUST be outstanding and create a stronger impression than the companies they see first and last. Studies have shown the first and last will always be most memorable all other things being equal. If your main competitor of the engineer’s prospects is who they see last it will be imperative that you significantly out shine them. If it comes to a split decision you could miss out just because your impression was less fresh in the engineer’s mind.

If you work with a proper recruiter who head hunts for you (rather than just advertising and forwarding mixed cv’s) ensuring the candidates have optimal Interest, Knowledge and Confidence is even more important. A head-hunted engineer must be shown the grass is greener with you, to even consider leaving a role they are happy in.

To ensure your recruitment campaign is successful you must fill EVERY interviewee with confidence and clarity about the role, their value to your team and company, and how they will fit in and be welcome.

If you are not doing this already you must learn and learn fast. I predict that with a little preparation and practice you will noticeably boost your success when you next recruit.

Would you like even more great advice on hiring top engineers?

Call us now: 02392 985 782

Let’s BOOST Your Recruitment this Summer!

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Thank You, Matt