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Apprenticeship Levy is now in place from April 2017, but how does it work?

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Research polled by the City and Guild skills group, has revealed that a third of employers liable to pay the new Apprenticeship Levy from April are not even aware of its existence. 500 senior decision makers from various organisations were asked about the impact of the impending changes to the apprenticeship system.

A similar number of employers said the levy, aimed at boosting apprentice numbers, would encourage them to hire more staff.

From this month, employers with wage bills exceeding £3m will be required to put 0.5% of their payroll into the levy to fund apprenticeships.  The purpose of the levy is to double spending on apprentices in England, resulting in three million new apprenticeships, “giving millions a step on the ladder of opportunity”.

From May this year, employers will be able to draw vouchers from the levy to fund apprentices.

The results of the research showed:

  • Only 33% felt fully informed about the new rules
  • A total of 28% were not sure whether it would affect their business
  • Only 31% said they would hire more apprentices because of the levy
  • And 15% said they would have to cut other recruitment schemes to pay it

The survey also revealed that 87% of employers were struggling to fill job vacancies, with 29% agreeing that this was true of apprenticeship places.

47% felt the levy was an effective way to get employers to pay for training, 43% said it gave them more control and 34% believed it would improve quality.

Kirstie Donnelly, City and Guilds managing director, said that lack of awareness of the new system was “a cause for concern”.

“We still have a hill to climb in convincing people about the benefits apprentices can bring to business.”

Donnelly said it was absolutely vital for government to communicate with “less enlightened businesses to help them see the huge potential benefits apprenticeships can bring”.

A Department for Education spokesman said the levy would improve skills and boost economic activity.

“Employers are at the heart of our apprenticeship reforms and have been working with us since 2013 to create the apprenticeship standards and ensure they are high quality and deliver the skills that they need.

“We have also provided a link to the Government levy guide for employers and an online calculator that enables you to understand how much levy you will pay and how you could use your digital funds to pay for training in future.

The Government is confident that the new apprenticeship levy will give millions a start in work, it could also help bridge the skills gap we are seeing throughout the UK and give many SMEs the vital support they require to grow and scale their business.

If you need any help or advice on the Apprenticeship Levy or Recruitment, please feel free to get in touch on 0330 2233 047 or email us on hello@graffitirecruitment.co.uk

Recruiting Times

How to choose the right Recruitment Agency

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Discover in this article how to choose the right Recruitment Agency most suitable to your Business needs.

Whether you are a candidate seeking a new role or a client looking to hire, identifying a good recruitment agency is the first vital step in making this often tedious process a pleasant and fruitful experience.

Applying for a job is hard work, time consuming and extremely competitive. Despite having an outstanding CV, hiring managers may never get to see it even if you have the right qualifications and experience. In order to maximize their chances, candidates are turning to a recruitment agency to help them in their search for their dream job.

So, how should you go about identifying a recruiter who is right for you? A quick Google search will bring up a myriad of results, and a scan of positions available may be one way of choosing who to entrust your CV to, however, this isn’t necessarily the best approach. When you research agencies, many of them will have things in common – but you need to find the one that will best serve you in your search for a new job.

The first thing to consider whether you are a client or candidate is the agency’s approach. Do they really care about you? A good agency will be keen to speak to you, find out about you and your motivations behind looking for a new job as well as quizzing you about your career goals. The same principle goes for clients who are looking to place a role with a recruitment consultant. Recruiters should be inquisitive about your organisation, the sort of culture you have there and the type of person that would fit in, as well as the usual job description.

An ability to sell is essential in a recruiter. They are your representatives in front of your potential new employer and as such, when they find you a great role, you want them to pitch you as the perfect candidate, with the right skills and personality for the role on offer.

Furthermore, you need to conduct your job search with an enthusiastic recruitment agency. Job-hunting is not an easy process, so working with someone who is positive and who motivates you when the going gets tough will make life better all round.

