Article 1: Q: How Has Brexit Affected the Recruitment Industry?

A: Badly. Really badly. Oh, you want more? OK.

In a scathing indictment of the Brexit fallout, the Financial Times said that the UK job market was in ‘freefall’.

Referring to a press release from the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC), the FT article says that recruiters have reported the steepest drop in permanent placements for seven years. From bad to worse, the depressing presser was sent out a day after the Bank of England predicted a rise in unemployment from 4.9% to 5.5% as a direct result of Brexit.

These numbers have a ring of doom and gloom to them, of that there’s no doubt, but it is, according to REC Chief Executive Kevin Green, ‘important not to jump to conclusions from one month’s worth of data’.

At the time of writing, it’s been six weeks since we voted to leave the EU and the only thing that we can believe with absolute certainty from what we read in the papers and online is that no-one knows what the long-term consequences look like.

With Government and the Bank of England making sensible decisions (yes OK, we know it’s a long shot), market confidence could return faster than originally anticipated but as Kevin Green says ‘the demand for staff remains strong with vacancies continuing to rise but the sharp fall in placements suggests that businesses are highly cautious about committing to new hires. Economic turbulence following the vote to leave the EU is undoubtedly the root cause.’

It seems that, for now, job seekers are prepared to stay where they are instead of rocking the boat and moving on with no guarantees of stability. While there’s been a drop in confidence rather than demand for perm staff, temp billings are up across the country as employers look to satisfy demand with casual staff.

What doesn’t help confidence is Mark Carney saying that around 250,000 people will lose their jobs as a direct result of Brexit….

In last month’s Recruitment Grapevine online magazine, Macildowie chairman Ed Vernon OBE offers his thoughts on the post-Brexit recruitment industry and it’s an interesting read.

We know we ask every month but what are your thoughts? What do you think is going to happen? Have you noticed a drop in per placements? Let us know on Twitter or Facebook.

Article 2: Can Where You Sit REALLY Improve Productivity?

An article in this month’s Recruitment Buzz thinks so.

Reading one of a billion trillion books on improving productivity in the workplace and then regurgitating it verbatim to bored middle-managers and small business owners who are looking no further than the next invoice is how ‘business coaches’ justify their existence. Now, there’s a new way to improve productivity and thankfully you don’t have to waste your money on ‘consultants’ and ‘coaches’. You just need to buy a few new chairs.

A new report – with the exceptionally dull title ‘Planning Strategic Seating to Maximise Employee Performance’ – from talent managers Cornerstone in conjunction with Harvard Business School says that by rearranging where your employees sit in relation to each other, businesses can ‘generate up to a 15% increase in organisational performance’.

In a company of 2,000 staff, that potentially translates to an extra £800,000 on the bottom line.

The research – which took two years to compile and took in data from over 2,000 employees – identified three types of workers:

• Productive – very productive but lack in quality
• Quality – superior quality but lack in productivity
• Generalist – average on both dimensions

As it turns out, ‘seating Productive and Quality workers together and seating Generalists separately in their own group shows a 13% gain in productivity and a 17% gain in effectiveness.’

In a sentence that can charitably be filed under ‘the bleedin’ obvious’, the geniuses behind the report suggest that ‘symbiotic relationships are created from pairing those with opposite strengths’.

While the report says that by sitting certain people together will increase productivity, it also says that the ‘spillover’, the effects one gets from another, can also ‘extend to negative performance through misconduct and unethical behaviour’.

The article goes on to say ‘in measuring the extent to which a toxic worker (i.e. a worker that harms an organisation’s people and/or property) influences others, the study finds that the negative performance of these workers spills over to fellow workers in a process similar to positive spillover.’

So there we have it. In a nutshell, sit with people who you think you can learn from and who will positively influence your productivity rather than that kid in school who used to spit balls of rolled up paper through a straw at the back of teacher’s head. He’s a wrong ‘un.

Article 3: The Bleedin’ Obvious 101: Don’t Be Rude At Your Interview

The title of this article barely needs further explanation, except it does. We’re not talking about calling the interviewer a **** on your way out, the rudeness we’re talking about is much more subtle…

Business Insider has collated 20 things candidates say (mostly without realising it) that are guaranteed to relocate their CV to the bottom of the pile.

“I’ve been waiting a while’ – be internally annoyed your interviewer is late, but don’t verbalise it.

‘Hi, I know I’m late, but…’ – Don’t draw attention to it and don’t make lame excuses. Apologise quickly and move on.

‘What happens if I don’t get on with my boss?’ – The inference here is that you don’t get on with co-workers and/or management. Also, it’s likely your future boss is sitting in front of you…

‘Are you married/do you have kids?’ – Your interviewer’s personal life is way off limits and none of your business. Don’t even go there.

