Ask Balance

Do you have any questions you'd like answered in relation to recruitment, interviews or a career in accountancy?

We've launched an 'Ask Balance' feature over on the Balance Recruitment website this week, and my colleague Tony Vickers is first up in the chair. Tony has been recruiting for finance and accountancy staff in London for over 10 years, working with some of the worlds best known brands across a variety of sectors. 

He has been shortlisted for the 'Agency Recruiter of the Year' Award at this years Recruiter Awards for Excellence, and is eager to take your questions. 

Get involved here: #AskBalance

Job Boards and the battle for quantity over quality...

With the threat of social media networks moving in on their territory, job boards have had to work a little harder recently to convince their clients (e.g. recruiters and direct employers) that their services are still as valuable as ever and that their well established business models can withstand the threat posed by LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

This is most notably evident through the significant increase on advertising spend to increase the number of job seekers registering on their sites. The campaigns seem to be working, with a number of job boards boasting record traffic statistics.

So what does this mean for the clients who advertise vacancies on their sites? Does it improve their chances of finding the best candidates? Possibly. Does it mean they will receive more applications? Certainly. Does it mean they’ll spend more time filtering out irrelevant applicants? Definitely. Quantity is assured, quality isn’t.

One job board even seems to actively promote the ‘spray and pray’ method of searching for work in their TV campaign, implying that a wholesale change in career profession is achieved as simply as sending your CV off for something that catches your interest!

Ask any recruiter what they dislike about using job boards and they’ll all tell you the same thing; too many irrelevant applications. Job board users can send their CV’s to countless vacancies in no time, regardless if they do not have the experience requested in the vacancy advert.  Very few recruiters will tell you they just want even more applications.

There is also a logical argument to say that this focus on volume has a negative impact on the job seekers who use the job boards in the manner intended. Relevant applicants will inevitably get overlooked from time to time when their CV’s are buried in amongst hundreds of irrelevant applications.

So what do I think job boards could do to improve their services? Here are a few suggestions:

·         If a job seeker is applying for a very wide range of different role types, at salary levels that indicate a reasonable level of previous experience might required, send a ‘yellow card’ email, asking them to be more realistic with their applications, or face restrictions on the number of applications they can make.

·         Limit the number of applications job seekers can make daily. This might be a bit extreme, but it would encourage job seekers to spend more time reading through adverts to see if they have a realistic chance of being considered.

·         Universal use of filtering questions. Some job boards have this feature, but couldn’t they all allow the advertisers to pose some yes/no experience questions that filter out unsuccessful applicants?

·         Require more information to be entered manually by the job seeker for each application (to reduce spamming). Adding a layer of process in to the application process will take more effort on the job seekers part. Perhaps allow the vacancy advertiser the option to add a specific question field, relating to the advert (e.g. ‘please describe your involvement in a systems upgrade project’).

So when I receive a promotional email from a job board telling me that their new TV advertising campaign is about to start, I now find my finger pressing the delete button before I’ve reached the end of the first sentence.

What do you think of the above suggestions? Would they improve service for you as a recruiter/hiring manager? Or would they be too restrictive as a job seeker? Or have you got any better suggestions? Please comment below…

LinkedIn's Endorsements feature - users will decide its fate...

I’ve read a number of articles/blogs recently discussing the pros and cons of the Endorsements feature on Linkedin, so I thought I’d throw my opinion in to the ring.

The theory behind its introduction makes sense to me. It’s a quick and easy way to publicly verify the skills and expertise of a contact you’ve worked with or done business with. Not as personal and informative as a written recommendation, but still a testimonial of sorts and one we’re all grateful to receive when it’s from someone we know.

One of the major problems is how the feature is promoted on the site. Linkedin have made it too quick and easy to endorse multiple contacts with one mouse click when prompted.  This significantly dilutes the credibility of the function and actively encourages users to endorse their connections for skills and expertise they may not possess.

Another big argument from the doubters is that they’re receiving endorsements from people they’ve never even met or had business dealings with. In the article:  Why I Think LinkedIn Endorsements Will Be Dead By The End Of The Year the author states that he’s had five endorsements that very day from complete strangers, and as a result feels the feature is doomed to fail.

This is where there seems to be some misguided criticism of the feature in my opinion. Only first tier connections can endorse you, so if you don’t want to give strangers the ability to endorse you, don’t connect with them in the first place. Linkedin can’t be held accountable for being unable to distinguish between your real life connections and the open networkers you connect with on the site to build a bigger network. *I’ve literally just had a notification of an endorsement come through as I typed this (I promise!), and guess what – it’s from a stranger with ‘LION’ in their surname. I assume they’re just hoping for a reciprocal endorsement back, but it’s not going to happen.

