People often wonder which is more important when applying for a job; experience or qualifications.
This often depends on what job you are applying for as some require you to have certain qualifications for you to be allowed to do the job. For example, if you want to be a doctor then qualifications are obviously vital and therefore will be mandatory. If you are looking to becoming a hairdresser then you may do a qualification or you may decide to train on the job and use your experience when applying for other positions. If you are applying for a job based on experience then you may need to be able to prove this by demonstrating that you can do the tasks required.
The ideal candidate for the majority of jobs will have a balance of both but sometimes it is hard to get the experience you need if no one is willing to offer you a position without it. If this is the case you may even consider doing voluntary work for a while to get experience you need to allow you to apply for more jobs and have a better chance of success when you do.

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.

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.

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.

Often as a potential employee attending an interview, it is easy to find helpful tips and advice on what you may need to ask and how you should conduct yourself during the interview, but as an interviewer you may also need some assistance and feel that you could do with some advice and pointers.

When it comes to carrying out interviews, it is all about preparation. You will probably have already read through all the CV’s and covering letters of the applicants that are going to be attending. From this I would strongly recommend highlighting any sections on their CV that you wish to discuss with them in detail. This could be something such as a gap in their employment history or extra qualifications or training they have done that you want to explore further.

Make sure that you have a set of questions in which you want to ask everyone as this will give you something to compare when you are looking through all the candidates at the end of the interview process to find out who you want to invite back for a second interview or offer the job to.

There are hundreds of recruitment agencies all over the UK, so if you are thinking of setting one up then you will need to find out what your unique selling point is going to be in order to compete with the existing agencies.

There are a number of different recruitment agencies such as ones that only offer permanent placements, some that only offer short term agency work or some that offer both. You may also find that some recruitment agencies specialise in one or two particular industries. When setting up a recruitment agency you need to decide which of these jobs you would like to offer and if you are going to limit it to jobs within particular industries or open it out to everything. You will also need to consider how you are going to charge for your services. Often if the agency is offering temp work they take a percentage from the employee, if they are sourcing people for permanent positions then the employer will pay. These fees can vary widely from one agency to another, so you will need to do your research to ensure you are competitive.

If you have been invited to an interview for a job offer then you may have a lot of questions that the ad did not answer. It is a good idea to get these questions down on paper as and when you think of them as your mind may go blank when you are in there and struggle to remember what you needed to ask.

Although an interview is predominantly for the employer to find out about you and your skills / experience etc it is also an opportunity for you to find out about the job role and the company to see if you think it is the right job for you.

It is always a good idea to have a few questions that you want to ask as this will show you’re passionate about getting the job. Often people like to ask a little bit of background about the company if this has not already been covered in the interview.

Always wait until the end of an interview to ask questions as you may find that your question is in fact answered. Often people need to know about salaries but are a little afraid to ask. No one can be expected to take a job role without knowing what the salary is, but be prepared if they ask you what you would be expecting to receive.

If you have been given the responsibility of interviewing candidates for a position within your company then you may need to take some time to plan your interview and what needs to be asked in order to get the information you need. There are certain jobs where the candidate will need to have a particular qualification or experience and there are others where on the job training is offered so no previous experience is necessary. Regardless of what you are asking for in terms of qualifications, you also need to ascertain whether the candidate has the right personality for the job and could work well within your existing team.

Some job roles require a lot of quick decision and thinking on your feet, for example. If you have someone that has all the require experience and/or qualifications but finds it hard to make decisions then they will probably not be the right person for you.

When planning your interview be sure to put in questions to find out a bit more about the person in general and what type of work ethics they have. Also making sure that they are a team player and can work well within a group environment, if this is needed in the job role.

When writing a CV it is important to ensure that all the information you put on the CV is true and accurate. There is no point stating that you have experience in an area you don’t or have achieved exams results which you didn’t. Doing this is setting yourself up for a fall and if you get found out you may find yourself out of a job quicker than it took you to get it.

It is also important to make sure that your CV is free from spelling and punctuation mistakes. Your Cv is likely to be the first impression a potential employer has of you, therefore you want it to be a good one. Sometimes all it takes is a quick re-read of the CV before sending it off and ideally getting someone else to look over it for you. There is not usually a need to add a photo to your Cv but if you do decide to do so then make sure it is a professional one not one of your latest holiday snaps.