Business Updates

October 25, 2016 by Julie McGrath

10 benefits of using the ‘right’ Recruitment Agency!

There are a lot of benefits to using the ‘right’ recruitment agency, we have chosen the top 10 that may be beneficial to you.

1. Knowledge of the market

The best recruiters will have their finger on the pulse of their specialist markets, and can give the hiring team insight in to what is happening. They should know the available talent, where they are and how to reach out to them, salary rates, career expectations, available skill-sets and current hiring complexities. The best will act as partners and collaborators, and should still be your eyes and ears in the market.

2. Extended reach

Some candidates are hard to find. They may be passive or they may be selective. If they aren’t responding to job advertisements, don’t see themselves as part of your ‘talent pool’ and are too busy to search full time then the chances are that they may have relationships with trusted specialist recruiters in your sector. Even if they aren’t currently ‘active’ I use this term loosely as everyone is active if presented with the right opportunity, there’s a strong chance that a good recruiter will know who they are and how to reach them. Agencies have many networks – each consultant, candidate, client or collaborator has the potential to leverage their networks to help connect you to people with a range of skills and experiences, many of who would be off the radar of an in-house team or hiring manager.

3. Time saved

In business, time is money and using a Recruitment Agency is a time saver. They will save you time because they take care of the beginning steps of the hiring process. If you post a job opening on traditional job boards, there is a strong chance you will receive hundreds of CV’s and applications for any single position. Out of the hundreds of applicants, a significant amount will not be qualified or will simply not be right for the job. Finding the right applicants to interview will take a great amount of time and effort.

4. Candidates not applicants

A lot of talent attraction is aimed at attracting applicants, whether they are responding to an advert, applying on spec, or through your website. A lot of these people may not be good matches for the role hence a lot of time will be invested in filtering, assessing, matching and communicating with them. Using a recruitment agency should mean that you see only candidates – job seekers who have been pre-selected to match the criteria that you are looking for and who are worthy of consideration and interview.

5. Access to the best

In addition to sorting through submitted applications, a Recruitment Agency will also have access to the best talent available. This includes access to talent that is currently employed elsewhere. These qualified individuals can work discreetly with a recruitment agency when they are looking for a new challenge and opportunity. Recruitment Agencies have their own database of qualified applicants that they can pull directly from.

6. Cost

Cost needs to be proportioned to two things, price associated with advertising your vacancy and the time spent by you and your employees trying to find that correct match. If you are looking for a person with a specific skill set or in a specific niche many hiring managers in house maybe out of there depth when trying to understand what it ‘actually’ is you need from that person. Through no fault of their own they are maybe not specialists in that particular market place, although get it ‘wrong’ and it will end up costing your business more than just money. A Recruitment Agency is also there to help negotiate the best salary, giving you guidance and advice on what is fair and appropriate, but also what you might need to do to guarantee that top candidate that everyone else is after too!

7. Help with employer brand

Large companies invest a lot of time and money in developing and marketing their employer brand, but many SME’s and smaller businesses don’t have the same resources. If you choose your agency wisely then they can give potential candidates a real insight in to your business – what it’s like to work there, benefits and career openings available, and a feel for the culture. If you partner closely with right agency they will act as an extension of you and your team and also be an advocate of your brand.

8. Access to key strategic skills

The number one reason that companies gave for using a recruitment agency was to gain short term access to key strategic skills, a reason that has been growing in importance over the last 3 years, now overtaking covering leave and peaks in demand. With talent shortages now potentially hindering growth it’s not surprising that this is the case. Whilst some of the reasons I’ve already given may refer more to permanent recruiters, many also offer the opportunity to bring in qualified, experienced help at short notice. These flexible solutions are particularly crucial for a long term project or initiative.

9. Peace of mind

A good Recruitment Agency is going to have a proven track record of finding the right employees for the job and be specialist in their field. When you meet with their selection of shortlisted candidates, you can feel more confident with your final hiring decision. Working with a Recruitment Agency will help you make a more assured decision.

10. Relationship

Once you have developed a relationship with a Recruitment Agency that you trust, your future hiring’s will go even more smoothly. The Agency will be aware of the qualities that it takes to make the right fit within your company and what you expect from them. The next time you have an available position, you can fill it quickly and satisfactorily. Your recruitment partner is an advocate, a specialist soundboard and an extension of you and your company’s brand.

