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Is your web-site attracting or losing talent? |
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Date: 28/03/2008 |
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Top retailers including Marks & Spencer, O2 and House of Fraser are losing out on thousands of talented job candidates because of badly designed websites, research has revealed.
Only 40 out of 100 retail recruitment sites evaluated by independent adjudicators were deemed good enough to attract candidates. Even many of those judged attractive to jobseekers were said to be far too difficult to use.
At some famous high street names, less than 2% of visitors to their recruitment pages complete an application form, equating to a cost of £300 per job applicant.
A British Retail Consortium spokesman said: "Retailers have created half a million new jobs since 1995. Retail has the best record of any sector of offering flexible working and employing people who traditionally find it difficult to get back into work. That confirms they are doing a good job. But no retailer would want to lose customers or job applicants because of website failings and they are always looking to improve their sites."
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HR professionals are key to successful mergers |
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Date: 28/03/2008 |
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Human resources can contribute to the success of mergers and acquisitions through the integration and transfer of knowledge and practices, according to a new report from the Charted Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).
The last few years have witnessed a sharp upswing in international mergers and acquisitions, with 172 cross border deals worth more than $1billion in 2006 alone. Yet many international mergers have encountered problems due to their complex nature. CIPD research shows that HR's contribution to mergers can be substantial, particularly on the issue of employee integration.
Frances Wilson, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development's International Manager said: "Mergers and acquisitions transcend national cultures often making the integration process challenging and problematic. HR can play a key role in making this integration a success for employees at all levels and in particular lead the transfer of knowledge so that organisations' personnel learn from the operations they acquire."
The report International Mergers and Acquisitions: How can HR play a Strategic Role? shows that 60% of overseas owned organisations growing through acquisition have already made deliberate attempts to share and integrate with the acquired firms' knowledge in the UK.
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Jobcentre Plus ready to receive new online advertisers |
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Date: 27/03/2008 |
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VIEW WEBSITE |
Jobcentre Plus has informed Kaonix that their capacity planning and usability review is now complete and that they have fast-tracked Kaonix customers through the government gateway process where they have to apply to advertise their vacancies on the Job Warehouse.
Kaonix customers have responded very positively to this news and we have already configured Travis Perkins, Sheffield Galleries, Debenhams, Focus and Tragus with their required user names and passwords. Testing will be completed by the end of March and we will be posting hundreds of new vacancies on behalf of our customers by April 1st.
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The attractive people get the job |
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Date: 18/03/2008 |
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Almost 9 in 10 bosses admit to have given the job to the most attractive candidate as Peninsula, the employment law firm's latest research shows. The research which polled 2266 employers across the UK throughout February found that many employers have at some stage given preference to someone because of their attractive looks rather because of skills and experience.
- 88% of respondents who interview admit that they have at some stage chosen candidates because they were attractive rather than based on skills and experience
- 92% of respondents say that appearance at the job interview can influence their decision on who gets the job
David Price, Head of Diversity for Peninsula said today: "Are you discriminating against potential employees because of how they look? If so then you're not alone. It seems that many interviewers are guilty when it comes to looks influencing their decision. I was surprised at the number of people who have based an employment decision on looks and it's turning into a new form of modern discrimination. Using such a strategy is not without legal risk. Most employers know better than to base employment decisions on appearance that is related to legally protected factors such as race, age or disability but it seems occasionally these factors are abandoned."
Here is the exception that proves the rule.
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Kaonix in the Sunday Times, again |
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Date: 18/03/2008 |
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VIEW E-BROCHURE |
For the eagle-eyed out there, you may have noticed Kaonix were featured once again in the Sunday Times last weekend. Having sponsored the online version of the HR outsourcing supplement back in June 2007, there we were again, this time show-casing our shiny new logo in print and online.
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What is talent? How can recruiters and employers spot it and quantify it? |
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Date: 10/03/2008 |
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Dave Ulrich, professor of business at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, has devised a formula: Competence + Commitment + Contribution = Talent.
Competence means that individuals have the knowledge, skills and values required for today's and tomorrow's jobs.
Committed or engaged employees work hard, put in their time and do what they are asked to do.
Contribution occurs when employees feel that their personal needs are being met through their participation in their organisation.
The whole person is involved, says Ulrich: Competence deals with the head (being able), commitment with the hands and feet (being there), and contribution with the heart (simply being).
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Eligibility checks - new legislation |
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Date: 06/03/2008 |
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VISIT WEBSITE |
New laws governing the checks that UK employers must conduct on their workers came into force on 29th February 2008 and replaces the existing Home Office guidance of 2004.
The fines and penalties for non-compliance have also risen and are now up to £10k per individual recruiter - not the organisation.
