Jobs data shows modest increase in permanent appointments - hurray!

John Eccleston 08 February 2012 12:01 in Personnel Today

Jobs data published today points to a modest uplift in the number of permanent appointments, although figures relating to temporary placements and pay offerings suggest that the job market is still experiencing difficulties.
The Report on Jobs, published by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) and professional services firm KPMG, is compiled using data provided by recruitment consultancies. The latest edition, released today, found that permanent appointments rose for the first time in four months, albeit at a modest rate.
However, this small piece of good news was offset by data which highlighted temporary and contract billings falling for the second month in a row. According to the report, a number of respondents cited the introduction of the Agency Workers Regulations as a reason for this fall.
In addition, salaries for permanent positions rose only marginally in January and at a much slower pace than the long- term average. Hourly rates of pay for temporary/contract staff increased modestly following a slight decline in December.
Respondents also reported that the growth in overall demand for staff eased to its weakest level for 27 months. Data suggests that engineering and construction workers were the most sought after in the latest survey period, in contrast to declines in demand for hospitality and catering staff.
Kevin Green, chief executive of the REC, said: "This month's report highlights that there are glimmers of hope for the UK jobs market with permanent placements increasing for the first time in four months. This is the first positive indicator for some time that employers are looking to hire staff despite the ongoing weakness of the economy.
"It is particularly encouraging that six out of eight sectors surveyed show growth in demand, including engineering, IT and office professionals. The report also follows better than expected services data from the Purchasing Managers' Index last Friday, which suggests that confidence is growing among consumers as well as businesses.
"A major challenge in the jobs market is the disconnect between what employers are looking for and what jobseekers can offer. Better careers guidance is part of the solution, as is increased use of apprenticeships to get young people into employment with vocational skills development."

Women at work love Borgen

My friends and I have been loving Borgen.The Danish TV show about a woman prime minister, not only is it beautifully shot, well crafted and great plots (mostly) it has not just one great female character but two!.
The Prime Minister is mature, intelligent and sexy. She has to learn to be tough, in fact she turns into a bit of a tough nut! The journalist is attractive, bright, articulate, fun andsexy. Both are workaholics, lap tops in the bedroom was a bit of a theme.....Both sacrifice their relationships and personal lives because of the passion for what they do in work. Both struggle with attacks from male colleagues. Both have to meet standards of perfection that might not be expected of their male peers.

I thought the episode about gender equality was possibly the weakest the whole 10 episodes were a treatise on gender in the workplace and the tortuous relationship that women  have with their homes/personal/work lives in order to be successful. If Birgitte had been a man, he owuld have had a cleaner and probably a wife who would have consented to sacrifice her career for his. If Katrine had been a man, he would have been ambitious and brave rather than a pain in the neck!

All sorts of issues have been raised and many of them are really relevant to my work helping people - both men and women - 'Get Paid More, Promoted Faster and Feel more Satisfied'. Like Borgen its about life not work.
Read my book of that title NOW -available from www.topcareerstrategies.info

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3 Great problem solving stragies part II

Strategy 2 –Look from underneath
Often when trying to solve problem solving we think in one dimension. Straight at it. So I’m trying to decide what to buy my partner for Christmas. All I can see are things that I want him to have. Well he may not want those. So how to find a solution?
Reverse the problem or look at it from underneath If he is trying to find a present for me, what does he want me to have? Is that something he really wants for himself? If  I pretend its next month; what would he be really grateful to me for having given him. As I write I come up with all sorts of prosaic, useful things.. but maybe he really would prefer them to the nonsense I might buy!
So try to take  a really different perspective.. what would the fly on the wall see? What would the  Dali Lama do? What would he do in my shoes?

Right off to buy the snow shovel!

3 Great ways to solve a problem...part 1

 Strategy 1 - sleep on it
Last night I was trying to do my Christmas mailer, but could I get the programme to do what I wanted? can I fly?  The format was all rubbish and the lines of text too long and…  and… and…..
I was getting so angry and cross and worked up. Then I ran out of time so rushed off to rehearsals, came home and went to bed. Woke up this morning with an image in my head of a little box at the bottom of the page which says ‘wrap text’ and the fact that I had unchecked it. Oh yes so easy.. into the mail programme and checked the box and hey presto it looked much better.
Now for those of you that received it, it was not the greatest but I did solve the problem. How.. switched off the conscious brain and let the power of the subconscious crack the code. Whilst I was getting so cross and angry there was just too much static in the brain; whilst I was relaxed and asleep… no static and up comes the answer.

