With significant changes to employment law on the horizon this year, we want to make sure all employers in our network feel prepared and supported. In partnership with leading employment law firm Birketts, we held a live discussion focusing on the first wave of changes taking effect in 2026.

With several key reforms due to take effect from 6 April, our Head of HR Division, Kate Headford, sat down with Employment Lawyer Sarah Bull to discuss how HR teams can start preparing for changes to day-one rights for paternity leave, unpaid parental leave, statutory sick pay (SSP) and redundancy protections:

Below is a practical checklist of areas HR teams should be reviewing now, ahead of the April changes, to reduce risk and avoid having to make last-minute policy updates.

Update your family-friendly policies

The Employment Rights Act makes paternity leave and unpaid parental leave “day one” rights for all employees. From April, employees will be entitled to these rights, removing the need for a qualifying period.

While the 26-week qualifying period for paternity pay remains unchanged, new regulations will introduce a day one right to paternity leave for employed parents of babies with an expected week of childbirth on or after 5 April 2026, born on or after 6 April 2026, or children placed for adoption on or after 6 April 2026. Parents will also be able to benefit from the day one right to take unpaid parental leave from 6 April onwards (Department for Business & Trade).

Action: HR teams will need to review and update their company’s family-friendly policies to reflect these changes and train line managers to ensure they understand how to manage leave requests in practice.

Amend your sickness absence policies and update payroll systems

The lower earnings limit is being removed to make statutory sick pay (SSP) available to all employees, regardless of weekly earnings. The rate of SSP will now be 80% of an employee’s earnings or the current flat rate – whichever is lower (Department for Work & Pensions).

By removing the waiting days from the SSP system and amending the period of incapacity for work, employees will now be entitled to SSP from their first full day of sickness absence, rather than the fourth. SSP enforcement and disputes will now be handled by the Fair Work Agency: a newly established enforcement body.

In practical terms, this means more employees will qualify for SSP, and payments will begin earlier than under the current framework. The Department for Work and Pensions believes that these changes will “support all employees to take the time off they need to recover by providing better financial security, whilst also limiting the costs to businesses and reducing the spread of infectious diseases.”

Action: Payroll teams should update their systems to remove the lower earnings limit and apply SSP from day one of absence. HR teams should also revise their sickness absence policies to align with the new ERA and consider completing additional training on sickness management in the workplace. This can serve as a proactive measure to reduce staff sickness levels.

Prepare for collective redundancy changes

In April, the maximum protective award for breaches of collective consultation obligations is increasing from 90 to 180 days per employee (Department for Business & Trade). This significantly raises the cost (and ultimately the risk) of non-compliance, making early planning and manager awareness especially important where workforce changes are being considered this year.

Action: Senior managers should be trained on new legislation to ensure they are aware of changes ahead of any redundancy plans. Further changes to organisation-wide thresholds on redundancy are expected later this year, and we will keep you updated in due course.

Stay informed of strengthened harassment prevention

The Act introduces a strengthened responsibility for employers to take “all reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment (Department for Business & Trade). From April, sexual harassment will be added as a ‘qualifying disclosure’ for whistleblowing protection, providing employees with a further legal mechanism to pursue claims of sexual harassment. This change simply enhances existing legal protections, rather than introducing something completely new.

Action: HR teams should conduct audits to assess the risks of harassment and implement appropriate controls. Policies should be updated, and training provided for staff (especially managers) on the new protections, so that they feel confident in addressing harassment complaints. It’s important that your team keeps records of all actions taken to demonstrate compliance.

Revise your probation policies

As day-one rights expand, probation periods will no longer delay access to certain statutory protections. HR teams should therefore review probation policies and make updates to reflect the April ERA changes.

For further information and suggested actions around the changes expected this year, Birketts has shared a very useful Employment Rights Act 2025 summary table to help you create an implementation plan for your business, in line with the Government’s roadmap.

We’re continuing to work closely with industry experts to provide clarity to HR teams, helping them minimise disruption and maintain compliance. If you’re considering new hires over the coming months, our consultants can share market insights and practical considerations to support your planning. Please get in touch to request a callback.

The post Preparing for April Changes to Day-One Employment Rights appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

When changes in senior leadership suddenly occur within an organisation and there is no strong affirmative succession plan in line, can a company survive? With the market fluctuating both rapidly and unpredictably, the disappearance of valuable members in a company’s body has become more apparent and frequent. A solution that invites continuity that is often overlooked is succession planning; This introduces growth within an organisation, employee morale and progression, and allows for a company to be prepared rather than reactive. If it’s this easy, why is succession planning not being implemented?

The job market is in such a competitive landscape due to economic data release, investor behaviour, geopolitical events and corporate news, and these factors are leading to quiet resignations, client poaching and natural bias to external hires. These stark changes cause companies to scramble and make urgent responses that are not always in their best interest, potentially costing millions as well as tainting the working environment. Whilst succession planning is a reactive response, it doesn’t have to be desperate and disjointed

Proactive succession allows for a range of steps to be taken to ensure stability- steps which should be led by an HR senior. The approach would include identifying critical roles, assessing employees who embody both technical and soft skills that can be nurtured, and investing in internal development such as mentorship, training, and project work. Succession agility will allow the company to pivot no matter the market condition, and using tools in anticipation allows for continuity if a company loses a key employee.

Senior leaders within HR will be key in driving the continuity resulting from succession planning. This role should be conveyed as a strategic partnership as opposed to process ownership because they will be the ones embedding the plans into the workforce. HR will have the knowledge on all candidates that can fill in the gaps when skilled people depart; they know the career aspirations of the people and who the high-potential clients are. They have the understanding and knowledge to communicate transparently with the board and stakeholders, encouraging growth within the company as opposed to external recruitment. This will also boost office morale and progression, which also tackles the quiet disappearances of current employees.

The geopolitical and economic state of the world is taking a toll on businesses globally, and people are rightfully making decisions to better their living situations, but where does that leave the company? Adapting to the ever-changing market demands is crucial, especially during this economic climate, and succession planning, along with the use of HR professionals, can alleviate a lot of future stresses. What are the ways your organisation is future-proofing leadership?

The post The Need for Succession Planning in a Volatile Market appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

Few HR challenges are as complex as managing parental leave policies across multiple jurisdictions. Global employers should not only consider duration and pay, but also cultural and social differences. As mobility across borders continues to rise, companies are increasingly being asked to explain how they approach parental leave policies.

For example, a London-based employee decides to relocate to Sweden, where parental leave laws are among the most generous in the world. Swedish parents are entitled to 480 days (68 weeks) per child, with 390 paid at nearly 80% of their salary. Comparatively, in the UK statutory maternity leave is capped at 52 weeks, with only 39 weeks paid, and at a significantly lower rate. It’s not hard to see why employees might consider starting a family overseas.

Overview of parental leave entitlements across leading commercial nations (October 2025).

So how do international employers ensure fairness when national legislation dictates unequal benefits?

“Global consistency is a noble goal, but local compliance has to come first,” explains Rebecca Siciliano, Managing Director at Tiger Recruitment. “The challenge lies in balancing what’s legally required with what feels equitable across the business. Employees notice when policies feel inconsistent, especially if they’re working side-by-side with colleagues in different regions.”

One approach gaining traction is the creation of global minimum standards for parental leave. This is a company-wide baseline that applies regardless of location. For example, a business might offer a minimum of 16 weeks of fully paid parental leave to all new parents globally, even if the statutory period in some countries is lower. In places where local laws are more generous, the company simply meets or exceeds those terms.

This strategy simplifies communication around benefits and promotes fairness. It also sends a clear signal that the organisation values parenthood consistently, regardless of geography. Netflix and Spotify have both implemented global parental leave standards to align with their values of flexibility and inclusivity.

While this might sound like a simple solution, it’s not without challenges. “What seems generous in one market might be financially unrealistic in another,” notes David Morel, CEO and Founder of Tiger Recruitment, “you also have to consider how others will perceive the change in some regions; taking extended leave might impact future career opportunities in some cultures.”

An alternative model is to offer flexible policies that complement local legislation. For example, a company could provide additional weeks of paid leave or introduce shared parental leave, giving parents greater control.

Flexibility can extend beyond leave itself and instead allow employees to work remotely or temporarily reduce hours before or after leave. “Support doesn’t stop when the baby arrives,” says David, “it continues when that parent returns to work.”

Navigating employee movement and fairness

One particularly difficult element of managing these policies across borders is when an employee moves between countries. The question of which policy applies becomes complicated. Should the employee benefit from their new location’s laws, or should their entitlement remain tied to their home country?

Most multinational employers address this through a principle known as ‘home-country consistency,’ meaning the employees’ original location policies continue to apply during temporary relocations. Others adopt a ‘host-country’ model, aligning benefits with the country where the employee physically works. Each has pros and cons and requires clear communication to prevent perceived unfair treatment.

Global employers that get global parental leave policies right tend to focus less on mirroring legislation and more on building an inclusive culture. This means normalising parental leave for all genders, supporting those undergoing fertility treatment and offering re-entry programs to ensure the transition back to work is smooth.

The post Understanding and Adapting to Global Variations in Parental Leave Policies appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

Hiring a finance director is essential for any organisation looking to enhance its financial management and strategic planning. They will bring financial leadership, expert insights, and strategic vision to your business, ensuring you can handle any economic challenges and take any growth opportunities.

In this guide, we explain how to recruit a finance director, helping you secure the perfect candidate to drive your company’s financial success.

What is a Finance Director?

A finance director is a senior executive responsible for overseeing your company’s financial operations. They will typically hold a seat on the company board, working closely with other senior leaders to align financial goals with overall business objectives. Their role involves strategic planning, risk management, and ensuring the long-term financial stability of your business.

They are often confused with financial controllers. A financial controller handles the day-to-day financial operations, including accounting, reporting, and compliance. The director typically has a broader, more strategic outlook. Both roles are crucial, but it’s important to know what you need before looking into how to hire a financial controller or director.

Key Duties of a Finance Director

Before you hire a finance director, it’s important to understand their key duties. This ensures you’re hiring the right person for the role.

Their duties are extensive and can vary depending on the specific needs of your business. Here are their main responsibilities:

• Overseeing financial planning and analysis.
• Developing long-term financial strategies.
• Establishing and managing budgets and financial forecasts.
• Ensuring compliance with financial regulations.
• Supervising financial reporting and audits.
• Identifying and preventing financial risks.
• Advising on investments and financial decisions.
• Leading the finance team.
• Ensuring professional development within the finance team.

Essential Skills and Qualifications

To hire the best director for your business, you need to know what skills and qualifications to look for during the candidate screening process.

Certifications

A candidate will typically have a degree in finance or accounting. A strong candidate typically holds additional certifications, such as a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) or Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA). Candidates may also have advanced degrees like a Master of Business Administration (MBA), which enables them to bring valuable insights to the role.

Experience Level

Experience is crucial when selecting a director. Look for candidates with at least five years of experience in financial management, ideally within your industry. They should also have a record of successfully leading financial teams and implementing strategic financial plans.

Expertise

Look for candidates who are skilled in financial modelling, budgeting, and forecasting. They should also be experts in financial software and have a deep understanding of regulatory compliance and risk management.

Soft skills are equally important in this role. Your director should have excellent leadership abilities to manage, motivate, and develop the finance team. Strong communication skills are crucial for conveying complex financial information clearly to stakeholders. Strategic thinking is also critical for ensuring your business is a success.

Importance of a Finance Director in an Organisation

You might already have a great team of accountants and financial analysts and wonder if you need a director. A finance director is an essential role as they bring valuable strategic insight and leadership that can take your financial operations to the next level.

Here are some key benefits that show why this is an important role to fill:

Strategic Financial Management

A director ensures your company’s financial health is monitored and managed strategically. They provide expert oversight of financial planning and analysis, helping you make informed business decisions. This financial insight keeps your organisation competitive and financially stable.

Risk Management

This role plays an important part in managing risks for your business. They identify potential financial risks and develop strategies to prevent them, such as credit or interest rate risks. This proactive approach protects your company from unexpected financial challenges.

Credibility and Compliance

A finance director enhances the credibility of your financial reports. Their expertise in compliance and reporting reassures investors, stakeholders, and regulatory bodies about the accuracy of the reports. They also ensure all reports are completed on time and meet regulatory standards, maintaining a positive reputation for your business.

Broad Impact

A finance director will manage the entire financial strategy of your organisation. Compared to a finance business partner, who focuses on specific departments, a director has a wider reach across all financial aspects of the business. Both roles are important, but a director has a broader strategic impact.

They also have a more complex role than an accountant. If you need tasks like bookkeeping and tax preparation done, you will hire an accountant. If you need strategic planning and financial leadership, a finance director is the right person for the job.

How to Recruit a Finance Director

The director you choose will play a crucial role in your business, making the recruitment process vital. Finance recruitment agencies are helpful because they have access to a broad talent pool and know how to find the right candidates. They can save you time and ensure you hire the best person for your business needs and culture.

If you prefer to handle the recruitment yourself, here are the steps to follow:

1. Crafting the Job Description

A clear job description is essential for attracting the right candidates to your role. It should outline the role’s responsibilities, required skills, and qualifications, helping potential candidates understand if they are a good fit. This will help save you time by ensuring only suitable applicants apply, reducing your screening process.

Here’s what to include in a job description for a finance director:

• Key responsibilities and duties
• Required qualifications and certifications
• Essential skills and experience
• Company background and culture
• Reporting structure and team details
• Expected performance metrics
• Salary range and benefits

A job description differs from a job advertisement. The job description provides detailed information about the role’s responsibilities and requirements. A job advertisement is a shorter, more engaging summary designed to attract candidates to apply.

Use our finance and accounting salary and benefits review to determine a fair and competitive salary to offer to ensure you attract the ideal candidate to your role.

2. Identifying Ideal Candidates

Once your job description is ready, you can post it on job boards or your company’s website. You can also send it to a finance recruitment agency, who will help find and screen potential candidates for you.

Alongside posting your job description, you can actively source ideal candidates to approach. This proactive strategy helps you find qualified professionals who may not be actively job hunting. Use professional networks, LinkedIn, and industry events to identify and reach out to these candidates.

3. Screening and Shortlisting Candidates

Once you have a list of candidates, the screening process can begin. This is when you will review each candidate’s CV and cover letter to assess their qualifications and experience. Look for red flags like missing qualifications, irrelevant experience, or poorly written resumes to quickly narrow down your list to the most promising candidates.

4. Conducting Effective Interviews

The next step in the recruitment process is conducting interviews. This is your chance to talk with each shortlisted candidate and get a deeper understanding of their qualifications, experience, skills, and how they present themselves.

For the interviews to be effective, you need to prepare the right questions to ask the candidate. There are questions you should always ask in an interview, but you will also need to create tailored questions that are relevant to the role and your business. For example, you might ask how they have managed financial risks in the past or how they approach financial planning.

You also need to use the interview to assess how well they would fit into your company culture. A good cultural fit is crucial for long-term success and job satisfaction, which can save you from having to repeat the hiring process. Ask about their leadership style and teamwork, paying close attention to their communication style.

5. Assessing Competencies and Aptitude

After the interviews, you can ask the remaining candidates to complete competency-based assessments. You might include assessments such as financial modelling exercises, case studies on risk management, or strategic planning tasks. These tests can provide insight into their analytical skills and capabilities so that you can confidently select a candidate who will excel in the role.

6. Checking References and Backgrounds

Before you make a final decision, you will need to check the candidate’s references and background. Reach out to former employers to verify the candidate’s work history and performance. Use this as an opportunity to ask specific questions about their strengths and areas for improvement.

It’s also best practice to ensure the candidate has a clean financial and legal background. This helps maintain the integrity of your business’s financial operations and reputation.

7. Making the Job Offer

This is a critical stage of the recruitment process. You must make the best job offer so you can secure your ideal candidate.

To make the best job offer, include comprehensive details about the salary, benefits, and additional perks. Clearly outline the job responsibilities, the reporting structure, and performance expectations. This transparency helps the candidate understand exactly what to expect and makes your offer more attractive.

It’s important to be open to negotiation during this stage. Your candidate may have specific requests or conditions that need to be met. Being flexible and willing to discuss these aspects can help you get the candidate you want.

8. Onboarding and Integration

After the candidate accepts the offer, focus on their onboarding and integration. Begin with a thorough orientation to introduce them to your company, their team, and their role. Make sure they have all the tools, resources, and training they need to get started.

Integration is key to helping your new finance director feel welcome and become productive quickly. Schedule regular check-ins and encourage open communication to address any questions or concerns. This support will help them adjust to your company culture and align with your goals.

Retaining Your Finance Director

Now that you know how to hire a finance director, it’s important to focus on retaining them. Losing a director can disrupt your business and lead to costly and time-consuming recruitment efforts.

Here are some tips to ensure your director stays long-term:

Competitive Compensation

You should regularly review and adjust their salary and benefits to ensure you are keeping up with industry standards. This will help keep your director satisfied and less likely to look for opportunities elsewhere.

Professional Development

Providing opportunities for professional development will benefit both the director and your business. You can encourage your director to attend conferences, pursue certifications, and stay updated with industry trends.

Positive Work Environment

Focus on creating a positive and supportive environment to help enhance their job satisfaction. You can do this by formally acknowledging any impressive contributions, providing constructive feedback, and promoting a culture of respect and collaboration.

How to Recruit a Finance Director with Tiger Finance

Tiger Finance specialises in recruiting top-tier finance professionals. Our team of experts, extensive network, and deep industry knowledge enable us to identify and attract the best candidates for your specific needs.

We handle every step of the finance director recruitment process, from crafting job descriptions to conducting interviews and reference checks. By partnering with us, you will find a director who is highly qualified and a perfect fit for your company’s culture and goals.

Ready to hire your next finance director? Fill in our request form today to start your search.

The post How To Recruit a Finance Director appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

Whether you’re a small business experiencing growth or a large corporation needing to improve efficiency and compliance, choosing to hire a financial controller is a strategic step. They play a vital role in managing day-to-day accounting operations and ensuring financial accuracy. A skilled controller can also provide valuable insights, helping to drive your business forward.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know about hiring a financial controller. From understanding their role and responsibilities to identifying the signs it’s time to bring one on board, we’ve got you covered.

What Is a Financial Controller?

A financial controller is a senior financial executive who’s responsible for overseeing a company’s accounting operations. They ensure that the day-to-day accounting activities and reports are accurate and compliant. They can also offer valuable insights based on the accounting data to help with decision-making.

The Role of a Financial Controller

Whether you are running a major corporation or small business, a financial controller has an important role to play in your company. They ensure your accounting operations are accurate, compliant, and efficient.

Here are some of their key responsibilities:

• Overseeing all accounting operations.
• Ensuring the accuracy of financial reports.
• Ensuring compliance with financial regulations and internal policies.
• Preparing financial statements, including income statements and balance sheets.
• Conducting internal audits to prevent inaccuracies and fraud.
• Developing and monitoring budgets.
• Analysing financial data to identify trends and provide insights.
• Managing the accounting team and financial processes.
• Supporting strategic financial planning and decision-making.

How a Financial Controller Differs from Other Financial Roles

Financial controllers fill a unique role in your business. They are more than just accountants because they oversee the entire accounting process, ensuring compliance and accuracy. If you need someone to handle basic bookkeeping and daily transactions, you will hire an accountant, not a controller.

The controllers also differ from finance directors. While controllers focus on managing daily accounting operations and ensuring accurate financial reports, finance directors set the overall financial strategy and goals for the company. The controllers will manage the day-to-day, while the finance directors will manage the broader financial direction.

They also play a distinct role compared to finance business partners. Finance business partners are deeply integrated with different departments. They use their financial insights to guide strategic initiatives and ensure collaboration between finance and operational teams.

Signs Your Business Needs a Financial Controller

Knowing when to hire a financial controller is crucial. Here are some of the sure signs that your business needs to recruit a controller:

Rapid Business Growth

If your business is experiencing rapid growth, it can become challenging to manage finances effectively. A controller can help ensure that your accounting operations scale with your business. They provide the expertise needed to handle increased financial complexity and support sustainable growth.

Increased Regulatory Requirements

As your business grows, so do the regulatory requirements you must comply with. A controller ensures that all financial practices meet legal standards and internal policies, helping you avoid any costly penalties.

Inaccurate Financial Reporting

Frequent errors or inconsistencies in your accounting reports are clear signs that you are relying too heavily on your accountants. Financial controllers bring the necessary skills to improve accuracy and reliability in financial reporting, ensuring you have the precise data needed for making informed business decisions.

Qualifications and Skills to Look for in a Financial Controller

If it’s time for your business to hire a financial controller, you need to know what to look for in potential candidates. All candidates should have a strong background in accounting and finance, demonstrated by a relevant degree and professional certifications such as Certified Public Accountant (CPA).

To suit this role, the candidate should also have strong analytical skills, proficiency in accounting software, and reporting capabilities. Candidates with experience in your industry will mean they are familiar with industry-specific financial challenges and regulations, making them a great fit.

How to Hire a Financial Controller

Using finance recruitment agencies can streamline the hiring process. These specialised agencies will quickly identify your specific needs and match you with the right candidates. They can also help you with creating the perfect job description, screening, and securing your ideal candidate, saving you time and effort.

If you want to do it yourself, follow our step-by-step process:

1. Identifying Your Needs

You first need to identify the needs of your business for this role. Consulting with your accountancy team can provide valuable insights into what is required. They can highlight areas where additional support is needed and identify specific skills that are crucial for the role.

You can then use this information to create a detailed job description. A well-crafted job description will attract candidates who are well-suited to meet your business’s specific requirements. Make sure to clearly outline the responsibilities, qualifications, and skills needed for the role.

2. Finding Potential Candidates

A finance recruitment agency is one of the best ways to find potential candidates. They have extensive networks and resources to connect you with highly qualified professionals. This can speed up the hiring process and ensure you find top talent.

You can also place the job description online on various job boards, network within your industry, and use LinkedIn to find suitable candidates. Attending industry events can help you meet professionals who might be looking for new opportunities. These methods can help you reach a broad audience and find the right fit for your business.

3. Evaluating Financial Controllers

Start by assessing candidates’ CVs and resumes to identify those with the right qualifications and experience. Look for relevant certifications, such as CPA, and experience in accounting management. Pay attention to the industries of their previous roles and any accomplishments to determine their suitability for your role.

Conducting interviews is the next crucial step in the evaluation process. You will need to prepare a set of questions that cover both technical skills and their problem-solving abilities. Make sure to ask about their experience with reporting, compliance, and how they have handled any financial challenges in the past.

You can also use assessments, such as practical tests or case studies, to gain insights into a candidate’s capabilities. These assessments help ensure you choose a candidate who can effectively manage your accounting operations.

4. Making the Decision

It’s now time to decide who you will bring into your business. Before making an offer, it’s always best to check the references and background of your potential candidate. This ensures the person you choose will be the best fit for your company’s culture and future success.

Once you have narrowed it down to one candidate, you can make them a formal job offer. This should clearly state the terms of employment, including salary, benefits, and any other relevant details. With a well-structured offer, you are set to secure the top candidate.

Check out our finance and accounting salary and benefits review to ensure you are making a competitive offer that will attract and retain your ideal candidate.

Hire a Financial Controller with Tiger Finance

At Tiger Finance, we’re ready to help you hire a financial controller. We have years of industry experience and access to an extensive network of both active and passive candidates, ensuring that we will always find the right fit for your role. Our team will support you throughout the hiring process, from sourcing candidates to aftercare.

Fill in the request form so that we can make your recruitment process easier and faster.

The post Hire a Financial Controller: A Comprehensive Guide appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

We remind our candidates daily, ‘Don’t forget to prepare!’. If they want the job, they need to show that they’ve completed their research by being able to talk intelligently about the role and business. It’s the same advice for you, hiring managers. If you’re looking to hire an executive assistant, for example, you’ll need to set up the hiring and interview process the right way. Doing so will pay dividends in ensuring a positive brand experience.

Prepare your interview questions ahead of time, craft these according to the key skills required of the role. In doing so, think carefully about both what you’re willing to train for and the skills you need to hire. Try to ask similar questions of all the interviewees so as to be able to compare responses.

If you’re a small business without an HR presence or formalised hiring policy, our tips below can help to guide the right approach.

