**IMPORTANT – CHRISTMAS OPENING HOURS**

THE OFFICE IS OPEN AS USUAL ON THE 28^TH, 29^TH AND 30^TH DECEMBER AND WE’RE BACK IN ON TUESDAY 3^RD JANUARY 2012 BUT WE WILL BE ON HAND THROUGHOUT THE HOLIDAYS SHOULD YOU NEED US.

December is always a busy month for us. We are making sure all our clients are fully staffed and prepared for the Christmas holidays as well as going about our day-to-day business of being on of the most innovative, successful and ruthlessly efficient recruitment companies in Hertfordshire.

We have blogged a lot in the last few months about attracting and retaining the best talent, legislation changes and making sure you’re prepared over the holidays but this month, we though we’d ease you into Christmas by introducing you to the newest member of ‘Team Asset Resourcing’, recruitment consultant Hayley Morton.

Hayley has been with Asset Resourcing since September 2011 and below, in her own words (mostly) she gives us the Asset Resourcing low-down!

My average day is busy! I spend a lot of time searching for the right candidates and speaking to our clients on the phone trying to match the perfect person to their perfect job and so far, it’s working! A good day for me is a new vacancy, getting CVs out and interviews on the board. Of course I prefer all three, but any one is a good result!

My career in recruitment started in 1995 as a resourcer (I searched for candidates on behalf of the consultant) and then I progressed up the food chain to consultant, team leader then to Sales Manager in IT, Engineering and Construction. I took a hiatus for a while to have Archie and Francesca (now 5 and 2) but the recruitment bug bit again and I’m really happy to be with such a great company!

I like working at Asset Resourcing because we are honest recruiters who provide an excellent service to both candidate & client. We know our clients well and have forged a fantastic reputation for being reliable, quick to respond & possessing an excellent understanding of the industry sectors we specialise in. On a personal level, the guys are flexible & understanding which makes balancing work & home life so much easier.

The future of the recruitment industry is notoriously uncertain. What I mean by that, is that we are living in such a fragile economic climate, the pool of qualified, talented staff across all our market sectors is growing every month, but the number of businesses willing to take on such great staff is not as high as it was. Here at Asset Resourcing, we won’t let a financial downturn affect what we do and in any climate, the most talented will always find work so we have a positive outlook for 2012. You have to work to get work and that is exactly what we’re doing!

My favourite food is Indian

My favourite book (so far) is All That Glitters by Pearl Lowe

My favourite sports team is Spurs

And…I love socialising and home improvements

So there we have it. That’s Hayley and she’s available, along with the rest of the Asset Resourcing team for anything you need.

As this is the final blog for 2011, all that’s left for us to do is to wish each of you a very happy and healthy Christmas and New Year. As you know, we are here for you all through the holiday season so if you need us, call us.

Here’s to a profitable and stress-free 2012!

Ben Sweeting & Michelle Scott – Directors, Asset Resourcing

We’ve had another great month at Asset Resourcing.

Last month’s blog post was on recruiting and retaining the best talent and we have already spoken to quite a few of our clients who are concerned they’re not doing enough.

This is yet another example of why Asset Resourcing is one of the most talked-about recruitment agencies in Hertfordshire. We listen to what our clients say and respond.

As always, we have the best candidates and the best jobs in IT, Accountancy, Admin & Clerical and Sales & Marketing. Get in touch and let us know what you’re looking for.

This month, we’re going to run you through the basics of the new Agency Worker Regulations 2010 that came into force on 1^st October 2011. The aim of this guide is to help you as hirers of agency workers, and us, the recruitment sector, to understand our individual responsibilities and the implications of the new legislation.

It’s important to note here that this blog post is intended as a guide only. If you need further information or clarification, please call us and we’ll be more than happy to explain.

What the Agency Worker Regulations 2011 means to you

Temporary and contract workers provide real-time flexibility as a labour resource forUKindustry and all agency workers (classed as ‘workers’ rather than ‘employees’) are entitled to certain rights, including –

• Paid annual leave
• Rest breaks and limits on working times
• National Minimum Wage
• Discrimination rights under the 2010 Equality Act
• Health and safety at work

The new regulations give agency workers the entitlement to the same (or no less favourable) treatment than ‘comparable employees’ in respect to basic employment and working conditions as and when they complete a qualifying period of 12 weeks in the same job.

In essence, you will get parity in pay and employment conditions as you would be entitled to had you been recruited directly by the hirer themselves.

Who is covered?

The regulations cover agency workers (i.e. our candidates) supplied by a temporary work agency (i.e. Asset Resourcing) to a hirer (i.e. our clients).

Who isn’t covered?

These regulations don’t cover the self-employed, those working through their own limited liability company or those working on managed service contracts.

In addition, they won’t change the employment status of agency workers who still don’t have the right to claim unfair dismissal, redundancy pay or maternity or paternity leave. Nor will agency workers be entitled to benefits including company pensions, financial participation schemes and performance-related bonus payments.