A recruitment agency that has genuine experience in the sector you are interested in is vital. They must understand the jobs they are recruiting for and the needs of the client entrusting them with finding the perfect candidate. There is nothing worse than being put up for a job by a recruiter who doesn’t understand the industry they are recruiting into.

A good agency should be able to help you tailor your CV so that it stands out and meets the employer’s needs, as well as offering you tips for interviews. They should be able to get you in front of great companies, respect the confidentiality of your CV and only send your details to companies with your permission.

So in short, you are looking for a recruitment agency that is enthusiastic and highly motivated to help you develop your career.

They should take the time to understand your experience and requirements, and offer you advice and support throughout the process – helping you secure your next brilliant role.

If you’re a Business Owner or Hiring Manager, ensure you select a recruitment agency that displays genuine interest in your Business and how it operates. A detailed understanding of your Business will enable a recruitment agency to fine tune their image of your desired candidate.

Finding the right talent is extremely important for growing and established Businesses. Recruitment Agencies are a highly effective way for Businesses to obtain high quality talent that is matched to Business needs, values and culture.

Graffiti Recruitment offer IT Recruitment Solutions for Businesses seeking talented candidates in the areas of operations, support and development.

Get in touch with us on 0330 22 33 047 or E-mail us at hello@graffitirecruitment.co.uk to discover how we can help you!

 

– Sarah Bloomfield

Why Candidates should be treated like Customers

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Candidates are also customers! Bad recruitment experiences cost brands millions in lost customers

Giving job seekers a poor experience could turn them off a brand from a consumer perspective.

Interviewees may feel like they are in the spotlight during the recruitment process but the brands conducting the interview are under just as much scrutiny, as new research suggests a poor recruitment experience could turn candidates off that brand for life.

Recent reports have revealed that one in four British jobseekers have either entirely stopped purchasing (12%) or purchased less (11.5%) from a brand because of a negative candidate experience.

Poor candidate experience cost Virgin Media £4.4m in 2014, the study claims. More than 130,000 candidates applied to work at Virgin Media that year, 18% of which were existing Virgin Media customers. However, as a direct result of poor candidate experience more than 7,500 candidates cancelled their subscriptions and switched to a competitor, resulting in millions of pounds in lost revenue, according to the analysis.

The brand has since brought its recruitment function in-house, which allows it to “take a lot more control and engage with individuals on a one-to-one level”, says Neil Chivers, employer brand and marketing manager at Virgin Media.

He adds: “It wasn’t all just about the money but the saving to the business really helped us get the support from our CMO and head of finance to say that we could change the way we do things.”

 

Focus on candidates’ needs

Virgin Media has also invested in technology with a candidate portal that maps the recruitment experience. It looks at how candidates are going about their application process and explores what they want rather than Virgin Media leading. The process also features inspirational voice messages from brand ambassador Usain Bolt.

The brand was able to identify quick wins that cost nothing to change and improve but made an immediate impact.

“We have to make sure whatever we say to a candidate at that first touchpoint stays with them all throughout their life here.” – Neil Chivers, employer brand and marketing manager, Virgin Media

Chivers adds that changing recruitment practices is just the first step: “In order for this to be a success we have to deliver on what we promised those candidates. Giving them a great experience through the application process is just one facet of the whole employee life cycle.

“We have to make sure whatever we say to a candidate at that first touchpoint stays with them all throughout their life here.”

 

Positive Impression

Bryan Adams, CEO and founder of Ph.Attraction, says: “The recruitment process needs to be people-first. Every brand experience is as valuable as the next – whether it’s recruitment or anything else it’s an opportunity to delight, retain or attract a customer.”

The study of 1,200 British-based workers also shows that nearly a third (29.3%) candidates would consider becoming a customer of a brand if they had a good experience.

Given that more than 75% of respondents aged 16 to 24 have applied for a job at a company where they are already a customer, it is vital that brands look at how they treat applicants or they could risk losing their business.