Make the candidate comfortable

To encourage the best possible candidate experience, try to make sure you’re meeting in as neutral and comfortable environment as possible. Rather than sitting on the other side of the desk or table, try sitting next to the candidate (if space permits!). This move, alongside open body language, will help set the tone of a meeting between equals. You’ll then be able to develop much more of a natural rapport which will give you a significantly more accurate steer on their potential to fit in culturally with the business and team. In a virtual interview, body language is still important – you don’t want to be fidgeting or looking away from the camera – this will unconsciously signal to the candidate that you’re not giving them your full attention.

Have the candidate meet with other staff

It’s important to know if the interviewee was rude to the receptionist. It’s equally important to consider everyone’s opinions to understand their responses to the candidate joining the team. It might well raise advantages or concerns you hadn’t previously considered. While you will want everyone to get on, be wary of hiring candidates with similar backgrounds and interests. A diverse team, after all, is more likely to produce fresh ideas, innovative approaches and ultimately, improved successes. When you ask yourself what’s missing in this team, consider the possibilities a prospective employee might bring to the business rather than just filling a slot.

Money matters

Have your budget prepared and approved in advance to avoid wasting time negotiating and risk losing a star candidate. While many hiring managers still argue, “if they like us, they’ll take it for less”, it’s sadly a little unrealistic in today’s market to do so.

Representing the brand

Even if the candidate isn’t successful, a positive experience with you will mean that they’re more likely to speak highly of the business. To help this positive experience along, try the following:

• Leave your stresses and negativity at the door

• Don’t be late

• Allow enough time in the interview for the candidate to ask all the questions they need to

• Listen (really listen) and don’t interrupt

Check your biases

We all have them, though we might not want to admit it. Consider your biases and be aware of them beforehand. These could include judgements about personal appearance, comparing them to the previous incumbent in the role, or even where they went to school. To avoid this, bring an objective colleague to the meeting and assess their suitability together afterwards.

Can we help you recruit your next permanent or temporary role? Get in touch with one of our specialist consultants today, or read our complete interview and selection guide for employers to find out more about best practice hiring.

The post Hiring managers, are you preparing the right way for interviews? appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

The search for a job in London can be a full time job in itself. However, there are ways to make the process easier, including registering with a recruitment agency. Employment agencies in London specialise in placing candidates in roles across a range of industries and can help you secure your next dream role.

Choosing an agency

Firstly, you need to think about your needs. What job are you looking for? What industry do you want to go into? You can get generalist and specialist agencies, so if you know exactly what you want to do – you want to be a PA, for example – look for an agency that specialises in administrative and PA recruitment. If you have no idea what route you want to go down, look for a generalist agency who will have a number of different roles that might be suitable. Have a look on the agency job pages on their website to see the roles they have advertised to help you decide which might be most suitable. You might have certain employers you want to work for; perhaps you could find out who does their recruiting and get in touch with them.

It’s always good to ask friends and colleagues if they have any recommendations too. Tiger offers a £250 reward for any successful referrals for permanent positions and other agencies can offer similar, so it works in your friends’ benefit.

How do you register with job agencies?

The process of registering with a job agency in London will vary from agency to agency, but usually you will submit an initial enquiry online. You may then be invited to meet with a recruitment consultant for an interview. During this meeting you will have the chance to talk about your CV and career goals. It’s not only skills and experience that make an impression;, this is also an opportunity for your consultant to get a sense of your personality and what roles and company cultures may suit you best.

Don’t be afraid to register with a few job recruitment agencies in London or elsewhere. By placing your CV in front of as many job agencies as possible, you’ll increase your chances!

Finding the perfect role

Once you’re registered with a London job agency, you’ll be considered for jobs that fit your skills and preferences. It’s not uncommon for London employment agencies to ask you to complete skills testing – these online tests will assess relevant skills such as your touch-typing speed and Microsoft Office proficiency.

Should your consultant wish to put you forward for a role, they will check with you to ensure you wish to be considered for the position. Generally a shortlist of candidates is shared with the company seeking to hire, and they will make the decision to invite a selection of people to interview.

The perks of using a recruitment agency in your job hunt

Your consultant will support you in every stage of your job hunt. The collaborative nature of securing work through a job agency will save you time and may also expand your professional horizons as you could be considered for roles you wouldn’t have otherwise heard about.

Many job agencies also offer interview training, CV advice and professional development opportunities to candidates, all at no cost.

Some London recruitment agencies offer assistance with securing temp roles as well as permanent contracts. Temping in London can be a great way of gaining confidence and experience, making ends meet while hunting for a permanent role, or working flexibly alongside other commitments. There are both specialist temp recruitment agencies in London, as well as industry-specific agencies in London that cover both temporary and permanent placements.

The post What can a recruitment agency do for jobseekers? appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

Your CV is essentially a written advertisement for yourself. This is the first piece of documentation that the employer and recruiter will receive, so you will need to sell yourself and make sure all crucial information is clearly listed. Make your first impression count!

Ensure your CV follows a clear layout

Start your CV with the essentials: your contact details and name. This is so very important, as you need to be contactable by recruiters. Make your name, telephone number and email address stand out at the top of the page.

Aim for a simple design – something too complicated can put people off. Use a clear font, simple headings and don’t include a photo.

Try to keep your CV to a maximum of two pages – the hiring manager will usually be very time-poor so won’t have time to review anything longer. Remember to proofread any document you send it to recruiters and employers. Look for any spelling and grammatical errors and if your CV includes bullet points, ensure they are all the same and follow suit.

Avoid the irrelevant

Be realistic when writing your CV. Keep all information relevant. If you are applying for a particular role, tailor your CV to suit the job spec. If you have covered elements in another role which may fit the position that you are applying for, make sure you mention this. By adapting your CV to match the job spec, you will be far more appealing than a candidate who may not have the experience required. When writing your CV, make sure you are always thinking about what you are writing. Avoid the obvious and ensure you do not waffle on. Try to bullet point your key responsibilities in your previous roles to stay succinct.

Mind the gap

You will need to explain any gaps in your employment history. An unexplained gap is usually a red flag and your recruiter will definitely ask you about it, as they will need to explain it to your potential employer. It doesn’t matter what your break was for – travelling, maternity/paternity or just a career break – being clear is much better than being vague.

You should also make reasons for leaving jobs clear – it could be that you felt that you were no longer busy and felt you needed a new challenge, or it may be that you were made redundant. Reasons such as these are not negatives and your consultant will appreciate your honesty.

Never, ever lie on your CV

It is common that candidates tell a fib or two on their CV. This may be in the hobbies and interests section, where it mentions that they enjoy team sports and cooking. However, others have made the mistake in lying about qualifications, salaries and achievements. Employers do carry out background checks on their candidates and if they find something that doesn’t match up, it can lead in a retracting of an offer at a later stage. The consequences are never positive, so it’s essential to make sure your CV is a true and honest representation of your experience.

Limit job-hopping

Millennials have thrown away the idea of company loyalty – most will only stick around for two years before looking elsewhere. [1] So, while having a variety of roles has become more common, there is a point where employers will start to question why your stints have been so short. There is an expectation that, unless there is a valid reason, you will remain in every permanent role for a year – if you only stay in a job for a few months, it will make you appear unreliable to your recruitment agency and employers.

One way to do this is to really think about the job before you accept an offer. Think about any reservations that you may have and why you may have such reservations. Your consultant is there to answer any questions you may have if you would prefer to avoid asking the employer directly.

You may be leaving a job due to boredom; your skills are not being utilised and the role is not busy enough for you. Before throwing in the towel, think about what you could do to help matters. Speak to your employer and explain how you are feeling. They may be able to help and give you more responsibility, making your current job more exciting and essentially will make you stay in the role for longer. The longer you stay in a position, the more reliable and loyal you will appear. If you have a hoppy CV, where you jump from roles without a second thought, it may appear that you lack engagement and struggle to get on with colleagues.

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For more advice on CV writing, check out our Insights page. Once your CV is ready for the job hunt, get in touch with the Tiger team, or check out our job listings.

1. https://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/about-deloitte/articles/millennialsurvey.html

The post How to make your CV and experience stronger appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

Table Of Contents

• Introduction
• Money Talks
• Development and Training
• Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
• Flexible Working
• Employee Wellbeing
• Relationships At Work
• Employee Turnover
• Summary

Introduction

Tiger Recruitment hosted a roundtable event, bringing together a select group of HR leaders across a range of industries. The discussion focused on their experiences of employee retention and acquisition.

There are plenty of reasons why staff leave their jobs — from low salary, poor management and lack of flexible working through to a long commute. According to Forbes, however, the most common reason an employee leaves is because of a toxic company culture, which ranks number one for 62% of jobseekers. With this in mind, the ever-evolving challenges that HR leaders face are far from simple.

Throw in the cost-of-living crisis, and employers now face even more pressure to improve working conditions for their employees. With junior jobseekers and graduates receiving lower salaries, compared to the average UK business support salary at £40,656, graduate retention and attraction came up time and time again as a key concern among our HR leaders. Is it possible to attract entry-level staff without the same attractive salary that might be offered to those with more experience?

In 2022, workplace trends, like the Great Resignation and quiet quitting, exploded, prompting many to reconsider their retention strategies. From boosting salaries to protecting employee wellbeing, read on to discover what our HR Leaders will be investing in over the next 12 months.

Money Talks

Our latest Salary and Benefits Review revealed that 51% of UK office workers received a pay rise in the last 12 months — almost twice as many as in 2021 (28%). While that might not present too much of a shock, given the current cost-of-living challenges the UK is facing, what may surprise employers is that many employees are prepared to receive less money overall (inclusive of salary, benefits, bonuses), in return for an increased base level of pay.

As bonuses are usually positioned as a job performance incentive, some employees aren’t confident that their performance will be accurately evaluated. Those in roles without commission also have less faith in the bonus system, as the value that they bring to a role has more vague indicators of performance. According to Employer News, 83% of HR professionals believe that compensation should be linked to performance. With this in mind, it’s no surprise that new employees who are yet to ‘prove themselves’ have concerns about the effectiveness of bonuses.

Some employers are experiencing an increase in requests for salary raises from junior candidates, due to a generational trend of open discussion about salary ranges. With 64% of UK-based employees wanting greater transparency from their employers about pay practices, and over half of employees across the US wanting to know what everyone at their organisation is paid, it’s clear that the push for more open communication is strengthening.

What employers are finding difficult, however, is not the request for transparency, but the lack of variable allowance across different industries, roles, type of pay, and experience. If these factors are omitted, the reality of an individual’s desired pay may fall short of their expectations.

At our roundtable, employers spoke openly about graduate salaries, with most — in light of the cost of living — agreeing there is a growing pressure to increase them. Many have altered their graduate bonus and salary structure, to accommodate for higher salaries with lower bonuses.

Employers mentioned that they were getting to the stage where the grads that they hired five years ago were starting to think about buying a home. But with the cost to buy being so expensive, these employees were looking to move further out. One employer expressed how disruptive this was for the business, and that they were planning financial support options for employees looking to buy their first home, to retain talent effectively.

Key actions

• Consider offering financial support to long-term employees looking to buy their first home. This will help to retain staff who are debating whether to relocate.
• If the budget doesn’t allow for an increase in the overall employment package, increase the base pay and reduce the bonus.
• Only consider pay transparency or banding if you can accommodate variations across experience, sector and role type.

Development and Training

Career development remains a leading factor in employee retention. In our Salary and Benefits review, over 40% of jobseekers reported that career development was a priority in their next job. Around the table, HR leaders made it clear that their retention efforts were focused on strong employee development structures, regardless of role or industry.

Some shared how they had realigned their career development framework to prioritise visibility in their structure. In doing this, they found employee feedback overwhelmingly positive as a result of all staff being able to map out a clear path of personal progression.

Some HR leaders said that they were trying to improve the level of training offered to roles that traditionally lacked in this area. For example, one company was in the process of launching a new training programme with the Institute of Executive Assistants and Administrators. This employer also planned to implement a top-to-bottom training plan, allowing for a diverse group of employees with varying experience to capitalise on peer-to-peer knowledge sharing, thereby encouraging transparency at the same time.

Training, as part of graduate apprenticeships, is a key focus for 2023. Many are evaluating these, with the majority seeing apprentices working weekends and unusual working hours, due to off-the-job training requirements. Following a full day of learning and working, many employers received negative feedback from their grads a contributing factor to feeling burnt out.

The training and development piece for grads is a key focus for employers, with most leaders at the roundtable saying that they find graduate employees the hardest to retain. In the Wiley Edge 2021 report on graduate retention, 16% of employers surveyed found that a staggering 51% – 100% of their graduate employees typically leave the business within 24 months. A further 38% found that between 21% and 50% leave within two years. With this in mind, HR leaders at the roundtable were either thinking of scrapping apprenticeships completely or had done so already.

Demonstrating to your staff that yours is a business where they can develop a career will play a huge role in their decision to stay or go. The more your company gives people the opportunity to improve themselves, the more likely it is they will stay to find out how. By nature, we don’t want to stagnate. This is self-perpetuating because as our career furthers, the more important our decision-making inevitably becomes – which in turn heightens our emotional investment in the business.

Key actions

Retention efforts should be focused on strong employee development structures, regardless of role or industry

Prioritise visibility in the career development framework, so staff can take greater ownership of their personal progression within the business

Extra hours and “tick-box” exercises enforced in certain graduate apprenticeships are proving to have a negative impact on graduate retention. Companies should consider assessing these schemes, by requesting feedback from their graduates

Equity, diversity and inclusion

Diverse workplaces make better decisions 87% of the time. Research has also shown that diverse staff are more innovative, creative, and faster problem-solvers.

The push for a more diverse workplace is still front of mind for many employers. HR leaders at our event declared that their diversity and inclusion had improved across the board, and that they are still reporting rising numbers in their data.

Several employers have made significant progress as a result of establishing ED&I committees, with one claiming they were inundated with applications for the committee elections. Another stated that increased maternity and paternity payments have been a great success in regard to a more inclusive work environment. With new strategies in place, employers also have more accessible data on ED&I, which has been pivotal in their plans to make further changes.

One leader said that by requesting ongoing feedback on their ED&I initiatives, they are able to ensure that new strategies are well received, and gain greater insight into the thoughts of a wide range of employees.

Although progress is being made, equity, diversity and inclusion remain an area that still needs sustained and continued attention. The majority of employers agree that moving forward, actively hiring a more diverse workforce is essential in striving for equality.

It’s still as important as ever for employers to be part of the change, and at Tiger we will continue to champion the efforts made for progress. If you are looking to improve your ED&I, here are a few tips on how to do so.

Education

• Education can be in the form of training, discussions, and open communication. A good place to start is by creating an ED&I guide for staff.
• Learn from previous mistakes; educate yourself and your employees on what can be improved.
• Lead by example as an employer; pass on the importance and benefits of inclusion in the workplace.

Reach wider audiences

• When writing job openings, descriptions should be catered to reach broader audiences. These jobs should also be sent to a wider net of platforms and outreach programs.
• Advertise your company values on ED&I. Most companies forget to celebrate their workplace culture in their job listings, website, and media channels, but this should be a very visible part of your employer brand.

Communication

• Inclusive language is very important and a powerful tool for managers to open up internal communication.
• To make sure you are using inclusive language, avoid biases, slang, and expressions that discriminate against groups of people.
• By asking your diverse workforce for feedback you will ensure transparency as well as ownership of your actions.

Offer meaningful opportunities

• Take an individualistic approach to career development by nurturing talent and asking people what they want. Offer equal opportunities and be inclusive of all diversity groups.
• Set measurable goals, whether it be through quotas or feedback. Use this data to help direct progress in the right areas.

Foster at all levels

• From management level down to graduates, diversity should be a consideration when hiring for any position.
• Whether via blind CV, skills testing or widening your candidate pool, make a commitment to remove biases from the recruitment process.

Offer better workplace flexibility and policies

• Allow employees to take time off for religious holidays that may not be officially observed by the company.
• Be flexible with RTW parents and offer competitive parental leave.
• Ensure your office is well-equipped with inclusive facilities, including wheelchair access and non-gendered bathrooms.
• Offer the option for flexible working hours.

KEY ACTIONS

• Actively align the recruitment process into DE&I initiatives, involving key stakeholders and training managers where needed.
• Review existing policies to make sure they’re inclusive. Installing an ED&I committee in the workplace can support internal change.
• Even with improved ED&I data in 2023, more still needs to be done, as equality figures remain unbalanced across the board. Hold those in management accountable to change.

Flexible working

In the second half of this year, we saw a wave of employers insisting on workers returning to the office full time and, as a response, many employees started to look elsewhere. While most people enjoyed the flexibility of WFH and found greater productivity, some employers were not convinced. According to a BBC report, 87% of workers believe they’re performing just fine, while only 12% of employers say they have full confidence their team is productive.

Many of the HR leaders that we spoke to said that post-pandemic, they had asked workers to come in three days a week, but received a lot of pushback. People couldn’t benefit from the savings of a five-day season ticket, and, as a result, some employees were asking companies to expense the difference. Under the assumption that remote working was a permanent fixture, some staff relocated further away from their offices during lockdown and were more resistant to coming in for three days.

Since then, most employers have decided to judge flexible working on a team-by-team basis. Certain businesses have found this altered approach to be a popular strategy, as there is not a one-size-fits-all solution. As for travel expenses, the HR leaders we spoke to were unanimously opposed to reimbursing these costs.

However, the rise in the cost of living has shed light on the pressures for employers to help out with rising energy prices. As remote working has become less affordable, some employees have campaigned for businesses to reimburse their energy usage whilst they’re working from home.

Uswitch estimates that full-time home workers increase their daily gas use by 75%, while electricity use is predicted to rise by 25%.

If an employee is seeking financial support, employers agree that encouraging them to return to the office would help with the reduction of home energy usage. Collectively, our HR leaders agreed that they would rather increase salary than recoup energy bills.

Being inclusive of new starters has continued to be a struggle in the remote landscape. Some employers have emphasised the importance of new employees being in the office in the first few months of their role, even if their role is fully remote. By having direct access to their superiors, some employers have noticed learning has been faster, and new starters have built better relationships within their teams.

That said, some employers felt that we should perhaps be embracing the new way of working to be more accommodating to the younger generations, by finding better solutions in the remote world. One HR leader expressed that it’s just a matter of showing them the right tools and changing the mentality of how leaders can knowledge-share. By adapting how we mentor, we can provide learning and development opportunities without forcing them back
into the office.

While hybrid working has its benefits, employers have noticed a greater risk of burnout in those that work exclusively remotely. Some have said that remote workers are more likely to work longer hours to try to keep up with the workload. Given these circumstances, employers have encouraged these members of staff to attend the office more. In doing so, they’ve resolved workload anxiety organically by collaboratively sharing the load without the fear of bothering colleagues over the phone.

At our roundtable, the concluded outlook on flexible working, was that flexibility goes both ways. On the whole, employers were more open to offer flexibility to those employees who showed willing and, in return, met the needs of the company.

• Recent evidence suggests that companies with a 90% remote workforce reported being just as happy with manager-employee face time as those with a 10% remote workforce. Of those with face-time concerns, engagement and culture – not productivity – emerged as the primary challenge.
• 1.8% According to the ONS labour productivity report, output per hour worked was 1.8% higher in Quarter 2 (Apr
  to June) 2022 than the average level in 2019, pre-pandemic.

KEY ACTIONS

• Employers should stand by employees’ flexible working, as productivity remains higher compared to those working in the office full time.
• There’s no one-size-fits-all to hybrid working. Flexibility should be judged on a team-by-team basis, allowing managers to decide what works best for their individual teams.
• If employees are looking for help with their energy usage and/or travel expenses, consider implementing a designated cost-of-living bonus rather than a reimbursement.

Employee Wellbeing

More than 50% of employees want employers to do more to support their mental wellbeing, and feel that workplace stress and anxiety can result in increased absence and dissatisfaction with their job. With this in mind, employee wellbeing has been in the spotlight. By implementing workplace support, employers have noticed a positive shift in office morale as well as sustained productivity. Some have been actioning an individualised approach, whereby one-to-one coaching and therapy sessions are offered to help employees build coping mechanisms when confronted with anxiety and stress.

The wellbeing of newer members of staff is of particular importance, especially those with limited work experience, as they’re less likely to ask for help when their workload becomes overwhelming. Many employers believe this is partly because new starters don’t feel completely comfortable yet within their team relationships, which could be hindered by the lack of social exchanges in remote working.

Successfully onboarding a new employee into the workplace is all about trying to provide opportunities for the new employees to build key relationships and make new connections, whether they are working from the office or from home.

Small interactions can make all the difference when integrating new starters into the workplace. Many employers have encouraged their senior management to take initiative and the time to introduce themselves to new starters whenever they catch them in the office. Saying hello by the coffee machine or sparking conversation in the communal areas of the office, are all simple but effective ways in making a less intimidating work environment.

People don’t want to be ignored or feel excluded from decisions that directly relate to them. Be transparent with your staff about the business’s performance, your frustrations, your hopes, and any news. Encourage open plan areas in the office where staff can communicate with each other. Offer regular 1:1s and listen. You’ll encourage buy-in from staff if they’re feeling heard. Listen to their concerns and observe how they feel more valued as a result.

Relationships at work

According to m3, half of people stated that company culture is the most important factor when deciding whether to accept a new role, while 41% said that culture is one of their main considerations. This suggests that publicising and promoting the company culture should form a key part of the recruitment process, yet businesses are failing to effectively capitalise on this opportunity. Disappointingly, one in 10 businesses do not promote their company culture to potential new employees at all.

While flexible working remains highly sought after, the office social life has become tumbleweed to some. In the hybrid world of working, Friday has become a popular WFH day for many employees — a world away from pre-pandemic Friday evenings when co-workers would gather and go for drinks.

The HR community has had their fair share of challenges in reintroducing a post-pandemic social life to the workplace — with one notable issue being the increased popularity of sobriety. In fact, 26% of 16–24-year-olds are not interested in drinking alcohol at all. Our HR leaders recommended social activities such as sporting events, bowling and even candle-making workshops, with the most creative approaches being the most well-received among staff.

Recognition needn’t be in the form of cash, and reward needn’t be in the form of a prize. A simple ‘well done’ in front of the wider team can do wonders if it’s genuinely delivered. Even better, see how well an unexpected early finish on a Friday goes down! Offer employees the opportunity to listen to your reasons for making decisions. By giving them a glimpse into your rationale as opposed to barking orders, you’re much more likely to incite trust. For the business and staff to feel a collective sense of purpose, you’ll need to tap into their emotional values and personal visions. Offering them the opportunity to come together as part of a team effort will enhance this, so be sure to encourage teamwork and open communication.

KEY ACTIONS

• HR leaders are planning more inclusive work events that cater for sober employees.
• With Friday evening socials off the table, employees are enjoying more activity-based social activities.

Employee Turnover

Employee turnover rate and retention both play a crucial role in shaping the success of an organisation. By prioritising staff retention, HR teams can build a loyal workplace with increased productivity and a positive impact on the company’s overall performance. It’s important to make sure there’s a balance between managing the turnover and implementing successful retention initiatives. When the balance is right, employers can expect productive, thriving employees who are fulfilled and excited about contributing to the long-term success of the business. Reducing employee turnover requires a proactive approach that supports the longevity of your employees.

A successful onboarding process is vital for ensuring new employees feel welcomed during what can be an uncertain time. Successful onboarding goes much further than administrative tasks and paperwork, to ensure that the new employee is given as positive start as possible.

If you don’t have an HR team or dedicated person who can help with this, use your office manager to help with onboarding. The process should start before their first day, and can include a welcome message alongside a pack on what they can expect in their first week or month. Supporting the social aspect of your company ahead of their start date can be beneficial. For example, a coffee or drinks could be organised with your new hire and the rest of the team so that they see some familiar faces on their first day.

Encouraging employees’ work-life balance goes a long way to supporting their wellbeing and overall happiness. From the top down, by promoting a culture that values the importance of personal time, employers and leadership teams will find that that staff are more energised and productive when at work.

There are a number of ways that HR teams can implement this, with one of the easiest being flexible arrangements such as remote work options and flexi-hours. Importantly, managers should also set realistic workload expectations to avoid excessive overtime and prevent burnout.

Leading by example and promoting self-care, offering resources for stress management and wellbeing initiatives will further demonstrate the business’ commitment to supporting a healthy balance between work and personal life.

Having personal development initiatives in place provide employees with the necessary knowledge and support to excel in their role. By investing in continuous learning opportunities, employers are demonstrating the ways that they value their staff, prioritise their growth and offer opportunities for career advancement.

