A round up of links to news items on recent employment tribunal rulings, including: compensation for a harassed female soldier; a decision on sickness during annual leave; and the resolution of a zero-hours contract dispute.

The recession has created opportunities for HR and recruitment professionals to raise the standards of their recruitment activities and embrace social recruiting, yet the majority have failed to act on these opportunities. But Generation Y and post-election cuts in public spending will force significant change in recruitment activity. These were just some of the predictions to emerge from a lively debate at the TRU London 2010 "unconference" (external website) last week, which asked a simple question: "Where is recruitment going?"

I spent today surrounded by recruiters - and I liked it. Now there's a sentence I never thought I'd find myself typing, but it's true. Or perhaps I should say TRU. I was at the TRU London recruitment unconference, along with my colleague Martin Couzins, who has already blogged about the event here.

The main theme running through the day, at least in the sessions or "tracks" I attended, was social media in its main manifestations (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, YouTube and so on) and its impact on the recruitment industry.

Last week, we looked at whether it's time to take social media seriously in the workplace. For employers who decide that the time has now come to see if social media can work for them, there are two key questions they must ask themselves, according to recruitment consultant Andy Headworth on his Sirona Says blog.

Are your job adverts non-discriminatory? Now might be a good time to double-check. According to the Sunday Times, a serial litigant in Bristol - pictured no doubt on his way to a post box, claim in hand - is taking advantage of any potentially age-discriminatory adverts that refer to “school leavers” or “recent graduates”.

Employers who are considering whether or not a job applicant accompanied by an assistance dog (commonly referred to as guide dogs) could be employed, should consider that accommodating an assistance dog could be a reasonable adjustment under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995.

Social networking is driving a fundamental change in recruitment practices in 2010, with implications for all parties involved in recruitment, according to an excellent introduction to social recruiting (external website) from the Guardian. For many organisations, traditional recruitment practices are being swept away, with employers, candidates and recruitment agencies becoming involved in an evolving online "conversation".

The UK economy may be proving exceptionally slow in emerging from recession, but this has not harmed the London's position in the global labour market. London is the number one destination city of choice for international jobseekers, according to global research from Totaljobs (external website).

With economic recovery in prospect, employers need to turn their attention from organisational survival to employee engagement (external website), if they are to prevent their most valued staff from jumping ship as the labour market thaws. This is according to Chartered Management Institute chief executive Ruth Spellman.

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has given two judgments on when employers can set upper age limits for employment, in Wolf v Stadt Frankfurt Am Main [subscription required] and Petersen v Berufungsausschuss Für Zahnärzte Für Den Bezirk Westfalen-Lippe [subscription required].

Scientific advances will allow for individuals to grow new limbs and see a whole new range of career paths develop, including space pilots, weather modification police and body part makers, says a report commissioned by the Government.

The rise of online recruitment methods over the past decade has resulted in a completely transformed recruitment landscape with social recruiting at its centre as we enter 2010, according to a fascinating blog post from recruitment consultant Andy Headworth. He argues that social recruiting now represents the cutting-edge of recruitment (external website), and that recruiters must adopt social recruiting methods in order to meet evolving candidate expectations. Consequently, platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and blogs should be seen as "primary recruiting channels", and "will become the recruiting battlegrounds of 2010".

The UK labour market has reached a turning point with the arrival of 2010, and "a sense of cautious optimism is now building, [..'] reflected in an upturn in job supplies across many sectors", according to Totajobs director John Salt,  commenting on latest data from the Totaljobs Barometer (external website), published today. But this increasingly optimistic outlook is tempered by the harsh reality facing job seekers in the current climate. As Salt puts it:

[A] backlog of job seekers means that securing the next step on the career ladder has never been more competitive.

Want to receive the answer to a frequently asked HR question every day? If you’re on Twitter, you can do so by following HRdailyquestion. The questions come from the popular XpertHR FAQs section, which contains over 1,000 frequently asked HR questions - and more importantly the answers.

Around 50 new model policies and documents have been added to XpertHR in 2009. But what have been the most popular? The XpertHR employment intelligence blog provides a round-up.

