The New Level Health & Safety Recruitment Blog

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!

 

Good news!

Good news - Jo is back from her adventures in Ningaloo (which is somewhere in the wilds of Australia!) on Monday and the blog will return to normal!

Have a great weekend!

Formatting

I'm not sure what has happened to the formatting of our blog and do apologise if it appears to be a bit of a mess. I'm looking into it... :)

Where's the blog gone?

Just a quick note to let you know that I haven’t forgotten to write the blog. I’ve been writing a marvellous one on transferring skills from one industry to another, but as we’ve been quite busy this week with new jobs and arranging interviews etc (it’s not all doom and gloom out there despite what the media says!) I’m afraid I haven’t had time to finish it. I’ll get on to it early next week. In the meantime, have a great weekend!

Another week and loads more interesting stuff learned!

Well, another interesting week in the New Level Recruitment camp, and all the team are off to enjoy a well deserved break. We've had a load of new jobs in this week, some of them particularly interesting to us as they involve industries we haven't really dealt with before - a requirement for an HSE Manager with an international  client in Nottingham who specialises in Cash Transfer Solutions for example (ref 0814), another requirement for an HSE Advisor with a Somerset company who manufacture the plastic pellets used by plastics extrusion companies (ref 0815) plus many others. We've also had a couple of new CDM-C roles in which are paying extremely well and above the industry average, so we're quite hopeful of filling those quickly too (ref 0816, 0817). That's just a few - there are many more on our website, so if you want to take a look, go straight to our jobs page to see if there's anything there that might suit you!.

We've been watching with interest the development of an H&S networking site being run by a friend of ours, Christian Hopper.There are a few other H&S networking sites out there I know, but this one seems to be a bit more interesting and better run than most. The url is www.safetynetworking.co.uk

We are still very excited by the upcoming roll our of our latest offering to our clients - a pre-recruitment audit, to help you ascertain exactly what your H&S requirements are and what level of health & safety professional your business needs PRIOR to actually writing the job spec. and instructing an agency - it could save everybody a lot of time and effort, as well as making it easier for the agency (hopefully New Level Recruitment!) to make sure they find you exactly the right person.

Ah well, that's it from me this week - it's a (relatively) warm spring evening and I'm off to enjoy my garden and recuperate my strength and enthusiasm for the week to come. I hope you all have a nice time too!

Needle in a haystack for the number ones!

Wow! What a great start to the week we've had! We've just had independent confirmation (from www.seodigger.com) that our site is now number 1 on the Google organic search pages for our main keywords - recruitment health and safety, and health and safety vacancies. This might not mean much to some of you out there, but those of you familiar with the black arts of SEO will understand what an achievement this is. Another good thing that happened was that our colleagues at Health & Safety at Work (www.healthandsafety-jobs.co.uk) were only just behind us, ahead of the SHP and some of the bigger more general job boards like jobsite! They've been working really hard over the last year or so to get their site up the rankings, and we're really pleased to see they're getting there.

On another note, we are very happy today because we've finally managed to find the perfect person for a particularly difficult to fill role we've been working on for some time. The client had very particular requirements and a very clear idea of the sort of person they needed, and it wasn't easy finding someone with all the necessary attributes, but we did it. As one happy client said "we asked you to find us a needle in a haystack, and you did!" When you work in recruitment the thrill of such praise more than makes up for any bad days.

Let's hope the rest of the week goes as well as today!

Helping you to decide what sort of Health & Safety professional your company needs.

Well! Another interesting week in the New Level Recruitment office - TGIF!!!

A question that many employers ask us is "what level of Health & Safety professional does my business need?" Up until now we've given what advice we can, talked about the different qualifications and professional memberships out there and what they mean, and have sent out so many copies of our List of Health & Safety qualifications (see the page on this blog) that we've lost count.

It is really important to get the right level of H&S support for your particular business. If you hire someone who isn't sufficiently experienced or qualified then you risk not having an adequate level of cover. Conversley, if you take on someone who is too highly qualified and experienced then you risk a) paying too much money and b)them getting bored and frustrated and resigning, leaving you to go through the whole recruitment process again.

It was with that in mind that we listened with interest this week to a new colleague who has an innovative approach to solving this problem. He proposes a form of pre-recruitment audit of your company in order to advise you on what you really need to look for when you're drawing up the job spec. and selecting candidates for interview. We can organise for a qualified H&S professional to come in, look at the systems and procedures you have in place, talk to any existing H&S personnel, and advise you on the most appropriate level of health & safety support for your particular needs.

The benefits to employers are obvious, in that you know exactly what you need and you don't waste time and money recruiting over or under spec. The additional benefit is that we as a recruitment agency then have a much better idea of the particular issues facing your business and of the sort of person best suited to solve them.

