Month: January 2021
Why good interview feedback really matters
Our team been working exclusively with a long-standing client to recruit an Assistant Management Accountant. Ideally someone with bright enquiring mind, keen to learn with an accounting and finance degree. Some experience in a finance role would be ideal. After shortlisting down from 18 candidates to the best five, the CVs went across and our client interviewed all five this week.
The good news is that three have been selected to undertake some online testing and have a second interview in a few days.
The bad news is that two candidates are not being progressed.
The client and Astute were able to discuss detailed, constructive feedback for each candidate including some tips for the future.
We fed back to one of the candidates not being progressed and wanted to share what the feedback was including some constructive tips for them in answering unplanned questions and focussing their answers.
“…while its bad news I’ve not got a second interview – it’s great to get positive rounded feedback after the first interview. I can use this experience and feedback to help me prepare and perform better in future interviews, and hopefully get a second interview next time! Thanks for letting me know and taking the time to ring me.”
He has been impressed with the process at Astute Recruitment Ltd, and thanked us for taking the time to call him and pass on the feedback.
If someone has taken the time to attend an interview – they deserve at the very least to get some constructive post- interview feedback. That feedback may just help them secure a second interview and a job offer next time.
“It’s not just learning how to prepare for an interview that counts.
It’s also learning how to perform in an interview. That takes time, practice, and crucially, feedback!”
This is why our team at Astute Recruitment encourages a collaborative relationship with our clients throughout the recruitment process. Good interview feedback from the finance manager/ line manager/ HR professional recruiting, really helps our team inform our candidates on how they can improve their performance on an interview.
From how to answer a question to coping with nerves, unless a person has interview practice and good feedback from the recruitment consultant and/ or client, it is very hard for them to learn how they can come across better in the actual interview itself.
For another useful post on more interview tips and advice, you can see another of our blogs on our website, using the following link: https://www.astuterecruitment.com/6-interview-questions-and-answers-to-help-you-nail-the-perfect-job-in-the-pandemic/
If you would like any more advice or help around interviews, arranging interviews remotely – let us know.
An article by Mary Maguire
MD Astute Recruitment Ltd
Email: [email protected]
LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/pub/mary-maguire/18/73/553
With interview requests and new jobs taken by our team at Astute Recruitment, it’s great to share some pointers for candidates about to enter the job market to give them an edge on interview.
Imagine, you’ve been selected for a job interview! Well done! It’s always great news, but especially so in such challenging times. But preparing for a job interview might be trickier than usual, too.
It would be a little weird if you and your interviewer didn’t acknowledge the global pandemic going on.
You’ll probably be doing your interview remotely, online, at least the first interview, and it’s also likely that you’ll be starting work remotely.
The people and business you’re interviewing with won’t be operating as normal, plus you’ll have to navigate different ways to work together.
Apart from the obvious, (ensuring you’re wearing smart clothes, and your Zoom background looks tidy & professional), preparing for an interview means being ready to answer some different questions. So, what can you expect to be asked?
1. How are you feeling?
It’s normal to start off an interview with an icebreaker, but in the pandemic, small talk can take on a deeper meaning.
For an interviewer, it’s a way to gauge the tone of the interview. Some candidates’ replies might reveal they are struggling, whereas others will take the question much more lightly. In either case, there is no shame in acknowledging how the Covid-19 crisis is affecting you. The worst thing would be if a candidate came across as too disconnected from the situation, which could be a hint as to empathy skills or lack of.
The pandemic is impacting people emotionally, and for an employer to ask this question, shows they care. If you are asked this question, you should show you understand the situation and are adapting to it. You shouldn’t just use the same answers that you had prepared pre-pandemic, as if you were still in a typical office setting.
2. How are you handling your work-life balance?
If you can keep a healthy work-life balance, it shows a potential employer that you’re able to manage your time independently, and be organised.
Working from home is set to continue for a lot of us for the foreseeable, meaning employers are looking for these qualities,
Companies and hiring managers need to know that even if you don’t have a team around you sitting in an office, you ARE going to be able to work by yourself, can be trusted to wfh independently and autonomously.
This doesn’t have to mean that you’re calendar-blocking each hour of your day. But this question is a prime opportunity to highlight how you can, and have been able to work productively.
In an online interview, it’s an opportunity to also build a bond as you can reflect back a question to your interviewer, e.g.”I’ve found it’s key for me to factor in a 20 minute slot to excerise /walk the dog/ play with kids. I find this improves my feelings of wellbeing and makes me more focused and productive working for the rest of the day. What works for you?”.