Your rights as an agency worker

From ‘day one’ of your employment, you will be entitled to –

• The same access to facilities such as staff canteens, childcare and transport as a comparable employer of the hirer
• Be informed of job vacancies

After your 12-week qualifying period, you are entitled to –

• Pay – including any fee, bonus, commission, or holiday pay relating to the assignment. It does not include redundancy pay, contractual sick pay, and maternity, paternity or adoption pay
• Working time rights – for example, including any annual leave above what is required by law

You will also be entitled to paid leave to attend ante-natal appointments during working hours.

As we said, these are just the headline facts. For more information, please read the full document produced by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills or alternatively, contact us and we’ll happily fill you in on what you need to know.

From all of us at Asset Resourcing, have a good month and we’ll see you in December.

Ben Sweeting & Michelle Scott – Directors, Asset Resourcing

It’s been another great month here at Asset Resourcing.

We have an ever-increasing pool of fantastic candidates for the best jobs in IT, Accountancy, Admin & Clerical and Sales & Marketing and our clients are already planning temporary cover for the Christmas holidays. How well prepared are you for when your key staff take their holidays and time off over Christmas?

If you need any information about holiday cover, have a read through September’s blog, it tells you all you need to know.

Recruiting the best talent

This month, we’re going back to basics with a post telling you about the best ways to both develop your existing talent pool and how to recruit and retain the best employees. One fundamental piece of advice is to try and adopt these tips as early into your recruiting process as possible. As the economy rebounds and becomes more stable, there will be a ‘talent war’ – a larger number of companies attempting to recruit from a smaller pool of available talent – and you need to be prepared.

1. Job Description – Obviously, a job description is designed to give potential employees the exact specification and key responsibilities of the advertised position but what companies with foresight do is to develop the job description internally. This way, they have a clear idea of the cultural and behavioural characteristics of the type of person they are looking for. This can be used to screen candidates, prepare relevant questions for interview and attract the right candidates that fit not only the role, but the company ethos also.

2. Networking – The search for appropriate candidates shouldn’t only come from the HR department and the MD. Each employee now has a vast social network on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (amongst others) and they can tap into them to look for the most suitable candidates so don’t be afraid to use them. Some companies will even offer ‘employee referral’ bonuses for positions that are hard to fill.

Another great source of untapped potential is through the networks of trusted suppliers and clients. They all know your business, how it works and the type of people who work for you so why wouldn’t you ask them if they know anyone who may be suitable.

3. Use your website – Most corporate website will have a ‘Work For Us’ page where it will usually say something along the lines of ‘if you feel you fit with our company ethos, please get in touch with us’. This is all well and good, but if you don’t tell the reader what the company ethos is, how will they know?

Tell the potential employee what your vision is, what sets your business apart in your industry and with the clear intention of making the best candidates say ‘this is the company for me’. Include testimonials from current employees as to why they like working for you. Remember, there is no greater testimonial than the voice of the satisfied end user.

4. Maintain contact – ‘Thank you for your application. You were unsuccessful this time but we will keep your information in file’ is one of the very worst things a candidate can hear. Each relationship needs to be nurtured and maintained because you may well find that an unsuccessful applicant for one position is perfect for another role that may come up only days or weeks later.

5. Become an ‘Employer of Choice’ – What happens to your employees once they join your company? Are they made to feel part of a vision? Do you recognise and nurture talent? Do you provide opportunities for personal and professional growth?

If you do, you need to make sure potential employees know it. Act like an employer of choice and you will be recognised as such. If you develop a reputation for attracting top talent, make sure you can stand by it.

6. Use your recruitment company – At Asset Resourcing, we do a lot of this work for you. We nurture and maintain contact with our pool of candidates; we are in frequent contact with them even though there may not be an open position; we are experienced in finding what you’re looking for and we do it having learnt about your business, what you stand for and the types of people you’re looking for. We’ve done our homework long before the recruitment process begins.

7. How do people perceive your business – The power of publicity cannot be underestimated. Good candidates will always identify specific companies they want to work for, especially if they’re inundated with offers. As such, they will follow your activity on social networks, in the mainstream and trade press and elsewhere on and offline. The oft-quoted phrase ‘any publicity is good publicity’ may work in some industries but not in recruitment.

Good, positive press goes a long way in marking your company out as an industry leader or, more specifically, a company the best candidates want to work for.

As always, we are available to you for information, for guidance and as a sounding board. Use us; it’s what we’re here for.

In the meantime, have a great month and we’ll see you in November.

Ben Sweeting & Michelle Scott – Directors, Asset Resourcing

Our day-to-day business of sourcing the very best candidates for the very best jobs in IT, Accountancy, Admin & Clerical and Sales & Marketing continues at pace, but we were also invited to tender for the opportunity to supply IT staff to Bupa, the global healthcare provider who have 11m members in 200 countries round the world.

