Tate Recruitment

Okay guys. I’m here with Zoë from Tate and she’s going to run through with us what Tate does and how they can help you get a job in London quick and easy.  Hi Zoë. Hi. So first of all just tell me about Tate. What are you guys? What do you do? We are a secretarial support agency so we like to help our candidates find any administrative or secretarial posts. We recruit across the board so we don’t have a particular industry or sector in mind. We supply to the top 5 so that’s the Ensten Youngs, PWCs and clients like that and then also the media, finance, public sector and all that stuff.

What sort of candidates do you recruit? Are there any sort of specific sort of people you’re looking for? Not really. I mean we even take some students on for summer and things like that but generally we will take people that have had some office experience and maybe within a classification so administration or secretarial or reception. Okay so let’s talk about the Australian candidates that could be coming over. If I’m just out of Unie and I’m going to move to London, what’s going to be my best option to get me sort of in with your agency or get me a job in London? Do I need office experience? Is my degree enough? Office experience is preferable definitely but obviously we understand some people haven’t got that. They may have done bar work and things to keep them going at Unie, which is understandable but if you have good skills so you know you come in and you do our tests and you’re okay at word and okay at excel and pass power point and your typing is about 40 I’d say, you’re absolutely fine. I mean we do have some clients that will trust us and we don’t even have to send a CV so we can put you straight into those roles. But that is once again dependent on your skills

Okay so I could knowing that I’m finishing my degree, knowing I’m going to come and register, probably just practice my office skills so like word, excel, power point even if I’m not working office just practice those skills. You can but the other option is you know we like our candidates to be proactive, friendly, quite committed and if you come across like that anyway, there’s always the opportunity that you can come in and if your test results don’t meet our criteria which is 70%, you can actually train for free because we offer free training to all our candidates.

Tell me more about that. That sounds fantastic. So if you come in and your not happy with your skills and you’d like to develop them further, you can actually book an appointment with reception and they will put you on a training system and they’ll actually go on a one on one basis through all the systems with you so when words coming up it’ll just train you through word and train you through excel and train you through power point and then you just retest at the end and get your new results and that’s really, really good. That’s a great supportive system. It is and obviously shows a bit of commitment from a candidate when they’re prepared to do that. It obviously looks quite good too. Yeah and you know what they’re going to be like.

Okay. So can I come to Tate before I’ve jumped on the plane if I’m leaving Australia or New Zealand or South Africa? Can I register or find out about you? What you could actually do is you could register on line so you could actually send your CV through to one of our consultants and you can actually do the tests on line so you can do a lot of it before you come in but you will still have to have your interview with a consultant so you just have to book in a registration time once you have obviously completed those tests and sent your CV through which has been looked at.

Okay so I could do the tests, see what my results are and redo the tests while I’m in Australia if that’s possible? Yeah, we can actually send you the training systems. Okay and alright you say register, what exactly does that mean? You will actually fill out some forms and you have to give all your referee details, so that’s a minimum of two years that we require for compliance. You will need to bring a relevant passport and work visa and then you have to go on our tests, as we say word, excel and power point. What if I don’t have referees for two years? What if I’m only out of Unie for 6 months or a year? What will you take as referees? We take educational references. We also take personal and then we take professional but you would need at least one professional reference so whether that’s file work or it’s nanny or working a clothing store retail, whatever really but you need something to cover that then you can always get the second reference to be educational or a character so a personal one from a friend. Someone who has known you for more than 15 years. Okay so more than 15 years. That’s important.

So I can send that all to you via email before I get to London or is that what I bring when I come in to register? Well, you can bring a hard copy to us or you can email, like scan it reference to us but we want you to apply first always because again we need it personally in writing from someone for compliance. So you can definitely bring them with you. That’s great. Because that can cover you initially but we will have to get all the details to apply that for ourselves. Okay fair enough. So you need contact details. Exactly. So email is the best thing because obviously with international candidates it is quite difficult to call up at weird hours and get references. Alright so registration is a come to offices. Where are you guys located? We’ve got a few offices actually. We’ve got an office here which is Hanover Square, then we’ve got Liverpool Street, and then we also have James Street and that’s all central London. They are. All W1. They’re not all W1 though. Ones EC that’s Liverpool Street. Okay. I should know that.

Clothes. What am I going to come in for my registration? We do ask everyone to wear a suit and tie. Come dressed as you would be for work is what we ask really because our top clients will require a suit. Which is always a good thing to do. Pack something that’s worky. Pack black pants if you’re a girl or boys suits as well. Suit, tie.

Okay. Alright. So I’ve come suited and booted. I’ve got my references. How long does registration actually take? So I’m going to be introduced to a consultant who’s going to look after me? Yep. For instance I’d have a full in depth interview with you that would usually go for about an hour so. We complete some further forms you know health and safety and just general procedure of those forms and go through your test results, your CV, your experience, what you’re wanting to do next. There are a lot of jobs where we can actually look for work for you and then hopefully we could find you something straight away. You guys can usually do that can’t you? We like to try and kind of have work within 24 hours so it’s an absolute bonus when we get someone in and we’ve got jobs that are waiting to be filled. We will bring candidates back and they are always given first choice straight in. What’s the market like at the moment for a candidate? It is a very candidate driven market actually. There’s very few really, really good candidates out there compared to all of the jobs. Candidates can choose a lot of what they want to go into. There is so much out there. We are so, so busy. That’s fantastic. That’s so good to know.

