Every business has its own set of Crown Jewels. They’re usually a collection of things – an asset, a database, a sales team, a patent – that gives a firm a strong competitive advantage over every other company.
the strong network and database of experienced, talented FM professionals which we add to all the time, and our long-standing team of FM recruitment experts.
It’s taken us 12 years to build that up.
HR professionals cite recruitment as “greatest challenge”
If you are in an HR department of an FM service provider or a company with its own FM team, the network we constantly update and our team of recruitment professionals are the most valuable things we can offer you when you’re looking for new FM staff, at whatever level.
That’s because 36% of HR professionals, according to HR News, now believe that recruitment is their greatest challenge.
69% of you told the website that you find it really difficult to recruit new staff. You also mentioned that there are three major problems hampering you in your search:
• Lack of required skills or experience
• Lack of applicants
• Salary expectations
It’s a problem across all industries but it’s a particularly severe issue in FM.
FM recruiters face two different obstacles to successful recruitment.
The first is supply. More FM posts at all levels are being created than there are people who could fill them. It’s been this way for the past 5 years and it’s continuing to this day.
There are more FM service providers than ever before. More and more companies are establishing their own FM departments. That’s led to an unsustainably large number of companies fishing in a very small pool.
Second, how jobs are advertised. The days of everyone looking for jobs in the Thursday pull-out employment supplement of their local evening newspaper has been and gone. Back in the day, these adverts may have been expensive but you were almost guaranteed that the huge readership meant that your vacancy would attract promising candidates.
People now access job boards on a number of different platforms at any time of the week and across multiple devices wherever they are.
How do you choose when to advertise?
We genuinely get the stress you’re under to find the right candidate but you’ve also got a lot of other responsibilities competing for your time.
A recent situation with a client, long-standing and much valued, came to mind this morning. This company have been using us for five years now and we’ve enjoyed placing dozens of candidates with them over that time. A Head of Facilities job came up within their organisation and the order came from on high that, this time, they wanted the HR team to handle it. (PS We were and still are working with them on other vacancies).
They placed their Head of Facilities advert in various different locations in early December. The adverts yielded 77 candidates from which only 3 were suitable for interview.
The 3 interviewed by the HR team were competent but not quite ready for the job that was on offer. The client sent us over their CVs after they had rejected all of them and we said, honestly and with respect, why we would not have shortlisted them for interview and the reasons why.
It’s now nearly February and, regretfully, the HR team are no closer to finding their Head of Facilities.
Recruitment is difficult but when you don’t have a strong network of proven CVs to start your search from, it is always going to be an uphill climb. And that’s even when you have the strong, experienced, and dedicated in-house HR team whose experience we’re describing in this article.
The Maxwell Stephens team start their search to fill your vacancy after gaining a full understanding of the type of person you’re looking for and the responsibilities you need them to be able to master.
Rigorous telephone interviews with our internally shortlisted candidates whittle the numbers down to the final shortlist we present you with.
From instruction, your candidates will be sitting down with you for their first face-to-face interview within two to three weeks on average.
No client pays us until a candidate starts their first day of work. If you’ve never used a recruitment agency before, put us to the test and let us show you the quality and suitability of clients we can send you.