So when you are struggling to see a solution .. just relax and sleep on it, as my mum used to say 'all better in the morning'.

Please read between the lines…

Please read between the lines…

I have been coaching a great chap who has been looking for a new job. He wants to be a Chief Executive and he works in local government. So we have been smartening up his presentation and applications.

Last week he rang me as he had seen a role for a CEx in the midlands, lovely part of the world.  So could I review the application. No problem.

The first line on the person specification was ‘senior management  experience in a large, complex, public sector organisation’ . My client duly started his application with a description of the senior civil service  role with 3500 staff, big budget and lots of departments, computers etc etc. Well that is a large, complex  public sector organisation. But is it what the £17m turnover district council is thinking of?

Probably not, they are more likely to be scared off by the scale of this. I can hear the phrases ‘oooh would he know how to operate in a district council? Will he be hands on enough with so few staff? How would he cope with the little budgets we have here? He probably had a chauffeur there; won’t be like that here!’

You see when people write person specifications they may not mean the same thing as you or I do. When they wrote this they probably (I don’t know who did write it but have sat in the room when such things have been discussed) were thinking; we don’t want someone from a Parish or Town Council, we don’t want someone from a small housing association, we don’t want someone who has not managed a range of services… There are quite a lot of public sector organisations that are smaller than this District Council. I don’t suppose they wanted a self employed accountant or a manager of a corner shop, or the marketing manager of a food manufacturer, or even the production manager of the local cheese factory.

Another client was thinking of applying to an international human rights pressure group. He felt he could meet the criteria ‘have influenced opinion formers and politicians at all levels’. And whilst undoubtedly they had done that in a local charity.. had they done it on the  international stage, had they been and done presentations at the UN? The context of the job was not really described by the person specification.

So when you are reading the person specification just read between the lines. What will the people in that organisation be thinking about? What do they mean by small? Who are the politicians that need influencing?

With my first client we were able to identify a different experience which was in another District Council, similar turnover, rural, tourism dependent and in a National Park that was going to press the buttons of the prospective employer. In the second, she was not successful in getting an interview.

When reading person specifications you have to read between the liens and understand the context of the job, anticipate the mind set of the authors and put yourself in their shoes. I could yet be proved wrong.. maybe they were looking for a former senior civil servant with a multi million pound budget and 3500 staff… but I suspect they will like my client whose experience is very directly relevant.

What will work be like in the future?

ILM's futurologist's predictions – could the following be coming to an office near you?

• Artificial intelligence – towards the end of the decade, computer-based intelligence will provide much of the effort in many jobs. Employees will concentrate more on the human aspects of their work, which are harder to automate.Love one another....
• Visors & 3D immersion – semi-transparent visors are coming soon and some of these will enable a fully immersive 3d experience, with a separate display in front of each eye. Together with fingertip tracking and gesture recognition, this will give a whole new interface to our computing, even with virtual keyboards.
• Augmented reality – the convergence of the virtual and physical worlds. Enabling superposition of graphics everywhere we go will give marketers, games manufacturers, retailers, fashion designers, architects and social network designers a whole new platform to play with.
• Restructuring – company structures are changing rapidly and this trend will accelerate as the web matures, automation increases, skill shortages increase, and global labour costs change, all in parallel with changing regulation.So we will all be waiting til 67 for a pension but with no work to do?
• Miniaturisation – today's IT will reduce in size potentially to digital jewellery and smart dust. This is good for sustainability, requiring far less physical resource for the same functionality and quality of life value.That sounds good, but a phone implanted in my skull? maybe not
• Cordless Energy – as well as wireless comms, tomorrow's electronic devices will almost all be cordless for power too. thank god i say, no more trailing wires or running out of power!
  
  How will you cope?

Thanks to the Institute of Leadership and Management.