REC - drop in Jobless figures good news

Drop in jobless figures good news, says REC, but confirms two speed market is now in full swing

Released on 15 June 2011

Figures out today have shown another significant fall in the numbers of people out of work. In the three months to April, the total fell 88,000 to 2.43 million, the largest quarterly fall in unemployment for more than ten years, according to the Office for National Statistics.

The most marked fall has been in the number of young people out of work which has dropped 79,000 to 895,000, the lowest rate since April 2009.

Commenting on the figures, Kevin Green, the REC’s Chief Executive, said:

“The reduction in the number of unemployed people is to be welcomed especially among the young. However, this could be the lull before the storm as in the next three months tens of thousands will be leaving school, college or university, having completed their GCSEs, A-levels and degrees.”

The new figures show that those working in the public sector fell by 24,000 to 6.16 million during the quarter while those employed in the private sector increased by 104,000 to 23.08 million during the same quarter.
Kevin Green added:

“While the May Report on Jobs marked a slowing in the rate of growth, recruitment professionals continue to report that hiring activity is still strong in many sectors of the jobs market. Coupled with that, employer confidence is at a 12 month high as is consumer confidence so the jobs market outlook in the next few months is looking more positive than expected considering the UK’s anaemic economic growth"

“The figures also clearly demonstrate that the two speed jobs market we predicted is now in full swing. We remain confident that the private sector can absorb the fall-out from public sector cuts in the medium term.”

Credit - REC Website

Jobmax Food Careers: Google Page 1 - Food Jobs Board

Jobmax Food Careers: Google Page 1 - Food Jobs Board: "Jobmax has been making steady progress up the rankings over the last few months making in-roads on search terms and visitor numbers - and no..."

Google Page 1 - Engineering Job Board



For hundreds of Jobs in Enginering go to http://www.jobmax.co.uk/

 Engineers are in short supply and high demand - that is not new news. It means however that companies looking to attract engineering staff need to maximise the reach and effectiveness of their recruitment spend.  Jobmax has been on the march up the rankings for the last few months with unique visitors now exceeding 45,000 and listing at position 3 on page 1 of Google for Engineering jobs board.  Add to this the effective links now forged with our aggregator partners your job posting, which is still free, could reach an audience of around 60 million people.  Must be worth a go!  Registration is quick and easy - your jobs could be online in an instant.  Click here and start now!

REC News Report for May

View the Article: http://www.jobmax.co.uk/article/recnews-34.htm

Report on Jobs shows slowest growth of permanent and temporary staff appointments in seven months

Released on 8 June 2011

Latest data in Report on Jobs published today by the REC and KPMG signalled an easing in growth of staff appointments during May. Permanent placements and temp billings both rose at the weakest rates in seven months.

Growth of job vacancies moderated to a five-month low in May. Weaker rates of expansion were recorded for both permanent and temporary positions. 

Although permanent staff salaries continued to rise in May, the rate of inflation eased to a three-month low. Temporary staff pay increased at the weakest rate in the current four-month sequence of growth. 

Recruitment consultants signalled a modest improvement in the availability of staff to fill job vacancies during May. However, the rates of growth of both permanent and temporary candidate availability eased since the previous month.  

Kevin Green, the REC's Chief Executive, says:

"The latest data shows a worrying deceleration in the UK jobs market. Although the number of placements has continued to increase, the rate of expansion has hit a seven-month low. Private sector job creation has not hit the buffers but it is clearly slowing which heightens concerns over whether public sector job losses can be absorbed.

"There have been signs of increasing employer confidence in some sectors but economic growth remains too fragile to spark the real step-change that our jobs market needs. With consumer confidence at a low ebb, many individuals who would normally be looking to change jobs are staying put.

"The feedback from recruitment professionals confirms a real paradox in the current jobs market, namely, the ongoing challenge of finding suitable candidates in a number of sectors. With the Government's much discussed ‘Work Programme' formally getting underway this month, the question now is whether it will be able to deliver the training and guidance necessary to address the current disconnect between employer needs and  available candidates. Looking ahead, the mismatch between vacancies and skills available could hinder future growth."

Bernard Brown, Partner and Head of Business Services at KPMG comments:

"The latest figures are worrying - because they reveal a marked slowdown of the UK jobs market. We'll need to see whether this is a trend or a blip. Employers across all sectors are becoming more cautious about hiring new staff.

