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New to Market

25 April 2019
Construction & property, Executive search

NEW TO THE MARKET: 23-26 APRIL 2019

• Leeds-based executive search firm Charlton Morris has partnered with qualified mental health practitioner Jaimie Shires, who will provide the agency’s staff with a four-point service aimed at supporting employee mental health.

This includes:

  • Quarterly half-day workshops for the whole business, designed to improve the understanding and awareness of mental health with topics of the workshops are also based on employee surveys
  • Training – all managers are being trained as ‘mental health first aiders’ 
  • Drop-in sessions where Shires will be hosting in-office drop in sessions for employees to have an informal conversation about their mental health
  • Counselling and support, with Shires available for conversations between 9am-6pm Monday to Friday to conduct a needs assessment on anyone who needs it. If she deems it appropriate, the company will pay for up to 12 individual counselling sessions for employees. 

• Property sector employment platform Gradfeed has launched. The site, which aims to make the sector more accessible for students and employers, targets both those with degrees and those without degrees seeking to get into the industry.

17 April 2019
Executive search

The Thrive Team

Search-and-selection specialist Martin Grady and experienced HR professional Alison Trodd have joined up to launch The Thrive Team, a search-and-selection, transition coaching and training provider.

Grady brings a 20-year search and selection background to the new business, having worked for firms such as Stonehouse Search and Selection, Hawker Chase Executive, ARM Consulting, MEG Recruitment Solutions, Matchtech and Manpower. Trodd has been in HR for more than 30 years, working for the NHS, the BBC, Boots and Butlin’s.

The Thrive Team places senior leaders in roles commanding salaries of between £80k and £200k, says Grady. But its support of the candidate does not stop when the placement has been made. Once a candidate accepts a role, the firm transitions them into that role during their gardening leave and notice period through coaching, so that they can be immediately effective in their new role. This coaching can cover a range of topics including emotional intelligence, their wellbeing – including mental health awareness – and issues they may have at home. “What that’s doing is helping them hit the ground running, and from the client perspective it’s taking the risk out of the hire,” Grady told Recruiter. “We’re often asked in recruitment: what’s the guarantee? And this is our guarantee, that they will have the right fit for the role and the culture, and they will absolutely be thriving in their new role.”

Asked about future plans for the business, Grady added: “We’ve got an associate pool, but we will take on permanent people and then grow it.”

15 April 2019
Recruitment Process Outsourcing, Public sector

NEW TO THE MARKET: 15-18 APRIL 2019

• Vendor management service provider Engage Technology Partners has launched a new self-sign-up service that allows recruitment firms to have a more streamlined service through complete automation of worker registration and compliance.

The platform aims to reduce the administration burden on management teams and ensures that recruiters have more time to spend on meaningful engagement. Through the service, contractors will be able to register, manage timesheets and upload all compliance documents, allowing ease of managing payroll online, and much more.

• Technology staffing specialist Frank Recruitment Group has opened a third office in Germany. The new Munich office is located at Herzogspitalstraße 24, 80331.

• Chris Hughes and Steve Bromley, owners of HGV drivers supplier GO2 Drivers, have launched GO2 Personnel, a specialist recruitment company helping businesses find the right people for a range of roles.

Both businesses, based in Colwyn Bay, are part of the Welsh Government’s Accelerated Growth Programme. Bromley will head the business development side of the new venture, supported by a team of experienced recruiters. The two companies, GO2 Drivers and GO2 Personnel, sit under the GO2 People brand.

• Cloud solution HireFaster has launched. The platform offers real-time reference checking and on-boarding, and aims to mitigate fraud and cyber risk as well as cutting the cost per hire.

• Recruitment technology provider idibu has released the new idibu mobile app. The app delivers candidate management to mobiles and is available on both iOS and Android, and is compatible with all major recruitment CRMs.

Developed in-house, the app enables users to work through all new applications via a list. Data presented includes candidate profiles, key information, custom fields, links to social media, contact details. Users can also view the original CV. In addition, the app works with any candidate autoresponders users create.

• Healthcare staffing specialist Nurse Plus has opened an office in Durham, led by branch manager Rebecca Clish.

• Glenn Southam, the founder of strategic marketing consultancy TwoEnds, has launched a network dedicated to recruitment marketers called ‘The Lonely Marketers’, supported by podcast shows and events.

9 April 2019
Sales, Public sector

NEW TO THE MARKET: 8-12 APRIL 2019

• Cheshire-based wealth management firm Equilibrium Asset Management has launched a new recruitment website and training academy. As part of this recruitment drive, Equilibrium has also created an internal training academy to develop talent – based around workshops and group debate, and aimed at employees who aspire to be advisers, team leaders and specialists.

New starters can also join the company’s ‘Growth Zone’ - a series of workshops involving quizzes, podcasts and group debate covering topics such as how to communicate with different personality types and finding out the best way to learn and take on new information.

• Global recruitment specialist McGregor Boyall has launched WeAreMcGregor-Boyall.com, a career site designed to showcase life at the agency and highlight training and career progression opportunities available to new and existing staff.