HR practitioners who have been tasked with assuming responsibility for "lower-end recruiting" activities as a cost-cutting measure during the recession will be expected to maintain these recruitment responsibilities once economic recovery is underway. This is the key prediction on "the future of recruiting", set out by UK recruitment consultant Bill Boorman in a guest post on Australia's The Savage Truth (external website) blog.

As usual, 2009 was a busy year in the employment tribunals, courts and in the European Court of Justice. But what employment law cases can we look forward to in the next 12 months? Here are 10 significant employment decisions expected in 2010.

The duty under the Disability Discrimination Act to make reasonable adjustments to prevent disabled people being disadvantaged at work applies during the recruitment process, as well as in relation to existing employees.

This means employers should consider how to comply with the duty at each stage of the recruitment process, from advertising a vacancy to selection. Employers shouldn't wait for a candidate to raise the issue of reasonable adjustments before they start thinking about potential action they could take.

A new guide in the XpertHR "how to" section gives employers practical guidance on how to comply with the duty to make reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process (subscription required).

A fascinating debate is currently emerging among the recruitment blogging community regarding the use of social media in recruiting. A key question is whether those who are slow to adopt such methods will be left in the dust in the immediate future. Two recent blog posts from leading UK recruitment bloggers provide interesting perspectives on this issue.

Recruitment consultants can drastically improve the quality of their relationships with their contacts in HR if they act as consultants as well recruitment specialists (external website), according to US-based people development and HR specialist Alicia Arenas.

Recruitment via social media has the potential to be "the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs of the [executive] search industry". This is the scenario envisioned by HR and recruitment blogger Gareth Jones (external website), who is keen for UK HR practitioners to wake up to "the power of social media in the recruitment mix".

Social media are set to become critical to recruitment activities for UK employers and their prospective employees, but "a lot of recruiters in the UK [...] haven't yet got social media" (external website). These are among the key points of a fascinating post on the T-Recs blog from UK HR recruiter Mervyn Dinnen.

A year ago we looked at why it didn't pay to be a graduate in 2008. Things haven't exactly improved for graduates in the interim, with a number of different surveys on the state of graduate recruitment combining to paint a picture of static starting salaries and dwindling graduate vacancy numbers. But hope remains that graduate recruitment will pick up once again in 2010.

The first phase of the vetting and barring scheme was implemented on 12 October 2009. Affected employers must now obtain enhanced CRB checks to ensure that individuals working with children or vulnerable adults in a regulated activity are not on the barred lists held by the Independent Safeguarding Authority (external website). It is now an offence for an employer to allow a person who it knows is barred to engage in a regulated activity in relation to children and vulnerable adults. From 1 November 2010 it will be mandatory for new and transferring employees into a regulated activity to register with the Authority.

The Government has said that the Agency Workers Regulations, which will implement the Temporary Agency Workers Directive, will come into force on 1 October 2011, just two months before member states' deadline of 5 December 2011.

Ed Balls, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, has told Ofsted that reciprocal childcare arrangements between friends should be permitted, and not treated as childminding, according to Times Online (on its website). Mr Balls’ ruling is a response to the case of two policewomen who looked after each other’s children and were told by Ofsted that they must register as childminders.

Devon and Cornwall Police has taken the unusual step of recruiting three Springer Spaniels as rescue dogs for a job that has traditionally been done by German Shepherds, reports the Daily Telegraph website.

• The latest trends in graduate recruitment;
• Starting salary spot rates, ranges and increases;
• Changes in recruitment processes; and
• The most effective methods of candidate attraction, selection and management.

Recruiters are turning to advertising their vacancies on bus tickets, reports Recruiter (external website). Aviva is using eye-catching yellow bus tickets in Perth to target locals, with the added advantage of reaching to those who may not read the newspaper to look for jobs.

