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HR Advisory, News, Renewable Energy

Tinder Versus Recruitment – What Every Candidate Should Take Away From The Relationship

Posted on by Lindy Taylor

Often in life, we limit ourselves to speaking to the pre-defined fields that we think recruiters want to see on our CV’s or what they want to chat about over the phone. We cover the basics in a summary “bio” and occasionally speak to our “interests”. We don’t take enough time to think about what we really want to get out of our relationship with a future employer – who that dream employer is and why. Engagements with our recruiter, in short, are often taken at face value. It is these small nuances that can define how successful you are in a firm once a recruiter places you. Is the corporate culture built to optimize your outputs?

So, before you swipe right on a recruiter to find your new challenge, really think about what you want and how they could canvass you effectively to an employer you respect, or how they can motivate your profile for a current role they are sourcing for.

Here are a few key points that candidates often forget to mention on their CV’s or bring up in discussions with their recruiter. These are the elements that can help you land your dream job or assist a recruiter to match you to the right firm.

  • First off, get the recruiter’s name and understand a bit more about them. What is their track record when placing candidates and what are their expertise? After all, you are going to want to build a strong long-lasting relationship with them if they are going to represent you.
  • Are you willing to relocate and where would you consider moving to?
    • Candidates should think carefully about this question a recruiter may pose to them. Before simply stating where you would be happy to relocate to for a dream job, check in with your spouse to see if this is a realistic move. Will your partner be able to find work there? Are there schools in the area that you would happily send your kids to? What are the living costs associated with relocating to that destination and are your salary expectations realistic in covering these costs? If you need to relocate, what is a realistic notice period? Who do you expect to cover the cost of relocation? Is this location one that you can see yourself living and working in for a while? Would you feel comfortable moving away from additional support structures that you had (e.g. parents and in-laws)
  • What are your drivers? Are you looking for career growth or is it purely based on financials?
    • If you are motivated by the experience that you can gain with your dream company then what are the minimum walk away points in terms of a salary that you would be open to negotiating on? If you are looking to expand your experience you must remember that you are not the only applicant an employer is looking at. So if you are focused on indicating a move for a salary increase from your current CTC it could affect your chances of getting the job if another candidate has the same experience but their remuneration expectations are lower than yours.
  • What is the corporate culture you are after and in what type of environment do you work best?
    • Are you an introvert that needs their own space and can happily work remotely with little external engagement or do you work better in an open planned office that is very team-based?
    • Do you prefer to work in certain gender-based environments? Maybe you prefer a culturally diverse team or working with internationals.
    • Are slacks and slops more your style or do you like to suit up to work? Perhaps a more unstructured environment is your thing while others may opt for a corporate environment with strict processes and procedures in place (less grey matter)?
    • Are you concerned about the company staff turnover and or how many of their employees are promoted internally? Talk about it.
  • Which companies do you respect and why?
    • If you want a recruiter to successfully match you to relevant companies on your wish list, they need to know why they are on the wish list. Is it the types of projects they have been involved in, the geos they are expanding into, an innovative offering you want to gain experience in, or is it something to do with the brand culture they embody. Are there companies that you do not respect and why? All these questions will better aid your recruiter to apply your preferences to mapping out opportunities for you through their networks.

In summary, never assume a recruiter can speak (or assume) for your unspoken motivations or needs. Considering a career change should be seen much like going into a relationship, you need to think about what you want out of it and what will keep you happy in order to excel in that environment. What are your “hierarchy of needs”? If you are not moving for the right reasons the employment relationship will simply, not last.

 

If you have questions during your engagements with our recruiters, please speak up! If you would like to enquire about our Career Coaching services, feel free to drop us an email at careers@altgen.com.

HR Advisory, Renewable Energy

Unveiling the “Tech-Talent Exchange” & “Graduate Connect” Platforms

Posted on by Lindy Taylor

AltGen Tech-Talent Exchange

It is our collective responsibility to turn COVID-19, tragic as it is, into an opportunity. An opportunity to recalibrate our energy system into one that is fit-for-purpose. The energy storage assembly and manufacturing market in South Africa is a quiet but very notable success story. DG installations continue to grow. And if the mythical, artificial, unnecessary, and protectionist 1MW cap could be lifted to 10MW, RE could generate 1000’s more jobs and our electricity system could be, fit-for-purpose.

THE RENEWABLE ENERGY “TECH-TALENT EXCHANGE”

To this end, AltGen will be doing its part by creating the AltGen “Tech-Talent Exchange”. The service will be FREE OF CHARGE, where we will offer renewable energy project developers and installers free access to a rapidly growing database of technicians and sales staff. Reality is that we are receiving hundreds of applications from unemployed technical skills as the economic bite of COVID-19 takes hold, and we need to assist where we can.

CLIENTS

Salary Cap (TBC):

But we are also not going to let you eat our lunch, so there will have to be limited to access and levels of staff that we are able to accommodate requests for, and to this end, we will have to put a salary cap on the roles that we enable.

