There is no doubt about it, things are starting to pick up again in the economy and also the job market. We’ve seen businesses start to release multiple roles to try and quickly regain some of the muscle required to help them cope with the economic upswing ahead.

So how does looking for a job in a downturn differ to job hunting during an upswing?

Have you ever seen a job that you were interested in, or been approached about an opportunity, only to go to send your resume and realise that the last time you updated it was many years ago?

Have you ever read a job description and thought “wow, that sounds just like what I’ve been doing” and then had to re-write your resume because you had forgotten to include all of the important achievements and day to day tasks from your last role?

As a client, it is not uncommon to expect a lot from your RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) provider. Value added services such as interview; recruitment process and selection process design should come as part of the parcel when it comes to outsourcing your recruitment process.

Clients should expect a great deal of value if they are to outsource their recruitment process; including excellent customer service, reduced cost per hire, increased quality of hire and decreased time to fill, but is there a point where clients and hiring managers are expecting too much from their RPO provider?

For the most part when you conduct an employment reference, the answers are overall very positive, after all people generally only provide references if they know the referee has good things to say about them!

But occasionally you do conduct an employment reference that is not gleaming or packed with wonderful things about your work ethic and capabilities and with social networking playing a big part in the employment process these days your reputation and your previous references are more important than ever.

Business partnerships of yesteryear were built on respect, honesty, integrity and of course a firm and trustworthy handshake. People valued partnerships and sought to build mutually beneficial life long relationships through connections and in their community.

Business partnerships were built on mutual respect and trust and resulted in successful win-win outcomes. Today, in the recruitment industry Clients release roles to multiple agencies, candidates in turn then apply to these multiple agencies, which results in dozens of people scrambling all over town trying to establish role fit and suitability for the same role but bumping into one another and causing all sorts of confusion along the way.