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July Newsletter Welcome to the first of two summer newsletters. We hope you are making the

most of the sunshine and that you will enjoy the following mix of industry trends,

tech bites and comedy that have caught our attention.

Contents Click below to be taken to each section:

It’s Flexi-Time

Interviews: Are you asking the right

questions?

News in Brief

How to deal with irritated

customers….

It’s Flexi-Time...

With the advent of mobile technology and the ability to log in from virtually

anywhere in the world, a lot of us have been working flexible hours for years.

Now, the Government has extended the right to request flexible working hours

(previously the domain of carers and those with children) to every employee with

more than six months’ service. There are now 20m people in the UK who can

request flexible working hours from their employees according to the Department

for Business, Innovation and Skills.

It doesn’t have to be granted but

employees can now expect their

request to be considered ‘in a

reasonable manner’ by their

employers. Frances O’Grady, the

General Secretary of the TUC

welcomed the move but remained

cautious: ‘When you make a flexible

working request you also need a fair

hearing, so we should improve things

further by giving people a right to

challenge an employer's reason for

rejecting a request.’

Deputy PM Nick Clegg said ‘all the evidence shows that it is good for the

individuals…but also that it boosts productivity’. There have been lots of studies

undertaken over the last few years that do show that flexible working does have a

positive impact on productivity and profitability, it can enhance employee

engagement and improve loyalty and attrition rates however if all of a sudden

everyone started working from 1am to 9am, we would be in chaos.

Modern life isn’t what it used to be. There are more single-parent families, more

dependence on childcare (and its associated costs) and more and more people for

whom the traditional 9-5 is a thing of the past and it looks like the Government

have recognised that and have acted [insert own joke here].

They are selling the new legislation as of particular benefit to older employees

creeping up on retirement (although it’s hard to see how that particular

demographic would benefit) as well as younger employees looking for training*

(*job hunting) while they work but actually, most employees will probably have a

case to request flexible working hours, it’s just a matter of time until we find out just

how many do.

So far, no-one at Asset Resourcing HQ has asked and Ben already has ‘NO’

tattooed onto his forehead…

What do you think of the new legislation? Is it open for abuse? Will it largely be

ignored by most employees? As an employee, do you plan on asking and as an

employer, what will you do if asked?

Let us know on Twitter @AssetResourcing.This is a Text Block. Use this to provide

text...

Are you asking the right questions to your interviewer?

We’ve all had interviews with varying degrees of success. We’re asked questions,

we answer them to the best of our ability and then the interviewer drops the ‘Q’

bomb – ‘are there any questions you want to ask me?’

This is technically known as ‘make or break time’.

Ask where people go to get lunch, what smartphone you’re going to get or if the

pretty brunette in Marketing is single and it’s likely that the interviewer will file your

CV under ‘B’ for bin.

Virtually all candidates grouped into the category of ‘outstanding’ will ask questions

that actually get the interviewer thinking. Further, they don’t care what the answers

are; they are focused on asking intelligent questions that evaluate you and your

business and deciding if your company is the best fit for them.

What sort of questions are we referring to?

In a recent article posted on LinkedIn by American writer Jeff Haden, he listed ‘five

questions great job candidates ask’…

1. What do you expect me to accomplish in the first three months of me

being here?

Great candidates don’t want to spend weeks and months unravelling the culture

and ethos of your business. They want to hit the ground running and make an

immediate difference.

2. What are the common attributes of your top performers?

The key qualities of top performers vary from business to business, dependent on

the nature of that business. Whatever they are, great candidates want to

seamlessly immerse themselves into the company and they are focused on being

top performers.

3. What are the things that really drive results for this business?

Great candidates need to know what makes a difference in your business because

with business success comes personal success.

4. What do employees do in their spare time?

An odd question on the surface and you don’t need to go into specifics but what

they are getting at is whether they fit in with the overall culture of the business.

5. How do you plan to deal with…?

New competitors, technological advancement, shifting economic trends, rising

costs of raw materials etc. Great candidates want detail, not just how you think but

how you plan to act and moreover, how they fit into those plans.

