Sirona Says

What Absolute Rubbish!! The Retail National Staff Dismissal Register

Has anyone seen this complete load of rubbish that came to light this week? Action Against Business Crime (AABC) Group have set up a National Staff Dismissal Register for retailers. It will apparently hold data on individuals who are dismissed for prescribed “dishonesty” reasons, including theft and/or damage, and on individuals who resign part way through a disciplinary process or investigation based on such reasons. The organisations that have signed up - allegedly including Harrods, Mothercare and Selfridges - to the scheme will have access to this information and are likely to use this in their employee vetting process.

Just imagine creating something that broke every rule in the employment discrimination handbook and not even having it officially regulated!! Well AABC seem to have chosen have chosen to do this with their stupidly misguided register.

How the hell can you have a register of dismissed employees when each retailer has its own disciplinary criteria. The phrase double standards springs to mind!! 

You See, Generation Y'ers can achieve things!!

Everyone talks about the generation Y'ers (including me) and how they need focus, training and development. If they could only apply themselves to subjects (maybe physics??) that they are interested in, they can achieve, what could sometimes could be called the impossible! Thanks James for heads up on these clever (well some would say clever!) generation Y'ers!

The 10 things Employers HAVE to understand about recruiting staff

As an employer, you don't want to be reading this list, but you HAVE TO READ IT!! It is what the recruitment market is like currently, and if you don't take these points on board then you will have bigger problems that you think, when it comes to recruiting your own staff!! Reality hurts sometimes, and for some companies, who stick their heads in the sand it will end up being very painful indeed!! So, here are my 10 things that employers have to understand about the recruitment market place:

• Candidates receive multiple offers. You must understand what your prospective candidates are really looking for and sell your company and your opportunity accordingly. Candidates will have more than your offer to choose from, make it count.
• Nearly all candidates will receive a counter-offer from their current employer. Be aware and offer a good package or you simply won't get that second chance!
• Past employers return like sharks. They wait for you new employee to have been there 1-2 months and return with another counter offer and a 'is it really what they told you?' approach.
• Recruitment agencies are also sniffing for blood. A fact of employment life is that your good staff WILL be getting calls from recruiters, looking to prise them from your company. Ignore this fact at your peril.

CareerBuilder's new marketing tool - Sexual Innuendo!!

There has been alot of discussion about an advert for CareerBuilder that went a little too far. It was so close to the mark that YouTube pulled the video and Cheezhead gave it an R rating. See what you think, but beware those of you, who are easily offended you might feel the need to sit down!! Feel free to laugh loudly but this was meant to be a serious production !!

Resume Forensics - How to find free CV's on Google, Yahoo and Live

Jim Stroud of the recruiters lounge, the award winning blogger/recruiter/speaker has written a book that is going to be very popular amongst recruiters and even some corporate recruiters. It is called Resume Forensics - and it is a comprehensive guide on how to use Google, Yahoo and MSNLive to find CV's - free! Click here to download the ebook . In the meantime here is a video to give you a taster of what to expect in the ebook.

Reed's Recruiting Emergency is behind the times!!

Anyone seen this offer from Reed today (it arrived in my inbox)? They have tied their summer advertising campaign into the 'old'  999 emergency services dialing number - pricing the package is £999.

Come on you Reed marketing department isn't our government telling us that we are part of the European community? If you didn't already know the European wide number you dial for the emergency services is now 112.

So as a business within the European community I would be more than happy to have the same deal, based on the 112 emergency number, at £112!!! .........chances of that happening .............slim!!!   (It would be a great bargain though!!)

A change is as good as a rest!

Having seen Stephen's excellent rebrand of his Recruitment Views blog, it prompted me to make some ammendments as well. Nothing too drastic, but after a year I felt a change was needed, hence the makeover!  I hope you like the changes!

Generation Y'ers - not for us, say SME's!

Generation Y staff are surprisingly not in demand for SME companies, says the latest report from the entrepreneur think tank, the Tenon Forum. They claim that these generation Y'ers are often not just up to the job, but also show a lack of work readiness. They also go on to say that over 30% of the SME's surveyed cited poor literacy and numeracy amongst school leavers as a key issue facing their business.

So, while the generation Y'ers are an employers future lifeblood, it does appear that companies that need 'real' skills are shying away from them.....at the moment anyway. So are companies starting to realise that the generation X and the boomer's are actually still worth employing? It appears that they are actively seeking them out!! 

Entrepreneur and Tenon Forum think tank member, Khalid Aziz, Chairman of the Aziz Corporation, says: "We are becoming increasingly frustrated with a lack of work-readiness amongst graduates, many of whom do not possess basic skills, such as mental arithmetic. Those under the age of 40 have never experienced high unemployment and this is contributing to a tendency for younger employees to take work for granted or, worse, treat it as an extension of their social lives. This failure to take work seriously is not an issue amongst more mature employees."

Is Twitter the new RSS subscription?

It's Monday, so I thought I would start the week with an interesting poser to get your brains working.

Is Twitter the new RSS subscription?

RSS Subscription is an awesome and powerful tool, but has it already become 'mainstream'? Are people now looking for that next communication channel with an edge? Has it just become 'accepted' all of a sudden?

Twitter has become that edge (for the moment anyway!) and is expanding very very fast, so just think if you had joined Twitter just 6 months ago? How many followers would you have now? You could have 1000's of people following you and taking note of what you say - a very powerful distribution channel to get your message across. There is no doubt that Twitter could be as powerful as RSS subscription, but is it better?

So for those of you that either haven't joined Twitter yet or have only recently seen the light (my hand is raised here! - want some Twitter tips?) then you need to get over to Twitter and join up (follow me).

Twitterberry - a new Twitter addiction!!

I know this Twitter thing seems to be everywhere, but today I discovered that there is (of course) an application for Blackberries - very correctly named Twitterberry!! So if you want to take your Twitter addiction (follow me) a little further download this neat little app here.

Very simple but so effective!!