News: UK’s top 10 dream jobs revealed

Although all too few people are doing their ideal job due to either a lack of cash or lack of skills, the dream for most is to have more control over their own destiny. According to a survey among 3,000 UK adults undertaken by OnePoll and commissioned by Microsoft’s Bing search engine business, a huge […]

Legal Insight: Positive discrimination – A trap for the well intentioned?

Recent publicity on the use of positive action in recruitment or promotion in tiebreak situations has left HR directors with a dilemma. Should positive action be used to improve diversity either in the organisation generally or to help women and members of ethnic minorities break through “glass ceilings” into management?   Section 159 of the […]

How to beat a counter job offer

Against a backdrop of continued economic uncertainty, top talent at all levels is becoming increasingly hard to find and land. Competition for candidates is increasing as companies start to ramp up their hiring efforts after the downturn. This has given rise to more challenging candidate management and the infamous counter offer.   Recent research by […]

The senior HR interim recruitment market: An insight

What’s the current global interim market like? From a UK financial services perspective it’s very competitive, with more candidates than opportunities.   The current market consists of career interims, ex-consultants happy to be interims, and those available immediately who are ideally seeking perm but will take a contract in the meanwhile. With the candidate market being […]

Blog: Can you tell your performance measurement from your performance management?

Performance Management is an Art! If you want to be cutting edge you need to measure your results and performance manage your team.   Getting the best out your people can sometimes be a stressful business. In my many years of managing and subsequently as an HR professional, one of the biggest barriers to great […]

Blog: Why you should beware of video CVs

Following attendance at a recent recruitment industry event, it seems that the idea of using video CVs as a recruitment tool may be coming back into ‘vogue’ – certainly if the number of companies extolling the benefits and trying to sell their systems and software to me are anything to go by. I first encountered video CVs as a concept […]

HRD Video Vox Pops: How to engage an increasingly diverse workforce

At the CIPD's HRD learning and development conference in London Olympia last week, we asked a number of experts what their top tip for engaging an increasingly diverse workforce was. And here's what they told us:

News: Kate Bleasdale v Healthcare Locums case turns dirty

The former chairman of Healthcare Locums, Alan Walker, has denied “sexual impropriety” with dismissed chief executive Kate Bleasdale amid allegations of accounting irregularities at the company. Bleasdale, who is representing herself at the London employment tribunal, is suing Walker – and HCL’s board members – for sexual discrimination and unfair dismissal.   The medical staffing […]

Blog: Making your employee benefits count – and not just the financial ones

Make your employee benefits count! I am not talking here about financial benefits. If you are a great employer you know the market levels of financial reward and presumably you are paying a fair salary in return for the work of your employees.   Pensions are another financial reward which I know is subject to […]

News: Charities and spooks replace financial services on employer wishlist

Financial services firms have dropped off the list of top ten graduate employers for the first time as organisations that aim to have a positive impact on society such as charities knocked them off their perch. The Guardian’s UK 300 poll, in which more than 25,000 UK students voted for their most desirable employer, revealed […]

News: Would you sack someone for blogging about your job offer?

A graduate in the US had his first journalism job offer rescinded after posting the good news on a blog. Kristopher Brooks, who had just completed a graduate journalism course at New York University, was reportedly thrilled to receive a job offer from the News Journal in Wilmington, Delaware.   As a result, he published […]

Blog: Career development part one – Why employers are investing in it

What does career development mean to you and to your company? Why is it important? How to do it? This is the first of two posts on the subject of career development practices in companies.   First, I want to discuss the reasons why companies are interested in career development. In the next post I […]

Graduate starting salaries lowest for nearly a decade

Graduate starting salaries are predicted to drop to their lowest in real terms for almost a decade because it is currently a “buyer’s market”, researchers have revealed. According to a survey of more than 100 employers conducted by Incomes Data Services, nine out of ten that run graduate recruitment schemes plan to freeze pay over […]

Blog: LivePerson – A culture-based approach to recruitment

This is my tweet (see below) from Thursday afternoon after I got a glimpse of LivePerson’s campaign to find a new CTO. “A CTO with heart” does not quite fit into my mind when I think of a CTO. I know numerous Chief Technical Officers, but I would be hard pressed to figure out which […]

Employers shun temps in wake of Agency Worker Regs

Just over six months after the Agency Worker Regulations first appeared, initial findings seem to indicate that they are bringing about three key shifts in the employment market. While the legislation, which came into force on 1 October 2011, is pushing some employers towards taking staff on permanently, it is encouraging others to hire excluded […]

Charities increasingly look to private sector for HR skills

As traditional sources of funding dry up and levels of professionalism continue to rise, charities are increasingly looking to the private sector for the HR skills that they need to manage change. Although third sector organisations have in the past been reluctant to hire people from other industries over fears of too strong a commercial […]

Jealous HR staff ‘bin CVs with pics of pretty rivals’

It appears that internet sensation Samantha Brick may have a point – research has revealed that women should beware of attaching photos of themselves to their CVs because jealous HR staff have a habit of binning them. Brick, a former TV presenter, who has widely been accused of being an internet troll – or someone […]

Blog: Three tips for enhancing your online job pages

With a background in web design, I’ve heard it all. "Make my site pop!" "I want this page to really grab people’s attention." "Can you make the logo smaller?" "I want one of those rotating .gifs, and it’ll ideally be on fire" (mostly joking about that one).   Anyone with a background in any sort of […]

Agency Worker Regs lead to creation of new staff payment models

Contrary to expectations, the introduction of the Agency Worker Regulations has not had a negative impact on demand for temps, although it has given rise to new payment models in the industrial and driving sectors. These are the key findings of research undertaken by the Recruitment & Employment Confederation to commemorate the six month anniversary […]

Do you take visa? How to deal with the new immigration guidelines

There are now a myriad of documents that enable workers to take up different posts in the UK. But even though the UK Borders Agency published new guidelines in relation to its five-tier visa system earlier this month, employers still face a huge amount of risk when dealing with items that all too common such […]