Once received, the process of filtering begins. This process alone will require hours of painstaking sifting (particularly with-out an ATS), and since whoever does the sifting will need to be fully conversant with every nuance of the position, and consequently, is likely to be highly paid, then by process of elimination arrive at a number of applicants to interview. Now this is the point – during this process of elimination you are in grave danger of missing the most suitable candidates. Why? Because you are basing your selection on a huge assumption. The assumption that a candidates’ CV is in any way representative of their suitability for the job.

Of course we need parameters, a form of measurement, somewhere to start the process. A well written CV can provide some useful information.

Most importantly it can register the applicant’s level of education and professional qualifications. Often it may provide some interesting points about the candidate’s interests and hobbies, and in most cases will offer an historical account of the candidate’s career path thus far. But, the way each recruiter (be they a member of the human resources team, a line manager or the company MD) views this account is purely subjective. A ‘good’ CV in one persons eyes will be completely discarded by another.

Can you really afford such a hit and miss approach to form the basis of policy for sourcing your most valuable assets?

A good recruitment agent understands this. He or she will have made it a priority to firstly completely familiarise themselves with the details of the position concerned, fully taking into account such details as; the culture of the company, the number and mix of the work force, the geographical location, the expectations of the employer, the retention and rewards policy etc. etc. They will also have an open mind concerning the attributes of the ideal candidate, making the number one priority finding the right person for the job.

Some candidates can write a very appealing Curriculum Vitaé (that is, appealing to some) and some are just not able to represent their clear suitability for a particular job by way of 2 -3 sheets of printed A4. So how do you decide? You let the recruitment agent do their job. Ask yourself, would there be around 20,000 employment agencies in greater London alone if they weren’t doing a reasonable job?

Over the years, I have built a level of trust with many clients, to the point that, if I recommend a candidate for a particular job, that candidate will be granted an interview regardless of what it says on their CV. This is how they arrive at a short list. They allow me to do what I’m paid for. Of course, the final decision is theirs and I will endeavour to ensure that they have a real choice. Not the choice between someone suitable and someone who isn’t but between two or three who are entirely suitable. The rest is down to what I call ‘chemistry’, something that as yet, we haven’t found a way to regulate.

Written by mypeoplebiz user David Bloomfield, senior consultant at Bloomfield consultants, a recruitment agency specializing in financial, legal and sales recruits highlights the benefits of using the agency channel in a recruitment strategy.

Connect your business with recruitment 300+ recruitment agencies across the country, deal with your applications quickly and effectively with our inbuilt ATS. Find out about cost efficient multichannel recruitment with mypeoplebiz here.

I have been merrily working under this preconception for years, until last week when during the course of a lunch with an old friend (who has significant experience in running huge businesses in the professional services space) we got talking about recruitment strategy.

I am going to share his thoughts with you because it was a very different take on the do nothing if it’s working theory. He began by saying that, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it is a flawed strategy or at the very least a non strategy. Doing nothing often means maintaining the status quo which is fine for a while but eventually you risk being left behind; particularly if your competition suddenly changes their strategy or becomes more aggressive in the market, or more efficient, or  if your business is susceptible to changes in technology which may have an impact on your strategy. He had read my previous recruitment insight last month in this column and he agreed that a multichannel recruitment strategy was a good thing because at the very least it puts the business in a position from which it can be flexible, not dependent on any one source or limited suppliers. But he cautioned that it was not enough just simply to play at it, instead he advised that as a recruitment team, you have to continually improve your offering to the business and that ongoing improvement and better quality of hire, is the goal year on year and to achieve that; you have to tinker and improve every year, you cant just say we are ok and we will do the same again next year; or you will get left behind. He added that in today’s world, cost reductions are essential and achievable.

There are some classic anecdotes I could cite, a Formula 1 car does not get faster every year without improvement, technology changes everything and this years winner, will be left behind next year if the car is not improved because all the cars will be improving; so whilst its not broken it is vital that it receives ongoing improvement in order to maintain a podium position and stay ahead of the field rather than get left behind. This thinking resonates with most recruiters at recruitment agents. They say that more often than not, when you talk to a prospective new client the barriers go up immediately regardless of whether you are offering something new and potentially fantastic its almost impossible to get an audience. “We are very happy with what we are doing”; “I like my agencies”;” I have been doing the same thing for years and it’s has worked up until now” are all common objections; and another way of saying: “its not broken and I am not fixing it”. The problem is that when you finally realise that it may not be broken but someone else’s strategy is working much better and the competition have got a lead and an advantage on you in the talent game, by then its too late and any changes or adaptation will take time to have an impact which could be costly.