• Are conditional job offers binding?
• If an employer receives a poor reference for a prospective employee, can it legitimately withdraw its job offer?
• Is an employer obliged to supply a reference?
• What are the duties of an employer if it supplies a reference?
• Should references always be marked confidential?
• Where a job applicant does not give his or her current or most recent employer as a named referee, can this employer be contacted instead of the named referee?
• Where an individual's employment offer is withdrawn due to an unsatisfactory reference does he or she have any right to see the reference?
• What rights of access do employees have to job references?

Well, for one thing, it would be surprising if starting salaries continued to go up...

The UK jobs market continues to contract in Summer 2009, but the pace at which it is shrinking has slowed markedly, according to the latest labour market outlook survey from the CIPD and consultants KPMG. By sector, the results are striking: the private sector is staging a "jobs recovery" (external website), while the jobs outlook for the public sector is worsening significantly.

Swine flu and the workplace - it comes as no surprise that many of the most frequently accessed FAQs on XpertHR throughout July were on this subject (see Swine flu - guidance for employers for up-to-date information and guidance). Other popular questions cover breaks for new mothers to express milk and the special rules for employees made redundant while on adoption leave. Most employers are aware of the laws protecting employees made redundant while on maternity leave, but remember that they apply to employees of either sex on adoption leave too.

Employers who do not train managers in good interview practice could find that they are vulnerable to findings of discrimination.

Britain’s legions of struggling, unemployed law graduates will no doubt be heartened to hear that positions at the Bar are now being handed out to mediocre non-law students.

If you think your industry is male-dominated, spare a thought for all the aspiring female gondoliers in Venice. It's being reported (on the Guardian website) that Giorgia Boscolo has become the first woman in 900 years to become a gondolier on the Venetian canals.

You wait ages for a ‘job of a lifetime’ to be advertised, and then two come along at once.

The High Court has rejected Cheltenham Borough Council’s case against a former director who failed to disclose a history of depressive illness.

Cost considerations arising from the 2009 recession are accelerating UK employers' take-up of online recruitment methods (subscription required), according to research from Personnel Today. At the same time, they are also hastening the decline in the use of recruitment agencies.

As their final exams come to an end, students looking to start their careers will face the highest graduate unemployment rates for years. Almost 400,000 students will graduate this year, and according to the Higher Education Careers Service Unit (HECSU), up to 40,000 of them will still be unemployed in six months’ time. Read more about the HECSU research on the Guardian website.

IRS would greatly appreciate your participation in our latest online survey. It covers the use of employers' own websites in recruitment, and will only take a few minutes of your time to complete.

Your organisation is probably one of many that have been looking to reduce its expenditure, even before the current recession lead to many vacancies being frozen. If so, you may well have considered using your own organisation's website as a low-cost, fast-track way of advertising job opportunities.

Gordon Brown's cabinet reshuffle sees multimillionaire and Apprentice front-man, Sir Alan Sugar, appointed to the position of enterprise czar. Read more on the bbc (external website).

See XpertHR's How To section for guidance on Recruitment and Selection (subscription required).

Photo: Jovike

Changes to the immigration rules are threatening the arts in Britain by making it difficult for foreign performers to enter the country, according to an article in The Times (on its website).

The two May bank holidays were occupying HR professionals last month, prompting the question: are part-time workers entitled to bank holidays? Another popular question concerned how to deal with bank holiday entitlement for employees on maternity leave.

Other frequently asked questions focus on redundancy and alternatives to redundancy, including whether or not an employee’s salary is protected if he or she accepts a less well-paid position as an alternative to redundancy.

Photo: Valerie Everett

According to a survey by the CIPD, reported by the BBC, almost half of employers won’t be recruiting either school-leavers or graduates in the coming months, underlining the extent of the economic slowdown.

According to the BBC website, 56,000 people from eight key Eastern European countries left the UK in the 12 months up to September 2008 - more than double the figure for the previous year. But in total 44,000 more Eastern European workers arrived in the UK than left.

Salary comparison site Glassdoor, which I blogged about last year, now claims to offer job seekers a sneak preview of the job interview process and the questions asked by more than 23,000 companies.

Following on from our look at just how much women's standing in the workplace has improved since 1943, more heartening news arrives regarding women's fortunes in the City of London.

