Many UK employers are finding it difficult to secure the best talent in certain sectors of the market including: Engineering, Management, Trades and Construction. Locally, we know there is a real shortage of experienced Sales Professionals and mid-level Customer Service individuals with steady work histories.
We understand that for employers, skills issues can reduce their ability to respond to customer needs and stay ahead of competitors and to adopt new technologies. Skills have long been identified as one of the key reasons for the UK's "productivity gap" with other major Western economies. Coupled with this, “unfilled vacancies” are likely to lead to increased workload and stress for other employees.
So how can we tackle this skills shortage effectively to limit the impact on our business and potential growth opportunities during 2016 and beyond?
Changing it up!
During 2014/15 we increased our staffing levels as coming out of the recession we saw the need to staff up to match the demands of our industry and respond to the needs of our clients and candidates! One thing we struggled with was finding experienced recruiters who wanted to work in a role that required dedication to sales and account management. What did we do?
We looked at the experience we had in our business and how we could leverage more time for our front line consultants to spend in the critical development of new business and client account management. This meant for us recruitment of Resourcers/Account Coordinators to manage the candidate application process (which is becoming more and more time consuming due to on-line job sites being the key choice for candidates).
Our Resourcers provide a valuable service to our clients, candidates and consultants by sifting through a large number of candidate applications from job boards, networks, our website, as well as utilising our own database and social media. In doing this they seek to identify the very best local talent who are both active and passive. Building solid relationships both face to face they understand the essential requirements our candidates are seeking and are able to promote and profile these to our two teams in Windsor and Uxbridge to secure the best opportunities.
We believe it is this effective and dedicated service which our candidates enjoy that leads to the volume of recommendations and referrals we receive with some of our candidates also becoming our client contacts, which is testament to the long-term relationships we seek to develop across our business.
The other great benefit of this is that we have been developing our Resourcers during this process and now they are taking up roles as Trainee Consultants still working with our Senior Consultant teams who have in excess of 15-20 years recruitment experience to share with them.
Playing your cards right!
So if you have a role you are struggling with have you thought about changing it up? Can you look at your current work force and look at ways you can create job roles in support – but with the view that you offer training and development to create the workforce, skills and experience you require in-house? We believe this is an excellent way to gain loyalty and utilise the fantastic experience that long-standing employees have to offer – creating a truly thriving team environment.
If you need help creating a job and person spec we have an experienced team on hand to provide this added support so why not call today to find out about our full range of recruitment services and start benefiting from these today!