Week 1:
Welcome to BRS Global’s Recruitment Roundup – this is where we’ll be showcasing the best content we’ve found over the past seven days relating to the recruitment industry. Expect original content from our own expert team, articles written by industry leaders and other top tips from across the web for keeping ahead of the competition.

This week we’re looking at an eclectic mix of material including articles by top consultants in their field, a slideshow, a blog from our very own Managing Director James Chapman and tackling such topics as the passive market, culture fit and building relationships with your candidates.

First up we have a great article by Bob Duffy (founder and lead consultant at Insight Consulting LLC) on the importance of culture fit when recruiting a candidate to, or placing them with, a company. In ‘Is There a Gap Between Your Culture and Your Recruiting Practices?’ Mr Duffy cautions against hiring a candidate based solely upon their resume or qualifications and instead advises us to also give due consideration to ‘the potential fit between your candidate’s values and expectations and the authentic attributes of your company’s culture’ as it can enhance greatly future productivity and teamwork. This is an area we always focus on with our clients, which we find helps greatly in terms of candidate tenure post hire.

Next up is a neat little introductory SlideShare by Link Humans on the benefits and uses of LinkedIn for recruitment professionals. It begins by giving a brief overview of LinkedIn’s global member distribution, their career profiles and the main reason they use the service. More interestingly for the recruitment market it then moves on to discuss how recruiters can use LinkedIn to target the online passive market. It also details a few handy features the website offers for connecting with potential talent such as status updates, polls, groups and events. Rounding off on a group of slides recommending some top tools for getting the most out of the service Link Humans have provided everything you need to get to grips with LinkedIn at speed. However, let us not forget that the true passive candidate market doesn’t just exist online (as our MD recently blogged about) and to make sure to maximise the quality of talent we provide, BRS makes a point to source candidates at multiple sources, irrespective of web presence.

Finally, we have a short article by David Woods detailing a recent talk given by Matthew Jeffery, the head of EMEA talent acquisition and global talent brand Autodesk, at the Kelly OCG Talent Strategy Summit 2012. Speaking directly of the kind of market BRS targets, Jeffery noted that ‘90% of the best candidates are not looking’ for employment – again this is the infamous passive market. While like Link Humans Jeffery agreed on the importance of social media such as Twitter, he counter argued that people won’t follow these feeds unless they feel an ‘emotional commitment’ and a relationship can be built with recruiters. The reason being he, like Bob Duffy, argues is that candidates want to know more and more about company culture.

The above would seem to fit with our service offering as we have a commitment to culture fit, open discussion and accountability at every step of the recruitment process – it’s always encouraging to know you’re doing something right! But what do these insights mean to you? Did any of these growing trends surprise you? Did you already suspect you knew which way the market was moving? Fill us in on your thoughts in the comments.