This leads me to the other pearl of wisdom I got from my lunch, “people just don’t give change a chance”. This also resonates with me and with recruitment strategies, particularly with regard to social media.

There is a strange attitude to recruitment and social media.  You hear a lot of “we have tried it and it didn’t work”. Really? How long did you give it? Did you go into it hoping that you would be proved right all along? I have seen at first hand the reluctance to approach social media and social networking in recruitment. “We will give you one job to see what you can do- It’s in Mongolia-off you go, let’s see how well referrals work now!” (I jest about Mongolia, but only just).

The thing I find intriguing is that you get perfectly sensible, experienced people suddenly changing into the Y generation. They acquire that most modern of traits i.e. the requirement for instant gratification, you know “I want it now”. Except in this case  its ” I have tried it, I used the social networks yesterday and we haven’t had any response”. This is what I mean by going in to something with the intention of making it fail because it upsets the status quo, it gets people out of their comfort zones, its change. If you don’t give change a chance then the natural conclusion is that your strategy is right for you and if aint broke there is no point in fixing it.  But I wonder where we are heading with all this reluctance to adapt? When email came along, the fax worked perfectly well and the Royal Mail was still delivering letters, so it wasn’t broken. How many businesses still use the fax as part of their daily communications instead of email today?

Another “It will never catch on” was the internet. Many people made a virtue at the time of not having an internet strategy, particularly the bookshops. Then Amazon came along and the book shops have been going bust ever since, but their model was not broken, its just that selling books evolved and many of the book stores didn’t realise because they were closed minded and not interested in how the new technology would affect them. Recruitment agencies took the same approach initially. Most recruitment agencies did not bother with an internet strategy, now its all they do. Employers are still lagging behind the recruiters in terms of their thinking on candidate generation, too often relying on a strategy that lets the recruiters find the candidate first and dealing with the cost implications later. This is fine, as long as the business has no requirement to reduce cost and as long as your competitors aren’t stealing your talent at a fraction of the cost that you are paying. It is also fine until your talent acquisition model becomes too expensive and cannot feed the talent into the business therefore starving the business. The problem is that, when you analyse your recruitment/ talent strategy it doesn’t look broken yet, but can you afford to wait until it finally does break?

Getting back to my lunch conversation. My friend said that his own experiences in trying to seek systematic, ongoing improvement in his business have been very frustrating because of the negative internal reaction to any change, but he remains determined to push through a cultural change and to persuade his talent acquisition team to embrace social media and to ensure that it is embraced sensibly as part of a long term strategy.

It would be good to hear from readers about their experiences. Have you encountered reluctance to embrace social media/networking in to your recruitment strategy? Do you have examples of positive or negative reaction to change in recruitment? and, what impact if any has it made on your business or on your clients?

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Two years ago, I undertook a significant research project based on how companies recruit and also what they wanted to achieve from their recruitment strategy.  Some of the key themes were better price control, more choice, more structure and reducing the burden of administration.  On a closer analysis, it was evident that many of the existing strategies  actually attempt to achieve better price control (although they don’t necessarily achieve this goal effectively) and a reduction of the administrative burden, but have the side effect of limiting  hiring choices. However, our experience is that these strategies, which generally involve a substantially single channel approach, have the side effect of limiting hiring choices and, often, an increase in the overall direct, variable, cost of hiring. Worryingly, most of the employers we spoke to seem to be unaware that they are approaching the war for talent through a strategy of ignoring potentially great candidates.

A solution is to employ a deliberate and effective multi-channel recruitment strategy which would reopen recruiting options and give scope for more intelligent focussing of recruitment.  The challenge is to find a way to do this without increasing the administrative burden on the employers’ HR function.  Perhaps most interesting, in addition to increasing the choice of quality candidates, the flexibility of a managed multi-channel approach implicitly results in a significant reduction in the overall cost of recruiting.

Looking at some of the recurring key themes that  limit choice will also lead me to tell you about  what I have done to help solve the candidate attraction conundrum and to ensure that all the options are always available to the employer.

Firstly the recurring themes

Attend any industry conference and you cannot fail to notice the dissatisfaction amongst employers with what is perceived to be the regurgitation of the same old candidates that appear on their shortlists time after time, the emphasis here being on the lack of choice, the lack of quality candidates, etc.