Please contact Graffiti Recruitment to find out how we can help! Our recruitment experts offer a free business review, and a no obligation quote on all your recruitment needs!

August 29, 2016 by Julie McGrath

The recruitment of new employees can be a costly and time-consuming process for businesses, especially SMEs. Find out how a Recruitment Agency can save your business time and money when it comes to recruiting.

Employers fully recognise the value of top talent – those individuals that can drive their business forwards and boost the bottom line. Directors and hiring managers face a tricky task when it comes to ensuring a flow of continual talent into the business and making sure they hire individuals who are suited to the job and the culture of the organisation. In a buoyant jobs market, where employers are competing with one another for the most skilled and experienced staff, this becomes even more difficult. In many cases, employers need specialist support with their hiring strategies. Using a recruitment agency to identify and attract talent, and negotiate terms, can relieve a huge amount of pressure. This approach can help organisations find the people they need to move forwards, bring them to interview, and secure their services within budget.

What are the benefits of using recruitment agency to help hire professionals?

Here are a few practical benefits:

Ability to identify talent

Recruitment agencies work with both employers who are searching for talent, and professionals who are on the hunt for career opportunities. As such, they are ideally placed to be ‘in the know’ and operate as an intermediary between the two parties. The knowledge recruitment consultants possess about how to avoid hiring a bad candidate can be extremely valuable; they know who is looking for work, how capable they are, and what sort of a salary expectations people have.

Once an employer has created a vacancy and established the job criteria, recruitment agencies can set about finding suitable people for the position. The ‘ideal candidate’ is often the one who is not actively looking for a new job but would be open to one if the right opportunity presented itself. A recruitment consultant has strong networks and a clear idea of where to find these individuals.

Another benefit of using a recruitment agency is their extensive knowledge about individual segments of the job market and the talent that is available in particular localities. They also learn about employers’ requirements and goals. This means they can source talented individuals who are capable of doing the job.

Advertise roles

Sometimes when employers advertise vacancies, they do not receive applications of the required calibre. They are looking for an experienced candidate with niche skills, but the CVs they receive simply don’t hit the mark. Often, this is down to poor marketing; or the cost to advertise individual jobs online. High-calibre people can sometime miss the job advert an aren’t aware of the opportunity available.

Recruitment agencies advertise vacancies both online and offline. They actively seek out and head hunt professionals who fit the job description. Recruitment consultants may establish direct contact with talented individuals they know, having networked with them in the past and invite them to apply for the role. Some professionals might not be actively looking for a career change, but your vacancy could just tempt them. ‘Everyone has a price right’, but that price may not always be money! As the millennial generation continues to demand modifications to the standard 9-5 as we know it. Work/life balance and company culture sometimes become even more important than salaries.

Negotiate salaries

As an employer, the last thing you want is to get to the end of the recruitment process, having identified your preferred candidate and made a job offer, only to find that you are poles apart on salary and benefits. Before entering salary negotiations, recruiters can help you benchmark remuneration against other businesses in your industry and can provide valuable resources. Recruitment agencies are also actively placing skilled candidates and negotiating salaries involved in the hiring process. They can negotiate on behalf of both parties and agree a mutually acceptable remuneration package. If both parties are aware of the other’s hopes and expectations from the outset, it ensures there is a realistic prospect of sealing the deal.

Interview candidates

The recruitment agency can conduct interviews on an employer’s behalf, which can save time and money. On average each individual hire could take up to 50 hours of your time. Within an average SME there are usually 3 people involved in the recruitment of a single person. Is this the best way to spend your time or can you use this time more effectively to drive your business forward? A recruitment consultant can give you that time back by providing a shortlist of suitable candidates and begin the process of narrowing down the applicants. The recruitment agency can also conduct background checks on candidates invited to interview, meaning the employer’s HR department doesn’t have to.

Deliver interim professionals

Using a recruitment agency gives businesses the benefit of increasing or decreasing their employee levels as needed. They can identify professionals for full-time permanent roles, but also individuals suitable for interim jobs. It may be that emergency cover is needed for an absent employee who has gone off ill or left at short notice. Or an employer may be concerned about a lack of capacity for a new project or initiative that is getting underway. Recruiters have candidates on who are willing to hit the ground running, meaning there is no time wasted getting these professionals up to speed.