We spent a great deal of time and effort in preparing and submitting the tender document and we’ve just been informed that our stage one submission was successful. We are now preparing a visual presentation and we have to present it next week at Bupa’s headquarters in centralLondon. Wish us luck and we’ll let you know next month how we did!

Are you covered when your employees are on holiday?

The main topic of this month’s blog is going on holiday. More specifically, making sure you’re covered when your employees go on their Christmas vacations. We know everyone is still unpacking from their summer trips and the kids have only just gone back to school, but in reality, there’s only three months to go until the Christmas holiday season starts!

Type ‘winter holiday deals’ into Google, just like your staff are doing, and you’ll find thousands of cheap flights and great deals to every corner of the globe. You’ll soon start to get requests for annual leave, but while everyone is off sunning or skiing, you still have a business to run. Some companies are quiet over Christmas and some are busy but either way, your clients and suppliers need to know you are running at optimum capacity.

Plan in advance – Good forward planning is vital to your business but never more so than with the preparation and training of temp staff. If your admin and secretarial staff are taking staggered breaks, Asset Resourcing can arrange for one temp to cover all positions. This offers you continuity and familiarity with your product, service and workflow systems making them far more effective and saving you money.

What do you need cover for? – Answering the phones, sorting the post and replying to emails are one thing, but talking to stakeholders and clients is something completely different. You can’t expect temp cover to know your business and have the skills required to be involved in corporate decisions so the key is to prioritise what’s immediately important and what can wait until the start of the year when everyone’s back.

Make sure your lines of communication with your business partners, clients and suppliers remain open and transparent and you’ll be sure the deals you put into place before Christmas are still on the table in January.

Does your staff understand their duties? – It may be that with a smaller workforce, employees will be asked to cover certain tasks they wouldn’t normally be expected to do. Make sure they are trained and proficient on any technological or mechanical systems they might have to use and you can go on holiday knowing your business remains operating at full steam.

Use your recruitment company – That’s what we’re here for. We believe wholeheartedly in the development of close and long-term relationships with our clients and through these relationships, we have the ability to foresee any potential staffing requirements well ahead of time. In addition, we aren’t just here for staffing, we are here to provide advice, information and opinions on all aspects of the recruitment process. If there’s something you need to know, just pick up the phone and ask us.

Learn from your temp staff – Not as strange as it may seem. While every temp we provide will do an excellent job for you, it’s likely that because they are seeing your business through fresh eyes, they may have thoughts and ideas about improving efficiency or workflow. An added bonus of using temp staff is that you can ‘trial’ them with the view to growing your workforce either now or in the future.

To conclude, with good forward planning, you will get the temp staff that have the skills and attributes you’re looking for but last minute ‘panic recruitment’ could have a detrimental effect on your business.

It’s up to you.

In the meantime, have a profitable month and we’ll see you in October.

Ben Sweeting & Michelle Scott – Directors, Asset Resourcing

Welcome to the first blog from Asset Resourcing’s fantastic new website.

Over the coming months we’ll be keeping you informed, entertained and up-to-date with the latest goings on in the world of recruitment as well as internal news and staff introductions, tips, hints, thoughts and ideas and essentially anything we feel that will help you get the maximum benefit from Asset Resourcing – YOUR recruitment company.

For now, we want to invite you to have a read through our new website and familiarise yourself with the new layout.

We’re really pleased with it and we feel like the company has been reborn. It’s given us a clear focus and fresh impetus to work ever harder to ensure that our clients and candidates are at the very forefront of what we do.

Just in case it slipped your mind, the four main industry divisions we focus on are…

• Information Technology
• Administration & Clerical
• Sales & Marketing
• Accountancy & Finance

…and we have a wide range of positions available for you to browse through, from junior positions through to senior management roles.

If any of the listed roles catch your eye or if you’re looking to recruit the best, most qualified people in your industry, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. We’re positive we’ll be able to help you.

One of the aspects of our job we are most reliant on in order to give you the best possible service is feedback. If there’s anything on the site you like, don’t like, need clarification on or would like more information about, please let us know. Additionally, if there are any specific issues you’d like to know more about in future blog posts, get in touch. The only way we know what you want to know is if you tell us!

If you’ve been away, we hope you had a good holiday and if you’re going away, have a great time and we’ll see you next month.

Ben Sweeting & Michelle Scott – Directors, Asset Resourcing

I’m hearing more and more of my candidates tell me they intend to stay put in their current jobs because of concerns about job security even though there are opportunities out there.

Most have no plans to change employers in the foreseeable future fearing they will become victims of last in, first out syndrome if their new employer is subsequently forced into a cost cutting exercise.

If this scenario applies to you then please call us for a confidential career crossroads session with one of our experienced consultants or visit www.assetresourcing.com/assetresourcing-career-crossroads.html