Interestingly, you also hear the same employers talk about the strong relationships that they have with the headhunters who continue to supply them with those regurgitated lists of candidates. You also hear a lot of talk about the PSL lists which now dominate the recruitment industry and which actually restrict the supply of candidates, to those supplied by the chosen few on the PSL.

Then there is another wave of choice limiters, the mantra of the internet recruitment gurus who, I can only imagine, must have been terribly upset or damaged so severely by their previous recruitment experience as recruitment consultants, that they now wish to show the world how to recruit without using a recruitment agent ever again.

Taking the phenomenon of continuing to use a supplier who fails to provide a fresh added value short list for each assignment first, it is easy to dismiss this as a real limit on choice by recalling that often quoted Einstein analogy that “the first sign of madness is to continue to do the same thing and expect different results.”  So, if this is a condition that afflicts you and it’s the main topic of conversation the next time you are struggling with a recruitment project – just use someone different and don’t repeat the same mistakes expecting to get a different result.

One could additionally question what the purpose of this strong relationship with the supplier is, since it clearly does not help the organisation to hire better people.

Moving on to PSL’s, I have never quite understood what this is about, mainly because, if its more choice that you want, then opening up your candidate supply options is logical – businesses want the pick of the best people.  But then, for an employer to say that “we are only going to use 10 suppliers”, so if Agent X has a really first rate candidate, but the employer has decided not to use them, then they are closing their candidate supply options and this is tantamount to putting a sign up asking Agent X to send that candidate to any or all of their competitors.  This is bizarre.

Many people talk about the candidate experience and how important it is to ensure that the candidate always has a positive impression of your employer brand. This is often used as a reason to go down the route of PSL’s, but I don’t understand how this works, how does the candidate know which agency is on your PSL? Are we suggesting that candidates should find out who you have chosen to deal with if they want to apply to you for a job? Let’s say that a candidate has a relationship with their favorite agency and enquires about an employer and the availability of roles with that employer. The agent would usually just introduce that candidate and that employer has the choice to interview and hire, but in this case, as the agent is not on the PSL, he simply advises his candidate that there is nothing on the books and to look elsewhere.  That employer has lost the opportunity to se the star candidate who could have made a difference to their business. This limits the employer’s choice and also does not do anything for the candidate experience as they simply don’t have an experience.

The conclusion that I have come to is that the true justifications for PSL’s are firstly to negotiate better prices with suppliers and secondly to be able to have fewer suppliers in order to reduce the administrative burden. The side effects though are a limit in the choice of quality people to just those who are registering with your PSL.

I think you become a preferred supplier, mainly because you treat your clients like preferred clients. Surely in the current business climate we should be more open to new ways of conducting business; and with new people. PSL’s may be putting limits and constraints on your ability to hire; you may not be getting the pick of the best people by sticking to your list.  So why limit yourself with a select few?

Competition is good for business and in this current climate many new and existing agents are willing to be much more flexible on terms and price. This means you could be getting much more competitive terms with someone outside of your magic list. And it’s worth thinking about the fact that candidates do not always throw themselves into the arms of every large agency in town, sometimes candidates prefer to go to a niche recruiter who understands their particular industry, which means you could be missing a future asset to the business that may not even appear on the radar of your PSL. When a candidate on the open market looks promising, they look promising to you and to your competitors. To put in a deliberate policy of not interviewing that candidate because the candidate chose not to use your PSL is rather baffling and, in my humble view, a choice limiter.

Looking at the “direct” only brigade, “let me show you how to use social media”, “let me “train you to get more out of job boards” let me …..etc. If your requirements are pretty generic, then there may indeed be a better way for you to recruit rather than paying a recruitment fee to fill roles such as, customer services, general sales, or non-technical roles and you could save yourself from spending thousands of pounds that you do not need to spend. In this current climate, getting candidates through your door should not be the issue. So I can definitely see a huge value in the direct strategy, but only as part of a balanced diet, as they say. To limit the choice of candidates by only going direct is potentially very harmful to your business. But it is happening. Very recently, one of my colleagues went to see a potential client who had been told that the CEO had hired a “direct” trainer and decreed that the recruitment team had to stop using agencies immediately as a cost cutting measure and must have a direct strategy only. So this team has to go from making sure they hire the right people for the business to actually spending day and night finding people. They will be woefully resourced (believe it or not hiring an ex recruiter is not enough) to be able to deliver this strategy and are doomed to fail.

