The economy will improve and this will present challenges in both attracting talent but also retaining your existing staff.

Will your competitors be looking to attract your best staff?

Do you know the real cost of staff turnover?

The costs are often invisible and not reported but recent surveys claim that it costs 30% – 50% of the annual salary of entry level employees, 150% for mid level employees and up to a staggering 400% for specialised executive level employees!

On that basis for every mid level member of staff with an annual salary £40,000 the cost to the business in terms of lost productivity and profit is £60,000!

Sounds unbelievable until you start looking at the factors involved:

• Loss of productivity
• Management time
• Learning curve for new employee
• Lost knowledge
• Training
• Recruitment and onboarding

Some will say that staff turnover is necessary and unavoidable! To a certain extent that is right (and there are some staff who you might be happy to see go!!)

But which members of staff leave? Is it the talented, conscientious, IT developer who implemented a new workflow system that had a direct impact on productivity and bottom line profit? Or is it the negative, downbeat member of staff that is dragging down morale.

Put another way, when you are looking to attract staff from another organisation do you want to hire their best people?

So, how do you retain the right staff?

Surprisingly this isn’t always about salary it’s about making people feel part of something, valued and even proud to be part of your company.

What is the most important thing in your business?

Most people answer their customers. I disagree, it’s your staff, without a motivated and committed workforce you can’t serve your customers effectively. If your staff is the most important thing in the business treat them like it!

Five Key areas for success:

• Wherever possible give them responsibility, let them take ownership and trust them. I know its work, it’s got to be professional but don’t forget it can also be fun!
• For new staff its critical to make the right hiring decisions first time (make sure you use a great recruitment company!) and have an effective onboarding programme (that’s another post)
• Spend your Training Budget, that’s what it is there for!
• Speak to your staff. Most companies today have exit interviews. It’s probably too late at that stage to stop that person leaving but find out why they are leaving and do something about it!
• Also why not speak to your best people and find out why they stay? This combined will tell you what you need to do to retain your staff.

Written by Richard Morgan, Remit Resources

When it comes to finding your next career move the most important rule to keep in mind is the 60 second rule!

60 Seconds, that is how much time you have to make a first impression!

Whether you are:

• Sending a cover letter / email
• Calling a recruiter or employer to follow up on an advert
• Attending an interview

It is this first 60 seconds that will be the crucial difference in being successful or not, this is the time it takes for someone to make their mind up and make an initial assessment about you. (Often subconsciously but nevertheless a fact!)

Is this fair?

Probably not but think about it, we do it all the time, it is said that in the UK the average homebuyer spends longer deciding what suit to buy than on a house! We get gut feelings, make immediate decisions, and often find those first impressions were right (or at least we perceive them to be right as we’ve already made the decision!)

Once it is accepted that the first 60 seconds are crucial it is possible to give yourself a real competitive advantage.

We covered the 3 Key aspects of the interview process Preparation, Presentation and Performance in detail.

These points are equally as relevant when making initial contacts with both recruiters and direct employers.

Tailor a cover letter for each application you send. A recruiter will receive hundreds (and often more) CV’s every week. This is your opportunity to stand out. Use the chance to highlight relevant experience and how this relates to the job. It can be easier to do this as part of a cover letter than CV as there isn’t the restriction of chronological order of jobs or job titles!

It is important to follow up on an application, but be relevant, concise and engaging. Rather that call with the opening line “I just wanted to call to see if you received my CV” or “Is the job still available” why not have a few sentences about how your experience relates directly to that required in the advert. (Similar to what you would say in the cover letter)

Once you have engaged the recruiter and shown that you have the skills for the job it isn’t difficult to work out what the first couple of questions are going to be, have the answers ready. Think about what you are going to say in advance and practice. It’s not easy to ad lib when the pressure is on!

The principal here is to make the relevant information easily available to the recruiter or employer in a straightforward and engaging way.

Some readers will think this is simplistic! It is, and on purpose! The fact is the vast majority do not make the extra effort, if you do it will give you a real advantage.

Written by Richard Morgan, Remit Resources – The IT Recruiters.

If you’ve done the right preparation and make a good first impression you now need to press home that advantage.

