News, Blog, Employment, Awards, Careers | Wednesday 16th June 2021

As I write this, the Prime Minister has just announced the delay in lifting lockdown for another four weeks. Whilst this won’t change the nation’s opinion overall, that the end of the pandemic is in sight, it will continue to have ramifications for recruitment in our industry and recruitment.

I previously reported that our industry, along with others, is seeing an unprecedented level of new vacancies. However, this isn’t matched by the number of candidates registering on websites, moving between jobs or looking for a new career. Today’s announcement will only continue to concern those candidates who have paused their career choices, meaning it will be just as hard, if not harder, to recruit over the next four to eight weeks as it has been throughout the whole of 2021.

There are two types of companies currently winning the hiring game. One type is overpaying for talent, and essentially buying the resource in. The other is investing in people training and development and looking to retain as well as recruit. Only one of these strategies is sustainable. It will be the companies who are training and developing their own people that will continue that success into 2022, while the others face financial difficulties and risk damage to their employer brand.

Elsewhere there is exciting news with the events season about to start up once more. At Zitko, we are attending all the SecurityTwentyOne (ST21) events starting at the end of June as we build up to the industry’s biggest event of the year - The Security Event (TSE) in September. We hope to bring the best of everything to these events by meeting and networking with clients and customers alike, and by using the event to drive the new generation of talent to our industry.  Should you wish to arrange a meeting at any of these events, then simply get in touch with any of the Zitko team.

Finally, it gives me great pleasure to welcome two new hires to Zitko. Many of you may know Christopher Kendall, a highly experienced fire and security recruiter, who has joined us in our security team run by Emily Coates and has already got off to a flying start. Secondly, Tim Ward joins our international division. For those of you who don’t know Tim, he brings a wealth of experience across international recruitment, but is also known in the recruitment space as an RPO and managed service guru. I am excited about the impact both of these fantastic additions to the Zitko team will have for all our customers.

George Zitko

Founder and Managing Director


Market Update – 17/06/21

Technical: (Phil West – Director)

  • Everyone is hiring. Here in the Zitko Technical Team we have never had so many vacancies and never had so much inbound interest from current and new clients. It’s fantastic to see security engineering having such a boom.
  • However, this is not without it challenges as the talent shortage continues to get harder.
  • Filling immediate requirements may take some time, especially as there’s so much competition for the best people. More importantly this trend is likely to continue and problem will get harder. I’d encourage companies to be planning and acting now to avoid their future recruitment headache.
  • For candidates this is a great opportunity. So many companies are busy and the best employers will be working extra hard to look after and reward their teams. Training is very much back on after Covid and upskilling and diversifying staff is a priority for good employers looking at the future.

 Sales: (Dave Geddes – Director)

  • We are very busy across the board and there is a lot of activity in the Industry at the moment. Installers & Integrators are hiring strong salespeople in the UK into both Business Development and Account Management positions.
  • Some of these positions are for experienced sales professionals from within the industry, whilst some companies are hiring engineers who are looking to move into a more commercial role.
  • Additionally, we are recruiting for a number of entry level sales positions, which is a great opportunity for candidates with 1-2 years B2B sales experience to join the Fire & Security Industry.
  • Recruitment across Europe is far more active than 3 months ago. The vaccine rollout is seeming to make a big difference in both candidate and client mindset, which has seen us place a number of high end sales people with global manufacturers over the last month.
  • Really positive signs for the industry and the rest of the year.

 Contracting: (Laura Raven – Director)

  • Contracting has again continued to build over the last 6 weeks.  June sees again a big uplift in bigger projects starting, with lots of 1yr long projects finally getting going. We have already seen a change in availability of contractors, something we predicted earlier in the year.
  • Now is the time to be booking contractors in for future bookings or you risk losing out!  
  • We are currently delivering on a number of European projects, working with clients to navigate staffing in this post Brexit world. If you have projects across Europe you need support with, contact Laura Raven.

Talent: (Priya Vencatasawmy – Senior Consultant)

  • Since the last update, we've added a new member to Talent, Campbell Wilson, who has taken an active part in candidate management and engagement.
  • Through the Talent initiative, we have continued to place new trainee engineers with existing and new integrators .
  • Talent has collaborated with the technical team to offer a structured solution for experienced and trainee engineers, we are currently working with Reliance High Tech which has been a huge success.
  • There is still a fantastic pipeline of candidates coming from similar backgrounds with lots of transferable skills, we are engaging with professional technical bodies, universities and promoting diversity .
  • Government incentives through a fast-track apprenticeship programme still remain in place, which gives our Talent employer additional money.
  • The market is busy and recruiting, there is a shortage of experienced engineers, so a larger requirement to bring fresh new talent, we have had a phenomenal response from clients within the industry.
  • Looking for more Trainee Engineers to join your business? Follow this link for more information: Discover the key to your security tech talent challenge | Zitko Talent

Resourcing: (Terri Lalonde – Director)

  • As our summer finally arrives, following what seemed like an eternal winter, the market is still very much candidate led. The whole candidate attraction discussion has never been so important.
  • I have been involved in meetings to advise clients as to how to approach not only their image in the market, and how they handle interviews, but how they make offers, what they offer (financially and in terms of training) as well as the whole initial onboarding process.
  • Making a new candidate feel loved from start to finish is so key now. Part of that is truly listening and understanding to what that person wants in their new career. After all, changing jobs is a big decision for anyone.
  • As a business, we’ve just invested in some software to gather feedback from candidates at every stage of the recruitment cycle. The results coming in are interesting to say the least.

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