So, where am I heading with all of this, it’s simply to point out the obvious that there are so many vested interests at play.

The larger the agency the more likely they are to try and sell you a preferred supplier agreement which cuts out the competition and gives them a clear income stream. I have noticed that many recruiter courses have sprung up over the years on selling your way in to PSL’s and sole supplier agreements. Agencies are actually training their people to go and sell restrictive practices that limit choice because they can make more money out of it.

With the direct crew, what’s their vested interest? They make their money from running training courses to show you how to recruit using twitter and Facebook and then they have revenue share deals with the job boards that you are encouraged to sign up to. The more you spend the more they make. Once you have chosen to “go direct” they come in and train the additional staff that you will need to hire in order to deal with the volume created by your new strategy.

So, step back in time to when there wasn’t much choice around and we all spent time trying to increase our choice, now fast track to present day and you will no doubt have noticed that at each stage you are being advised to reduce your options, to go single channel rather than multichannel for your recruitment.

And here I must confess my own vested interest and what I did to solve the issue of choice limitation.

Having been in the recruitment industry for many years and having been lucky enough to work for some great clients gathering extensive experience in retained search, traditional recruitment as well as online methodologies. I spent some of those years thinking about how the recruitment industry could be more effective and also provide better value. This has culminated in the creation of Mypeoplebiz http://www.mypeoplebiz.com/ with the aim of providing a simple to use multichannel recruitment platform that allows you to introduce and implement an innovative and efficient, process driven, recruitment function, where you can manage your cost to hire very easily.

Central to the mypeoplebiz offering, is the ability for employers to access not just one recruitment channel, but all recruitment channels from one place. You can access a huge network encompassing traditional methodology such as recruitment agencies, as well as referrals, social networks and a range of previously untapped, conduits for talent, whilst providing greater control over costs.

As I have already highlighted, our multichannel approach is in contrast to those who continue to espouse the virtue of the “one channel” approach, but I believe that you have to achieve balance and that all candidate supply channels are valuable and need to be available depending on the circumstances, so that the employer has the choice. To limit choice unwittingly or not, is not going to help a candidate attraction strategy.

Mypeoplebiz is a totally impartial platform and, to ensure that it always remains so, we have built in to our model a set fee structure so that regardless of where the candidate comes from mypeoplebiz always charges a flat fee for the service we provide. We really are not biased as to through which channel the candidate arrives at your desk, but we are concerned to make sure that it DOES arrive at your desk.

Indeed to increase choice and reduce cost, we have introduced a huge previously untapped resource in the form of the “social network referrer” and given clients the ability to stipulate what they want to pay for each vacancy that they recruit, we have provided an easy way to create and implement an e-recruitment strategy as well as providing an agency management system that will help you achieve the goals that you set and stay within the budget that you set.
It is a choice enhancer not a choice limiter.

We can only do this by being independent, pragmatic, process driven and bringing a level of expertise that encompasses experience from expert recruiters.

The idea was to make this platform suitable for any organisation and that is what has been achieved already. We are helping large corporates and small start ups alike to access a talent pool of hard-to-find passive candidates whilst helping them to reduce recruitment costs and increasing the recruiting performance for their business.

So far the results are as follows:-

• Reduced recruitment agency spend by up to 50%.
• Reduced recruitment advertising costs.
• Reduce time-to-hire for high volume roles.
• Increase the number of direct hires.

It’s amazing what you can achieve if you set out to increase the choice rather than limit the options. The war for talent will be won by organisations that do not limit where the candidates come from, it will be won by organisations who manage the cost to hire in a practical way rather than trying to achieve it through the creation of inefficient strategies that create more work for their already overworked recruitment teams.

Multichannel recruitment – keeping your options open – is vital in this day and age.

1. Good preparation  -  Draft a job description that states clearly the skills and knowledge the candidate needs and the tasks they will perform.  Also, ensure that the requirements for the job are objective and well justified.  For example, a request for working weekends may discriminate against certain candidates, like those with certain religions or with young children.  You must be able to prove that working weekends is indeed an unavoidably necessary part of the work.

2. Advertise widely -  Advertising does not need to be expensive; you can try using your business or social networks or other online resources to save costs.  Make sure your advert is well written and specific enough to attract the right candidates.   (But be careful how you say things to avoid any potential accusations of discrimination; see more below).  Also, advertise the job widely enough to avoid accusations of discrimination and don’t forget to let your own staff know about the new job opportunity either.

