This week really separated the men from the boys. Helen and Tom on team Logic dominated this episode with their business skills and talent. Helen was team leader and showcased her amazing organisational abilities. She also proved to be a good leader – she recognised Tom’s creative flair and allowed him to be in charge of branding when infact that was the gig she was really after.

Tom’s dyslexia in this episode proved to be the winning element when deciding on a new brand name “MyPy”. The duo decided to theme the fast food around the ‘best of British’ and focused on pie and mash – good choice. Tom demonstrated his creative abilities and his eye for detail in the branding aspect of the task as the shop had a quintessential English theme while still remaining modern.

The pair worked seamlessly together on this task. The concept was great, they knew their business plan and profit margins while at the same time creating quality food – all served to the customer in under 3 minutes! I fully expect one of these candidates to be ‘hired’ in the next episode. The only thing letting this team down were their history skills – naming the menu after famous British people and then calling the mash Christopher Columbus (who was Italian) was not the smartest of moves.

Team Venture on the other hand made a real meal of it!

After discovering Natasha had a degree in hospitality management her team mates looked thrilled. The excitement was short lived when her colleagues discovered she wouldn’t be using any of her degree knowledge in the task. With Jim in charge, Natasha and Susan’s relationship hit an all time low. The bitching and squabbling was rife and showed no signs of ceasing. Both the girls wanted to be on the branding aspect of the task, so instead of separating these children, Jim left them to get on with it while he created the food. Once left alone they continued to argue over sombreros and peppers! Failing to even come up with a name it was left to Jim to step up to the mark. Jedi Jim really was a one man band in this challenge, having to control Susan and Natasha who turned into the ugly sisters, leaving Jim, aka Cinders in the kitchen.

Jim’s mathematical abilities did take a battering though. Where was the calculator when Jim needed it? It certainly wasn’t in his head. To multiply 60 by £7 and to arrive at an hourly turnover of £4,800 was embarrassing. To do it in front of an audience of industry experts when you’re pitching to win was cringeworthy.

The food was cold, there was no business plan, profit margins were not calculated and the food took over 10minutes to reach the customers – the winners of this task were clear to everyone.

Back in the boardroom Lord Sugar made the well over due decision to fire Natasha. After showing signs of brilliance during the magazine challenge, Natasha has done little but repeat the word ‘yeah’ at least a million times. I’m glad she went, yeah!

So that leaves the final four – the inventor, the leader, the salesman and the beauty product queen. The final episode will finally reveal the candidates business plans – I can’t wait!

However, as someone who has been involved in recruiting for our own organisation over the past few weeks, I have been quite literally gobsmacked at the poor level of effort, courtesy and basic communication skills displayed by applicants.  We hear lots of stuff about how we need to really engage with Generation Y – but have we gone too far? Do Generation Y now  feel that they have to make no real effort?  And is that one of the reasons that graduate unemployment is currently so high? Are we creating a whole generation of people who think that they can just sit back and wait for the ever so eager employer to find them within their ‘talent communities’?

A few examples:

• The applicant that I interviewed– a good degree, good A level grades and relevant work placement experience. When asked what had appealed to her about the role, she answered: “Dunno really – I just thought I could do it!”
• The applicant who, during a telephone screening interview, asked our Account Manager:  ”How old are you? Yousound really young!”
• The graduate  applicants ( and I’m not talking about just a few) whose covering letters and CVs are so full of spelling mistakes it makes me want to throw my hands up in despair at the current state of our education system. One was actively seeking a “roll in pubic relations.”
• The applicant who e-mailed me to say that he thought his experience would be of interest to me and directed me to site where I could find out more about him. I didn’t bother – because he couldn’t be bothered to sell himself.

Am I just a grumpy old woman?  Is there something I’m missing? Is it too much to expect applicants to make some effort to engage with ME?  What do others think?

In my job search experience I have come across some great consultants – they have listened and understood exactly what I want, then fixed me up with a good interview. However, the majority I have encountered, in both small and large agencies have been terrible. Without naming names, I have found some consultants to be rude and pushy.  They haven’t read my CV properly and they don’t listen which results in them contacting me about jobs that are of absolutely no interest to me and completely unsuitable. Here are just a few examples:

• ‘The salary is £10k less than your current wage – I think you should go for it anyway.’
• ‘The job is in Norwich – I think you’d be great for it – would you relocate from Aylesbury?’
• ‘The job is for a finance officer, I know you have a degree in marketing and pr, but I’d like to put you forward for it.’