3. Have you learnt any new skills since March last year?
This isn’t a trick question. Recruiters
wouldn’t be put off if a candidate said they had struggled with motivation or finding time to learn at the beginning of lockdown.
Instead, they’d welcome and expect some honesty about what they’ve learnt about themselves during the pandemic.
You don’t have to pretend you’ve been on some kind of productivity marathon if you haven’t. Of course employers will want to know if you’ve added any professional skills to your CV, but talking about hobbies you’ve picked up or personal lessons you’ve learnt helps to give interviewers a glimpse of your personality and a real glimpse of you.
For instance, what you learnt about yourself could be how you discovered a new skill or the ability to step back from something. It doesn’t need to be professional, it can be something more personal.
But, how do you answer if you can’t think of anything you’ve learnt in the past few months?
Something as simple as trying out a new recipe counts. Most of us have discovered some new culinary skills 🤣.
4. What’s your ‘work-from-home set-up like?’
Potential employers have every right to ask about a candidate’s home working environment. Especially making sure that potential employees have a computer with internet access, that they have access to a telephone or a landline, and asking about the reliability of their wifi signal
Employers need to know that you have the equipment you need to do the job you are being interviewed for. However, they are aware that few of us have the perfect WFH set-up. Don’t be afraid to mention any challenges you’ve faced working from home, and how you’ve found solutions to work around them.
This is a good question for employers to ask candidates to see how creative they can be, and how they’re dealing with and have adapted to the current situation.
5. “We’re all on Microsoft Teams/ Slack/ Google Hangouts. Have you used it before?”
Of course, if your interview is on a platform you haven’t used before, you’ll want to test it out beforehand to make sure you know how to use it.
It’s also worth getting to know the main digital communication tools that are popular with businesses. Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams, Slack and Zoom are all free to download and experiment with.
Some great advice to all candidates, is to be organised and prepared with the tech that they could be using if they are offered a job.
Lots of companies used digital communication tools before the pandemic. They’re just using them even more now. If candidates are unfamiliar with them they should definitely look them up & try them out before interviewing for a new job.
For employees who have started looking for a job after several years, this is a really useful tip.
6. Do you have any questions for us?
Pre-pandemic and lockdown, candidates would go into the office, meet a couple of members of the team. They’d get all of the contextual information before being offered the job and deciding whether to accept it.
Now, with largely online interviews, applicants don’t have all of the sensory, physical experiences through Candidates who have managed to get an interview aren’t getting the complete view of companies they’re applying for.
To counteract this, ask a lot of questions during your interview to get a clear idea of how the company works, the office culture and how you’ll work with different teams and individuals.
For starters, ask questions about training, daily tasks and communication methods. It’s equally important to ask about potential colleagues and hierarchy. This may mean clarifying who you would report to or who you can ask for help when you need it. Alternatively, it might mean taking a more informal approach to interviewing altogether.
A great suggestion for candidates is to ask, “If possible, could I have a virtual lunch with the team that I could be working with, just so I can get to know them—maybe not so much in a professional sense, but in a more casual, informal way?“
You could ask to have one-on-one meetings with potential future team members as part of the interview process. This shows you take the future culture of your potential colleagues seriously.
Companies should be understanding about these requests.
It’s really key that candidates meet more people, especially now. Particularly so if companies add a few more steps to the recruitment process. This can give applicants the confidence to be happy if they go on to secure a job offer.
Remember, it’s not just the candidate who has to adapt to the recruiter, but the recruiter who has to understand it’s a different situation for applicants too!
If you have questions around this topic or would like more information about this or something else, feel free to contact our MD, Mary Maguire, by email on [email protected]
An article by Mary Maguire, Managing Director
Astute Recruitment Ltd
Suite One, Ground Floor West, Cardinal Square, 10 Nottingham Road, Derby, DE1 3QT
T: 01332 346100
Employment-related coronavirus tax reliefs
Since March last year, many interim tax exemptions were brought in to prevent “benefit-in-kind” issues arising from coronavirus-related costs incurred by employers. Here at Astute Recruitment Ltd, we felt it was important to highlight these, especially for SME businesses and employers in general who may not have a resident tax expert on-hand.
Helen Thornley, technology officer at ATT, compiled a really useful article in Accountancy Age, highlighting some of the main points to help employers, employees, and flags the measures with a limited shelf-life. We have summed up the key points with useful links below.
COVID-19 tests provided by Employers
HMRC’s position on this has waivered. Originally HMRC advised that tests provided by employers outside the national testing programme were a taxable benefit in kind for the employee because said tests were not “wholly, exclusively and necessarily’ for the purpose of the employee’s duties.
