Case studies

SER are Hiring.

As the summer is rapidly approaching SER Ltd are looking to recruit their next “batch” of new recruits who are looking to join the World of recruitment.

We provide full training and support based over your initial 3months employment. Working with you daily to develop the skills required to be successful as a Recruitment Consultant.

Interested in hearing more? Our current recruitment job advert which is live on the job board sites such as www.cvlibrary.co.uk and www.totaljobs.co.uk is as follows:

Recruitment Consultant (Full Training Provided)

Blackburn, BB1 5QR

Hybrid Working Available / Potential flexible pro-rota working hours available.

Office hours 9am t0 5pm Monday to Thursday & 9am to 4pm Friday

£24,000 - £28,000 basic neg

OTE Year One £30,000 - £40,000

Package includes Monthly performance bonus, commission, 26 days holiday plus banks, pension, free parking, Work from home option 2 days a week, Team events.

SER Limited is a firm of specialist Recruitment Consultants who have been established since 2007 and current employ 25 people from their Blackburn offices.

Due to planned growth, they are now looking to recruit a further two people to train and support in order to give them the skills to be highly successful Recruitment Consultants. Ideally, they are looking for people who have held Sales Consultant or Sales Executives roles previously.

This position is a mixed bag of Account Management, Business Development, Interviewing, Field Client Visits and Administration; however, it is expected that a large part of the typical working day will be phone related working.

Main Duties will include:

• New Business Development
• Account Management
• Candidate sourcing
• Referencing
• General Administration duties associated with the recruitment process

Ideally you will have or hold:

• Previous sales exposure
• Fantastic communication skills both verbal and written
• Proactive approach to work and a willingness to make things happen
• Highly motivated to be successful
• Driven by targets and goals
• Have an outgoing personality

Interested in hearing more? Please either apply by sending a copy of your current CV or alternatively call SER Ltd on the listed number and ask for Gary Bentley.

Another successful Charity Day held by SER Limited in their continued support of the Pendleside Hospice Charity.

A fantastic effort from all the staff in baking some wonderful treats both savoury and sweet, with a special mention to Leah Wilkinson who won the vote for Best Baker.

£187 raised.

Living the dream since 2023!

Experience

Before joining SER Limited I was at university studying to be a PE Teacher. Once I finished university, I worked at a furniture manufacturer as a Stores Manager in my local town of Colne, but I wanted to dip my hand into sales.

My first sales job was selling fuel cards at Fuel Card Services where I met some amazing people and friends for life but then I saw the opportunity to get into recruitment and joining SER Limited has been a breath of fresh air.

I currently recruit directly into the IT and Telecommunications industry which has been challenging but rewarding and I hope to continue to write many success stories whilst at SER Limited.

Living the dream since 2014!

Before SER I was a recruiter in the grad markets and working in my local Italian whenever I could lend a hand! I am now applying my skills to the niche engineering sector of machine tools.

My favourite thing about this sector is speaking with candidates that are so knowledgeable within the industry and helping them find their next career steps.

 This quarters 'EMPLOYEE AWARD' has been awarded to one of our newest recruits, Arran Kelly.
The employee of the quarter award is a type of recognition given to workers for exceptional performances. As the name suggests, the employee of the quarter award is offered on a quarterly basis.

Arran joined SER only six months ago, and became part of the Packaging team

Congrats Arran on your outstanding work. We are continually impressed by the results you produce! You play a crucial role in our team and the company's success. You've done amazing to accomplish what you have in such a short amount of time, and you've exceeded our expectations at every step.

Dan Walton his manager said: "Our rising star Arran Kelly has really taken well to recruitment since he started 6 months ago, he is an exciting addition to the packaging team and the SER family as a whole. Keep up the hard work Arran, first of many awards I am sure. Congratulations"

On Thursday 31st March to Friday 1st April, the SER team took part in a 36 hour virtual bike ride in the offices at SER HQ. We peddled through the day and night and the event was all live streamed via Twitch

The team rode an incredible 500 miles in 36 hours raising over £3,000!

Associate Director, Joe Reed commented "we enjoyed raising the money, we will be looking at doing more weird and wacky events in the future to raise money!"

Everyone at SER would like to thank everyone that donated! We were overwhelmed with the amount raised and all the messages of encouragement kept the team peddling throughout the night and into those final killer few hours

Future fundraising events will be announced soon....

Past the eleven year service mark

Thank you, Congratulations, Well done and every other accolade that there is to Wendy Evemy and Lee Geldart. Both Senior Recruitment Consultants here at SER Limited have past the eleven-year serviced mark. It’s a rarity in the recruitment sector to see such loyalty and it is really apricated.

Both lead the way in their specialist fields of Building Services and Machine Tool Engineering, working closely with many of the industry leading names. Their approach has helped SER Limited grow from the old days of a hand full of recruitment consultants to where we are today.

SER Limited as a business and a company has changed so much since their first weeks some eleven years ago, numerous office moves, re-structures and of course the attending of lots of splendid team building events.

From the bottom of our hearts SER thanks you for all your efforts over the past ELEVEN years.

Working with an Engineering Recruitment Agency

Recruiting in the current market is extremely difficult. Rising salaries in the engineering sector, an ever-increasing skill shortage, Brexit and changing working visa regulations are all on-going problems that just won’t go away. The benefits of outsourcing your recruitment to a specialist engineering recruitment agency couldn’t be stronger in the current climate.