BERR has published a consultation seeking views on implementation of the Temporary Agency Workers Directive.

How to talk you way out of a job in no more than 140 characters. More twit than twitter, but a useful warning to job applicants (and employers) everywhere that social media are exactly what they say they are - social, and hence rather too public a forum in which to be indiscreet.

… leading, according to the Telegraph, to offers to continue the trend with baked CVs from potential successors.

The dream has become a reality for some graduates who were due to start training contracts with City law firms later this year.

Notes made at recruitment interviews and unsatisfactory job references resulting in an employment offer being withdrawn - does the prospective employee have the right to see them? And what about an employee who is permitted to work beyond retirement age, but whose position subsequently becomes redundant - will he or she be entitled to a redundancy payment? Out of the hundreds of HR questions on XpertHR, these are some of the most popular throughout February 2009.

An employment tribunal has ruled that an air traffic controller was guilty of age discrimination when it turned down a 50-year old man’s application for a position as a trainee controller, in Baker v National Air Traffic Services Ltd.

Cheltenham Borough Council is suing former managing director Christine Laird for failing to disclose a history of depression when she applied for the job, in an unusual High Court case.

It seems that the current economic climate is making public sector jobs more attractive, according to a survey by Hays Public Services (external website). In fact, almost three out of four private sector workers (72%) said they would be more likely to consider a job in the public sector now than they would have been a year ago, and a fifth of respondents (18%) are developing transferable skills in preparation for a move to the public sector.

As we all know, unemployment is rising fast. In an attempt to encourage employers to keep recruiting, the Government is to award firms that recruit people who have been unemployed for more than six months “golden hellos” of up to £2,500 (external website).

Some counter-cyclical news from the BBC today: 6,000 new staff will be taken on for front-line roles in Job Centres next year.

The growing economic pressures facing organisations mean that low-cost but potentially high-quality recruitment methods such as employee referral schemes are coming into their own.

IRS is conducting a survey which will allow you to compare your current methods with those of other organisations.

The UK labour market is weakening rapidly in response to the global credit crunch, according to a new survey reported on XpertHR today (subscription required).

The research, from the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) and consultants KPMG, finds that October 2008 saw the sharpest drop in overall demand for temporary and permanent staff since the survey began in October 1997.

It appears that employers who shun pregnant women are actually missing out on an opportunity to gain from a natural brain boost that occurs after women give birth - and which stays with them for life.

According to a scientific study carried out in the US by Craig Kinsley, professor of neuroscience at the University of Richmond, Virginia, (reported in the Sunday Times) having a child rewires a woman's brain, improving her mental agility and skills. In particular, experiments - so far only carried out on animals - have shown that mothers get more "computing" power as a result of growing new sets of brain cells, coined "maternal circuits".

David Blunkett's observation (external link) that people should be prepared to work as long as they are physically able to - cheerily summarised as "work till you drop" by the Daily Express - raises a few interesting questions. Should organisations be scrapping their retirement ages now? How should pay and benefit packages best be structured to suit this arrangement?

An employment tribunal has rejected the age discrimination claim of a 16-year old job applicant who didn't get the job when he was unable to find his way to the employer's premises.

A local authority that advertised for candidates in "the first five years of their career" indirectly discriminated against a 61-year old applicant who was not shortlisted, according to an employment tribunal.

Following on from its message of doom and gloom for recruiters last month, the latest monthly survey from the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) - XpertHR's coverage of which is published today (subscription required) - offers more positive tidings, after a fashion.

According to REC chief executive Kevin Green: "A positive benefit for the economy is the muted pay growth that the increase in the supply of candidates is creating."

A Scottish employment tribunal has allowed a male applicant who was turned down by the police because he is colour-blind to bring a sex discrimination claim. He is bringing the claim on the basis that the condition is more common in men than women.

In contrast to the distinctly less-than-green stance held by the Bush administration these past eight years or so, it seems that environmental issues are being taken much more seriously by growing numbers of our friends across the pond. For example, environmentally-friendly workplaces are increasingly sought-after by US workers, according to new research.

