CONTENTS

• My Favourites (Peter Greek from Absolute Systems)
• Article One (A Searching Strategy by by Darren Revell)
• Opinion (Winning the Ongoing War for Talent by Lander Associates)
• Don't Miss This (Invitation to Recruiters' Event - Discounted Rate for Legal Seminar - Discussion Board)
• Statistics (Hitwise Top 10 Recruitment Sites)
• Subscribe/Unsubscribe
• Feedback & Advertising Information

Visit http://www.careersinrecruitment.com for the latest recruitment industry jobs.

My Favourites

Often I find I want a map but do not know the town name or post code. Here are my favourite favourite alternative approaches:

http://www.streetmap.co.uk/ I like this site because it offers you lots of ways to describe the location. In addition to street, post code, place, etc you can use telephone code or even, for the hiker, grid reference. 

http://www.maporama.com allows you specify airports. Most of us wouldn't know what town or post code to use for Heathrow, for example.

http://www.multimap.com if all else fails you can use multimap to point at a map of Britain and just zoom in (provided your knowledge of geography is up to it!)

Peter Greek provides IT support at Absolute Systems

Why not submit your 3 favourite web sites. See the guidelines at http://www.ukrecruiter.co.uk/articles.htm

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Recruiters' Event - 23rd February

Readers of UK Recruiter are invited to register for a free place at the launch event of our latest Annual Recruitment Channel Survey report. Reserve your seat now to guarantee a place:

http://www.top-consultant.com/recruiters_event.asp

Article One: A Searching Strategy by Darren Revell

Searching the Internet is a hybrid skill. It is part creativity and part science. While riding upon the surf, your search success or failure depends upon your sector knowledge, internet search technique, experimentation, creativity and luck. Combine this with a clear and methodical approach and success should quickly follow.

Different search engines find different information on the web, so to utilise your web searching to the maximum, you must first learn which one to use. By all means start out with the popular ones like google but don't be afraid to try others when you are not getting the results you want. The major engines have references to an immense number of web pages and they provide us with the ability to tailor our searches so that we can find what we are looking for in our results. 

Defining a process 
The degree of disorganisation on the web means in general, that the average user of a search engine will often settle for what they can get rather than what they actually wanted. To improve the odds of searching success, a clear search strategy is needed. Having a strategy will make all the difference between regular search success or failure. Here is a strategy in six basic steps.

1. Determine the type of information you need. Determine the type of information you are trying to find (CV, staff directory, client vacancy, case studies for example) and then try and pinpoint the specific data (e.g. the skills, company or job title) you are trying to find. 

2. Create a list of potential search terms. Search terms are those specific words or phrases that best describe the person or company that you are trying to find. The free text nature of the internet and lack of controlled vocabulary that is used, means that you must posses the widest range of potential search terms possible. 

3. Choose specific search tools that will retrieve the type of information you want. Successfully searching the Internet is dependent on you choosing the right search tool for the job. Search tools fall into three main categories. Search Engines, Metasearch Engines and Directory Search Engines. 

4. Construct a search string and conduct your search. These are the words or strings that you actually type into the search engine to control the results that are returned. You can search using a combination of individual keywords or phrases that best match your criteria. Ensure that you make the best use of the Search Engine's advanced features, allowing you to search for example, for keywords in the title or in the url of a web page. 

5. Evaluate your results. Even the most carefully constructed search terms will often retrieve irrelevant information or results with thousands of hits. If you cannot find what you want in the first 15 or so results, then move straight on to the next step in the process. Also don't be surprised if occasionally you click on a promising looking link to find that the page has been moved or deleted. 

6. Revise your search terms if necessary (and it probably will be). Change your search terms using different combinations of words and phrases and you will in turn get different sets of results. Add or remove words that you feel may be influencing your search negatively. Then try again. 
   

