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Mission Statement and Code of Practice

Altmore Mission Statement:

To become the leading specialist provider of technology recruitment services in Northern Ireland by providing the best candidates with the best career opportunities. We will do this through partnership with both candidates and clients, using best-in-class strategies which are more innovative, more professional and more effective than the competition.

Our corporate integrity is a critical asset and we are committed to upholding it. We practice business fairly and behave ethically. We will provide our customers with a professional, informative, reliable, trustworthy and honest service. We achieve this by staying one step ahead, keeping up to date with the current market.

For ourselves we set high standards by sharing our expectations with each other and striving to maintain a workplace built on trust, support, self-motivation and commitment to development.

Code Of Practice:

Altmore IT are members of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (the REC). The REC is the body representing the recruitment industry in the UK. With more than 7000 corporate members, it is recruitments biggest voice. All REC corporate members such as ourselves, must adhere to the Code of Professional Practice – developed to ensure jobseekers and employers receive the highest recruitment service levels. Beware there are agencies out there in NI that are not members of the REC. You wouldn’t use a solicitor who wasn’t a member of the Law Society. We recommend you adopt the same philosophy when choosing your recruitment agencies. We respect fellow travellers like Diamond IT and Blueprint who are both well established firms and long-standing members of the REC.

Please see the included document with this submission for the full REC Code of Practice, titled “REC_Code_of_Professional_Practice.pdf” and also a guideline document detailing compliance for agencies titled “AST-00103 Guide to Compliance - Code of Professional Practice.doc”.

Altmore IT are bound by this code to observe the highest principles of ethics, equity, integrity, professional conduct and fair practice in dealing with others and we conduct our business in a manner designed to enhance the operation, image and reputation of both our clients and our industry. To quote the Code of Practice:

“Ethical conduct is not simply compliance with legal requirements but extends to honesty, respect for and equitable treatment of others, integrity and social responsibility. It is conduct that holds up to disclosure and to public scrutiny. Members and their staff will act towards other members and non-members, candidates, clients and others at all times in good faith. Members should actively seek to support and uphold the mission and values of the REC.”

Compliance With Equal Opportunities

Altmore IT also comply in full with all Equal Opportunities legislation. Our CRM system allows us to store an unlimited number of files on a candidate's record, and we find that for popular candidates we can have several different monitoring forms stored, as some hirers insist that their own branded customised form is used, often with different fields of monitoring information being collected. One point worth noting is that we need to know in advance of a recruitment campaign that equal opportunities information is required as we find that candidates are often unwilling to provide this information after the process has finished.

Compliance With The Law

The relevant law for the recruitment sector in NI is the "Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations (NI) 2005". We have studied these to a deep level, going so far as to request written clarification of various points of best practice from the Department of Employment and Learning NI who are responsible for enforcing this legislation. This is in stark contrast to many in the recruitment industry where ignorance of the law, or worse, is the norm. We received our first routine audit by DELNI in Feb 2008 and were delighted to have been given a clean bill of health as we passed with 100% compliance at first inspection, an achievement which the inspectors told us puts us in a tiny minority of recruitment agencies in Northern Ireland.

The letter from DELNI included with this submission titled “AST-00107 Letter of Compliance 2008_03_20.pdf” confirms us passing this inspection, and a detailed guide of the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations (NI) 2005 is included titled “AST-00107 Conduct Regulations (NI) 2005 - a detailed guide (April 2008).pdf”. The regulations themselves are attached in full in a document titled “SUP-00148 Conduct Regulations (NI) 2005.pdf”

Candidate Selection Process

How Do We Source Candidates?

There are two main streams of candidates – from our proprietary database, and job-boards.

Proprietary Database

• Altmore IT has been running in Northern Ireland for 6 years, building up a collection of over 12,000 IT candidates, the vast majority registered for work in Northern Ireland, with an average of 4 or 5 consultants over that time. This is in contrast with some of our competitors who have only had a Northern Ireland IT division for a year or two, and some of whom have only had one or at most two IT consultants.
• 12,000 candidates registered over 6 years works out at on average at 2000 registered per year, with 500 new candidate registrations per consultant per year, based on our average consultant level in the period of approximately 4. So quickly one can see an agency with only 1 or 2 consultants who have only been operating an IT desk for a year or two cannot compete on this level and so has access to only a fraction of our candidates.
• The 12,000 candidates are across the whole IT spectrum so here is a short summary showing the number of people coded in areas of interest: Java – 1290 candidates .NET – 912 candidates QA – 1099 candidates Application Support – 504 candidates DBA – 313 candidates Project Management – 972 candidates Business Analysis – 339 candidates (These are at all levels of seniority for each code)
• We also regularly gain recommendations from top candidates who, if they aren't interested themselves, recommend people to us. This is because we engage first, and recruit second, which consolidates our credibility and trust with candidates as opposed to a hard, overly aggressive, ‘apply-or-goodbye’ approach used by some agencies.

