Technology now plays an integral part in the Recruitment industry, says Intellectual Property recruiters Fellows and Associates
(PRWEB) August 07, 2014 -- In their latest article on the Fellows and Associates website Pete Fellows, Managing Director and Founder, offers his perspective on the evolution of the recruitment industry and his experiences throughout his early career. The article, part two of an earlier edition back in April 2014, may well have been conceived out of nostalgia due to the upcoming fifth anniversary of Fellows and Associates this month.
Pete notes early on in the article that an investment in technology can impact productivity; however it wasn’t until the turn of the Millennium that some recruitment firms began to warm to this fact. “There are quite a few recruitment firms that like to do things on the cheap and can be run by people who have worked in recruitment for a long time and have quite fixed beliefs in how things are done. Unfortunately, the integration of technology and how it aided the recruitment process impacted more heavily in the last decade than it had in the previous one and trying to do things the way they had always been done was not necessarily the way to go about things. Whilst of course there was the internet, email and a very decent version of Windows in the 1990’s, for the most part recruitment was done in the same way it had been in the 1980’s” Pete explains.
Technology is an integral part of Fellows and Associates’ business model; with a heavy investment in their website, social media integration and video helping them carve a name for themselves as a unique provider in the industry. This influence could be attributed to Pete’s time at leading generalist recruitment company, Manpower. Pete describes his time at Manpower as “was one of the most fun periods of my working life, it was a very friendly atmosphere in general and whilst there were stresses of course they were stress-lite in comparison to what was to follow….By the time I left Manpower all consultants had their own PC and gradually but increasingly, more business was being done via email. Quite often email led rather than followed phone calls.”
Another aspect of the Fellows and Associates’ ethos is the ability to change with the times and tailor their service to suit their ever evolving client base. “I think this is very important as recruitment develops in the 2010’s” Pete explains. “Increasingly business is done via email which actually significantly changes the profile of the people needed to do the job. Whilst you still need people who are able to sell solutions over the phone or face-to-face, as, if not more important, is the skill to develop a rationale in writing - to be persuasive in text correspondence and when talking to a wider audience on social networks. I still think some recruitment companies forget this.” The team makes a conscious effort to offer a multidimensional service, rather than a hard sell; with advice, an informative and interactive website and long term relationships compared to a fast fee being some of their main company objectives.
Pete reasons that in order for a company to remain successful there also needs to be an element of flexibility in the employees, employers and overall business model. “Rigidity in recruitment is just plain stupid, believing that you, as an experienced recruiter, should only impart knowledge and not receive it is why your business may fail but more importantly why you are failing your staff.” This is a point that Fellows and Associates also try to educate their own clients and candidates on. Phillipa Field, consultant, remarks that “a willingness to widen a candidate brief, or a candidate becoming open to considering relocation can significantly increase both the client and the candidate’s chances in success. It sometimes requires a small leap of faith on their part but we ensure that we put ourselves in a position where they can trust and rely on us as recruiters to deliver, which we like to think we do on a regular basis.”
About Fellows and Associates
Fellows and Associates recruit Patent Attorneys, Trade Mark Attorneys, IP Lawyers and other Intellectual Property professionals worldwide. The firm offers a diverse range of recruitment services including search, advertised selection and managed campaigns. Fellows and Associates’ management consultancy division offers targeted strategic advice to firms within the Intellectual Property sector worldwide. See http://www.fellowsandassociates.com for more, phone +44 207 903 5019 or email [email protected].
Pete Fellows, Fellows and Associates, http://www.fellowsandassociates.com, +44 1924609110, [email protected]
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