No actual tips this week but a reminder that all the recruitment tips you could possibly need will be available to you at our end of year Recruitment Conference.

This showcase event with sessions being run by many of  the major players in the recruitment conference space is on Tuesday 12th November. This event is for everyone involved in the recruitment industry, including recruitment agencies, employers, publishers and job boards. It will expand your knowledge, offer tremendous networking opportunities, benefit your business and/or personal development, and represents a fantastic opportunity to meet with the best minds in our industry today.

Spaces are getting booked up fast so you wish to come, book your tickets soon.

The debate over zero hours contracts continues, last week the Channel 4 Dispatches programme, ‘Secrets of Your Pay Packet’ aired aiming to expose some of the issues. Karen Weston, Senior Manager at Aspire Business Partnership, gives her opinion on the programme here.

This interesting article from TotalJobs.com looks further at the pros and cons of the zero hour contract.

As you can tell, I’m running out of tenuous Halloween related links now so here’s an article that looks at exactly makes the difference between an ace recruiter and an average one.

• Anyone ever used TalentPuzzle?
• Testing Technical Skills of Candidates
• Why Recruitment Agencies are Important while searching Job...

• Just 1.9 jobseekers per vacancy in September, down from 2.3 in September 2012
• Total number of advertised UK job vacancies rises 3.3% year-on-year in September to 710,859, the highest in two years
• Findings give strongest indicator yet that unemployment rate will fall below 7.0% before 2016, the Bank of England's current prediction, despite the ONS data showing steady unemployment rate
• Salaries picking up, with average advertised salary up 0.6% on August, but still down 0.3% year-on-year
• Recovery in wages led by London and the South East, with average advertised salaries rising 1.6% and 0.7% year-on-year in each region respectively
• But the outlook is tough for graduates, with more than 50 graduates competing for every entry level job, and graduate salaries down 3.4% year-on-year