‘I heard a rumour about the MD, is it true?’ – An interview is no place for idle gossip and hearsay of the very worst kind. It’s hugely unprofessional.

‘Who in the office should I avoid?’ – Intra-office politics and dramas are not your concern when you’re not even an employee (yet).

‘So, what does your company do?’ – If you even have to ask this, don’t be surprised if the interviewer simply asks you to leave on the spot.

‘My weaknesses? None at all.’ – Don’t be ridiculous. We all have them. Be honest otherwise you come across as arrogant and not entirely honest. If you had no business weaknesses you’d be running Amazon.

‘So, did I get the job?’ – This is #1 on the list of ‘what not to ask an interviewer while you’re technically still in your interview.’ It puts them on the spot and you may not like the answer.

‘I think your company’s big weakness is _______’ – Be enthusiastic and positive, don’t point out deficiencies. Offer ways of improvement rather than to tell them how awful they’re doing.

‘Sorry, I really need to take this call…’ – No explanation needed. Use your phone during an interview and you’re finished.

‘I just need a job.’ – We refer you back to point one. Even if you’re thinking it, don’t verbalise it.

‘Shall we get started?’ – That’s not your call to make. Eager and nervous you may be but wait for the interviewer to start the interview.

‘Sorry, I’ve gotta run…’ – Make sure you leave enough time (including a redundancy) before and after your interview.

‘I’d like a coffee please.’ – It’s bad form to ask. Wait to be offered and if you’re not, tough. Take a bottle of water in with you if you think you’re going to need some lubrication.

‘I…I…I…’ – Of course you need to sell yourself but keep the bigger picture in mind. You’re about to become a cog in a machine, not the MD.

‘The office isn’t what I imagined it to be.’ – Don’t start off with disappointment. Again, keep these things to yourself.

‘How did YOU get this job?’ – That’s none of your business. It implies condescension and that’s not the first impression you want to leave the interviewer with.

‘So, did you vote Leave or Remain?’ Keep politics off the agenda. That goes both ways. If the interviewer asks about your political allegiances, politely steer them away from the conversation and ask something about benefits or working hours.

‘Thanks mate/honey/brother/sugarlips…’ – Don’t be familiar or worse, a dick. This is the person you’re hoping will give you money each month to pay your mortgage and feed your kids.

Article 4: The Three Most Unnecessary Jobs at Rio 2016

Any major sporting event – the Olympics, World Cup, Tour de France – requires phenomenal feats of complex organisation, consultation, arrangements, logistics and the allocation of roles. Over the last 20 years or so, we’ve seen spectacularly well-organised events for which the host nations and all those who participated can be rightly proud.

But sometimes, the allocation of roles goes a little bit far. These three for example…

1. Lifeguards– Brazilian law is quite clear – pools over a certain size are required by law to have a lifeguard present, and that includes swimming, diving, water polo and kayaking. The lifeguards are paid £260 to sit and watch the world’s finest aquatic athletes do their thing.
2. Human Sign-Posts – During the opening ceremony, dozens and dozens of human sign-posts were on hand to guide the teams to their allocated areas as they came into the stadium for the first time. Many of them got so overwhelmed as to where people should go they ended up pointing to all places but the right one. A sign on a pole would have been cheaper and far more effective.
3. Eric – Have you read about Eric? He became a bit of a reluctant celebrity at the Olympic Village and an internet sensation after he was pictured walking into the mini-city holding a bag filled with almost half a million condoms. It works out at 42 per athlete, or three a day for the duration of the Games…

Article 5: Met Vriendelijke Groet, Duizendpoot*

*Kind regards, the Centipede…’

 No, we haven’t fallen down, hit our head and woken up speaking Dutch but if an article on Recruitment Grapevine is to be believed, der Nederlanders, at least in their job descriptions, are seemingly happy to refer to themselves as animals.

Marte Meijs, a marketing and communications specialist at Amsterdam-based semantic search technology company Textkernel who create labour market analyses says that animal-related expressions are so commonly used in the Dutch language that they have inevitably found their way into job descriptions.

Her article says that insects are at the top of this particular food chain; ‘Centipede’ (a multi-skilled multitasker) has consistently been the most advertised job position over the past five years (70% of all animal-themed vacancies), followed by ‘sales tiger’ (aggressive, go getter) and ‘spider in the web’ (problem solver).

 It seems to be a bit of a double-edged sword though. Whiles these job ads can increase the pool of applications thanks to their humorous and playful nature, the job descriptions need to be found.  Candidates searching for a head chef position are unlikely to extend their search to ‘catering tiger’ so from a boring (but necessary) SEO standpoint, ‘it seems to be a disadvantage to be creative.’