Offer industry insight

Another benefit of a recruitment agency is they spend all day, every day, working to provide staffing solutions for organisations across a range of industry sectors. As such, they have significant expertise and jobs market insight, internationally, nationally, and locally, which employers can tap into as they plan their recruitment strategy. Recruitment consultants understand employer’s needs, candidate expectations, and the impacts of supply and demand. This means they are ideally situated to help employers make educated decisions, which have a positive impact on the bottom line.

In summary

Employers don’t need to go it alone when it comes to hiring. Finding the right recruitment agency that has access to people in your industry vertical can be very beneficial, time saving and cost effective.

We can help you find highly talented candidates within the Tech Sector for jobs such as Software Development, Web Development, IT Engineering, IT Support, Graphic Design, Marketing, Business Development and much more! Please get in touch to find out how we can help you.

July 22, 2016 by Julie McGrath

Telford & Wrekin Council’s cabinet is set to approve a scheme which will open up Superfast broadband to around 120 extra businesses in the borough.

If an application for European funding is successful, the Marches Broadband Grant project will provide eligible businesses across Telford & Wrekin with a fully funded grant to access fibre broadband.

In Telford and Wrekin, 98 per cent of the borough will be covered by the end of 2017 as a result of the Council’s Superfast Telford partnership with BT and Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK).

The council is committed to seeking a solution for the other 2% of the borough, of which this scheme is potentially one, to get coverage as close to 100 per cent as possible.

The Telford & Wrekin element of the £4m project is seeking £237,818 funding from the European Regional Development Fund , which requires match funding of £158,545.

It is assumed that the level of grant payment to businesses will on average be between £7,000 and £25,000 per business although many grants in Telford and Wrekin are likely to be towards the lower end of the spectrum, as it has more accessible, semi-rural areas.

It will only be open to businesses that have not been broadband enabled by either the current Superfast Telford programme or by other commercial broadband investment.

A total of 124 eligible businesses have initially been identified in Telford and Wrekin and an expected output of around 22 per cent or 27 businesses, including a significant number of micro enterprises will potentially benefit.

Councillor Angela McClements, Telford & Wrekin Council’s cabinet member for Customer and Neighbourhood Services, said: “We have made a commitment to extend fibre broadband coverage across the borough as far as possible.

“The priority is the delivery of Superfast Telford which is still in the early stages of delivery.

“However the Marches Broadband Grant scheme opens up the availability of fibre broadband to businesses that might not be covered by Superfast Telford, although some eligible businesses may receive superfast connectivity via the main programme.

“This demonstrates our commitment to ensure that as close to as 100 per cent of the borough as possible has access to superfast connectivity and all the benefits it brings.”

Telford & Wrekin Council’s cabinet – which meets on 21 July – is being asked to approve proposals for the match funding mechanism.

They are also being asked to enter into a partnership agreement with project partners Shropshire and Herefordshire Councils to deliver the grant project.

– telford.gov.uk

Interested in the development of Superfast Broadband and Business? Why not check out our latest job roles in these sectors by clicking here!

April 28, 2016 by Julie McGrath

The first group of IT graduates emerging from Accenture’s apprenticeship scheme in north-east England will walk straight into jobs, debt-free

The first group of IT graduates from Accenture’s Newcastle-based apprentice programme will all walk into jobs at the IT services giant free of student debt, after graduating in April 2016.

Thirteen apprentices became the first to pass out of the scheme, which combines several years of on-the-job experience with a salary and education. This resulted in the award of a Higher Apprenticeship for IT, software, web and telecoms professionals, incorporating a foundation degree and Level 4 BTEC diploma.
Surely the greatest pull of the scheme is the absence of crippling debt following years of study.

Back in 2013, local young people joined the company’s scheme, at Accenture’s Cobalt Business Park near Newcastle, north-east England. All 13 graduates will soon start full-time work at the firm’s Newcastle-based centre, the UK link in its global delivery network.

The programme’s success has meant that it has already been expanded and the next 19-strong group of apprentices, set to graduate in July 2016, are already on their way.

The expansion is not a surprise, with apprenticeships experiencing something of a revival in the UK. The IT sector is part of a new industrial revolution, driven by digital technology, with trends such as the internet of things (IoT) breathing new life into similar schemes.

Earn while you learn

Three graduates inside story.

Ben Manning

Ben Manning was 17 years old when he joined the programme. “I was in sixth form doing my A-Levels and I wanted to go to university to study computer science. I heard about the Accenture scheme, which was pretty similar to the path I wanted to follow,” he said, adding that it was easier partly because the degree is paid for by Accenture.

