Job-hopping

CVs are crucial things. They are your personal manifesto, the ultimate appraisal of your skills and achievements to date, and are also your one chance to get a foot in the door with prospective employers. When your application is one of sometimes hundreds an employer has to wade through, having had a number of roles in a short space of time is something many people are afraid of. Does it always mean you’re unreliable or unable? Or is there a positive side too?

Looking from a negative perspective, the historical view is that a steady career progression, perhaps with just one company, is the best way to indicate loyalty and consistency. Yet others would say that in the modern job market the opposite could be true – particularly in highly competitive fields like IT.

Send us your CV and we’ll be able to give you the best advice out there.

Celebrating deals

They’re the reason we’re all here. No recruitment company (or any sales company for that matter) would survive without a regular supply of deals. The consultants who make them happen put in the hours and get rewarded with the commission accordingly. But how do you mark the successful completion of a placement?

We know of some companies that ring a bell or blow a whistle and others that operate a reverse psychology approach by listing those who have not done deals on a ‘wall of shame’. At Aston Taylor we all celebrate every deal together; the successful consultant is obviously the focal point of the celebrations, but it’s very much a team effort.

Find out more about our culture and successes.

So, what is your name is exactly?

Obviously you can’t please all the people all of the time. Like any diligent company we do our best, but sometimes confusion does occur. It could be something simple like having a person’s title or job role wrong on our database, or contacting the wrong person at a company. We all make mistakes.

But we didn’t expect to get a broadside from Person A when we sent them a CV for a prospective candidate. We were told, in no uncertain terms, that we had incorrectly used Person B’s name and email address and should have sent the information straight to Person A. Furthermore we were told that Person B didn’t even work there anymore.

Fair enough, you might think, but when the angry email from Person A came from Person B’s email address (and used their name as well), it left us a little at a loss as to what the true identity of the person really was…

Contact us and let us know your most up-to-date information.

Lucky Dip

The latest game our consultants are playing in the office is proving a real hit. Lucky Dip, running for the Management Division, is a motivational game where for every interview one of the team books, a prize is drawn at random from a box of exciting treats.

The star prize has probably been 500g bar of Dairy Milk chocolate, but among the usual array of sweets there are some more unusual, er, gems to be had. These include a plug, a tin of Spam and a sponge. This game, however exciting, has not replaced the ever-popular noughts and crosses battles that still break out (one move per interview booked), or the occasional ‘ten interviews for a bottle of wine’ game – a particular favourite.

Does this sound like the kind of place where you’d like to work? Find out more.

Recruitment Round-up 14/9/07

This week’s look at the sillier things we have come across features three frankly bizarre entries, showing the rather odd nature of some the people in this industry. First up is the tale we heard from a client of ours of a candidate they arranged an interview for who asked if he could dash off early as he had to get back to work – after spending the interview, without a tie, munching tic-tacs.

Then there was the candidate who cancelled an interview as their sister’s house had suffered a terrible fire (obviously a terrible tragedy). However, the person in question couldn’t quite seem to agree with themselves as to which day this awful event had happened – changing the story several times.

Topping the bill this week though is the manager we know who once, many years ago, witnessed one of his consultants being chased around the office by a Hell’s Angel brandishing a plank of wood, trying to get hold of his pay packet!

How to choose the chores?

Every office has tasks that no-one wants to do: putting paper in the printers, changing the water cooler, loading the dishwasher – even clearing your desk. Yet we all know that these things have to be done. So how do you decide?

At Aston Taylor, we have a ‘competition’ for who gets to make the tea at three (called, originally enough ‘Tea at 3’) – the winner is the person with the lowest phone time for the previous day.

Others go to more extreme lengths. Like the client of ours who decided to have a press-up competition, including all staff from the MD down, to choose who made the coffee. I suppose it comes down to who wants to avoid the chore the most…

Excuses, Excuses, Excuses

Picture the scene: you’ve put in the hours hitting the phones and developing new business, you’ve negotiated great terms for your upcoming deal and you’ve got the perfect candidate. Just one problem: the candidate doesn’t turn up.

Now there are always going to be valid reasons for someone not attending an interview – they may even not have the courtesy to let you know, but when they do it’s possible to get the occasional gem. Like the candidate who said (word for word):

“I woke and found that my eye had swollen so much that I looked like something out of a horror film and I'm waiting outside the doctor’s surgery for them to open so I can get it fixed - must be due to a protein build-up on my contact lenses.” On telephoning the work number five minutes later, the candidate answered the phone.

Or the chap who called in to say he was feeling too sick to go to the interview, and then proceeded to prove how sick he was by vomiting down the phone line. Still, that’s better than the candidate who claimed their father had died – subsequently proven to be a lie. How low can you stoop?

A share of the spoils

So we’re talking incentives again here. There are obviously great financial rewards to be had in the recruitment industry, but given that any top recruiter can make excellent money, what inspires someone to stay with any given company long-term?

Aston Taylor have today announced a share scheme. Based on longevity of service and performance, all members of staff can qualify for share options that will pay dividends and increase in value as they contribute to the company’s success.

In an industry plagued by high staff turnover and paranoia surrounding staff and headhunting, is this a solution to the perennial problem of holding on to your best recruiters?

Come and see some of the other things that make Aston Taylor a bit different to work for.

Recruitment round-up

Working in an industry when you deal with so many people, you’re always going to get some, er, ‘unusual’ things cropping up when dealing with phone calls, emails, CVs and the like. This is the start of an irregular column rounding up the funnier stories we hear through our working lives.

For example, there was the client who told us he’d once interviewed a candidate who’d clearly turned up drunk to the interview and, on being asked to leave, tried to start a fight! Not necessarily the best way to make a first impression.

Or there was the candidate who thought it was important to mention on his CV that he had met the Pope. Maybe he thought divine inspiration would take him once he was recruiting. However, on a much more down-to-earth level, one client asked to see one of our (female) consultants’ ‘white bits’. I guess some things never change…