"With businesses and consumers now being hit by higher taxes and fuel costs, public spending cuts and a continuing squeeze on real incomes - this is perhaps no surprise. The hope now is that growth in the UK will pick up later this year, led by a private sector recovery absorbing job losses in the public sector."

Report on Jobs provides the most comprehensive guide to the UK labour market drawing from original survey data provided by recruitment consultancies.

Jobmax Engineer Careers: Hundreds of Engineering Jobs on Jobmax

Jobmax Engineer Careers: Hundreds of Engineering Jobs on Jobmax: "Jobmax may be a relatively new name to you - but it has actually been around on line since 2005, just being 'there' building up traffic unti..."

Food For thought - Working in NPD

View the Article: http://www.jobmax.co.uk/article/workinginnewproductdevelopment-33.htm

New Product Development (NPD) is the powerhouse of the food industry driving innovation of new products and leveraging value from the upgrading or repositioning of existing brands. In 2006 almost 105 new food and drink products were launched globally (Rowan 2007) - that equates to 300 for every day of the year - of those launched it is estimated that some 30 - 50,000 will succeed. (Brody and Lord 2000)

 

Developing a product normally happens in three phases:

• 1-Product Definition - Defining the strategic plan and market opportunity
• 2- Product Implementation - Developing the prototype, consumer testing, modification and factory trials
• 3 -Product Introduction - Product Launch

Basically it involves taking a concept (which could be developed from a client brief or from market analysis finding a gap in the market) from idea to reality. You could be working with new and exciting ingredients to invent new recipes, or reworking old recipes, for example, to reduce fats and sugars without losing taste and texture to appeal to changing consumer demand, or extend a product life by changing a flavour combination, for example putting toffee in jammy dodgers.

 

Typically there will be a large multi skilled team involved right from the development kitchens with development chefs, specification technologists, through sensory evaluation, microbiology, nutritional analysis and microbiology, process engineering, design and development of packaging all under the watchful eye of food safety and compliance.  Factory trials involve operations, logistics, procurement and planning, supply chain and quality control.  Marketing and sales develop marketing strategies and get the product in front of consumers, whilst the legal team look after compliance, regulations and copyright.

 

So an exciting, diverse job in a fast moving consumer driven business which demands creativity, customer facing skills, great written and spoken communication skills and the ability to work in teams across a range of departments in the business.  Other key skills needed to succeed include attention to detail, the ability to manage your time and meet deadlines, and to be able to solve problems.

 

Getting in to NPD could happen through moving from being a trained and experienced chef in hospitality into a development kitchen, but more likely following higher education (BSc Food Science, HNC / HND in Food Technology or similar) and 1 - 2 years experience in a food processing environment. 

 

Salaries for an NPD Technologist range from £17,000 - £25,000 depending on the role, the company and location.

 

Senior Technologists could expect £25000 - 33000k, NPD Managers £30,000 - £45,000k again depending on the scope of the role and size and location of the company.

Aubergine

View the Article: http://www.jobmax.co.uk/article/aubergine-32.htm

It's about 8 inches long, purple, bulbous and threatening. It comes on like a fruit, behaves like a vegetable but in real life it's a berry. Reputed to have caused an imam to faint (if only), it is a close relative of deadly nightshade , contains nicotinic alkaloids (I'm beginning to enjoy this) and despite its unfortunate connection with Gordon Ramsay (be still my beating heart) is loved the world over variously as the brinjal, egg-plant, guinea squash or as we call it down the road, aubergine.

I love it in dhansak or simply as a dry-ish bhaji, the subtle sour bitterness and the yielding yet coherent flesh partnering  the sweet slick of glossy tomato, with aromatic kasoori methi sounding the top note, smelling of tea dust. I love it in baba ganoush ( goes with almost anything), but most of all I love it in moussaka.

It's a paradox that until recently, despite having some of the loveliest raw ingredients in the whole of Europe, the majority of Greek cooking was so fundamentally flawed as to verge on the uneatable. I invariably lost weight during a visit to Greece, if not from the sheer awfulness of the cooking, then from the effects of the cooks' imaginative attitude to personal hygiene, and I suffered through many a moussaka, which if sufficiently wrung out, could have fuelled my hire car for the rest of the holiday. It does not have to be like this.

