The New Level Health & Safety Recruitment Blog

Britain the safest place to work in the EU!

According to research published this week by the HSE, Britain is one of the safest places in the EU to work. last year 29.3 million working days were lost to injury and ill health, compared to 33.0 million in 2007/8, and apparently significantly less than other EU countries.

Thats down to dedicated Health & Safety professionals like the ones we recruit, working hard to get their message across - well done all of you!

How to work with your recruitment agency to achieve the ultimate aim - hiring the best possible person for your company!

It is a common complaint of HR managers that they don’t get all they expect from their external recruitment supplier, that agencies are full of talk about high levels of service, getting to know you etc etc. As usual when a relationship doesn’t live up to expectations, there is likely to be fault on both sides.  It is very difficult for an agency recruiter to get a really good idea of what you’re looking for if you don’t tell them. Recruitment via ESP isn’t really feasible, is it?

With this in mind, I’ve put together a few thoughts on things that can be done to improve communication and to increase the likelihood of a successful recruitment outcome.

• Provide a job description that actually matches the job. Often we receive job descriptions that are several years old or which were originally written for another position entirely. Remember that the job description is what the recruiter and the candidate take to be your requirements – if you ask for the wrong thing, you’re going to get the wrong thing…. Allowing the recruiter to speak to the current incumbent or the line manager is also very helpful in getting a feel for what the position actually entails.
• Be clear about what you actually want - provide specific requirements, not general concepts. Think about what you actually mean by “good communicator”, “flexible approach” and where you can, give more detail. One person’s flexible good communicator is another person’s inflexible brick wall.
• Meet your recruitment consultant! Many HR Managers don’t want to waste their precious time meeting their recruitment consultant face to face, but if you think about it, without seeing the place where a candidate will be working, meeting some of the team and getting a feel for the company ethos and culture it is very difficult to know what sort of person will best suit the vacancy. Expecting a recruiter to find you the perfect candidate without giving them any information about the company is like asking them to swim the channel with one arm tied behind their back!
  
  
• Offer a realistic salary and benefits package. Ask yourself if you would move from your current position to another company for less money than you’re on now. Of course you wouldn’t, so why expect anyone else to? Take advice from the recruitment consultant if you’re unsure of the market rate – they are the ones dealing with it every day and generally have a pretty good idea of what is feasible. And remember – paying peanuts gets monkeys.
• Move fast - don’t waste valuable time waiting for weeks before booking interviews – even in a depressed market the best candidates will get snatched up while you’re cooling your heels not bothering to move. Also, long delays before interviews tend to give a bad impression of your company and your HR processes – the best candidates will simply go to someone ready to act quickly and treat their application with respect.
• Sell the job and the company to the candidate. An interview is a 2 way street – the candidate is there to sell him/herself to you, but he/she is also there to find out more about the company and the role – you’re both in the spotlight so be prepared and make sure you present yourself in the best light.
• Trust the recruitment agency to manage the offer negotiations – this is the stage at which a third party can give valuable distance to allow honest discussion to take place.

2009 IOSH Salary and Attitudes Survey published this week

I thought that the results of the 2009 IOSH Salary and Attitudes Survey published this week in the SHP were generally good news for the profession! Here are some of the key points for those who missed it:

• The average salary overall was £37,705 with oil and gas being the best paid sector where the average was £57,408.
• The average salary for Chartered fellows of IOSH (CFIOSH) was £58,484; while Chartered members received an average of £42,847, with Grad IOSH and Tech IOSH at £35058 and £3,748 respectively.
• The average salary for non-members of IOSH was £31,384 (non-members made up for just under 8% of the sample)
• Consultant’s rates varied considerably with 29% charging up to £250/day and 19% charging a daily rate of over £551.

Attitudes are changing… according to the survey 43% felt that health and safety practitioners had a higher status than five years ago and 60% added that their company is more committed to health and safety than it was five years ago.

More than half of the respondents thought their job would be changed to include extra duties - around 80% of respondents already have responsibility for fire safety, two-thirds for occupational health, over half for environment, a quarter for security / general FM and a sixth for quality control.

Approximately 80% of respondents said that they wanted to see a government-recognised scheme of accreditation for the profession.

The survey took place in April 2009 and of the 2969 people who responded, 93% were ‘in-house’ employees and 7% were consultants. 1973 people supplied salary details. For full details see www.iosh.co.uk/salarysurvey

Have a great weekend!

Interview advice - how to come out of there with the job of your dreams!

Now that the economy is showing such strong signs of picking up there are obviously going to be a lot more people out there going for interviews, so I thought the time might be right to revisit a blog I posted earlier this year on interview techniques and advice. I hope you find it useful.

The thing to remember is that an interview is a 2 way street - they are assessing you to see if you will fit their company, and you are assessing them to see if the company (and the role) fits you. If you just remember that, you'll find that you are a lot less nervous about the whole process!

