Candidates

How Will Lockdown 3 Affect Hiring in Cambridgeshire?

The New Year's festivities had barely come to a close when Prime Minister Boris Johnson was on our screens again, instructing us all to stay home to help in the fight against COVID-19. A third national lockdown became inevitable when COVID case numbers soared to record highs over the holiday break. This was partly due to the spread of a particularly contagious variant of the virus that has particularly affected London, the east and the south east. As with the first lockdown, which was announced back in March 2020, people have been instructed to work from home where they can, schools have closed (except for the children of key workers) and travel has been severely restricted. 'Lockdown 3' is expected to remain in place until at least the middle of February although there will be regular reviews. It is expected that the country will be phased back into the regional tier system when the government decides they can relax restrictions. Much hope is being placed on the vaccination program which, at the time of writing, has seen more than 3.5 million people receive injections. What does this mean for Cambridge businesses? While jobs will inevitably be lost as some businesses either fold or decide to lay off workers, the outlook isn't all bleak due to a combination of government support and the unique employment mix of the region. The furlough scheme, whereby the government pays the majority of eligible employees' salaries, has already been extended by the Chancellor Rishi Sunak, giving eligible businesses security at least until the end of April. While salaries have fallen across the country, Cambridge is expected to resist this trend. In fact, statistics have shown a slight rise in the city's annual salaries between 2019 and 2020. This is in stark contrast to the aftermath of the 2018 economic crash which saw local salaries plummet by 15%. One key reason for this is the region's jobs mix which is slanted towards sectors that have been less impacted by the pandemic. These include R&D, pharmaceutics, tech and food. In many sectors, the job supply has actually increased as employers recruit to meet new, sometimes unexpected demands. These include educational software (edtech) firms that have risen to meet the need for quality home learning resources. Another example are those local manufacturers that have turned their factories into production lines for 3d printed face masks or ventilator components. Many companies have also had to increase their internal IT provision to support home-working employees. This has led to significant IT recruitment drives in some cases. How can Cambridge businesses attract top talent? With salaries in Cambridge expected to remain roughly stable, businesses should look beyond renumeration to attract the best people. It also goes without saying that they should not be looking to reduce salaries to take advantage of the increase in employment demand. So what are some tips for company recruiters? 1) Focus on job security. This is likely to be high on many candidates' priority list as many will have been in previously secure roles and may still be recovering from the shock of having their rug pulled out from under them. Companies that have shown support and compassion for the workforce during these tough times (e.g. extending the furlough scheme to employees with home-schooled children, inviting furloughed staff to virtual meetings, etc.) should highlight these positives in their campaigns. 2) Clarify your home working policy. While candidates remain uncertain about the length of the current lockdown, they will want to know about home working provision. Will they be given access to company-owned devices and networks to do their work or will they be expected to use their own? When lockdown ends, will they be required to return to a physical place of work or will home working be an ongoing option? Local statistics show that most people (39%) prefer an even balance between the two while 35% would like to work from home permanently, even after lockdown. 3) Set out your COVID safety credentials. Working in a COVID-safe environment is likely to be a high priority for employees expected to travel to a workplace. Detail all the measures you have taken to keep people safe and healthy (not forgetting mental health). 4) Create an attractive travel policy. Provision for parking, for cars and bicycles, might be appealing as employees seek to avoid public transport. 5) Improve the candidate experience. Even before the pandemic, optimising the candidate journey has been a priority for many companies as they recognise the influence of social media and review sites such as Glassdoor on brand perception. With many interviews now conducted via video conferencing software, time to hire has fallen in many recruitment campaigns. This provides an opportunity for smart recruiters to invest more resources into improving the overall candidate experience. In summary, Cambridge and the surrounding areas will be affected by the ongoing COVID pandemic and jobs will inevitably be lost. However, many sectors will remain resilient and, on the whole, salaries are likely to remain stable or even increase. Therefore, we advise recruiters looking to bring in top talent to focus on increasing their competitiveness through ensuring a positive candidate experience and highlighting their ability to provide a secure and COVID-safe working environment. Links/Resources: Cambridge salary statistics: https://www.plumplot.co.uk/Cambridge-salary-and-unemployment.html Work from home statistics (may want to leave out as a potential competitor): https://www.prs.uk.com/news/2020/recruitment-and-the-eastern-region-s-recovery http://www.economicswebinstitute.org/glossary/unemploy.htm