He has worked on customer relationship management (CRM) software, mobile technologies and at HM Revenue and Customs’ (HMRC) operation in Newcastle.

He’ll stay at Accenture after graduation and hopes to continue developing at HSBC, the company’s customer, and could also be offered a top-up year to attain his full degree. He’s happy to stay at the HMRC, he said, where he is part of a small team delivering software changes.

Ashley Walker

Ashley Walker, 28, who studied IT during a further education course, joined the scheme from a business degree, after realising the latter wasn’t for him. “I heard about the Accenture programme from a friend of a friend,” he said.

On the apprentice scheme he started in a maintenance role at the Rural Payments Agency (RPA), another Accenture customer, working on the RPA’s IT system, known as Rita, and got to grips with things such as batch schedulers and Unix.

He is currently working on Salesforce.com technology and, like Manning, hopes to top up to a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree.

He said the course has surprised him through the opportunities it has provided, even beyond the learning experience. “One week I was sat doing my normal stuff at the RPA, and the next week I was collecting an award on behalf of Accenture, meeting Nick Clegg and staying in a nice hotel.” He has also spent time working in Madrid.

While Manning’s computer science interest and Walker’s IT course at college seem to be appropriate launch pads to the apprentice scheme, IT experience is not actually a requirement.

Scott Gillan

For example, Scott Gillan embarked on his A-Levels but wasn’t sure what he wanted to do after that. “I heard about an apprenticeship and thought this was the best choice because the company pays for your degree, so you earn while you learn and get experience as well.”

He said he might be £40,000 in debt if he had completed a degree. “All my mates went down the university route and they are going to be stuck with this kind of debt,” he said, adding employees want possible recruits to have experiences of life.

Gillan works in HMRC software testing, and is happy to remain there gaining experience in public sector IT. He said he would like to progress to a team leader or manager role and see where he can go from there.

Career opportunities in Newcastle and beyond

And there could be great opportunities even if the graduates remain in Newcastle, where Accenture is developing operations the business considers important for it both nationally and globally.

The north-east England operation is a vital cog in Accenture’s global delivery engine. In fact, Accenture’s Cobalt Park office is the only UK facility where the company’s name adorns a building, according to UK managing director Oliver Benzecry.

The centre, Accenture’s main UK delivery operation, is part of the company’s global delivery network, which encompasses more than 140,000 people globally, the majority of whom are in India and the Philippines.

Emma McGuigan, who runs Accenture’s UK and Ireland Technology business, said the Newcastle operation was originally seen as a way of getting a different mix of people and skills. These complement other regions, she said. For instance, agile development might start in Newcastle and then be scaled in Mumbai.

She said the centre was first used to support government customers that did not want data going overseas, but added that this approach was now changing.

Five years ago the centre was supporting about 10 clients, mainly in the public sector. “We now have 60 clients supported from Newcastle, which is a significant percentage of the business, and they are all accessing it in different ways,” said McGuigan.

For instance, UK customers might not have the volume to justify a large offshore shared services contract, for operations such as Salesforce, and the Newcastle operation can provide a small local alternative.

Scaling down services is important as changes in technology, such as the increased use of the cloud, lead to a fall in the average deal size of IT services contracts, something which McGuigan said would be perfect for a delivery centre such as Newcastle.

Getting the right people is vital

It’s the rapidity of technology change that gives the north-east England operation another advantage. Mark Larsen, who heads up the Newcastle operation, said the centre is flexible and the people within it are able to shift between technologies. “It’s now about getting people with the right curiosity, aptitude and skills. They have to switch between technologies very quickly.”

Getting the right people is clearly critical, and with 500 people applying for 20 places there’s a lot of choice.

Despite the success, Accenture knows there is still work to do, not least attracting the right kind of people, something which is not always obvious.

Larsen said the advertising used for the scheme needs to be adapted to attract the right people, as well as more women. There were no women in the first group of graduates, and there’s only one among July’s graduates.

“It is harder to attract girls but it is improving and there are more interested,” said the operations manager for the Newcastle delivery centre.

The programme now is now expanded technology apprenticeship to London, Warwick and Newbury!

– Karl Flinders

April 4, 2016 by Julie McGrath

March 30, 2016 by Julie McGrath

The BBC’s Micro Bit finally launched last week just as the children headed off for the Easter holidays.