If you're lucky and you're being put forward for the position by a reputable recruitment agency (like New Level Recruitment, for example :)) you will have been offered an interview preparation session before you go in - take it! The prep. session will not only cover the likely interview format and probable questions, but will also give you the chance to clarify in your mind the things you need to say and ask. It will also "limber you up" mentally and help you to relax once you get into the actual interview.

Good preparation is the key to ensuring a successful interview so be sure to go through the job description in detail prior to the interview and match that against your own unique experiences. The interviewer may also ask why you are specifically interested in working for the particular company, so ensure you have fully researched the company  beforehand – the company website is a good place to start.

The interviewer will initially ask you to talk through your CV and previous experiences.

Below is a short list of just some of the questions you may be asked in an interview situation:

  Why are you looking for a new position?

  Tell me about yourself      

  What interests you about and our company and this specific role?

  What strengths could you bring to the role?

  Describe two weaknesses\development areas - and what you are doing to address them

  How would your current manager describe you?

  Talk me through a recent achievement that you are proud of.

  Give me an example of when you have had to manage two or more conflicting priorities - what happened, what did you learn, how would you manage differently?

  Give me an example of when you last worked under pressure - what happened?

You will probably have questions of your own that you would like to ask the interviewer, be sure to write down critical questions so you don’t forget. It is really important that you leave the interview having found out everything you need to know to decide if this is the right opportunity for you.

Finally, before you leave the interview if you have decided that this is the position and company you have been looking for, make sure you tell the interviewer. It will ensure that the manager is in no doubt about your level of interest and it is a great way to make a lasting impression!

 

By the way, I hope it goes without saying that you should always make sure you arrive in plenty of time, dress smartly (and appropriately) and take a copy of your CV, your passport and the job spec. with you. It all just helps things to go more smoothly!

Job seekers tip - the importance of tracking where your CV is going and following up on your applications

A common error being made by many job seekers at the moment is not keeping track of where their CV has been sent and what jobs they have applied for. It is really important that you do so – firstly, so you can check it actually got to where it was supposed to (could have got lost in the post, stuck in a spam filter etc); secondly to stop you reapplying for the same position lots of times (that makes you look really unprofessional and disorganised) and thirdly, so you can follow it up for feedback.

 

Following up on your application is a really good idea, not just to make sure it got there in the first place, but also because a follow up reinforces to the recruiter/employer that you are genuinely interested in the role and not just spamming out applications to every job you see.

 

It’s a sad fact that in today’s market it is common practice not to respond personally to all applications (though at New Level Recruitment we do our very best!).It’s nothing personal, just that with so many hundreds of applications for every vacancy, there aren’t enough hours in the day to reply to them all! So if you want to make sure you get noticed, follow up your application with a phone call or an email a few days after you sent it. Do give them a bit of time though - please don’t do what one applicant did to me last week and ring 5 minutes after pinging over his CV to ask why we hadn’t bothered to respond – it does take a bit of time to read and assess an application properly!

 

Because the application process can take several months and you might forget the details, it is a good idea to keep a record of the position you applied for, a copy of the job spec. and a note of which CV version you sent in. That way you’ll have all the necessary information to hand, which makes life easier for everybody and also makes you look more professional and therefore more likely to get the job!

 

Where to look for HS&E jobs

We've just put together a new information sheet that we hope will be of use to anyone out there looking for a job in HSE - it's saved in the "Pages" section in the right hand column - have a look, and if you can think of any potential HSE job sources that we've missed out, please let us know!

Accreditation of the Health & Safety profession - what do you think?

An article in the SHP recently discussed the current and ongoing talks between the main H&S industry bodies about the possibility of accrediting the H&S industry. A transcript of the article is below, and we'd really like to know what you think. Good plan? Bad plan? or don't you care either way? Please click here to complete our very quick poll and let us know!

"The main professional bodies in health and safety have started discussions on official accreditation for practitioners, which would ensure that clients and employers have access to competent and sensible advice.

At a round-table meeting hosted by the HSE on 21 July, representatives from IOSH, the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, RoSPA, the British Safety Council, the International Institute of Risk and Safety Management (IIRSM), and the British Safety Industry Federation (BSIF) discussed what a future accreditation scheme might entail, as well as a feasibility study. Details of the study are due to be published by the HSE in mid-August but SHP understands that it will be conducted by IOSH and the CIEH and funded by the HSE.

Said IOSH’s policy and technical director, Richard Jones: “The CIEH is researching existing accreditation models and assessing their suitability. IOSH is doing market research into the small-business sector to determine its appetite for an accreditation scheme and, secondly, researching in the health and safety consultancy community – not just among IOSH members but also those who are members of other bodies – to understand their feelings towards an accreditation scheme. The HSE is also undertaking parallel research into issues around how organisations access competent advice.”

The issue of official accreditation has been around for some time, and was welcomed by the Government in its response to last year’s Work and Pensions Select Committee report on the role of the HSE. However, the Executive is adamant that it will not run such a scheme, nor control or regulate the professional bodies that do establish it.

IOSH has long advocated some form of official accreditation to improve the current situation, in which anyone can act as a health and safety consultant. It said it envisages a voluntary system, which sets down a minimum standard of qualification and experience required to operate as a health and safety consultant.