Technical Work:

As we develop the offering it will become automated and eventually move online, but for now, it’s going to be a bespoke service, so if you are a PV project installer who has installations or maintenance work or needs technical skills or if know anyone who may, please email Phillip (phillip@altgen.co.za) and he will try and help you find the skills you need through a manual search.

Again, this service is offered willingly and freely, and we are covering the overheads internally, so there will be a (yet to be determined) wage/salary cap on the roles that we can assist with.

“TECH-TALENT EXCHANGE”

If you are someone with some RE experience, technical sales experience, a PV technician or a qualified installer, please send your CV to Phillip, you can do this by completing the form by click here. Note that we are just launching this free service and we are in a job starved environment right now, so please do not expect fireworks! And please do not necessarily expect a reply from us. We would love to connect with each and every one of you, this may just not be possible.

 

RENEWABLE ENERGY “GRADUATE CONNECT”

If there are any RE IPP’s or developers who would like to advertise for graduates or interns on the AltGen jobs page, you are welcome to do so FREE OF CHARGE, with your own logo/contact details, as you prefer.

The AltGen WWW jobs page receives 1000’s of hits every month and pulls through to a number of job aggregators and job boards so we can guarantee that you will receive plenty of traction from a job advert placed with AltGen.

We will also post your advert on our social media sites, specifically on LinkedIn, where we have close to 9,000 mostly RE specific followers.

We have also added a “Recruit Grads and Interns” page on our website where employers can submit any openings. All advert responses will go directly to the employer, and while we will assist where we can, and will do background checks for a small fee, we will not be filtering responses on your behalf. Again, we are hoping to make this an (automated) online service in the mid-term.

RECENT GRAD’S

We do not have any graduate or internship roles at the moment but if you load your CV as a graduate, if we get one, you will be on our list, and we will email you. To apply, follow this link!

 

COVID-19

Covid-19 has and will continue to have a devastating effect on the global and African economies. In the two primary geos within which AltGen operates, South Africa and Kenya, the fallout will be with us for years to come. Energy drives economic growth, but without economic growth, there is reduced demand for all forms of energy. But this is not a condition that will continue indefinitely.

As we deal with this existential crisis a recalibrated system will emerge, and there can be no doubt that this will be very different from the previous state of play. The oil price, for the first time in history, discovered negative territory as tankers sailing the high seas could not offload their cargo.  Oil majors have slashed CAPEX expenditure. This is not a world where producers are cooperatively reducing production any longer, this is a place where oil production is grinding to a halt.

And in this, is an opportunity. We have already had glimpses of a better future. Cities that have been covered in smog for decades, can now breathe. Wildlife that was banished from the human landscape is making a tentative comeback. And this is a future powered by renewable energy. Besides the obvious health and environmental benefits, renewables are cheap, easily deployed, and reliable, especially with the addition of storage. It’s a no-brainer.

HR Advisory, Renewable Energy

“Scrubbing CV’s” – it is ILLEGAL

Posted on by Lindy Taylor

You, the client, email 3 – 5 recruitment agencies. The “TO” field is blank, or you have addressed it to yourself, but in BCC are your most “dependable recruiters”.

The email is received by your trusty recruiter and the first thing she or he does is jump on to a job board and conduct a keyword search. “Accountant” + “Cape Town” + “500k” + “available immediately”. That same trusty recruiter then puts a CV on to a company letterhead and emails it back to you. In many cases, the trusty recruiter has not even contacted the candidate.

You see, there is just enough information on the job board for the recruiter to know that it is likely that the candidate would be interested in the job. And who would not be, in this job scarce environment.

Now you might be thinking, “super, I have CV’s delivered to my inbox, same day! Great service….”

This is what we in the executive search industry like to call “scrubbing”. It is worse than washing week-old dirty dishes under lockdown. And unlike washing dishes, it is illegal. ILLEGAL. Do not pass begin, do not collect R200.00, go straight to jail (or maybe just pay a little fine Mzanzi).

But, in South Africa (and globally) there is the small matter of the POPI Act – Protection of Personal Information Act, which eruditely states: “personal information may only be processed with consent”. With consent being the operative word here. It is like a marriage, or a friendship, or any relationship – it’s consensual. Get it? Consent! The Act also provides for inter alia, the following:

1. Processing Limitation:

  • Information about a client and/or candidate must be processed lawfully.
  • The information must be processed in a manner that does not intrude on the privacy of the client and/or candidate.
  • Personal information may only be processed if the client and/or candidate provide their consent, except where we (AltGen) are required to do so by law.

2. Purpose Specific:

  • Candidates and/or client’s information must be collected for a specific purpose, which is properly defined and for legitimate reasons.
  • Clients and/or candidates must be made aware of the purpose of the collection of the information in accordance with point 5 – “Transparency / Openness”.
  • Personal information may not be retained any longer than is necessary for achieving the purpose for which the information was collected unless the client and/or candidate has consented to the retention of the personal information.