• Specialist staffing company Onezeero, part of the global Impellam Group, has announced the launch of their technology executive search division, which will be managed by directors James Secker and Daniel Brin.

• Energy drink distributor Red Bull has launched assessment tool Wingfinder. Wingfinder can be used as a pre-screening tool during selection, as well as a development tool at any stage of one’s career. The tool has been developed by a team of psychometricians and psychology professors from University College London and Columbia University New York, and is based on psychological research and scientific studies.

Wingfinder aims to help individuals and HR professionals gain insights around strengths and weaknesses to better leverage talents in the workplace, overcome hurdles and launch their careers, and is available worldwide in English, German, Portuguese and Spanish.

• Recruitment marketing automation software provider SmartDreamers has released SmartDreamers Academy, a hiring, talent acquisition and recruitment marketing automation learning centre. The Academy, which is free of charge to recruiters, offers users a series of courses on a variety of recruitment-related topics, with a quiz at the end of each one to give people the chance to test their knowledge. 

• Dave Geddes has joined fire and security recruitment specialist Zitko Consulting to lead its new sales division.

12 February 2019
IT/Telecoms

Start-up of the Month: TT Tech Solutions

Thakrar, who previously headed up the technology and financial systems division at former Apprentice winner Ricky Martin’s recruitment business Hyper Recruitment Solutions, told Recruiter working with Lord Sugar and Martin had given her the confidence to launch her own business.

“My network, my background, my eight years in recruitment have really given me a solid reputation in the space I recruit within.”

Looking ahead, Thakrar added she was uncertain whether she would seek external investment to aid expansion of her Thurrock-based business.

“I think I can call on my own savings to make sure I can keep all of the business, but I want it to grow so I would [look again] this time next year. I would love us to be based in London, somewhere in the Liverpool Street area… and have a solid team of about 10.

“We’re not massive but I really want to partner with organisations – to be an arm of their business. I want us to be onsite if we can at places and at organisations, and try and work with brands that are where we are – small brands that are growing, expanding and who really want to make a name for themselves in their markets as well.”

12 February 2019

Joining the dots: Exploiting big data to find talent

Video-interviewing, gamification, artificial intelligence (AI) and predictive analytics are all changing the face of recruiting. The HireVue recruitment platform, previously best known for video-interviewing, acquired predictive hiring and talent analytics platform MindX last year and is one of the first platforms to unite these technologies. So how are they combining to help recruiters make better hires?

Really big data

The value of big data has been espoused for many years but it is only now that its true magnitude is being fully exploited in recruitment, with platforms having had several years to collect and analyse information. HireVue draws on data from more than 9m on-demand interviews and is on track to collect them at a rate of 4m interviews per year. It also holds large amounts of data on gameplay behaviour and performance. It has used this as the backbone for a platform that uses AI to identify the definitive traits in top performers. Candidates can then be assessed against these through their own gameplay and video interview, which are undertaken on the same platform.

Predictive hiring

The game-based challenges are designed to evaluate cognitive traits such as problem-solving, mental flexibility, learning agility, attention span, creativity and quantitative aptitude. The platform can be customised but HireVue has recently launched pre-built assessments for specific roles and job-related competencies. Currently, they are available for call centre service representatives, sales reps, retail associates and software developers, and feature a combination of video questions, games-based challenges and coding challenges for technical roles. “We aim to predict whether a person will have the right cognitive ability and thinking style to learn and adapt in a role,” explains Dr Nathan Mondragon, chief industrial and organisational psychologist at HireVue.

Can algorithms be trusted?

Platforms such as HireVue introduce a high level of automation into the recruitment process but are recruiters ready to trust AI to identify talent? Mondragon doesn’t believe the industry has crossed this “digital divide” yet: “We need to show that algorithms from a research perspective are more trustworthy than human judgement.” Unilever is one of HireVue’s clients and has used the platform to filter up to 80% of the candidate pool. Its criteria was to ensure that its process felt “human not robotic” and had to be “better and more efficient” at selecting candidates than an in-person interview. The system has helped reduce time-to-hire by 90%, increase new hire diversity by 16% and deliver £1m in savings.

What about bias?

Algorithms are unambiguous and don’t have grey areas so, in theory, can reduce bias in the recruitment process. They are based on human data, and so are fallible. Mondragon says it is important for developers to continually run manual and automated tests on software. HireVue regularly checks for bias in race, gender, age, culture and disability, as well as other areas that might be relevant to different countries. “For instance, our tools can identify and remove a datapoint that might be causing a male or female difference,” he says, adding that constant checks are important as the bias can return. The algorithms also understand that there can be traditional differences in how a person performs on certain exercises.

Change management

Bringing more predictive technologies into the recruitment process and shifting towards more to data-driven decision-making requires culture change. Mondragon believes it should be accompanied by a change management initiative. The message, says HireVue, is that it is “teamwork” between the algorithms and the recruiters that makes the decision. “Customers use the score to facilitate human judgement,” he says. “We want to stop them making a bad decision.”

WHAT DO ALGORITHMS DO IN RECRUITMENT?