Summary

In 2022, we witnessed trends like the Great Resignation and quiet quitting, which formed the basis of recurrent recruitment and retention difficulties. In response, we have also seen employers prioritising the upskilling of their existing staff to compensate for hard-to-fill roles. If you’re doing this, we encourage you to put in place a clear career development
plan. This allows staff to progress in new areas of the company or role, motivated by a supportive structure and the promised rewards of expanding their skills.

In 2023, we expect to see the ratio of job vacancies to candidates to be more equally matched, ahead of the Great Rebalance. The January “big move”, where employees leave positions in the new year after bonuses are paid, is a trend that we see repeated year after year. With this in mind, we advise employers to recognise the employees who have gone the extra mile in their EOY appraisals and to consider offering competitive salaries and career development training for the new year.

At Tiger, we expect to see flexible working as a continued attraction to jobseekers in 2023, and we encourage employers to offer hybrid working as part of their employment package. Like many of the employers at the roundtable, we suggest judging flexible working on a team-by-team basis, to better meet the needs of the employees and company.

At our roundtable, job perks were a discussion highlight in the context of 2023 retention strategies, and we were pleasantly surprised to hear about some of the innovative ways companies were prioritising employee wellbeing. Organised activities such as massages and mindfulness lessons were most popular among staff, with the consensus being that these directly impacted improved morale and positivity.

Free office lunches were also suggested as an easy win. Employers noticed an increase in office attendance when they provided food, and plan to continue organising free meals as part of making a small difference in the cost of living. One HR leader also mentioned that this was a great way for new starters to socialise with other staff, as they found attendance was up and everyone took some time to chat whilst on lunch.

As many as two-thirds (67%) of employees who have free food at work class themselves as “extremely happy” or “very happy”.

Some HR leaders are also finding value in employee apps that provide financial advice, mindfulness techniques, yoga etc., which employees can access at any given time. Some of these include Welbot, Headspace for Work and Ben. Private financial planning was another retention strategy that some employers were looking to help their employees within 2023.

KEY ACTIONS

• Ahead of the January big move, recognise the employees who have gone the extra mile in their EOY appraisals, and consider offering competitive salaries and career development training for the new year.
• The key to retention in 2023 is securing a strong benefits package. Where relevant, this should also be updated to suit the hybrid working model.
• Employee wellbeing is in the spotlight for 2023. HR leaders are trying to incorporate mindfulness into the workplace, as well as perks that make employees feel valued.

The post Retention and Acquisition Trends appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

Table of Contents

• What is recruitment and selection
• Difference between recruitment and selection
• Diversity in hiring
• Writing a job specification
• Writing a good job ad
• Creative candidate attraction strategies
• What to look for in a CV
• How to conduct an interview
• Tailoring interview questions
• The offer process and securing a candidate
• Best practice onboarding process

We have matched exceptional jobseekers with fantastic businesses since 2001 and, for those looking to recruit staff, the recruitment and selection process has changed drastically since then. The pandemic instigated a significant shift in the way we work, and therefore a change in the desires of both businesses and jobseekers.

Now, we’re seeing another dramatic shift in hiring. Both the pandemic and the calls for increased diversity in the workplace have forced many businesses to transform their recruitment and selection processes. From the conversations we’re having with employers in the wake of this, it’s clear there is a need for a simple, straightforward guide to the basics of the recruitment and selection process from start to finish.

What is recruitment and selection?

Recruitment and selection processes refer to the procedure of finding suitable candidates for a company to fill job vacancies. It involves identifying the requirements of a job, advertising the position, defining the requirements of the position, and choosing the appropriate candidate for the job.

Learning the recruitment and selection process effectively is essential for employers who want to recruit suitable staff, save the business time and optimise resources. Following each step of the process through to selection will also lead to better retention rates and long-term hires.

Difference between recruitment and selection

What is the difference between recruitment and selection?

Recruitment refers to the process of finding potential applications for a role. If you’re working with a recruiter, this might be with an initial briefing to understand exactly what you’re looking for, so that they might then write a job ad, search for candidates, and provide a shortlist. Once you’ve signed off on this, the next step would involve an interview process. Selection then follows, which is the route to hiring your preferred employee from those you’ve met.

In other words, selection is the process of choosing the right person for the job.

Recruitment and selection policy?

A comprehensive recruitment and selection policy ensures consistency in the process and helps to manage expectations for all parties. Such a policy serves as a guiding framework that outlines the organisation’s principles, procedures and best practices for attracting, assessing, and hiring potential candidates.

Firstly, a well-defined policy ensures consistency and fairness throughout the recruitment process. By establishing clear guidelines and criteria, it helps minimise any potential biases and ensures that all candidates are assessed on their merits and qualifications. Moreover, a recruitment and selection policy promotes transparency, both internally and externally. It provides employees with a clear understanding of the company’s hiring practices, ensuring a consistent approach and reducing ambiguity or confusion. Externally, it presents a professional and ethical image of the company, fostering trust between jobseekers and employers. Additionally, a robust policy helps mitigate legal risks and compliance issues by ensuring adherence to applicable laws and regulations. It outlines procedures for handling sensitive information, ensuring confidentiality and data protection.

Overall, a recruitment and selection policy is crucial for maintaining a fair, efficient and legally compliant recruitment process, ultimately leading to the identification and hiring of the most suitable candidates for the organisation’s needs.

Tiger’s recruitment and selection process

Let’s look at Tiger’s recruitment and selection process.

Diversity in hiring

Diversity is about including, embracing and empowering a range of people by respecting and appreciating their age, gender, ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation and education. Diversity is important because everyone deserves to have the same opportunities in the workplace. However, due to discrimination, prejudice and systemic racism, this is rarely the case. So, if a workplace promotes diversity and inclusion through actionable initiatives, it can help provide opportunities for those from underrepresented groups.

Everyone brings a unique perspective to the workplace and, if an office is diverse, these different perspectives can make organisations stronger and more successful. There have been many studies to support this, one being the McGregor-Smith Review, which found that the benefit of having a representative black and ethnic minority workforce would add an additional £24bn a year to the UK economy, which represents 1.3pc of GDP.

Protected characteristics under the Equality Act

Legally, unlawful discrimination is dealt with under the Equality Act 2010 (applicable in England, Scotland and Wales). There are nine protected characteristics under the Act:

• Age
• Disability
• Gender reassignment
• Marriage and civil partnership
• Pregnancy and maternity
• Race
• Religion or belief
• Sex
• Sexual orientation

The Act states that unlawful discrimination includes:

• Direct: Someone is treated less favourably than someone else because of one of their protected characteristics
• Indirect: When an employer applies criteria to all employees, where as a result, those with shared protected characteristics are discriminated against
• Harassment: Unwanted behaviour that relates directly to someone’s protected characteristic – could be in the form of intimidation, humiliation, hostility or offence
• Victimisation: When an employee is treated unfavourably because an employee has made a complaint, raised a grievance or given evidence in respect to a complaint about discrimination

The Act states that employers must not discriminate against those applying for employment during the recruitment process.

Effective tools for encouraging diversity include:

• Blind CVs
  • Removing names, ages and genders from CVs before they are passed to the hiring manager
  • These can be still read in a certain way, so should not be the only measure put in place to remove bias
• Skills testing
  • Using skills tests as the first step in the recruitment process can help jobseekers progress through to the following stages in the recruitment process, based entirely on their skills
  • This can help remove bias based on protected characteristics in the first stage of the recruitment process
• Creating a role-based scorecard for interviews
  • Using a set scorecard for each interviewee which is weighted towards essential skills/ characteristics – this can make interviews more objective
• Diversity targets
  • These can be based on the location of the office (reflecting the general population of that area)
  • Communicate your diversity targets to your recruiter in the first instance
• Including a hiring metric based on diversity
  • If an employee’s potential contribution to the diversity of a team is taken into account in the recruitment process, it will result in a more diverse talent pool

Find a more comprehensive guide to diversity in recruitment, and read our diversity and inclusion in the workplace guide. If you’re looking for a diversity and inclusion or freelance HR consultant to help your business, get in touch today.

Writing a job specification

A job specification (job spec) or job description is a document created for candidates to understand the details of the job, before they apply for it. It’s an easy way for them to understand what the job will entail and conclude if it’s the right position for them.

Why is a job spec important?

• It will convey the company’s expectations for the position in a transparent way
• It helps the business stay competitive in the market, as well as prove its investment in employees through details about benefits and company culture
• It will help distinguish between suitable candidates and those who don’t have essential skills or requirements
• It makes the recruitment process easier from the very start, as the job spec clearly sets out expectations
• It gives the candidate a clear understanding of the role and what’s expected from them
• It can attract and entice candidates
• A good job spec comes across as professional and organised, helping to represent the employer brand in a positive light
• The more detailed the job spec, the easier it is for a recruiter to find the best possible person for the role

Format of a good job spec:

• Information about the company
• Day-to-day duties
• Requirements/skills/experience needed (this can be separated into essential and desired categories)
• Personal attributes
• Benefits of the role

Writing a good job ad

If you’re not using a recruiter, it’s likely, that you will also write a job advertisement for the role, in-house. The ultimate goal of a job ad is to attract the best talent, so it’s worth taking the time to write a fantastic ad.

While you want to attract the best talent, it is essential that all role expectations are communicated clearly and understood by the employee before any type of commitment is made. If a role includes a large amount of administration or irregular hours, mention it – otherwise, a discrepancy between what an employee expects and what can you deliver could arise.

Other elements to consider when writing a job ad include spelling and grammar, tone of voice, a clear heading, simple language and enthusiasm. Writing the best possible job ad will also reflect positively on your employer brand, which ensures your opportunity is considered by the right candidates.

There are also common mistakes that we see many employers make when writing their own job ads. The following are some things to avoid:

• Exaggerating the position or company
• Ignore company culture
• Be evasive about salary

What’s the difference between a job ad and a job description?

Remember, a job ad and a job description are different: a job description describes what a candidate does for you, whereas an ad should focus on what you can for them.

If using a recruiter, it’s likely they will write the job ad for you, once you’ve provided them with a thorough job description or spec.

Creative candidate attraction strategies

Our MD, Rebecca Siciliano, hosted a webinar in March 2019 where she offered her expert insight to hiring managers around creative attraction strategies in times of uncertainty. She discussed:

• Going above and beyond what’s enshrined in law
• Creative attraction trends
• Streamlining your hiring process
• Remuneration and reward
• Work-life balance and flexible working
• Working initiatives and career progression
• Sending positive messages to candidates

Find the full session below:

When looking to attract talented candidates, it’s useful to think outside the box (and the traditional job ad). It could be as elaborate as a creative job ad or as simple as setting up a strong referral process. Looking for inspiration to get you started? Head over to our blog on creative ways to attract the best talent.

Remember, by 2025, millennials will make up three-quarters of the workforce, so it’s incredibly important you take them into account as part of your attraction strategy. You can do this by investing in your digital presence. They were the first generation to grow up surrounded by digital technologies, and as such, will rely on the internet for information about your employer brand. Invest in building a digital presence that’s attractive to the best talent, with consistent messaging and experiences across all sites. Don’t be afraid to use social media for sourcing – LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Glassdoor can all be effective.

What to look for in a CV

When looking at candidates’ CVs, it’s important to know what to look out for with a quick scan of the document. Below, we outline what we look for in a great CV, along with common misconceptions we’ve heard along the way.

CV Layout

So, what should a CV look like? Look for:

• Consistent formatting
• Correct spelling/grammar
• No more than two to three pages in length
• Simple design and font use

Education

Education is clearly important, but often employers will rule out candidates who don’t have a bachelor’s degree, even if they are clearly intelligent (e.g. strong A-levels but have chosen not to go to university). We see this quite often when hiring personal assistants and office managers. Remember, if you do rule out a candidate based on their university qualifications, you’re at risk of narrowing your pool of candidates and potentially excluding your dream hire!

Interests/achievements/further information

These sections are a fantastic opportunity to learn more about a candidate on a personal level, behind the CV. This, in turn, gives you a better indication of their personality and if they are likely to be a good fit for your workplace. It’s also a good indication of the level of imagination and creativity a candidate possesses, as there isn’t a lot of room for individual expression on the rest of the CV. As recruiters, we actually use this information to help us do just that, so we would highly recommend more than a cursory glance at these sections.

Soft skills

It can be tempting to hire prospective employees based on specific skill sets, past experience, and referrals. Personality type and soft skills like patience and enthusiasm, however, factor into workers’ success just as much (if not more) than their ability to carry out the role. Unlike industry experience and technical skills, soft skills often cannot be taught, though they can make or break a successful onboarding process.

While CVs may outline the soft skills of a candidate, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to completely understand the breadth of these from this alone. Therefore, you should always try to go into soft skills in more detail in later stages of the process.

Movement on a CV

A number of employers find a CV with little movement unusual or an indication that the candidate won’t stay in one role for long. While this may have been the case in the past, it’s now very normal for a candidate to ‘hop’ from one role to the next, particularly millennials.

When you review the CV of a job-hopper, consider the following points:

• The calibre of the companies they have worked for
• Why they might have left their previous roles (ask your recruiter for more information about this if you’re unsure)

Essentially, hoppy CVs aren’t necessarily a negative thing, so never exclude a candidate based on this reason alone.

For more tips, read our blog on how to screen CVs.

How to conduct an interview

Effective interview techniques are essential to get the most out of the experience. If done well, you’ll better understand your employees’ motivations and be better equipped to nurture their desired career path for the benefit of your business.

As the interviewer, it’s your job to make the candidate feel at ease in the situation (as they are probably nervous) when conducting interviews. Remember: a calm, informative and honest interview will ensure the candidate performs at their best, allowing you to ultimately make the right decision. It’s also a good idea for hiring managers to prepare for an interview beforehand.

Set the scene for the interview

There are different types of interviews, mainly consisting of 1:1, panel and group assessments, with 1:1 being the most common. By explaining the format of the interview and what the candidate can expect, will allow them to feel comfortable and will make for more effective interviewing.

Make interviewees feel at ease

If the candidate feels at ease, you will get the best out of them in the interview and have a more accurate representation of their character/ skill set. If working with a recruiter, brief them on what the interview will entail so that they can prepare the candidate on what to expect.

This includes:

• Who will they be meeting?
• What is the interview type (i.e. panel, telephone, video)?
• Will there be a skill or psychometric test?

In the interview, you can make the candidate feel at ease by adopting friendly, open and warm body language. As mentioned above, start the interview by outlining what the candidate can expect. It’s also a good idea to give the candidate an overview of the company and the role as this will allow them to settle in and calm their nerves before answering questions.

There are topics you should avoid venturing into during the interview, as they have no bearing on the candidate’s ability to perform the role successfully. These include those topics to do with protected characteristics (as mentioned above), but also questions about social media accounts and leading questions.

Structure of interview

In the beginning, reiterate what structure the interview will follow and give the candidate an overview of the company and role. This is an effective interviewing technique as it will make the candidate feel at ease and give them time to tailor their answers and choose the best examples.

Next, talk through a candidate’s CV and experience. This, alongside targeted questioning, will take up most of the interview. The goal here is to find out about the candidate, their previous experience and what they’re looking for in a new role. Questions to ask at this stage may include:

• Their reasons for leaving
• Why they want to work for the company
• What can they bring to the role

After your questions, give the interviewee a chance to ask their own. This allows them to show an interest in the role and company, as well as proves they’ve done background research into the company.

End the interview by explaining what the next steps might be and when the candidate can expect to hear feedback. Regardless of how well the interview went, always thank a candidate for their time and finish on a positive note.

How long does a job interview take?

The length of the interview depends on the role, the level of experience and the number of stages in the interview process. We recommend a minimum of 20 minutes for a first-stage interview (if there are several stages). A single interview could take up to 45 minutes, but try not to keep the candidate too long, especially if they are meeting different people.

Tailoring interview questions

While it’s important to tailor interview questions depending on the specific role the candidates are applying for, there are a number of general questions employers should always ask in an interview. Below, we break down the specific types of questions that can be asked when assessing a candidate.

Different types of interview questions

There are different types of questions that an employer can ask when conducting interviews. These include:

• Open and closed questions – closed questions have a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response, whereas open interview questions are those which require further explanation from a candidate.
• Competency/behavioural questions – these are designed to test/ask questions about a candidate’s specific skills or behaviours
• Situational – focuses on a hypothetical circumstance and asks how the candidate would react in that situation
• Probing – often used to learn more about the candidate’s personal qualities, skills and experiences, based on their initial answers to questions

A combination of both competency and situational questions will provide you with a holistic view of a candidate’s thought process and problem-solving abilities. These are open questions and will therefore require the candidate to tell you a bit of a story and paint a complete picture of their experience and approach to work. These should be defined ahead of the interview with the desired competencies in mind.

Closed questions can be useful too. These are the ones that only need the one-word answers. They have their place, especially in an interview environment where you might be asking prospective permanent staff technical questions to test their understanding. Equally, if you’re rushed for time, closed questions can be a speedy way of generating easy conversation at the start or end of a meeting.

Competency-based interviews are becoming increasingly popular, with companies opting to ask broad questions that reveal a candidate’s skills and personality behind their CV.

What is a competency-based question?

Competency-based questions typically lead a candidate towards describing a situation and/or task.

For example, you may start a question by saying:

• Tell me about a time when …
• Give an example of when …
• Describe a time when …
• Have you ever been in a situation where …

Competency-based interview questions always require an example of something a candidate has done in the past (to use as an example of their competency or behaviour in a certain situation).

Pros of competency-based interviews

Competency-based interviews allow you to use a set script or a score-based system for assessing candidates. This typically means that all candidates are asked the same questions, allowing there to be a fair interview process in place, where every candidate has an equal opportunity to shine. Competency questions force candidates to recall their personal experiences, which may then be elaborated on.

Finally, these questions allow candidates to show they have all the experience and capabilities to do the job well.

Cons of competency-based interviews

As with every type of interview, there are cons associated with using competency-based questions. In some cases, candidates spend so much time preparing polished answers that they unintentionally give the impression they have a robotic personality. Also, some may struggle with the open-ended nature of the questions and end up giving poorly constructed or unclear answers. Typically, these are the most challenging types of questions — some employers report that they find candidates will freeze if they feel they’re put on the spot with a competency-based question. Finally, if an interview focuses exclusively on competencies, a candidate might not get the opportunity to convey their emotions or motivations.

Examples of competency questions

Influencing or persuading others:

• Tell me about a time when you were able to change someone’s viewpoint significantly
• Tell me about a time when you were asked to do something that you disagreed with

Interpersonal and team skills:

• What experience have you had working with a team?
• Which skills and personal qualities have you contributed to the teams you have been a part of?
• Tell me about a time when you used tact and diplomacy
• Tell me about the last time you had a disagreement with someone
• Tell me about the most difficult person you have worked with
• What have you disliked in your past jobs?
• What kinds of people do you enjoy working with?
• What qualities do you admire most in others?

Communication skills:

• Tell me about a time when you were successful in getting crucial information from another person
• Tell me about a time when someone misunderstood what you were attempting to communicate to them

Personal adaptability, energy and resilience:

• Tell me about a time when you felt under pressure
• Tell me about a time when your work or ideas were criticised
• Tell me about a time when you felt frustrated by your work

Self-management, self-motivation and self-knowledge:

• Tell me about a time when you acted over and above the expectations of your role
• What have you done that shows initiative and willingness to work?
• What are three major accomplishments from your last role?
• What does ‘success’ mean to you?
• What does ‘failure’ mean to you?
• What motivates you at work?
• What are your interests outside work?
• Tell me about a major problem you have encountered and how you dealt with it?

Problem-solving and decision-making:

• Tell me about a difficult decision that you have made
• Tell me about an unpopular decision you have made
• What significant problems have you faced in the last year?
• How do you work under pressure?
• How would you motivate an employee who was performing poorly?

Conflict management and ethics:

• How did you resolve conflict in the groups or teams that you were a member of?
• How would you resolve a dispute?
• Tell me about a time when you bent the rules. When is it okay to do so?

Personal and career objectives:

• What are your short- and long-term goals?
• What are the most important things you are seeking in a career?
• Who do you admire most and why?
• Why do you want this position?

Knowledge of the organisation and role:

• Why did you apply for this position?
• What skills and personal qualities are essential for success in this role?
• What would you like to know about this organisation?
• What do you believe you can contribute to this organisation?
• What do you know about our organisation?
• Why are you interested in working for our organisation?
• In what kind of work environment are you most comfortable?
• What qualities should a successful manager possess?
• Describe the relationship that should exist between a supervisor and those reporting to him or her

Work experience:

• Tell me about the best job you’ve ever had
• What did you enjoy most or least about your last job?
• What extracurricular activities are you involved in?

Ability, competence and achievement:

• What two or three accomplishments have given you the most satisfaction? Why?
• What do you feel qualifies you for this position?

Stress questions:

• How do you react to criticism?
• Can you accept criticism for poor work?
• What causes you to lose your temper?
• Aren’t you overqualified for this role?
• How long would you expect to remain with this organisation?

Essentially, what you’re looking for is someone who can positively contribute to the business by using their pre-existing knowledge and any new skills they learn on the job. It’s important to establish that they possess the relevant skills for the advertised role, which can be conducted through a small skills-based task.

The offer process and securing a candidate

Congratulations! All your hard work throughout the interview process has paid off and you’ve found your dream hire! Below, we outline the next steps to take to ensure you win over your chosen candidate as quickly as possible.

The pre-offer stage

The offer process is an integral part of securing your dream candidate. Essentially, strong communication and acting quickly are key.

This process begins before interviews start, as communicating timings and setting expectations around the interview process are essential. If working with a recruiter, talk to them to learn important information, such as where the candidates might be in recruitment processes for other positions and salary expectations.

Offer and acceptance

When making an offer to a candidate, this usually begins with a verbal conversation. During this talk, you may mention salary, benefits, an expected start date and reference requirements.

In some cases, there may be some negotiation and working around a counter-offer from the existing employer.

Once the candidate accepts, you will be able to get in contact with them directly (if you’ve been using a recruitment agency up to this point). At this stage, the contract and offer letter is sent to the candidate.

Elements to include in the contract/offer letter

There are a few key points to include in a contract or job offer letter. These include:

• The job title and key duties
• Compensation, benefits and terms i.e. start date, working hours, notice period, probation period
• The name of their direct line manager

You will also need to carry out any background and reference checks and talk to the candidate about when they will hand in notice with their current employer (if applicable).

Finally, communicate any final information pre-starting with the candidate. This could include the start date/time, who to ask for on arrival and how the onboarding process will go ahead.

Best-practice onboarding process

The hiring process doesn’t end at the candidate’s acceptance of the job. Without a smooth introduction to the organisation in the days following their acceptance, you are in danger of alienating your new recruits and impacting their motivation and productivity.

Effective inductions are timely, organised and engaging. The aim is to inspire and excite new starters while giving a good first impression of the company. They should set out an organisation’s mission and vision for them, while educating them about the company’s history, culture and values.

Your employee onboarding process could take up to three months, depending on the level and scope of the role. HR staff, line managers or the office manager can help onboard new staff. We’ve outlined the best practice for onboarding below:

Planning the onboarding in advance

A successful onboarding process doesn’t begin from the new employee’s start date. As soon as the individual accepts the role, you should be managing your new recruit’s perception of the organisation’s brand and the team they’re about to join.

How to structure a new starter’s first day

On a new starter’s first day:

• Welcome them in and show them around the office, all the facilities and their desk
• Introduce them to their line manager, colleagues and senior managers
• Put in place a well-planned timetable
• Make sure they’re aware of any soft benefits that they can take advantage of on a daily basis (casual Fridays, free lunches etc.)
• Tailor the induction to suit the new employee — for example, a graduate’s onboarding is likely to be different to a new employee who has extensive experience with other companies, or someone returning to work after a long absence
• Provide them with a training manual that they can refer to which includes all company procedures, including health and safety and company information

A new starter’s first weeks

It’s a good idea for HR to organise catch-ups with individual managers once they’ve started the role. Communicate to managers that this is an important step in the new starter’s onboarding process, as it will also help them to feel as though senior staff are taking a genuine interest in them and their skills.

The first few weeks are the most important time for any new starter. In this time, they’ll form an opinion of your company which will be hard to change if it isn’t a positive one.

Send around an email asking their colleagues to introduce themselves so that they have informal introductions over a few days. Introducing them to everyone at once will be overwhelming and the recruit is unlikely to remember any names. Organising a buddy who can take them for lunch and show them around the local area is also a good way to relax and orientate them.

