Hiring

July 27, 2020 by Julie McGrath

Before the coronavirus pandemic hit, the jobs market was incredibly buoyant, with statistics indicating that employment was at an all-time high. However, sadly the tides have turned with a number of employees recently losing their jobs or being placed on furlough as a result of the global pandemic.

Figures released by the ONS in June discovered that for the three months ending April 2020, the highest employment rate estimate in the UK was in the South East (79.5%) and the lowest was in Northern Ireland (71.6%). It also revealed that for the three months ending April 2020, the highest unemployment rate estimate in the UK was in the North East (5.2%) and the lowest was in Northern Ireland (2.3%); a joint record low unemployment rate.

Due to the closure of many businesses across the UK, including retailers, gyms, restaurants and pubs, these outlets have felt the severe brunt of coronavirus, while the tourism industry has struggled to stay afloat as international travel was stopped. For example, British airline Flybe announced it had gone into administration this year after struggling with the outbreak, meanwhile Sir Richard Branson announced plans to remortgage his private Caribbean island to raise money to help his Virgin Group business, which includes the Virgin Atlantic airline, survive.

To give you an idea of how the jobs market has changed over the last few months, we have compiled a list of some of the key stats and trends:

75.3% of Brits feel stressed about trying to find a new role in the current climate.
CV Library

Research has revealed the jobs and companies which have seen the biggest increase in searches since the UK entered lockdown (March 23, 2020), with ‘NHS Volunteer Job’ seeing a 355% increase and ‘Fruit Picking Jobs’ seeing an 843% increase.
Debut Careers

The new Improving Quality of Hire through Recruiting Enablement report revealed that 63% of businesses believe that identifying and attracting quality hires is the greatest challenge they face.
Aptitude Research and Oleeo

Delivery driver, warehouse operative, sales development representative, risk analyst and retail assistant are the top five most applied for jobs in the UK.
LinkedIn

In the COVID-19 Business Reaction Report, 54% of the businesses that took part in the survey revealed they have had to furlough staff and, worryingly, are only expecting to reactivate 60% of those furloughed.
IsoNation

Data has found that as many as one in five contractors are anticipating having to close their business down because of the crisis.
University of Edinburgh Business School and the Association of Independent Professionals and the Self-Employed (IPSE)

What does the future hold?

With a new decade comes a desire for change and a lot of people had big intentions for 2020. Whether that was to find a new job, set-up a new business or embark on an exciting new career path. Sadly, the coronavirus pandemic has flipped the world on its head and forced people to abandon these plans, which is resulting in a lot of angst and uncertainty.

For employers and recruiters, the fact that more people are wanting to change jobs is a massive positive, but we know that organisations are already making difficult decisions around their existing workforce. While job vacancies are starting to pick back up, opportunities have been limited over the past few months and this is naturally making job seekers feel nervous.

For help or advice on your business or career options, please contact us for some support.

Executive Grapevine

November 18, 2019 by Julie McGrath

The 11 Most Important Job Skills Every Company Will Be Looking For In 2020

As the world evolves to embrace the 4^th industrial revolution, our workplaces are changing. Just as other industrial revolutions transformed the skillset and experience required from the workforce, we can expect the same from this revolution. Only five years from now, 35 percent of the skills seen as essential today will change according to the World Economic Forum. While we’re not able to predict the future, yet, here are the eleven most important job skills every company will be looking for in 2020.

The 10+ Most Important Job Skills Every Company Will Be Looking For In 2020 — The 11 Most Important Job Skills Every Company Will Be Looking For In 2020

1. Data Literacy

Data has become every organisation’s most important asset—the “fuel” of the 4^thindustrial revolution. Companies that don’t use that fuel to drive their success will inevitably fall behind. So, to make data valuable, organisations must employ individuals who have data literacy and the skills to turn the data into business value.

2. Critical Thinking

There’s no shortage of information and data, but individuals with the ability to discern what information is trustworthy among the abundant mix of misinformation such as fakes news, deep fakes, propaganda, and more will be critical to an organisation’s success. Critical thinking doesn’t imply being negative; it’s about being able to objectively evaluate information and how it should be used or even if it should be trusted by an organisation. Employees who are open-minded, yet able to judge the quality of information inundating us will be valued.

