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Hey! Can you believe it’s almost March already? It’s a new week so I’m here to bring you your next round-up of news and resources and I’m confident you’ll find these interesting! Enjoy!
[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][vc_separator][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”166″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row el_id=”firstpost”][vc_column][vc_empty_space height=”45px”][vc_custom_heading text=”Questions to Turn the Tables on Your Interviewer” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left|color:%23055091″ use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_single_image image=”1345102″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” css=”.vc_custom_1487684288270{margin-bottom: 30px !important;}”][vc_column_text]You’ve answered all of their questions, the interview is going well, you’ve made a great impression, but it’s all about to fail if you don’t respond to ‘So do you have any questions for us?’ It’s that moment during the interview that makes or breaks it. You’re on the spot. You don’t know what to ask that won’t be incredibly banal. Well ABL are here to help! Here’s some questions you can ask the recruiter to turn the tables right round!
Why Would It Be a Good Idea to Work for You? – This one, you can expect the usual corporate lines on how great the company is, but you need to listen to what they don’t say, as this can be a warning sign.
Why Did My CV Interest You? – This is great for self reflection, and it’ll tell you what they’re looking for and just maybe inadvertently give something away about your competition.
If I Worked Here, How Could I Impress You? This is a slightly flattering question and you can’t go wrong with that. If they say something like ‘you come in early and you go home late’ then you know where you stand – it’s a long hours culture you’re about to get involved in.
Why Do You Work Here? – This one is the most likely to cause a reaction. If your interviewer seems unable to answer the question then take that as a big warning sign.
How Do You Help Employees to Perform Well – If the employer seems to have no idea that good performance from an employee comes from a great workplace culture and practical tools for the company, then this is bad news.
What Questions Are You Surprised I haven’t Asked? Your interviewers should be impressed by this. It allows them to point out any gaps and you can immediately respond to those.
ABL wishes you good luck with your job search and we hope our tips are useful to you!
Source[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row el_id=”secondpost”][vc_column][vc_empty_space height=”45px”][vc_custom_heading text=”2017 Hiring Trends: How to Get Hired This Year” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left|color:%23055091″ use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_single_image image=”1345104″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” css=”.vc_custom_1487684471975{margin-bottom: 30px !important;}”][vc_column_text]The recruitment market is booming and in the next 12 months business activity is set to increase with 74% of employers looking to hire additional staff. But amidst these changes in the economy, candidates have abandoned traditional websites such as Monster and CareerBuilder when reviewers stopped going over applications because a lot of candidates were responding to positions they were nowhere near qualified for, diluting the quality of applications.
There’s 4 key themes this year when it comes to hiring, all focusing around the investment of technology:
1. Embracing video to promote your brand and connect with/ select candidates
2. Increase on candidate referral
3. Moving onto mobile recruitment – Applicant Tracking Systems, Social Media, Job boards etc)
4. Increased use of social media to find and connect with candidates.
Jobvite conducted a survey and revealed that 73% of recruiters use social media to find candidates, 61.5% use LinkedIn, 30% use Facebook and ultimately only 7.7% are using job boards on their own. In a survey from Onrec, 93% of recruiters say they review a candidate’s social profile before deciding to hire. Ultimately those who are hiring are looking for ways to combine job posting, social connectivity and aggregation to make hiring smarter and work closely with talent and clients. A solution – Talengapp.com was created. Here’s what the founder Victoria Butt had to say:
“We wanted to build a tool that was easy to use, saved Hirers and Talent time and connected Hirers and Talent with recruitment in mind. We ultimately wanted to connect Talent with Hirers to enable an ongoing and meaningful digital relationship with recruitment in mind throughout their career.” she continues, “Being able to see Talent availability in one place is unique. Talent are actively invited to maintain their availability status, that way Hirers don’t spam people who aren’t active in the market and can target their time on those who are. Talent can also manage their profiles to define who can see them and who can’t. This enables Talent to focus their job search and their current employer unaware of their activity.”
So now you know what recruiters are doing to switch up their processes, it’s time to adapt and get yourself seen.