Continue holding regular catch-ups and check-ins, and allow different team members to take part in the induction process to draw on their own skill sets and give them some responsibility when training the new starter.

Planning a new starter’s initial workload

Recognise that a new employee will take some time to be able to work at their full capacity. If you enforce deadlines too quickly, you could get the wrong impression of their capabilities as they may be tempted to rush tasks in order to deliver them on time. Small mistakes are likely to be made while the recruit is taking in all this new information, so try to set them small tasks and evaluate their performance after each is completed, ensuring that you give constructive feedback.

Remote onboarding

If onboarding remotely, it’s important that:

• Any necessary hardware is sent to a new starter’s home office
• They have scheduled video calls with their team, their line manager and the person leading their induction
• They have a new-starter guide which outlines all of the systems used for communication e.g. Skype, Slack, Zoom
• They are provided with an e-version of their induction schedule
• They are included in any virtual social events with the company
• Their buddy contacts them regularly about work or otherwise

Remember, the onboarding process can be overwhelming for a new starter. It’s important that everyone in the office reaches out and makes them feel welcome.

If you’d like any additional guidance on recruiting new staff, contact us today, and we’ll walk you through the process. If you’d like to request the PDF version of our Interview and Selection guide, please email us at marketing@tiger-recruitment.co.uk.

The post Interviewer’s guide on candidate selection appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

Fatigue, hot flushes, memory lapses and anxiety are just a few of the challenging symptoms that people going through menopause will face, often while juggling demanding professional roles. Despite this, menopause is still widely misunderstood in many workplaces, leaving employees to “push through” without adequate resources. Research proves that workplace support can make a significant difference: 84% of women who feel unsupported report that menopause symptoms negatively affect their work, compared to 71% of those who receive the necessary help. Businesses cannot afford to ignore this issue if they wish to retain valued staff.

In a recent episode of Tiger Recruitment’s podcast From the Tiger’s Mouth, Jane Leese, Head of the Zurich Office, and Dr Ruqia Zafar, NHS GP and Director of Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy (BHRT) at Future Woman, discussed how businesses can better support employees through menopause. Ruqia highlighted the tangible impacts of menopause on both mental and physical well-being and offered actionable steps that HR professionals can take to make a real difference. This blog will explore those insights in-depth, helping your business cultivate a workplace that allows women to thrive through this transition.

What HR Needs to Know About Menopause

The symptoms of menopause and their severity can vary significantly from person to person. Menopause officially begins after 12 consecutive months without menstruation, but the transition phase, known as perimenopause, can start several years earlier. During this time, fluctuating hormone levels cause a range of symptoms, from the more well-known hot flushes and night sweats to less obvious (but equally challenging) issues like brain fog, joint pain and anxiety.

Ruqia explained in the podcast: “There is a common misconception that menopause is just hot flushes, but it goes way beyond that. Symptoms are going to be all over the body and can impact your mental health. So, you might notice that you’re more irritable, perhaps experiencing more anxiety. And for women who already had a history of depression, they may notice that becomes exacerbated.”

Given that the global population of menopausal women is growing, the ripple effects in the workplace are significant. In 2021, women aged 50 and over accounted for 26% of all women and girls globally. This was up from 22% 10 years earlier, as women are living longer. These individuals are often in senior positions, making their experience and knowledge vital to business success. Losing them due to unmanaged symptoms not only negatively affects the individual, but also the company.

Practical Ways to Support Employees Through Menopause

Open Conversations and Awareness Training

Creating an environment where employees feel comfortable discussing menopause openly is the first step toward meaningful support. A workplace that encourages open dialogue helps reduce the stigma that still surrounds menopause. Ruqia emphasised the importance of raising awareness, noting that: “Many employees won’t feel comfortable talking to their manager about their symptoms unless there’s a culture in place that normalises the conversation.”

One way to achieve this is by offering menopause awareness training for all employees. Organisations like the NHS have successfully implemented their menopause advocates—trained individuals who offer support and resources to those experiencing symptoms.

Incorporating menopause training into your company’s onboarding process can also ensure the issue remains front of mind. Future Woman can provide corporate menopause awareness training to any business looking to open up conversations among colleagues and encourage those experiencing menopause to seek the support they need.

Flexible Working Policies

The symptoms of menopause, particularly fatigue and sleep disturbances, can make adhering to traditional working hours difficult. Implementing flexible working arrangements, such as hybrid models or adjustable start times, can alleviate some of the pressure on employees.

Ruqia recalled an example of a senior employee at the UK Home Office who, after speaking to her manager, was allowed to start her workday later to accommodate severe fatigue. “This simple change allowed her to manage her symptoms without having to take sick leave, and it prevented her from leaving a job she loved,” Ruqia noted. Offering these small but impactful adjustments will allow employees to remain in the workforce.

Physical Comfort and Ergonomics

Employers can make simple adjustments to create a more comfortable working environment for menopausal employees. For example, providing fans for desks can help with hot flushes, while ergonomic workstations can ease the joint and muscle pain that many experience. These accommodations may seem minor, but they can significantly improve day-to-day comfort and productivity.

Mental Health Support

Menopause can bring on or exacerbate anxiety and depression, leaving employees feeling overwhelmed or disconnected. Ruqia stresses the importance of offering mental health resources, such as counselling or peer support groups, to those struggling with the emotional toll of menopause.

Many companies already provide Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) that include access to therapy or mindfulness workshops. However, tailoring these programmes to address menopause-related mental health issues can make them even more effective.

Nutrition and Wellbeing Initiatives

Good nutrition plays a key role in managing menopause symptoms, but it’s often overlooked. Ruqia advocates for a diet rich in antioxidants, omega-3 fatty acids and protein, which can help reduce inflammation and stabilise energy levels.

Ruqia explained that: “Many of the more troublesome symptoms, like fatigue and joint pain, can be managed better through proper nutrition, but most people aren’t taught to realise this.”

Employers can support this by advocating for balanced meal options in workplace cafeterias, providing healthy snacks in the office (perhaps arranging for a regular fruit basket delivery) or organising nutrition workshops as part of a broader wellness programme. This will not only contribute to the overall health of employees experiencing menopause, but to all staff within the workplace.

Tailored Support Makes the Difference

Menopause is not a one-size-fits-all experience. Some may experience relatively mild symptoms, while others could struggle with debilitating fatigue, anxiety or physical discomfort. The key is to offer individualised support, tailored to each employee’s needs.

This could involve adjusting workloads for those experiencing brain fog or allowing extra breaks during the day. By remaining flexible and responsive to individual needs, employers can help staff navigate this transition while maintaining productivity.

Why Investing in Menopause Support is Good for Business

Businesses that take menopause seriously are not just supporting their employees, they are strengthening their organisations. Women in their 40s and 50s often hold key positions and have a wealth of experience and can’t be easily replaced. Creating an inclusive environment where menopause is openly discussed and support is readily available will increase employee retention and loyalty.

As Ruqia concluded: “When women feel supported through menopause, they are far more likely to stay with the company, and their loyalty and productivity often increase.”

Taking Action

The level of workplace support received by those experiencing menopause can make an incredible difference in their day-to-day lives. From flexible working policies and mental health support to nutritional guidance and physical accommodations, there are numerous ways businesses can make a real impact. The companies that get this right will not only improve employee wellbeing but also strengthen their workforce for the future.

Supporting your employees through menopause is an investment in both people and performance. To learn more about creating menopause-friendly environments, you can listen to our full podcast with Jane and Ruqia here.

The post Supporting Employees Through Menopause appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

Sometimes, once your recruitment agency has presented you with a shortlist, you may prefer to carry out a telephone interview ahead of a more formal face-to-face meeting or a video interview with a potential candidate. There are several reasons for this; for instance, you might be looking to relocate someone from another country or have an extremely busy diary and want to make sure that a meeting with a potential candidate is not going to be a waste of time.

In any case, should you follow this route, it is important that, as the employer, you get the most out of the conversation.

• Consider this first conversation with an applicant not as an interview, but as a “pre-interview” or screening process. In this way, you won’t try to cover too much ground in a short time span and you’ll concentrate on getting the really important answers, which will determine whether you invite them in to meet you face-to-face.

• It is not all about the questions and answers. If you have called the candidate, how did he/she pick up the phone? Do they sound on the ball, enthusiastic? Sometimes the negatives can be telling – if you had arranged to call at a particular time and the candidate didn’t pick up the phone, what does that say to you? If they were meant to call you and didn’t on time, if there is not a good reason for this, then again this might raise an issue over timekeeping.

• Keep your questions short and to the point. It is a telephone interview so you don’t want to be on the phone for too long. Prepare five good questions and assess the answers to those. As a telephone interview is one-dimensional, you’ll find yourself concentrating on how a candidate answers much more than you might in a face-to-face meeting. For instance, is he/she answering the questions in a concise manner? Have lots of good examples been given? On the negative side, is the candidate unable to answer your questions fully and is there too much waffle? At the end of the day, trust your gut instinct on the phone as much as you would in an interview. For instance, does the conversation flow? This may be the most important thing you can take from the conversation as it will determine whether they can communicate in the way you would like with someone they haven’t met before.

• Finally, at the end of the call, keep your options open. It sounds obvious, but there is no need to commit yourself by telling the candidate that you will be in touch regarding a face-to-face meeting. Much better to thank them for their time and say you’ll be in touch either way.

• Once you have put the phone down, take time to think about the interview and digest how things went. As always make sure you are speaking to a number of people on the telephone so you have comparisons.

On the hunt for new permanent or temporary staff? The Tiger team can help organise telephone interviews as a pre-screening initiative. Get in touch today.

Looking to find out more about hiring? Our complete interview and selection guide for employers covers best practices on many steps throughout the interview process.

The post Interviewers, Here’s how to conduct a telephone interview appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

Businesses have long been focused on DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) efforts and, in the past few years, advances have been made to address gender, race, and ethnicity as employers strive to reap the benefits of a diverse workforce. Despite this, neurodivergent individuals have often been overlooked. And, given that 15 to 20% of the global population is neurodivergent, there is much opportunity to improve.

Below, we explore the benefits of neurodiversity at work and actionable strategies that HR professionals and management teams can implement to empower neurodivergent employees. Neurodiversity experts, Toni Horn, a neurodiversity consultant and Founder of Think Differently; and Kassandra Clemens, a transformational coach and Founder of Heal Your Confidence CIC weigh in with their thoughts.

What is neurodivergence?

Neurodivergence is an umbrella term that encompasses individuals who have at least one condition that alters their cognitive function. These could include Asperger’s, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyslexia, dyspraxia, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), epilepsy, and Tourette’s. Many of these individuals contribute effectively to the workforce, especially in businesses that offer personalised initiatives and soft benefits.

For employers seeking to accommodate neurodivergent workers, it’s important to be aware of the correct terminology and what it entails. Spring Health defines the following terms:

• Neurodivergent refers to a person or group with atypical brain functioning
• Neurotypical refers to individuals who are non-neurodivergent
• Neurodiverse is a mix of people from the two groups. Supporting a neurodiverse workforce means accommodating neurodivergent individuals

Benefits of a neurodiverse workforce

Numerous studies show that diverse businesses are more innovative and agile due, in part, to a greater variance in thinking and approaches. This can lead to disruptive breakthroughs by offsetting a tendency for companies “to all look in the same direction,” according to Harvard Business Review.

Neurodiverse individuals are often excellent problem solvers, due to their ability to think in non-typical ways and identify solutions that other employees may not find.

Toni Horn explains how “those with Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) might excel in pattern recognition and detail-oriented tasks, while individuals with ADHD could offer high levels of creativity and dynamism.” Kassandra Clemens adds: “they may benefit the workplace through their ability to ‘dream deeply’, demonstrating visionary abilities.”

Companies that embrace neurodiversity have reported impressive statistics. They are “45% more likely to report market share growth and 70% more likely to capture new markets,” Toni explains. Furthermore, she highlights the economic impact, stating, “in the UK, increasing employment rates for people with autism could add £23 billion annually to the economy.”

An increase in reputational value is also a considerable return for employers investing in a neurodiverse workforce. Hiren Shukla, Neuro-Diverse Centre of Excellence Leader at EY summarises that “our clients want to do business with companies that do good. Candidates want to work with companies that do good.” With Gen Z and Millennial jobseekers increasingly desiring to work for organisations that are positive contributors to society, a neurodiverse hiring programme can allow employers to tap into diverse talent and receive a boost in reputation.

Further, neurodivergent employees are on average more loyal, and likely to stay at a company for longer than neurotypical workers. According to JP Morgan Chase, their Autism at Work initiative discovered that neurodiverse hires were “90% to 140% more productive than employees who had been at the company for five or 10 years”. Therefore, investing in accommodating neurodivergent workers will not only provide a positive reputational boost, but can also create loyal, well-oiled teams that approach tasks in creative and dynamic ways.

Steps to create a supportive workplace culture

The bedrock of supportive workplace culture for neurodivergent workers is, as Pamela Furr notes in a Forbes article, to create “an open and safe environment where employees feel comfortable speaking up about their accommodations”. Key to this is ensuring employees are not penalised when asking for accommodations and that these conversations are kept confidential.

Leadership plays a pivotal role in fostering this environment. “Leadership from the front is crucial,” Toni emphasises. “When company leaders openly support and advocate for neurodiversity, it sets a powerful example for the rest of the organisation.” Leaders should be trained not only to understand neurodiversity but also to recognise and nurture the unique talents of neurodiverse employees. She notes that “by doing so, they demonstrate a commitment to inclusivity and diversity that can inspire others within the organisation”.

Businesses can consider creating their own, tailored awareness programmes for employees. For example, PWC implemented a neurodiversity interactive learning programme for all 32,640 UK employees. It “explores the topic of neurodiversity and includes bite-sized resources, as well as stories and experiences from PWC employees.” By learning from the lived experience of employees, the programme is designed to help the rest of the workforce understand neurodiversity and how they can best accommodate neurodivergent co-workers.

If an employer doesn’t have the budget for an awareness programme, inviting a neurodivergent speaker to educate staff is an option. Gaining an understanding can help avoid discriminatory scenarios, as Toni recounts a neurodivergent woman whose promotion was retracted, stating, “her employer expressed concerns that she wouldn’t be able to handle the pressure, a decision based more on stereotypes than her actual abilities and performance.”

Hope Gillett, writing for PsychCentral, discusses numerous ways employers can take steps to evolve their workplace culture to be accommodating to neurodivergent employees. From offering designated quiet areas and providing headphones to “prevent distraction or overstimulation”, to including breaks in long meetings to allow employees to “re-centre”, and “eliminating mandatory attendance at work social events”. Recognising that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to workplace culture, and adding small initiatives that appeal to neurodivergent employees may work wonders in fostering a healthy and inclusive working environment.

Inclusive hiring practices

While the benefits of a neurodiverse workforce are clear, organisations often struggle to recognise and tap into this talent pool. Toni states, “with an estimated 15-20% of the population being neurodiverse, this is a significant segment of potential talent that can contribute to various industries.” HR professionals should actively work to identify and attract neurodiverse talent, going beyond traditional recruitment channels. This can be done by engaging the local community, and partnering with groups such as “government agencies, non-profits, vocational rehab centres, educational institutions, or offices for disabilities”.

Harvard Business Review states, “the behaviours of many neurodiverse people run counter to common notions of what makes a good employee”, which often includes “solid communication skills, being a team player, emotional intelligence, persuasiveness, salesperson-type personalities, and the ability to network”. When hiring managers adhere to the above criteria, neurodivergent employees are often at a disadvantage when applying for roles. This issue is echoed by Claire Hastwell, who notes that “many superficial norms, such as a strong handshake or looking someone in the eye, are difficult for neurodiverse individuals to perform.”

Instead, Kassandra suggests employers provide full interview information in advance for neurodiverse candidates, allowing them to prepare adequately and showcase their skills effectively. Kassandra states, “reasonable adjustments benefit everyone! When a business treats diversity as a company asset, it naturally caters to the whole workforce.”

Including task-based assessments or job trials that mirror actual job responsibilities will also allow neurodiverse individuals to adequately showcase their skills.

One interview method that can help neurodivergent jobseekers feel at ease and demonstrate their potential is discussed by Robert D. Austin and Gary P. Pisano, entailing “comfortable gatherings, usually lasting half a day, in which neurodiverse job candidates can demonstrate their abilities in casual interactions with company managers.”

Employers should consider offering new recruits neurodiversity awareness training to allow them to get up to speed with inclusive practices. As part of this, Pamela Furr suggests including an “introduction to neurodiversity, explaining what it is and how it affects different people in different ways.” In addition, during onboarding, employers may wish to assign a mentor or buddy to help new employees navigate the workplace and understand company culture, which can be particularly beneficial for neurodivergent hires. If you’re unsure where to begin, becoming familiar with these DEI recruitment guidelines is a good starting point for employers.

Conclusion

Empowering neurodiversity at work involves leadership by example, inclusive policies, open dialogue, and ongoing adaptation of company processes. By embracing neurodiversity, companies not only benefit neurodiverse employees but can also enrich the entire organisation. Kassandra concludes, “creating a truly accessible work environment benefits employee retention, closes skills gaps, and prevents employee burnout.”

For HR professionals and organisations looking to be inclusive towards neurodiverse professionals, the key lies in a commitment to diverse hiring, educating employees on accommodations, and taking steps to nurture neurodivergent employees that allow them to perform at their best.

The post Empowering Neurodiversity at Work appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

What is the role of AI in recruitment?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping the recruitment process across industries. AI offers innovative tools that have the potential to improve efficiency and enhance decision-making when searching for talent. However, the integration of AI in recruitment also presents unique challenges that businesses must be prepared for.

AI in recruitment refers to the use of machine learning algorithms and other advanced technologies to automate and optimise various stages of the hiring process. From candidate sourcing to onboarding, the adoption of AI tools in recruitment aims to enhance the effectiveness and speed of hiring decisions.

The past year has already demonstrated how AI can revolutionise the way businesses use technology, and we expect this trend to continue. Some other technological innovation examples include augmented reality, the Internet of Things and 5G technology.

Why is AI important for recruitment?

The use of AI in recruitment has become increasingly vital as companies strive to handle the increasing volume of applications while ensuring quality hiring decisions. AI enables recruitment teams to work more productively by speeding up time-consuming manual processes like screening CVs.

By automating repetitive tasks and leveraging data-driven insights, AI not only saves time but also improves the accuracy of candidate assessments.

To read more about the business-changing benefits of AI, request our roundtable report today.

Benefits of AI in recruitment

1. Streamlining candidate sourcing

The use of AI tools has changed the way recruiters source and engage with candidates. By leveraging algorithms, machine learning, and data analytics, AI tools enable recruiters to identify top talent more efficiently across platforms like LinkedIn, job boards, and internal databases.

AI-driven platforms can process vast amounts of data in seconds, scanning professional networks and internal databases to pinpoint candidates who best match the requirements of a role. These tools help to streamline sourcing, freeing up valuable time for recruiters to focus on more strategic, human-centric aspects of the hiring process.

2. Automated CV screening

CVs remain at the heart of most job applications, offering recruiters a snapshot of a jobseeker’s experience, skills, and career aspirations. However, reviewing hundreds of CVs for a single role can be incredibly time-consuming and impractical, particularly when recruiters are managing multiple vacancies.

AI-driven CV screening tools address this challenge by quickly analysing CVs to filter out candidates who don’t meet predefined criteria. These systems leverage advanced algorithms to identify relevant experience, qualifications, and patterns of behaviour that align with the role’s requirements.

3. Improving candidate matching

AI tools can also be used to improve the candidate-matching process. By utilising advanced algorithms, natural language processing (NLP), and machine learning, AI systems can analyse job descriptions and candidate profiles to identify the strongest matches for a role. For instance, in sectors such as business support, finance, and HR, where the competition for talent is particularly high, AI can help recruiters quickly identify the best-suited individuals for each role.

However, while AI can improve the speed and accuracy of candidate matching, it is crucial to incorporate human judgement into the final selection process. Recruiters are able to assess some of the more subtle, interpersonal qualities that AI systems cannot fully measure.

4. Speeding up the recruitment process

One of the most impactful advantages of AI tools in recruitment is its ability to accelerate the hiring process. Automating time-consuming tasks helps recruiters to fill roles faster, particularly in high-demand industries such as technology recruitment and temporary roles that require a quick turnaround. In a competitive job market, securing the best jobseekers quickly is essential, and any delays may result in losing talent to competitors.

5. Chatbots for communication

Chatbots support recruiters to communicate with users via a messaging interface. AI-powered chatbots provide instant responses to candidate queries, keeping them engaged and saving recruiters valuable time.

Since chatbots can respond instantly and out of traditional work hours, jobseekers won’t feel as though their application has been ignored and it gives them more flexibility to conduct their job search around their current working hours.

6. Enhancing candidate engagement

AI-powered tools, such as personalised messaging and feedback systems, play a key role in delivering a seamless and engaging candidate experience. By analysing candidate profiles, preferences, and behaviours, AI-driven platforms can intelligently match individuals to roles that align with their skills and career aspirations. This targeted approach not only enhances job relevance but also drives higher engagement and application rates.

Throughout the recruitment journey, AI can gather and analyse jobseeker feedback, which provides valuable insights to continuously improve the overall process.

AI technology can also improve onboarding processes for new hires, guiding them through company policies and training programmes.

7. Data-driven insights for better decision-making

AI tools can equip recruiters with comprehensive, data-driven insights that help inform hiring decisions by detecting patterns in hiring data, such as common candidate skill gaps, industry trends, or seasonal shifts in talent availability. These systems can forecast a candidate’s success by analysing historical hiring data, enabling recruiters to make more confident hiring decisions.

With data-driven insights, recruiters can gain a clearer understanding of what works and where improvements may be required. This strategic approach ensures greater efficiency and a higher quality of hires.

8. Specific benefits of AI in executive and other types of recruitment

AI’s ability to process complex datasets is particularly beneficial for roles requiring specific levels of expertise, such as finance recruitment, digital recruitment or creative recruitment.

What are the challenges of AI in recruitment?

Despite its advantages, using AI in recruitment poses a few challenges. AI algorithms learn from historical data where there may have been biases in hiring practices. If not carefully monitored, these systems may eventually repeat this bias. While AI can handle repetitive tasks, it cannot replicate human judgement, empathy, or intuition. Over-relying on automation runs the risk of missing intangible qualities, such as value alignment, motivation, or potential for growth, which are often better assessed by real people.

The use of AI in recruitment can also raise ethical concerns. Ensuring compliance with data protection regulations (such as GDPR) is paramount to safeguarding candidate information, maintaining trust and avoiding legal issues further down the line. This is particularly important for sensitive roles in private staffing.

Can AI create bias in recruitment?

AI has transformed the way recruiters operate. However, the rise of AI-driven recruitment has raised concerns about its potential to reinforce existing biases, hindering businesses from building diverse and inclusive workforces.

If historical hiring data contains biases, it is likely that AI will replicate this in candidate evaluations. Businesses must implement checks and balances, such as regular audits of AI systems, to mitigate this risk. HR professionals and hiring managers find themselves on the cusp of a revolution that promises to improve processes, elevate candidate experiences, and unlock the full potential of their workforce. Learn more about this issue in our article on how HR is evolving.

Future of AI in recruitment

The future of AI in recruitment is poised to bring even greater innovation. Predictive analytics, advanced candidate profiling, and emotional intelligence analysis are just a few emerging trends that will redefine how AI is used in hiring.

While AI offers impressive capabilities in automating and optimising recruitment processes, human judgement will remain vital for delivering high-quality hiring experiences. By recognising the challenges of AI and addressing them proactively, businesses can harness the full potential of AI tools without compromising on fairness, quality, candidate experience, or the ability to build strong, lasting teams.

The post Pros and Cons of AI in Recruitment appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

Domestic temporary, contract and seasonal staff can offer benefits beyond leave cover or busier periods – there are plenty of situations where having an extra pair of hands can prove helpful. With an established temporary division, Tiger Private has an ever-growing database of temporary and seasonal chefs, chauffeurs, housekeepers, live-in couples, nannies and other private support staff who are available for a night, weekend, month or even in a temp-to-perm capacity.