3. Tech Savviness

Technical skills will be required by employees doing just about every job since digital tools will be commonplace as the 4^th industrial revolution impacts every industry. Artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, virtual and augmented reality, robotics, blockchain, and more will become a part of every worker’s everyday experience, whether the workplace is a factory or law firm. So, not only do people need to be comfortable around these tools, they will need to develop skills to work with them. Awareness of these technologies and relevant technical skills will be required for every job from a hairstylist to an accountant and everything in between.

4. Adaptability and Flexibility

As quickly as the world is changing, the half-life of skills is constantly reducing. Therefore, people need to commit to learning new skills throughout their careers and know they must be adaptable to change. Important to this is understanding that what worked yesterday isn’t necessarily the best strategy for tomorrow, so openness to unlearning skills is also important. Additionally, people must be cognitively flexible to new ideas and ways of doing things.

5. Creativity

Regardless of how many machines work beside us, humans are still better at creativity. It’s essential that creative humans are employed by companies to invent, imagine something new and dream up a better tomorrow. Tomorrow’s workplaces will demand new ways of thinking, and human creativity is critical to moving forward.

6. Emotional Intelligence (EQ)

Another area where humans have the edge on machines is with emotional intelligence—our ability to be aware of, control, and express our emotions and the emotions of others. This ability will be important as long as there are humans in the workforce since it impacts every interaction we have with one another.

7. Cultural Intelligence and Diversity

Organisations are increasingly diverse, and effective employees must be able to respect differences and work with people of a different race, religion, age, gender, or sexual orientation. Also, businesses are increasingly operating across international boundaries, which means it is important that employees are sensitive to other cultures, languages, political, and religious beliefs. Employees with strong cultural intelligence and who can adapt to others who might perceive the world differently are also key in developing more inclusive products and services for an organisation.

8. Leadership Skills

Leadership skills will be paramount for not only those at the top of a traditional corporate hierarchy but increasingly for those individuals throughout the company who are expected to lead in the 4^th industrial revolution. Enabled by the support of machines, there will be more individuals who are in decision-making positions, whether leading project teams or departments. Understanding how to bring out the best in and inspire every individual within a diverse and distributed workforce requires strong leadership skills.

9. Judgement and Complex Decision Making

Machines might be able to analyse data at a speed, and depth humans are incapable of, but many decisions regarding what to do with the information provided by machines must be still made by humans. Humans with the ability to take input from the data while considering how decisions can impact the broader community, including effects on human sensibilities such as morale, are important members of the team. So, even if the data support one decision, a human needs to step in to think about how a decision could impact other areas of the business, including its people.

10. Collaboration

When companies are looking to hire humans in the 4^th industrial revolution, skills that are uniquely human such as collaboration and strong interpersonal skills will be emphasized. They will want employees on their team who can interact well with others and help drive the company forward collectively.

11. In addition to the skills listed above that every company will be looking for in the 4^th industrial revolution, there are several self-management skills that will make people more successful in the future, including self-motivation, prioritisation/time management, stress management and the ability to embrace and celebrate change. Those people who have a growth mindset, are adept at experimenting and learning from mistakes, as well as have a sense of curiosity will be highly coveted in the 4^th industrial revolution.

Learn how to implement and execute these top 11 skills in preparation for your next interview.

. Bernard Marr

August 14, 2019 by Julie McGrath

A large enterprise or corporate businesses offer big benefits and perks like good salaries, a fancy workplace, etc. but when it comes to personal or professional growth, SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) play an important role. Working in a small business, offers an abundance of benefits, as it recognises the potential and value of every employee.

Small businesses offer exceptional career opportunities to its employees, giving them a chance to stand out in the workplace. Working in a small or medium enterprise (SME), connects an individual to the senior management, allowing greater exposure to widen an individual’s skill set.

Listed below are 7 benefits of working within an SME:

Widens your skill-set: Working in SMEs leads to a better understanding of the job role, helping develop and broaden your skill-set. Small businesses develop their employee’s overall skills set and encourage their entrepreneurial drive. They get an on-the-job, first-hand experience to understand and introspect the business better.

