RecruitAbility Sponsoring HBO 10K

RecruitAbility are delighted to announce that we are one of the sponsors of the Hatfield Broad Oak 10K race being held in May 2013.  This historic, yearly event is growing year on year and as a local business we are very excited to be involved.

If you're interested in running, entries are now being taken and more information can be found on the official website at http://www.hbo-10k.org.uk/

The 10k road race is open to all runners who are 15 years or older on the day of the race. 

Younger runners & their friends / family are invited to enter the 1 mile Fun Run after the main race – no registration is necessary and the Fun Run is free of charge . 

The HBO 10k is held on the same day as the Flower Festival in the beautiful 15th Century Church which adds interest for the whole family and many entrants make it a family day out.  Fresh food, drinks, displays and attractions for all the family can be found here and there is very much a festival feel to the whole day.

The race is organised by the local school PTA with all proceeds going to the village school and other village charities and organisations.  In 2012 they helped groups ranging from the Cubs and Brownies & sports clubs for children, to the WI and a Christmas dinner for the over 60’s.

RecruitAbility join other sponsors such as Broad Oak Sausage Co, Wright & Co, HardSoft Computers, Allen House and both The Cock Inn and Dukes Head are also sponsors this year.  Wendy and Lucy, Directors of RecruitAbility, are proud to be associated with all of these companies and wish all the runners the best of luck.

We will blog about the race nearer the time and of course, write about the race itself.

So far, none of the RecruitAbility staff have entered but there's still time!

RecruitAbility Means Business!

On Wednesday 19th October, businesses in the Bishop's Stortford area were out in force as they took to their stands at the Bishop's Stortford Means Business exhibition at the Rhodes Centre.


From 8am, professionals from all over the town were arriving fully armed with  banners, boards and bumf as well as sweeties, champagne and all sorts of goodies to entice their visitors to stay and chat!

By 10am our  RecruitAbility Stand was completely set up - we even had time for a quick coffee and a bacon roll before the doors opened!  RecruitAbility decided to spread the purple love and had the full team out in force.  Our goodies consisting of bags, pads and pens went down very well with our visitors, not to mention our fortune cookies with our RecruitAbility messages inside - mine said "Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life' how true is that for you?  It's definitely true for me!  We were also very excited to be handing out the most recent edition of our Newsletter 'Recruitment Matters' which was hot off the press and gives an insight into life within the recruitment industry as well as updates on employment law and national minimum wage.



Wendy and Lucy - RecruitAbility's Directors

 There was a steady stream of visitors throughout the day and the atmosphere was great.  There were some very informative seminars courtesy of Easy Key, Bird Luckin and Nockolds Solicitors and Danny Doyle, former General Manager at Pearse House Hotel, made a wonderful host and compare!

The RecruitAbility girls had a very productive day talking to prospective clients and candidates about the different sorts of jobs in Bishop's Stortford and the surrounding areas that we work with including admin jobs, customer service jobs, clerical and sales jobs on both a permanent and temporary basis and we look forward to working with those individuals in the future.

We also had some good chats with students from Leventhorpe School who came down to talk to business owners about how they started their businesses and one student asked me what I had sacrificed in order to set up RecruitAbility - my answer was 'everything!' but was it worth it?  Of course it was!  We're looking forward to working with Leventhorpe and Birchwood Schools later this year by helping them prepare for interviews and all the elements of job hunting in this difficult market place.

So back to the exhibition!  By 5pm the visitors had left and the exhibitors were packing up  feeling exhausted but buzzing after a very busy day.  We packed up quickly, despite aching feet and came back to the office where one of our trustee temps had been holding the fort and answering our phones, allowing us all to be at the exhibition in our purple glory!

We're already looking forward to next year's event!




The RecruitAbility girls in their 'purple glory' from left, Laura McBride, Harriet Simmons, Wendy Barriball and Lucy Gilmour



RecruitAbility Goes Back To School

Following our recent involvement at Birchwood High School's  'Insight to Industry' day, RecruitAbility were back at the school today to help Year 11's with some of their course work.

Birchwood High School, Bishop's Stortford

We were delighted to be invited to answer questions from a small class of students who were doing a controlled assignment on effective communication in the workplace and were specifically studying Recruitment Agencies.

RecruitAbility, who specifically recruit for jobs in Bishop's Stortford, sent along Director Lucy Gilmour who first of all gave a brief introduction into RecruitAbility and then gave the students the chance to ask her detailed questions about the way that they communicate with their candidates.

Many of the students asked good , intelligent questions such as, which was our preferred method of communication, how do we shortlist candidates for our clients and would our candidates think that our communication could be improved.

The pupils will now get the chance to talk to 2  of RecruitAbility's candidates about how they found our service and they will then put all their findings into a report along with a letter to RecruitAbility highlighting any observations and recommending changes.

We're looking forward to receiving those reports and wish the students the best of luck with the rest of their GCSE's.

RecruitAbility's Lucy Gilmour

RecruitAbility Caught the School Bug!

Wow! What an event ful day we had at RecruitAbility on Tuesday 1st March.  We were invited by the Hertfordshire Chamber of Commerce to attend an 'Insight into Industry' day at Birchwood School in Bishop's Stortford.  This event was the first of its kind and involved a number of well known organisations such as the RAF and the Police Force as well a handful of local employers visiting the school and giving year 9 students an insight workshop on their industry sector.  After a very upbeat introduction given by communications expert John Bennett, the pupils then went off to 3 workshops of their choice to find out more about what it involves to be a Vet or an Optician and other workshops included what you should wear for an interview and a 'type off' organised by Pitmans.

