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Episode 7
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Episode 7
Up to date Australian content and news of the industry. Stay up to date by simply spending 15 mins listening to Adele & Ross.
Question of the Week:Why do my clients invalidate non-Australian work experience and what can I do about it?
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Transcript
Introduction and Recruitment Experience
00:00:07
Speaker
Welcome to Recruitment News Australia. In case you don't know who we are, firstly, my name's Ross Clennet. I started my recruitment career in 1989 as a permanent accounting recruiter in London. I work for four different agencies across a 14 year period. I started my training and coaching business in 2004. I've been publishing a weekly newsletter and blog since 2007.
00:00:37
Speaker
And my name's Adele Lust. I've been working 26 years in the recruitment sector for a range of small private and larger publicly listed recruitment agencies. I've worked as a GM and managed recruitment businesses before starting my own company three years ago involved in creating a pathways program, including training for new recruiters coming into our industry.
Workforce Challenges in Defence
00:01:06
Speaker
And this is the news for week commencing 1st of May, 2023. A defence strategic review warned that all areas of the Australian Defence Force, the Australian Public Service and the defence industry already face significant workforce challenges and must adopt creative and flexible responses to ease these pressures. Some of these measures include relaxing fitness standards for cyber professionals and other non-traditional army roles, recruiting more foreigners
00:01:35
Speaker
and making it more appealing for former soldiers to return to defence. Policy, process, risk appetite and approaches to recruitment must change to increase the speed from application to enlistment, the review says. Recruitment time must be achieved in days and not months. Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles says the government would have more to say about recruitment in the lead up to the budget. The largest review of the country's defence strategy in 35 years
00:02:03
Speaker
recommends expanding the eligibility pool of potential recruits to better align recruitment requirements to the specific needs of each role, especially in key technical areas and specialist trades such as cyber engineering and space. The other half of the battle is retention. The 2021-22 Defence Annual Report shows the permanent ADF headcount fell by 1,422 people in the 2022 financial year.
00:02:30
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even though just over 5,000 people enlisted.
Degrees vs. Trades: Career Satisfaction
00:02:35
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Although Australia's two most popular states recorded falls in job advertisements, the seasonally adjusted Internet Vacancy Index rose 0.1% month-on-month to reach 282,100 job advertisements in March.
00:02:51
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Declines in New South Wales minus 4.8% and Victoria minus 6.3% were offset by rises in all other states with Tasmania 25.7% and Queensland 8.4% recording the largest increases followed by South Australia 4.9% and Western Australia 4.3%. Bachelor's degrees are a popular option among young students.
00:03:16
Speaker
But new data suggests university might not be the best option for those seeking happiness and wealth in the early years of employment. Almost 3,000 young people were surveyed as part of the Australian Industry Group's research into the real trajectories and early career paths of 25-year-olds, with nearly half holding a bachelor's or postgraduate degree. Tradies performed better than their tertiary educated counterparts, with a difference of 16% between the group's wages at that age.
00:03:45
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Although the report notes, we should exercise some caution in drawing conclusions comparing pay at age 25, as other evidence suggests higher qualified workers are likely to have stronger wage growth over their careers. One of the key findings in AI reports group was the benefit of learning in real world settings and with almost all post graduates and apprentices reporting full employment by 25. Meanwhile, only 92% of those holding a bachelor are fully employed at this age.
00:04:15
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Post graduates and apprentices also recorded the highest levels of job satisfaction with respondents particularly pleased with the opportunities for further training as well as the chance to use their skills and experience on the job.
Job Cuts and Temporary Hiring Trends
00:04:29
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There were more high profile job cuts this past week in Australia. Australia Post being one of the latest companies to cut jobs with 400 rolls announced to be axed from its Melbourne head office starting at the executive level
00:04:44
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and then moving on to GMs, heads of departments and other senior roles. The organisation said no frontline roles would be impacted. At its recent half year financial results, Australia Post announced it will report a full year loss the first time since 2015. Our thoughts receive approximately 2.4 letters a week, a third of what they received 15 years ago, with modelling predicting that it will fall to just one letter per week by the end of the decade.