Advancement in the career graph: With ample opportunities to learn, all individuals get a platform to showcase their talent towards a positive progress in the company.

Offers employee-centric work culture:A smaller workplace leads to more cohesion amongst the team. An employee centric work culture leads to a better understanding amongst professionals and greater transparency in workflow, which is crucial to an organisation’s growth. Unlike a large company, an SME creates an atmosphere that is more nurturing than that found in companies with thousands of employees.

Client-facing roles which facilitate better customer- centricity: Employees working in SMEs are in a direct client facing role, mostly. This lets the employees of SMEs understand the clients’ ask better, to give them a customised solution.

Adaptable and Flexible:A large company often has a complex structure whereas an SME has a more flexible work policy. This allows an SME professional, to contribute more to the company than someone of an equivalent designation in an MNC (multinational corporation).

Rapid Response to Change:A simpler structured SME allows even junior level employees to learn more about the company’s industry as compared to employees of similar ranks in huge multinationals. Employees who work in an SME intimately feel the pulse of their industry. Also because SMEs have a simpler corporate hierarchy, employees of such companies are able to understand and adapt more quickly to changes in their industry.

Greater Learning from Niche Industries:Many of the world’s largest companies are also the customers of equally large companies. This often means that many of the smaller niche segments in an industry are serviced by smaller and medium-sized businesses. This creates a niche that is ideal for SMEs to exploit and allow those working there, to gain better insight into niche industries and market segments.

Working in any organisation opens avenues for many learning experiences. SMEs stand apart from their larger counterparts because of their ability to help employees grow in a manner, which is unique and distinct from the kind of growth possible in companies that have a thousand or more employees.

We are partnered with some amazing SMEs throughout the UK that offer excellent benefits including personal and professional growth . Check out some of the latest featured jobs that could be right for you.

April 3, 2019 by Julie McGrath

Can you believe that we’re already at the start of Q2 2019? Filled with warm weather, cold weather, Brexit (still) and plenty of IT news and developments, let’s take a look at the highlights from Q1.

Let’s hear IT for inclusion

Diversity and equality in IT have been in the spotlight for good reasons this quarter. Amazon launched Amazon Amplify — firstly, a program of initiatives to increase the number of women in its UK technology and innovation roles. Also the Learning Foundation and Nominet joined forces to ensure that all children in the UK have equal access to digital information and education.

IT salaries on the rise

An increase in IT and tech jobs wasn’t the only growth in the UK last year. We saw a significant surge in salaries within the IT sector, most noticeably within machine learning, AI, DevOps, big data, data science and CIO roles.

Cloudy with a chance of change

This quarter saw the launch of the FinOps Foundation. The non-profit consortium, consisting of big names including Spotify and JustEat, aims to help enterprises manage their cloud costs better by sharing financial management strategies. It is hoped that this leads to faster cloud adoption and better utilisation of cloud resources across the globe.

Speaking of the weather, the 2019 State of the Cloud Report was released, with some interesting data on the adoption of Azure. While AWS still leads when it comes to the public cloud market, Microsoft Azure is catching up, with interest in Google Cloud on the rise.

Cybersecurity headlines

Cybersecurity remains firmly in the news this quarter, following cyber incidents and data breaches involving Airbus and the Student Loans Company, who suffered a shocking 965,639 cyber attacks in 2017/2018.

In more positive cybersecurity news, Tech Nation launched the UK’s first cybersecurity scale-up accelerator program, and Orange acquired SecureData — making them a leading player in the European scene.

Speedy Gonzales

Speed enthusiasts will be pleased to hear that Virgin Media began testing 8Gbps this quarter. Eight homes in Cambridgeshire experienced what it was like to download a 20GB ultra-high definition 4K film in 20 seconds. Meanwhile, O2 announced that it will begin rolling out its 5G network this year — a year earlier than planned, and just in time for the new broadband speed regulations. It will also be launching a number of 5G innovation spaces across the UK, allowing businesses to begin testing their devices.

