What Is Cheap Recruitment Costing Your Business?

We are fresh back from the All-Energy 09 conference. What a difference a year makes in this industry!

One subject uppermost in every company’s mind at this year’s exhibition was the “cost” of recruitment. The current climate of course means that new entrants into the renewable energy recruitment market are popping up everywhere it seems. But is “cheap” good and what long term value are you building in your business – or even short term pain?

Here’s two real live examples we’ve seen in the last 2 days at All-Energy 09 where cheap recruitment can actually be damaging to your business:-

1. Company X - suffered the loss of no less than 3 senior managers in the space of a year. Result:- damage to credibility and reputation, missed opportunity and potentially revenue, wasted operational time. Cause:- Insufficient qualification of candidates, no background check on history, no behavioural testing against real life business challenges 
   
2. Company Y – 6 months on and still looking for a CTO using a multi-agency approach. Result:– damage to business credibility (not to mention future investor potential), misrepresentation in the marketplace as to company strategy, impaired ability to attract good talent on account of poor recruitment positioning. 
   

All this is easily avoided by investing time in giving full briefs about your business culture, vision and goals and working with a partner who takes the time to match and marry candidate motivations, aspirations, skills & knowledge – with everyone involved in the recruiting process. It’s not just about filling that seat! The quality of approach and qualification adopted by your recruiting partner is vital to the wellbeing of your business – the results can be the difference between failure and survival in today’s market, and the right partner can actually enhance your reputation in the marketplace – and bring you unexpected windfalls in the shape of direct approaches for future hires.

So what does cutting corners in recruitment quality, process and methodology cost your business?

It’s a sad fact that you can calculate the price of a failed of hire to 3 x salary and sometimes more. This could be down to lost opportunity, Directors time invested and damaged reputation.

So if someone is offering you a service at 12% in today’s market – you need to ask yourself what they’ve had to drop from their quality of service. Because if it’s a reference check they are dropping to save time in order to meet a volume “rack 'em, pack 'em an' stack 'em” approach you can bet your life that time will fall back on your desk sorting out the fall out from a failed hire. £1,000 extra spent today – could be a £20,000 return on investment in the next quarter because you are able to focus on the right things in your business.

Debby Lloyd
Managing Director, EcoSearch

Image based on this by malias

So what IS REALLY happening across the markets?

Interesting week this week as we wrap up – there appears to be genuine confusion and much scratching of the old grey hairs – and across the widest variety of sectors... could it be caused by some industries bottoming out of “the recession” and lifting quicker than others? Is the pioneering and dogged spirit that got us here pushing us forward inspite of the hurdles and the furrowed banking brow?


Of course, there are still lots of negatives around, lots of conversations of
“hunkering down”, still some major job loss fall outs... and yet... it's almost as if the snowdrops of opportunity are starting to shake off the cold snow and emerge. Albeit cautiously, perhaps a little slowly, but out there are still some signs of greenness (no pun intended). Evidence of planning, priming, gearing ready for action – and evidence that there is money burning a hole in some people’s pockets - but who don’t have their fingers on the right pulse spots to know where to spend it?

Give us a call if you are an investor wanting to jump into this space – we can point you in the direction of people who can put your money to good use!

Image by todd434

Debby Lloyd Rants: CVs are real people too

Today I’m going to have a Jeremy Clarkson style rant on account of the activities I can see affecting candidates and clients in today’s marketplace, although I will take issue with Jeremy over his views on Green.

EcoSearch has known that dot.green is THE place to be for the last two years. There were those who thought we were opening some tofu eating hippy commune and as we are on New Greenham Park, former home of the Greenham Common women’s action group against Cruise Missiles – they probably had a point. Although Dale Vince I believe was keeping Swampy company at the same time on the A34 and look where he is today – counting UFOs – but that’s a different story for another day.

I ramble, anyway, the rest of the recruiting world has now woken up to the fact that renewable energy is where the action is.

Add in the impact of the credit crunch and this is what I’ve heard this week:

From EcoSearch Client A (in a similar Jeremy Clarkson style rant to me):

“Debby – you won’t believe this but I’ve seen one CV cross my desk this week by 4 different recruiters of a person we interviewed through you 3 months ago!”

Now what do you think he’s thinking a) about the recruiters and b) about the person who’s CV this is? More importantly what impact is this behaviour having on this person’s career? – Let’s not forget, we are dealing with real people with valuable careers to protect, although some people treat them as a paper commodity and I wont begin to go into the inordinate amount of time wasting for the client company. (I could even go into the ever expanding datacentre implication issues for data storage and energy consumption but that would be churlish).

From EcoSearch Client B:

“Debby, I am being hammered by recruiters offering me candidates that have no relevance to my business and don’t know the difference between a kw and a mw turbine. I don’t have the time, it’s such a distraction!”

From Clare – EcoSearch’s wind sector specialist (in a fist slamming, angry kind of way):

“Debby, this candidate has just found out his CV has been emailed “somewhere” into our client by a recruiter who hasn’t even had a conversation with him and qualified what career path he’s looking for and can’t tell him who its gone to or where it is” 

Cue EcoSearch team who break into Bridget Jones style cries of “No!” on a group basis across the EcoSearch office. Net result – this candidate hasn’t been positioned effectively in this organisation and will no doubt end up wasting his opportunity to entrée a great career. Not to mention the service level to the client which is clearly second rate.

