Clients

November Report on Jobs

Cavill Robinson Financial Recruitment contributes to the Report on Jobs each month, which is produced by KPMG and the Recruitment and Employment Confederation. This month's key findings are: There has been a solid drop in permanent staff appointments and only a slight rise in temporary billings. Vacancy growth eases to a 93 month low Pay continues to rise as candidate availability falls again. Commenting on this month's survey results, James Stewart Vice Chairman at KPMG said: "Businesses are still waiting to hear that starting gun, and until there is some certainty around Brexit and now the election, employers continue to stall on creating vacancies and making permanent hires. “It’s not just businesses that are being cautious, however, and over October we’ve seen jobseekers become increasingly nervous about making a career change. The lucky few that do find jobs are continuing to demand higher pay as reflected in the rise in starting salaries and temp pay. “The IT and computing sector threw caution to the wind last month as the best performer in vacancy growth. Meanwhile, the medical sector is not far behind, and we also saw a sharp increase in the demand for temp staff in this sector.” Neil Carberry, Chief Executive of the Recruitment & Employment Confederation, said: “These figures underline why this needs to be a jobs election. The labour market is strong, but permanent placements have now dropped for eight months in a row, and vacancies growth has fallen to its lowest level since January 2012. One bright spark is the temporary labour market, which continues to provide flexible work to people and businesses that need it during troubled times. “Ending political uncertainty and getting companies hiring again is vital – but we must also look to the long term future of work. Jobs must be front and centre during this election campaign, and we will be launching our REC manifesto for work next week. We will be urging all political parties to run on policies which support and enhance the UK’s flexible labour market – allowing businesses to create jobs, employees to build careers and the economy to grow. Jeanette Robinson, Managing Director at Cavill Robinson Financial Recruitment said: "We are now seeing a market, which is increasingly being affected by people's unwillingness to move due to political uncertainty. This coupled with the extremely low unemployment rate within the Cambridgeshire market and surrounding areas is driving fast wage growth. This needs to be factored into any company's budget preparations for next year as the success of the local market in creating jobs will ensure this continues."

Will private recruitment agencies survive under a Labour Government?

Over the next few weeks with an election coming up, I thought I'd look at how recruitment agencies and employment might change under the different parties. Many young recruiters will be too young to remember the negativity with which Labour viewed our industry. When I first started in recruitment, way back in 1986, Labour wanted to make it illegal to run a private recruitment agency. This wasn't wishful thinking. It was a high priority for them as the unions have always viewed the activities of the private recruitment sector with suspicion and dislike believing that the industry exploits people rather than helps them. Even in the early days of New Labour, the recruitment industry was viewed very negatively. When New Labour revamped the Employment Agencies Act in the 90's, they wanted to make it illegal to charge a fee for a temp to perm. This would again have meant the death of the industry as everyone would have taken a temp on for a couple of days and then made them permanent at no cost. It took a change of Employment Minister to the hugely pragmatic Alan Johnson and huge amounts of lobbying from the industry to put paid to that idea. Whilst Corbyn and McDonnell are not talking about anything which would threaten our industry currently, this does not mean to say that they or the unions will not be thinking about it. It would be the norm, in my opinion, for a very left wing government to go down this kind of route. Have a good week. Jeanette

The problem of candidates ghosting recruiters

Recruiters are often accused of not getting back to candidates but we have the same problem the other way round currently. We are experiencing a large number of people submitting their CV's for roles but when we try to contact them by phone, email and text to ask them to meet with ourselves, we receive no reply. Whilst there is always an element of this in our job, it is happening to a much greater extent at the moment. The result is that we are wasting a lot of valuable time trying to speak to people, who are not serious about their job hunt. That time could, instead, be spent helping people who are desperately wanting to change job. I can only assume people send their CV and then are getting cold feet about changing jobs in the current uncertain climate when a potential interview means that their job hunting is turning into something real rather than just a wishful thought. We are always delighted to receive your CV and herlp you with your job hunting but please, please, please make sure you have every intention of responding to us when we call if you do submit it. Thank you and have a great week. Jeanette Robinson