3. Limitation on Further Processing:

  • Personal information may not be processed further in a way that is incompatible with the purpose for which the information was collected initially.
  • AltGen collects personal information for recruitment and will only use collected personal information for this purpose unless written consent is obtained from the client and/or candidate should the need arise for it to be used for another purpose.

4. Information Quality:

  • Employees collecting personal information from clients and/or candidates must take proper steps to ensure that the information is complete, accurate, current, and not misleading in any way.

5. Transparency / Openness:

  • Personal information may only be collected if the client and/or candidate have been made aware of the information being collected, where the information is not being collected from the client and/or candidate the source from which it is collected must be made known to the client and/or candidate.
  • The purpose for which the information is being collected must be disclosed to the client and/or candidate.
  • Clients and / or candidates whose personal information we (AltGen) are collecting either directly or through other sources must be informed of who we are and be provided with our details.

6. Security Safeguards:

  • Technical and organisational measures must be in place to secure the integrity of personal information and to guard against the risk of loss, damage, or destruction thereof.
  • Personal information must also be protected against any unauthorised or unlawful access or processing.
  • Clients and / or candidates must be made aware as soon as reasonably possible after the discovery of a compromise of their personal information being accessed or acquired by any unauthorised person.

7. Participation of Individuals:

  • Clients and / or candidates, upon providing adequate proof of identity, are entitled to know particulars of their personal information held by us and are also entitled to know all third parties, or categories of third parties, who have, or have had, access to their information.
  • They are also entitled to correct any information held by us or request that it is disregarded after using the information for the initial purpose.

8. Accountability:

  • Employees will be held accountable for the management / implementation of the points listed above.

So, at the end of the day, it comes down to ethics, respect, and accountability. It is up to the recruitment agency to ensure best practices are adhered to, but it is up to you as the direct employer to ensure that your chosen service provider is legally compliant, after all – it’s a matter of association!

Skills Development

Areas of Specialisation – A Shift In Emphasis

Posted on by Lindy Taylor
Recruitment Trends 2019 - AltGen South Africa
We have seen a notable change in the recruitment trends, here’s whats changed!

 

Over the past 7 years AltGen has built up an enviable track record in initially identifying transferable skills and then placing Project Managers, Project Engineers, Developers, Wind Engineers and other specialist skills in the wind and solar energy market in South Africa, Kenya, Ghana and Ethiopia.

But lately we have started to perceive a shift in demand from traditional RE mainstream to a new type of client, most of which are involving themselves in activities behind-the-meter.

Tech 1: Water Manufacture. This client makes water from air. How, we can’t tell since that would be, well, telling. But we can confirm that they have a pilot project set up somewhere in Africa – and are bullish about the future of water. From the air. No boreholes, no expensive drilling, no desalination, and no need for grid power. And no more power hungry and expensive municipal purification and pumping infrastructure to maintain.

Tech 2: Internet of Things. For the first time, we are working in the IT – Energy – Water nexus, where assets are connected, monitored and controlled digitally, real-time.

Tech 3: Energy Storage. Batteries, batteries, and more batteries. Manufacture, sales, distribution.

Tech 4: Electrical components. We are coming across more and more SMME sized electrical equipment manufacturing and assembly companies. This is where the real value is added, in the small and medium business space.

Tech 5: 3/4PL Clients. As the component supply chains deepen so we are starting to come across a need for a one-stop shop, for companies that provide wholesale and distribution of solar and solar associated products including panels, invertors, storage racks, cabinets, communications modules, charge controllers, and mounting systems.

These change in emphasis is a real indication of a fundamental shift in the structure of the economy in South Africa, there can be no doubt, the 4th Industrial Revolution is here.

News, Renewable Energy

AltGen opens a representative office in Mauritius trading under “Altgen Energy Services LTD”

Posted on by Lindy Taylor

AltGen Mauritius

 

AltGen has just opened a representative office in Mauritius which caters to our clients who are interested in running our payroll services throughout Africa. The newly formed entity in Africa’s business hub is registered under the name “Altgen Energy Services LTD”.

As Africa continues to be a destination of choice for renewable energy developments, the need to offer unique payroll services which enable the development, construction, operations and maintenance of energy projects is vital. Since 2012, AltGen has made a robust name for itself in the industry, offering our clients a boutique set of services within the sector. This niche service offering in a growing market has enabled us to have a privileged depth of insight and offer clients unsurpassed value in terms of recruitment, consulting, advisory, training and employment services. We understand that businesses, like individuals are unique – they have a brand, a persona – something that makes them… them – and that is why we ensure our solutions are perfectly suited and customized to their needs and their corporate vision.

We are the people who understand people, the ones who make businesses operate, the people who create organizational cultures. We provide employment assistance to allow you to do what you do best, while we cover the rest.

To find out more about AltGen Energy Services and how we can help you, contact us today!

Call us or drop us a mail!