In order to attract talent, particularly candidates aged under 24, brands need to advertise what they stand for. A separate study by LinkedIn shows that an organisation’s purpose is a deal-breaker for 52% of UK professionals when considering a job offer but businesses generally fail to include their values on their website or LinkedIn company page. That number rises to 56% among those aged 16 to 24.

Brands should also be thinking about the future work force in employer branding. There are projects and companies already helping young people make the right recruitment choices. Rise To, for example, matches 16- to 24-year-olds with suitable purpose-driven entrepreneurial companies.

Employers build a LinkedIn style brand profile and pre-vetted ‘matched’ talent is served to them automatically. Those aged 16 to 24 sign up for free and are guided through building a digital CV. As they refine their profile, the algorithm matches them with the companies and opportunities that best suit them.

Duncan Cheatle, co-founder of Rise To, who also co-founded Start-Up Britain and the Supper Club, says: “Companies learned decades ago they needed to build an ongoing brand. With employer branding they don’t do that. They just put a job ad up for 30 days hoping the talent they want to attract will be remotely interested.”

Business in the Community (BITC), a responsible business charity supported by the Prince of Wales, conducted a survey of 4,000 young people, which again finds that after a negative recruitment process one in five young people are put off that company.

BITC works with a number of large employers and educators, including City & Guilds, Barclays and Whitbread, on recruitment and promoting the importance of constructing an employer brand that is open and accessible for young people as part of its Future Proof campaign.

Creating positive experiences for candidates is vital for Costa-owner Whitbread as it relies on a large number of employees to grow in the UK.

Sandra Kelly, head of education at Whitbread, which owns Premier Inn and Costa, believes creating positive experiences for candidates is vital for the company as it relies on a large amount of employees to grow in the UK. It aims to make the process “fair, accessible and transparent”.

Kelly believes this is “particularly important for young people who will form an increasing part of the future consumer market”. She says: “We have worked hard to open up different routes into our business, focusing on attitude, values and motivations in our expanding apprenticeships programme.”

“We have an ageing population so young people will become a scarcer resource than they are today,” adds Chris Jones, CEO of The City & Guilds Group. “If businesses don’t make changes now to break down the barriers young people face when entering employment, their futures – and indeed our economy – will be at risk.”

“If businesses don’t make changes now to break down the barriers young people face when entering employment, their futures – and indeed our economy – will be at risk.” – Chris Jones, CEO of The City & Guilds Group

Jones is backing the BITC campaign because he wants “businesses to take a look at their practices, be honest about how youth-friendly they really are, and commit to changing for the better”.

 

Treat talent like consumers

The Ph.Attraction report states that 22% of British workers believe a brand’s candidate experience is more revealing about brand culture than its customer experience. It therefore makes commercial sense to treat potential recruits the same as potential consumers.

“These days, recruiters are marketers, they just sit in a different department,” says Joe Wiggins, head of communications, Europe at reviews-based recruitment platform Glassdoor. “Employer brand is a product of employee engagement, which is in itself a product of employee experience.”

Brands are using the platform as a marketing tool by linking reviews to profiles on careers pages, and using social platforms to show employee-generated content.

Wiggins adds: “The lines between internal and external communications are blurring. Smart organisations are using social to give a look inside their organisations.”

Once those candidates are attracted to roles and companies it is up to the brand to deliver on what that employer marketing has offered. One way of improving candidate experience is adjusting the power balance in the process.

Cheatle at Rise To says many employers view recruitment as a one-way process. Employers want to attract talent but the moment they start recruiting it comes down to deciding whether to give someone a job “instead of recognising that they are going to be assessed the other way round”.

He adds: “The whole approach needs to be seen as one of embracing in a much more equal way.”

Being asked the right questions and receiving feedback from a prospective employer can improve how that company is viewed, according to Cheatle.

He says: “Too often the recruiter doesn’t get any training or steer so they will come in with questions that aren’t quite appropriate or are not exploratory.”