Job-boards And Subscription Databases

We are subscribers to all the major ones both locally and nationally. However responses to job-board adverts placed by agencies and indeed by companies directly are vastly reduced now compared to the period between 2005 and 2007. There are several reasons for this:

• The period between 2005 and 2007 was a period of “taking up the slack” where IT staff who were out of work, underpaid, or unfulfilled moved jobs. A lot of NI IT candidates got very good roles, the job of their dreams etc when opportunities where better and when there were more IT companies setting up or expanding. Most of these candidates are still very happy in their jobs, very well looked after and have no reason to be browsing job-boards.
• As a result of this “taking up the slack” since approx. 2007/2008 there is now almost full employment for experienced IT people.
• We now find ourselves in the middle of a recession. People feel they are better off staying where they are as long as their current company is stable, and employment in the IT sector is high -– that is to say that most companies do not have unfilled jobs. Candidates do not want to be seen to be looking for another job online for fear they will be first out the door if there are redundancies.
• It has become far harder for jobseekers to see the wood from the trees, so to speak, on job-boards and apply for real, genuine, bona-fide opportunities. With a lack of work, some agencies post a lot of fake and duplicate adverts online in an attempt to save face, appear busy, and build up a CV database. There are also a lot of new entrants into the IT recruitment market, some from outside Northern Ireland, some are local companies with traditional strengths in other areas who are trying to jump on the perceived bandwagon and start up an IT division due to the recession compromising the traditional part of their operations. (NB Creating dozens of fake job adverts to build a database is illegal and unethical practice and we do NOT partake in this practice).You can read about this in the attached document titled “Final Online Job Boards Advertising Code of Conduct June 2009.PDF”
• Lastly there is level of jadedness and tiredness amongst those jobseekers that are actually wanting to move. For example they have applied for roles directly with companies only be interviewed and never hear back, or get told a job opportunity had to be withdrawn after an indication of successful performance at interview. So there is a reluctance to apply to online adverts of any description due to underhand practice from some recruitment agencies, bad experiences with companies directly in the past, and this results in a growing cynicism toward all online job-board adverts from clients and agencies alike.
• Overall this places an even greater importance on an agency’s proprietary database, their own contacts and their networking skills. In our own opinion we are in the premier league in each of these areas.

Our Submission Process:

For any role, standard or niche, we begin by taking the assignment in full by arranging a face to face meeting with the hiring manager to discuss the business case for the role, factors required to succeed in the role, cultural fit required, the key tasks needed to be performed by the person, how they will contribute to organisational objectives and what the upside / growth potential is for the candidate.

Once completed, we then contact those people immediately in our network who are available and a match, or get recommendations from them if they aren't available. Then we run a database search on our own database, as well as checking our local and international subscription databases, contacting the most available people first. After making sure they are a fit for the role, registered in full and all DELNI legislation is satisfied, plus having met them in person where possible and appropriate, their CV is then sent out by email to the hiring manager, with a feedback request within 1 week, or whatever pre-determined time was agreed.

A CV sendout includes: an up-to-date CV plus covering notes from ourselves describing previous relevant work, their motivations and other job applications, as well as their notice period, current and expected salary and whether they require a work permit or not. Post interview, feedback is exchanged with the candidate after we debrief with the hiring manager.

Throughout the process, we handle candidates major and minor concerns and cover these off. Major concerns might be for example progression opportunities or the exact nature of the work, and minor concerns might be some pension details, car parking arrangements, or the chance of occasional flexitime. It is our job to cover these concerns by gathering information to answer candidate questions, so when the offer comes, there are no obstacles left for acceptance since we have created and maintained a career-opportunity gap throughout the process, demonstrated the learning challenges and covered all of a candidates concerns. Where needed we test offers before officially presenting them - this involves sounding a candidate out to see if in theory they would accept the role at the salary discussed. If not, we need to go back and close off their concerns. This reduces the chance of offers being made with uncomfortable rejections, bidding wars, or counter-offers. When an offer is made, we present it to the candidate.

It is absolutely critical to point out that Altmore IT never send any introductions to an employer in response to a vacancy instruction, unless we have spoken to a candidate first about the opportunity. This is common sense and best practice, and it is illegal to do otherwise. At best, agencies that do this will have guessed at a candidate’s motivations, salary expectations, notice period and have no idea of their current work. All too often we have candidates tell us of instances where they have had a sole phone call from an agency offering an immediate interview with a client, or they have tried to apply directly only to be rejected, being told by client they already have their CV via an agency, or have spent several hours in dialogue with one agency only to be put forward and find a different agency has sent off their CV without them knowing about it. Or even worse – an agency sends a CV to a client without the knowledge that that candidate is actually now working there. This all contributes to the reluctance of jobseekers as described earlier, and re-emphasises the importance of existing relationships and trust with candidates on our database. Again Altmore IT do not partake in such unethical practice.

