I remember being told this story as a boy and it’s one of those that attached itself to my consciousness for no apparent reason… that is until today! I realise that it’s a metaphor for the struggle between the forces of in-house recruitment and agency recruitment. As with the story the outcome is by no means certain.

 

The story is set in the snowy Alps. The British spy (Agency) is being chased on cross-country skis by the Russian sniper (In-House). The Russian is faster…

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A new trend emerging in the recruitment sector is the “engagement” portal. These offer Recruiters opportunities to engage with Employers.

They split into 2 models which can be broadly characterised as:

Tendering sites: e.g. http://bountyjobs.com which publish employer’s jobs and invite recruitment agencies to “bid” to work on them, and

Networks: e.g.…

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When you spend every waking minute analysing the possible outcomes for the recruitment industry over the next decade and you have a brain so limited in capacity as mine, you end up hearing the old cliché ringing in your ears:

“You can’t halt progress!”

 

I believe this to be true and short of a post apocalyptic return to the Stone Age, which actually seems frighteningly more likely than it did a week ago, I suspect that In-House, Social Media et al will continue to rise…

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My pet hates include: waste!



Give what you don’t want to someone who does – why not. Think Karma. Cooperate.



The supply of candidates to Employers by Agencies is rigidly controlled by preferred supplier agreements. So if you have say 100 Employers hiring within the Tech sector, you’ll have 100 PSLs. Now some of the bigger Recruitment firms may be on all the PSLs but it is likely that the 100 PSLs will each have a different line up of suppliers and that line up will be a… Continue

We all know that Employers that use Agencies adopt preferred supplier lists to manage the Agency situation. Idea being that you find some good agencies that you’re prepared to work closely with and you exclude the rest.



We also know that whilst this might work well some of the time, there are diametrically opposing forces at work that cause it to fail from time to time. These being: the need to keep the PSL to a manageable number, otherwise you’d be dealing with agencies all day long… Continue