Algorithms provide recruitment platforms with a scientific and step-by-step set of rules to follow to solve a problem, which typically in a recruitment context is to find the right candidate.

11 February 2019
Public sector, Construction & property, IT/Telecoms

NEW TO THE MARKET: 11-15 FEBRUARY 2019

• US-based tech talent acquisition platform AmazingHiring has launched an AI-sourcing solution based on machine learning algorithms to enable users to find the right candidates more quickly. The solution allows users to choose the core skill or specialisation from a list and the AI technology will do the rest.

• Cambridge-based learning technology company Coracle Inside, which already provides its Digital Learning Platform to offenders in prison, has partnered with recruitment tech specialist Highr to create an online jobs board designed specifically to connect ex-offenders with job vacancies likely to be open to people with criminal records.

The Coracle Inside Jobs Board offers 200 jobs each week in London and up to 1,000 nationally at launch, with expansion plans to advertise more than 3,000 vacancies around the country before the end of the year. Jobs advertised on Coracle’s Jobs Board are generally semi-skilled roles in high-demand industries including construction, warehousing, social care and hospitality.

Vacancies in companies, which have signed up to the government-backed ‘Ban The Box’ and ‘Clean Sheet’ schemes designed to eliminate recruitment discrimination against ex-offenders, will be given prominence on the new jobs board. Coracle Inside has also built an algorithm to bring up additional vacancies in sectors known to be short of staff and looking to fill vacancies.

• Professional network LinkedIn is moving talent tools – Jobs, Recruiter and Pipeline Builder – onto a single platform. The move means recruiters will be able to see all their candidates, from whichever LinkedIn tool they’re coming from, in one unified pipeline.

LinkedIn added it is releasing more than 15 new product enhancements for LinkedIn Recruiter and Jobs over the next few quarters. New features include helping recruiters and their teams collaborate better, helping them to be more productive and providing them with smarter results.

• Property recruiter Lloyd May has launched property tech staffing specialist LMRE. Led by director Bradley Bartlett, LMRE’s core areas of focus will be within strategy & innovation, product development, software development and business development & marketing.

• Software provider O.C. Tanner has launched a culture assessment service, which aims to enable organisations to quickly and easily assess their workplace culture.

The culture assessment service, which can replace or complement employee engagement surveys, uses methodology to provide measurement, in-depth analysis and actionable recommendations so that organisations can build inspiring workplace cultures. It focuses on the six key elements of purpose, opportunity, success, appreciation, wellbeing and leadership which, following global research with 10,000 employees, O.C. Tanner discovered to be the building blocks of organisational culture.

• Midlands-based recruitment specialist SF Group has vowed to ditch all single-use plastic and turn to a more sustainable material – bamboo. SF Group has made the pledge as it launches its new name, brand and values this month.

Now known as SF Recruitment, the agency, which has offices in Birmingham, Leicester and Nottingham, has chosen bamboo to represent the values a recruiter needs to be successful and its drive to replace a wide variety of plastics being used throughout the business. The new tagline for SF Recruitment is ‘a natural fit’ – chosen to highlight the business’s philosophy on finding the perfect match between people and companies.

4 February 2019
Recruitment Process Outsourcing, Creative/Digital/Media, Executive search, Interim recruitment, IT/Telecoms, HR

NEW TO THE MARKET: 4-8 FEBRUARY 2019

• The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas) has published new guidance to help prevent age discrimination at work. The new Acas advice includes guidance on recruitment, training, performance management and redundancy, and other areas where age discrimination is most likely to occur. Included in the guidance is a myth-busting document.

• Recruitment portal GoFindMe has launched. The portal focuses on a person’s skills and experience by anonymising the recruitment process, with the aim of enabling companies to hire top talent while breaking down barriers created by stereotyping.

• Global talent solutions business Morgan Philips Group has announced a number of changes to its UK business following its acquisition of the Hudson talent solutions business in the UK and Europe (excluding Benelux) in April 2018.

These include:

  • The launch of a new recruitment business, Fyte. Fyte uses digital tools such as video job descriptions and video CVs together with a focus on digital sourcing techniques including social recruiting and crowdsourcing.
  • The launch of Morgan Philips Executive Search.
  • Investments in its Morgan Philips Talent Consulting business with an emphasis on a new, bespoke assessment framework, digital assessment centre management and predictive talent analytics and investment in a new managed solutions offering designed to help organisations scale up digital project teams.

• Ged Roberts, the founder of HR recruiter The HR Market, has launched Rec-interim, a day-rate RPO recruitment solutions business.

• Skillbase Contractor Management Services and Skillbase Consulting have rebranded under one brand – Skillbase Group. The group, which provides telco and IT contractor recruitment services to firms across Europe and across the world, adds it is opening an office in Galway, Republic of Ireland.

• Employee referrals and employee advocacy platform Talentry has launched the Talentry Candidate Relationship Management (CRM). The platform, which provides lead generation, talent pool building, talent lead nurturing and conversion of leads into applications, also integrates fully with applicant tracking systems.

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