3. Play fair  -  You must actively avoid discrimination in selection as well as the advertising process.  Your business can be taken to an employment tribunal by someone who believes you didn’t give them a job because of discrimination.  For example, looking for a ‘young, dynamic person’ or ‘mature, experienced lady’ could fall foul of the age and sex discrimination rules.  Also, avoid asking for personal details that are not related to the job, such as race, religious beliefs or marital status. 

4. Dig deep  –  Experienced job seekers are good at submitting “air-brushed” CVs and providing expected answers to expected interview questions.  Use the interview to get as much information on the candidate’s real suitability for the job as you can.  For example, you may want to include a skill test in the interview and ask the candidates to describe their past experiences with situations that are similar to those they will need to manage in the new job.  

5. Set evaluation criteria  –  Make sure you ask the same set of questions from each of the candidates during the interview process and use your detailed job description to assess them.  If you are accused of discrimination, this hard evidence can be invaluable in demonstrating that you have objectively assessed each candidate.

6. Find the right fit  -   Any new person you hire will need to adapt to your company’s style and work well with your existing team and processes.  Try to include in the interview process a brief tour of the work place and a quick meeting with the people with whom the new person will work closest with. 

7. Check the papers  –  You must check if the candidate is eligible to work on the UK.  If they are not, you could be fined.

8. Promote diversity  –  Make sure you have a separate equal opportunities monitoring document and put an effort into trying to recruit a balanced work-force.

9. Feedback  -  It is important to give feedback on the interview on request by an unsuccessful applicant.  Failure to do so can leave you open to claims that the rejection was for discriminatory reasons.

10.  Seal the deal  -  Every employee is entitled to a written statement of employment within two months of starting. This can either be a contract or a statement and set of policies covering the date they started work, their salary, hours of work and holiday entitlement, your policies on sick leave and pay, and pension availability. There should also be a statement on how you or your employee can terminate the job, and what disciplinary and grievance procedures are in place. 

About the author:  Aniko Zagon is the founder-director of Entelliz Limited, the entrepreneurial incubator and training specialist.  Follow her @anikozagon

Despite only a slight increase (from 50 – 58%) in the implementation of a more formalized resourcing strategy in HR departments,  the report highlights how this figure was expected to be higher, as surveys show that 76% of employers ranked “attracting and recruiting key staff to the organization” as one of their top three resourcing objectives.

Such a small number of companies formalizing their HR strategies could be due in part to the current economic uncertainty. Widespread recruitment freezes are making implementation of a formal resourcing strategy much less of a priority. Without large amounts of recruitment HR departments have a little room to ‘wing-it’ case by case, or do not want to introduce a system which may not be right when the economy picks up again.

However, other reports show that despite the woes of the credit crunch there are other signs that recruiters are looking for new ways to implement formal strategies.

In a recent article on workforce.com Ed Frauenheim said that “despite the downturn, investments are being made in HR software vendors that could lead to new capabilities when the economy eventually recovers.” Recruitment software is selling well, comparative to how the market is affecting sales of just about anything else. “Spending in the first quarter of this year was up 10 to 15 percent from the fourth quarter of 2008” said Josh Bersin, head of research firm Bersin & Associates. HR departments definitely seem to think this a good way to bring their recruitment up scratch, 21^st century style.

These programs are far from cheap, and the truth is that economic recovery will be slow, and companies are looking to reduce costs as things begin to pick up.

HR columnist Gillian Hibberd brings us a cheaper suggestion for moving things into the 21^st century, social networking sites. Feared by many companies as the ultimate time-waster for their employees Hibbered warns that organizations are going to fall “out of touch” and she champions some of the “opportunities that social networking provides”. Nowadays, “what we have to grasp is a matter of urgency … we have a new generation of workers who are web 2.0- and now expect these technologies to be part of their everyday lives  – work included”. The social networking beacon is flashing; research shows 8 in 10 HR professionals belong to these sites, and certainly for a bit more than catching up with old friends. Many said they were using it to make recommendations for suppliers and partners and to share guidance and advice from peers.

Resourcing through social networking sites seem like the obvious answer, referred to by some as the “holy grail” of recruitment. However, despite the buzz about social networks many bosses are skeptical. Maybe rightly so. How many HR consultants can say they would really know how to do this properly? is this really a strategy that can be formalized?