Hackaone

Stack Overflow hosted its first ever hackathon. Employees working on Stack Overflow products or with the Stack Overflow community were all encouraged to get involved learning where issues were and thinking about how to tackle them next time. Part two TBC

It’s been a positive and strong start to 2019! Good luck to all of you for Q2 and thank you again for all your support! If you need any help or advice with your career or your business, please get in touch!

Don’t forget to take advantage of our April promotion and have your CV updated by one of our professionals. Let us take the time, stress and hassle out of changing jobs.

Data Driven Investor
Evolution

March 4, 2019 by Julie McGrath

Hire For Skills First

How do you identify young talent that will have the greatest impact?

For most companies, the standard practice is to target select, prestigious schools, universities or colleges, invest in a prime spot during seasonal career fairs, and collect as many CV’s as possible to build an entry-level talent pipeline. However if you are an SME or start up this isn’t always possible. Let’s find out why hiring for ‘Skills’ first rather than ‘degree’ first maybe beneficial to your business.

First off, in the age of digital transformation, the demand for developers won’t be able to keep up with degree focus recruiting. If everyone’s fighting for talent in the same pools of talent, hiring will be exponentially more difficult. Secondly, if your goal is to make strong hires, we need to look past ‘only’ grades, as they aren’t reflective of true ability.

It’s time to focus the conversation on skill. To dive deeper on understanding the state of student developer skills. 10,000 developers were surveyed by Hacker Rack across universities worldwide on how they’re learning, what they’re learning, and what they look for in a job. For instance, we learned that even though 76% of tech students are pursuing a degree in computer science, 65% of all student developers say they are at least partially self-taught. And nearly one third of all developers said they’re completely self-taught.Self-directed learning is the norm among developers; so when companies focus on hiring based on proven skill instead of prestigious degree a massive pool of overlooked talent opens up.

A degree is not enough to learn how to code

Although most computer science students are learning software development in universities, over half of all student developers say they’re partially self-taught. And nearly one third of all student developers say they’re completely self-taught.

This prevalence of self-taught knowledge means two things: First, computer science programs lag behind the pace at which technology evolves. For skills that are growing in the industry today, students have to rely on self-teaching to learn.

Second, self-teaching is ingrained in the developer DNA. Developers have an insatiable thirst for learning. On average, students are planning to learn 6 languages, while more senior developers are learning 4. Their thirst for learning makes it clear that Computer Science (CS) degrees shouldn’t be the primary measure of student developer skills. Instead, teams need to look beyond school performance—to personal projects, portfolio, skills assessments, and the like—to accurately evaluate their skills.

Students rely more on YouTube than professionals

Developers have traditionally flocked to Stack Overflow as a means of learning new skills or working through problems. But that could be changing with new generations.

University students today seem to be showing less interest in Stack Overflow compared to professional developers. Instead, YouTube is starting to become more favourable as a learning tool for the next generation of developers. We found that 73% of students use YouTube, compared to only 64% of professional developers (where the majority of professional developers were aged 25-34, and the majority of student developers were aged 18-24).

What platforms do Student and professional use to learn how to code?

Outside of the classroom, the face of education is shapeshifting quickly. The popularity of video-focused mediums may signal the beginning of a larger generational shift led by Generation Z (those born in the mid 90’s – early 00’s), who make up the majority of today’s college and university students.

This trend supports recent research by Pearson & Harris Poll, which found that Generation Z (ages 14-23) preferred YouTube and video to learn versus other applications of learning.

Check out some of the latest jobs that we are hiring for that will consider ‘skills’ first!

February 19, 2018 by Julie McGrath

Demand for tech talent will continue to outpace supply in the year ahead, while the mix of skills necessary to remain relevant in IT will undergo a significant shift.

The good times for tech workers will continue through the next year, which found that today’s tech talent gap will continue to put pressure on businesses in 2018 to the benefit of those they are looking to hire.

A recent survey with over 8000 technology professionals completed by Robert Half gave us an interesting insight into the IT Job World. We found that the fight for talent has companies offering tech workers generous perks, incentives and competitive salaries — and that tech work itself has become a more satisfying & overall a less stressful Job.