The major changes are as follows and affect people recruited on a temporary or permanent basis after 29th February 2008:
The eligibility documents for candidates who have limited leave to remain in the UK must be checked every 12 months. Adoption certificates issued in the UK are now acceptable
as an alternative to full UK birth certificates. Therefore, a UK adoption certificate confirming parentage along with an official document confirming a candidate's National Insurance
number will satisfy that candidate's eligibility to work in the UK. The front cover of the candidate's passport must also be copied and retained on file.
For further information visit http://www.bia.homeoffice.gov.uk/
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8 out of 10 Graduates only search for jobs online |
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Date: 05/03/2008 |
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UK businesses who are investing in newspaper advertising to recruit graduate talent may be wasting their money according to new research from Reed Employment of almost 400 graduates registered on www.reed.co.uk.
89% of graduates claimed that they only ever search for jobs online; 18% use specialist recruitment agencies; 8% apply in person and just 3% regularly check newspaper job sections. 80% of respondents also claim to be
avid users of social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube.
It seems that speed is the name of the game for graduate jobseekers, with 57% stating they spend less than an hour researching for jobs; 18% spending between one and two hours; just 15% spending over two hours and 9% claiming they just
turn up at interviews, without having researched the company at all.
Whilst this could be down to laziness, it does appear that graduate jobseekers want more information provided in job descriptions and from recruitment consultants.
A half claimed they were not given enough information before their interviews. The kinds of information most in demand were details about training and development opportunities (40%); the office location and surrounding amenities (17%);
the office culture (15%), and the salary on offer (12%).
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CIPD welcome move to long-term solutions for long-term unemployed |
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Date: 29/02/2008 |
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The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) welcomes government incentives, to encourage voluntary and private firms to offer employment to long-term job seekers. The CIPD also supports the move to give the largest grants
to those companies which employ job-seekers for longer than six months, signalling an emphasis on long-term solutions rather than quick-fixes.
Private and voluntary organisations that specialise in employability will play a greater role in preparing the long term unemployed for work and giving them access to jobs. CIPD Skills Adviser, Dr. John McGurk believes this offers the government
a promising route to getting the 1.5 million currently on welfare into work.
"Welfare to work schemes should be based on what works in practice. If the private sector can deliver better outcomes for individuals and employers than Whitehall then we should embrace that change.
Existing New Deal providers are already working with the government and helping to get people back in to work. These organisations will increasingly take the burden, incentivised by the government to ensure that people fill the jobs that the economy generates.
The focus however should be on getting people into work and there is nothing wrong with firms profiting from placing people in long term employment. We are glad to see that expansion will be sustainable. The danger of short-term fast-buck operators is something
that government is alive to. This agenda is too important to be spoiled by the fraud which occurred in some earlier programmes. Overall this new strategy can only help the government achieve its stated aim of getting 1.5 million back in to work."
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MP to meet employment experts PPDG |
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Date: 25/02/2008 |
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Birmingham Lib Dem MP John Hemming has been invited to see how people facing the misery of long-term unemployment are being helped to find jobs and transform their lives.
The MP will visit the offices of Pertemps People Development Group (PPDG) in his constituency of Yardley and speak to former unemployed people who have turned their lives around, and the employment coaches who have helped them to succeed.
PPDG managing director Steve King will also explain how the company has become one of the UK's leading providers of Government-funded Welfare to Work initiatives.
They will also discuss the problems faced by long-term unemployed people and what more could be done to tackle the benefits culture. A report last week claimed that in some Birmingham constituencies more than 30 per cent of children are growing
up in homes dependent on benefits such as Income Support, Jobseekers Allowance, Incapacity Benefit and Severe Disablement Allowance.
Launched in Solihull in 1998 with just a handful of employees, PPDG has grown significantly and now employs 650 staff. Working in partnership with Jobcentre Plus and other organisations, it delivers employment and training initiatives helping
disadvantaged job seekers in Birmingham, Solihull, West Bromwich, The Marches, Liverpool, Teesside and Islington access the workplace or self-employment.
More than 60,000 job seekers have been helped into sustained employment since the projects began. PPDG delivers a range of initiatives including Employment Zone, New Deal and Lone Parent mentoring, and Learndirect training programmes.
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Executive Attitudes Changing Towards Job Boards |
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Date: 22/02/2008 |
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A recent article on OnRec.com, the recruitment industry magazine for online recruitment, finds that far from being the province of just the younger, less senior jobseeker, job boards are increasingly used by experienced executives to mount a pro-active job search. Read the article.
It cites shelf life of an online advert, accessibility anywhere, and the ability to sift adverts online and via e-mailed job alerts as among the benefits of online recruitment. A raft of specialist job boards targeted specifically at executives, and offshoot executive sites
from large generalist job boards, are attempting to capitalise on these trends and benefits. The recent acquisition by the FT of leading executive board Exec-Appointments demonstrates the growing value in this advertising sector.