At RecruitAbility, our workshop was about how to present yourself in an interview and how to put together a good CV.  We gave each of the students a RecruitAbility bug and asked them to think about how you would describe the bug and then asked them to present their bug in groups.   Some of the pupils gave their bugs a name and they ranged from Brian to PDiddy and words they used to describe their bug included friendly, cute, informative etc.  What the presentation gave us the chance to do was show them how important presentation skills are in an interview.  Like most things, some of the pupils were naturals and loved standing up in front of the class and projected themselves well.  Others had great content but struggled to make themselves heard.  Hopefully, with our help, they realised what areas they needed to work on and why it's so important to make yourself stand out from the crowd.   The 2nd part of our workshop was about how to create a CV and we asked them to think about times when they taken on a project under their own initiative, examples of where they'd work together as part of a team, perhaps done some fund raising for charity and what their passions or hobbies were.  When you haven't got any work experience, these areas are imperative when creating a CV and hopefully our students went away with lots of food for thought.

The day finished on a high, when the students were put into small teams and were asked to put together an 'advertisement' about what they had learnt from the day and whether they'd recommend it to future year 9 students.  Both Lucy and Wendy at RecruitAbility judged the 'heats' and the winners from the heats had to present to the whole of the year which was well over 200 students plus all the employers and teachers that had been involved.  Some of the adverts were funny and well rehearsed and a well deserved winner was chosen by the judging panel.

Our morning finished with a school dinner - it's been a long time since we've had one of those, but our bugs were seen all over the school throughout the rest of the day so hopefully they're in safely tucked up in their new homes now!

The RecruitAbility Bug!

The workshop in full swing

3 Birchwood Boys enjoying the RecruitAbility workshop

Dress For Success

Here at RecruitAbility, we had a very enjoyable day yesterday when Claire Ellis from Mirror Image put two of our candidates through her 'Dress for Success' course on what to wear for an interview.  We were also joined by the 'Herts & Essex Observer' who will be doing a 3 piece feature on the candidates and how the course has helped them.   There are obvious do's and don'ts like make sure your shoes are clean etc but Claire taught the candidates how to read a job description/advert and how to show that you have the skills for the job at the interview  by how you're dressed and we believe that these hidden gems can be the difference between you being successful and unsuccessful at an interview.

We're looking forward to seeing how this course helps the candidates with their job hunting success and have more courses running on the 24th March 2011

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Employment Law

Do you think it's right that candidates can now take businesses to tribunal before they're in their employment or have even been interviewed?  With the new Equality Act which came into play in October 2010, if an employer advertises a job as looking for a 'minimum of 2 years experience' for example, a school or college leaver could take that organsiation to a tribunal for discrimination on the basis that it would be impossible for a school or college leaver to have 2 years experience and the company is therfore discriminating against candidates who are 16 or 18 years of age.  Is it right to protect candidates who might not be old enough to accrue enough experience for the role or do you think you're entitled to request a minimum amount of experience for a job?

The Key To Interviewing

With so many candidates on the job market at the moment, it’s easy to feel unenthused at the prospect of recruiting, especially if you’re a small business without the use of a full time HR Manager as the process can be very time consuming.  We have many clients that don’t consider themselves as good interviewers so how can you be sure that you’ve found the best candidate for the job and make sure you don’t fall into the ‘gut feeling’ trap rather than basing your results on actual evidence.

First of all, we always advise our clients to put together a job description/person specification and to use this to assess each candidate.  Prepare for each interview by thoroughly reading the CVs and highlight any areas that you would particularly like to question around beforehand .  It’s important  to make the interviewee feel at ease with a warm handshake and a friendly smile to help with any nerves -  giving candidates a good ‘grilling’ is all very well, but these tactics rarely show you the real personality and you could miss out on a suitable candidate as a result.  Use competency based questions, for example ‘give me an example of where you’ve had to use your initiative’ rather than ‘do you use your initiative?’ which is a leading question as there’s only so much information you can get from ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ answers!  By asking open ended questions you will invite more conversation which will help you to ascertain whether the person is the right fit for your organisation which, in some cases is as important as the skills and abilities to do the job.   If you really like someone you’re interviewing, it’s easy to concentrate on the good bits and gloss over the rest, but to ensure that you get the right candidate the first time round, it’s imperative to explore all avenues so that you can make an informed decision.  So if necessary,  keep questioning an area until you feel convinced either way.   

Don’t forget to spend time in the interview  to discuss  your  vacancy and company in detail after all, it’s no good offering the job to very good candidate if you haven’t spent the time promoting your role, so ensure they have plenty of opportunities to ask questions.  At the end of the interview, we never recommend offering a candidate the job there and then, especially if it’s a first interview.  Most of us need time to digest our thoughts and being too keen can sometimes come across as desperate  - which is never a good thing!  Even if you feel you’ve found the best candidate, never tell them that they’re a favourite, especially if you have other people to see as you can  build up people’s hopes unnecessarily.  It’s also imperative to inform the candidates that they weren’t successful because as a local employer,  you want to retain your good reputation.

 Finally, as well as good  interview techniques, there are other products on the market that can help you with your selection process including various testing software packages which help get underneath the best behaviour, which most of us are on when we’re at interview!