If you’re a chief of staff or private PA and responsible for your principal’s staffing requirements, understanding where temporary staff could help can be harder than first thought. As former private PAs and lifestyle managers, our expert team have plenty of experience in ensuring that you have the right levels of support. Here’s our comprehensive guide to hiring temporary staff for a private occasion:

For a weekend away…

Whether it’s a shooting or fishing weekend, or a culinary-themed country retreat, a weekend away is made all the easier with the right help on hand. If your principal is holidaying in the UK countryside, for example, consider hiring a temporary chauffeur for the duration of the trip. You’ll also need a housekeeper to prepare the home for their arrival, maintain it whilst in residence and leave it sparkling once everyone has left. Alternatively, you could hire a temporary live-in couple that can satisfy both roles.

A private chef can look after all catering including menu design, sourcing of ingredients in addition to preparation, service and any required clean up. Similarly, should families be present, a nanny will ensure that Mum and Dad truly relax by taking charge of children, entertaining them during the day and supervising their night-time routine.

If the weekend location is near a major town, contract close protection officers may also be required for your principal’s safety and wellbeing.

For visiting guests at your principal’s main residence…

Your principal’s permanent household staff may need extra support when extended family or friends come to visit. This could mean an extra chef in the kitchen or, if there isn’t a permanent chef on hand, hiring someone to look after the catering so that your family doesn’t need to think about the practicalities when entertaining. You could also look to hire additional housekeepers to maintain guest bedrooms and common areas. For more formal dinner parties, consider hiring temporary butlers to assist with silver service requirements.

If your principal is looking to wine and dine outside of the home, turn to an expert – a contract lifestyle manager can look after all entertainment requirements, making reservations in the hottest restaurants in town or securing seats for the latest theatre.

Should your principal’s guests have young children, treat them to a temporary nanny for their visit!

For your principal’s next event…

Is your principal hosting an event in the near future? Make sure it’s a success by hiring temporary private support for a night. This could range from a whole team of chefs and kitchen attendants, to butlers for meeting, greeting and silver service and housekeepers to prepare and clean the venue. You may even want to consider hiring chauffeurs for a valet service, as well as close protection officers for event security.

For your principal’s extensive travel requirements…

When your principal is hopping from one country to another, having someone to look after their luggage can prove incredibly helpful. As travel packing and wardrobe manager experts, temporary travelling butlers can do just this, ensuring that your principal isn’t without their perfectly pressed tuxedo, ballgown or golfing gear. If your principal doesn’t have permanent close protection officers on hand, hiring temporary bodyguards may be required for additional security purposes.

For your principal’s family holiday…

Should your principal and their family be heading to the slopes over winter or escaping to the heat of summer, you will need to staff their chalet or villa for the length of their vacation. Live-in couples are a popular option for these types of requirements, as they can often look after housekeeping, gardening, chauffeuring or butler responsibilities, as well as training of new staff.
More generally, within a ski chalet or villa, you’ll need to think about hiring a housekeeper for all cleaning duties; a private chef for all culinary requirements, and hosts who can look after elements like airport transfers, logistics, ski hire and other relevant activities.

If your principal would prefer to be seaside, you’ll need to look at hiring yacht crew, such as stewards and stewardesses, deckhands and chefs.

For trying before buying…

If you are looking to hire permanent staff on behalf of your principal, but want an immediate start or a longer probation period, a temp-to-perm arrangement is a great solution. It allows both parties to test out the role and working environment before committing long-term and lessens the risk should it not work out. Generally, candidates looking for temp-to-perm placements are also available immediately, meaning you can get them working as soon as possible.
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Should you need to hire temporary and seasonal private staff, Tiger Private can help. Get in touch today.

The post How temporary staff could help your Principal appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

Updated 31st March 2020

Does being stuck at home mean that the steps you were taking to find a new role have plateaued? You may be surprised to learn that this enforced downtime can give you the opportunity to take stock and actually boost your career prospects. If you’re looking for a job in London during lockdown or a period of self-isolation, here are our tips to help you use this time to your advantage.

It’s time to evaluate

Juggling a job and your personal life while taking the next step in your career requires compromise. Each element takes up a huge amount of time. The result is that job hunting can become a tick-list exercise, crammed into any remaining time in the day, rather than a conscious and deliberate process.

Now is a fantastic time to actually evaluate what you really want from the next step of your career. Ask yourself about your goals and aspirations in order to make a solid plan. You may even take this opportunity to find out more about yourself and which roles may actually suit you. 16 Personalities offers an excellent personality test[1] to help reveal which careers play to your strengths.

Tips to help you find a job while at home

Not only can career evaluation reveal ideas you hadn’t considered, it can also highlight gaps in your experience or skills. Contrary to what you may think, your job hunt shouldn’t just focus on finding your next job. If you take this approach, your skills tend to stagnate and you may be unable to reach for career success in the long-term. The good news is that downtime presents a great opportunity to do things which, once recruitment activities are back in full swing, will put you in a better position than before.

Take an online course

Trying to squeeze extra training into everyday life is hard. However, now you have time to sign up for extra development options which will hopefully help in finding a job. There are a plethora of online training providers with many currently offering their courses at lower prices or even free. Excellent providers include:

• New Skills Academy: Provides several courses covering everything from secretarial/administrative basics to public speaking. You can also get up to 65% off all courses using the code TIGER at the checkout.
• Udemy[2]: Over 100,000 courses on anything and everything from programming software to leadership skills.
• Future Learn[3]: An eclectic mix of courses aimed at broadening your skills and helping your career development.

Professional reading

Expanding your professional knowledge by reading about your role and industry can help bring greater depth to what you do. Not only that, if you’re actively looking for a new role, then relevant reading brings you two more benefits: you’ll be prepared for future interviews and you’ll identify ideal employers!

Career admin and CV advice

How often do you find yourself sending off your CV knowing it’s not quite right for the role advertised, but you haven’t had time to customise it properly? Luckily, you now have time to spring-clean your recruitment admin so this won’t happen again.

Here’s our biggest piece of CV advice while in self-isolation – use this time to update your latest experience, skills and achievements. You can also create a small suite of cover letters relevant to different jobs or niches, ready for customisation in due course. It’s also a good idea to research potential employers, consider questions to ask at future interviews and prepare your own answers to common questions. Don’t forget to take the time to tidy up your social media, paying particular attention to LinkedIn, as this is the first place employers are likely to look when they see your application.

Career development projects

In the last few years, there’s been a major change in what future employers look for. No longer are they satisfied with a list of duties and skills – recruiting managers also want to see evidence of these.

There are a number of different side projects you can take up which provide evidence and will elevate your skills. They don’t always need to be directly related to your career, but the important thing is that they showcase skill acquisition.

Examples of worthwhile projects to keep you busy:

• Create an online presentation about your profession aimed at sixth formers or university students
• Write a paper or article about a development in your field and publish it on LinkedIn
• Become a volunteer on a helpline and improve your communication skills

Keep in touch

With everyone stuck at home, it’s actually a good time to network. You can arrange video meetings, pick up the phone, or even fire off emails. Importantly, don’t forget to keep in touch with your recruitment agency. Keeping them in the loop will help ensure that you’re ready to go when there’s a fantastic job for you to apply for.

Downtime doesn’t have to feel unproductive. In fact, in career terms, using downtime wisely is an opportunity you should grab with both hands! Use it effectively and you’ll be perfectly positioned to take the next step in your career.

If you’re looking for more CV tips, interview advice or other blog posts to help you during the lockdown, our Insights page can help.

Author bio: Andrew Fennell is the Founder of CV-writing advice website StandOut CV [4] – he is a former recruitment consultant and contributes careers advice to websites like Business Insider, The Guardian and FastCompany.

[1] https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test

[2] https://www.udemy.com/

[3] https://www.futurelearn.com/courses

[4] https://standout-cv.com/

The post Five tips to boost your career prospects while in isolation appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

When it is time to wow your potential employers, it can be difficult to set yourself apart from the rest of the candidates. Once you get your foot in the door with an interview, it is time to make your impression. First impressions count, remember to dress the part and greet those you are meeting with a polite smile and a handshake.

Prepare yourself

As soon as your interview time is confirmed, you should start your preparation. Study the job spec as well as the company website – your research is integral to your interview. The way to wow your potential employer is to show that you care – brush up on your knowledge, and prepare questions which you can ask yourself. Importantly, you should always prepare answers for conventional interview questions, as well as competency based questions asked in interviews. The night before your interview, ensure you get a good night’s sleep, lay out your clothes and allow yourself enough time to get ready. Plan your travel and allow yourself plenty of time to get to your interview.

Positive mind

Positivity is key when job hunting – employers want staff who are happy to pick up any role necessary. A can-do attitude can be the most beneficial tool, so aim to be a part of the yes movement and reap the rewards. Be attentive throughout your interview, and always check your posture – by slouching, you could appear disinterested and bored. Carrying out a SWOT analysis on yourself can be very useful – this way you can break down your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, and work on your weaknesses and see what you can improve. Be yourself, be genuine. Think of your best qualities, and be sure these come across within the meeting.

What to say

Of course, you should know how to present yourself in an interview, and though it may seem obvious, never mention salary expectations within the first part of the interview unless asked. Always ask whether there is room for career growth within the company – by asking this question, it shows your potential employer that you are keen to grow, not only in your career but within their organisation. Another important question to ask is about their current training opportunities. Again, it will show you are looking to further your skills at their company.

Ask about the company culture and where your role would sit in its current structure – this way you can get a better understanding of the team and how you would fit in. Often you will be asked complex questions, it is always best to clarify this question rather than answering it in a way that you are unsure.

Get social

Social media is crucial to modern day business. Get active on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn – most companies run their own social media accounts, so set up professional social media accounts and get following recruiters and potential employers. LinkedIn, in particular, is a powerful tool in the job hunt.

You need to make the most of these social media platforms, as these present a huge opportunity to sell yourself to a huge market. That said, it’s worth spending time thinking about the way you will come across when publishing status updates and tweets. Though posts can be deleted, it can never be guaranteed that they have not been seen. Having an active presence online is of great importance, but remember to keep it professional.

Experience

Be sure to discuss your experience in great detail. Your experience is what will help you get the job. If you have an impressive portfolio of work, take it to the interview with you to show your interviewer what you can do. Explain what you can offer the company and relate your experience to your potential responsibilities.

And breathe…

Yes, interviews can be nerve racking, particularly when you are very keen on a role. Interviewers expect candidates to be nervous in an interview, so if you really want to stand out, try not to be! Be the person who enters the interview room with confidence – polish your shoes and walk in with perfect posture, ensure you carry yourself well. Breathing is so important when being interviewed. Keep your breathing regulated as it will keep you calm and ready for any question asked.

Be confident, yet modest – the interviewer does not want to listen to a candidate bragging. Most importantly, believe in yourself! It is a great achievement for an agency to put you forward for a role. You are the person they are wanting to see, which is a huge positive and something to be proud of.

The post How to stand out from the crowd appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

Increasingly, employers are putting their administrative staff on three months’ notice as opposed to one months’ notice. The motivation behind this is partly a reaction to the evolution of the PA role, and partly a fear of being ‘left in the dry’. Additionally, where we’d previously seen line managers altering an employee’s notice period after having been employed for a year or two, we’re now seeing the three month notice period being incorporated into contracts at offer stage. But how well will an extended notice period be received by future employers when you wish to find a new job?

Is this good or bad for candidates?

On the face of it: great! You have more job security and are safe in the knowledge that your employer will pay you three months’ notice should they ever request you to leave. On the flipside, it may have severe implications at the point you want to progress your career with another business.

My view in most cases is that the latter point outweighs the former. Put it this way: at the administrative level, three months’ notice will preclude you from 90-95% of jobs you apply for. Quite simply, employers want to hire someone who can start either immediately or who are on a maximum of one months’ notice.

Essentially, the administrative market is very different to the executive market where extended notice periods are far more commonplace. It is much more fluid and fast-paced; Candidates simply move jobs more frequently at a business support level compared to an executive level.

Employers putting support staff on three months’ notice realise that it could cost them more, but there is a greater opportunity cost to them by tying someone in for a longer period of time who is able to recruit their replacement and complete a full handover.

What does it mean for you?

Sadly, this puts candidates in a very difficult position because most (quite rightly) don’t want to hand in their notice until they have secured a new position. However this is exactly what job seekers are having to do in order to find another job. Hiring managers just won’t consider candidates with extended notice periods. Employers also frown at two months’ notice, so in effect you have 6 weeks to find a new position – not three months from the time of your resignation.

While there is a real risk of being out of work for a period of time if you can’t find something immediately, remember that temporary work is always an option should you not find a new and perfectly-timed permanent job. Additionally, my advice would be to negotiate any suggestion of a three months’ notice period at offer stage. In many cases it might not be appropriate to challenge this, but unless you do, you may risk running into problems down the line.

If you’d like to contact Tiger for career advice, get in touch today.

The post Is three months’ notice a good or bad thing? appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

Diversity in the workplace refers to the inclusion of different genders, nationalities and other underrepresented groups in the office. Across many industries the lack of diversity is alarming and problematic, however, when it comes to diversity numbers in tech startups, the numbers are dismal.

For example, our 2019 research revealed, in a survey of 1000 UK workers, that only 1% of female jobseekers want to work in startups, compared to 8% of male jobseekers.

This is reflected in Tech Nation’s Diversity and Inclusion in UK Tech Companies report[1], which states that 77% of tech director roles are made up of men, while just 23% are women. Compared to the national average of 71% for men and 29% for women, there are clearly barriers in place that are  preventing more women from working in startups.

When we look at wider underrepresented groups, the situation remains the same. According to Tech Nation, just 15% of those working in tech are from black and minority ethnic backgrounds[2]. If you think your company lags behind and you’d like to learn how to improve diversity in your startup, find our headline ideas to get started below.

Encouraging diversity in your startup infographic

If you’d like any more advice about how you can increase diversity and inclusion in the workplace, please get in touch today.

[1] https://technation.io/insights/diversity-and-inclusion-in-uk-tech-companies/

[2] https://technation.io/news/what-of-people-working-in-tech-are-from-bame-backgrounds/

The post 10 tips to improve diversity in your startup appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

It’s not uncommon for candidates to misunderstand the role of a recruiter. Sometimes our clients engage us because they don’t have the time to recruit, but more often than not it’s because we’re the experts who know how to find the best person for the job. Our clients pay us a fee to present a strong shortlist of candidates to them. That means that when we meet you we’re looking for the signs of a candidate our clients will like. When we interview you, we will create a mental list of all the companies who might want to meet with you.

That said, know that we always act on your behalf too: nothing makes us happier than being able to place our candidates in rewarding roles. If we’re impressed by you, we’ll do absolutely everything within our power to find you the job of your dreams. These are the secrets we wish all our candidates knew:

1. We’ve already completed our background research

Be wary of your online and offline imprints. We often complete Google searches of our candidates ahead of meeting them and certainly ahead of introducing them to our clients. If we can easily retrieve photos of you emptying buckets at full moon parties in Thailand, we’ll probably hesitate to put you forward. Make sure you delete your online photos and anything else that could incriminate you!

Similarly, it’s entirely possible that people within our network have worked with you in the past, so always act with integrity. You never know what may come back to haunt you!

2. We don’t want to hear that you’re a perfectionist

Try and give us something genuine to hold on to rather than a rehearsed response you’ve been using in all your other interviews.

3. It’s about the whole package

Yes, your skills are important. Yes, you should be qualified for the job. But we also want to like you. Try not to let nerves get the better of you so much that you’re unable to show off your personality in interview. Show confidence, smile and tell personal anecdotes to win us over.

4. Demonstrate enthusiasm

Showing enthusiasm for your career aspirations and for the job vacancy at hand will put you in very good stead. We want to work with passionate candidates who really care!

5. We rarely place candidates in roles for which they applied

Don’t get us wrong, this doesn’t happen because we wish to mislead you. Nor is it because we advertise imaginary roles. The main reason is because, quite simply, we often notice qualities about you that mean you’ll be a better fit for something else. Our shortlists are usually created from a mix of pre-registered Candidates – both actively and passively seeking – and those who may have applied for a different role.

Don’t wait for us to advertise a job before reaching out to us! Register so that we can get in touch with you when the perfect opportunity becomes available.

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In today’s working environment, diversity is no longer an aim – it is an expectation. UK law requires that employers promote equality within the workplace and carefully consider whether they are discriminatory on any grounds.

If you’re looking to hire permanent staff, establishing a diverse workforce doesn’t mean paying lip service to legislation – there is, in fact, a solid business case for increasing diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Organisations that employ people from a range of backgrounds, ethnicities, genders, religions and age groups are usually much more successful because diverse people bring with them diverse skills and ways of thinking, which can positively impact the output of any business.

Diversity monitoring* is an important means of implementing and promoting diversity within the workplace. By collecting data on who your organisation employs and analysing the results, you can address the areas of your business that you feel could benefit from greater diversity, while identifying how it has benefited you in other areas.

But creating a diverse workforce doesn’t have to burdensome for hiring managers and the HR community. Here are some important points to consider when evaluating diversity within your workforce and how to monitor it effectively:

Create your own business case

Think about how diversity can contribute towards the commercial strategy of your organisation. Communicate this up to board level to ensure that its importance is understood throughout the business. With C-suite buy-in, you can help to create an environment that fully supports diverse initiatives. Starting a conversation about diversity and investment in people can also help to stimulate morale, and in turn productivity, among existing employees.

Monitoring forms

Collecting data from your employees, interviewed candidates and applicants is easy with diversity monitoring forms. They can help to measure how diverse your current workforce is and allow you to make equality improvements to ensure your HR processes are fair. These forms will give you information about how good your organisation is at attracting people to apply for roles from a broad spectrum of society. It is important that you communicate exactly why you are asking for this information, how you will be using it to inform your HR procedures and how it will help to create a better workforce.

Review the data

Use the data you have gathered to help you design or amend HR policies that will attract and retain a talented workforce. By comparing and contrasting the data you gather in various parts of your organisation, you’ll be able to identify where your organisation could benefit from broadening the talent pool. You can also contrast these figures to the wider labour market to get an idea of whether you need urgently address equality within your workplace – if so, it will be a useful exercise to investigate how and why this bias might have developed.

Take action

If your workplace isn’t hitting its diversity targets, you might need to consider altering the way you approach the recruitment process. Perhaps you need to reconsider the way you write job descriptions or even the recruitment companies you use to help you hire the right candidates. You could consider a collaborative approach to recruitment, which will provide a broad pool of candidates – from social networks, traditional jobs boards and recruiters – and help you to select the right individual with input from colleagues throughout the business.

If you’d like help to broaden your talent pool and search for candidates, our HR recruitment agency is ready to help!

*http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=4071

The post Diversity monitoring – why it’s important and how to do it well appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

Updated 13th November 2020

In today’s market, it can be a tough gig convincing the most talented candidates to choose you over a competitor. While the power of your brand plays an important role, for the vast majority of employers, it’s the job ad that truly attracts applications from prospective candidates.

But how many of us actually get it right? You only have to look at a handful of job adverts online to see there are as many good ones as there are bad. Here are our top nine tips on how to attract the best talent through a fantastic job ad.

1. Spelling and grammar

Correct spelling and grammar is, without a doubt, one of the most important elements of any job ad. Just as you would shake your head upon seeing a typo in a CV, so will a candidate looking for a professional company with which to work. After all, if you can’t get the basics right, what confidence does this give the candidate? Therefore, it’s essential you write it, check it and then ask someone else to check it. Before you publish, check it one final time.

2. Tone of voice

The tone of voice in which you write your job ad will give prospective candidates some insight into the personality of your business and your company culture. Are you a corporate professional services firm looking for polished professional candidates? Make sure you reflect this in your language. Conversely, an advertising and media agency with a more laid-back approach might use informal language to give a more accurate impression of what it might be like to work there.

3. Avoid complex and lengthy headlines

The job headline should be the job title. After all, that’s what people will be looking for! If the job title doesn’t clearly describe the role, or requires further explanation, then use a strapline to do so. As an aside, if you realise you’re writing an ad for a job with an obscure job title that in no way conveys what the role’s purpose is, then consider changing the job title altogether.

If your business is well-known with a good reputation among your targeted candidates, then display the organisation or brand name prominently, either as a strapline or contained in the main heading alongside the job title, as well as incorporated in the body of the advert.

4. Keep it simple and clear 

A powerful advert is succinct and to the point. With four in five job seekers using their phones to apply for jobs[1], it’s essential that you keep things short and sharp, making it very easy for candidates to review what the role is, who the successful candidate looks like, and why they should apply.

Therefore, keep sentences and paragraphs short and use bullet points to list key responsibilities or ideal requirements. After writing your first draft, find the commas and ‘and’s, and replace with full-stops.

It’s also worth avoiding jargon, elaborate design or multiple font styles.

5. Be excited

Do you want your candidates to be excited and enthusiastic about your unique opportunity? Ensure this is reflected in the writing of your advert. Take the following two extracts as an example:

a) The role has direct responsibility for all core operational departments, including sales, account management and administrative operations. Candidates will have P&L management experience and should be confident managing senior staff, each of which manage offices and teams.

b) Fully accountable for the operations and finances, we’ll look to you to maximise revenue opportunities, control costs and guarantee safe and healthy surroundings. We want our staff to love coming to work every day, and your role will make sure this is brought to life, through your fantastic interpersonal abilities.

While seemingly similar requirements are highlighted, which of the two would you rather apply for? If you’re needing some inspiration, check out 10 of the most creative job ads.

6. Why you?

All too often, we see ads that list a whole host of responsibilities and ideal requirements, with absolutely no incentive for the candidate to apply. In this candidate-led market, it’s essential that you demonstrate why a candidate should leave their current position to come work for you. If you can’t sell the pros, one could assume there are none and therefore you don’t really care about your staff.

If you want motivated and ambitious candidates looking to make an investment in you, you should be prepared to do the same and give them some really good reasons as to why you are unique. Beware, however, if your advert is littered with ‘too-good-to-be-true’ empty promises. You may come across as less than credible and walk away with a damaged reputation.

7. What do they want to know?

The structure and content of an advert can of course vary from one business to the next, and from one sector to the other. Generally, you should always include the following pieces of information:

• Overview of the position

• Location

• What differentiates this role from another in the same sector?

• What makes your company so great to work for?

• What experience, skills and qualifications are required?

• How to apply/call to action

This last point would seem a bit of a no-brainer, but a simple instruction of what to do/what not to do is often missed, and obviously, quite important if you want them to get in touch!

8. Which job boards will your candidates be using?

There are a number of general job boards that the majority of job seekers use but there are also many industry-specific ones (for example, within the creative industry), that you may want to consider advertising with. Similarly, your target candidates may not even be looking online, in which case you’ll need to think about the publications they will be most likely to read and when.

9. Let them know what to expect next

Before you post your advert, think about how every applicant will receive a response. It doesn’t have to be personal – though of course that’s always best. An auto-responder that thanks them for applying and says you will get back to them by a certain date if you’re interested in hearing more, is a whole lot better than no response at all.

Keeping prospective candidates engaged in the hiring process will also result in a positive process and increase your chances of winning them over. 

Why is this important? Other than basic good manners, you just never know where they might pop up in the future.
–

Looking for more guidance on job ads? Our complete interview and selection guide for employers will help!

Are you looking to hire a PA, EA or other support staff? Tiger’s consultants are experts in helping you find outstanding candidates for each role. Get in touch today to see how they can help.

[1] https://wearelanded.com/2019/03/29/four-in-five-use-smartphones-for-job-applications/

The post How to write the best possible job ad (and attract the right candidates) appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

Tiger Recruitment operates across multiple divisions for all manner of temporary requirements. From same-day requirements through to long-term contracts, we can assist when your team needs some extra support. At Christmas time, particularly, you may find yourself understaffed or operating on a skeleton staff. We’ve put together a guide on how Tiger can help find the best Christmas temps for your company, regardless of what you require.

Business Support

Our business support temporary division can source Christmas temp cover for a receptionist, your personal assistant or office manager with little to no notice when your staff are on leave. Our extensive database of candidates looking for a Christmas temp job in London will ensure that we can find the perfect temp for your business requirements.

Unlike other temporary recruitment agencies, we take the time to talk to all of of our candidates to make sure that we send you the person with the best skills and personality fit for your business. In addition, our innovative candidate sourcing methods like our referral system, strategic marketing, use of social media and industry job boards ensures we attract the best temporary candidates. Whether it be a one-day placement, or ongoing temp cover, Tiger Recruitment can help.