Article provided by Darren Revell of Attract Spider.  http://www.attract-spider.com

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Opinion: Winning the Ongoing War for Talent

The ‘war for talent’, a catchphrase coined by executives at the world renowned McKinsey and Co in 1998, is back with a vengeance. McKinsey and Co. found that the most important corporate resource over the next 20 years will be talented staff , which needs to be hired and retained, and our clients know this. There are very good reasons why the recruitment industry is worth over £23bn in turnover per annum, our services and ability to source talented individuals are critical to any corporation’s commercial success. 

With the economy in a period of consistent growth, the search for the best and the brightest people will become a constant battle. Not only will companies have to devise more imaginative hiring practices, they will also have to work harder to keep their best people.

The government has recognised the need to have talented individuals in the UK. by offering more working visas to highly skilled people. Not just for health and education specialists, but in a large number of industry sectors and at all salary levels. There simply aren’t enough skilled people out there to fill the demand. 

A large number of corporate clients in the U.K. have, over the last four years, directly employed specialist recruitment resourcers to identify, approach and employ individuals for their organisations i.e. to headhunt people directly. Originally this was looked at as a cost saving exercise to reduce expenditure on recruitment agency fees, but now more than ever this has become just an extension of a vast array of recruiting tactics that companies employ to ensure they win the ongoing war for talent. 

We are all aware that our clients’ recruitment activities normally extend to advertising, online and offline, use of agencies and head hunters and internal referral schemes. So, how can we bring a competitive edge to the market, now candidates are becoming harder to find. Headhunting or Executive Search is one way to source candidates that is under utilised by most recruitment companies. 

How do we, the recruitment company, fit into this? Well, one way that we can add a competitive advantage for our clients and maybe gain ground over our competitors, is to professionally and actively seek out candidates that would consider a career move, but are not currently talking to any agencies or taking a proactive approach to finding a new position (passive job seekers). If certain individuals are identified and professionally approached by recruitment consultants that are trained in the skill of headhunting, then a large pool of talent will open up to you; providing more skilled candidates for your clients. 

This opinion piece was written by the Executive Search team at Lander Associates, Performance Development Specialists to the Recruitment Industry, February 2005.  http://www.landerassociates.co.uk

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Call Louise on 01635 254881 or email louise@ukrecruiter.co.uk or visit http://www.ukrecruiter.co.uk/tests.htm

Don't Miss This

23rd February, London - Invitation to Recruiters' Event
The latest edition of Top-Consultant.com's Annual Recruitment Channel report is going to be released in February and UK Recruiter readers are invited to attend a special launch event alongside a couple of hundred HR Managers and recruiters from the management consultancy sector. For full details and to register please see: http://www.top-consultant.com/recruiters_event.asp

6th April 2005, London - Discounted Rate for Legal Seminar
Penn Legal are running a half day seminar on the topic of "EAA Regulations 2003 One Year On: an introduction and other legal issues in recruitment". The seminar takes place on 6th April 2005 from 1pm to 5pm. They are offering a discounted rate of £200 (including VAT) to ukrecruiter subscribers. A seminar overview is available on their website at http://www.pennlegal.co.uk/c_agenLaw_seminars.php. For more information call 0870 043 4361 or email agency@pennlegal.co.uk quoting ukrec.

UK Recruiter Discussion Forum - Are you using it? 
Don't forget to visit http://www.ukrecruiter.co.uk/forum. Current topics on the site include "Agency Fees", "On what grounds can you refuse to represent a candidate" and "Sales Recruitment". It is free to use the discussion board and you don't have to register to view messages. Visit the site; ask questions and share your knowledge

Statistics

Hitwise top 10 Recruitment Sites, week ending 5th February 2004
The most visited UK recruitment sites last week, starting with the most popular, were Jobcentreplus.gov.uk, Jobsite.co.uk, Totaljobs.co.uk, Reed.co.uk, Fish4.co.uk/jobs, Monster.co.uk, TESjobs.co.uk, jobs.guardian.co.uk, Jobserve.co.uk and  National Health Service - Careers. For more information about Hitwise, visit http://www.hitwise.co.uk

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Feedback

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