Why do we salt an aubergine? (If you don't, you should.) It's not to draw out the bitterness as the books may tell you - in any case, that's half the point - but, if the slices are then also lightly floured, it inhibits them from absorbing vast quantities of oil when fried on a moderate to high heat to form the first stage of a moussaka. What follows owes a heavy debt to Simon Hopkinson's recipe, to be found in The Prawn Cocktail Years (Macmillan, 1997), which contains in the course of many recipes not a single wasted or irrelevant word.

You will first have fried some seasoned minced lamb - beef is allowed (why ever not) and I am very fond of this heretical version - drained it in a colander of most of its fat and combined it with some onions and garlic lightly sweated, some red wine, some tomato purée, a pinch of cinnamon and some parsley, and cooked until well reduced - almost dry, in fact. Having made a good béchamel (this involves the heating and subsequent steeping of aromatics of your choice in the milk before cooking), added some Greek, not Danish, feta cheese - not a huge amount or it will become assertive and swaggery -  you can then layer up the moussaka in a nice earthenware dish, starting with the aubergines to cover the base, continuing with a layer of meat sauce, a second layer of aubergine and finally, the béchamel. Cook in a moderate to hot oven (190º ish) for around forty minutes, until it is brown, bubbling, crusted and delicious. This is good served with a few plain leaves, dressed with olive oil and lemon, and some Greek bread if you can get it - not the Cypriot flat stuff, but the proper psomi, nut-coloured crust, yellowy crumb, warm and smelling of summer days. You can get close by adding some semolina to your usual bread dough.

Our thanks to Nick Butters for his contribution:

Bio:

"I am a food lover which is a polite way of saying, a food obsessive. I recently returned to my beloved north-east after 25 years working away in London, at sea and in France. I've been cooking for the last 35 years or so and it has been my entertainment, my passion and my solace. Everywhere I go I hear the message that British food has never been more varied, more exciting or more delicious. So, if you are in food and think I can help you get your message across please take a look at the services page of my blog, http://www.creamandbacon.com/ , or write to me directly at nicholas.butters@yahoo.com "

Thinking of a career in food?

View the Article: http://www.jobmax.co.uk/article/thinkingofacareerinfood-30.htm

The food and drink industry is the largest of the manufacturing sectors accounting for 15% of total manufacturing overall, and has a total turnover of £70bn. The industry employsaround 500,000 people, which is about to 13% of the UK manufacturing workforce. Food and drink remains the biggest spending category. In 2005, consumer spending on food and drink was nearly £153.8bn, or 20% of total UK consumer expenditure

We are a nation of busy people and have a population going through changing trends including marrying later, higher divorce rates contributing to the increased number of  smaller families and single occupancy homes. Traditional mealtimes are largely a thing of the past with more women in the workforce impacting the way we eat.  The UK is by far the biggest consumer of ready meals compared to our European neighbours which keeps the manufacturing companies busy, with both manufacturers and supermarkets competing for our interest through constantly re-inventing and modifying prepared food to meet our changing food habits and taste. Through the recent recession food manufacturing, whilst affected of course by closures, restructuring and cost cutting, fared much better than other sectors because, after all, we all have to eat, and although our habits changed whilst reducing spending, (favouring the budget supermarkets such as Aldi and Lidl and led to the introduction of budget lines - even in Waitrose!) demand changed surprisingly little overall.

So - Food is a massive part of the economy, a dynamic but mature sector that demands a wide range of skills, innovation and creative thought as well as business acumen in order to continue to lead the way. Food is a diverse sector, spawning a huge vertical market that is needed to support the transformation of an idea into a product, through manufacture, packaging, warehousing and distribution to supermarkets and wholesalers and consumers across the globe - driven by the commercial activities of Sales, Marketing, Finance, Business analysts, purchasing and procurement, not forgetting HR and the Talent managers who may well be looking for you!

A well written advert will save you time and money

View the Article: http://www.jobmax.co.uk/article/gettingthemostfromyouronlinejobadvertisements-29.htm

Getting the most from your on line job advertisements

Getting the best from your on line advertisement is all about how to get the applicants you want to find, select and open your advertisement from endless job listings - and then be interested enough to bother to apply (especially as these days application will typically involve a registration process)

Writing an effective online advertisement is not the same as writing an advert or creating a display ad for printed media. Newspapers and specialist publications that have a job section have to some extent a captive market, whether the avid job hunter or the casual browser they tend to see the title and job content in entirety at a glance. If it is a professional magazine that for marketing, engineering or the  IT sector for example, typically the audience for that advert would have already selected themselves in by choice so refining the search audience -specialist niche websites have the same effect. On the downside printed media charges more the more you write or the bigger your display, so getting a good descriptive ad in print media is still a costly business, whereas internet jobsites, including Jobmax, allow for more detail to be included allowing you (almost) limitless imagination to get your message across.

