Recruiting In The UK

by David Carter

So you need to recruit new staff?

There are so many methods available to companies these days that it's harder to choose how to recruit than it is to actually do the recruitment exercise.

Years ago it was fairly simple. All an employer had to do was call up the local newspaper and place a classified advertisement.

For more specialised jobs, such as accountants, lawyers, IT staff etc., a number of specialist magazines appeared, offering the opportunity to place advertisements that would be targeted directly to the relevant candidate base. This was often (and still is) far cheaper than having to go to the national press.

Then along came the recruitment agencies. Often concentrating on the local workforce, agencies sprouted up all over the country. Some were general staff agencies while other specialised in certain disciplines.

In the early days, these recruitment agencies would interview all of their candidates face to face and try to arrange job interviews with local employers who would be interested in the skills of the person concerned. It was a successful approach.

But then the Internet happened....

The Internet is a wonderful tool for business and it can offer an extremely cheap and valuable method of recruiting staff at just about any level.

Companies should obviously make use of their own web sites when looking for staff - every corporate web site should contain a current vacancies page, together with information that "sells the company" to prospective employees.

The downside of the Internet is that it's created a million job sites - most are terrible - and it's made recruitment consultants lazy, though they would argue that it's actually made them "efficient".

Today, it is far to easy for a recruiter to place an advertisement on a job site and then sit back waiting for the response to come in. With ads costing as little as £6 on some major sites, the recruiter no longer has to search through a list of registered candidates to find you the right person - it's easier and cheaper to place an advertisement.

Many agencies have candidate databases of several thousand people, but few will be considered for your vacancy, because nobody reads CVs these days. The modern recruiter relies on technology - key word searches that scan thousands of CVs at a time is the norm these days.

The problem with key word searches is that everyone compiles their CV differently. Inevitably, some candidates get missed out. In the rush to get canduidates in front of an employer, many consultants will stop searching once they have a couple of likely candidates to submit.

You won't always get the pick of the crop!

So what about advertising yourself on a job site?

Many sites offer direct site advertising for employers and some of these represent fantastic value for money. The only thing to be aware of though, is that the site you are considering might not specialise in the type of position you are ofering.

The way to find out the best sites to advertise on is to conduct a search at any search engine, for the vacancy title that you have. See which sites come up in the top 10 or 20 results. Look for multiple results from the same site - as these are the sites that are probably best suited to your advertisement.

This site isn't anti-advertising, anti-Internet or anti-agency, but will provide you with a balanced viewpoint on all things to do with recruitment. Our other articles explore different methods of recruiting in more detail to provide you with a better idea of which strategies are best for you.

If you are an employer and would like assistance with any aspect of a recruitment exercise, whether it's advertising, candidate screening, interviewing or selection, please call David Carter on 01564 824554 or 07800 790427.