FROM OCTOBER 2015’s RECRUITER MAGAZINE

Sinead MacManus

Chief executive and co-founder of Fluency, a digital skills start-up, speaking at ‘The War for Talent and What Women Want’ event in London

“I read these job descriptions from all these start-ups and they’re looking for these unbelievable unicorns, to pay them £16k a year, have all of these skills and be in the top 1% of people … these people, they just don’t exist. I always try to say to them ‘what about some nice, well-trained ponies’?”

Trudi Scrivener

Managing director, Universal Care, on the impact of the Living Wage on social care recruitment agencies

“The local authorities are not providing the level of funding to even allow people to pay more than the minimum wage. In some places around the country, there are local authorities that are paying a home care agency as little as £13 an hour. If you’ve got to pay somebody £7.20 or £8 an hour out of that, it doesn’t leave very much.”

Colin Woodward

Director at construction recruiter Contract Scotland, on a CIPD report showing 58.8% of UK graduates are in non-graduate roles, particularly within construction

“When these graduates come out to the job market into a job market where there are no jobs, unfortunately you’ve got this mismatch. The difficulty is not so much the graduates aren’t capable of undertaking jobs — it’s the volatility of the construction industry.”