Jarvis Johnson

In our last article we talked about gearing up for September and how this time of year is like a ‘mini New Year’!   We shared with you 4 tips about how to turn the ‘Summer Recruitment Slump’ into a strategic advantage and as promised, here’s the next 4 tips….

1. Do You Need To Carry Out A Salary Survey?

By carrying out salary surveys you can understand current market trends, ensure that your pay scales are competitive locally and nationally, and make informed decisions about salary adjustments, recruitment, and employee retention. Salary surveys are essential for maintaining fair compensation structures and aligning pay with industry standards to ensure you recruit the right calibre of candidates.

2. Think Long Term as well as Short Term

If you’ve been struggling to fill a particular vacancy, make sure that you’ve assessed whether wider business issues might impact on the team you are trying to recruit for. Things to consider :

• Customers; are you likely to win / lose more customers in the next 6-12 months?
• Is product innovation or existing product re-development or ramping up
• Have you got audits coming up; BRCGS, Customer Audits ..or do you have a lot of implementation to do from a previous audit
• Are there legislative / labelling changes coming down the track that might affect workload?

It could be a good time to look at what your existing team are doing – could some of the responsibilities where skills are harder to find be incorporated into other people’s roles, swapping them out for tasks where the skills might be more widely available

3. Widen the Net

If you are struggling to attract the right candidates, give some thought to these ways of widening your net

• Sponsorship – we’ve seen some great applications, from candidates who have completed a Food Science degree or Masters, often combined with excellent job experience outside the UK, Many hold Post-graduate works VISA’s enabling them to work in the UK for up to 2 years. Clients who are prepared to offer sponsorship at the end of the VISA period are much more attractive to these candidates. A large percentage of candidates coming out of University having completed Food-based courses are on Post-Grad VISA’s so you will maximise your chances of getting access to a wider pool of highly qualified candidates by being open to sponsorship.
• Training – if skills are particularly “sought after” consider whether you could look at a candidate with similar skills and train them up in the specific area you need. Specifications, HACCP and Auditing skills are all areas where you could invest in external training and open up the pool of candidates you are looking at. You may even have the skills in-house to teach these areas. You could also consider bringing in an Interim Manager to train and mentor a less-qualified candidate until their skills have been developed. Alternatively – is there someone internally you could train to take over some aspects of the role that are proving “hard-to-find”. If you’re in a sector of the Food industry where summer is typically quieter, this could be a good time to look at upskilling your existing team – even if it just proves a useful skills back-up whilst recruiting or for holiday cover.

4. Consider Pausing Recruitment or Taking a Different Approach

If you’ve had a vacancy live for a while it could be worth pausing it while you re-evaluate the skills needed or finding a recruitment agency partner to work with

• Consider pausing a role and removing it from your website and job boards while you re-evaluate it. Relaunching after a break can be particularly effective if you have a new salary bracket, are now open to hybrid working or changing a job title.
• If you have hit a brick wall using your internal talent acquisition teams and your regular recruitment agencies haven’t come up with a strong shortlist, then consider using a specialist recruitment agency. Niche recruiters who have a strong database, will often have access to a different pool of candidates not active on job boards or alternatively access to sophisticated recruitment tools to identify candidates for you. If the cost of seeking external help is a barrier, make sure you have evaluated direct and indirect costs already and potentially incurred from not having this role filled (overtime, existing team members becoming demoralised, time spent rejecting unsuitable applications, customer dissatisfaction, risk of performing poorly in audits).

If you missed the first 4 tips you can see them here!

In Summary

For Food Manufacturers with vacant roles, the transition from the summer slump to a bustling September, packed with interviews, is all about preparation. By evaluating what has been done already, looking at what could be tweaked and seeking out new partners you could be all set for a positive to start September!

If you’d like a free salary survey for any Technical, QA or NPD vacancies you are handling drop us a line at enquiries@jarvisjohnson.co.uk

 

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