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Traditionally skills, knowledge and experience have been the primary matching criteria for candidates against job roles. However, recruiters often use the term ‘candidate fit’ when attempting to assess the candidate outside of these more traditional and measurable factors.

But what is ‘fit’? Does it mean fit with the team, fit with the environment or, fit with the boss? Well, it is all of these and more.

We can summarise this as ‘cultural fit’ or ‘cultural affinity’. It is based on ways of working, personal style, and how these fit with the recruiting organisation’s informal ways of conducting business. So what can you do as a recruiter to begin to get underneath this complex marriage?

We asked Anthony Carnell, a recruitment and selection design architect with Human Core, to use his expertise in aligning talent acquisition processes to organisational brand, culture and target candidate groups, to offer some practical ways of assessing candidate cultural fit…

Employers are increasingly looking at the cultural fit of candidates and, at times, weighting them at the same (or higher) level as skills and knowledge. At Pret A Manger for example, potential staff work for a day and are then voted in or out by the existing team. Other companies talk of the ‘culture-fit devil’ and believe that employing staff who do not fit the company culture means that “The soul of your company is at stake.” A US survey last year showed that 65% are not happy at work. Cultural fit is therefore probably a two-way process!

A consistency in culture or style across groups of staff has a number of advantages: Continue reading “Top Questions to Understand a Candidate’s Cultural Fit” »

“There is a real need to be better partners with managers, and to collaborate with them. Part of it is about being more agile for them, setting their expectations, and getting managers (the experts in the role) to own recruitment a little more than they may do already.”

So begins one of the key conclusions from the recent Evenbase Recruiting Leaders’ Roundtable, chaired by renowned HR commentator and MD of Recruiting Toolbox, John Vlastelica, who was in the UK for the Recruiter Smart Resourcing Conference, 2013.

The Roundtable event was attended by a small group of leading recruitment directors from across several sectors. Each attendee had been asked to focus on the core challenges affecting their company’s HR performance, and the key areas they highlighted were:

• Finding resource partners
• Attracting niche talent
• Managing expectations of hiring directors and candidates
• Maintaining contact between training and recruitment
• Improving candidate experience

The question of how best to engage hiring managers and set expectations for them was a major discussion point, with the resulting conversations focusing on the need for:

• Ensuring that managers see hiring as part of their job and not something extra
• Showing how managers will always be busy until they recruit properly
• Changing the conversation between hiring manager and recruiter by shifting the relationship from customer/supplier to peer-to-peer
• Setting real timeline expectations, incorporating the major reason for delay at each stage of the process
• Making sure that hiring managers really subscribe to the ‘find someone better’ philosophy, and ‘look upwards’ as they recruit rather than a ‘drive to the bottom’ of the market

Ultimately it was also about finding the ‘pain points’. As John Vlastelica said:

“Managers react to ‘pain points’: the locations and practices in their day that have recurring problems that appear insurmountable or unavoidable. If you are not talking about a pain point, then they will inevitably find something else to prioritise over recruitment.”

To read more conclusions from the Roundtable, and to find out how they could help you with your own recruitment, download a copy of the whitepaper here, or click on the image below. And also let us know about your core HR Challenges…

On Wednesday and Thursday 19th and 20th June we’ll be exhibiting and presenting at the CIPD Recruitment Exhibition in London.

Here’s where you’ll find us:

Exhibition Stand R1

Look for the giant poster of Max and come and help yourself to some sweets from our pick n mix stand!

You’ll also be able to:

• Pick up a copy of both our latest whitepaper ‘Answering Today’s HR Challenges’ containing findings from our Recruiting Leaders’ Roundtable, and the Evenbase Hot Markets 2020 report
• Test drive our CV Database (after all, our research shows that it’s the service that most recruiters use!)
• Enter our prize draw

And meet Rob and the Jobsite team who can advise you on all your recruitment needs.

Showcase Sessions

As part of the free learning sessions we’ll be giving a presentation at 10.00 on Wednesday 19th June entitled ‘How to Stay Ahead in Recruitment and Reach Tomorrow’s Talent’. We’ll be looking at how online recruitment is changing whilst also offering practical advice on the use of digital, mobile and social channels for attracting future talent.

We look forward to seeing you there! If you can’t make the exhibition then follow our tweets over the two days at @JobsiteUK

Working parents learn to juggle, and fast. The most basic juggling act – childcare versus making ends meet – is demanding enough. Then there’s the really tricky stuff, like keeping a career on track following parental leave. With skills like that, parents should be in high demand. So it’s no surprise that employers are gradually wising up.

“In some countries parenthood is assumed to bring new skills in negotiation and management,” says Susie Diamond, vice-chair of the WiBSE network for women in the building services engineering sector, “and a return from parental leave is frequently greeted with promotion.”

Closer to home, what are employers doing to show that they value, and want to retain, parents in their companies?

Childcare & the workplace crèche

More and more parents are turning to formal childcare to help with the competing demands of work and family life. According to the Office for National Statistics, there was a marked movement away from informal childcare in the home between 1995 and 2010, with a 36.4% rise in formal care for children under five years old. Yet just one in five UK businesses help their staff to find, organise or fund childcare services, according to a 2010 study.

That could now be changing, according to a report by Oliver Balch for the Guardian earlier this year. He points to on-site crèches at CA Technologies, First Direct and HSBC as examples of workplace facilities that help parents integrate their family and work life – because it makes good business sense. As Laura Swiszczowski, Head of Research at the business diversity group Opportunity Now, tells Balch: “Businesses see that providing childcare services … will retain their female staff – or male staff for that matter.”

Time away from home & flexible working

In early 2013, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer sparked fears for the future of flexible working by banning staff from working at home. But according to Samantha Parent Walravens, author of the book Torn: True Stories of Kids, Career and the Conflict of Modern Motherhood, the trend toward flexibility is here to stay – and that’s good news for working parents.

“With most families today having both parents working, the pressure to balance work and family responsibilities is growing,” Parent Walravens writes for the Huffington Post. To underline that, she cites a 2010 study from the US in which 92% of respondents reported that they didn’t have enough workplace flexibility to meet their families’ needs. Continue reading “When Family and Work Life Clashes – 3 Smart Solutions” »

We’re pleased to announce that we are continuing our sponsorship of Portsmouth Football Club.

The past few years have been an eventful ride for the club and its fans, but now under new ownership and its financial difficulties addressed, Portsmouth Football Club is set to embark on a new era and we’re very happy to be there with them.

The sponsorship deal includes branding on player shirts and around the stadium, and employees and our clients will have some great opportunities to experience the fantastic match day atmosphere at Fratton Park.

Our Managing Director Mike Wall summed up our thoughts on the good news:

“We’re so pleased to be continuing our sponsorship of Pompey. The club plays such a pivotal role in the community, and as a locally based company, we’re keen to support them in their new lease of life. We’ve been fortunate to work with the club on some of their community initiatives over the years and look forward to doing so again this season.”

“Throughout the past four years we’ve been blown away by the passion and loyalty of the fans, and so it seems fitting that it’s those people who care most about the club are now the proud owners of it. We look forward to joining them again at Fratton Park from August to cheer the club on as they take their first steps back to glory. Play up Pompey!”

Our fellow Evenbase group company Broadbean have just released this infographic showing recruitment trends for March 2013.

Every month they collate the big data they have regarding vacancy numbers and applications for a snapshot of how the market is doing.

Although the first quarter of 2013 proved to be slightly lower than 12 months previously, there are definite some signs for optimism… Continue reading “Recruitment Trends Update – March 2013 [INFOGRAPHIC]” »