Our Shortlisting & Selection Process

When a candidate is registered, one of our consultants, who all have an IT technical background, applies various skill codes to the candidate record to indicate technology areas, skills, etc. When we take an assignment, part of the process is converting the role into our approximation of the job in terms of these skill codes, then running a database search. Although a mechanical process, this step allows us to cut out a lot of the chaff in one fell swoop before we start to apply our own skill and matching abilities. We go through the resultant list manually, reviewing the CVs, notes from previous interactions, interview results, as well as candidate’s supporting documents. We'll contact suitable candidates and discuss what previous relevant work they have achieved, and if there is a mutual interest then we proceed and they are added to our shortlist. We are happy to lead the shortlisting process in full ourselves and select interviewees, or select final interviewees in conjunction with the hiring manager if needed, after our selection of candidate CVs have been emailed over.

We interview, assess and brief ALL candidates FULLY on the role and the company as per DELNI legal regulations and the REC code. This is best practice. Be aware not all agencies do this. Interviews are usually carried out on the phone in the first instance. We meet candidates also, but this is not always practical. Assessments are our judgement of the candidate’s ability to do the work compared to the job performance profile based on their work history, their character and motivations. We can conduct specific assessments if needed in our offices. Again, no CVs are sent without a candidate's permission.

Before submitting a candidate for a role, during our first interview the full job description and any other information given by the company is provided. This is then consolidated again before an interview with the client in addition to our own knowledge of the company. We also provide the candidate with a copy of the CV application that was sent to client, along with of course the clients full address and directions if needed.

Our Interview Process:

In most cases, the first interview is with a candidate by phone to assess suitability. We meet candidates where possible and push for this if they are called for an interview. It is not possible to meet every candidate for a variety of reasons - work schedules, location etc. In an interview for example we cover a candidates work history, gaps in a CV, their current projects, their biggest achievements, reasons for moving on and their other job applications.

How We ‘Sell’ To The Top Candidates:

Top candidates will rank their options after comparing each of them in areas of challenge, learning curve, promotion prospects, the strength and culture of the company and how they will contribute to company objectives. Top candidates want a career, not a job. We gather all this information from a client and the hiring managers involved to give a full and compelling description of the role and of the business, clearly demonstrating all of the aforementioned. We know other agencies simply use a jobspec with a few bullet points, and a status-quo paragraph from your website – a quick online search and scan of IT agency adverts other that ourselves will confirm this.

It is important to note that different candidates have different motivations and concerns. We will work to ensure we know as much of this as we can possibly know before we start the pitch, so that we can customise the pitch to a candidate's particular preferences e.g. if we know a particular candidate is driven by brand new product development, we can focus on that aspect in our pitch.

Before starting we will have read the candidates file, past interview notes etc. so as to have in our short-term memory what makes this candidate tick. If the candidate is new to us, we will have to obtain this information before starting the pitch. If they are not new we will also spend some time in the interview itself confirming this "status" information before beginning the pitch. It is our job to collate all the information possible at the outset, or find out new information requested from candidates, no matter how major or minor - e.g. promotion opportunities after 24 months, benefits package details, working hours, travel times / distances, whether there is a canteen or not etc. What works for one candidate in terms of explaining and branding the opportunity may not work for another. The reason we can do this is because we know our candidates well and they freely give us their concerns and queries which we have to answer in order to guide them through the process step by step. More often than not the process breaks down when there are unanswered questions since the candidate holds back on making a commitment.

Our Candidate Feedback Process:

We feedback on a weekly basis, usually on a Friday with updates on a candidates position within the process, or details of offer or rejection. We make sure that feedback is promptly presented in a constructive manner so as to not cause offence, and also to maintain the client's standing in the hiring market.

Recent Clients

mFormation Technologies

We have been working with mFormation since the start of their recruitment in spring 2007, at times on an exclusive basis. To date we have placed eleven candidates despite tough conditions, mostly Java developers and some QA / PM roles, making us far and away their most successful agency. Currently we are assisting them with the hire of thirteen Java developers (having already placed three Senior Java Developers as part of that programme) and an Oracle database architect as part of a large expansion drive.

Philips Healthcare

In the past twelve months we have placed three candidates with Philips in the areas of senior .NET development and QA. To our knowledge only one other candidate was placed by an agency in the same period.

<Leading Financial Services Company>

We have placed 80 people in Belfast with this organisation in Belfast in the past 4 years – circa 60 permanent and 20 contract. Typical placements include Java and .NET roles, Unix Admins, DBAs, and specialist areas like AbInitio. We have made significantly more contract placements in the past 12 months than our competitors on the contract preferred suppliers list.

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We stand by any claims made and statistics given, but would urge you to check them out with the companies themselves for your own reassurance. We would especially recommend you do likewise for any claims made by and statistics given by any other agencies, as unfortunately honesty is in short supply in some areas of the NI recruitment agency sector (as an example consider the number of “live” IT jobs on the local job boards – a few months back I counted 400 agency jobs, and only 10-20 employer adverts. Even allowing for different agencies covering the same job, there is a massive mismatch. Someone somewhere is putting out fake adverts, and lots of them. Of course we have our own opinions about who is involved, but couldn’t say as to do so could leave us open to legal action since the antiquated defamation laws in the UK dictate that even though an allegation may be true and its disclosure might be in the public interest, the whistleblower may still be sued for damages.).