 In all its glory, here’s the list of 2016’s most popular animal-related job titles…

Centipede – A person who can do a lot of things to a very high standard

Sales Tiger – A relentless salesman/woman with the drive required to close the deal

Spider in the Web – A well organised problem solver who oversees processes

Early Bird – Someone who wakes up early

Catering Tiger – Enthusiastic catering staff

Cool Frog – One who can keep their head when all around them are losing theirs

Sheep with Five Legs – A jack-of-all-trades

Young Dog – A young but highly-motivated person

Water Rat – Someone who loves to be in the water

Fish in the Water – Someone who easily adapts to different situations

Night Animal – A person happiest working in the night hours

Busy Bee – Someone capable of taking on many tasks at once

Career Tiger – Someone intent on scaling the career ladder

We’re unlikely to read about the ‘Fast-Food Elephant’ or the ‘Estate Agent Pig’ but if you ever see anthropomorphic job titles, send them our way!

Article 6: Reminder: Sexism Has NO Place in the Workplace

 For the vast majority of forward-thinking 21^st century employers, workplace sexism is a long-dead relic of times past but for a very small number, it’s alive and well and more than that, it’s actively encouraged.

While there might be a few backwater businesses where sexism still lingers like a bad smell, you’ll never see it in job descriptions. Or will you?

Well as it turns out you will, but only if you happen to be looking for a very particular job in Russia.

One of the former Soviet Union’s top recruiters posted a job advert earlier in the summer which somehow manages to plumb the rancid depths of the unholiest of unholy trinities – it’s sexist, creepy and just plain odd.

The ad explains in the tiniest of details what face shape, smile type (there are 23 types according to the advert), height, hair and eye colour is required along with the fact that the candidate shouldn’t have had any type of plastic surgery.

Recruiter Ella Mikhaylova posted the listing on Facebook, writing; ‘The main requirement for the job is a smile. A certain type of smile (there are 23 types)’. She went on to say that the ‘premium girl’ must possess a ‘soft, Slavic smile (only the top row of teeth must be visible, and under no circumstances must the bottom row be seen)’ and they most certainly mustn’t have a ‘defiant, dazzling, advert-ready American smile.’

 Oh, it gets worse – much, much worse.

Further down the advert, it mentions the successful candidate must ‘contain no hint of feminism, cunning, haughtiness, independence or pride.’

 Yes, it really says that.

The cherry on top of this particularly gruesome cake is the stunning admission from Ms. Mikhaylova that she would send out the contacts of the girls who made the final round to ‘my male friends’ but, naturally, ‘only with the women’s’ consent’. 

You’d think, like any normal person, that this advert would have spectacularly backfired, women’s rights campaigners in Russia would be going crazy and Twitter would have gone into meltdown but less than 24 hours after the advert was posted on Facebook, Ms. Mikhaylova wrote; ‘We have received a flood of CVs. The vacancy aroused such enthusiasm that we were able to find the right candidate straight away. Thank you all for your participation!’

 *facepalm*

Article 7: A Movie Poster, a Facebook Profile and a 1950’s Newspaper Advert

 What do you think these three things have in common? Wrong. They are three creative examples of how CVs have been submitted to employers and while plenty have tried and failed (including the tired toilet paper cliché), this guy stands head and shoulders above the rest.

Perfectly tapping into the zeitgeist, Reddit user ‘blueddit4’ wrote his CV to read like a Game of Thrones script. If you’re in any way familiar with the adventures of Daenerys Targaryen, Arya Stark and Cersei Lannister, you will love this!

NB: The guy’s name and university were redacted from the article so the writer has reverted to poetic license to keep the flow!

‘I am Dave Smith, first of his name, graduated fresh from University of America, scientist of computers, hunting for a job.

Attached is my resume to prove that I am worthy to serve House Symph. And if ever you feel that my credentials are OK, I am always willing to learn to adjust to fit the company’s needs.

 I also live by the motto ‘if you are the smartest person in the room, then you are in the wrong room.’

 Thank you for taking your time in reading my application via virtual crow.’

 Of course the success of such a specifically-targeted CV is entirely reliant on the recipient also being a Game of Thrones fan. Luckily, ‘blueddit4’ struck gold with this reply…

‘Greetings. I was just beginning to recover and get on with life after the last season ended. I’m unsure if I should thank you or hate you for bringing up the memories. Anyway, let’s meet. Are you free to come to House Symph tomorrow at the strike of ten in the morning? I’ll arrange to have bread and salt prepared to ensure your safe passage.’ 

The candidate shot back with; ‘Expect my presence at House Symph at the strike of ten in the morning, carrying the banner of House blueddit4. I shall represent our house well.’

