Outplacement Companies – What do they Do?
February 2nd, 2010
Outplacement has been around for a long long time and dates back to when companies had to make mass redundancies in the 1980’s and wanted to show their staff that they were giving them some support. There are a large number of outplacement companies out there now, ranging from one man bands through to multi-national corporations with a multi-million pound turnover. One of the best known outplacement companies is PENNA who are used by a whole range of large companies and even the Job Centres now have their own version of outplacement in the form of executive job search support for newly unemployed professionals.
Outplacement is essentially the idea that a consultant can come to assist an employee who is moving on to find a new position. Most outplacement companies have a large range of resources and will hold sessions on CV Reviews, Job search techniques, change in careers, interview practice, assessment centres, networking and anything else in between. The services can range from one session covering everything through to two week residential courses.
The most useful part of outplacement is probably the preparation of a CV. The vast majority of CVs used to apply for jobs are, to be frank, pretty awful. As a recruitment consultant and a career coach we get to see the best of both sides in that we prepare CVs as well as use them on a daily basis, and the vast majority of CVs that we see are not up to the job. In fact some of them positively discriminate against the person making the application because they are so bad and fail completely to put across that person’s experience in a way that will ensure they are seen for a particular position.
In working with the Job Centres on their executive job search support service I have also seen that bad outplacement advice can have a similar effect.
A quick example of this is the idea by some of the outplacement providers that a CV has to fit onto two pages. This inevitably results in someone with a career spanning twenty years missing the vast majority of information that may have assisted them in finding a new position, particularly with the use of key words being so vital now on CVs for CV banks and CV searches. It means that instead of having between three and eight pages to fit your career on you have to remove the vast majority and strip it down to its bare bones.
Most of the outplacement providers I have come across and the advice they have given people has been anecdotally good, and the people who have been to outsourcing have very positive experiences of it and it does open people’s eyes to new opportunities and potential sources of work. The vast majority of people spend their whole working lives going from one position to the next without any thought as to where they want to be and how they want to progress their career and this is why something like outsourcing can be so effective as it stops you, it makes you think about where you want to be and how you want to get there and what you want out of life.
Jonathan Fagan is the Managing Director of Ten Percent Legal Recruitment and also Senior Career Coach at www.jbfagan.co.uk. Both companies provide outplacement services via companies or for individuals on a private basis. For further details please visit the website or e-mail cv@jbfagan.co.uk.