If you are a business owner and have a vacancy or number of vacancies that you want to fill then you will probably be all too familiar with the usual time-consuming recruitment process and costly expense of advertising the job and then trawling through a mountain of CV’s that land on your desk. Even when you have whittled the CV’s down you will then have to endure hours of interviews with a number of candidates before finding the right one.

Research shows that on average it costs a business approximately £4500 to fill a vacancy, this is in advertising and time. By using a recruitment agency to find the right candidates for you, they can take a lot of the hassle away by doing all the advertising of the job, filtering through CV’s and then pre-assessing people that you wish to attend an interview.

Agencies will of course charge a fee for their service which is often a percentage of the salary of the job for permanent positions or a fixed price. It is often a good idea to employ more than one agency to find you candidates for you as you will only pay the one who supplied the applicant that you successfully hire.

As a business you may decide to use an agency to fill any positions you may have available, or you may decide to advertise and manage the recruitment process yourself. It is often a good idea to allow people to send their CV’s to you even when you are not advertising a position. This allows you to build up a CV database which you can have a look through prior to advertising for posts.

Every six months or so you may want to contact the people to ask if they are happy to stay on your CV database as situations do change and you may find they are no longer interested in a position within your company.

Having a place on your website where CV’s can be uploaded or application forms completed will make the whole process easier. You can then have these emailed to a dedicated email address so you have them all in one place.

Make sure that when storing CV’s you adhere to the recent GDPR changes and that you have consent to keep them on file.

If you do decide to advertise jobs in the local paper etc, then you could use the email address that you have set up for any recruitment purposes to make the process easier to manage.

If you are looking for a job you may find that there are many positions that involve shift work, often working over night. These jobs are not often that popular as it will involve you sleeping in the day and working at night. Shift work is usually done on a rotational basis meaning that you may have four nights on then four nights off etc. This type of work does not suit everyone but if you like having whole days off in the week then it may be ideal for you. If you have a partner and they work a 9-5 type job then you may find that you have little time together if one of your works night shifts. Some shift work is not over night as such, either early mornings or late nights such as 6am till 2pm until 10pm. Again this can work brilliant for many individuals and families as it allows you to have time together when most people are at work.

If you are working night shifts you may find that you are offered a higher wage than working in the day. This is often something that tempts many people in to the job.

Professional CV-writing services have been around for some time, but have become ever-more prevalent as recruiters increasingly look to software solutions to increase their efficiency.

You may have heard of ATS, but what is this? Well, it stands for Applicant Tracking Systems. These programs use algorithms to evaluate the content of your CV to see how closely it matches a given role and person specification, returning a score. This saves the recruiter from actually having to read reams of text, which can be a particular problem for highly sought after jobs.

If 300 people apply for one role, it’s easy to see how much of a time-saving that could be if you could simply discard all the CVs below a set score threshold, and review only those in more detail – and that’s exactly what happens.

Increasingly then, whether you’re considered for a role or not is based on how your CV scores. Ultimately this boils down to the language & phrasing you use, so it’s absolutely key that this matches what the systems are looking for.

This now gives CV-writers a huge selling point – in much the same way a website needs SEO, your CV will benefit from the kind of ATS optimisation that a good professional can give you.

Nursing is a very important job and one that is often under paid and under appreciated. Nurses are a vital part of the NHS and private medical sector and although often challenging at times, can be extremely rewarding.

If you are considering becoming a nurse then you will need to think about what part of nursing you want to go in to. As with many professions within the medical industry, you may have to work long shifts during various times of the day. This can have a massive impact on your family life and something that you may not want to do if you have young children at home.

It is important to understand exactly what your job entails. There is paperwork that needs to be completed and you need to be able to have patients to work with people of all different backgrounds and level of understanding.

It is essential that you are a good team worker and that you can also work well on your own. You will often need to think on your feet and be prepared to work longer hours if an emergency arises.