It’s not clear if the guy got the job or not but what would you do if a CV like this came across your desk? Dismiss it as a childish prank not worthy of your esteemed company or embrace the fact that there are some pretty creative types out there and they should be given worthy consideration?

Article 8: Just for fun….

 Wouldn’t it be great if all interviews went like this…

Thanks for reading and we’ll see you soon!

The Asset Resourcing Team

Article 1: Got Your Eyes & Ears Peeled?  Nine Tell-Tale Candidate Interview Mistakes

The meeting room has been booked out; you’ve got your notebook, coffee, a stack of CVs and your best Thursday socks on and you’re settled in for a day of interviews. You’re fresh for the first three or four but eventually they candidates will morph into what seems like a gelatinous mass of cliché after cliché.

You need to keep your wits about you. It’s often not what they say but how they say it and there are some sure-fire signs that the candidates sitting in front of you are failing to engage brain before opening mouth. Here are nine classic interview warning signs:

1. Liars: Candidates who lie about roles, experience or salary won’t look you in the eye, they blush, nibble their lips and blink more rapidly than normal – indications that the brain is working quickly. Be aware.
2. Vague Answers: You want a more detailed explanation as to why they left their last role. ‘I left to further my career’ can be true but it can also be a euphemism for ‘I was booted out for stealing too many Post-It Notes’. Be sure.
3. CV Knowledge: Does their off-pat chat correspond with what’s on their CV? Does it match up? Test them.
4. Why You? You need to determine whether the person in front of you just needs a job to pay the bills or genuinely wants to work for you. Do they know the company, the role and the culture? Do they care? Find out.
5. Negativity: This is an easy one because it’s purely verbal. If they kick off with reasons why they can’t do overtime, overseas trips or that they absolutely have to get the 5.46 train from Waterloo every day, file their CV in the ‘maybe’ pile.
6. Barriers Are Up: Underselling is very common but look for signs that they are focusing on the 15% of the role they don’t have experience in rather than the 85% they do. It could be a sign of things to come.
7. Too Much: Overselling is the domain of the nervous. If they go on and on about how great they are, how much money they made for their last company or a me, me, me diatribe, be cautious. No-one’s perfect even if some of us think we are…
8. ‘Hilarious’ Jokes: A candidate sitting in front of you telling you ‘jokingly’ that they’d use dirt they had on potential clients to drive business is one to be cautious of. A joke it may have been but it’s an insight into how their brain works and from the get-go, the seed is planted.
9. Where Next? Candidates that ask about progression within the business in the right way are to be applauded but the ones who want to use this role as a stepping-stone to the top need to be weeded out. They will have an agenda.Article 2: Comedic Candidates, Confused Clients…

 As a business owner, HR manager or indeed anyone who has ever conducted an interview, sometimes a candidate presents themselves seemingly with the sole purpose of ending up on a list like this… Here are some candidates we all wish we could see, if only to break up the monotony of a day of asking the same questions to dozens of people!

In an article from reed.co.uk, they asked over 200 interviewers for their most memorable faux-pas…#facepalm

Dress for Success

Most know how to dress for an interview, unlike these guys…

• The woman who showed up with bare feet, holding her shoes complaining her feet hurt
• A Skype interview conducted with the candidate in bed wearing stripy pyjamas
• The candidate who sewed saucepan lids into the lining of his coat for ‘protection’

Eat Healthily

That’s sound advice, but not during an interview…

• The guy who came in with a half-eaten pizza in the box and asked the interviewer if she wanted a slice
• The lunch interview where the candidate asked for a beer, then another, then two more. He got battered and threw up
• The girl who was getting flustered and sunk a sachet of energy gel mid-conversation

Friends Will Be Friends

They’re your friends, not a portable fan club…

• One candidate brought her best friend to sit in the interview for moral support
• A guy brought his wife in to the interview who answered most of the questions on his behalf
• The guy who brought his dog in with him. Guess what the dog did on the carpet…

No Category for Odd People

These don’t fit into any particular category but they’re too good to leave out…!

• The guy who asked for a cigarette break halfway through his interview
• The candidate who asked to borrow ‘a couple of grand’ from the interviewer
• One candidate asked his interviewer out on a date
• The woman going for a job at a yacht-charter company who was scared of the water

Article 3: Snap & Swipe: Are Snapchat and Tinder Useful Recruitment Tools?

Move over LinkedIn. Snapchat and Tinder are the latest way forward-thinking firms are attracting young, hip millennials with businesses creating geo-filters to target relevant people in specific areas. Melissa Murphy, head of HR at New York digital advertising agency Space150 whose Snapchat geo-filters targeted college campuses and public areas says, ‘Rather than asking students to come to us, we thought it would be much better to target them where they already are’.