The sentiment is mirrored in the Ph.Attraction research, which reveals 18% of respondents felt more valued by a receptionist than the interviewer during their last job application. Furthermore, one in four believe interviewers do not care about their goals or aspirations and 37% believe it is more likely they will win the lottery than receive detailed job feedback.

It is clear that employer branding takes effort, but failing to consider the recruitment process could cost a brand both talent and customers.

 

A large number of Businesses fail to consider the importance in providing a good candidate experience in their recruitment processes for reasons such as time limitations & lack of HR Staff.

This is when Recruitment Companies such as Graffiti Recruitment become a highly useful, cost effective solution. Our Recruitment Consultants are all trained to give the highest possible standard of experience to both Clients & Candidates. We understand the Recruitment Process can be extremely stressful, therefore our goal is to extinguish that stress by streamlining the recruitment process and provide a unique, premium quality experience along the way.

Find out what our clients and candidates think of our unique service here!

 

 

Top-15 Most Shocking Recruitment Stories

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Check out 15 of the most shocking and strange recruitment stories revealed by hiring managers!

Things do not always go to plan during the recruitment process.

This isn’t suggesting bad CVs full of spelling errors or candidates who say the wrong thing.

This is suggesting jaw-dropping, shocking, bizarre, maddeningly frustrating things that would be hard to believe if they weren’t true.

Take a look at these odd stories – and count yourself lucky they didn’t happen to you:

 1. During a phone interview, a recruiting manager heard a candidate’s mother giving the applicant answers to her questions. The interviewer asked him, “Who’s feeding you the answers to my questions?” He said no one. The manager told him she could hear his mother in the background. The applicant got flustered and hung up.

2. At the beginning of an interview, an applicant told an interviewing team that if he should pass out during the interview, his mobile phone was in his pocket and that they should call the emergency number.

3. An applicant showed up for a job interview wearing a noticeably greasy, see-through white dress shirt and bottle-lens eye glasses being held together by tape. He also sported a comb over covering only the front half of his head, so when he turned to the side, there was a large, exposed bald area. The icing on the cake? Severe skin shedding. During the interview, the candidate repeatedly scratched his head and arms, causing large flakes of skin to fall onto the table and onto his clothing. By the end of the interview, the table was covered with a thin layer of skin flakes.

4. A recruiting manager found a candidate he really liked who interviewed well over the phone. He also interviewed well in person, though the candidate did say he had an appointment to run to and asked if he could take the job application with him and return it completed later on along with his references. He returned both the next day, the company checked his references and hired him. On his first day, the company gave the new employee a short telephone script and asked him to make some phone calls. Strangely, when someone would answer his call, he’d ask for a person whose name wasn’t on the script sheets. After a few calls, he stopped asking for anyone by name and just said, “Who’s this?” After a few more of these incidents, the company realised the man couldn’t read. The manager found out later that the handwriting on his job application was that of his girlfriend. The firm felt so bad for him they gave him some phonics books and asked him to study up and come back when he felt he was ready to give it another try. He never returned.

5. After an interview, one candidate asked a recruiting manager if she could borrow some money to get her car out of the car park. She didn’t have any money with her and didn’t know how she was going to be able to get her car through the barrier. (Happy ending: She did end up paying the manager back!)

 6. An applicant showed up late for an interview wearing a long trench coat with his hair slicked back in a pony tail. As the interview progressed, he answered the recruiting manager’s questions, sipped on his Starbucks coffee and tilted the chair on the back legs. When asked the question, “Why should I hire you?” he responded by taking a sip, leaning way back, running his hand along the side of his hair and saying, “Because I’m so good looking.”

7. A recruitment manager hired a woman to help out with typing proposals. The woman said she could type 75 words per minute and, in a crunch, the manager hired her on a trial basis without giving her a test. Rushing past her desk to an important meeting, the manager happened to notice that new hire’s computer screen was completely filled with spelling errors and mistakes. He asked her what she was doing since she seemed to be ignoring the spell check warnings. Very calmly, she replied, “Oh, I do that at the end. How else could I type 75 words per minute if I stopped every time I made a mistake?”