Private

If you’re in charge of staffing a private household and haven’t considered the extra support you may need for the Christmas period, why not enquire after our private temporary division’s services? Tiger Private is perfectly placed to source highly-trained private chefs to cook a delicious feast; lifestyle managers who can look after Christmas shopping; drivers who can transport your Principal’s family to and from events; and many other household temp staff requirements.

Our private consultants can also introduce you to a black book of experienced professionals. They’re working at the top of their field, in niche areas like fine art, spirituality, menswear, beauty, classic cars and many others. A private consultation with one of our experts makes for a fantastic gift.

HR

Does your HR team need a project consultant to make a head start on a project for the new year? Look no further: our HR team can assist with you with hiring interim HR specialists across:

• DEI
• Talent acquisition
• Organisational development and design
• Learning and development
• HR generalists
• Employee relations
• Employee experience
• People and Analytics
• Reward

Whatever the requirement – if you’re looking to hire a temp or interim cover, Tiger Recruitment can help! Call us on 020 7917 1801 or let us know what you need here.

The post Looking to hire a temp this Christmas? We’ve got you covered appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

In the creative industry, events such as product launches, press events, workshops, dinners and other celebrations are always on the calendar. That said, it’s also possible that you need the right staff to help organise them on an adhoc or contract basis. As leading creative industry recruiters in London, we can source the right people to help. Whether you need an event manager to oversee the planning and executing of a film launch, or extra office support staff to make preparations for an upcoming dinner, we’ve got your temporary event staffing needs covered.

Event managers

Whether in a short- or long-term capacity, an event manager liaises between the directors, sales, operations and marketing teams in order to bring the event together. This person will manage the budget for your event, and sort out any AV or equipment headaches! For more detail, see our event manager job description template.

Events assistants

When hiring event staff in London, know that a great events assistant could make or break your event. Often on the ground at the event site, they will be in charge of ensuring branded items for events arrive on time, help setting up or packing down and assisting the events manager with their role. As a top marketing temp agency in London, we expect events assistants to be across all social media platforms in order to promote the event in the best possible way. When registering events assistant candidates, we’re also looking for a bubbly personality and creative thinker.

Admin or business support staff

This position may not immediately come to mind when looking at your event staffing requirements, but hiring extra admin support staff will transform your event from good to great. An office assistant can organise event prep like goodie bags, name cards and guest lists. We often see PA and office manager candidates with experience in events, who love this aspect of their roles.

Tiger Recruitment is one of the leading event staffing agencies in London. Get in touch with your temp requirements today!

The post Looking for event staff in London? These are the temps you can’t live without appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

When hiring permanent staff, well-prepared open questions can provide a perfect opportunity to break the ice with nervous candidates. They can help to paint a picture of prospective employees in a broader sense by allowing them the opportunity to tell their story in an unstructured way. Hopefully, these should prompt unrehearsed responses, resulting in more genuine and uninfluenced dialogue.

By asking the right open questions, candidates may well unknowingly reveal personal attitudes and opinions. In doing so, you’ll be able to read between the lines and learn much more about your prospective new hire. Here are some of our recommended open questions that will see you getting the most out of your interviewee.

1. What do you like most about [name of profession]? What do you like least, and what do you find the most challenging?

By asking about likes and dislikes, you’ll be able to get a good overview of a candidate’s perception of their role. Reassure candidates that there’s no right or wrong answer here!

2. Tell me about a typical day in your current position.

A CV can only say so much. By asking interviewees to describe a typical day, alongside the question above, you’ll be able to quickly understand the bigger picture of their role and their key motivators for leaving.

3. What was your primary contribution or achievement in your last or current position?

This is a good alternative question to the traditional ‘what are your strengths’ as it allows them to give you a real-life example (as well as a barometer) of what they consider to be strong performance.

4. What was the best job you ever had? What was the worst? Why?

This question will shed light on what the candidate is really looking for moving forward. In describing the reasons for their likes and dislikes, you’ll gain a more honest assessment of what they’re really looking for moving forward.

5. What are your short- and long-term career goals?

By asking candidates to define both long- and short-term goals, you’ll be able to evaluate how your business might be able to accommodate their progression – if at all. If the candidate is particularly ambitious with notions of moving up the career ladder quite quickly, it’s possible they might not be the right fit for a permanent appointment if you can’t offer that.

6. What’s the best book you’ve read in the last year?

Tell me what you liked about it. Interviews are as much about discovering candidates’ personalities as they are about their skillsets. Their favourite book will offer a glimpse into their potential cultural alignment.

7. What is your interpretation of “success”?

You can set so many KPIs, goals, success measures as an employer, but it’s the candidate’s own yard stick that you’ll want to truly have a measure of. With insight into their personal drivers, you’ll be able to better manage them as employees and push them to exceed expectations.

We believe interviews should be organic conversations. While these questions serve as a guide, don’t be afraid to let the conversation run a natural course with a little prompting and direction from you at points. Rigid interview formats will not serve you or the candidate best in being able to show off your best selves.

Get in touch with us today to get the recruitment process started. If you’re looking for more guidance on the interviewing process, read our complete interview and selection guide for employers.

The post Hiring managers: What you’ll learn from these seven open questions appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

With International Women’s Day still fresh in our memories and the looming mandatory gender pay gap reporting deadline in April, the topic of encouraging female talent in the workforce is more prevalent than ever.

Companies are now dedicating time and resources to finding solutions that go beyond simply hiring more women. While this works on paper, it is up to senior decision makers to examine their existing workplace culture and start to implement innovative structures, policies and procedures that make their company a welcoming place to work. Only then will the workplace become one that encourages development and growth.

Need some assistance with your hiring strategy? Tiger can help! Get in touch. 

The post Five ways to encourage female talent in workplaces appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

Gone are the days of ladder-like career progression, where a trainee or entry-level assistant would slowly work up the ranks of their company to eventually reach a senior position. The modern world of work has transformed, bringing with it a new approach to career development, where experience and learning are emphasised and pathways appear in a matrix or web, not ladder form.

In Deloitte’s 2018 Global Human Capital Trends Survey, a 21st century career is defined as “a series of developmental experiences, each offering a person the opportunity to acquire new skills, perspectives and judgement”.¹ Technological advances mean that the value is shifting from technological skills to soft ones – with companies surveyed listing “complex problem-solving, cognitive abilities and social skills as the most needed capabilities for the future”. Therefore, business’ learning and development policies need to focus on supporting their employees to maintain a constant state of learning, while encouraging growth and longevity. After all, with careers now reasonably spanning over 50 years, the 21st century worker must be about to “pivot throughout this journey to align with evolving jobs, professions and industries.”¹

Nowhere is this clearer than in the case of administrative professionals. In years gone by, when you hired a PA, you’d expect their career ladder to be quite linear, starting in a junior administrative assistant or junior secretary position and slowly moving up to take on more responsibility and complexity. However, the modern administrator can now diversify into a range of areas, taking on a wide set of responsibilities and developing their career in ways that were previously unavailable. It’s therefore vital to provide administrative staff with regular training.

Lindsay Taylor, specialist in the professional development of administrative professionals, says there is no longer a stock-standard progression path: “The evolution of the PA role over the last decade has resulted in a profession that is both diverse and complex, as a PA sees, hears and experiences what’s going on in their organisation from ‘the shop floor’ to the boardroom table,” she says.

“With a vast scope and breadth of opportunity for career advancement, there is no ‘one size fits all’ typical career path – this can absolutely be determined and shaped by the PA/EA taking ownership of their own career and ensuring they invest in Continuous Professional Development (CPD) as an essential and integral part of that journey.”

Sharing the responsibility

A 2017 study by the Executive and Personal Assistants Association (EPAA) found that 63.18% of PAs and EAs last completed formal training more than four years ago, but over 70% had undertaken some EA/PA specific training at some point in their career and 92.53% engage in activities outside the office like reading, networking and engaging with online resources, including webinars.²

The disparity between the formal training offered and the training administrators seek to do themselves demonstrates that there is a demand for training initiatives, but currently, support professionals are having to be self-sufficient, investing their own time in ensuring they understand the latest developments in the industry.

This is despite the clear evidence that investing in your staff’s career progression will help with your attraction and retention efforts in the long run. The 2018 Workplace Learning Report produced by LinkedIn found that 94% of employees would stay at a company longer if they invested in their career and for 90% of talent developers, people managers and executives, learning and development is a necessary benefit in the race for top talent.³

Lindsay notes this employee loyalty is incredibly clear when administrators sign up to one of their qualifications: “Those whose organisations more readily support the learning and development needs of their employees are proud to be a part of an organisation that invests in their staff and the resulting loyalty, commitment and engagement from these employees is evident.”

Investing in training as part of a career progression programme means that in the short-term, an administrative professional can share their newfound knowledge with your workplace, enhancing their efficiency and adding business value.

In line with the findings from Deloitte’s Human Capital Trends Survey, the LinkedIn research also revealed that leadership, communication and collaboration were the three most important skills for employees to take away from their L&D programmes, while the most important area of focus for talent development is how to train for soft skills.

Bridging the gap

So what can employers do to encourage the career progression of their administrative professionals? Rebecca Siciliano, Tiger’s Managing Director, notes it’s all about formalising initiatives: “We know that administrators such as PAs, EAs and office managers want to progress, so organisations need to implement formal frameworks to get them there.”

“This means establishing a clear reporting structure, feedback mechanisms and allocating time within the working day which they can devote to training,” she continues.

There are a host of secretarial business courses that can enhance an employee’s soft skills, covering topics like time management, prioritisation, diary management and multi-tasking, but not all training initiatives need be external. Rebecca says mentoring is an excellent way for a junior professional to build their skills, both technical and soft: “If an office manager wishes to move into an operations role, organise for some shadowing or a mentoring session with your operations manager, offering the opportunity to ask questions, observe processes and chat through situations.”

Businesses should also consider looking internally when hiring, allowing existing members of staff to take up a new opportunity before advertising elsewhere.

“A PA may start supporting junior members of the team, but could take the next step by supporting a director or executive, should a position arise,” Rebecca explains.

“It’s an easy transition for the employee and allows them to hit the ground running, rising to the challenge, while showing that the company is invested in their development.”

Lindsay suggests that businesses audit their performance review procedures.

“Performance reviews must offer a true opportunity for an employee to set goals and objectives that are meaningful. Having these to work towards will mean the employee is supported with their learning and development needs and because there is a procedure in place, it will be continuous.”

As with many other elements of the workplace, communication is also essential: “Businesses need to foster a culture of open communication where, not only is it accepted but rather it is expected that you check in with your manager, HR or L&D to let them know how you’re doing, so you can identify any gaps in your skillsets or knowledge,” says Lindsay.

“Businesses need to make it easy for employees to put forward ideas, suggestions and requests for development support. They need to encourage the development of soft skills, things such as communication, rapport-building, team dynamics and working styles, alongside subject specific learning.”

In the case of a PA or EA, examples of this support could include encouraging and valuing suggestions like setting up an internal PA network; attending PA conferences, exhibitions or seminars; working towards a recognised qualification, and subscribing to industry magazines and resources.

Measuring return on investment

Continuing professional development (CPD) may apply to each individual, but should be a business-led initiative.

“Supporting staff with their career progression builds loyalty and engagement, resulting in a positive impact in terms of productivity,” explains Lindsay.

“These closely linked elements ultimately contribute to the overall success of a business, whether that be financially, brand awareness or business reputation.”

For Rebecca, investing in the careers of your employees means a happier workforce that is more likely to go the extra mile.

“At the end of the day, a great employee will want to learn, grow and develop. Therefore, the more you can implement structures to do this, the more likely they are to contribute to the business.”
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Is this your year for career progression? Get in touch with our team today.

1. https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/focus/human-capital-trends/2018/building-21st-century-careers.html#
2. https://epaa.org.uk/time-to-train/
3. https://learning.linkedin.com/resources/workplace-learning-report-2018#

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Finding a competent, let alone great, secretarial agency in London can be a challenge. Let’s face it: there are plenty to choose from! How do you know their ethics are aligned with yours? How can you be sure they’ve properly screened their candidates? And most importantly, how can you make sure you end up with the best talent?

While all valid questions, sadly we can’t give you all the answers outright. But we can give you a couple of pointers on what to look for and how to decide which secretarial agency to entrust your hiring with:

Invite a few agencies to meet with you

The best way of identifying who’s the best fit for you is to meet a couple of office support recruitment agencies so you can compare their services and how their business aligns with yours. There’s a lot to be said for cultural fit. After all, if you recruit regularly, you’re likely to be communicating with us often. Not only that, but you’ll need to trust that we understanding your business and can deliver what you’re looking for.

Brief us in properly

Regardless of time pressures, if you don’t brief us in thoroughly and accurately, we will struggle to fulfill your brief! Permanent or temporary, as your recruiter we want to hear about your business values, culture and a description of the personalities of the team. If it’s a permanent role, it really helps us to understand the main challenges the candidate would be facing, the learning opportunities, the prospects for progression and of course, your ideal wish list. All of this information will ensure we can work efficiently and competently with you to find the right candidate.

Recruitment strategy and metrics

A strong recruitment agency will be able to clearly define their recruitment strategy beyond ‘searching the database’ and ‘putting an ad up’. A recruiter who knows the industry well and is experienced in the office support market will have a clear strategy in place for sourcing excellent candidates. Equally, they will understand the market trends and use these to give you accurate and up-to-date recommendations for attracting fantastic employees.

Referrals are key

Like your hairdresser, mechanic or builder, the best recruiters are the ones referred to you. If you’re contemplating engaging a secretarial agency but don’t have a referral, ask for one! A good recruiter will have strong enough relationships in place with their clients to be comfortable asking them for a reference. As such, you’ll be able to have a candid conversation with an objective third party.

A trusted advisor in all things talent

A recruiter should be a right hand to an HR manager or hiring manager. While sourcing candidates to fill roles is the name of the game, we will equally be able to provide valuable information and advice relating to market trends, future predictions and general guidance around talent such as employee engagement and retention.

Are you looking for a secretarial recruitment agency to assist with your support staff recruitment? Give us a call today.

The post How to identify a great secretarial agency appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

We’d probably all agree that your employer brand is crucial to the successful recruitment and retention of talent for your business. And while branding is of course comprised of your external marketing and communications strategies, it’s also impacted by the ways in which your employees are talking about you outside the office.

Your staff are one of your most important brand assets. They’re walking and talking business ambassadors who have existing relationships with like-minded and skilled talent that you probably don’t have access to. You can count on them sharing all the gory details of what it’s really like to work for you, revealing all the benefits and, of course, the failings too.

So imagine the impact of online employee reviews.

Companies like Glassdoor have revolutionized the permanent recruitment process in that your current and former employees can go online and rate your recruitment process, describe the pros and cons, and even review your CEO. The website has quickly established itself as the go-to resource for job seekers and recruiters to gain honest and valuable insights into your business. And if your company hasn’t yet been reviewed, don’t worry: it will come!

Embrace transparency

It’s not a stretch to imagine the potential damage incriminating reviews might have on your company’s brand. But before you run for cover at the potential damage, consider the scope this transparency could afford you as an employer. If the vast majority of us trust peer reviews and use social media, this is a fantastic opportunity for you to step up and win some incredible branding points, producing an ROI that marketers can only dream about.

Cutting to the chase, if your business is big enough to have a review on a site like Glassdoor, then it’s also big enough to start investing in brand management and monitoring the ways it can be improved upon. Get your staff on board in the following ways:

• C-suite management can optimize their own social media accounts to promote and strengthen the brand

• Human resources can monitor employee satisfaction and identify areas for improvement

• Marketing’s creative skillset can be tapped into to attract new talent

• IT will be maintaining careers pages and blogs through which candidates can find out what it’s like to work for you. Is your website communicating in the right way?

• Freelancers might need to be called upon to create engaging content for the above if your staff are busy with existing workloads

• The team: Conduct a survey and ask your staff what they’d like to see more of at work. You might be surprised by their ideas.

Improve employee satisfaction without spending more

Contrary to popular belief, it needn’t cost the earth to look after your staff; most employees would agree that it takes more than salaries and bonuses to keep them engaged and happy. Easy wins could be the implementation of mentoring programs, making work-life balance a priority and simply ensuring good work is recognized. Above all, show your employees you care and in no time you’ll start to see those 5* ratings, followed by a long orderly queue of star candidates.

Want to know more? Get in touch to discuss how your business can become an employer of choice.

The post What are your employees saying about you online? appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

The UK’s unemployment rate is the lowest it has been in 42 years. So it stands to reason that, increasingly, organisations are finding it difficult to attract the right calibre of candidates because they are fighting over the same pool of talent. Our clients, for example, are turning increasingly to executive assistant search firms in their quest to hire executive assistants.

A wide talent pool is invaluable way of securing the very best employees who will add value and make a positive long-term impact on your organisation.

By casting your recruitment net wide, you’ll be able to reap the benefits of a diverse workforce, which can introduce a new range of skills, experiences and innovative ways of thinking to organisations of all shapes and sizes.

And, by taking steps to widen your talent pool, you’ll be making the recruitment process easier and it will ultimately help to aid the future health of your organisation.

Here are our four tips:

Be flexible in your terms of employment

You’ll immediately be able to broaden your pool of potential candidates by offering flexible working as you’ll appeal to a wider geographic area and people with families.

This might mean you allow your new starter to work from the office or from home, offer them part-time hours or recruit two people who can job share.

Reconsider who you’re looking for

When you’re recruiting for specialist position, it is vital that you look in specific areas to find an appropriately skilled individual.

However, for more generalist roles, you might want to reconsider the key attributes of the person that you’re looking for because on-paper skills do not always equate to a good hire.

For example, ask yourself whether it is absolutely vital that your receptionist has a degree or if your PA has to have undertaken a project management course. You might be able to train them on the job.

Use social media

A diverse range of people now spend a lot of their time on social media, so by being visible on these platforms, you’ll be able to grow your reach and brand awareness beyond your immediate audience.

Think about who you’re trying to reach and hone your social presence accordingly; if you’re hoping to attract graduates, platforms like Snapchat can be useful as this demographic uses it more than any other.

Remember, social media is conversational and you want to get people to interact with you, so keep your posts snappy and topical to generate the most traction.

Review your recruitment method

If your organisation has worked with the same recruitment agency or has used the same in-house recruitment approach for many years, it could be time to consider reviewing these methods.

Most businesses evolve considerably over a period of, say, 10 years. So does the labour market and wider economic outlook, so it is important to review your approach to recruitment accordingly.

You might want to consider collaborative recruitment, which combines the use of external agencies with input from employees and social media, to maximise the pool of candidates.

If you’d like help sourcing a wide range of candidates, get in touch with us today.

The post Four innovative ways to expand your talent pool appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

In today’s job market, finding the best talent is proving harder than ever. While some are looking to hire HR staff in London to help with their people strategy, others are now looking beyond the basic salary package, introducing soft benefits that enhance their employees’ working lives. Could you introduce any of these into your business?

Should you be ready to hire, Tiger can help with all your permanent and temporary hiring needs. Get in touch today!

The post The best benefits to encourage attraction and retention appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

The first Friday in March is National Employee Appreciation Day, a chance to recognise the contribution your temporary and permanent staff make to your business. While it may be tempting to go all out with a catered lunch or one-off celebration, we’d argue the best way to show your employees you care is by implementing long-term solutions that allow them to do their best work. Best of all, it usually doesn’t require a big budget.

Develop a culture of gratitude

Every person working for you wants to feel like they are being noticed and appreciated, so it’s time to start communicating this. Whether it’s a simple thank you, or introducing a section on your company’s intranet that celebrates employee achievements every month, a little recognition goes a long way.

Trial flexible working

Flexible working is increasingly becoming a necessity for most employees – a study by Timewise found that 87% of employees say that they work flexibly or would like to. Therefore, why not trial some sort of flexible working scheme within your business? It could be as simple as offering the chance to come in early so they can leave early, or work from home every now and then. It shows that you trust them to get their work done and recognise that they have a life outside of work.

Invest in learning

Research conducted by totaljobs in 2018 revealed that 9 in 10 employees want their employer to offer more training courses, while 68% of employees have changed jobs because of a lack of learning and development opportunities.² Therefore, why not show your employees you care by hosting lunchtime learning sessions, or allowing time during the working week to catch up on training initiatives? Encouraging an ethos of learning will make employees comfortable and enthusiastic about taking control of their career progression within the working day.

These programmes can also help with attracting new talent – when hiring an executive assistant or recruiting a PA, offering learning and development opportunities can be a huge plus.

Allow for internal mobility

It’s not just a case for onwards and upwards – sometimes, employees will look to their company for help in changing careers. For example, an office manager may be looking to move into HR, or a PA might find they are interested in corporate social responsibility. Whatever the shift, you can show support by welcoming this change and providing the resources wherever possible.

Review your internal communication strategies

People don’t want to feel excluded from decisions that directly relate to them, so if you haven’t already, now is the time to consider a regular internal communications scheme. Maintaining a transparent approach on business performance, goals and future plans will allow your employees to see how they fit into the grand scheme of things and in return, encourage buy-in. They’ll feel more valued if they know what’s going on, and are given the opportunity to express their wins, concerns or gratitude.

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When embedded into your culture, these strategies can also assist with your recruitment strategies. If you are looking for help with PA recruitment or secretarial recruitment in London, Tiger can help. Get in touch today!

1. https://timewise.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Flexible_working_Talent_-Imperative.pdf
2. http://www.onrec.com/news/news-archive/two-in-three-workers-quit-due-to-a-lack-of-learning-and-development-opportunities

The post Five ways to show appreciation for your employees appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

As organisations look for ways to attract and retain the best talent in this ongoing candidate-led market, hiring managers are increasingly examining the importance of employee engagement in the modern workplace. However, just as the world of work continues to shift and transform, what it means to engage staff is also evolving as companies look to the entire employee experience.

A report by Cascade, an HR and payroll software supplier found that 44% of the 447 HR directors surveyed said their biggest challenge for the year ahead would be engagement¹. The concern is warranted – a 2020 report from CharlieHR has found that 86% of SME employees don’t feel they are involved in decisions made at work (to the extent to which they’d like to be)² .

“A motivated employee is not only happier, healthier and more fulfilled at work, but they are also more productive,” says Jonny Gifford, a senior research advisor at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).

“Research has shown a number of relationships between the way people are managed, their attitudes and behaviour and business performance. Organisations can expect to witness greater profit, revenue growth, innovation, staff retention and customer satisfaction as a result of motivation and other aspects of employee engagement.”

As it stands, just over half (58%) of the UK’s employees feel engaged at work³. So how can companies bridge the gap? One option is engaging the services of an employee experience manager. However, if you want to do this yourself, the first step is acknowledging the difference between the two concepts – and how they translate practically into the workplace.

Engagement v experience

“Employee engagement is the connection to the organisation or the brand, the connection to leadership and management and the connection you have with the job itself,” says Niall Ryan, employee experience consultant and former Head of Employee Engagement at Harrods.

“But the employee experience is how the organisation works internally for the employees who work there, encompassing the experiences they have with the leadership and their manager, all the way through to ‘how do I do my job’?” he continues.

“It’s experiences that shape how engaged people are.”

The end result should be employees that not only want to go the extra mile, but “generally demonstrate a high level of awareness surrounding the wider business context of an organisation, and carry out their work with these in mind,” says Jonny.

Going back to basics

However, before even considering how you implement these connections, it’s essential to consider how you are responding to employee needs at a basic level.

“Maslow’s hierarchy of needs applies to engagement – are you taking care of your employees’ hygienic needs, covering the basics such as good food in the canteen, the right tools to the job and clear guidance from managers? Even the basics of recognition – is anyone saying thank you?” asks Niall.

“When you take care of the hygienic needs, the security of a job, more capable management, you can then start to look at forums for two-way dialogue, where people feel like they are listened to, they feel like they can change things, they are contributing,” he concludes.

Creating connections

It is at this point that the brand, leadership and job role start to come into play. But just how do you make sure that every employee is connected with your brand, their leaders/managers and their role?

You don’t.

“It’s a fallacy to engage 100% of your workforce. It’s not possible and I don’t think you should put your efforts into doing that,” says Niall.

“There are people who are fully engaged, disengaged and then there are people in the middle who are passive. The passives – or the swing vote, as I like to call them – are the ones to give more focus to,” he reveals.

“Passives aren’t ineffective people by any means. They are probably the backbone of your organisation. But they are the people you need to be mindful of, because they are not as immersed in their roles as you would like which can be for many reasons; professional and personal.”