She continued; ‘Being in a creative and tech-savvy industry, we’re always trying new ways to recruit talent – and Snapchat is where all the youngsters are.’

Fetch, a mobile agency in New York recently used dating app Tinder to recruit an intern. They created a profile for one day only and started swiping. They asked potential candidates for their best chat-up lines and of the 270 they matched (150 men, 120 women), five got to the interview stage.

22-year old Sam Weidt was the lucky intern who wowed them with his chat-up line. Fetch initiated the chat with a simple ‘Hi Sam!’ His response was a pearler. ‘Hey Fetch! If I was as good at dating as I am at marketing, my thumbs wouldn’t be sore from Tinder!’

 Even JPMorgan, the most traditional of institutions has embraced Snapchat’s geo-filtering to look for young, urban millennials.

There was a word of warning via The Economic Times from a senior recruiter at Accenture who said ‘These apps don’t capture any educational and work experience of candidates, so a recruiter would end up investing a lot of time on each profile before even understanding their fitment.’

 Valid to a point, but if you want cool, young, tech-savvy kids with their fingers on the pulse, you have to go and find them.

Have you ever used Tinder or Snapchat to recruit? Would you consider it? Let us know on Twitter @AssetResourcing or Facebook.

Article 4: Bored of the Same Interview Questions? Have an Apple…

 Known the world over for innovation, secrecy and churning out ground-breaking products, Apple and CEO Tim Cook’s ‘team of hiring experts’ are also now famous for something else.

In an article from Business Insider, Apple’s ‘eccentric’ recruitment techniques means that if you want to join the other 115,000 ‘geniuses’ that work for the tech overlord, you’re going to have to answer some seriously strange cryptic riddles targeted to the role in question.

Want to work for Apple? Then get answering…

‘How much does the Empire State Building weigh?’ – Solutions Consultant

‘Give me five ways of measuring how much gasoline is in a car.’ – Hardware Engineer

 ‘Why did Apple change its name from Apple Computers Incorporated to Apple Inc.?’ Specialist

‘How many children are born every day?’ – Global Supply Manager

‘How does an airplane wing work?’ – Lead Systems Engineer

‘How would you break down the cost of this pen?’ – Global Supply Manager

‘How would you test a toaster?’ – Software QA Engineer

‘Explain what RAM is to a five year old.’ – Apple Genius

The last one is easy. A ram is a daddy sheep.

Article 5: Go Quietly and Don’t Make a Fuss…

 A disgruntled ex-employee with a grudge can be a scary prospect. Some will accept their failings and leave with good grace, a decent reference and another middle management role somewhere else.

Last laugh or career suicide, others are prepared to go postal…

In April, a video from sharing site LiveLeak apparently shows a rather displeased Russian airport worker taking his aggression out on a £3.5m Yak-40 plane with a crane after being sacked. Doubt has emerged regarding the authenticity of the clip with some believing it’s footage from an airplane breakers yard but still, it’s a cracking watch!

Meanwhile in Dundee, Gheorge Ilie went for an interview at Morrisons but didn’t get the job. So annoyed was he about failing the interview that on his way out, he loaded up a trolley with over £1,700-worth of booze covered with bags and, oddly, nappies and tried to leave the store. The security tags triggered the alarm and the inept thief was apprehended.

Andrew Plumb was sacked from the Gas Superstore in Leicester in early 2015 and decided to hack into the company’s computer system. He cancelled orders, changed passwords and replaced pictures of appliances with characters from Coronation Street. He cost the business £41,000 and they had to stop trading for three days.

Christmas most certainly wasn’t the season of gifts, kindness and forgiving for ex-Harrods Santa Lloyd Hudson. After downing almost two bottles of whisky, he found the location of the switches for the corner shop’s 10,000 exterior lights. He disabled a select series of lights until the outside of the world’s most famous department store read ‘F**k Off’!

Lastly in America, and after being given four weeks’ notice to leave, an accounts clerk at a trading company in the Midwest used the company credit card to order a year’s worth of male enhancement pills to be delivered to a choice selection of male executives around the office. [Insert your own joke about stiff penalties, hard labour etc…]

Article 6: Recruiters Can Only Do So Much…

Here at Asset Resourcing, we thoroughly prepare our candidates for their interviews. We run them through the questions they’re likely to face as well as the role and its responsibilities and then we let them loose. What we can’t do with any degree of accuracy is prepare them for random, leftfield questions…

Yasmin Green is head of R&D at Jigsaw, formerly known as Google Ideas and at Marie Claire’s recent Power Trip networking event for women she was aske d about her favourite interview technique. It was a marked detour from the usual guff and the logic behind it seems pretty solid.

She likes to ask potential hires the following question: ‘How would you make money from an ice-cream stand in Central Park?’