8. A female recruitment manager and her team thought they’d found a great male candidate. The applicant eagerly accepted the offer – and began emailing and calling the recruiting manager every day for two weeks until the first day of work. Then came the cards, unsolicited breakfasts, joke emails and statements of “being friends forever” – all within the first two weeks. Management eventually had to counsel the employee about appropriate behavior in the workplace.

9. A Human Resources manager worked with an outside agency to place job adverts in the local newspaper. The agency got the job adverts in the newspaper without a problem – except they went in newspapers 30 miles from the store. Potential candidates began calling to enquire about train schedules and which part of town the store was in. Worst of all: This happened twice – to the tune of a huge financial loss each time.

10. A recruiting manager hired a receptionist who during her employment used the emergency room as her primary care physician and ran an escort service on the side.

11. A recruitment agency helped a company hire a new IT technician based on his CV alone. The new employee arrived on the job the very first day, looked at the company-issued laptop and said, “What is this?” Needless to say, the company promptly and respectfully returned the new employee to the Recruitment agency.

12. One applicant for an attorney position giggled the entire time during the phone interview. The manager thought it was probably nerves, so he asked her for a writing sample. She submitted a detailed legal brief that used the names of characters from the cartoon “The Family Guy” and placed them into horribly violent situations.

13. A recruiting manager hired a promising candidate with two master’s degrees. Upon being hired, however, she shooed people away from her desk when they tried to train her. (She said she knew how to do the job better by herself.) She also spoke over everyone else in the office when they tried to talk to her, frequently screaming, “What?!” Finally, she sent strange Youtube videos to other staff members about race horses for no apparent reason.

14. One company hired what they thought was a qualified, excited applicant. But 10 days after the employee started, he resigned – and moved to a larger company. Turned out he’d used the company’s salary as leverage.

15. A police department hired a new recruit who successfully made it through the academy and field training. A few weeks later, though, he quit. Why? He had to touch a dead body and said he didn’t think he could do that ever again. The icing on the cake: The recruit’s family’s business was the community’s only funeral home and mortuary.

Well there you have it! 15 of the most shocking recruitment stories. If you’d like to elimate the chance of you experiencing any of these scenarios, check us out to see how we can help you by clicking here!

 

– ProgressiveBusinessPublications

Could Virtual Reality be the future of Recruitment?

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The recruitment process may take place in the Virtual World in the near future: Lloyds trials virtual tests for candidates

Lloyds Banking Group is launching a scheme that uses VR headsets to put job applicants to the test in virtual situations during the recruitment process.

Beyond gaming, there are a myriad ways companies are attempting to embrace virtual reality. The latest is in recruitment.

Lloyds Banking Group is launching a scheme that uses VR headsets to put job applicants to the test in virtual situations. No longer will the applicants have to describe how they would handle a certain situation, they will soon be asked to prove it but taking on a range of problem-solving tasks in virtual worlds.

The technology will be first used in Lloyds’ graduate recruitment drive this autumn as part of its 2017 Digital and IT Graduate Schemes.

By using the VR headsets, the assessor will be able to give candidates a range of situations and tasks and monitor their progress. They will be looking at how the candidates approach the tasks, how they solve them and if they encounter any problems.

Lloyds said this would give the company a chance to assess candidates in ways “that would otherwise be unfeasible in the conventional assessment process”.

A spokesperson added: “This demonstrates our commitment to future talent and in hiring the digital leaders of the future.”

During the VR interview, the candidate will have complete freedom of movement within a 360-degree virtual world and will be able to move virtual objects using tracked motion controls.

If you enjoyed this article, check out more Information Technology Industry insights by clicking here!

10 benefits of using the ‘right’ Recruitment Agency!

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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!

 

 

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