In order to ensure your passive staff members don’t disengage, consider facilitating relationships between them and your fully engaged employees, or engagement ambassadors, those who are enthusiastic about every element of your business. It will get these employees thinking more productively about the role they can play in the organisation, all while contributing to a positive employee experience. While the passive workforce should be your focus, “we can’t forget those who are fully engaged – it is still important to show them how valued they are in the organisation,” Niall notes.

Measuring success

A strong engagement strategy is well and good, but with no way to measure it, there’s no way of figuring out if it works. Prior to implementing any new initiatives, you need to capture a clear picture of where your employees are at, where you want to get to and how will you know when you’ve reached your goals.

“A barrier to engagement can be a lack of knowledge surrounding what motivates employees,” says Jonny.

“Evidence-based people management is vital if employers are to understand what factors are de-motivating their employees and make good decisions on which engagement initiatives to employ. This will often highlight things like poor line management or frustrating HR systems.”

The aforementioned data is traditionally collected through annual employee surveys. Getting this method right is crucial.

“Measuring engagement with composite scores carries a serious risk of over‐simplification. It is easy to fall into the trap of combining a range of distinct factors into an unhelpful single metric,” explains Jonny.

“A better approach is to measure distinct components – for example, motivation, organisational commitment, organisational citizenship, shared values, autonomy and employee voice.”

For Niall, the problem lies in the ‘annual’: “Annual employee surveys are falling out of favour quite rapidly, with a shift into pulse surveys.”

“Your business asks the customer in real time what they think about your brand, so it’s an oddity to only ask your employees once a year. The pulse survey process should allow organisations to be agile in its listening and agile in its response,” he continues.

Shifting strategies

As the world of work shifts, your business needs to shift with it. Taking a pulse approach, with bite-sized changes, can make huge differences to your overall engagement strategy.

“The most powerful thing to exist in my career is communications. Whatever you do, you need a core foundation of communicating whatever you’re doing as an organisation that’s both meaningful and relevant for your employees,” says Niall.

This means building and maintaining a robust communications framework within your business that fosters two-way dialogue and leadership visibility and accessibility, keeping employees connected to the brand, purpose, strategy, their leaders and managers and each other.

Managerial recognition is a well-established element of engagement, but where businesses can find additional value is at a peer to peer level: “The strongest relationships in an organisation are often team relationships, so you need to create an opportunity to support and strengthen those relationships and communities,” says Niall.

“Recognition isn’t just about the company doing top-down stuff, it’s about creating opportunities for people to recognise each other.”

At the crux of the matter is an emphasis on the employee voice.

“It’s essential to give employees throughout the organisation a meaningful voice, to challenge or reinforce organisational policies and procedures,” says Jonny.

“Involving employees in these decisions is key.”

Niall agrees, noting it all comes back to the employee experience: “When things aren’t quite working right, identify a group of people who are passionate about helping the organisation and let them be agents of change.”

“By facilitating a cross-functional group of people – doesn’t matter what level – that all have a common focus, you’re offering the wider organisation a chance to really help and get involved.”

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This piece is the fifth in the series: ‘Make your working life exceptional: a guide to creating a better workplace.’ Read part one about mental health here, part two about flexible working, part three about workplace design and part four about diversity.

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1. https://www.cascadehr.co.uk/hr-landscape-2018/
2. https://www.charliehr.com/state-of-employee-engagement

The post From engagement to experience: how employee engagement is shifting appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

In the early nineteenth century, a British entrepreneur named Robert Owen introduced what could be identified as one of the earliest iterations of traditional performance management. In his textile factory in Scotland, supervisors assigned each factory worker a coloured block based on their performance that day. The idea was that high achievers were rewarded and those who needed to improve could do so.

While it has become more nuanced with time, the same traditional practices exist in many modern workplaces today. We may have moved away from manual labour and into a knowledge-based society, but at its essence, performance of employees is still managed by their superiors, with high performers rewarded with a bonus. This begs the question – if the modern world of work has changed, why hasn’t the performance review?

In 2018, a survey commissioned by Ruddington-based HR firm, MHR revealed that 39% of British workers believed the process was ‘pointless’ and ‘time consuming’.¹ What’s more, research conducted by Deloitte found that 91% of companies still follow an annual – or less frequent – salary review system, but only 21% would suggest their programme to others.²

With big names such as Adobe, Microsoft, Deloitte and Accenture scrapping the performance review altogether and corporate thought-leaders agreeing that there is something flawed with their operations, is it time for businesses to seriously consider what value their existing performance management processes bring?

Getting it right

Social media management platform Hootsuite has nearly 1000 employees spread across 14 offices in 13 cities including Vancouver, Toronto, San Francisco, London, Singapore and Bucharest. They scrapped the annual review two years ago, in favour of a programme called Cadence.

For Matt Handford, Senior Vice President of People at Hootsuite, scrapping the annual review was driven by a number of elements.

“We found it was hard to assign ROI to the amount of time being invested in performance management systems. There was a lot of bureaucracy and time spent getting 100% of our employees and leaders to look at themselves through a structure of forms and checklists, and eventually assign themselves a rating,” he says.

“The rating tends to detract from hearing the feedback, and the ability to actually grow and build skill. So we essentially had a process that was taking up a lot of time and was hard to understand. Not only was it not additive, but it was also potentially distracting”

In looking to transform their processes, there were two areas in which Matt and his team identified the most value: “In our case, we chose to focus on conversation, connection and alignment, and development. Because we chose to focus on these areas, we didn’t worry as much about evaluation, capability, long-term assessment and the types of things that allow bias to roll in”

“With the new process, we benefit from the cultural, connective and managerial dialogue that we were aiming for.”

Breaking it down

Hootsuite’s Cadence programme can be broken into two parts: the first is to foster simple, employee-driven, 1:1 conversations with direct managers and the second is to encourage an employee-led and employee-driven conversation on developing and growing capability, from short-term job-specific skill development to career mapping and planning.

“We’re a fast technology business, built on innovation, with a demanding, highly educated, highly marketable workforce that moves at the speed of social media. Therefore, it’s counter-productive to spend a ton of time trying to think about 8-12-month individual goals in the strictest sense,” says Matt.

“What is most valuable is having what we call ‘priorities’. Priorities are going to change, they are going to rock and roll probably week-to-week or month-to-month in some cases in a business like ours,” he continues.

“So we provide a really simple framework, which the employee drives and owns and has the accountability to say ‘here are my top five’ for this week and then their manager just keeps checking in. That becomes the basis of that weekly conversation.”

The second part of Cadence occurs as and when required – usually once a month or once every two months – and covers wider progression, growth and learning.

“The fundamentals in our culture that we see as differentiators and we see as encouraging success are all about the ability to build and develop capability at very high speed,” explains Matt.

“Our employees have high expectations of themselves, the organisation and how quickly they’re going to move through learning and progression in their career, so our performance management system needs to reflect that.”

The results are in

Two years into implementation, and the company is now scoring an 80% positive response on the question Are you having 1:1 meetings on a weekly or bi-weekly basis with your leader? in their annual employment survey. This emphasis on consistent conversations has seen employee alignment improve significantly around performance management.

“In our employee survey, one of the highest scores we receive is in response to the question ‘I understand how my work connects to the ultimate goals of the organisation.’ This question is one of our top 10 highest-rated questions, with 85% to 95% of people responding positively,” says Matt.

“We’re 1000 people, across a dozen countries. We’re way beyond the start-up challenge of having individuals aligned.”

The next challenge is making sure those conversations are as effective as possible.

“We want to make sure that the current conversations are as useful and valuable as they can be, so we’re trying to build that skill in the organisation,” explains Matt.

“It puts pressure on the leader in a different way and on the responsibilities of the employee in a different way, so there’s a developmental muscle that needs to be nurtured.”

With the removal of ratings, the idea of consistency is also an ongoing challenge for the Hootsuite team.

“It’s very difficult to ensure that you’re having a consistent way that people’s performance is being reviewed. We’re trying to create a rubric for a structure – how do we incorporate a uniform, unconscious-bias-proofed structure that allows the experience of the 1:1s and the Cadence programme to stay consistent?” Matt explains.

“For us, that’s the holy grail for the next 12 months.”

What now?

For those starting to move away from the traditional performance management processes, Matt suggests changing your thinking: “If people did the math, they’d see that usually performance management is up there in the top five investments you’re making in your business, but we don’t tend to think about it that way.” “So I would start by trying to think about the process cost and the drag on the organisation, as it frames the scale of a challenge.”

Once you’re clear on the opportunity cost implications, it’s about finding simple solutions that make the process more efficient, and by proxy, adding business value. In doing this, Matt cautions against looking first to complex technology and instead analyzing the business value drivers that you’re trying to hit. At the end of the day, modern performance management offers an opportunity to pull together a high-performing team in a meaningful way, creating community, alignment and dialogue. Whatever your end solution looks like, it is these drivers that should stay front of mind.

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No time to have one-to-one meetings? Perhaps it’s time to hire an executive assistant! As a specialist recruitment agency, Tiger can help – get in touch today!

1. https://www.consultancy.uk/news/17726/uk-employees-losing-faith-in-annual-performance-management-cycles
   2. https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/focus/human-capital-trends/2018/personalized-incentives-talent-management-strategies.html#endnote-sup-2

The post The evolution of performance management appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

When we are briefed on a new piece of business, the first thing a consultant will do is place an advert on the job sites we use, including our website and social networking sites.

We do this to make sure we are choosing the most suitable candidates for the vacancy from the widest pool possible. This is done before a database search as advert response takes time to come through.

Once the advert has been placed, then the consultant will conduct a detailed search on our state of the art database.

Our database holds all our registered candidates – including you! This record will include keywords so that we only speak to you about the vacancies you are going to be interested in. The interview notes taken by your consultant are attached alongside any further information you have provided.

When a consultant carries out a search, they are looking at everything from location, capabilities, type of business and role etc. Languages may be desired, previous experience within an industry may be requested etc. Whilst we keep the search criteria as open as possible, the consultant has a duty to their client to select the candidates that tick the most boxes.

That is before we even get to personality fit! One of the reasons that a Tiger consultant visits each and every one of their clients is to get an idea of culture and the personality profile of the business and people that work there. It is vitally important that we try and get the personality fit right for both the candidate and the client.

So, to sum up, whilst we fill many permanent, temporary and virtual jobs each year, there is actually a surprisingly small pool of candidates who are suitable for each vacancy we take on. This is enhanced further by the way we work at Tiger. It could be that you are contacted almost immediately regarding the perfect role, or it could take the Tiger team a month or so to contact you regarding roles suited to your skills, experience and personality profile.

Sometimes we do get it wrong or candidates change their goalposts. Please let us know of any changes you would like us to make to your profile. Please update us whenever your salary expectation or notice period changes and remember, we need an updated CV from you every 3 months whilst you are job hunting. Send these details through to the consultant that registered you and they can update the system and the wider team.

The post Frustrated that you haven’t heard from Tiger since registering? appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

Retaining a good receptionist for the long term can be a difficult task, but it’s critical if you want to ensure consistency and quality of your client service delivery. Here are five tips you can follow to make sure you hold on to your star receptionist.

Treat them with respect

A receptionist can be treated poorly throughout their working day. With so many calls to answer and people walking through the door, they are bound to deal with a few irate individuals. This, paired with the fact that both full-time and part-time receptionists are seen by many as inferior in the office hierarchy, means that some people think they have the right to be rude. As their employer, it will mean a lot if you can show your receptionist real appreciation. Making the internal environment positive and respectful can really help to make up for the trials of the role.

Set out a clear progression path

If you want your receptionist to stay with you on a long-term basis, you need to make it clear from the beginning that you are willing to customise a clear progression path for them. Not only will this encourage them to stay within the business as they grow, but it also indicates that you value them as part of the team. Alongside this plan, encourage training and be honest about their progression to ensure they know exactly where they’re going in the business.

Put together a competitive benefits package

This almost goes without saying, but don’t undermine the worth of their work with a low salary or minimal benefits. If possible, we recommend tailoring a benefits package to each employee, including your support staff. If not, make sure your benefits package is competitive across the board when looking at other companies. Flexible working, health insurance and opportunities for training are all great places to start.

Find ways to make them feel included

If your receptionist is manning the desk by themselves, it can be quite an isolating job. It’s easy for them to feel like they’re not part of the team, especially if their desk is separate from the rest of the office. The easiest way to encourage inclusivity is to initiate and invite them along to company social events . Even after-work drinks at the pub go a long way to making sure that one of your hardest-working staff members feels included. Someone who feels like they are an integral part of the company will definitely be more likely to stay for the long-haul.

Separately, ask your receptionist for feedback on the role, the systems and processes; invite them to speak up on areas for improvement. Seeing their suggestions implemented, no matter how small, will go a long way to helping them feel as though they’re part of the family.

Offer realistic support

If you’ve never been a receptionist yourself, it can be hard to know the exact tasks they manage on a daily basis. The hundreds of phone calls, emails and conflicting requests are only a small part of their workload. If your receptionist needs support on the desk, the best thing you can do is ask them what they need. If it’s an extra pair of hands during peak phone times, consider hiring a temp to cover those hours. Whatever it may be, listen to your receptionist and take it seriously when they need help.

If you’re looking to hire a receptionist in London , Tiger can help. Please get in touch to discuss your brief today!

The post Five easy ways to hold onto your receptionist appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

When hiring a butler, it’s not enough to look at their professional skills and knowledge – their personality must also be considered. Butlers in London and elsewhere are required to have a diverse set of soft skills that distinguish them from other house attendant roles. The team at Tiger Private is a specialist butler recruitment agency and home staffing agency. As such, understand what to look for in a butler for a private household.

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Looking to hire a butler? Tiger Private can help. Get in touch today. 

The post The qualities every butler should possess appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

Acquiring suitable talent is a challenge for businesses of all sizes. If it’s not a core responsibility, hiring can be considered a burden to hiring managers who are juggling their day jobs alongside filtering through applications, conducting interviews and making hiring decisions.

Collaborating with other members of staff – both senior and junior – throughout the hiring process can play a highly beneficial role in easing the burden off one individual. Having input from colleagues at all levels can also help to ensure that the new employee is filling perceived skills and/or cultural gaps within the business.

In addition to colleague collaboration, collaborative recruitment methods can also help to secure the best talent from your search. Using a single traditional method of recruitment, on the other hand, could possibly take much longer and may not produce exceptional candidates.

So, when you’re next looking to recruit, be collaborative and you could benefit in the following ways:

1. Motivate your team

You can help to motivate the wider team if they have a say in the future direction of the company. If hiring decisions are made in a collaborative way, this can also help a forge a collaborative working culture in the business operations and, as a result, improve productivity within the organisation. Candidates are likely to want to join companies where they feel like they could be a part of this kind of working culture. In addition, by including diverse opinions in the hiring process, you will have the best chance of reducing hiring errors and unconscious bias from hiring managers.

2. An informed decision on both sides

Your team is your company. An interview is not just for your organisation to decide if the individual is right; it can also help the candidate decide if they will fit in well with the team dynamic. New recruits will get a better idea of the culture of the organisation and get to know more about the company from employees’ perspectives if they are present during interviews.

3. Get social

Tap into your existing team’s network by creating an employee referral channel. By making job postings sharable on social media, you are likely to reach potential candidates with similar backgrounds to the people you currently employ, thereby easing the process of expanding your team. Having an employee personally share a job posting will also act as a personal endorsement of your brand, which is one of the best forms of marketing. Incentivising your referral scheme could work wonders to encourage current employees to participate!

4. Set them to work

Rather than asking traditional interview questions to decipher whether or not a candidate is right for your business, set them a task to get a clearer idea of how they work. An interview will give you an idea of personality fit and experience, but setting an actual task such as creating a PowerPoint presentation will give you an idea of the approach and care they take with their individual tasks.

We can help you to find the very best candidates for both temporary and permanent positions – click here to get in touch with one of our consultants.

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At Tiger, our experience in service-led recruitment of senior business support staff is something we pride ourselves in. After almost two decades establishing ourselves as one of the best PA recruitment agencies in London, we felt it was a natural next step to launch our retained executive search division, Tiger Platinum Executive Search, in 2019. Below we break down how our executive search arm can help you find the perfect hire.

What is an executive search service?

An executive search service is one that clients enlist when they want to target both active and passive jobseekers (those who aren’t actively job-seeking) to find the right person for a role. Surprisingly, these passive jobseekers make up 80% of the workforce[1], which means that an executive search service can access a larger pool of talent to find the right person in the market (not just the best active job seeker).

Clients usually reach out to executive search firms when they need to fill a senior-level role, and they want an industry expert recruiter with an extensive network to invest time in truly getting to know the company, position and the candidates that will suit. Executive search recruiters will also approach these candidates on a company’s behalf in a discrete manner, whether they’re based internationally or at home. In the context of Tiger Platinum, we focus on roles such as C-suite level executive assistants, board EAs, business assistants, corporate and private chiefs of staff and senior operations manager roles.

The Tiger Platinum difference

Our executive search division is headed up by David Morel, our CEO and Founder with extensive business support recruitment and financial services experience. When dealing with our clients, David (or one of our executive search recruiters) will sit down with you to formulate a bespoke searching methodology and market map, as well as develop pre-screening requirements and behavioural interviewing questions specific to your needs. This will vary for every requirement, and may well mean our consultants conduct first-stage interviews for you.

On the candidate side, our executive search recruiters meet every person face-to-face, which means we get to know and understand their unique motivations. We will also brief every candidate in person. This helps us to ascertain their enthusiasm, mitigate any concerns head-on and of course, convey all aspects of the position description and company.

The process

You will partner with one dedicated executive search consultant throughout the process, from taking a face-to-face brief to the onboarding stage, and beyond. Once the brief is taken and our consultant has taken the time to understand your business’ needs and fit, we will conduct market research and extensive searches for the perfect hire. You’ll have access to candidate testing beyond the usual Microsoft Office and typing speed tests, including arithmetic, logical reasoning and vocabulary testing, among others. We also offer pre-screened references on your behalf. Throughout the interview process, we will be in daily contact with the candidate to make sure we can deliver interview feedback and updates on changes to their availability and other interviews. Once the offer has been accepted, we’ll stay in touch with you and your new hire to aid with the transition and any onboarding processes.

The benefits

When you enlist Tiger Platinum, you will have access to both active and passive job seekers. In the current candidate-short market, this has never been more important as it’s likely that the best person for the role won’t be searching and actively applying for roles. In addition, an executive search service usually specialises in a particular role or industry, which means they will be well-networked among high-calibre candidates in your field. In our case, we have been recruiting senior-level business support roles since 2001, so are extremely well placed to tap into our networks and source the right candidates.

As our service is retained, it’s extremely tailored and personalised to fit our clients. Our Tiger Platinum consultants will take the time and all available resources to take an exhaustive approach to finding the right candidate. It also allows us to exclusively manage the sometimes tricky relationship between you and the candidates and navigate negotiations with packages or paperwork.

If you’d like to learn more about Tiger Platinum or the executive search process, contact David Morel today.

[1] https://theundercoverrecruiter.com/focus-passive-job-seekers/

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What do recruitment agencies do?

Recruiting the perfect candidate can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Between advertising, filtering through CVs, organising interviews and going through any referencing, it can be a time-consuming and labour-intensive process. This is where an employment agency or London-based recruitment agency like Tiger can help.

Whether you’re recruiting temporary staff or hiring permanent candidates, they can support your search, helping to find the perfect candidate. London recruitment agencies have a wide range of capable candidates on their books, each of whom have been vetted, skills tested and have excellent references. They are able to do much of the hard work for you, compiling a shortlist of the best-matched candidates for the position you are looking to fill.

Job agencies in London will consult their detailed databases and draw on their extensive network of contacts to present a tailored selection of professionals for you to consider. They’ll take the guesswork out of recruitment by streamlining the hiring process, ensuring that your new employee is the best fit for your business.

What happens when you use a recruitment agency

Once you’ve chosen your preferred recruitment agency in London and signed their terms of business, the consultant will meet with you to understand what you’re looking for in your new employee(s), as well as your company culture. From there, they will advertise the role on the relevant job boards and search their database to find candidates that match your requirements. Once they have discussed the role with each candidate, they will send over a shortlist of CVs, from which you can choose who to interview.

The consultant will organise interview times, second and third interviews (if needed) and ensure that each candidate has the appropriate right to work permissions.

Once you’ve found your new employee, the recruitment consultant can also facilitate an offer letter and ensure the candidate is all ready to go with their new role. Using an employment agency makes the entire hiring processes simple and stress-free, giving you time to focus on other elements of your role.

Three benefits of using a professional staffing agency

1. Speed up the hiring process

A well-established and experienced staffing agency can find top tier candidates faster than you can. In no time at all they can tap into a vast talent pool via their existing database, they have a broad network of connections to leverage and utilise powerful sourcing tools that make the process of finding the right job candidates much faster and more productive.

2. Access to the best candidates

Staffing agencies have access to a wide pool of talented jobseekers. Top candidates don’t have time to search job boards. Instead, they turn to a specialist recruiter who they can trust to find them the right role. This includes access to candidates who are actively seeking work as well as talent who are employed elsewhere. Professional recruiters also understand the logistics and marketing value behind each of the top job boards.

3. Market knowledge 

A business’ requirements can often be specific and difficult to find. This is where a recruiter’s industry expertise and market knowledge proves valuable. Once a relationship has been built, the agency will be aware of the qualities and attributes required for someone to be a good fit for your company, and all future hires will be easier and faster. Professional recruiters are industry specialists and can provide regular market insight to hiring teams. They can offer advice on attracting the best talent, salary and benefits, skills shortages, hiring complexities and retention strategies.

Why is having an effective recruitment strategy important?

If you want to improve your success in talent acquisition and establish a sustainable hiring process to ensure you attract and retain the best talent, developing an effective recruitment strategy is critical.

Our Salary Survey highlights the degree to which the priorities of candidates and their motivations for accepting a new role have changed in light of the pandemic. So, take some time to consider what will make your organisation an attractive employer. Will you offer competitive remuneration and benefits packages for example? Will you offer excellent career progression opportunities? Is your business environmentally and socially aware? Will you offer a pleasant working environment and encourage a healthy work life balance for your employees?

What to look for in London employment agencies

There are many agencies specialising in recruitment in London, so it can be hard to know which agency to work with. Look for a job agency that wants to get to know you and your company. A bespoke approach, adapted to your unique requirements, will serve you best when recruiting.

Leading job agencies will be able to assist you with every step of the hiring process. From writing job specifications to determining appropriate salaries to compiling the shortlist, your consultant will use their market insights, professional knowledge and intuition to guide the recruitment process.

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Are you hiring? Tiger can help! We have the expertise to find you the very best individuals. Request a call back here.

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Seasoned hiring managers will understand the demographic and behaviours of their target audience. Is it Gen Z, Gen Y or Gen X? Or, are you looking for return-to-work mums? Whoever you’re targeting, the first rule of engaging with your candidates is this: Don’t wait for them to come to you. Go to them.

Think beyond your traditional advertising boards

To successfully reach your audience, consider carefully the places where you’re likely to capture their attention. Your more senior candidates are likely to be checking the press ads in the Sunday papers and networking at industry events with peers. School leavers, on the other hand, might not have even started looking yet and are happily spending their youth on Snapchat and Instagram. Conduct your research, and don’t be afraid to embrace creativity in your approach.

Think strategically

Advertising your business as an employer of choice on Instagram or Snapchat may come as a surprise to many, but consider the facts: Snapchat reaches nearly 50% of 18-34 year olds on a daily basis and that’s rising. Plus, if you advertise with them you’ll be safe in the knowledge that their click-through rate is 5 times higher than other social channels. Don’t be scared to think beyond the traditional scope to secure the talent your competitors are too lazy to search for.

Speak their language

While you should never compromise your brand integrity, there is a valid argument for adjusting your language so that it might resonate more effectively with your target audience. Common sense dictates here: a more formal approach might be a more appropriate choice for senior candidates, while Gen Y’s and Z’s are likely to appreciate a more approachable and transparent tone of voice.

Why you?

Why should a fantastic candidate choose you over your competitors? What can you offer them to ensure you stand out from the crowd? When crafting your recruitment strategy, consider the kinds of benefits that will appeal to your talent pool. What is attractive to one audience may not be for another. A return-to-work mum is likely to be scouring job boards for flexible hours, opportunities to work from home, and any other benefits that might prove supportive of her family. On the other hand, if you’re seeking a keen bean who wants to climb the corporate ladder and travel the world, demonstrate the ways you might be able to offer that in your advert.

