Employers in the UK who need valuable input on their recruitment strategy will welcome the news that the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) has launched an ‘aspirational’ recruitment charter for today’s businesses.

The Good Recruitment Campaign outlines nine key principles for recruitment which covers areas such as good recruitment practice for all types of contracts, candidate experience, ethical resource planning and much more.

The Campaign was created with input from leading organisations such as Santander, Royal Mail, Penguin Random House, NHS Employers and The HR Society.

CIPD, the CBI and the Institute of Leadership Management and other business and professional organisations also fed into the campaign’s creation.

Dubbed “the most important the REC had ever devised” by REC chief executive Kevin Green, Green cited a range of statistics to demonstrate why the campaign is so timely.

This includes the fact that finding the right talent is a struggle for 40% of employers, to the fact that the number of sectors experiencing skills shortages has jumped up from 14 to a current figure of 47.

One figure that adds real weight to Green’s argument is the fact that the cost of poor recruitment has come in at more than £40,000 for 25% of employers.

Explaining the aim of the campaign in further detail, at yesterday’s (April 8th) launch event in London, Green said:

“It’s a simple campaign.”

“What is good recruitment practice; let’s promote it to businesses; let’s give them a tool and a charter to judge themselves against; and let’s share best practice by creating a community of people that are talking about what best practice looks like.”

The latest figures from REC show that the greatest demand for staff is in engineering, construction and information technology, and the campaign could go some way to helping employers in these sectors find the candidates they need.

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