Spring Newsletter

Welcome to our Spring 2015 newsletter. We hope you've been enjoying some of the sunshine we've had over the past couple of weeks, and now you've got over the shock, what better to do than to catch up on the latest tech bites, recruitment news and other industry insights from the Asset Resourceing Team

Contents

Click below to be taken to each section:

Should You Quit Your Job? Here’s 10 Reasons Why YouShould Think About It...

Engage Brain, THEN Open Mouth…

Question: When Is A Lunch Hour Not A Lunch Hour?

Are You In A Position To Hire More Staff?

Should You Quit Your Job? Here’s 10 Reasons Why You Should Think About It...

First off, let it be clear that we’re not advocating that you walk into your boss’s office this afternoon and tell him or her in no uncertain terms that you’re off and you’re not coming back. That would be foolish advice for anyone to give, let alone a recruitment consultancy.

Leaving a job at any point, but especially during these times of market uncertainty is a risk,so why do people do it? Some people do it because they’ve found a better paying job or one with more prospects for career advancement elsewhere. Some leave to start their ownbusiness. Some leave because their boss is a half-witted, oily-haired middle manager with unwarranted delusions of grandeur and who will wear a Christmas-themed tie in December because he’s ‘wacky’. Whatever the reason, there always is one.

Ultimately, life is far, far too short to get stuck in a rut you can’t get out of. It’s too short to work for a moron. It’s too short to feel unfulfilled and taken for granted. It’s too short for people more senior than you but far less bright than you to take credit for your work with no acknowledgement. Most importantly, it’s too short to be royally unhappy going in every day, being bored and not caring about whatever it is you’re churning out.

If a friend says to you ‘I can’t stand my job/boss/colleagues’ (delete as appropriate), the first thing you’d tell them is to look for something else, so isn’t it advisable to take your ownadvice?

Here are the top 10 reasons to leave your job and find something that will ultimately give you satisfaction, a perma-grin and if you’re lucky, more cash…

No-one cares what you say

It’s horrible when you have genuinely good ideas and they are ignored, disregarded or worse, your brainless boss takes credit for your creativity. Eventually you’ll stop contributing, stop caring and find a company where you’re appreciated.

Constructive criticism is fine, public criticism isn't

Having occasional private (or team) sessions with your boss who has taken the time to identify ways in which you can improve and be more productive is a vital element of your career progression but a boss who will publicly criticise you for your perceived failings is nothing more than an insecure moron and it’s time to start the hunt for a new role.

You’re welcome…

You should say ‘you’re welcome’ when someone says ‘thank you’ and if you’ve got a boss who expects the world but will never thank you for your time and effort, it’s time to update your CV. Why should you bother to put the effort in for ungrateful people? There are plentyof companies out there who will appreciate what you do.

Managing up is another sign of insecurity

Often, you’ll find a boss who’s seemingly only purpose in life is to kowtow to their boss, likesome sort of performing monkey in the vain hope they’ll get noticed. A good boss understands that youwin as a team and the victories are sweeter and conversely you lose as a team and the defeats are softened. It’s not your job to grow your boss’s career at the expense of your own.

What are you doing every day?

Do you get home every night and wonder what on earth you did all day and more importantly, why you bother? If you don’t feel like you’re achieving anything meaningful or having any sort of impact on the business you’re working for, it may be the time to get out…

Are you doing it ‘just’ for the money?

Look, the money is important; it pays your mortgage and puts food into the mouths of your children but it’s not the be all and end all. If you work with talented people you respect, admire and can learn from, great, but if you don’t and your boss never stops to ask how you are, you will quickly become an automaton. Before that happens, get out!

You’d rather stay in bed

We have all woken up on a freezing cold January morning and wished that we could just stay in bed but trudge off to work we go and the only thing you look forward to is when youcan leave at the end of the day. This isn’t healthy. Every job has things that you’d rather not do but then again every job should have some excitement, or something that challenges you or aspects you look forward to. If not, guess what we’re going to say…

Tomorrow is the same as today…and yesterday…

Are you going through the motions day after day, week after week, month after month with no evidence that you’re ever going to get promoted, get given additional responsibility or talk to your boss about how to further your career? A good employer knows that to keep the best talent, they have to be challenged to step up. If there’s no hope, there’s no future for you there.

Do you think differently to others?

You’ll always hear from serial entrepreneurs that you’ll never get rich working for someone else but you need experience in a big company to give you the understanding of what’s needed to run a business and also to perhaps meet the like-minded people that will enableyou to fulfil your dreams and launch the business you’ve always wanted to.

Are you too ‘safe?’

We’ve all been there. It’s easy to stay in your current job for a number of reasons. The money’s good, it’s close to home, the work isn’t too taxing, there’s nothing else out there orthe worst one – you feel like you owe them something. Maybe it’s time to come out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself if no-one else is going to? Take a chance on your own ability. What do you REALLY want to do, because if you’ve got this far into the article, it’s likely it isn’t what you’re doing right now?

