2014 and beyond...

It's that time of year where crystal balls are dusted off (and, inevitably) double entendres cascade like snowflakes. Here is my 2014 flurry of forecasts...

1. RPO's and MSP's find increased competition from both sides - in-house and specialist recruiter - when seeking to cover professional roles. It's clear that more and more resourcing directors/managers are gaining a voice at board level, and that responsibility for meeting resourcing targets will become increasingly uncomfortable to devolve. Specialist recruiters will be offered 'outsourced' roles, somewhat like to old days of retained assignments, whereby the retainer is now simply a firm promise not to self-source.
2. Globalisation of recruitment heats up. You only have to look at recent results of the international players to see where the real opportunities lie.This will in turn have an effect on the consolidation strategies of acquisitors as they will seek footprint rather than a single region market share.
3. Compliance plays an increasing role - Auditable, traceable decision making will be increasingly demanded by hiring organisations and legislation.
4. HMRC get it right over IR35. This is a big prediction, but it's clear that HMRC are really listening now and that consequent proposed legislation may at last iron out many or all of the anomalies and misunderstandings inherent in the current scheme.
5. M&A activity begins to pick up in advance of a major surge in 2015. With the improving economic landscape, many owners will be seeking to repair some of the damage of recent years and building a firm foundation on which to base an offer for sale. By 2015 the ratios may have improved enough for there to be more energy, and many owners fatigued after the prolonged downturn will feel they are in a better position to negotiate an acceptable exit.

Should be a fun year! Have a good one...

5 top tips for awards success!

Marilyn has been buried under a massive virtual mound of entries for the APSCo Awards for Excellence. As a relative newbie here at the APSCo nerve centre I haven’t seen the process from the inside – I’ve usually been the guy on the outside trying to string together a series of vaguely related and almost impressive stats into a compelling and winning submission – with varying degrees of success it has to be said.

Whittling the entrants down to a shortlist was a very time-consuming and rigorous process and it’s been fun to hear the arguments between judges on who should or shouldn’t be shortlisted. What’s clear is that it is genuinely a very hard job to choose – they ain’t blowin’ smoke… well anywhere… when they say this. Marilyn says (somewhat wearily) that the standard of submissions gets better and better each year which in turn makes the judging panel’s job more difficult.

So let’s have those 5 top tips for award success, I hear you yell…

1.       The successful companies seem to have placed real emphasis on staff development…things like developing academies, partnerships with training providers, measures like the Recruitment PracticeStandard - all these things help.

2.       Judging by the gasps of exasperation, anyone who doesn’t stick to the word count can be in big trouble – if it says 500 words it’s a good plan to stick to it. There were loads of superbly crafted, literate and entertaining entries that began to rival classic Russian novels* in their length. Not a good plan. Follow the required format. There’s usually an option to provide any other information alongside the entry if there are things you really believe are important – give the judges the option

.

3.       Answer the bloomin’ questions – there were some examples of Izzard-like lateral thinking which took us to wonderful places – but completely unrelated to the response being sought.

4.       Give evidence – we all love being market-leading, innovative, customer-focused, we have the best people blah blah blah – where’s the evidence? Show me the money! Well don’t, actually, bribery is never a good way forward…

5.       Make it easy for the judges to understand. Don’t over elaborate. Don’t use illustrations if they don’t really illuminate. Just make it easy to get to the information.

And if you follow all these rules, there’s still no guarantee. But at least you’ll be on that level playing field.

Happy form-filling!

* On the subject of huge novels I just finished reading 'Les Miserables' - it's utterly fantastic once you get past the social treatise(s). The last lines on Valjean's death were sublime:-

"The night was starless and extremely dark. No doubt, in the gloom, some immense angel stood erect with wings outspread, awaiting that soul."

Beautiful...

At last! The benchmark we've been waiting for!

I met the team from Deloitte yesterday who are partnering us on our recruitment benchmarking survey - and a more enthusiastic and brighter bunch of people you could not hope to meet. We were having a look at the first analysis of the data from the questionnaire and it was one of those 'hallelujah' moments. I've lost count of the number of times I've been putting board papers together, or designing target/commission schemes or simply trying to answer the question 'how are we doing?' and wished I had the kind of information at my fingertips that we are going to deliver to the survey participants in September (oh, you lucky people!).

And there's much further we can go with this next year. The frustration was during this first process that recruitment companies seemed to think 'it's just another survey' when in fact this was something very different. Once the analysis has been released I'm sure those that did not take part will wish they had, and that next year when we run this (to be upgraded) process again we get even more participants than the already impressive number who took part this time.

I've got to admit to a level of jealousy of the kinds of resources that are available to the Deloitte team - designers who will make the report look a million dollars, analysts who can turn raw data into works of art and even TV facilities for us to spread the word through informative clips. It's always been me, my trusty Excel spereadsheets and me old mate Photoshop huddled in grim isolation before. So a refreshing change.

In fact this whole process has been very enjoyable (thanks Aleksandra, Vicki, Rebecca et al). Get ready to see the results mid-September.