Following widespread criticism, including the Treasury Committee saying this was an unhelpful stance, the Chancellor readily agreed to do a ‘180’ on this.
As expected – to transfer the alterations into formal legislation has taken time, so tax policy papers in November and December 2020 confirmed that there will be ‘no tax consequences for employer-provided testing for ‘active’ cases in the 2020/21 tax year. This specifically refers to antigen tests that identify current COVID-19 cases.
An important caveat is that this exemption DOES NOT extend to employer-providing antibody testing as antibody testing tests whether an employee has had the virus previously. Normal benefit-in-kind rules continue to apply to them.
Every policy paper has its own new statutory tool with its specific relevance to these changes.
- The first statutory instrument provides that ‘income tax’ is not chargeable on employer-provided tests for ‘active’ cases of coronavirus from December 8, 2020 to April 5, 2021. The accompanying policy paper confirms that HMRC will exercise their discretion under their collection and management powers and not collect either income tax or national insurance contributions (NICs) on tests carried out earlier in the 2020/ 21 tax year.
- The second related statutory instrument (due in January) exempts from NICs any employer who opts to either reimburse or provide funds in advance for an employee’s coronavirus test. This will apply from 25 January to April 5, 2021, but again the policy paper confirms that HMRC will use their statutory discretion to refrain from collecting both NICs and Income tax for employer-reimbursed tests for the earlier part of 2020/21. The corresponding income tax exemption is due to be included in the next Finance Bill.
IMPORTANT: Employers should be aware that, as HMRC’s view of the underlying position has not changed, unless further exemptions are granted, when these antigen-test exemptions expire on April 5, 2021, the costs will revert to being a taxable benefit in kind. Since employers could well still be paying for tests beyond that date, the ATT is raising concerns with HMRC and asking for these antigen-test measures to be extended.
Office equipment
At the start of the pandemic when mass homeworking was first advocated, many employees will have found themselves in need of extra equipment – from laptops to monitors, keyboards and printers and even office furniture. In general, provided there is no significant private use, employers can provide these items without tax consequences.
BUT, where employers allowed employees to purchase the required items themselves and then agreed to reimburse those costs at a later date, such reimbursement is taxable under the usual rules. Thankfully a temporary exemption from these rules will apply to reimbursements made between 16 March and April 5, 2021 inclusive. During this period of time, provided that the equipment was purchased for the sole purpose to enable homeworking/ WFH to take place as a result of coronavirus – and it would have been tax exempt if the employer had provided it directly – employers will be able to reimburse their employees for purchases of office equipment without tax or NIC consequences.
Being and ‘Cycle to work’
Under the ‘cycle to work scheme’ an employee can hire a bike, AND necessary safety equipment, from their employer and pay for that hire out of their pre-tax earnings. The scheme effectively allows employees to obtain a bike in a tax-efficient manner, provided that the employee uses the bike at least 50 percent of the time for qualifying journeys, which generally means commuting to and from work.
Employees who have benefited from these schemes but are now working from home may well struggle to meet this condition. HMRC guidance has now been updated to confirm that anyone who joined an employer-provided cycle scheme before 20 December 2020 will not have to meet the 50 percent qualifying journeys requirement. This easement will apply until April 5, 2022.
The easement will not apply to employees who joined a scheme on or after December 21, 2020 as they will have been expected to factor in the impact of the pandemic on their use of the bike.
‘Online parties and work socials’
On November 20, HMRC acknowledged that a virtual party would fall within the current exemptions for an annual function. This meant that employers wanting to provide some sort of festive fun wouldn’t land their employees with a tax bill provided that they followed the usual rules requiring the event being annual (i.e. not a one-off celebration), open to all staff and that the total cost of the event (including VAT, food, drink or party favours in a ‘party box’) was no more than £150/head.
While Christmas is past, the pandemic is still very much with us, so employers with other annual events coming up might be pleased to learn that the relaxation was not just in respect of Christmas parties, but any such annual function – provided that the total cost per head of the events combined is less than £150 in any given tax year. This means that provided all the other conditions are met, an employer can move comparable regular events online and still benefit from the usual rules for annual functions.
While all these exemptions are helpful, most of them are time-limited and employers who miss the relevant ‘windows’, could still create a benefit-in-kind charge for themselves and their employees.
This article by Mary Maguire, MD Astute Recruitment, was based on an original article by Helen Thornley, an ATT technical officer, which appeared in Accountancy Age on 7.1.2021. For the original article, click HERE.