If you are struggling with recruitment and haven’t used a recruitment agency in the past or moved away from agency biased recruitment because of a bad experience or simply couldn’t justify the cost then hopefully this blog can outline how SER Staffing can work with you to significantly improve your recruitment process in all aspects including, quality of candidates, time to hire and reduced administration.

In the first instance we would always say, stick with one single engineering recruitment agency in the first instance, more recruiters does not mean more candidates. It’s quite the opposite. The engineering sector has a huge skill shortage and as such one recruiter may well be speaking to the same engineer as another. What you as the employer doesn’t want is to have your position touted about and “mis-sold” and “mis-represented” to any engineer that would listen. It will dilute your fantastic position. Working with a single recruitment agency will allow them to commit to working on your vacancy in a logical and professional manner, as opposed to a first come first served who’s at the top of the pile approach. You will also remove that double agency claim risk which can happen when two recruitment agencies introduce the same candidates CVs at the same time, therefore both claiming a fee! Yes, that does happen, and more often than you would think, practically in engineering recruitment.

If you work with a recruiter on a sole agency bases, it doesn’t stop you running your job adverts. SER Limited encourage our clients to run adverts practically if they have the free Indeed job credits. At the very least you as the client will have a gage, something to judge against, how better the CVs from the recruitment agency actually are, compared to those from your adverts. If they aren’t better don’t interview them and save the fee money.

A good recruiter will take the time to talk to you about the role, interested to discover what you as the employer are looking for in times of attitude as well as skill set. It should be important to the recruiter to really understand the role and what working for your company is like and what type of candidates in the past have gone on to be extremely successful within your organisation. It’s not just a case of asking what is the job title and how much are you paying. A good recruiter needs to understand everything about your vacancy and your company in order to successfully sell the opportunity to great candidates.

The recruiter will then compose a brief plan on where they are going to find these candidates and then start the process. The recruitment process for resourcing can take anything from a week to 3 months+ to complete, just depending on the vacant position.

A good recruiter will proactively target people with the right skill set, often contacting targets via sourcing referrals from industry contacts, gaining recommendations and using social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn. Of course, a specialist engineering recruiter will have a database of candidates but a good recruiter will always open up their search in order to ensure you get the best possible candidate and not just the best available on these job boards and CV databases.

Its then the recruiter’s role to sell your opportunity, this is one of the key reasons for taking the time with you at the very start of the process as there is a need to draw out the benefits of joining your organisation. What sets this position apart from the others?

Once candidates have been highlighted and have expressed an interest, it’s the job of the specialist recruitment consultant to interview the candidate in a manner that tests their suitability while still maintaining their interest in the job, if not increasing their interest. The recruiter should find out information such as the list below but obviously with further points depending on the position:

• Current salary and package information
• Working environment – hours, office culture, average age of work force, managerial type, current company size
• Reasons for interest (and there is always more then one reason)
• Reasons from leaving previous roles
• Qualifications and where possible copies of certificates
• Engineering experience and if applicable types of projects and duties they regularly work on
• Run through and job specification that you may have provided to gain feedback on each and every point, where possible asking the candidate to rate themselves on a scale of 1 to 5
• Asking for and taking references
• Personal situation in regards to family life, possible working away, requirements to be home etc

Once we have all that information SER Staffing Limited will send over the CV and interview notes for you to make a decision as to interview or not. Remember this is a FREE service until you actually make a hire, so you don’t have to interview if you don’t feel they candidate is right.

Saying that it free to see CVs and free to interview as many candidates as you wish, its only when you hire someone that there a fee to pay, however with SER Limited we provide a guarantee period, so if it doesn’t work out with your chosen hire for whatever reason then you are entitled to all or part of the fee back, depending on how long the candidate was in your employment for.

Once you start interviewing, the recruiter should then be busy taking references on your interviewees and carrying out social media checks on Google, Facebook and LinkedIn just to ensure that the work history matches the candidates CVs and there are no hidden secret’s.

To conclude the process the recruiter will work with you to ensure that what you offer the successful candidate in terms of salary is enough to ensure you get the candidate that you want.

Finally, the recruiter will stay close to the candidate as they hand on their notice, help them see past any counter offer that may come and keep them engaged until they finally start with you. Its than just a couple of check in calls to ensure all is good throughout the probation period.

To conclude the key benefits for you when using a specialist recruitment agency include:

• Significantly reduced administration
• Significant time savings
• Better quality of candidate CVs
• No requirement to send rejection emails or take calls from unsuitable candidates
• Approach interviews from a far more informed point of view, making the interview process quicker and more engaging for the candidate
• Guarantee your investment by receiving a rebate period from the point the candidate starts
• Able to target competitor companies to get on board candidates who can hit the

ground running

• Better picture of what your competitors are doing and paying package wise
• Smoother recruitment process and experience for the candidate

In a candidate driven recruitment market which is what we have currently a good specialist engineering recruitment consultant can be worth their weight and add significant value to your business. Not only by sourcing great candidates that otherwise would not be known to you, they also provide great insight into what your competitors are offering and paying, who is winning what contracts and who in key positions could be open to hearing about new career opportunities.

If you feel that working with a specialist engineering recruitment agency is something that could help you, then please contact us here at SER Limited – info@serlimited.com and of course we would be pleased to run through our recruitment process and discuss what we can do for you to improve your recruitment process.