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Bingo halls across Britain are struggling to make the numbers work after falling income and a tax increase could spell the end of many halls. Even the biggest player in the bingo industry Gala Coral are looking to close up to 6 clubs with the loss of 180 jobs. This could be joined by another 100 clubs right across the country.

Some insiders believe that this is not the end of the closures but only the beginning. Over the next two years some believe that 40 to 50 more clubs may be closed or sold off, many of which are former cinemas, allowing Gala to concentrate on the more popular flat floor halls. Since the smoking ban, which many blame a down turn in business on, and the scrapping of section 21, Gala have closed 13 bingo hall and 4 casinos.

The recent rise in duty on bingo from 15 per cent to 22 per cent has forced many bingo operators to reassess their futures. The Rank Group, owners of the Mecca Bingo chain, has had to issue a profits warning estimating that they will now lose £9 million a year in lost profits.

Its not all bad bingo news at the moment though, online bingo is continuing to grow bigger and bigger and has become the fastest growing form of gambling on the internet. In 2008 the world wide online bingo market is worth $1.4billion, this year it is expected to hot $1.7billion with it rising to £2billion in 2010.

The online market is good news for Gala too. Gala Bingo is currently sitting pretty as the number one online bingo site in the UK; thought is position could be under threat with the impending sale of internet rival Cashcade.

Waking up to another cold grey showery morning in a municipal town in Britain, and struggling through the rush-hour traffic to a nondescript office block for another day at your crumb strewn desk can be quite a depressing prospect. Perhaps you are already thinking it’s time for a change. Now it’s your chance to consider something you may not have thought of doing before- working abroad!

The international job market is in a healthy state at the moment and someone with the skills from a UK education and career path are greatly sought after. With readily transferable skills UK applicants are seeing high levels of success in securing International Jobs.

The benefits are obvious, a better climate, reduced living costs and gaining invaluable international experience are all great reasons to consider going international. Obviously such a move would involve a big change in your life with relocation an important process to manage. Many companies offer assistance, both logistical and financial, to help a new recruit to transition seamlessly into their organisation.

But where do you start looking for that job of a lifetime? The best approach is to find an international recruitment expert who understands the needs of prospective employers. They can help you find a role that you will feel challenged but comfortable in, and where you will not suffer cultural dislocation in the way that so many people who go it alone do .

The skills and experience an international job gives you will also put you ahead of many other candidates should you wish to return home later on. Such a role on your C.V. is amble demonstration of your pro-active nature, flexibility and willingness to embrace change. All of which are key assets in the modern workplace.

In addition the opportunity to learn a second language, is not only an exciting challenge but also another string to add to your bow for future use. With the decline of foreign language within the UK curriculum, the demand for language skills has risen sharply.

Often international recruitment is an overlooked option by UK applicants. But now is the ideal time to take that step. If you do you will be rewarded with improvements to your career prospects and your quality of life.

With more and more jobs in the private sector at risk as the economic downturn continues to hurt small and medium businesses, more people are looking at public sector jobs as a career alternative. But what are the benefits and how easy is it to stand out considering the competitive nature of the current job market?

Perhaps the primary benefit of working in the public sector is the sense that you are contributing something back to society through your work rather than generating profit for your faceless corporate masters. But it’s not all altruistic, in general public sector wages are higher than the national average. This is also coupled with an attractive benefits package and stable pension scheme. Flexi-time and other flexible work arrangements are also prevalent, allowing busy people a better chance to maintain a work life balance.

There are a wide range of careers available in the public sector, so being able to find a job that utilises your skills should not be a problem. The public sector is increasingly aware of the benefits of employing someone with private sector skills. In fact the main drawback sited of working in the public sector is that you can often feel like you have stepped into an arcane world of bureaucracy and red tape. But fear not, with increased pressure to not waste tax payers money, the ability to recognise waste and streamline working practice will lend you a distinct advantage over other candidates.