Source[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row el_id=”thirdpost”][vc_column][vc_empty_space height=”45px”][vc_custom_heading text=”New Research: HR Concerns for 2017″ font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left|color:%23055091″ use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_single_image image=”1345105″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” css=”.vc_custom_1487684730276{margin-bottom: 30px !important;}”][vc_column_text]Cascade HR has revealed the topics that are most likely to concern HR departments this coming year. A fifth of respondents claimed they don’t see any challenges ahead as Brexit begins to unfold, but the rest highlighted managing organisational change, staff morale and recruitment as overriding struggles they expect to handle this year.
On the bright side, 80% of participants say their organisation is ‘OK, Good or Excellent’ at managing major change, so it may be fine for some organisations to navigate the changing landscape. Significant areas for improvement were highlighted in the report, with 61% of people stating that better communication is needed, 57% want greater staff involvement/engagement and 50% highlight the need for better planning.
Oliver Shaw, CEO at Cascade said in his comments on the findings: “The media has, understandably, been dominated with talk of Brexit in recent months. Yet we must acknowledge that change is now commonplace within the business environment. In fact, nearly three quarters of the HR professionals we polled (73%) said that they encounter change on a frequent basis.” he says, “So, whilst we must all develop plans to equip ourselves with the challenges – and opportunities – that Brexit may bring, we cannot become fixated on this issue alone. HR departments, in collaboration with senior management teams, need to analyse the ‘temperature’ of their workforce, and develop strategies to overcome all of the changes that may lie ahead.”
The survey questions 275 industry professionals to reveal their fears and plans surrounding Brexit and other significant economic developments. 59% of respondents are relying on technology to help them make the changes they need to. Oliver continues:
“This is actually a stat I would like to see increase throughout 2017. HR professionals hold a wealth of data at their fingertips and tech vendors should be working hard to ensure clients make smarter use of the intelligence within their HRIS. The findings we uncovered from this research correlate with many of the topics our clients are asking us for help with. Recruitment, change management and morale/engagement are certainly hot topics for our customer base at the moment, but these are certainly areas that savvy HR teams are equipped to handle.”[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space height=”45px”][vc_custom_heading text=”EU Citizens Working in the UK: What Next?
” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left|color:%23055091″ use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_single_image image=”1345107″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” css=”.vc_custom_1487684825409{margin-bottom: 30px !important;}”][vc_column_text]As the haze of a post Brexit economy begins to clear up a bit, employers are beginning to think of the logistics when it comes to their current workforce. The issue of whether or not EU nationals already working here will have the right to remain is in full swing. The Government wishes to secure equivalent rights for the two million or so UK citizens resident in EU member states. It’s likely that the Government will propose a work visa regime as it seeks to cut immigration to the UK. Assuming this will be put in place, it’s likely to be a skills and demand based one, bringing it closer to the regime for non-EU migrants.
Migrants take 20% of jobs in highly skilled areas such as oil and gas extraction, optical engineering and computer electronics. If the government wants to make any changes that affect this, then the training and education sectors will need to produce more graduates and apprentices to compensate for this. A recent Engineering UK report claimed the number of technology and engineering graduates must double to meet demand.
Then there’s the demand for unskilled and semi-skilled workers for some sectors – care homes and agriculture for example. It’s likely some industries (like horticulture with an estimated 80,000 seasonal workers set to rise to 95,000 in the next two years) will request special status in order to survive.
So what do we as UK recruiters really need to keep in mind? Jackie Penlington, senior associate at Stevens & Bolton, says: “During the period between Article 50 being triggered and the UK formally exiting the EU, UK employers can continue to employ staff from EEA member states in the same way as present.”
But S&B partner Kerry Garcia warns us: “There is uncertainty for employers who recruit a long time in advance. There is uncertainty that an EU national recruited in, say, 2017, will have the right to work in the UK by the time they are due to start their employment if the UK has left the EU by then…This is difficult for employers as they also have to take care not to discriminate against applicants on the basis of their nationality.”