Perhaps this why some organisations are failing to boost the attraction and retention of key talent through the benefits of Web 2.0, according to the CIPD 2008 Recruitment, Retention and Turnover survey only 20% had adopted web 2.0 technologies to attract or recruit employers, Yet, of the 100 CIPD respondent members, over half (56%) believe that social networking sites are useful for engaging potential job seekers and welcome its ability to shed light on how they are perceived in the marketplace (52%). The majority (62%) are concerned, however, that damaging comments about their organization might be posted.

I leave with these quotes;

“We surely have to find ways of harnessing the benefits that these technologies bring while also mitigating there risks” – Gillian Hibberd

And as Frank at MPB often says as things move in the world of web 2.0

“In the end it’s all about balance”; whether the candidates are from the ever growing social networks or the more traditional angles: “It’s all about … getting the best from both worlds”

Since June 2009 to date, over 220 agencies have registered and are supplying candidates on a flat fee basis to employers, forming a diverse range of industries such as form Nestle, Sony, Camelot, Sab Miller, Next, Gerson Lehman Group, Jessops, McArthur Glen, Aspect, DSG International, Selfridges, Inter Resolve, Universal, Britvic, Royal London Insurance, OC&C, HMV, Premier Farnell, etc. We currently receive an approximate average of 50% candidate flow from Agencies. The remaining 50% are made up of 20% direct applicants and 30% are coming from our referral network.

The mypeoplebiz referral network is made up of 2000 users actively recommending friends and contacts to vacancies on the site and earning substantial rewards. What’s great is that our research shows this is likely to keep on growing!

Ofcom’s research into social networking show that 4 in 10 adults in the UK use social networking sites at an average of 5.3 hours per week. Bebo states the average time spent per visit is estimated at lengthy 40minutes. Ofcom further reports that UK adults are spending more time on social networking than our EU neighbors.

The other interesting statistic shows that one of the biggest group on the social networks is 35-49 year olds who constituted 25% of users in 2008, and according to the latest facebook stats on iStartegyLab the 35-54 year olds age group are the fastest growing age group of the site, growing by 276.4% in only 6 months. This is the category that we expect to use mypeoplebiz, either to look for a job or refer a friend for a cash bonus, reflecting that this is usually the age-group where people are most economically productive. This suggests that the number of applicants we get through the social networks is only going to grow bearing in mind the huge expansion of sites like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin over the past few years.

The findings reflect the opinion that a recruitment portal at this stage of the market’s development/sophistication has to offer a “rounded” service to clients and cannot simply offer clients a “direct only” solution for their recruitment. Some recruitment industry commentators have even gone so far as to say that the social networks are the key to achieving the Holy Grail of recruitment and delivering “direct only” candidates in the future.  However, Frank Verala mypeoplebiz CEO commented, “Recruitment is often more complicated than people realize: Referral schemes and direct applications through the social networks are our specialty, and we are doing as much as anyone else to utilize social networks, but, companies have to get the bigger picture and that is about achieving a balance in your approach and benefiting dramatically from reduced administration as well as having a complete view of all recruitment activities.”

“In the end it’s all about balance”; whether the candidates are from the ever growing social networks or the more traditional angles: “It’s all about providing a system that works for employers in helping them to recruit through getting the best from both worlds”.

Earlier in the year London recruitment looked bleak as the Centre for Economics and Business (CEBR) reported the capital would fare particularly badly due to its reliance on financial and business services.

However, a report out this week suggests after 16 months of consecutive decline “the number of people placed in permanent jobs has risen for the second consecutive month” according to Bernard Brown, head of business services at KPMG in the Wall Street Journal.

The monthly Report on Jobs, produced by Markit Economics for KPMG and the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) provides an index system which measures recruitment of permanent staff placements in the UK. A score of below 50 describes a decline, whereas August and September of 2009 have seen a rating over 50 showing an increase with measurements of 50.6 and 51.3 respectively.

It appears as though London recruitment as well as the UK as a whole has seen the base of the economic lows and things may be starting to pick up.

It has been recently reported that jobs centric to recruitment in London such as financial staff were rising for the first time in 18 months and demand for executives and professionals were also rising for the first time in 15 months.

The KPMG/REC survey of 400 recruitment consultants also showed the availability of permanent candidates rose further in September, suggesting that demand for staff is stabilizing.

Yet, London recruitment firms have reported that the labor market is still “very fragile”. Brown of KPMG suggested there are areas of optimism, but warned of a “twin-track economy” in which we see a recovery in the private sector but “large scale job losses in the public sector become ever more likely as the government finally tackles the huge budget deficit.”