So how can you stand out in the job market? Employers are not short of applicants for available posts in the current climate. In fact a recent store opening in Nottingham attracted 1800 applicants for just 20 positions. This means it’s important to make yourself unique and present a clear case to a prospective employer to justify why you are the best person for the role.

Perhaps the smartest way to do this is to let someone else do the donkey work for you. Identify a specialist in public sector recruitment and meet with them to ensure they understand your skills and what sort of role you are after. You are looking to give them the detail that helps bring your C.V. to life and allows them to go out and present you as the well-rounded employee that you are.

Rather than wasting time applying for dozens of ill-suited roles, working with a recruitment professional will help you to land that dream public sector job.

Following on from our previous blog posts on writing job specifications and choosing the right candidates to interview, we will now look at job interview techniques. Most job interview articles whether it is for accountancy jobs or finance jobs you will read will concentrate on the interviewee and what they will encounter, but in this blog we will look at what the interviewer needs to do and look out for.

Conducting the perfect interview is all about getting the right balance of preparation, questioning and listening.

There are many interview techniques you can use, the two most common are the behavioural event interviewing technique and the criteria based interview.

The Behavioural event interview is where you look at the applicant’s past and you look at how they performed and handled previous tasks and roles. This is based on the assumption that the applicant will handle your role in a similar fashion to how they handled previous relevant roles.

Criteria based interviewing is when you measure a client’s performance in different areas, this is done by testing the applicants knowledge using structured questioning. This formal technique is a great way of testing the applicant’s performance but does involve the right questions and the ability to interpret the answers given.

The technique you use in your interview depends on various factors such as personal preference, objectives and company regulations to interviewing. But with careful planning, questioning and listening, you should be able to conduct a successful interview. Here are some of the things you need to factor into your interview.

Detailing your requirements and what you are looking for is something you have hopefully prepared already and used in your job advertising process. But it helps if you go into a bit more detail at this stage. Make sure you are clear about what skills, experiences and qualifications you are looking for.

You should always look and analyse the applications and CVs in advance, but this can sometimes be overlooked. Make sure to highlight any points you would like to raise in the interview, this includes both strengths and weaknesses. This is a great chance to highlight any questions you have about previous employment as most people don’t go into great detail in their CVs.

Remember you will not only be asking questions, the applicant will probably have some for you as well. So make sure you have relevant information to hand to make sure both you and the company appear professional, this may include history of the company, benefits or what its like to work there.

Make sure the area or room you will be conducting the interview is suitable. You want to put the applicant at ease, so don’t choose a place where you will be disturbed a lot.

Preparing an agenda for the interview will help you to stick to your time slot and also make sure you cover all areas that you wanted to go over. One of the best techniques to put an interviewee at ease is to introduce yourself and then cover your agenda so you can let them know what to expect.

Once you have finished your questions you should close the interview by asking the applicant If they have any questions. They may want to cover some of the areas you have introduced briefly. After the questions you can let them know things like, when they can expect to hear back and how the rest of the process will go. Whether there will be any other interviews for example.

As well as notes during the interview, it is always a good idea to make notes at the end to summarise what you thought of the applicant.

Once you have performed all this and seen a good range of applicants, you can hopefully come to a decision on who you want to see again or even who you want to offer the job to, completing your financial recruitment process.

If you have taken on board our advice about writing a concise job specification then you should have a good amount of appropriate candidates applying for a job but what do you do if you end up with a lot of applications and CVs. Well it can be a difficult and time consuming task to sort through them and establish who to bring in for an interview. In this blog post we will look at some of the key areas you should use to assess whether the applicant is right for your roles. If you look for the right things in these applications you should soon be able to work out who will be right to bring in.

When looking at the skills and achievements they list you will need to think how these will benefit you and the role. Do the skills they have provided actually match the ones required for the position? Is there any skills and achievements that make them stand out from the others, something that may actually help them in the role that you may have not initially thought was required.