Recently I’ve assisted a Candidate re-format his CV. Even when we are personally unable to place someone, it doesn’t mean we don’t help, especially where the candidate has been mutually helpful to us. The candidate’s new CV went up on Monster yesterday and in the space of 2 hours he had 16 recruiters “specialising in renewable energy” had given him a call. However, (with an incredulous look on face and raised voice):

“Debby – the quality of the conversation was so poor and some of them couldn’t even say Photovoltaic!”

But the absolute prize of the day is currently held by Steve – our carbon and engineering sector lead. Who had a “specialist renewable energy recruiter” ring him up today – having seen the jobs on our website (posted for our own client’s hiring needs) and ask if she could help us with our hiring needs …

“When she asked me what my job title was I told her ‘it’s the same as yours … Executive Search Consultant!’”

Cue EcoSearch team group laughter and hilarity. Unfortunately in her haste to make the call, she thought we were a renewable energy company. I thought our website looked good, but maybe we should revisit it ….

So, to make sure you get the service you expect as a job seeker...

• Demand written confirmation that your CV is not sent to any organisation without your prior knowledge. 
  
• If it is, you can request they withdraw your CV - YOU choose who represents you. 
  
• Work with your consultant in putting a defined list of target companies together.
  
• Mark your CV up with big red letters “DO NOT SUBMIT WITHOUT PRIOR CONSENT”.
  
• Demand to know who is getting your CV (although email forwarding is uncontrollable to a certain extent).
  
• You should receive written candidate service level terms of business from the company you work with or at the very least the consultant should have explained how they work, what to expect, timescales for working together and communication expectations.
  
• Keep in regular touch – build the relationship. 
  
• Don’t work with multiple recruiters at any one time. 
  
• Use a specialist.
  
• Any consultant with integrity will work with you on fully understanding your needs and making the most appropriate introduction. Anyone that only spends 15 minutes on the phone with you and wants you to tell them 50 companies you want to work with …. cue large ringing bells - run a mile. 
  

And for more information download the “recruiters – working with them” helpsheet below.

Recruiters - Working With Them

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Resumes & CVs resume howto

We can’t help everyone (as much as we’d like to), we aren’t perfect and we are not the fastest, but my goodness - some people need to raise their game out there … let’s keep it professional!

OK, I’m back to my desk now …

Will the Credit Crunch positively affect demands on Supply Chain in the Wind Energy sector?

Frost and Sullivan have just released a survey entitled Strategic Assessment of the European Wind Energy Market: Value Chain Analysis which provides an interesting insight into the various supply issues that have been facing the Wind Turbine Generator (WTG) manufacturing industry in the past three or four years, and the implications of the current global financial crisis.

The demand for crucial components such as gear-boxes, bearings etc have been so heavily in demand that many WTG manufacturers have been fighting for their right to secure an ongoing supply. In turn, wind farm owners and developers have been competing aggressively to procure Wind Turbines, and in many cases have been faced with expensive long-term framework agreements, and with a six month (or even one year) lead time. The wind energy industry has been experiencing a double-digit growth rate that the supply chain could simply not keep up with. Six months ago, that trend was set to continue for at least another couple of years.

However, the economic down trend, according to Frost and Sullivan, could curiously affect the supply chain challenge. Nervous about the financial climate, some of the major players in the industry have reduced their aggressive development targets. This, in turn, should lead to a supply and demand equilibrium, which will open up the market and ultimately make Wind Turbine’s more available and accessible on the market. Dramatic falls in the cost of raw materials such as steel and copper, and a reduction in prices for construction services, will see increased competition between WTG suppliers again.

So ultimately this slow down (whilst not forgetting that global government incentives have not shifted despite economic challenges) may just strengthen the wind energy industry, allowing it some respite from dramatically increasing costs and re-vitalising competition between the key players. Read more in this Frost and Sullivan press release.

By Clare Buxton
Wind Energy Sector Lead

Do you still need Headhunters in an economic down turn?

If we at EcoSearch compare our specialist headhunt service to that of standard database recruiters on any given day, the pool of available candidates might look something like this:

The headhunt side on the left is populated with all those people currently working in the renewable energy field that would be relevant to your vacancy. These are the people we would contact about filling your vacancy first.

The database recruiter area on the right shows the active candidates that are relevant to your job at any given time. These represent those that a standard database recruiter would contact.

It might be easier to attract those active candidates, but the picture changes dramatically when the economy takes a turn for the worse:

As you can see, there has been a massive influx of applications to your job from outside of the Renewable Energy industry. Not everyone will be relevant, or even have any transferable skills that might benefit your business.

The database recruiter now has a lot more ground to cover as they sort the relevant applications from those without the skills you require.

For the headhunters, business in the largely unaffected Renewable Energy sector remains the same. It is business as usual.

So when other industries start experiencing job cuts, it is important to know that your recruitment process will not be slowed. It is vital that you can rely on the service you expect from your talent acquisition partners.

What's your view?