Following are Six of the biggest trends in IT hiring and how it will impact both employers and employees in the year ahead.

1. The Skills Gap still remains

The talent shortage for tech workers is “no longer just an inconvenience for any employers — it’s quickly becoming a significant business problem,” And when companies do find tech talent, they often can’t afford it, as they are being out priced by the larger corporations.

According to a recent survey with smaller business owners 44 percent of Hiring Manager or Business Owners say they miss out on top talent because candidates are seeking higher salaries than they’re able to offer. As a result, there’s been an increase in companies hiring less experienced workers who are “motivated to learn new skills quickly.”

2. Interview Process is too slow

To get the best talent during a shortage, businesses need to speed up the hiring process. This study found that, while it’s understandable business want to be thorough, many companies are dragging out the hiring process. That’s a problem because around two-thirds of the non-executive technology professionals surveyed said they would “lose interest in a job if there was no follow-up within a week of an interview.”

The survey found that hiring managers are somewhat aware of this problem, as 41 percent said they are unhappy with the length of their hiring processes. On average, the survey found it takes 4.5 weeks to fill a staff-level role. Businesses need to establish a smooth hiring process so that they can quickly hire and onboard qualified talent.

3. Automation is shifting skills

Automation isn’t poised to kill jobs just yet. At least for now, it’s simply changing the skills that are important to businesses. The finance industry is already experiencing a skills shift thanks to automation. Of those surveyed, 56 percent of CFOs said they expect automation to bring increased efficiency to finance and 43 percent also envision improved decision making.

While CFOs are optimistic about automation they also expect it to shift their priorities and primary skillsets. By 2020, CFOs expect “keeping pace with changing technology” as a top priority, followed by managing big data, compliance and maintaining finance reporting standards.

4. Tech demand goes vertical

Tech is a growing need in every industry, but the survey found that certain vertical industries are experiencing an acute need for tech workers. Healthcare, financial and manufacturing professionals cited a growing demand for tech talent in their respective industries.

In healthcare, there’s a need for modernisation and innovation to better deliver patient care. Security and data professionals are in demand in the financial services industry as security becomes a top priority. Automation is impacting the manufacturing industry, where businesses are looking for innovative IT pros to help adapt.

Graffiti Recruitment predicts the latest developments in cloud, open source, mobile, big data and security are expected be the most in demand for 2018. And even if you aren’t a pro in one of these specialties, the survey found that as businesses are more pressed for talent, management is more willing to hire less technically qualified candidates who show potential and demonstrate an eagerness to learn.

5. Satisfaction is up, stress is down

The technology industry currently ranks 6th for on-the-job happiness and it ranks first for the lowest levels of on-the-job stress. ( I don’t think this applies to IT Recruitment though). Some of that satisfaction might come from the compensation and perks that companies use to lure talent.

Only 19 percent of companies said they didn’t offer bonuses and only 17 percent said they based salary increases on length of service. For 72 percent of businesses, raises are merit-based, while 65 percent said that compensation is based of organisation or individual performance. These incentives help motivate workers and keep them satisfied on the job.

6. Popular perks of the Job

To attract the best talent in a competitive market, companies have turned to “perks,” additional benefits outside the standard offerings you’d find at most companies. These include flexible work schedules (62%), regular social events (39%), remote work opportunities (34%), on-site or free gym membership (25%), a compressed schedule (17%) and free food (13%). (Chocolate is always a perk here at Graffiti )

To keep talent motivated, companies also offer incentives like awards for individual and team achievements (37%), profit sharing (20%), retention bonuses (18%), stock options (18%) and deferred compensation (16%).

Demand for tech talent will continue to outpace supply in the year ahead, while the mix of skills necessary to remain relevant in IT will undergo a significant shift. To stay up to date with the latest Hiring and Tech updates make sure to sign up to our Monthly Industry Updates.

How has the UK jobs market been impacted?

Top 11 Skills Wanted By Employers in 2020

The 11 Most Important Job Skills Every Company Will Be Looking For In 2020

7 Benefits of working within an SME vs Large Corporate