When looking at the candidate’s qualifications and educational background you will be looking to see if it meets the requirements for this position. It will also be worth looking for applicants who have completed other courses that may bring extra skills to the position.

If they have the right skills and education, you can then move onto the work experience they have. Hopefully you will have applicants that have had good positive experiences in relevant industry sectors. There are many things to take on board when looking at this section of the CV. How many employers have they worked for? How long have they been with each one? Do they give reasons for leaving their current position?

To fully analyse this section you will need to look at what you require and how the candidate presents the information, hopefully painting them in a good light.

Sifting through a large amount of applications can be quite a task especially when finding candidate for accountancy jobs and other finance jobs. But by taking on board the points we have made, hopefully you can find a good selection to bring in a talk to.

We have written many recruitment blog posts here on the online business blog, but the majority of those were written to aid the person looking for a job. In our next few blog posts we will be looking at things from the recruiter’s perspective.

It may seem like any easy task to come up with specifications for a potential employee, but it’s a good idea to take a moment and evaluate what qualities you are looking for.

Coming up with a detailed specification will help you focus on what type of person you want and what skills you need, which will hopefully make the recruitment process much smoother.

The goal of a job specification is to come up with a detailed description of the job opportunity, and detail the responsibilities and goals of the potential employee will have.

The second part of the process is coming up with a person specification which is where you will create a profile of the ideal candidate that you think will suit the role. These specifications, not only help the employer work out what type of person they are looking for but also the candidates will be able to understand the role and position better.

Many employers and recruiters make the mistake of posting vague information about jobs hoping that many people will apply and they can choose the best. Using better specifications you can save time and resources by having the appropriate candidates apply in the first place.

By specifying exactly who you are looking for and the skills and experience they should have will also avoid problems once they have been accepted and started. This can avoid unnecessary training that may be needed if the candidate is missing any skills.

One problem that crops up with vague job descriptions is that a new employee may leave the company fairly quickly as they might find that the position was not what they were looking for. This will then take you back to square one of looking for someone to fill the position, so it is always best to get it right the first time.

This is especially true for international recruitment as you want to make sure the right candidate is chose if they are having to move abroad for an international job.

We have written an accompanying piece on our tumblr blog

If you are planning to use international recruitment services for accountancy jobs and banking jobs and move abroad to the Netherlands, you will probably be working for a business where English is the main language spoken, but it would be handy to know some simple Dutch phrases to help you get by once out of the office. If you are planning to stay for a long time, it will be worth taking lessons and learning it so you become fluent, but these phrase will help you get by in the beginning.

English: Yes - Dutch: Ja

No - Nee

Please - Alstublieft

Thank You - Dank u wel

Thank you very much - Hartelijk Dank

Good Morning - Goedemorgen

Good Afternoon - Goedemiddag

Good Evening - Goedenavond

Hello & Good-bye - Dag

Do you speak English? - Spreekt u Engels?

May I ask you a question? - Mag ik u wat vragen?

Where would you like to go? - Waar wou je naar toe willen gaan?

That would be great! - Dat zou prima zijn!

Where do I have to sign? - Waar moet ik tekenen?

What is today’s date? - Wat is de datum van vandaag?

I need to telephone England. - Ik heb nodig England te bellen.

See you soon - Gauw tot ziens

Please - Alstublieft

Excuse me - Neem me niet kwalijk

I’m sorry, but… - Het spijt me, maar…

I would like to see the menu, please - Ik wou graag de menu zien, alstublieft.

I would like to order now. - Ik wou graag nu bestellen.

Could I have the bill, please - Mag ik afrekenen, alstublieft.

For more Dutch Phrases, click here

If you are advertising a position within your organisation it could well be tempting to slightly embellish the role to make it sound more exciting or glamorous than it really is, after all you want to attract a lot of good people to apply. However this can easily backfire on you if the person you have employed decides that their new job does not match up to what was advertised and decides to leave. That’s why it’s always good to be honest about the job and the kind of skill you will be requiring.  You aren’t allowed to discriminate in your advertisement either, but you are allowed to talk about the skills, traits and education you are searching for from a candidate.

