Welcome to the latest edition of our monthly Sparks newsletter! We hope you’ve enjoyed the previous editions. As always, we want to keep you up to speed with what we are doing, plus cover off a range of things that are going on in the industry. If there are any hot topics you’d like us to cover in the future please just let us know.
Happy reading!
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Where have all the candidates gone?
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The number of vacancies in the UK is on the rise, with July seeing the highest number of new openings the country has had in two years! Great news, right? Well actually, for many, this rapid growth is causing a bit of unease as the lack of qualified talent to fill these roles is pushing up starting salaries and hourly wages.
If this describes your situation, rest assured you’re not alone. Almost every UK sector is coping with a growing staffing crisis fuelled partly by the uncertainty around Brexit, which has seen a high volume of EU nationals already leaving the country.
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This in turn is meaning the competition to attract the best UK workers is heating up. And job postings and company profiles won’t cut it.
You’re looking for people that can do the job (that kind of goes without saying), but that will also fit with the culture, ethos and goals of your business, increasing the likelihood that firstly they’ll join, and secondly they’ll stay! Recruiters will naturally sift against core technical capabilities and with competition rife, it can be tempting to leave it at that. But the softer skills are the ones that are likely to determine who’s got the best chance of providing long-term value.
It's therefore important to attract people that can not only do the job, but are also aligned to your employer brand and believe in your business. There are a number of software solutions in the market that can be implemented, that help to assess personality traits and values etc. against your own.
Want to know more? Look no further and drop us a line!
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UpGRADing your strategy
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It’s that time of year again, and competition to attract the best graduate talent is now hotting up.
We have extensive experience of managing both large and small graduate attraction strategies. Everything from developing messages and concepts, planning media, budget management, website and collateral design and development through to campaign management and reporting, we’ve done it all. And this year has been no exception!
As well as working on all this good stuff, we also keep up to speed with research year on year to make sure we’re always ahead of the game in this ever-changing sector.
Here’s a few bits of info:
The biggest growth in vacancies is expected in public sector organisations and high street & online retailers, which together intend to recruit over 1,200 extra graduates in 2017
Graduate starting salaries at the UK’s leading graduate employers are expected to remain at a median starting salary of £30,000
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Fewer than a fifth of the country’s leading employers have increased their graduate recruitment budgets for the 2016-2017 recruitment round
This last point is perhaps the most poignant, and resonates with a lot of our clients who are needing to recruit more people with less resource. That’s where our top-class media planning comes to the fore!
For optimum success, combine that with strong creative, that not only boosts exposure of the unique things you excel in, but that also gives candidates the information we know through research they’re actually looking for. For example, starting salary, training and company reputation are the top answers given when graduates are asked what’s most important to them in their job hunt, so it’s important that you showcase these key areas.
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Another happy client!
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ISS Technical Services is a leading provider of technology driven technical maintenance and energy management solutions. Thanks to a huge (and we do mean huge!) period of growth, we were tasked with helping them recruit around 140 Engineers, Joiners and Plumbers across the UK. We looked at a range of advertising routes that would be relevant to the target audience and would work in tricky locations.
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Ensuring we targeted both active and passive job seekers, we selected media designed to reach people who would likely be on the road or on site during the working day. The final mix included an ad in The Sun, TalkSPORT (South East only) including text message response mechanism, targeted SMS messages, and sophisticated targeting through social media including Facebook and Twitter. All this was supported by job postings, HTML eshots and Google PPC.
The campaign nailed it when it came to direct applications, but also proved to be a great tool to increase brand awareness. The TalkSPORT advert particularly stood out as it was heard by employees, with many mentioning the feeling of pride they experienced working for this growing company.
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The ad also helped to spread the word internally, generating more employee referrals and awareness of the campaign among the senior leaders.
So far, traffic to the careers landing page has increased by 25% with over 3,000 new visitors generated. This has been a great start, and we're looking forward to seeing the final results. We're also proud to have saved ISS 45% off the media rate card in the process.
Next steps? Discussions about potentially rolling out similar activity across Europe.
We think that’s a job well done.
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