It’s certainly a different recruitment market than it was 5 or even 10 years ago, with candidates and job seekers holding more power than ever before, due to a shortage in most sectors.

One our recruitment advertising partners, CV Library recently stated that poor hiring decisions are costing businesses up to £15,000 a year, so it certainly pays to get it right.

Candidates have made it well know that certain areas put them off applying for jobs, so we’ve put together 5 recruitment mistakes you could be making and how you can avoid them.

1. Badly written job adverts

94% of job seekers say they are more likely to apply for a role that has a clear job description, that explains the role in some detail along with an overview of the company. A well written advert is naturally more inviting. You need to point out key responsibilities, what skills are required, a little about the company and of course what the candidate can gain from working for you. Why is this a better opportunity than the job they are currently in. This is one area of our expertise, and now with the help of AI, you should be able to produce a marketing masterpiece.

2. A lengthy application process

Simplicity is the key. You need to be able to make the application process as easy as possible. Remember, most candidates are applying on their mobile, so they are not going to want to answer 20 questions, and if they do start, they’ll abandon the process half way through. Capture only the information you really need at the initial stage. CV, contact details etc… you can capture the rest later in the process.

3. Too many interviews

Do you really need to hold a telephone interview, an initial face to face, then a second interview, then come in and meet the MD at the final interview. If your hiring process has too many stages for candidates, they may well become impatient, or worse get snapped up by someone else. If they need to meet the MD, can he he be brought in at the end of the first interview?

4. Slow response rate

We see this all the time. The perfect candidate applies, it takes a week to acknowledge their application and a further 2 weeks to invite them in for an interview, then another week to put an offer together. If they are good, you are not going to the only party interested. Move fast.

5. Offer a good package

Consider the package you are offering. If the candidate is currently earning £30K, don’t offer them £30K and say you’ll have more progression opportunities here. The market is competitive, so you need to stay on top of current salary levels to make sure you stay in line with what your competitors are paying. Plus, what perks do you offer, what can set you apart from the crowd – it doesn’t always have to be about money.

Getting your hiring process right is key to recruiting the right person for your business, and well worth investing in – that’s where we come in, and can certainly add value to your recruitment campaign, ensuring the end result is not only a successful hire, but the right hire.

If we can be of any assistance, or offer any advice on any thing recruitment related, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with either myself or one of the team.

All the best,

Steve Wyeth 🚀

Attracting, recruiting and retaining top employees is extremely tough right now. The chances are your new hire was signed up with multiple agencies & job boards, and recently attended a number of interviews, putting pressure on you to pull out all the stops in order to entice them into your role & get them to stay once they start. So, you need to do everything you can to stop your new starters from being poached by another company or sweet talked by an agency about the “dream role” they are recruiting for.

You may think your job is complete once you make the hire, but the hard work actually starts here. Now, you need to live up to your new employees’ expectations. At this point, most employees only have one weeks’ notice period whilst in probation – so can easily leave the business, and often won’t need to work the week and leave on the spot.

So, how can you stop your new starters from being poached? There are a few key areas to look at here. From keeping contact with them during their notice period, to ensuring an effective onboarding process. Get this right and your new employee will settle in no problem. Get it wrong and you risk losing them to a competitor and having to start the process all over again.

We’ve put together 4 ways to ensure you are successful in retaining your new starters.

1. Keep in contact after they have accepted the job

Fantastic news – your candidate has accepted your job offer! They probably have a notice period to work in their current job, and if they are senior – this could be up to 3 months. But that doesn’t mean you should wait until they start the job to speak to them again, far from it.

Send them an email with any business updates, show excitement about them joining the team. This period is critical for communication and making them feel welcome. Remember, their existing employer could swoop in and make them a counter-offer that they can’t refuse. So, the better rapport you build with them at this stage, the more excited & committed they feel about their new job.

2. Eliminate first day nerves

Starting a new job is extremely nerve-wracking. Put yourself in the candidate’s shoes and consider what you’d want from a new employer on the first day of a job.

In the final week before they start, get in touch to ensure that they have all the necessary information. They know where to park, what time they need to arrive by, who to ask for on arrival, dress code and so on. While these might seem small, it can make a real difference.

Be sure to introduce them to their new colleagues as soon as possible.

3. Create an onboarding plan

The best way to do this, is to put together a clear schedule for their first 2 weeks in the role. This will include dedicated training time, inductions & meeting key personnel. Alongside this, be sure to give them tasks to crack on with, so they feel they are adding value.