Next time, instead of asking if the vending machine in the office has Pickled Onion

Monster Munch, think about what you really want to know and how it will drive your

career.

Talking of careers, we have an ever-expanding selection of great roles in IT & New

Media, HR & Admin, Accountancy & Finance and Sales & Marketing. Have a look

through and if there’s something that tickles your fancy, contact us!

News in Brief

Here’s a selection of some of the recruitment stories that made the rounds in the

news last month. Have you read anything interesting, funny or newsworthy? Email

us at enquiries@assetresourcing.com or follow us on

Twitter @AssetResourcing and tell us. If it’s befitting our esteemed newsletter, we

might include it next month!

Graduates: Playing video games CAN get you a job after all…!

Sadly we’re not talking about FIFA ’14 or Call of Duty, rather a series of simple

video games devised by a New York start-up to help recruit the best talent.

Pymetrics uses elements of neuroscience that measure qualities such as

attentiveness and impulsiveness and the results create a profile to determine

which firm would be the best fit. According to NBC, at least six major US banks are

considering using these video games as a legitimate recruitment tool.

Women of Britain: You ROCK!

A recent study conducted across 30 countries by Dell has put the UK in the top

rank of nations providing the most favourable conditions for female

entrepreneurship to flourish. In the second annual Gender-Global

Entrepreneurship and Development

Index (Gender-GEDI),

they looked at factors

including equal legal

rights, Toverall business

situation, resources,

training and the attitudes

to high-ranking female

executives and the UK is

up there! We still rank

below the US, Australia,

Sweden, France,

Germany and Chile but

the signs are positive.

Dell’s Entrepreneur Campaigner Ingrid Vanderveldt maintains that Britain still

‘needs more inspirational female examples and women at the top’ but the gender

gap is getting smaller and smaller!

Believe it and it will

happen…

In 1985, eight year-old

Sam Johnson wrote to

Lego asking for a job. He

loved Lego and wanted to

be part of a company he

worshipped. Seventeen

years on and guess

what? He has just landed

his dream job as a junior

designer for Lego based

in Denmark! Naturally,

when you interview at

Lego, you’re almost

obliged by law to regale

tales of how you played

with it as a kid but Sam

pulled out the letter he

wrote! As part of his

degree in Product

Design, he used Lego as

part of his final year

project and his designs

were spotted by Lego

bosses and he was

offered a job! If you

believe, it will happen*.

*No guarantees.

How to deal with irritated customers….

Come on, admit it. We’ve all had customers who think they are the big ‘I am’.

Shouting the odds, demanding you drop everything and deal with them as they’re

the most important person in the universe and generally making your life a misery.

The trick is to remain calm, composed and professional, just like this Virgin Atlantic

desk attendant did a little while ago in Australia:

A full flight to London was cancelled because of an issue with the 767 which was

withdrawn from service. A single attendant was in the process of rebooking a long

line of annoyed customers when all of a sudden, an angry man pushed and

elbowed his way to the front of the queue and dramatically and aggressively

slammed his ticket on the desk.

‘I HAVE TO BE ON THIS FLIGHT AND IT HAS TO BE FIRST CLASS’ he said.

The attendant looked at his and said calmly ‘I’m sorry sir, I’ll be happy to try and

help you but I have to help these people first and I’m sure you’ll be travelling in no

time.’

He looked at the attendant (who was calm, composed and professional) and

shouted ‘DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHO I AM?’

In one seamless motion and without hesitation, she picked up the public address

microphone and (calmly) said ‘Can I have your attention please, we have a

passenger at Desk 14 who doesn’t appear to know who he is. If there’s anyone

who can help him, please come forward.’

Seething and getting redder and redder, the passenger glared at her (with

hundreds of people laughing hysterically behind him) and shouted a very bad ‘out

loud’ word at her, to which she (calmly) replied…

‘I’m sorry sir but you will have to get in the queue for that too!’

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