More detail means more sales opportunity for you to really promote the job - and also allows plenty of opportunity to include the keywords and phrases that will get your ad to the top of the listings - beginning with the title.

Start with a great tiltle

An effective title, apart from attracting the search engines, is the hook for the applicants you are hoping to catch.  For example compare "Team Leader" (which could apply right across industry and commerce and will get you hundreds of applicants mostly inappropriate) with "Team Leader (FMCG Food) London -£25k" or "Maintenance Engineer" with "Maintenance Engineer (Mechanical) Leeds-£35k.  Some sites do limit the length of the title string so discretion prevails - but always think like an applicant not a recruiter.  One point to remember is that job titles vary from company to company - so if the job title given is a bit off mark in common parlance change it to something that the applicants can relate to!

Starting the advert is always a challenge - consider the need to get the key words in as soon as possible in the opening to help with the listings whilst having an opening that will draw the candidate in further.  Avoid "my client" at this stage - it is a real turn off and does more harm than good. A brief summary to develop the title is good on all fronts.

The Company

If you are working on behalf of a Blue Chip company then say so.  If your client is an SME then find something positive about why they are recruiting (progressive, innovative, expanding, successful or similar) to engage the jobseeker early on in the process. If you are a Blue Chip then you r name reputation and brands will probably be sufficient to generate interest, and if you are a small company looking to attract the best staff to take your company forward you need to find a point of attraction a unique selling point that will speak to and appeal to the kind of person you want for your business.

The Job

This is the point to lay out the scope of the job and the context within the company - reporting lines, up and down, key areas of responsibility and expectations, challenges and demands of the job in question.  Some people find this easier to do in bullet points, but try to get the context and scope written in prose.  Again think of your target audience - accountants, technical and scientific people are typically less wordy and seek unembellished facts, where maybe HR would respond to a more detailed description.

Required skills

Details of education, courses and qualifications, certification, previous experience and knowledge base are all relevant here along with specifics of software, hardware, and professional accreditation

Soft skills

Include here things like communication skills, interpersonal skills, ability to work in a team, or lead a team, ability to develop relationships with internal and external clients, decision making prowess, business savvy, drive to succeed, willingness to travel, flexibility, dealing with change and so on.

Rewards and environment

Be accurate and honest - all overblown promises here will come back to bite you.  Include details of benefits and bonus opportunities, opportunity for progression, details of shift or working patterns. Work environment, (casual, formal, independently minded, team oriented) what the department is like to work in and any other relevant information

Summary and call to action

So may people miss this out - Ok so you have a decent ad now and an applicant has read to the end - then what?  Ok so you click the apply button - but you could be really excited and enthused by a brief summary and reason why you should apply with a brief carefully crafted personal invitation.

Manage applicant expectation - this IS a PR exercise

If you do not have the capacity to respond include the statement here about what the candidate can expect "if you have not heard in 7 working days...." Or "only successful applicants....." whatever the process state it here.  Lack of response is the biggest complaint - and not just the preserve of recruitment agencies

Free Advertising - Mad to miss it

Recent changes in legislation mean you no longer have to make the full declaration over the precise nature of your role in advertising a position - but that doesn't mean to say you should miss the opportunity to write a bit about your company or business.  Most Job Boards have good traffic and wide web coverage - you would be mad not to use it to get your name out there.

Key words

Some people add key words here.  Whilst it cannot do any harm I am not sure how much good they do in this location (i.e. at the bottom of the advert) other than being a chance to list all the variables on the job titles and sector.  (Most job sites will give you the opportunity to add key words when you upload your job - they are useful and should always be completed as they are used in the search process to match applicants.) Will it get your job further up the listings in a key word search? Probably not.  Will it get your job listed in an organic search on Google? Possibly, but probably not on the first few pages.

So in summary

• Start with a great title an open with an attention grabbing line.
  Remember to include the key words in the copy as high up the page as possible to ensure you get to the top of the listings
• Give as much detail as possible about the job so job seekers can make informed decisions about whether the job is for them, and screen out unsuitable candidates
• Better job copy will improve your cost and time to hire
• Write with passion and belief
• Think like an applicant
  

HAPPY POSTING!