00:05:15
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Software-based startup Culture Amp, which was recently valued at $2 billion, also revealed this week that it was laying off 9% of its staff with around 100 roles to be impacted. One of the big four accounting firms, KPMG Australia, is set to slash 200 roles, having increased headcount by over 2000 people in 2022.
00:05:39
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one of KPMG's big four rivals to let Australia won't be doing the same according to Chief Executive Adam Poick. Although hiring will be slowed with the firm having cut the number of active job ads on LinkedIn to almost 600 down from more than 1,000 ads before Easter. South Dakota posted the lowest jobless rate among all US states in March at 1.9%. The US Bureau of Statistics reported the lowest
00:06:08
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rates were in Nebraska and North Dakota at 2.1% each. In addition, seven states in March posted their lowest jobless rate since 1976. Nevada had the highest unemployment rate among all states in March at 5.5%. Meanwhile, small business owners in the US are shifting away from permanent full-time hiring and have rapidly switched their preference to employing temporary part-time workers or contractors instead.
00:06:34
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Small business owners' rate of hiring only temporary part-time workers and contractors has skyrocketed to a record high of 25%, up 6% from February, and is 19% higher than it was in December at just 6%.
Staffing Firms Financial Performance
00:06:50
Speaker
Ransad, the world's largest staffing firm, reported per working day revenue for the first quarter ending 31 March 2023, declined by 4.2% compared to a year ago. Gross profit was down 2% on an organic basis. Underlying EBITDA fell by 9%. Revenue in Ransad Australia New Zealand was up 5% year on year and up 8% compared to the December 2022 quarter.
00:07:20
Speaker
Jaime, an AXE-listed local staffing platform for temporary and permanent hiring, reported revenue for the quarter ended 31 March 2023 of $5.13 million, an increase of 53% when compared to the same period a year ago. Gross profit improved 40% year on year to reach $450,000.
00:07:42
Speaker
Manpower Group reported its 2023 first quarter results with revenue falling 2.2% year on year in constant currency to 4.75 billion US dollars. Australia grew 1%, US fell, the United States fell 13.4%, the UK declined 11% and France, manpower's single largest market, grew 2.5%.
00:08:10
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Global search firm Heinrich & Struggles reported net revenue fell 13.7% year-over-year in constant currency to reach US$293 million. Heinrich & Struggles had 432 executive search consultants at the end of the first quarter compared to 394 at the end of the same quarter a year ago. Revenue per consultant for the quarter was US$1.8 million.
00:08:40
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compared to US$2.5 million per consultant one year ago. Talon platform operator Freelancer reported March 2023 quarter gross payment volume of $311.7 million, a 4.6% year on year decline.
00:08:59
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The average project size registered on Freelancer in the first quarter was $243 USD, up 3% year over year.
Recognition of Overseas Experience
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Adele, our question of the week this week.
00:09:25
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Why do my clients invalidate non-Australian work experience and what can I do about it? This one's one that's a bit personal to me, Ross, having come from a migrant family myself who had a real and valid work experience overseas and had to come to Australia and pretty much start again.
00:09:51
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I absolutely understand the pain of this kind of question, both for the candidate and for the recruiter in this process. So I totally understand what people are meeting with this one. And it's really frustrating that there is a perception that overseas experience isn't comparable to Australian experience. You know, it isn't relevant. We know that that's the case, but there is that perception in the marketplace, in the workplace, in your clients.
00:10:20
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cultural environments that it isn't the same. And it's really wrong. I mean, often in most cases, it's a steeper learning curve for migrants to come to Australia. They have to come and learn new ways of doing things, new cultural environments, new jargon, new slang, all of the things that they need to learn to fit in. And they're also dealing with, in most cases, working in an environment where English isn't their first language.