It is also important for new starters to have one-to-one time with their managers to discuss what is expected of them in the role and to go over any grey areas.

4. Set clear goals

Every single employee in your company should have clear goals and objectives to work towards, this also applies to your new starters, as everyone is naturally far more productive when they have something to work towards.

This will also show that you value your new employee and they’ll be less likely to go snooping around for other job opportunities.

You should also focus on having ongoing career conversations in order to get the best out of all your employees.

What happens if your new starter does get poached?

Sadly, even if you do all the above, another company may swoop in and entice your new starter away. It’s just the nature of business and most of the time it is out of your hands.

If this happens to you and they choose to accept the offer, be sure to ask your employee for feedback. Is there anything that would have made them stay? Any issues you are not aware of? What has attracted them to the other role? All this will give you insights into why they have left and help your future hiring efforts.

Whatever you do don’t be bitter or show your anger. It’s your new starters career, not yours, so always stay professional and leave them with a positive impression of your company. You never know, you may be able to poach them back one day.

Take the above advice on board and you should stand a much better chance of retaining new starters and ultimately building a strong and stable team.

All the best,

Steve Wyeth 🚀

We’d love to tell you that the recruitment process is as simple as posting a job advert and then sitting back, waiting for the applications to start flowing in, just leaving you to pick the best candidate for the job.

It’s not…

However, with a little help from an online recruitment provider like Blue Rocket, we can make sure you are on your way to making a successful hire – quickly and easily, for just £399.

The main reasons why most hiring managers & business owners really struggle to recruit themselves are:

1. They spend 5 minutes putting a quick paragraph together, explaining roughly what the job entails and use this as a job advert.

Recruitment advertising is marketing – you need to first get attention, create desire, and then sell the opportunity. Why is this job better than their current one.

2. They choose to run their advert on just one job board, leaving it to chance, that is where their ideal candidates are looking. Or, even worse – they choose a ‘Free to Advertise’ option, for       example with indeed – where after 15 minutes of posting, their job advert falls off a cliff onto page 12 or beyond.

3. Speed & communication (more a lack of) – hiring managers & business owners fail to communicate with applicants, acknowledging applications, updating applicants on the status of the role / their application. Plus, above all – not reviewing & interviewing candidates in a timely fashion. Waiting 3 weeks to contact the ideal applicant, only to find out that they got snapped up and started with a competitor a week ago.

We get it – business owners, hiring manager & entrepreneurs are busy getting on with running their business, looking after their customers and haven’t got time to invest in the recruitment process.

But… You need to invest in the recruitment process, and if you engage the services of Blue Rocket Recruitment, for just £399:

• We’ll write you a compelling, fully optimised job advert from scratch, that will get the right candidates applying to your job
• We’ll advertise your job across all the leading job boards, online platforms and social media – not only attracting the best candidates, but more of them
• All applications come with full CVs and the applicant’s contact details
• Our simple, cloud-based dashboard allows you to manage all applicants in one place
• For a limited time, we’ll arrange all interviews on your behalf for FREE
• Fully account managed – support only ever a call a way
• We offer a recruit of your money back guarantee

So, if you are looking to recruit directly, but don’t have the expertise or the time to ensure your campaign is a success – engage Blue Rocket Recruitment.

For just a one-off fee of £399 (no more to pay), no contract, no commitments – you’ll be on your way to making your next great hire, fast.

Call one of our friendly team on 023 8033 6633 or email hi@bluerocketrec.co.uk to find out more or to get cracking. 🚀

The key component of making any recruitment campaign a success is sourcing the right candidates in which to shortlist & interview from. Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? But if it is so obvious, surely common sense would ensure that the advertising process is fundamental to any recruitment campaign – attracting the right candidates!

You’d of thought… but time & time again we see poorly written adverts written on company websites, job boards, social media & all over the internet. It’s not just employers who are guilty of this – some of the worst we’ve seen have been poorly written adverts by recruitment agencies.

If you are responsible for recruiting, or looking to recruit any time soon – complete the below form and receive your free eBook & template to use, to ensure you are on your way to recruiting success and making your next great hire.

Speaking to a number of owners, directors and hiring managers, we often get asked – are job boards really the best way to recruit?

