Guest blog: My first months in recruitment

Friday the 16^th September saw a celebration of ReThink’s academy consultants flying the nest to full target-dom and getting lots of praise, booze, food and money in the process.

A massive congratulations to the academy graduates: Chris Walker – Bristol, Wayne Hay – London, Qamar Khan – London

The day started off with a number of presentations for Andy (MD), Midge (Director), Christine (Contracts manager Bristol), Guy (Contracts manager London) and Fiona Lander (of Lander Associates) delivered by the academy graduates.  Thankfully I did well in keeping my composure throughout the presentation which lasted the best part of 20 minutes.

The Apprentice Episode 11: Who ate all the pies?

In a twist to the regular format, Lord Sugar decided to postpone the dreaded interview round in the penultimate show of the series, in favour of a fast food challenge. The candidates were set the task of creating, branding, and producing a fast food chain to determine who would reach the final boardroom.

This week really separated the men from the boys. Helen and Tom on team Logic dominated this episode with their business skills and talent. Helen was team leader and showcased her amazing organisational abilities. She also proved to be a good leader – she recognised Tom’s creative flair and allowed him to be in charge of branding when in fact that was the gig she was really after.

Tom’s dyslexia in this episode proved to be the winning element when deciding on a new brand name “MyPy”. The duo decided to theme the fast food around the ‘best of British’ and focused on pie and mash – good choice. Tom demonstrated his creative abilities and his eye for detail in the branding aspect of the task as the shop had a quintessential English theme while still remaining modern.

The pair worked seamlessly together on this task. The concept was great, they knew their business plan and profit margins while at the same time creating quality food – all served to the customer in under 3 minutes! I fully expect one of these candidates to be ‘hired’ in the next episode. The only thing letting this team down were their history skills – naming the menu after famous British people and then calling the mash Christopher Columbus (who was Italian) was not the smartest of moves.

Team Venture on the other hand made a real meal of it!

A new era: The ‘human age’

Take a look at this really great article by a good friend Krissie Davies – Managing Director of  Manpower Ireland: A new era: The ‘human age’

Guest Blog: Exploring new ways of recruitment – Arrows Group case study

Introduction

IT recruitment is a very competitive industry where the best candidates often play hard to get. Consequently, we sensed we could improve our processes and results by nurturing a passive candidate pool. In fact, it is widely accepted that the best candidates are usually the passive ones.

Why Agile?

Agile, a methodology and philosophy of software development, fitted all the requirements, since it is language agnostic (shared by all sorts of roles) and also because Agilistas feel very passionate about it. In fact, it didn’t take very long for us to fall in love to and apply Agile principles to our everyday work and even life! We soon found this was a niche where we could play a key role as part of the software community, adding value to it.

Guest Blog: Vive La Difference!

Nick Butcher – Capital International IT Staffing

So, as the new government rumbles into action, much like a rather large and complicated freight train with a power source at either end, a thought has struck me. 

Erstwhile antagonists like Uncle Vince and the boy George have been surfing the interview circuit from Newsnight to Today and back again peddling the snake-oil of unified purpose.  “Ah, no”, they say, “We didn’t really disagree with each other BC (before coalition)   Any evidence to the contrary (and there’s lots) was simply a magnification of our tiny, tiny specks of disagreement – that’s electioneering folks!”

Guest Blog: Recruiter or a Recruitment Consultant?

Marc Morris – 1st Option

Some say that the difference between a recruiter and a recruitment consultant is that a recruiter simply makes placements; a true recruitment consultant makes placements but also adds value to both the candidates and clients by consulting, as well as closing deals. Whatever your definition is, most people would agree that recruiters need to “add value” to gain that sought after credibility. This is especially true when it comes to service providers. Whether it’s promoting an umbrella company based on the free pen they provided or avoiding the subject completely, recruiters should think again!