Since leaving university, I’ve never been without a job and I’ve never been desperate enough to take any old position. So  the number of inappropriate opportunities I’ve received along the way has got me quite used to saying ‘no’, which I have found out is not a word accepted by all recruiters. One wanted to put me forward for an interview, ‘an opportunity I’d regret if missed’. The role wasn’t for me so I said no… several times. After speaking to a pushy consultant I was passed onto an even more relentless manager who informed me that if I didn’t go they wouldn’t help me in my search any more. I’ve never spoken to them since!

And it’s not just me – a colleague of mine relayed the sorry tale of a consultant asking her to change her CV so that her skills would fit a position they were trying to fill! The consultant guaranteed the interview, but the fact that my colleague didn’t have the required skills and wouldn’t be able to do the job didn’t even cross their mind!

This is why I get wound up with some recruiters; do they really realise what they are doing or how they are coming across to candidates and clients? In my experience, I can only think of 1 or 2 consultants out of about 10 who were professional and really had my interests at heart.

If I’ve had a bad experience with a recruiter then I will tell others not to use them. I’m sure that goes for a lot of people, including clients. Word of mouth is a very powerful tool, and now with social media you can reach millions!

I know you shouldn’t tar all recruiters with the same brush, and I know there are some good recruiters out there; this is just the view I have gained from my experience over the years.  And having got stuck into reading various recruitment blogs since I have started at BlueSky, it seems I am not on my own.  Andy Headworth in his recent blog post advises recruiters to:  ‘Look back at yourself through the eyes of your candidates’

Wise words indeed!

This got me thinking about a conversation I was having with a friend recently – an HR Manager at a company in the West End. She is currently recruiting for a graduate HR administrator role and here at BlueSky we are recruiting for a graduate level account executive so we were comparing recruiting techniques and candidate experiences.

Facebook was one of the first channels mentioned by my friend – not because they had advertised on there but what it had revealed about a candidate that had reached the final stages of the recruitment process. The candidate had undergone an initial telephone interview, had come in for a face to face interview and to have a look around the office and meet the rest of the team. Everything was great – my friend was relieved that she was to soon have some much needed support in the HR department, and it would be the end to what had been a very long recruitment process.

My friend decided, on the spur of the moment to type the candidate’s name into Facebook – she had never done this before but something made her do so this time!  No problem finding said candidate but what popped up shocked my friend somewhat. The candidate had a fan page with well over 2000 fans and what was it for? She was a rather provocative lingerie model and the pictures that were on the page were hardly daytime viewing!

So that put a prompt stop to the candidate’s chances of a job at the company. Why? Not because she was a lingerie model (and not because the largely male dominated company would probably have a significant reduction in productivity had she joined!!) but because this information was in the public domain, easy to be found by staff members but also clients!  So the HR Manager is back to square one in the candidate hunt.

Now a lot of people may say that the process of rejecting a candidate on the grounds of what can be found on social media channels is unfair but surely it is a common occurrence? What’s more, shouldn’t candidates be more careful about what they post in the public domain given the increased reliance by some companies on social media in recruitment? After all there are privacy settings on sites to protect certain areas.

Here at BlueSky we have not had any shocking discoveries like this, but that’s not to say we have not had our fair share of odd individuals looking to work here!  What’s your experience?

I recently spent the day with Twenty Recruitment at a vision and values day they were holding for their most recent hires.  I have to say it was really refreshing to see a recruitment firm not just talking the talk and paying lip service to the notion of values – but really living them. The firm has three values Life’s Short; Be Eclectic and Crystal Clear. Through the facilitator Rafe Offer, a marketing and branding expert, the new consultants talked about how those values related to themselves, their clients and their candidates.  

 Looking at  ’Life’s Short’ drove a discussion around daring to be different, embracing change, and being brave enough to take calculated risks. ‘Crystal Clear threw up phrases such as transparency, honesty, no spin and clear objectives; while ‘Be Eclectic’ explored ideas such as ‘there is no box’, solutions driven, differentiation and ‘there’s no such thing as a problem – only an opportunity for a solution’.