How To Survive Working From Home

With Covid creating the need for more working from home, finance staff in Cambridgeshire are having to adapt to the new normal. I was speaking to a client this week who told me she "hates" working from home. As someone who has been primarily working from home now for a few years, I was genuinely surprised as I love it. So I thought it would be helpful to all of you finance and accountancy professionals who have been catapulted from an office existence to the isolation of home to write a few tips on how to cope. The benefits of working from home Pre-Covid the “working from home” statistics were very positive, and no doubt reflected the Cambridgeshire region accurately. 40% of people feel the greatest benefit is the flexible schedule Companies allowing remote work have 25% lower employee turnover People who work remotely at least once a month are 24% more happy / productive 74% are less distracted and 86% are less stressed 21% would give up holiday allowance to have flexi-working (69% of millennials would give up other benefits) Plus, working from home saves at least 11 days per year travelling – so a lot less time (and miles) on the A10 and M11. My 8 Tips for Finance Professionals and Working from Home: 1) Have a structure to your day. This is extremely important as otherwise you will go in one of two directions. You will either do nothing at all or you will spend hours in front of the computer without giving yourself a break.  2) Working from home can be very intense. You can almost by accident, find yourself not moving from your computer screen from early in the morning to late in the evening. Your Things to Do List should incorporate breaks which you can tick off as well as work   3) You should schedule "Catch Up with Colleagues" calls into your weekly diary. These can be about work or just social. Either way, they help you stay connected and stop the feelings of isolation. I usually have early morning calls with staff and then one later in the afternoon. It helps us to review work, keep on track and exchange ideas.  Zoom and Teams is really helpful for this and helps you stay connected. 4) As I said before, working from home can be intense and when I started doing it, I often found I had finished all my work early. If this happens, don't worry that you've missed something. It's just that without many interruptions, you get a lot more done in a lot less time. You can use that extra time to do something for yourself, whether that's learning a new skill or housework. I personally love that aspect of homeworking. 5) Try and go for a walk outside at some point during the day. It gives you fresh air and makes you feel as if you are still connected to the real world (as much as this is possible at the moment!) 6) If when things get back to normal, you are still working from home, take yourself off to a local cafe or restaurant once or twice a week for lunch and enjoy a restful hour or so away from your desk. 7) If you have children, find out from your boss when you have deadlines for work and find out if they are happy for you to work outside the 9 to 5. One of my employees has a two-year-old and she frequently (pre this situation) takes her child to child groups in the morning but then does work for me in the early evening when her child is in bed. It suits her and it suits me. Flexing your work can be a major plus point when you work from home.   8) Another plus point: You don't have to commute, and you can stay in bed a bit longer as a result!  So, in short, you can be more productive at times that suit you in less time than normal. Perhaps you’ll reduce debtor days, or have more time to plan your strategy, create reports etc…  Plus more time with the family or for yourself. Have a good week and remember working from home can be really rewarding. Jeanette 