A lot of recruitment agencies will say, job boards are a thing of the past, it’s all about tapping into our little black book, the under the radar pool of candidates that they have access to, and yes, when recruiting at CEO or Director level, especially for big organisations paying salaries of £100K plus, yes. But for your more general roles, albeit office based admin, accounting, trades & construction, hospitality, sales (I could go on), job boards are by far the best source of candidates. Job Boards are where the majority or recruitment agencies get 95% of their candidates from – but they wont tell you that, why would they – then you could cut out the middle man, and recruit direct 😉

Over the past 5 years, I must say that with unemployment at an all time low, there has been big skill shortages which has not made it easy to recruit for many roles, across various sectors. But now, as we emerge from the pandemic, and with more and more good employees unfortunately being made redundant, there is a pool of good candidates, looking for a new job across the majority of sectors – and where do they go first to look for a job, you’ve got it – job boards.

Don’t just take it from me, here is some data from the job boards to back this up.

Indeed (data updated for March 2020)

With a strong worldwide presence, Indeed continues to lead in the market overall:

• 250 million unique monthly visitors
• Database of 175 million CVs
• 10 jobs added per second globally

However, the data from three of the UK’s other leading job boards is also hugely positive:

Totaljobs (data provided for May 2020)

• 5 million visits
• 5 CVs in their database
• 8m applications made
• 66,376 jobs posted

CV-Library (year-on-year data provided for June 2020)

• Website traffic up by 5.9%
• CV registrations increased by 19.2%
• Average applications per vacancy increased by a massive 106%, with an average 30+ applications per job

Reed (data updated for June 2020)

• 70% increase in clicks from Google through to their website
• Some sectors, such as social care, has seen the number of jobs posted more than double in June 2020 (year-on-year)

These impressive figures for job board interest show that these platforms are still by far one of the most effective tools to use for your recruitment.

However, we fully understand that it is not only time consuming to reach out to all of the individual job boards, pay them all separate, then right a fully optimised advert that really sells your opportunity, post it on each one, then watch sporadic applications come in to your inbox – if it’s not something you are familiar with, it can be a real headache. That’s why we’ve launched Blue Rocket Recruitment 🚀 –  we do it all for you, write your advert, post it across all the job boards, plus give you access to your own fully branded, cloud candidate dashboard which ranks all candidates in order of suitability, just leaving you to recruit as many candidates into you would like into your business, and for just £399 – no more.

Attract. Engage. Hire. Grow 🚀🚀

If you’d like to learn more, require any more information or simply have a vacancy that you’d like us to advertise for you, please do not hesitate to contact either myself of one of the team on 023 8033 6633 or email hi@bluerocketrec.co.uk 

All the best,

Steve Wyeth

Founder 🚀

Recruitment has moved on dramatically from the days of your local cock of the walk recruitment consultant holding all the cards, by having their little black book of candidates that you cannot gain access to elsewhere.

The internet has changed recruitment dramatically, and technology & innovation will continue to do so, as with most industries.

However, in most cases the dysfunctional recruitment agency model has not changed at all since the 90’s. It has stayed outdated and living on the past glory of being able to gain access to that ‘little black book’.

Recruiters up and down the country, actually no – worldwide, claim that the best candidates are not on job boards or are not looking online.

When, today’s job seeker is always searching. Did you know that over 90% of job seekers use their smartphone to find their next role?

So, is it any surprise that over 94% of the vacancies a typical recruitment agency will fill, the successful candidates would of actually responded to an advert that the agency had run on job boards or online.

They won’t tell you that…

However, to be able to successfully recruit yourself, you need to make sure your job adverts are attracting the best people.

A well thought out, well written and an engaging job advert that appeals to your ideal target audience is key to your recruiting success.

That’s where our 20 years of recruitment marketing experience comes in.

For just £399, not only will we post your job advert across all the leading job boards & online platforms. Plus, give you full access to your own, award winning cloud-based dashboard to manage all applications from. We will transform your job description into a compelling, fully optimised job advert, selling your opportunity and engaging with your ideal candidate.

So, next time you look to recruit using an agency, paying thousands of pounds in recruitment fees, for the same candidates that with a little help & expertise from the team at Blue Rocket, you can recruit yourself for just £399. Plus, with Blue Rocket, you are able to make multiple hires from any campaign at no additional cost. Think again & slaughter them sacred cows.

The future of recruitment is here. Recruit like you are in 2020 🚀

For more information, don’t hesitate to contact myself of one of the team on 023 8033 6633 or email hi@bluerocketrec.co.uk

All the best,

Steve Wyeth

Founder 🚀