The article goes on to say that many traditional executive recruitment firms discourage the use of online recruitment in order to retain their hold on the market - perpetuating what the authors refer to as a "cloak and dagger" myth around executive search.
With executive search taking on average 6 months to get a new executive in post, and charging hefty fees up-front and along the way, clearly there's scope for alternatives.
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Global Survey of CEOs and CIOs Shows Staffing Problems and Inadequate Skills are Biggest Problem |
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Date: 19/02/2008 |
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VISIT WEBSITE |
A new worldwide survey of CEO-/CIO-level executives commissioned by the non-profit, independent IT Governance Institute (ITGI) has found that more than one-third (38%) of CEOs and CIOs worldwide point to problems relating to staff with inadequate skills while 58 percent say that
insufficient number of staff remains the most common problem experienced in the last 12 months, compared to 35 percent in a similar survey conducted in 2005. In addition, 48 percent said that IT service delivery problems remain the second most common problem.
ITGI commissioned a global survey of 749 CEO-/CIO-level executives in 23 countries to determine executives' IT governance priorities and IT-related problems their organizations have faced. The IT Governance Global Status Report 2008 is available as a complimentary download at www.itgi.org.
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Marketing your Website |
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Date: 07/02/2008 |
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Your company website may be the most useful resource and excellent public face on the internet. The trouble is that if people don't know about it, you are unlikely to get many visitors, no matter how good it is. The tips below will help you get your website to the forefront of your field and in front of your key audiences or you could ask Kaonix to do it for you:
- Use email or an old-fashioned mailshot to let a targeted list of potential customers know about your site. By law, you must obtain your recipients' prior consent before sending them marketing emails.
- Provide incentives to attract visitors, such as discounts for online buyers.
- Register your site with the search engines - the starting points for keyword-based information searches - so people can find it. Each search engine site offers you a simple online registration form to fill in.
- Announce your site on the search engines' 'what's new?' pages.
- Negotiate to exchange links with relevant but non-competing organisations, e.g. your trade association or industry body.
- Plug your site in all company literature, letterheads and business cards, as well as flyers and advertisements.
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Update on job market |
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Date: 07/02/2008 |
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The UK labour market continued to slow at the start of 2008, according to January's Report on Jobs by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) and KPMG.
The research revealed that softer growth of demand for staff resulted in subdued rises in permanent placements and temp billings. Meanwhile, pay growth weakened further, in part reflecting easing skill shortages.
It showed that the growth of permanent staff placements remained lacklustre in January, and was only marginally sharper than the four-and-a-half year low recorded in December. Temporary and contract staff billings increased at the slowest pace for 22-two months.
Alan Nolan, director at KPMG, says: "Whilst the rate of expansion continues to slow, January's data still shows growth in both permanent and temporary placements. Despite predictions of redundancies and the financial market gloom, employers still remain optimistic. For example, many companies are planning to take on an increased number of graduates this year.
Different sectors carry on being affected in different ways. Whilst workers in the construction industry remain in demand, investment banks are seeing a reduction in graduate salaries in a bid to level out the playing field. Employers will wait and see whether the uncertainty in the job and the financial markets will lead to further interest rate cuts."
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Mind the Gap - The breakdown between HR and the Business |
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Date: 30/01/2008 |
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Although there has been much talk over recent years about HR stepping up to take its place at the leadership table, new research from activ8 highlights that there is still some way to go on this journey before HR can truly say they have arrived. Despite wide spread talk about becoming a strategic value-adding function, it appears the reality is very different with
operational necessity rather than strategic value being king. The result? A startling gap between the opinions of human resources professionals and those in business management roles on a range of issues, including the recruitment strategy and the overall contribution of HR to the business.
The area of recruitment in particular threw up some worrying results. Of the organisations surveyed, 72% of HR respondents assigned a high priority to the statement 'Anything that gets vacancies filled more quickly', while only 28% of businesspeople felt this was relevant.
Efficient or effective?
So why after all the endless debates, restructures, outsourcing/in-sourcing and change programmes that HR tackle each year, is there still such an alarming gap between what HR think they need to do to add most value to their organisations and what the businesses think is important?
One potential reason that the research highlights is the focus HR are still placing on efficiency inputs rather than effectiveness outputs. Whilst one in 5 HR managers stated that improving recruitment administration was one of their top 3 priorities for the year, just 4% felt that improving the person-role fit role was one of their priorities despite the fact that
over a third of line managers thought this was vital for the success of the business. Laurence Collins says "Whilst the focus for HR continues to be on reducing the time it takes for recruitment paperwork to be passed around the organisation, rather than on ensuring the recruitment process is delivering the right talent at the right time in the right roles in order to
achieve business objectives, HR will continue to be seen as a cost rather than a value add function."
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