Make the process short and sweet

To engage effectively with your talent pool, keep the recruitment process efficient and the lines of communication open. In interview, maintain a conversational tone and weave into the dialogue the benefits of working there and the culture they can expect once they start. Do not leave people hanging, do get back to them to let them know what they can expect next – even the unsuccessful candidates. Finally, once your chosen one has accepted your offer, continue that communication through the onboarding process and into their probation period.

Get in touch with us today and together, let’s optimise your hiring process.

The post How to talk to your talent pool appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

As it stands, 2019’s job market is full of uncertainty. With Brexit negotiations ongoing and the unemployment rate continuing to drop, knowing how to hire a personal assistant or other support staff can be confusing. In the latest episode of our podcast, Managing Director, Rebecca Siciliano, explains how companies can improve their chances of attracting and retaining talent.

Key findings

• It’s essential to work with your marketing teams – look at the content you’ve got out there and make sure that it’s attracting the type of talent you’re after
• Capture feedback from your current talent on what attracted them to the brand and what they love about working for you
• Embrace tech – have you considered using video? Is your website mobile-optimised? Is the candidate journey optimised?
• Social media goes both ways – while you may be looking at candidate profiles, candidates are now looking at your company profiles to see what it’s like to work with you
• Candidate communication is key. Don’t forget to acknowledge applications – even if it’s an automated response
• Manage expectations – establish the interview process early and keep candidates engaged at every turn. Make sure they know what to expect
• Educate your hiring managers in terms of availability – it’s important to streamline hiring processes as candidates are moving quickly
• Candidates want flexibility – it’s going to be a norm, not a benefit
• If new to your business, introduce flexible working gradually and monitor the results
• Candidates are moving for a 8-10% salary increase. If an increase isn’t within your remit, could your benefits stand out to candidates instead?

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Diversity is no longer a buzzword. It’s business-critical.

Most of us would agree that diversity and inclusion in the workplace is a positive thing for the economy, however, it goes without saying that for many, it’s still a contentious topic. Hiring with diversity in mind is no easy task: among those businesses who have embraced it, hiring managers continue to struggle with meeting the diversity quotas they’ve been set. Ironically, as executive assistant recruitment consultants, we also find ourselves considering fewer candidates when we know there’s a quota to fulfil.

Despite all this, global thought leaders agree that there are great benefits afforded to businesses who adopt diverse hiring, and that those benefits far outweigh the challenges faced in the process.

1. Improved employer branding

Recruiting a range of candidates from various backgrounds is still, unfortunately, an unusual practice. However, the advantages of diverse hiring will position you as a market leader who thinks beyond traditional stereotypes.

For example, it’s a fact that emerging generations like millennials are actively seeking more diverse workplaces; understanding this and their motivations will help you in your recruitment communication; using the right tools to engage them will strengthen your employer branding and position you ahead of your competitors too.

2. It makes you a better hiring manager

We are, sadly, influenced by unconscious and conscious bias daily. Embracing diversity when hiring will encourage you to challenge yourself because you’ll be pushed to stretch traditional boundaries and think outside the square. In doing so you’ll also need to seek new and innovative methods of hiring great talent!

3. It makes our job easier

Culturally, organisations that embrace inclusivity and diversity within the workplace are ones that tend to prize respect and collaborative practices. It goes without saying that when we’re speaking to candidates – whatever their ethnicity, sexual orientation, age or background – if we’re able to speak about those values that are intrinsically embedded into the business culture, it will undoubtedly make you a more attractive employer.

And it’s both attraction and retention of talent that promises to be improved. McKinsey’s Diversity Wins report [1] shows there to be a real correlation between stronger diversity and increased employee satisfaction.

Finally, if we’re opening the doors to more candidates from a range of backgrounds, we’re much more likely to win the war for talent and overcome the hurdles to finding suitable candidates.

4. Good for business

McKinsey’s report explains how ‘companies with more than 30 percent women executives were more likely to outperform companies where this percentage ranged from 10 to 30′. Put bluntly, if you’re making more money, it’s better for you and better for the economy. Embracing diverse hiring means you’ll be working more innovatively too which will also contribute to enhanced company performance.

Recruiting diverse talent future-proofs your businesses as you’ll strengthen your long-term management pipeline. To maintain levels of success, your future leaders will need to develop and equip themselves with the tools required to deal with varied ways of thinking.

If you’d like to speak to our human resources recruiters about your next recruitment drive, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

[1] https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/diversity-wins-how-inclusion-matters

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Updated 21th October 2020

It is now widely understood that job loyalty is a thing of the past, especially among millennials. Despite the effects of the pandemic, the latest Deloitte Millennial Survey revealed that 31% of millennials envision leaving their jobs within two years[1].

This approach to working represents a serious challenge to businesses’ employment strategies. It’s now widely understood that millennials now make up 50% of the global workforce[2], so it’s absolutely a concern worth addressing. When most young professionals choose to work for organisations that share their personal values, these latest stats present great opportunities for an employer brand to engage with talented existing and prospective employees.

And the good news?

You don’t need a big budget (or ping pong tables) to make a positive impact on your employer brand.

Tone of voice

Gone are the days of preachy language, a ceremonial ‘yours sincerely’ and formal communication practices. If you want to attract great talent, start speaking to them in a language they will appreciate and understand. Consider a tone of voice that’s approachable and genuine. Imagine the questions that jobseekers are likely to want to ask, and answer them head-on. Consider asking recent starters for their opinions on how your business communicates compared to others.

Social media

The existence and dominance of social media in our lives mean it’s never been easier to engage and interact with your existing and prospective employees. In a world where two-way conversations have become increasingly important and authenticity is key, social media provides brands a huge opportunity to positively engage with candidates. Depending on your business’s size, you may already have corporate business handles. If you don’t, create them and get communicating.

Your people

Your staff are your best brand ambassadors. Look after them, treat them well and they’ll tell the world about it. A proud employee who enjoys their work will share your business’s achievements with their friends, families and online. Those testimonials are priceless and are undoubtedly your most powerful marketing tool.

Have clear values

According to Deloitte’s 2020 Millennials at Work survey, just over half of millennials are attracted to employers because of their CSR values, and 56% would consider leaving an employer that didn’t have he values they expected[3].  Review and communicate your business’s carbon footprint, CSR programmes, and the ways in which you positively impact the lives of your consumers. These principles could potentially make or break the decision by a person looking to work for you.

What next? What’s the retention strategy?

If you’ve successfully attracted great talent, congrats! Now for the long-term retention. Your employees want to learn, and they’re looking for inspirational leaders. Most would prefer to work with subject matter experts who work as hard as they do. Employ the best, and put in place leadership programs or succession plans to ensure clear progression opportunities.

Be prepared to be flexible. Increasingly, emerging generations value their contribution to their employer not by the hours they put in, but by the quality of their output. Work-life balance has never been more important. Take cues from the likes of Amex, who have put in place a Bluework program that connects different work styles to work places (they’ve also saved millions on real estate).

The perception of your employer brand depends on much more than promotional advertising and bonus packages. Think about how the above points can be dovetailed into a long-term business strategy and you’ll undoubtedly reap the rewards of a talented and loyal workforce for years to come.

Looking to employ someone new? Get in touch today. If you’re looking for more insights, read our interviewer’s guide to candidate selection article.

[1] https://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/about-deloitte/articles/millennialsurvey.html

[2] http://www.marsdd.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Insiders-Guide-Finding-Meaningful-Work-Attracting-Talent.pdf

[3] https://www.pwc.com/co/es/publicaciones/assets/millennials-at-work.pdf

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It’s a phrase we’re hearing more and more. We’re listening to HR managers, with increasing enthusiasm, tell us that flexible working now forms part of their official employee benefits package. But what does it actually mean, and more importantly, what are the implications for businesses?

Earlier this year, the Harvard Business Review ran a Working From Home Experiment with Ctrip, China’s largest travel agent. This demonstrated a 13% increase in productivity and a 50% drop in turnover among workers working from home. Surprisingly, another outcome of the experiment was an increase in loneliness. Yes, workers actually missed the office and the company of their colleagues!

So what does this experiment actually tell us? To our minds, it’s clear. When hiring, employers have nothing to lose by offering their employees flexible working arrangements and the opportunity to work from home, and everything to gain. Some additional benefits to consider are:

• Avoiding the direct and indirect costs of replacing a team member if flexible working isn’t an option

• Improved responsiveness – especially if working in different time zones

• Engaged staff provide a better client/customer experience

• Placing trust in staff breeds loyalty and commitment

• Autonomy drives engagement and job satisfaction

• Reduced costs on office space and equipment (not to mention tea and coffee!)

With benefits like these, why then are businesses still hesitant to adopt flexible working arrangements? Strangely enough, technology is one objection we hear more often than not. While speed of internet access at home is of course going to impact communication, today there aren’t many areas without fast broadband accessibility. By investing in a remote server, employees can log on from home and works just as if they were in the office.

Unavailability for meetings and phone calls is another reason we hear quite frequently. The solution: technology! Skype and other video conferencing solutions are incredibly easy to implement and use. If there are reception issues either with slow broadband or limited phone reception, simply make it clear that meeting attendance is compulsory, and if they can’t be there via a screen, they will need to be flexible on their WFH day.

The obvious main concern is around employees not working when they should be – but if they get the work completed at home at the same pace and to the same quality that they would in the office, does it matter?

The key word in flexible working is ‘flexible’. At the end of the day, for it to be a successful working arrangement, there needs to be lots of this on both sides. From an employer’s perspective, there needs to be certain considerations in place (such as having the technology for employees to dial in or skype), and for employees, the understanding that it only works if their productivity and performance isn’t impacted.

If both parties are open to this, and the result is happier, more productive and longer standing employees then practically, the benefits far outweigh any potential risks.

Get in touch today to find out more about what candidates are truly looking for in their dream employer.

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When it comes to onboarding, the office manager’s job isn’t just about setting up a new starter’s computer, phone and official documents. They are in the unique position of working across all departments, so should also play an integral role in the successful onboarding of new employees through more informal means. We recommend partnering with the HR department to ensure everyone understands their roles and that all aspects of the process are covered.

We’ve outlined three ways an office manager can play a crucial role in settling in a new starter.

Prepare Their Team

One important thing to do beforehand is prepare the team for the new hire. You can do this by encouraging them to invite the new hire out to after-work drinks, organising a team lunch or setting up a team-building activity for the first few weeks they’re at the company. Depending on the role, HR may have organised a person to act as a mentor for them, or they may be receiving a hand over from their predecessor. Check this person has all of the materials and information they need to start this process. If the previous person wasn’t in the role and you hired a temp to fill the gap, ensure the temp has at least a few days handover with the new hire as well.

Talk to Senior Staff

The new starter’s manager will be overseeing their workload. If they are experienced, they will know the best way to introduce information – slowly, with regular check-ins and making sure their new hire is coping with their new role.

What about their interactions with other departments? Take the initiative and chat to each manager about a time they will be available to introduce themselves to the new starter. Once confirmed, make sure you remember to pop it in their calendar so they don’t let it fall to the wayside. This way, it’s guaranteed that the new employee will get some face time with the people around them, and it gives them an opportunity to find out how their role will interact with the rest of the office. This also encourages co-working and collaboration in the office, which is beneficial for productivity and ideas.

Communicate With Them

A new starter’s first day is daunting to say the least, so try to make your interactions with them as friendly as possible. It’s usually HR or the line manager’s role to go over company policies and make introductions, so sit back and wait until they have absorbed this information. Meet them within their first few days to reinforce anything they’re unsure with. Learn about them and make sure they’re aware of any benefits that may be of interest to them. This might be the company’s flexible working policies or social nights out. If you’re working remotely, it’s still important to set up a meeting a few days into their job so you can check in with them.

Above all, it’s important to work with the existing staff so this transition is as easy as possible for your newbie! You’re a natural conduit between HR, management and the new starter’s team; by ensuring everyone is aware of their responsibilities during this time, you’re proving yourself to be an invaluable part of the business’ success.

Check out our other workplace insights to keep up with our latest tips and office trends, or read our Interview and Selection Guide for employers.

The post Three Ways an Office Manager Can Help Onboard New Staff appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

The process of hiring the perfect person for any job is daunting. Using a recruitment company like Tiger makes the process a lot easier, as we have years of experience submitting fantastic candidates to high profile clients. However, even with the best of the best lined up outside the interview room ready to impress, you need to ask the right questions. When an EA is the right hand of your most senior executives, it goes without saying that this process is of the utmost importance when hiring an executive assistant. Here are five questions that you must ask when you’re interviewing your next EA.

1. What skills do you believe are important for being successful in this role?
This question is used to determine if the candidate has the same idea of this role as you do. If the interviewee mentions things such as good communication, the ability to manage a team and adapt to any situation, they will likely have a good understanding of the role. This position goes beyond just scheduling appointments, so you want someone who can anticipate the principal’s thoughts and who won’t be thrown by an unprecedented situation.

2. How do you anticipate the needs of an executive?
This is something that all top EAs should be able to do efficiently. Sure, it’ll take a little while for someone to know your work style and way of thinking, but you want to know the person you’re hiring has the capacity to get to that level. Listen for examples of where they have used their initiative to aid their executive team in the past. You’ll also be able to gauge a little about their working style through this question, so make sure it will work well with you own.

3. How do you prioritise your tasks when you have multiple urgent deadlines?
As the top person of all your secretarial staff, this question is extremely important for an EA because they will have to deal with anything that’s thrown at them. Not only will they have their own day-to-day tasks, but they will be the first person you turn to when you need something taken care of urgently. Listen closely to how they answer, as you want to hear that they can complete tasks under pressure and manage their time effectively.

4. If the CEO gave you confidential information, what would you do if another executive asked you about it directly?
The ability to have discretion within their role cannot be understated for any executive PA. Imagine you’ve just agreed on a merger with another company, but you haven’t made the news public just yet. Your EA is across the situation because they’ve been the one in the office with you, helping to finalise the details. That information is priceless, so you need to be able to trust them implicitly. The response a candidate gives to this question may turn them from potential employee to someone who isn’t suitable for the role. Look for those who will politely but firmly explain that they don’t have the permission to share information to everyone else who asks it of them.

5. How do you deal with an angry or irate person demanding to speak to one of your executives?
You may or may not be aware that your executive assistant will be the one who screens every incoming request to the principal. Depending on their position, an EA may politely decline many requests over the course of one day, and not all of them will go down without a fight. You need a person who can diffuse conflict before it builds into something more. Look for someone who has had experience with a similar situation and ask them to give you a specific example of how they dealt with it.

If you’re looking for an executive assistant or other secretarial staff, Tiger can help with all your temporary and permanent staffing needs. Get in touch with us today.

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Tiger’s recent candidate survey has revealed that up to a third of support staff don’t receive appropriate assistance for managing stress in the workplace, demonstrating a significant gap in the mental health initiatives for EAs, PAs and administrative staff.

We found that 30% of respondents’ employers provided no support or advice regarding relieving stress at work, while 25% said their employer does not recognise when they were stressed and offered little help.

In line with this, recent research from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and SimplyHealth reveals that 37% of hiring managers report stress-related absence has increased over the past year. Furthermore, 55% of UK organisations have seen an increase in reported common mental health conditions over the last 12 months and employees take an average 6.6 days off a year for mental health issues.¹

These findings align with the messages of this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week (May 14-20). The campaign aims to shine a light on the impact stress has on mental health, promoting strategies to manage and reduce stress in personal and professional lives.

As part of this, workplaces need to evaluate their current wellbeing strategies, determining whether enough is being done to address rising stress levels, and by proxy, the mental health of employees.

Here are five ways employers can help to reduce stress in the workplace:

1. Introduce mental health days
You offer your employees annual leave and sick leave, but have you considered mental health days? Offering 1-2 additional days of leave per year gives employees time to recalibrate, deal with personal stressors or simply relax, returning to work refreshed, recharged and a lot less strained. This will also reduce the chances of employees using their sick leave when not actually sick.

2. Consider your office design
Are your employees slumped over their desks, faces illuminated only by their computer screen? Perhaps it’s time to consider how your office is designed. Natural light and ventilation are essential for your employees’ general wellbeing, but elements like peppermint and citrus scents can also help improve productivity and reduce stress levels.² Creating breakout spaces where employees can conduct meetings or simply work in a different environment also encourages them to get away from the monotony of the screen and breaks up their working day.

3. Encourage lunchtime activities
While most full-time employees are entitled to a lunch break, actually using them is another story. One in five works through lunchtime and half of those who do take a break still eat at their desk.³
Therefore, consider introducing an initiative that encourages employees to use their lunchtimes effectively. Organise weekly running sessions, walking meetings, regular yoga sessions or a lunch club, where employees try a new restaurant once a week. By integrating it into formal strategies, it will also remove the stigma of leaving the desk.

4. Introduce and advertise a reporting system
Is it clear who employees should talk to if they are stressed or overwhelmed? Are your line managers equipped with the right tools and resources to address any concerns a stressed employee may have? Every workplace requires a clear reporting system so employees understand who they can go to should they have a problem. This should be mentioned in all onboarding stages and promoted throughout the business regularly. Consider investing in training for leaders to ensure they know what to do when confronted with an employee’s mental health issues.

5. Workplace recognition
Everyone like to hear they are appreciated in the workplace, so encouraging positive interactions and feedback within teams can help increase morale and reduce stress. Employees who have strong relationships with their management have been found to be more engaged and appreciate hearing when they or their efforts are noticed.⁴

Consider scheduling informal chats with managers and team members, providing an avenue for employees to voice any concerns and for line managers to pass on feedback. Showing that team members have the support they need can go a long way in managing their overall stress. Other methods of showing appreciation include implementing an employee of the month award, departmental awards and investing in professional development.
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Does your team need additional support? Tiger can help with all your recruitment in London. Get in touch today!

1. https://www.employeebenefits.co.uk/issues/may-2018/37-stress-absence-increased/
2. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-scents-affect-peoples/
3. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27726859
4. https://inside.6q.io/7-awesome-methods-for-employee-recognition/

The post Are your mental health initiatives up to scratch? appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

Recruiting is no walk in the park. Most hiring managers will know that a bad appointment could potentially cost their business threefold: the cost of searching, the cost of hiring, and the cost of training. So it’s all the more important to get it right first time. Having a structured hiring policy will play an important role in getting the best person for the job. Preparing properly, setting a timeline and applying a uniform approach for interviewing candidates will provide clarity in the decision-making process and ensure everyone is being considered on fair grounds.

That said, we also firmly believe in the importance of rapport-building in an interview, which will probably involve some small talk. This is especially true when hiring an EA, however, in doing so you may find yourself in uncharted territory. If this happens, steer the conversation back to your prepared interview questions and continue. In the meantime, avoid the below topics too:

1. Any subject relating to religion, gender, age, race, marital status, sexual orientation, gender expression and disabilities

That list might appear to be overwhelming, but essentially the premise is the same. Simply avoid asking too many questions that could be interpreted to be bordering on too personal. For example, asking someone what they did on the weekend and receiving a response along the lines of: “I went to a picnic organised by the synagogue with my husband and children,” takes you way off course. Bring the conversation back to your set questions immediately, so as to avoid legal risk both to yourself and the business you’re hiring for.

2. Social media access

Asking for candidates’ social media account information is a no-go area as well. If you want to have a little hunt around to see how the candidate represents themselves publicly online, by all means do that. But if you can’t find them or believe they may have pseudonyms, don’t probe for more info.

3. Leading questions

Asking a question such as, “Your boss must have been pleased about your decision to organise the travel itinerary, mustn’t he?” leads the interviewee to feel uncomfortable about saying anything other than ‘yes’. Avoid leading questions so that the candidate can feel confident answering authentically.

4. Positive reinforcement

Keep the tone of the interview neutral. Expressing to them something along the lines of, “That is exactly the right response and one that we’d expect from someone working here,” gives them an indication of their performance – which is a strict no-no. Maintain a balance between being friendly and neutral in your responses.

5. Textbook questions

Finally, make a bit of an effort with the interview questions. Asking, “What is your biggest weakness?” is a question that the candidate will have probably prepared in advance. Try a couple of unusual questions for a more genuine dialogue.

Looking to hire your next recruit? Get in touch now. If you’re looking for more information on the selection process, read our complete interview and selection guide for employers.

The post Hiring managers, know which interview topics to avoid appeared first on Tiger Recruitment.

Updated 19th March 2021

Along with eating, hydration and keeping active, sleep is one of the integral pillars of wellbeing. A bad night’s sleep can result in memory problems, mood changes, memory problems, a weakened immunity system, increased risk of diabetes and heart disease, memory problems, weight gain and affected balance and co-ordination.

In fact, such is the effect of sleep deprivation, that it costs the UK economy £40 billion a year [1]. Tired employees are less productive – or not at work at all – with research showing that those who don’t get a proper night’s sleep aren’t able to make accurate judgements, are often irritable, struggle with creative thinking and communication, and often late to work.

Sealy’s Worldwide Sleep Census in 2019 revealed that 70% of employees felt they could function better at work if they slept better, while 77% believed they didn’t get the rest time needed to feel healthy and happy [2]. Most worryingly, 11% of workers reported a recent accident at work, due to feeling tired.

Despite these overwhelming statistics, sleep is often overlooked in benefit strategies, even those with a wellness focus. In response to this, business-led membership organisation Business in the Community (BITC) has partnered with Public Health England to create Sleep and Recovery, a toolkit that “provides practical information for all employers on how you can create an environment where employees understand the importance of sleep and recovery and are able to make healthier choices at work and at home”.

The toolkit, available for all businesses on BITC’s website[1], notes that there is plenty employers can do to support employees who may be feeling sleep-deprived, in association with a wider health and wellbeing strategy.

Here are just five ways to do so:

1. Conduct a sleep audit, or encourage employees to self-assess

It’s impossible to measure success without benchmarks. Encourage employees to complete a self-assessment of their sleeping habits, or design one yourself. Once you have an idea of the current situation, you can start to create bespoke policies that suit the needs of your employees. As part of the process, consult your employees about the support they would ideally like.

2. Workspace design

Natural light, temperature, ventilation and humidity are all important factors in maintaining a comfortable working environment – and can affect how employees rest at night. If in the office, make sure all these elements are all at the right level and if not, consider investing in tools like daylight simulator lamps and fans. Creating break-out spaces, where employees can take a moment away from their screens can also prove helpful. If your team works remotely, provide information on how they can best set up their WFH space to ensure their workspaces are as comfortable as possible.

If within capacity, encourage employees to take meetings outside, either with a walk, lunch or just a different environment – this can provide a good break and allow additional exposure to sunshine, which helps establish natural rhythms.

3. Establish and implement training programmes

If you have resources for healthy eating, exercise, mindfulness and general productivity, consider adding sleep management to the list. Arm your employees with knowledge about what causes sleeplessness, small actions they can take to encourage a good night’s sleep and what resources are available should they continue to struggle, like sleep diaries or apps. For example, if any employees have work computers, encourage them to install an app like f.lux [3], which makes the colour of the display adapt to the time of the day.

Furthermore, encourage and empower line managers to open a dialogue with employees about any struggles with sleep, ensuring problems are spotted early and can be addressed as soon as possible.

4. Encourage time off from emails and long hours

While being on call 24/7 and long hours are part and parcel with some industries, where possible, consider imposing blackout times on work emails, allowing employees to truly shut off. In the same vein, if your workplace has a culture of long hours, imposing restrictions on how long employees are at work could help encourage better sleep practices outside of the workplaces – for example, suggesting that employees stay out of the office from 8pm on Friday to 6am on Monday. If employees feel like they have too much work to do, perhaps it’s time to re-assess their workload.

5. Offer incentives for healthy behaviours

Sleep is intrinsically linked to other pillars of wellbeing, so any incentives that address these issues will also inadvertently assist in encouraging healthy sleep behaviours. Initiatives like a cycle-to-work scheme, flexitime, additional leave for staying active and mandatory annual leave can help in the long run.

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Is it time to expand your team with a freelance HR consultant or other HR staff? Get in touch with Tiger today to see how we can help with your staffing requirements.

1. https://wellbeing.bitc.org.uk/all-resources/toolkits/sleep-and-recovery-toolkit
2. http://www.sleep-census.com/

3. https://justgetflux.com/

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