A win win situation all around really, so watch this space! We will be exploring this idea in detail over the next couple of weeks, and in the meantime, if you'd like to talk to us to find out more about it - you know where we are!!

Have a great weekend!

More on the interesting franchise offer

Whoops! Another week has zipped by and I've been so busy trying to fill all the work we've got coming in that I only just realised I'd missed posting the promised information about this H&S consultancy franchise offer I mentioned in my previous post. Basically, we have a client, a reputable AIM listed company with lots of experience and backing behind them, who is looking to help experienced health & safety professionals to set up and run their own consultancy businesses. Lots of H&S consultancies fail because of lack of marketing, trouble chasing invoices etc. Our client has a telesales team who will be doing much of the marketing for you and providing you with warm leads to follow up, a back office team who will issue and chase invoices on your behalf, the technical expertise of their existing team of franchisees to help you with any work you're not familiar with, an accounting team to issue and chase your invoices, and the marketing benefits associated with being part of a bigger and well known brand. For someone who hasn't run their own business before (or who has and got bogged down with all the extra bits!) then this could be something worth considering. If you think it might be for you, or you'd like to find out a bit more, then please call my colleague Nav, who will be happy to talk to you about it. You can reach her on the office number 0845 270 1640, her direct line 01483 230 472 or by email at nav@newlevelrecruitment.com

An interesting new opportunity arises...

Well!! It's been an interesting week for New Level Recruitment - the disruption caused by our move into bigger offices seems to be finally coming under control, we've had a good selection of new vacancies come in and around 50% of them are repeat business from existing clients. We love getting repeat business - partly because it shows that people are happy with the high level of service we provide, and partly because repeat business gives us the chance to get to know our clients even better, which means we're then able to offer an even better service! The same goes for our candidates too, of course. Just today, for example, I had a call from someone whose employer had recommended him to us because of the high level of honesty and support we give that distinguishes us from the other health and safety agencies in the market. That sort of thing happens to us a lot, which we love - it's always nice to get a pat on the back isn't it?

Anyway, something else interesting that has happened this week is that we have been approached by someone who is operating a health & safety consultancy franchise offering, which is a bit different from the norm. We met with them yesterday, and were impressed with the level of professionalism and planning that they brought to the table.. For anyone unfamiliar with the franchise model of business, basically, the franchisor offers its franchisees the opportunity to benefit from their experience in running a particular type of business, in this case Health & Safety Consultancy. They supply branding, qualified leads, business advice and support, invoicing facilities (the main reason so many health & safety consultancies don't work is that they can't get the work done AND chase the invoices, so this is a major benefit).

We were so impressed with this company that we have agreed to contact our existing database of health & safety professionals to let them know about the opportunity and to put both sides in touch so that they can further explore the mutual benefits of the franchise model. I'll be posting more information on here tomorrow, so if it sounds like the sort of thing that might be for you, then remember to pay us a visit to check things out further!

In the meantime, it's been a very long day in the health & safety recruitment world, so I'll sign off and be back tomorrow, refreshed and ready to face another day of helping people to find employers and employers to find people - very rewarding indeed!

Health & Safety - what the market is doing today.

Health & Safety – what the market is doing.

A fairly topical blog today I thought! It seems like everybody in the world is rushing around worrying about the financial market meltdown and what effect it will have on us ordinary folk – as a business owner this is obviously of fairly serious concern to me too, so we make a point of constantly monitoring what is happening in the health & safety recruitment market. Thus far (fingers crossed) the situation seems pretty stable – we’ve had a record number of new vacancies (job orders) come in this month, many at middle to senior management level, which is a good sign. This might be because the health & safety market is so legislation driven, or it might be (as I like to think!) that our clients appreciate the importance of being well covered when it comes to looking after their staff and so are prioritizing health & safety even in a time of economic downturn.

One thing that has changed in the market though, is that we’re seeing a definite “loosening up” of the candidate flow, i.e. the number of new candidates registering with us for work. Anyone with an interest in this industry will know that it has been a fairly candidate driven market of late, with the really good candidates being able to pick and choose their roles. This has made life pretty tough for your average recruiter, so it’s a relief to see that there are more people around interested in the jobs we have on offer.

A classic recruiter complaint is that there are either too many jobs and not enough candidates, or too many candidates and too few jobs. It does sometimes seem like that, but I always console myself with the thought that that is why we have recruitment agencies – if matching the right candidate to the right job was ever easy, we wouldn’t have a job! As it is, the call for good, professional recruitment services such as we offer at New Level Recruitment remains steady amongst those smart enough to realize the value of bringing in the experts.