She continues: “Employers would be well advised to ensure that employment contracts offered to EEA nationals are dependent on them providing evidence of their right to work in the UK at any stage during their employment”
Personnel Today has some practical advice for those affected by this situation, particularly EEA citizens. We recommend heading on over there if you need extra insight into this story. [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space height=”45px”][vc_custom_heading text=”Hidden Figures: A Cinematic Study of Race and Gender Bias” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left|color:%23055091″ use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_single_image image=”1345108″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” css=”.vc_custom_1487685057220{margin-bottom: 30px !important;}”][vc_column_text]Hidden Figures is the film that 2017 needed. Featuring Taraji P. Henson (playing Katherine G. Johnson) and Octavia Spencer (Dorothy Vaughan), and singer Janelle Monae (Mary Jackson) it was set to be a strong film. It surrounds the three women’s previously unsung accomplishments at NASA. The film was a cinematic study of race and gender bias that really drove home some points we all needed to hear. One of which, is looking beyond the obvious.
Al Harrison is played by Kevin Costner, a man who only sees what’s right in front of him. He wasn’t aware of the extra distance she had to run to get to the coloured-only bathroom, or the way her teammates would throw incomplete paperwork onto her desk. His teammate Paul Stafford placed by Jim Parsons was stuck firmly in his ideas of gender bias. Women were firmly behind him, nowhere else. He did not see the value in change or difference even when he was on mission. His refusal to embrace change by allowing Katherine into rooms where females shouldn’t normally enter wasted valuable time, money and resources. But once she was allowed into that room her contributions made a vast difference. She was a clearly underutilised tool based solely on a race and gender bias.
Kellye Whitney, associate editorial director at Workforce Magazine, delves deeper into the other core lessons we can learn from Hidden Figures and we think it’s best you hear it from her. The inspiring, insightful article can be found right here. She discusses the importance of never giving up as well as the sheer importance of sponsors and mentors. Amazing.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space height=”45px”][vc_custom_heading text=”Debra Messing Pressured into Nude Scene for ‘A Walk in the Clouds’
” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left|color:%23055091″ use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_single_image image=”1345109″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” css=”.vc_custom_1487685122767{margin-bottom: 30px !important;}”][vc_column_text]At the MAKERS conference in Palos Verdes recently the actress revealed her first time working on a film and stated that while working on the project (starring Keanu Reeves and directed by Alfonso Arau) the director humiliated her on set by talking about her body. She began the story by stating the director told her that her “nose is ruining my movie”. Apparently he shouted “How quickly can we get a plastic surgeon in here?”
She went on to explain that on the second day of filming, Reeves character was meant to find her in bed with another man, and Messing claims she was not told that she would have to film a nude scene in the movie so she approached the director. “Are you kidding me?” she said he told her. “Your job is to get naked and say the lines, that’s it. You should be grateful to have this part. Get out!”
After this she says she ran and talked to the producers and asked why she was told there would be no nudity. They claimed they promised no nudity for the domestic release, not the international release. She then tried to talk it through with her agents who said “you can say no, and they fire you, or you can do it, and you keep your job.” In the end she gave in and filmed the scene. She said “It turns out, after all, this trauma, the only part of my body that is seen naked in the film is my back,” she said. “The whole thing was a power play, a game. And the goal, to demean me, to strip me of my power and make me feel on a cellular level his dominance over me.” She added, “I told my agents I would never work with that a–hole again.”
This isn’t the first time she has experienced sexism in the film industry. When working on the hit TV series Will & Grace, she was made to wear chicken cutlets to bring her bra size up to a C-cup. After wearing them for several weeks she told the costume designer she had had enough and would no longer use them because “she looked stupid”. Then, she was told she “had to” because it was “in a note from the president of the network”. She never had to wear them again after she asked to speak to the president.
This unfortunately is just one of the many shocking sexist micro-aggressions women in the film industry face, and it’s truly disappointing that it still occurs in what should be far more progressive times.
Source[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”20px”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Did you know?
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About the author…
Nicole Debson
Director & Founder
With 30 years in recruitment, a genuine interest in people and a desire to help forge careers, Nicole has built ABL on the principle of making businesses better and that little bit more international. Seeking to help candidates navigate their career path; to help clients find the ideal employee, her hands on approach is what has moulded our company. Fluent in French, with good Spanish, and a Masters in Industrial Relations & Personnel Management, you’ll find Nicole thumbing through her well-worn copy of Jack London’s White Fang, her all-time favourite book.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