 She justifies her odd line of questioning. ‘I’m curious to see how people deal with ambiguity and whether they can have fun while thinking on their feet’. She’s passionate about hiring people that are ‘innately driven’ and those who have ‘that force of spirit that powers them through any obstacle that comes their way’ and asking them about how they’d make their fortune selling ice-cream in Central Park is as good a way as any.

Article 7: Just for Fun, Get Them In…

 Before potential candidates get involved with recruitment companies, applications and interviews, they need a robust, coherent CV. Now before we go any further, let’s all be honest for a moment. Most of us have embellished slightly and some of us have told whopping great porkies in order to secure a dream job. To confirm our suspicions, CareerBuilder’s summer 2015 survey says that 56% of employers have found a lie on a CV.

The most common ‘inaccuracies’ include embellished skill sets (62%), responsibilities (54%), dates of employment (39%), job titles (31%) and academic degrees (28%).

Yet some employers to the tune of 42% are happy to consider applicants meeting three out of five of these criteria. However sometimes, just sometimes a porky or an error so ridiculous manifests itself that it’s worth getting the candidate in…for a laugh! Here are some examples collated by CareerBuilder that are too funny to pass by! The applicant…

1. …claimed to be a former CEO of the company he was applying to
2. …claimed to be bi-lingual – English and Pig Latin
3. …managed to write ‘whorehouse’ instead of ‘warehouse’ under previous jobs
4. …’s email address was ‘2poopy4mypants@….
5. …said he was a Nobel Prize winner
6. …said they worked in a jail for two years but were actually serving time for robbery
7. …went to a college that closed down in the 1960s
8. …’s job history had her at three jobs in three states simultaneously
9. …claimed to be HVAC-certified but had to ask the interviewer what HVAC stood for
10. ..’s reference was from an employer they had embezzled money from with an arrest warrant out for said applicant

You couldn’t make it up! Have you seen anything on a CV that is worthy of this list? Let us know on Twitter @AssetResourcing or Facebook.

 Article 8: Recruitment Videos Can Be Good, We Promise…

 Recruitment is a continually moving target. What worked a decade ago is unlikely to work today. In fact what worked last week may not work today either, such is the fluidity of the industry we find ourselves in.

What hasn’t changed is companies trying to do their best to lure in potential candidates but it’s the way they try and lure them in that is getting a little more sophisticated.

Try this recruitment video from the Hillsboro Police Department in Oregon. The production values are awful, the acting is wooden but Reddit users called it one of the best recruiting videos of all time!

What do you think? Let us know on Twitter @AssetResourcing or Facebook.

Article 1: Facebook. Heard of them?

If you haven’t, it’s a social networ….oh forget it. Of course you have but it’s worth us looking at the stats: The company has a market cap of $305 billion, there are1.6 billion monthly users (more than WhatsApp, Twitter and Instagram combined), 300m photos are uploaded every day and 300,000 statuses are updated every minute. That notwithstanding, Mark Zuckerberg is now worth $50 billion. It’s safe to say it’s a business that has done pretty well.

They have also come top of yet another list. This time it’s The Lighthouse Company’s Shipping Forecast New World Talent survey that asks 600 c-suite executives (called c-suite as it refers to a corporation’s senior management – CTO, CEO, COO etc) from advertising, media, tech and marketing their opinions on the state of recruitment in the UK.

Facebook was named ‘best performing company for recruitment’ ahead of other media giants like ITV, Channel 4 and the7stars. One example of Facebook’s forward-thinking recruitment processes is their trial of the ‘Rooney Rule’. It was named for NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney and the rule requires recruiters to interview at least one black or ethnic minority candidate for every Head Coach or senior football position, and Facebook translated that to their own recruitment.

The ‘could do better’ list was topped by Twitter…

Article 2: PLEASE Think Before Hitting ‘Send’…

It’s a message you’ve heard a dozen times – probably this week alone – but there’s evidently no harm in repeating it for all those who STILL believe you can do or say anything you like on Facebook, Twitter and even LinkedIn now with no comeback whatsoever.

If you want to flirt with people who are expecting to be flirted with, download Tinder. Don’t do it if you are a well-known industry professional. Back in September, Charlotte Proudman, a 27-year old barrister and Ph.D. candidate connected with a 57-year old, well-known and well-respected solicitor on LinkedIn. After thanking her for connecting, he said ‘I appreciate that this is probably horrendously politically incorrect but that is a stunning picture!!! You definitely win the prize for the best Linked in (sic) picture I have ever seen.’

She replied with this shut-down; ‘I find your message offensive. I am on LinkedIn for business purposes, not to be approached about my physical appearance or to be objectified by sexist men. Unacceptable and misogynistic behaviour. Think twice before sending another woman (half your age) such a sexist message.’