Entry requirements for nursing degree courses vary because each university sets its own entry criteria, but you are likely to need at least two (usually three) A-levels or equivalent qualifications at level 3, plus supporting GCSEs including English, maths and a science (usually biology or human biology).

The marketing industry is vast and is growing year up on year. With different marketing avenues coming in to play, there is always a need to people within the marketing industry so it is often thought of a very sustainable industry to get in to.

Some people that work in marketing have a wide knowledge of lots of different marketing avenues to include online and offline marketing. Other individuals specialise in one or two areas such as social media marketing or search engine optimisation.

When training to be a marketing consultant you will need to decide if you want a broad knowledge of all aspects of marketing or if you would rather focus on one particular style. Many marketing companies will employ a range of people that have experience in different areas, so as a company they can offer all the services to their clients without them having to go elsewhere.

It is very important to stay up to date with changes not only within the marketing sector but also within your clients industry. You will need their help to do this especially if you work with clients in a number of different industries. This will allow you to be proactive when it comes to marketing strategies rather than reactive.

If you run your own business you should be aware of how much work you need to do in order to keep your accounts in order. You will have the option of using an accountancy firm to manage the financial side or doing it yourself. Depending on how large your business is and how complicated may mean that you will struggle to do all the accounting yourself. You may have employees and therefore also have to manage a payroll.

There are a huge number of book keepers and accountancy firms out there that will do as much or as little as you want them to do. You may wish to do all the accounting yourself but then have them audit you every few months to check that you are doing it correctly or you may ask them to manage the whole thing, so you literally send all your invoices to them for them to input. They can also manage VAT returns as well as personal tax and P11D’s. Obviously the more work you ask them to do the more you will be charged, but this can often free you up to allow you to manage and run the business as you need to so can often pay for itself.

Improving your performance and attitude at work can have a knock on effect on many things. You may find that you are given extra responsibility, possibly a pay rise and importantly you may also discover that you get more satisfaction out of your job. Job satisfaction is important as this can also affect your home life and if you can find satisfaction in your job, then you will most likely be more productive.

Once in a while it is a good idea to evaluate your own performance at work and see what areas you need to improve on. A recent study showed that lots of employees feel that their time keeping is not up to scratch. This can often be very important for an employer and if it happens regularly can result in disciplinary and possible even dismissal from the job.

Another area you may want to consider is how much pride you take in your work. If you are rushing through so you can finish early or have time to chill out then you may not be completing tasks to the best of your ability and this is not showing that you are an asset to the company.

A huge number of the population are in jobs that they do not enjoy and many people are in jobs that they simply are not very good at. Often people rush in to getting a job as they need money and once you have a steady income it is hard to risk that or give it up to find new employment.

It may be that you know the job you would love to have but will need to return to education to gain a qualification before you can do it and that can put a lot of financial and time strains on a person especially if you have a family or people that are reliant upon you.

There are always ways of changing jobs you just may have to be prepared to work evenings or study on your days off and the weekends to obtain the qualifications or experience you need. This may mean the process is longer than if you attended college full time but if it is something that you really want to do then you should not let that stop you.

Do some research and see what you need to land that perfect job, then shop around to find out the different steps to get there, you may find that it is actually easier than you think.

Doing the payroll can be a very time consuming job, especially if you have members of staff who’s wages change weekly or monthly or that sometimes earn bonuses etc. Your payroll system can be as simple or as complex as you like but more of the good ones will also have the ability to calculate holiday pay, sick pay and maternity leave as well as usual salaries.

If you are currently doing your payroll in-house then it is worth working out how much time it takes and also if there are often mistakes made with it leaving you with unhappy members of staff. Some accountants will charge a small fee to manage your payroll for you and can often offer different packages to suit your individual business needs i.e. the number of people on the payroll, the frequency of the payroll and complexity of it.

They can also submit your Employers contribution to HMRC for you and advise you of the amounts that need to be paid in order to stay on top of your financial accounts. They will check that you have all the unesseccary documents you need for your employees and any casual workers if required.