Couple of obvious things first, look at the interviewer, listen to what they say, try and be open and relevant with your answers, speak clearly and let the interviewer run the interview!

There are many different types of interview both face to face and telephone. I will cover the details in depth elsewhere but they can include, Behavioural Interviews, Competency interviews, Panel Interviews, Group Interviews – if you arranged the interview through a recruiter or direct yourself, ask, in advance, what to expect.

Whatever the form of the interview, one very important thing you must keep in mind at all times, to get to this stage the interviewer thinks you can do the job!

They will use the interview to confirm this.

There are hundreds of questions they could ask you, however they phrase them, they are trying to answer these three simple questions:

1. Can you do the job -do you have the right skills and experience?
2. What is your attitude and commitment to work like?
3. Does your personality fit in to their culture?

If you have done your preparation in enough depth you will already have identified your key strengths and skills and how they relate to this company and this role. This is your chance to communicate this to a future employer.

Every answer you give and the way in which you answer should be answering one of these three questions.

You will also get the opportunity to ask questions, use this chance but think about what you ask!

If you don’t ask any questions what do you think the interviewer will think?

If you ask about the number of holidays or what the policy for sick days is, what do you think the interviewer will think?

Ask intelligent questions that you want to know the answer to that will help you make an informed decision.

We talked here about first impressions. They are very important, so are last impressions, leave on a positive note!

If you’ve read all three posts (thanks, I’m not sure how many people will have got this far!) you will notice one thing, there is no big secret! It’s all very simple stuff, prepare thoroughly, think about the messages you want to convey, be positive, be friendly and try to make friends!

Written by Richard Morgan, Remit Resources

OK, so you’ve got the interview and done your research.

The next issue is presentation.

First thing, what time to arrive?

Aim to be sitting in reception 10 minutes before the interview starts (no earlier and no later).

No interviewer wants you to arrive earlier than 10 minutes. People are busy, it’s inconvenient and sub consciously what does it say about you!

Being early is great, I recommend it, but wait outside their office.

On this point, (I know it’s obvious but so many people do it!) don’t be late. There are no excuses, if the train was late, the traffic was bad it doesn’t matter to the interviewer. Think about how you are going to get to the interview, parking, train times etc. in advance. In my experience 99% of people who are late for an interview do not get the job. If there is any chance you are going to be late you must call ahead to let them know ASAP .

We’ve all heard the clichés “you never get a second chance to make a first impression” or “first impressions count”. Overused, yes! True, yes! There is also a fact about 93% of communication is non-verbal of which 55% is visual, I’m not sure I agree with those numbers but I think the message is loud and clear – first impressions count!

This doesn’t mean you need to be in a Savile Row suit but you do need to be smart, suit shirt tie (top button done up!) clean shoes, tidy hair! The rule here is dress smart and professionally, the dress code might be casual when you start work but you can’t be overdressed for an interview (again it goes without saying but you’d be surprised how many people don’t do this).

Be friendly! To everyone, you never know who you might meet. Be especially friendly to the receptionist, they can have an influence. If you are sitting in reception for 10 minutes speak to the receptionist, you might find out something interesting about the company, you will definitely get a feel for what it’s like to work there and a friendly 5 minute conversation really does calm the nerves!

Greet the interviewer with a firm handshake (I know another cliché!), make eye contact, smile and be friendly! To repeat, first impressions count, whether you believe the stats or not the fact is they are going to make their mind up pretty quickly if they like you or not. These initial exchanges make the differences between a relaxed successful interview or not.

The interviewer will normally ask “How are you?” the answer “how do you think I am, I was made redundant 6 months ago, can’t find a job, we’re in the worst recession on record and I’ve been stuck in traffic for the last 30 minutes and don’t get me started on house prices” whilst quite possibly being technically correct isn’t as effective as “great thanks how are you”.  Be positive, people want to work with positive people!

This also might be a chance to show some of your preparation, you might want to comment on a news article or award they have just won (something positive!). Think about this part of the interview, it’s often an area that gets forgotten but it is your chance to make that first impression.

If you prepared properly you will have a fair idea of the first couple of questions and you will be well on the way to getting the job!

Written by Richard Morgan, Remit Resources

Three Key Aspects of the Interview – Preparation

OK, so you’ve done the hard part and secured an interview.