After she got the message, she decided to tweet it out to see how many other women had experienced something similar and she was ‘overwhelmed’ with the response

The lawyer in question subsequently issued an apology through a legal news website and as far as we can tell, the matter is over. But, if you’re about to flirt, be offensive, sexist, misogynistic  potentially libellous or threatening online, even if you think it’s completely benign or ‘just a laugh’, take a moment to read what you’ve typed before hitting ‘send’, ‘tweet’ or ‘post’. It could very well be the worst spilt-second of your life…

Article 3: Refugees Are People Too…

Pick up any paper or go to any news site and the headline story will be about the migrant crisis. In 2015, Germany took in 1.1m Syrian asylum seekers, but this isn’t an article about politics or our views on what’s happening, it’s a story about two students who decided to do something amazing.

David Jacob and Philipp Kuhn, Communication Design students at HTW Berlin have created the world’s first online job platform for refugees in Germany called Workeer and it was designed to be the first point of contact between refugees and potential employers. The site lists a whole plethora of jobs, from manual labourers all the way up to engineers and software developers and employers can post jobs on the site and advertise the skills their particular business needs.

Co-founder David Jacob said ‘refugees have better access to the internet than most people think’ although there are still plenty of hurdles to jump through to secure work for a foreign national. A law graduate from Damascus, Houssam Y, who has found himself in Germany wants a job that showcases his impressive skills but he said he’d take ‘an apprenticeship or any odd job – anything. I don’t want to live without work. I want to pay my way through life.’

The site is gaining some great traction in Germany (currently it’s just in German) but we hope that Workeer (or similar) finds its way across Europe but Jacob and Philipp know what they’re up against – ‘the great response to Workeer has meant that many job seekers and employees have registered. Many of them have created already exemplary filled profiles and job listings. However, there are many potential improvements to be made. We now want to build a team, which takes care of this bigger problem.’

Good luck guys and kudos to you. The refugee crisis that has engulfed Europe needs people like you two who aren’t afraid to say ‘what can we do to help?’

Article 4: 2015 – Recruitment’s Best Year – EVER!

Here’s the headline fact – since the 2008/09 recession, recruiters have put four million people into permanent jobs! Go on, crack out the Champers, you deserve it!

 In November, the REC released their eighth annual Recruitment Industry Trends Survey and the 2014/15 numbers are very, very impressive indeed:

• 634,000 people were placed into permanent roles via a recruiter
• Just 1% of agencies working on permanent placements are accepting margins below 10% whereas more than a quarter (26%) are securing margins of 20% and over (up from 8% last year)
• On any given day in 2014/15 1.2 million people were out on temporary, contract or interim assignments via a recruiter, up 3.6% y-o-y
• More than 103,000 people now work in the recruitment industry, up 7% from 2014
• Average annual sales per consultant working in permanent recruitment were £96,00
• You can have a look at the infographic here, and REC Chief Executive Kevin Green said ‘This is a very exciting time for recruitment. Overall turnover has increased, employers are making more use of agency workers, contractors and interims and recruiters filling permanent vacancies are commanding better margins in a tightening jobs market. This report provides invaluable benchmarking data for our members for assessing how their businesses are performing compared to overall industry averages and to agencies operating in their sector.’

 He continued in a more profound, existential manner…’ Every day recruiters change people’s lives and make businesses more prosperous. Our industry is the engine that drives the UK labour market, enabling people to find work and businesses to find the talent they need to succeed.’

However it’s dressed up, we all did good last year and long may that continue!

Article 5: The Candidate Experience is Getting Better, We Promise…

 Honestly, we do! Or, more specifically, LinkedIn are telling us that it’s getting better. A massive 62% of talent acquisition leaders said employer branding (the process of promoting your business to a specific target group) was a top priority at their business and further, one of the best ways to enhance employer branding is to offer a great candidate experience during the job hunt.

As an employer, what elements of the candidate experience should you be looking to improve upon? Here are a few tips we came up with over lunch….*

*LinkedIn came up with them after a lengthy and presumably very expensive survey process involving more than 20,000 and many hundreds of hours…

69% – candidates who want to know the role’s responsibilities When you’re offering a job list the responsibilities rather than let the candidate guess

 8/10 – the number of professionals who say a negative interview will make them change their mind about a role The interview can be make-or-break when it comes to securing top talent.

49% – percentage of candidates who want their business questions answered

As the interviewer, you know all about the specific role but how much do you really know about the ins and outs of the business as a whole?

77% – candidates who want good news by phone

If you’ve got good news for a candidate, rather than an impersonal email or worse, one from your PA, pick up the phone!