So how can it be improved? It’s quite simple – by improving it ourselves. If everyone takes the initiative and some time out to endorse their real life contacts for the specific skills you know they possess, a much more accurate picture of an individuals expertise will eventually be reflected in the data.

The same goes for any site you use with user generated reviews and endorsements. Do you read the reviews on Amazon, ebay and TripAdvisor before making purchases/reservations for example? If you use it, get involved too. Contribute your reviews and experiences also and make it even better for everyone. The same applies to Linkedin Recommendations and Endorsements.

Procurement Guest Blog: Apples with Apples

A guest blog today from my colleague Craig Williams. Craig is a Senior Consultant within Balance Recruitment, joining us last year to set up our Procurement Division. He’s had a very hectic and successful start to life at Balance, which is covered here in his first guest blog:

Apples with Apples

Having returned from a sabbatical overseas last year – which saw me taking a cargo ship from London to Buenos Aires and from there, travelling through South America and then over to SE Asia (this time flying!) I returned to London ready to re-enter the niche recruitment sector of Procurement & Supply Chain and joined Balance to set up the division, complimenting their existing presence within accountancy & finance.

A year down the line and these are my thoughts so far…

Having once been told that Procurement, from a recruitment point of view, is relatively straight-forward and having spent a number of years recruiting for senior accounting positions in London, I was looking forward to the challenge of exploring this new and important business area, a business function rapidly coming to the fore due to the straitened times we are currently experiencing throughout the globe.

I had the benefit of already knowing a fairly large network of well regarded procurement professionals personally and through my connections in finance, all of whom were more than happy to talk through what they do – the knowledge share would cost me a glass of wine or two, though being a fan of good wine I felt that was a good exchange! One friend, when summarising what Procurement professionals actually do, rather succinctly commented that ‘…in a nutshell we compare apples with apples and we buy stuff…’.

Having dealt with finance for so long, a market well furnished with specialist recruitment consultants, I was pleasantly surprised to find that procurement professionals were much more open to spending time with me discussing their profession – being recognised as a potential supplier to an organisation certainly helped open doors during my initial few months and I quickly found myself working on several mandates for a well-known technology business. I was quickly able to fill three out of five of the roles given to me - a great boost to my confidence whilst developing my understanding of this new sector.

However, many of the roles I have subsequently been working on have been challenging and far from straight-forward! A high profile IT Category Manager position I was instructed on late last year required an extremely rare beast, though through persistent searching and networking with existing contacts, I was able to track down the elusive individual my client was hoping to find, and placed them in to an interesting ongoing interim assignment. There’s no better way to build strong relationships with clients than by placing these difficult to fill roles that other recruiters have long given up on.

Before long I was running several mandates, working with new and existing Balance Recruitment clients; for example an Interim HR/Professional Services Category Managers for a global media business – the remit being to shape their global contingent workforce, a great opportunity for the right person who would essentially be in the spotlight – not just here in London but also within their New York headquarters. I’ve also had the opportunity to partner with Global law firms, large engineering businesses and transport organisations all bringing fresh challenges and increasing my knowledge of the Procurement profession day by day. During each piece of recruitment I’ve met with some amazing practitioners along the way, building a large network of professionals across a variety of industries.

So it’s “so far so good” and I’m thoroughly enjoying my role establishing Balance as high quality recruiter for Procurement staff.

Apple anyone?

Yahoo and the flexible working debate...

Since publishing my last blog on flexible working, the topic has hit the headlines in a big way with debate raging amongst the business community on the pros & cons of working from home. I’d love to say it was my blog that triggered all this, but I suspect it may have had slightly more to do with the leaked internal memo from an HR representative at Yahoo, informing their staff that the business was putting an end to all “work from home arrangements”.  

The tone of the memo suggests that flexible working isn't working at Yahoo, and the move was to encourage greater collaboration between staff by working side by side – literally.

This bold move, driven by CEO, Marissa Mayer, has been widely criticised as being a backwards step, with accusations that Mayer is “out of touch” with the modern working demographic (not helped by reports that she paid to have a personal nursery built adjacent to her offices in order to be closer to her son).

There have subsequently been numerous blogs and articles quoting unnamed members of Yahoo staff who've said that people have indeed been abusing the system and that the move is a necessary change in culture to help weed out the slackers who are holding the business back.

(Photo by Chiot's Run)

So what will be the outcome of this change at Yahoo? There may well be an improvement in output from some of those who have slacked off when unsupervised, but are these really employees you’d want to retain in a business? If they’re just plain lazy, presumably they’ll now just take their foot off the gas at the first opportunity anyway; when their manager is away, for example. Or on lunch. Or in meetings. Are they really going to be monitored around the clock?