Then the real fun began with role plays where consultants had to pitch to clients and potential employees – and integrate some of the ideas around the values. I had great fun playing a client!

OK, I hear you say.  So what stops the consultants enjoying their day away from the office and then forgetting all about values when they walk out of the door?  Well, because how they live the values in the business is part of their performance appraisal – and it’s also linked to their bonus.  There was a great discussion around how the consultants felt that they could be judged around those values with some real measurable metrics.  And what’s more – to ensure that there isn’t a disconnect between how the values are perceived internally – and how they are perceived externally – there is going to be ongoing research with clients and candidates around whether the values are being demonstrated.

Recruitment is an industry where sometimes the egos of the founders can suffocate any attempt at creativity or originality.  It was great to see a company where the employees are really driving the vision and the values.

So what do you think?  Comments welcome!

…you’ll have to get through these interview questions first. These have been doing the rounds over the last couple of weeks, but I thought I would share a few of my favourites in case you had missed them, or wanted to take another look. Some questions are designed to test creativity, others are intended to test your ability to calculate. A handful are simply brainteasers that Google want to hear your responses to. Here are some of the more bizarre and thought provoking questions:

• How many piano tuners are there in the world?
• Why are manhole covers round?
• You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?
• How many golf balls can you fit in a school bus?
• Design an evacuation plan for San Francisco
• You have five pirates, ranked from 5 to 1 in descending order. The top pirate has the right to propose how 100 gold coins should be divided among them. But the others get to vote on his plan, and if fewer than half agree with him, he gets killed. How should he allocate the gold in order to maximize his share but live to enjoy it?

My brain is hurting just thinking about the answers to some of these – and there are plenty more. Have a read of this blog entry about a real life nightmare interview with Google. And click here if you want to read some answers as suggested by Business Insider and its readers.

There are various different interview techniques and debates about the merits of competency based interviewing. What do you think about Google’s ideas? They must work pretty well given Google’s global dominance, but is throwing brainteasers at a candidate really a good indication of how well they can do the job? Or is it just another tool for employers to use to narrow down a shortlist of skilled candidates? What’s the weirdest question you’ve ever asked / been asked?

A decade ago, online matching technology was seen as a huge threat to the traditional agency model. Did they all go out of business? No! But what did happen was that once that ubiquitous war for talent reared its head, lazy recruiters thought they could source a CV from a job board’s CV database; send it to a client, place that candidate and claim a fee. That’s not recruitment – that’s taking the proverbial.

In my view, the recession has , quite rightly, hit those ’recruiters’ who thought that it was ok to just press a few buttons and if technology is going to threaten any recruitment model then lets hope it’s that one.  What really makes my blood boil is that some of the real recruiters – the professionals in our sector – get tarred with the same brush.

So embrace all the technology at your disposal and add it to your toolkit. But don’t forget that ‘added value’ that all your clients will be looking for. It’s what they have always wanted – and more importantly it’s what they always will want!

To any innocent eavesdropper it would have sounded like an episode of grumpy old men/woman. You see Alan and I are from the old school of recruiters – before technology, before faxes – hell even before electronic typewriters. But during the last twenty odd years one thing has remained constant – the complaint from candidates about the candidate experience.

So why haven’t we learned? And there really is no excuse, as technology has made it easier than ever before to engage. But still we have the problem of candidates applying for jobs online and, at best, getting some impersonal auto reply. I know that we have a huge pool of candidates at the moment – and okay – many of then may not be suitable. But how difficult is it, on that auto reply, to point them to something that may help – a careers guidance area on your website for example with downloads on networking advice, coping with redundancy, the benefits of temping, upskilling etc etc .  Because when the war for talent comes back – and having worked through three recessions I can tell you it surely will, which recruiters will those candidates remember? A recruiters reputation can succeed or fail on something as simple as this so isn’t it time at last to try and get it right?  Here are my three  favourite anecdotes from my conversation with Alan:

• The candidate who received an e-mail to say your details  look exactly right so we will be putting you forward for the job and will contact you shortly.  The candidate then never heard anything.
• The recruitment firm that sent an auto reply after two weeks.
• The candidate who, having uploaded her CV as requested was then sent a form asking for two referees

There were lots more but it is too depressing! Technology is a great tool but you can’t e-mail a handshake! What are you doing to engage?