Targeting the right people with your vacancy advert is essential in recruiting the right person. After all there’s no point spending a lot of money placing an advertisement for a senior manager in a magazine read predominantly by people in there twenties, as the readers are not going to have the skills or experience necessary for the position. This will mean you have wasted hundreds or even thousands of pounds on an advert which returned no suitable applicants.

This is where a recruitment advertising agency will often provide invaluable expertise in targeting the right outlets to attract the right people and not wasting you money by placing expensive ads which don’t attract suitable recruits. They will have detailed knowledge and data to be able to target the right advertising opportunities to bring the right candidates to your business. Marketing recruitment agencies can also be great time savers as a simple phone call or two could result in your vacancy being placed in a number of different places via different medias, a task which completed by yourself could take hours if not days to complete.

Latest bingo news is not looking good. Amidst tough times for the bingo industry the government delta bother blow in their recent budget, despite belief that the government was sympathetic towards the industry.

The government has brought in partial exemption for bingo clubs yet it has stopped VAT reclaims which has previously been so beneficial to the industry to help reduce there large tax burden.

GPT meanwhile has seen an almost 50% increase to 22% from 15%. Some in the bingo industry are seeing this as an even heavier tax burden laid onto to struggling sector.

Many bingo games, specifically those involving cash for prizes, were originally tax exempt, under new government proposals however they will see there current tax levels rise from 15% to 22%. It was also revealed on Wednesday that VAT will be exempt from bingo rather than the zero rated that many had been hoping for. Leading bingo company Ranks chief executive Ian Burke said to the Daily Telegraph “I don’t understand what the UK land Bingo Industry has done to justify the government’s vindictiveness.”

The news of the tax increase spread quickly through the city and it traders. Shares in the Rank group tumbled by almost 14% after Alistair Darlings budget. The company has been predicting that the tax increase could see almost £6million wiped off its profits in the coming year while it could be as much as £9million annual in the future. As a result the company has had to scale down there pretax profit predictions, for 2009 the group are now predicting profits of £34million compared to £40.3million previously, while in 2010 forecasts are down to £32.5million from an expected £41million

Online bingo sector seems to have been much more fortunate that its offline counterpart. This has been largely due to the fact that many online operators are based outside of the UK so they get to avoid the tax burden. Those Online bingo operators who are in the UK have predicted an extra 7% of there income will go in the treasury coffers.

When looking for finance jobs you may have seen the term risk management used, you may already know what this role is or like me might be wondering it involves. After some research I have found some great information about what risk management is in the financial sector.

Employees who work in financial risk management help to create economic value for a business they are hired by, using financial instrument to manage credit and market risk. They may also deal with inflation risks, liquidity and foreign exchange.

As expected financial risk management is very similar to risk management in other areas. It requires the identification of sources of risks, measuring how big the risk is then coming up with ways to help prevent them. When dealing with risks in the financial sense, you will be dealing with both quantitative and qualitative management. To manage financial risks, teams and individuals need to use a technique called hedging with financial instruments to prevent and maintain costly risks and exposures to them.

So when do companies need to use financial risk management? The current theory is that a business should take on risk management project when it will improve the situation for its shareholders. Firm managers cannot add value for the investors or shareholders in a project that can be carried out by the shareholders themselves for similar cost. So in terms of financial risk management, if possible shareholders should hedge risks rather than bringing in a firm to do it for them at the same cost.

But hedging risks internally by shareholders is the best situation using perfect markets, according to business theory. But financial markets are often not perfect markets and firm managers will have better luck creating value using risk management than shareholders would be able to.

For more information on risk management jobs and financial jobs, visit Martin Ward Anderson