And what about those employees who are currently productive when working from home? Will they be even more productive in the workplace? Or will they just resent the change in circumstance and look elsewhere, to join a business that trusts them enough to allow them to retain their current working arrangements? That could signal a mass exodus of talent if so, and when hiring to replace these individuals, Yahoo is unlikely to appeal to those looking for a degree of flexibility on work/life balance.

To me, a blanket ban on working from home seems a step too far. Flexible working is a privilege that requires trust between employer and employee, but managed properly it can and will work for most businesses. It may mean getting everyone together for face to face meetings on a regular basis, and there may be limitations on the percentage of time individuals can spend away from the office, but there is usually a balance that can work for all parties. And if someone just can’t motivate themselves to work from home, they should be given the opportunity to work in the office or to find work elsewhere. Why let them spoil the system for everyone else?

Flexible working - why it should be embraced

As a business owner myself, I can fully understand why the term ‘flexible working’ doesn't sit all that comfortably when raised by a prospective employee during an interview process.

Do they just want more annual leave than our current benefits package allows? Or are they planning to work from home where they might have the TV on in the background or have a cat fighting for their attention by strolling across the keyboard? 

Whatever the immediate thoughts might be, for a lot of firms and managers, they’re often negative and focus on the lack of control over productivity levels. These are of course completely valid concerns and to be fully open to flexible working, a firm will need to carry out thorough reviews on any negative impact changes could bring and to also assess what levels of flexibility they can accommodate. Dismissing it out of hand however could be equally as negative in the long run. 

The Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) recently carried out a Flexible Working Commission, and came to the conclusion that, although the UK already has a far more flexible workforce than our European neighbours, there is still huge opportunity to be gained from further embracing flexible working options. 

The attraction and retention of top talent will be significantly enhanced if employees have more scope to influence their work/life balance without having to move jobs to secure it. The UK is facing an emerging talent crisis and, as the ‘war for talent’ intensifies, the opportunity is there for early adopters of flexible working to steal a march on their competition.

Employee productivity levels can also be positively improved. A large scale pilot scheme by telecoms giant O2 earlier this year reportedly concluded that by offering staff the opportunity to work from home they were able to significantly improve productivity. Staff were better rested from cutting out commuting time each day and were generally happier with more time to spend with their families or to pursue leisure activities.

A common misconception is that the requirement for flexible working is almost exclusively influenced by childcare logistics. Although this is and always has been a factor, the demand is being driven by the lifestyle choices of many different groups, and does not always involve a reduction in total hours worked.

So what challenges would flexible working bring for your business? There are plenty of businesses already embracing it and others that are actively looking at how they can make it work for them. Is your firm one of them or do you feel it’s not for you? Please share your comments below.

Managing salary expectations in the hiring process

In the increasingly competitive “war for talent” we are experiencing in the world of hiring these days, you’d be forgiven for being a little surprised to hear that there are employers who will go through a lengthy application and interview process and then knowingly offer their preferred candidate a salary lower than the figure they’re looking for.

Certainly it comes as a surprise to the candidate, and not a nice one, but it happens and we’ve experienced it on a couple of occasions recently despite making the individual’s salary expectations explicitly clear from the outset when making the initial introduction.

It’s understandable that the employer ultimately makes the decision on how much they feel each individual is “worth” in relation to an opportunity within their business, but if there is a difference between the salary expectation of the candidate and the employers’ valuation of their skills and experience, this really should be addressed as early as possible in the hiring process to save wasted time and to improve the chances of securing the desired individual.

 If it’s not dealt with until the point of offer, the underlying message sent to the jobseeker is: “we think you’re good, but not as good as you think you are” and all the faith and buy-in that has been built up during the interview process is immediately put at risk. The jobseeker, believing they’d gone through this process with their minimum expectations established, can feel undervalued and at worst, misled. There’s a high chance they’ll decline the offer and walk away from the process with a very low impression of the firm employer brand. 

Managed properly this can be avoided:

• ·         If a candidate’s salary expectation is above the level the employer is prepared to go, they shouldn’t be entering the interview process, unless it’s made clear to them that they are asking for a salary above budget and would need to lower their expectation. They may choose to walk away, but better that happen now than later in the process. 

• ·         If the candidate is within budget range but they are pricing themselves out of the running by asking for a higher salary level than other comparable applicants in process, this should be addressed as soon as this becomes clear. They may not be aware they are asking for a salary level above market rate and may just need their expectations managed before reaching the end of the process.

These conversations can easily be held by recruiters who ultimately want to assist all parties in reaching a successful conclusion to the process. They should also be able to help in identifying early on if a difference in salary expectation is likely to be a deal-breaker or something that can be managed.