Many won’t get their hands on the tiny computers until they return from their spring break in mid-April, although the hope is that some will play with their new devices at home over the vacation.

The BBC has bigger ambitions for the little machine, hoping that it will help kickstart a revolution in coding in the same way as its big brother the BBC Micro did in the 1980s.

But how will the Micro Bit – which currently is only on offer to 11 and 12-year-olds around the UK – inspire a generation and what exactly will it inspire them to do?

Computer history

The project is late – and there was clearly a rush to get it into the hands of children before most schools broke up for Easter.

This delay is perhaps unsurprising – it is a complex task launching new hardware especially with the huge range of partners that the BBC is working with – but it has frustrated teachers who are hastily rewriting lesson plans, initially slated for the beginning of the academic year.

It mean that schools now only have one term to start using the device in classrooms and, perhaps more worryingly, when this year group of students leave the classroom at the end of the summer term they will take the Micro Bits with them, thanks to a decision to give the devices to individuals rather than to schools.

“It is vital that there is a fresh supply of Micro Bits each year for it to have a long-term, sustainable future,” said Bill Mitchell, director of education at the British Computing Society (BCS).

The BBC has said that the devices will be made commercially available from next year although there is little detail about how this will work or how much they will cost.

The BBC Micro became the centrepiece of the BBC’s first computer literacy push in the 1980s and a hugely influential piece of kit.

When it hit the market, an estimated 60% of primary schools and 85% of secondary schools adopted it and many of the influential leaders in the technology industry now cite it as having been crucial to their computing careers.

Now those willing the Micro Bit to succeed hope for similar.

“Many of our volunteers and staff say that they learnt to code using a BBC Micro and we want to replicate that with the Micro Bit,” said Code Club director Clare Sutcliffe.

Separate to the roll-out of the device to a million schoolchildren, the BBC is also making extra ones available to after-school clubs such as Code Club.

“We will be getting 20,000 Micro Bits in a few weeks time and we plan to give them to the venues so that they can be used over and over again,” said Ms Sutcliffe.

Computational thinking

There is no doubting the fun that children can have with the Micro Bit and it has already inspired a bunch of interesting projects but what is the longer-term goal of the technology?

Those who argue in favour of the hands-on approach to computer science say that, just as children learning about Shakespeare need to see the Bard’s plays performed to truly understand the work, so those learning about computing need to get under the bonnet.

“The Micro Bit is a device that interacts with the physical world and children can see that the device can have a physical effect, which helps them understand how computation can solve problems in the real world. That is hugely important,” said Mr Mitchell.

He hopes it will create a new generation of school leavers who can “analyse real-world problems and find an algorithm to solve them”, which he said will not only put the UK leaps and bounds ahead of other countries but will also help those children as they enter adult life – whatever profession that they choose to pursue.

“There is a misapprehension that the new curriculum is about churning out a generation of computer programmers but that is not the case,” said Mr Mitchell.

“It is about creating a generation of children who can think computationally.”

Hardcore programming

That is something governments around the world are recognising and back in 2014the UK overhauled the ICT curriculum, which had drifted from teaching hardcore programming in the 1980s to classes about how to use Word and create a spreadsheet from the 1990s onwards.

And in the US, President Barack Obama pledged to provide $4 billion in funding for computer science education in US schools.

The UK’s national curriculum now acknowledges that “high quality computing education equips pupils to use computational thinking and creativity to understand and change the world”.

The shift in thinking harks back to the era of the BBC Micro although this time around, Mr Mitchell hopes to inspire more than just the computer geeks.

“In truth the BBC Micro only reached around 10% of children – those who were interested in hardcore programming. For the rest, it was just far too challenging to get to grips with,” he said.

The onslaught of new, user-friendly programming languages coupled with gadgets such as the Micro Bit offers a whole new world of opportunity, he thinks.

The BCS estimates that a quarter of UK schools are doing “an excellent job” in implementing the new computer science curriculum.

The challenge now, said Mr Mitchell, is to convince head teachers in the other three-quarters to put computer science on a par with subjects such as maths and English.

By Jane Wakefield Technology reporter

10 benefits of using the ‘right’ Recruitment Agency!

10 benefits of using the ‘right’ Recruitment Agency!

How a Recruitment Agency can save you time and money!

Telford Superfast Extension

Telford & Wrekin Council’s cabinet is set to approve a scheme which will open up Superfast broadband to around 120 extra businesses in the borough.