What’s the chances of me getting “dreamery” for lack of a better word, dream job if I’m just out of Unie and I’ve come to register with you guys say marketing or just design. Obviously I’m going to have to start at the bottom. I mean what are the chances? I think if you’re realistic and you do know that you have to start at the bottom which some people don’t understand that. They think they are going to be a manager from day one. Doesn’t happen but I think if you have that mentality that’s absolutely fine. I mean we have so many really sort of basic starting roles you could say so junior administrators, junior secretaries, administrators, you know we have really big clients where you can work your way through the systems.

Tell me why Tate is different. Why should I come to you guys? I think our main difference is probably our candidate care which sets us apart. We see our candidates or clients on an equal level which I think very few agencies do so we’re calling our candidates every week if you’re not in work. If you are, we’re in contact with you all the time to make sure you’re still happy. Are you looking for something else? What else could we be doing really to better your time working for us? You say that to the candidate? Exactly. Obviously if we haven’t got a candidate out to work for a while we’re speaking to them seeing what the problem is. You know whether they want to come in for training to get their skills up so we are constantly helping them and developing them. We also have a water tight guarantee which I think is very, very important because the water tight means how we actually service our clients. We send candidates in and if they’re not completely satisfied with the candidate we send over even me as a consultant you know if they’re not happy with my level of service, they won’t actually pay for the temporary assignment. That’s not like one or two days. That could actually be a six month booking in the end. Okay so it really is in Tate’s best interest to get the best candidate for the job. Exactly so that’s why we also talk to our candidates about what you’re wanting to do and make sure we find them the right thing because we don’t want them to let us down either. So it’s a two way system. That’s very true. I find people are a difficult commodity because we do change our minds quite often. Exactly.

Your advice to the people coming over, you know a few standards, what would you say? I would just say the main thing as well is be flexible in your work approach and also with your CV definitely write down anything you’ve done. You know if you haven’t got much work experience but at university you were on a board for a committee and you took minutes or you hosted that, put that down because actually that is very relevant so a lot of people forget putting little things. That have actually quite a bit of skill base in them. Exactly so I say just have an in depth CV, come over here, be prepared, be proactive and be flexible and get the job. There’s a lot out there. Alright. There you go. Good luck guys.

Okay. So tell me about the benefits that Tate offers its candidates once they’ve registered. Firstly, we offer free training so if you come in and your skill aren’t at the minimum requirement of about 70%, you can actually train with our systems for free so you just literally put a slot in at reception and then they’ll put you on a system and you’ll go on a one on one tutorial with the system three packages.

We also have a recommendation scheme, which is a good one as well, so when you refer a friend onto it for us and they complete a weeks worth of work on the temporary side you get a 50 pound voucher and if they went straight permanent into a role, you get 100 pounds. That’s a continuous referral fee as well so it’s not just for your first referral. It’s an ongoing system.

Also have temp of the month scheme so every month, we get together with consultants and talk to our clients and talk about the performance of our candidates and if people have been outstanding, you get a 70 pound restaurant voucher, well it’s 70 pounds worth of vouchers for different restaurants I should say, so that’s another good one.

We also have discounts at opticians. There’s an optician near one of our offices in Liverpool Street so you get 15% off of that so that’s really cool sunglasses and glasses.

We have temp parties which are conducted a couple of times a year. So if I get invited to those which is very, very funny because all Australians and everybody get together and it gets very rowdy.

We also have discounted theatre tickets so theatre tickets we get for various shows that are happening we put them in reception so candidates can actually go and help themselves to those which is good.

Then we have discounts at LA Fitness which is a gym. Get 15% off to join any LA Fitness branch. Another good one.

To help with getting your NI, literally once you have completed 2 weeks worth of work with our agency, we can actually write a letter for you which you can take along when you go and apply for your number and that’ll actually cover your work front reference so all you’ll then need probably is a reference from the place you are living as well but that’s very simple. So that’s another benefit as well.

Previously with NI it was very simple. Literally when a candidate came in and registered with us, we would give them a temporary NI number and that was to cover them until they actually had time to go and get their NI number themselves. Unfortunately, this is now illegal and we can’t do that so it is obviously good that we can write the letter once you start temping for us, makes things easy.

Tate’s candidate care is quite unique. We look after our candidates and clients on the same level so we always keep in contact with our candidates. We have a sole advisor so when a person comes in to register with our agency, that consultant will become their main point of contact so they will be calling them the whole time on a weekly basis if they’re not in work. If they are in work, they will just be in contact with them at least on a monthly basis saying hi. How are you? Are you still enjoying the role? Is there anything else we could be doing? Do you have any friends who want to come and work or anything like that just really to help them? Also we offer our candidates development evenings so we hold development evenings where we can help them improve their CV. Maybe help them with the interview process as well. A lot of people are nervous about interviews. We might also talk to them about interview preparation if that’s necessary for the candidate.

So this is where you’ll be introduced to your relevant consultant and you’ll fill out some registration forms. Then we’ll take you through and you’ll come on to some tests and here you will see some testing facilities. Once you’ve completed your tests, you will be taken into an interview room where you’ll be interviewed by a consultant. Once the interview has taken place, we’ll bring you through where hopefully we can find you a job immediately. There will be interviews directly with other consultants who are working the business.