Engage Brain, THEN Open Mouth…

If there’s one other thing in life that’s a certainty other than death and taxes, it’s saying something to someone and then regretting it. We’ve all done it. Even the non-verbal version – when your wife comes home and asks if you like her new shoes and you hesitate for a billionth of a second…

Generally speaking, the times when you’re at your grumpiest are likely to be on the tube in the morning (and on the way home), when your kids are driving you insane or when it’s taking the barman FAR too long to get to you and if there’s ever a reason to engage brain before opening gob, this is the perfect example…

Earlier this year, two people were on the tube. One was calledMatt Buckland, the Head of Talent at a private equity firm on his way to work and the other guy remained nameless but for the purposes of this article, we’ll call him ‘Dave’. ‘Dave’ was on his way to an interview. As the tube pulled into Monument station Matt moved over to let a woman off the train but ‘Dave’ thought Matt was deliberately standing in the way of everyone else. ‘Dave’ pushed Matt out of the way, told him to ‘f*** himself’ and got off the train.

Matt went to his office and started hisday’s work, preparing to interview a set ofcandidates for roles at his firm. In abizarre, unfortunate coincidence, whoshows up for an interview with Matt? Youguessed it. ‘Dave’.

At first, ‘Dave’ didn’t recognise Matt butMatt asked him a few questions about hisjourney into town to try and jog hismemory. As ‘Dave’ realised who he wassitting in front of, he, according to Matt onTwitter ‘…realised, laughed about it awkwardly and got on with the interview’.

Fair play to Matt, presumably he could have made ‘Dave’s’ life a misery for half an hour but he remained professional and said that the really ‘unfortunate incident’ could have happened to anyone and as a recruiter, he values people with emotions.

As it turns out, ‘Dave’ didn’t get the job. ‘He wasn’t right for the role’ Matt said.

Remember – engage brain, THEN open mouth. You just never know who you’re talking to (or swearing at).

Question: When Is A Lunch Hour Not A Lunch Hour?

Answer: when it’s half an hour, or even ten minutes. In a recent report published by Reed, 1,000 workers were surveyed to discover what they do at lunchtime and the answers may shock you.

•Over 60% are given less than an hour

•Almost seven in 10 don’t take the amount of time they are allocated

•Two in three admit they don’t actually eat at lunchtime

Which begs the question, why do people find it so hard to separate themselves from their desks?

A lot of us have been there, getting to 3pm and realising we haven’t eaten a thing since breakfast and the suggestion is that it’s partly about needing to get the job done and also about the perception that you’re working hard to impress the boss.

Eating out every day, even if it’s just a Pret sandwich, can get expensive. Add in a bag of crisps and a coffee and you’re looking at £6+ a day, £30+ a week or £120+ a month.That’s the business end of £1,500 a year. Throw in a few decent pub lunches a month and your banging on the door of two grand.

Some will use their lunch time for other things, such as going to the gym, doing personal stuff like banking or catching up on the latest episode of Better Call Saul. Whatever the reason, for some, eating is way down the list of priorities.

Being nourished naturally makes you more productive and of course in some companies, namely massive social media firms and banks, hot and coldfood is provided either free or at heavily subsidised rates and that’s a big draw but if you have fund your grub yourself, it seems that there are plenty of other things you’re prefer to do.

What do you do at lunchtime? Let us know on Twitter @AssetResourcing

Are You In A Position To Hire More Staff?

It’s the dream. You start a business in your back room, take on a part-timer and then makethem full-time. You soon realise you’re a bit cramped so you get an office. Then you need someone to make whatever it is you sell while you get the new business in, and so it goes on. Google started like that and so we suspect did thousands of other corporate giants.

We all know that finding talent to do whatever it is you do is hard and when you do find them, you have to pay over the odds, but how can you scale your business by taking on more work if you haven’t got the workforce to do the actual work you’re being asked to do?This is the double-edged (or even triple-edged) sword that employers are now discovering and it’s a genuine concern.

A new JobsOutlook survey by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) has thrown up some startling figures: •39% of employers have ‘no capacity’ to take on more work without more staff

•Just under 6 in 10 have ‘a little capacity’

•Since Aug 14, employers with limited or no capacity has increased by 5% to 95%

•In the same time period, employers reporting a ‘fair amount’ has halved to 5%

In addition, of those surveyed, 79% plan to hire more permanent employees in the coming three months; 13% will maintain current levels of staffing and only 8% plan to reduce numbers.

It’s a common story that we’ve reported on a number of times over the last 12-18 months: just where is all this skilled talent coming from? Employers are continually telling us that there are severe talent shortages in this century’s vital employment growth areas – engineering, IT, medical research and construction – so, according Kevin Green, the Chief Executive of the REC ‘fixing [the employment shortage] needs to be a priority for the next government so that the UK can continue to prosper. That means a sensible approach to immigration so that businesses have access to the talent they need today, while the government improves careers advice in schools and encourages more young people to study the right subjects.’

He also rightly points out that recruiters like Asset Resourcing have an important job – to connect employers with the right talent including untapped talent pools. There are around 1m ‘older’ workers who can potentially offer businesses experience and skillsets they need.

The talent is out there. Sometimes they just have to be given the opportunity and while that can involve a certain amount of risk on the part of the employer, oftentimes that risk can pay serious dividends.

What are your plans for Q2 2015? Are you hiring or firing? If you’re hiring, we have a supremely talented bunch just waiting for the right opportunity and if you are having to let staff go, we have some fantastic jobs waiting for the right candidate!

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