In the concluding part of our series examining trends in graduate recruitment we look at the changes in starting salaries over the best part of two decades. In 1992 the median starting salary was £13,000. We chart its progression since then.

To continue our series looking at trends in graduate recruitment we now turn to the mainstay of any recruitment campaign: candidate attraction. Here we reveal the most effective ways of reaching candidates as selected by employers over the past nine years.

Another day, another survey with dismal economic news: Latest research from the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) and consultants KPMG - as reported on XpertHR today (subscription required) - finds the UK recruitment market starting to succumb to the full brunt of the credit crunch.

Some of the most frequently visited FAQs on XpertHR during June concern the calculation of statutory payments - redundancy pay and SMP - where the employee in question has had a recent change in hours. Questions on the length of time that an ex-employee’s personnel record should be kept, and a change of heart on the employer’s part after a job applicant has accepted a position also feature.

Throughout May, some of the most frequently visited XpertHR FAQs were those recently added to the site as a result of subscriber suggestions - questions on a rise in the limit of a week's pay coinciding with the notice period for a redundant employee, and the qualification requirements for trade union officials who accompany workers to disciplinary or grievance hearings. Others concerned employees returning to work when they're signed off sick by a doctor, and asking job candidates about their sickness record.

Here’s an amusing recruiting video for Ernst & Young in Sweden. It has more than a touch of Monty Python about it - but it’s none the worse for that. It certainly makes me think that Ernst & Young in Sweden is a cool place to work - but then I’m hardly in the target candidate pool, being neither Swedish nor a recent graduate and never having considered a career in lion-taming accountancy.

Thanks to Andy Headworth at Sirona Says recruitment blog for finding this. See Andy’s post on this video here.

Two employment tribunal decisions demonstrate that individuals who are discriminated against for not having a particular religion or belief are protected by the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003.

There are some weird and wonderful jobs out there. Perhaps you have had to fill some of them. Maybe you've even done the job yourself. If so, we'd love to hear about it.

Of course, in the wonderful world of blogging, there is someone out there lovingly chronicling every last eccentric employment opportunity.

Here are some of the best of the odd jobs to be found on Eccentric Employment.

New telesales recruits at US online shoe retailer Zappos are offered $1,000 to quit the job after their first week's induction training - on the basis that if they accept the money it shows they don't have the level of commitment required, reports business writer Bill Taylor on his Harvard Business blog.

Testimonials from ex-employees don't get much more glowing than those published yesterday on the unofficial Google Operating System blog. OK, they all look like they come from software developers and related trades, or "engineers" as Google likes to call them, but wow, what an amazing bunch of recommendations about a great place to work - from people who have left.

The ongoing fall-out of the global credit crisis may be causing widespread angst and uncertainty, with sharp declines in business confidence (subscription required) afflicting many sectors and dire warnings on house prices (external website). But every cloud has a silver lining, as cliché would have it, and things would appear to be looking up for temps.

HR has been busy making changes to the way new employees are recruited and selected. IRS's latest survey (subscription required) of changes and trends in recruitment and selection has identified one clear winner: the internet.

Our three-part report is based on the experience of 133 organisations - covering a combined workforce of more than 1 million people - and shows that employers are now using the internet in all aspects of the recruitment and selection process.

We looked at changes and trends in three areas: candidate attraction; the application process; and, assessment and selection. In each of these key areas, the internet has grown in use and coverage.

We tend to hear a lot about NEETs (young people not in education, employment or training – presumably there are some ASBOS involved at some point too), or those who have just made their first billion. We don’t tend to hear much about those young people who just get on with it and go out and get an often unglamorous job.

Provisional statistics released by the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (PDF, 146KB) show that the proportion of young people aged 18-30 entering higher education in England fell from 42% in the academic year 2005/06 to 40% in 2006/07.

One of the oldest pieces of employment legislation still on the statute book will disappear later this year when a Bill currently before the House of Lords passes into law.

The Servants’ Characters Act of 1792 set out to prevent “evil-disposed Persons” from supplying bogus references with which they or their accomplices could get jobs in good households and carry out inside-job burglaries.