The British Chambers of Commerce has been working with Jobcentre Plus to develop a new service for smaller businesses that will provide recruitment help tailored to their needs.

The new service offers a free, professional recruitment service with advice and support throughout the recruitment process including:

• help with notifying and wording of vacancy ads;
• advice on the local labour market;
• matching of appropriate candidates with vacancies; and
• advice about Jobcentre Plus services that best meet the small businesses' needs such as Work Trials and the Recruitment Subsidy.

Small businesses wanting to recruit, obtain advice about recruitment, or get some advice on employment-related matters, need only contact Jobcentre Plus on 0845 601 2001 (option 2) to get started.  A textphone service for people with speech or hearing impairments is on 0845 601 2002.

You can find out more about Jobcentre Plus’ recruitment services for employers on the Business Link website or in the Jobcentre Plus leaflet.

The first phase of the new service went live in February.  When small businesses notify their jobs the JobCentre Plus contact the employer to discuss how we can best fill their job.  This could include help with the wording of the vacancy specification, screening applications and matching suitable candidates against the criteria set out in the vacancy.  In short they will agree what is best for individual businesses.  At that stage, they will agree individual aftercare arrangements.   

On 15 March Job Centre Plus launched their telephone advice line which offers small businesses recruitment advice and support as well as signposting to other help available, for example, to HMRC for PAYE or Business Link for their “Solutions for Business” suite of services.  When using the advice line, employers can place their vacancies if appropriate and will then agree any further support and aftercare that Jobcentre Plus can provide. 

In the first eight weeks of live running almost 5,000 small businesses accessed the help line.  Around 12% of those calls resulted in a local Jobcentre contacting the employer for localised support and information.