More than 121 CVs in 48 hours
21 July 2020
A recent feature on PI Sales in Eastern Daily Press
Recruitment firms and employers in Norfolk are seeing record levels of people applying for jobs as a result of coronavirus.
With more people losing their jobs and others on furlough, hundreds are going for one job often within days of the post being advertised.
Some recruiters are concerned that there are so many suitable applicants in the marketplace, it’s disheartening for many. Others reckon there are too many ‘lazy’ applicants firing off CVs who are not suitable. Meanwhile employers say they’re struggling to cope with sifitng through applications.
It comes as LinkedIn alone is currently listing 7,448 available jobs across all sectors in the UK including 941 in Morrisons supermarket. Although job vacancies plummeted because of the Covid-19 crisis, with some areas like administration, design, sales, catering, media and marketing seeing a fall of 80% of vacant posts, local recruitment firms reckon there are many businesses which have continued to take on new staff throughout lockdown. These include financial services, e-commerce, logistics and warehousing, tech and the healthcare sector.
Jon Tayler, managing director, Process Instrument Sales, based in Bury St Edmunds, which provides component parts and services to all kinds of industries, has just recruited two new people, Craig Hamman and Toni Kirkpatrick and was interviewing on Friday for more.
He said: “After the last job advert, we received an extraordinary amount of applicants for an internal sales role. It does make it harder to go through all the applicants, when you get a couple of hundred responses for every job and 20-30 are really suitable.
“You always get people who aren’t qualified for the job, people who’ve worked, say in Homebase selling electrical cables who think they can be a site engineer.
“We have remained very busy in lockdown, we provide to all the essential services like power stations, pharmaceutical companies, food and drink firms, all those who are producing in difficult times, we didn’t furlough any of our team and we never discussed in any fashion cutting hours.”
Craig Hamman and Toni Kirkpatrick have both just been recruited in new jobs after applying in lockdown.
Mr Hamman has been taken on as as a service engineer at Process Instrument Sales. He spent 10 years working as an electrical and instrumentation field services engineer in North Africa in the oil and gas industry.
“I am a believer in the principle that you get out of life what you put in. Hard work, adaptability, integrity and a commitment to constant self-improvement are the ideals that I strive to implement in my own life.”
Toni Kirkpatrick has been taken on as an internal sales administrator for the same firm. A married mum of a 12 year-old daughter, she spent 28 years working for an industrial process control systems firm including 12 years as a purchasing manager and eight years as an accounts assistant/receptionist.