Tips to Hire and Get Hired

I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by Tony Restell about tips to hire and to get hired for Finance Professionals in the Cambridgeshire area.  The below video is a result of that interview: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanette-robinson-763aa97/   The Accountancy Job Market: Tips to Hire and to get Hired (Video Transcript) Interview with Jeanette Robinson by Tony Restell Tony: Hi everyone, Tony Restell from Social Hire here. Thanks so much for joining today's video interview. I'm delighted today to be joined by Jeanette Robinson and Jeanette's going to be talking to us about accounting jobs, finding an accounting job and employing accountants in the current market climate. Thanks for joining us today Jeanette, do you want to tell people a little bit about your business? Jeanette: Yes, first of all thank you very much for inviting me onto this. Cavill Robinson Financial Recruitment is a business I set up back in 1992. We basically do finance jobs for really all across the board, from Accounts Clerks through to Finance Directors. Permanent, temporary and contract. We primarily serve the Cambridgeshire marketplace and round the borders of Cambridgeshire as well. So we're quite specific. Yes, that's us. Tony: Brilliant. So starting there, if you were to give candidates one piece of advice, looking for a job in accounting and finance at the moment, what would be your top tip? Jeanette: That's an interesting question actually Tony. I've been doing some recruitment recently for finance managers and the thing that has come across very, very strongly from that, is that people don't read adverts carefully enough. And they don't answer the question that the advert is posing. So, I think what I would say is my main tip is make sure that you answer the question that the advert is posing. And by that I mean if, for example, you read through an advert and it says you need monthly management accounts or you need cash flow or you need budgets. Those things have to be on your CV, in the same words that the advert is using. Preferably they have to be on your first page of your CV and they have to be bullet pointed. If you make a CV easy to read for the recruiter, whoever is receiving that, whether that's an HR person or a recruiter, and you have the words on your CV that are in the advert, you are more likely to go on the yes pile. For example, with these finance manager roles that I've been recruiting for, I've had over 70 responses for one of them. I was looking for royalties and I was looking for Sage 200. But I probably had two CVS that had those things on in those 70. They went into my interview pile straight way. There were other people who looked as if they could do the job and I actually phoned them. And I said, do you have royalties? Do you have Sage 200? And in some cases those people said to me, yes I do. But it wasn't on their CV. So they nearly went in my no pile and they nearly lost out on an opportunity. And there is this assumption I think, I found throughout my career actually, that recruiters have some sort of crystal ball whereby they look into it and amazingly, these things come out at them, even though you've not put it on your CV and that strangely doesn't actually happen. So people actually have to put things on their CV.   And you probably need to highlight things as you go through an advert. Highlight the things in that advert and then do a reconciliation with those things as to what is on your CV. It will your up job chances and it's not rocket science, but people don't seem to do it for some reason. And I think there's this perhaps concentration that you have to put everything you've ever learnt on a CV. But actually, it's like an exam. You actually have to answer the question, so you don't have to put everything you've ever learnt on a CV and you can leave things off that you've done, it's not a problem. You've got three pages to sell yourself. I mean all a CV is, is a tender document to get you to that next step, to get you to interview. So you've got sell yourself in those three pages. You know, I don't really need to know that you've got a dog called Rupert or you know, 2 wonderful children, what I'm looking for is those things in the advert, they need to be on your CV. So that's my top tip to people. Tony: I was gonna make the analogy of reading the exam question properly. Jeanette: Yeah it is very much about reading the exam question properly. Yeah, absolutely. Tony: And if we flip that over and think about clients, you know what would be some advice you would give them to try and hire in this marketplace? Jeanette: Yes, well, clients are interesting because obviously at the moment clients are looking at the marketplace and they're thinking there's lots and lots of people out there. So I'll do my own recruitment. And I would say to a client, if you want to do your own recruitment that's fine. You know, you've got the choice of the different methods that you can use. But what I have seen throughout my career and I've been in this now for over 30 years. But what I've seen throughout my career is that this stage off a recession cycle, that's what clients do. At the next stage of the recession recycle, they then come back to agencies because they realise just how long it takes to do recruitment and how difficult it actually is when you do it and how much of their time is taken up by it. So, for example, the example I gave before with the finance manager you've got to read through 70 very complex CV's. Have you really got the time to read through 70 very complex CV's? You know and that's just the start of the process, you've then got to actually arrange the interviews which again can be quite time consuming. You've got to do the interviews yourself. So you know an agency, a good agency should give you maybe three, maybe four people and they should all be good people. In order to get to those three or four people, I've interviewed a lot more than that. You know, I might have interviewed 12 to 15 people for you. At that level, it's an hour and a half's interview per person. Have you really got all that amount of time? You know that's already over a week of your time probably gone, whilst you're trying to do your day job as well. And there's no guarantee at the end of that process that you're going to find the right person. So if you've got all of that time, then fine, go ahead, do your own recruitment. But if you haven't then go to an agency and when you go to an agency, don't think you can push a good recruiter down. As I had last week, somebody saying, will you do something at 5% for me? I had another one saying would you do something at 10%? I turned them down. I don't need to work for that kind of money. A good recruiter will know their worth. They will know they're good at what they do. And they will turn business down if you're going to take the mickey out of them. So, you know, that's really what I would say, pay people for the work that they're doing. Make sure you have a good recruiter and then partner with them. Make sure that they know your business. Make sure that you've given them a good job spec. Make sure that they've asked all the questions that they need to ask, to make sure that they can save time for you. So all have to do the is interview three or four people and your job should be made a lot more simple in terms of the recruitment that you do. Yeah, that's what I'd say. Do your own recruitment if you want to, but if you want to use us partner with us. Tony: I'm very conscious of time, but if you could think of everything you've learnt in your career and recruitment, what's the one most important thing you've learnt that you'd like to share with others? Jeanette: I think the thing that I've learnt is that people are endlessly fascinating. They're just really interesting and they all come with a backstory and it doesn't matter how long you know somebody for or how long you interview somebody for, you're never really going to know them properly. They're always going to do things that surprise you and take you off guard and I think from that I would say that as a recruiter, you need to treat people as individuals, you need to listen to them and take on board what they say but also allow for the unexpected. Tony: Terrific, Jeanette, some really great advice today. Thank you so much for your time. Jeanette: Thank you Tony. Tony: If anyone would like to find out any more about you and your company, is there a web address or any other contact? Jeanette: Yes, so Web address is www.cavillrobinson.co.uk I do free tutorials for people on their CV's, so if anybody wants to message me on LinkedIn, you know, they can find me quite easily, so do feel free to message if you want to. Tony: Excellent. Thank you ever so much for your time. Jeanette: Thank you, take care.