The feasibility study is likely to be completed early next year but there will be no decision on accrediting the profession before the General Election, which must be held before June 2010."

Online job seeker support and guidance

I mentioned in last week’s blog that we were looking at different ways we can help and support our job seekers, and so I’m pleased to be able to personally recommend a new job seekers advice service called MyWorksearch. The people behind MyWorkSearch have over 60 years' experience in Human Resources between them. They know almost everything there is to know about how to search for and land the right job - and their programme incorporates it all.

 The people at MyWorkSearch give you the kind of personal guidance that's usually given by highly trained (and very expensive) career consultants. MyWorkSearch does what those career consultants would do for you - but online. Their programme coaches you in things like how to interview successfully and how to organise your time. They even analyse you to work out what kind of jobs an employer is most likely to hire you for.

Their system tells you exactly what to do, step by step, day by day - till you succeed.  It reminds you. It organises you. It keeps you going so you're not tempted to slacken when things don't go quite right, It offer practical and effective support and guidance all the way until you start your new job.

Well worth looking at, I think.

Exciting new developments to help our job seekers

We've been thinking hard (yes, it happens sometimes :))at New Level about how we can help all our candidates maximise their chances of finding a new job in the current (somewhat scary!) economic climate. Obviously we can't magically create new jobs for you all, but what we can do is steer you in the right direction to get the help you need to present yourselves well on your CV and in interview, and also to give you some advice about the tactics of applying for jobs over the internet. The pitfalls of that one are many and varied, believe me!

Anyway, I posted a blog last week about the special discounts we've negotiated with a training company (see below) to give you advice on CV writing and interview techniques, so that's a start. We're also in negotiations with another company who offer online career advice, but more on that later.

The 2nd thing we're doing is turning our informal email updates into a regular scheduled free email newsletter (sign up below),  in which we aim to provide you with bits of news about the HSE industry along with job seeking advice and some special offers from time to time. We'll be sending the first one out in the next few days, to all the people already registered with us. If you're not registered with us and you'd like to receive our newsletter, then just visit our website (www.newlevelrecruitment.com) to sign up (sorry, having trouble making the sign up link work on the blog...).

We hope all this helps - do let us know! And if any of you have any ideas about good content ideas for the newsletter, feel free to send it our way!

 

How to maximise your chances of finding a job on the internet.

When it comes to posting your CV on an internet job board such as CV Library, Totaljobs, Healthandsafety-jobs.co.uk etc., there are some basic rules you need to follow to make sure your details can be found by the right people and to maximise your chances of finding your next job.

Each job board is slightly different, but the basics are the same for each.

1. They will always ask you for your contact details – many sites have an option to hide these details and a lot of people take advantage of that, which is understandable. What you need to remember is that your contact details need to be SOMEWHERE, or recruiters and potential employers won’t be able to contact you. I had a CV in yesterday from a job site – a good candidate with skills highly relevant to a particular job I’m working on, but he didn’t bother to put any contact details on either his CV or on the site so I can’t let him know about the opportunity. A complete waste of time. So, remember either put your contact details on the job board, or on your CV.

2. Salary and location options – it can be tempting to select all locations and all salary brackets when you post your CV, but actually when you do that you’re making it more difficult for people to assess your suitability for a particular role. If you say you are looking for £30 – 40,000 a year, for example, that’s clear and people can work on that basis. If you select “£10 – 20k, 20 – 30k, 30-40k, 50 – 60k, 60k +” then it gives no accurate information at all, so won’t help recruiters assess your suitability at all! Likewise with location – if you really are totally mobile and can go anywhere in the UK (or the world) at a moment’s notice, then fine, select all those locations. 99.5% of people AREN’T totally mobile though, and would rather cut their hands off than relocate to Outer Mongolia or Timbuktu! If you aren’t really going to do it, then don’t say you will!

3. Always make your nationality clear, either on the job board selection options or on your CV. People need to know for legal reasons, not to be racist! It isn’t us being nosy, it’s the Home Office!

4. Keywords – many job boards allow recruiters and potential employers to search candidate’s CVs using keywords. If your CV or profile doesn’t have the relevant keywords in it people won’t be able to find you. Once a recruiter has your CV they may well be able to “read between the lines” to ascertain your relevant skills and experience, but if the right keywords aren’t in there to enable them to find your CV in the first place, they’re never going to get that far!

5. Job title – look on a job title as a keyword. Many job boards give you the option to put in your current job title, which recruiters and potential employers can then search on. If you put “unemployed”, what do you really think the chances are of anyone finding your CV or looking at your profile?

6. Spelling – my old bug bear, but just as relevant as ever, particularly when it comes to keyword searching. If, for example, you write IOSH as OHS institution, no-one will find you. If you spell NEBOSH as NESHOB (which I saw recently, so it isn’t a joke!) no-one will find you. Also, a properly formatted and spellchecked CV demonstrates your attention to detail and your professionalism.