Now for the easy part and getting the job!

Once you’ve secured the interview the first thing you must do is prepare

It is hard to believe it (unless you’ve spent a lot of time interviewing) but 80% of candidates do little or no preparation before an interview! No prizes for guessing how successful they are!

You can almost guarantee that the first question you will get asked in an interview is “What do you know about our company”. If you respond with anything other than a concise, intelligent summary of their business you are not going to be successful in this interview!

It is the least you can do, it breaks the ice, relaxes you and gets you off to a good start in the interview (the other questions will be tell me about yourself, and what do you know about the job – again very straightforward questions and by the time you’ve answered them you should be in your stride and ready to tackle the tougher questions!)

One of the challenges in an interview is engaging with the interviewer. If you have prepared effectively you should have discovered a couple of facts that make this a little easier:

OK, so how to prepare

• First port of call has got to be the company website. Print a couple of pages and take it to the interview (this shows that you’ve prepared!) Look at the news pages, find out what they are saying about themselves. Look at any case studies and print them, if there’s anything you don’t understand that could be a good question (far better than “how many days holiday do I get”!)
• Google! Obvious yes but don’t just look at their website, look at the news on the company, try searching for the person who is interviewing, they may have given a presentation or written an article recently, something you could use to break the ice! Depending on time to interview setup Google news alerts and get the latest information emailed to you
• Social Media, search on LinkedIn, there is a huge amount of information available, it tells you who works there, what they do, what events are coming up, and it gives recommendations. LinkedIn tends to be social media for business. Don’t limit your research to this though, do they have a Facebook page (have their customers set up pages, good or bad!), what’s on YouTube about them, what are people saying on Twitter. How about forums? What are their customers saying
• Networking. Do you know someone who works there? How about someone you know who knows someone that works there! Starts to get a bit complicated but again LinkedIn does this for you. Don’t just make connections use them!
• The recruiter. Doesn’t replace any of the above as you must do your own research and preparation but the recruiter will know the client, they should understand the business, they should be able to tell you about the interviewers, their style, and the types of questions they ask. If they don’t offer this information then ask them, if they don’t know ask them to find out!

So that gives you background on the company.

Now think about the questions you might be asked.

You can’t control the questions that you will be asked but you can still prepare

• If you were interviewing you, what would you ask?
• What is it about you that is most relevant to this job, where can you add real value? Think about these things and bring them into answers to the questions
• If it’s on the CV be prepared to talk about and expand on it. This is all the interviewer knows about you and it will often form the structure of the interview
• Think of scenarios you have been in and give real examples of situations you’ve been in, how you dealt with it and the outcome. (Once you’ve got 3 or 4 of these they can be tailored to be the answer to almost any question)

Whatever anyone says, everybody is nervous before an interview. If you have prepared thoroughly it helps!

I started this post by saying that 80% of candidates do not prepare for interviews, 95% of people wouldn’t have done all of the above – I wonder who’s got the best chance of getting the job!

Written by Richard Morgan, Remit Resources

Large FTSE 100 companies will often have well established onboarding programmes (with differing degrees of success) designed to help new employees integrate into their new environment and become productive quicker

There is no reason why every company should not have an onboarding programme in place (it hasn’t got to be complicated, the best ones are well thought out and simple!)

4 Reasons why every company should have an onboarding programme:

• Recent study by Booz Allen Hamilton suggested that 90% of employees will decide within the first 6 months if they are going to stay with a new employer. Most make that decision within the first couple of weeks
• Another study shows that an effective onboarding programme can increase staff retention by 31%. The real cost of replacing staff can be 150% for mid level staff rising to as high as 400% for executive level or highly specialised technical staff
• Time to productivity can be increased by as much as 2 months for those employees who have received onboarding to those that haven’t. This is specifically true when dealing with technical IT staff where it is difficult to find specific and specialist technical expertise
• New staff who go through onboarding programmes feel part of “the family” quicker. They feel happier in their role, are more productive and able to provide a better quality of service quicker

In summary every company should have an onboarding programme! Why? Simple, it improves profit and it improves productivity.

Written by Richard Morgan, Remit Resources