00:10:50
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They're now speaking completely in English. And, you know, that's a bit of another bugbear of mine is, you know, communication requirements around accents. And look, our industries are worse, to be perfectly frank. We are not great at being flexible around what we mean or understanding what we mean by communication. I will get that as a criteria with my clients saying they need to be able to communicate well, I want somebody who's a great communicator.
00:11:17
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And what they're actually meaning is I don't want somebody with an accent. And it really frustrates me again because somebody's accent is not indicative of the way they communicate. They are two very separate things. So I'll hop off my soapbox for a minute, but this one's a bit personal. Well, let me just pick up what you've said about accents because I think it makes a difference, or you will find as a recruiter, it will make a difference.
00:11:44
Speaker
whether that is a, let's say, let's say the way it is, whether it's a white person's accent or a brown person's accent, because I don't know about you, but I've got some Glaswegian friends. And even though they've been in this country for a number of years, they can still be pretty difficult to understand. And
00:12:07
Speaker
Not any easier to understand than people who may be from the subcontinent and also have an accent. So I think there is a racist element or there can be a racist element there.
00:12:26
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And moving on to the work experience specifically, well, in my experience as a recruiter, the type of hiring managers that requested Australian experience only were the people who'd never worked outside of Australia. So how would they know what it was like in workplaces outside of Australia?
00:12:51
Speaker
And again, you put up a candidate who's only ever worked in Auckland, or Cape Town, or London, and you'll find that non-Australian work experience isn't a real hurdle. But if it's other countries, then perhaps it is. And this infuriates me. Yeah, so it could be, you know, it's an
00:13:20
Speaker
ignorance element, really, because they're not understanding. As you said, in most cases, they may not have even worked overseas themselves. So it's a it's ignorance around understanding what the experience is about. And I guess it is about them getting the client to really unpack the person's experience and understand how it is relevant, understand where it is more like than unlike in terms of the candidate's experience to the job. So really doing
00:13:49
Speaker
your job as a consultant in matching up the kind of experience the person's had, regardless of which country it is from, where they've had the experience, but really matching it up to the job criteria. Exactly. And I recruited in accounting, and this was relatively easy because accounting globally is pretty much the same everywhere. Yes, of course, there are some legal differences.
00:14:16
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But the actual profession of accounting operates the same all around the world. So I focused on proving that my candidates had the accounting skills to do the job on offer.
00:14:31
Speaker
Well, of course, acknowledging that this candidate may be working in an Australian environment for the first time, but that's something that won't take that long to pick up, but they can actually do the job. And this is what recruiters have got to focus on. What are the requirements to do the actual job?
00:14:53
Speaker
have the client focus on those things, the most important things, because where the candidate has gained that particular experience is far less relevant than the fact that they can actually do the job.
Skill-based Hiring Strategies
00:15:07
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's a really great point, perhaps for us to finish on, that as a recruitment industry, we have to be part of the solution on this and not part of the problem. So we absolutely can't perpetuate these issues
00:15:20
Speaker
We absolutely can't accept client requirements that say, I want the money to have local experience. We really need to push back on the client, help stop this happening and get the client to really understand
00:15:33
Speaker
the quality of the experience and not the location of where it occurred. And also, Adele, let's be really frank, we've got employer groups in this country crying out for the government to let more workers from outside Australia come in. So what's the point once those workers come in that the actual employers themselves are still saying, oh, no, you know, you don't have Australian experience. I can't consider you like that's ludicrous.
00:16:02
Speaker
So, you know, it supports Australia's economy if all employers think about skills, not where the person gained the experience, because we've got all of these people coming into Australia believing these workers, believing that they're going to get work because Australia is crying out for workers. How do you think they're going to feel when they hear from employers like, oh, well, you don't have Australian experience? It's completely contrary. It's completely ridiculous. And it's completely counterproductive.
00:16:32
Speaker
to employers hiring the best people for the job and I wish they would stop it straight away. No argument for me. That's a wrap. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts from. Google, Apple, Spotify or on our website.