6/10 – number who want you to feedback updates

Feedback isn’t just ‘congratulations’ and ‘bad luck’. Candidates want constant communication while they’re being considered for a job.

94% – want feedback if they are rejected…but only 41% get it….

Candidates appreciate it and it will help them with their future experiences in the job market but above all, it’s common courtesy.

You can see the full article here but if you hadn’t heard the phrase ‘employer branding’ before, now’s the time to look it up!

Article 6: Is Diversity the Buzz Word of 2016?

 Have you heard of Angelica Coleman? No? If you haven’t, she worked for Dropbox from 2013 until 2015 when she left. It’s a common story in the work place – people get jobs, work for a few years, look around for better jobs and then leave when one comes up. There’s nothing really surprising about that which is probably why you haven’t heard of Angelica Coleman.

Except this isn’t that. There’s a little more to the story. Angelica Coleman is African-American and was, quite remarkably, in 2015, told this by a white manager: ‘If you ever want to be anything other than an admin, you need to go somewhere else.’

 After leaving, she said ‘I left Dropbox because as a black woman working on bettering myself, the tech industry doesn’t give a shit. Even with the skills to do more, if I had stayed at Dropbox, I would have always had the submissive role of serving others and never calling the shots. Why? Because a white manager didn’t want to see me do more.’

This isn’t the era of Rosa Parks. This is 2015 and diversity in the workplace has either become a massive hot potato or vital. We’re not sure which.

The biggest tech companies have all hired a Head of Diversity (Google, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Yelp and Apple) and of course with multinational businesses like these, implementing a global diversity policy is, ironically, difficult, but what about smaller companies?

In another ironic twist, virtually all corporate diversity policies are still failing to meet even the most modest diversity targets because…wait for it…they lump all diversity groups together. You couldn’t make it up.

School taught us that stereotyping is wrong (definition: a simplified and standardised conception or image invested with special meaning and held in common by members of a group) but having a diversity policy is a good start. However if you employ a ‘recruit all diversity groups in the same way’ model you’re setting yourself up for a huge fail because the very elements that make groups diverse in the first place means that ‘one-size-fits-all’ will never work.

Diversity in the workplace is vitally important but the diversity has to be diverse, if you get what we mean…

Article 7: The LinkedIn Seven Deadly Sins Recruiters Commit…

 As a recruiter and more importantly a business owner, it’s not always been plain sailing, especially in the first year or so. There’s a lot to learn about running a business and especially a recruitment business. But, slowly and surely, we got there. Then, we got involved with social media…

Our LinkedIn page is regularly updated with recruitment-based stuff but according to socialtalent.co, there are seven deadly sins that recruiters use every day on LinkedIn which, if you recognise, you really ought to stop….!

1. DO NOT publish job ads as blog posts. People don’t want to read bullet-pointed lists of skills. They want thoughts, ideas and advice from industry leaders.
2. DO NOT spam someone offering them deals on carpet cleaning immediately after connecting with them. Your message will get deleted and so, probably, will your profile.
3. DO NOT post shouty ‘we’re hiring’ messages. Social media is all about having a conversation, not a platform to see who has the loudest voice.
4. DO NOT use impersonal InMail. Connect with the people you want to talk to, don’t hide behind your connections. You’re a recruiter and you are supposed to have mastered the art of effective communication.
5. DO NOT use the top search bar to look for relevant skills and keywords. This is, according to LinkedIn, a cardinal sin and one that ‘low performing recruiters tend to start almost all of their searches.’ Use the Advanced Search facility and use Boolean search strings. You’ll need to do some research on this but it does work!
6. DO NOT scrimp by using a free account to try and recruit. You can’t cheat the system regardless of if you think you can. Search results are weaker and more diluted and for a few pounds a month you become more competent as well as more committed as now you’ll want an ROI.
7. DO NOT hide away on LinkedIn. As a recruiter who bases his or her career on honesty and professionalism (we bet that’s what it says on your website anyway), you need to be visible. When you contact people they need to know immediately who you are, what you look like and where you’re from. You can’t start a professional relationship like you’re the Scarlet Pimpernel.

Article 8: The Best Recruitment Video of the Year (and it’s only February)

 You don’t need to be Spielberg to create a fantastic recruitment video. You don’t need to spend tens of thousands of pounds of a team of bearded hipsters from Shoreditch to come and shoot an avant-garde take on your business for three days, nor do you need to employ perfectly-proportioned models to do your bidding for you.

All you need is a camera and a happy workforce who genuinely love what they do, who they do it for and why they do it. When you’re making a recruitment video, do what the guys at American Metal Roofs from Charlotte, Missouri have done. Give appealing reasons to work there. That’s it.

Take a look at the video here and take notes! This is how to make a recruitment video.