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Episode 18
409 Plays1 year ago
Recruitment News Australia Podcast is going from strength to strength, the feedback has been very positive as Adele & Ross update listeners with all the news of the week for the Australian recruitment industry and then discuss a question of the week.
Question of the week: "How do you instil a sense of urgency in a rookie recruiter?"
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Transcript
ASIO's Email Mishap
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Speaker
This is the news for the week beginning 17th July 2023. For an organisation that relies on secrecy and confidentiality, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, ASIO, made a monumental stuff-up two weeks ago when it unintentionally exposed the names and email addresses of dozens of rejected intelligence job applicants.
00:00:31
Speaker
Last Tuesday, it admitted it had sent a group email with recipients accidentally placed in the OpenCC address field rather than the ShieldedBCC field, even though the spy agency requires job seekers to keep their applications strictly secret. The hugely embarrassing error has sent recruiters and senior staff at ASIO into a flurry of activity to fix the data breach, contacting erroneous recipients to apologise and tell them to delete the rogue email.
00:01:00
Speaker
On 6 July 2023, an email was sent externally to a number of individuals. The person sending the email made an unfortunate and regrettable error, an unnamed ASIO spokesman told the Mandarin. This was a human error that should not have occurred. ASIO takes mistakes of this kind extremely seriously. We have reached out to each individual in writing and over the phone to own our mistake and sincerely apologise.
Legal Action Against BYC Recruitment
00:01:26
Speaker
The Fair Work Ombudsman has commenced legal action against a former recruitment agency BYC recruitment based in Queensland and its General Manager, Aaron Murray. The regulator investigated after receiving a request for assistance from a worker the company employed as a full-time business development manager between July 2020 and November 2021.
00:01:46
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The Fair Work Ombudsman alleges BYC, without reasonable excuse, failed to comply with a compliance notice which required it to calculate and backpay the workers' entitlements. It is alleged Murray was involved in the contravention. BYC faces a penalty of up to 33,300 and Murray faces a penalty of 6,660. In addition, the regulator is seeking a court order for BYC to rectify the alleged payments in full plus superannuation and interest.
Page Group's Profit Drop
00:02:17
Speaker
Page Group last week reported that global second quarter gross profit fell by 6.5% on a constant currency basis when compared to the same period a year ago. The group said the decrease was against a record comparative period in 2022. The strong performance in temporary recruitment net margin, up 11.1%, did not offset the 11.4% decline in permanent recruitment net fees.
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Page Group Australia reported a 4% year on year decline in gross profit for the three months to June. Robert Half Australia reported a record year for the 2022 calendar year with revenue up 18% to $154 million and profit after tax jumping 37% to $9.4 million. Robert Half Australia MD David Jones attributed the record result to huge improvements in permanent recruitment broadly.
00:03:12
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and the technology division specifically.
Queensland Police Recruitment Drive
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Speaker
About 15,000 people from overseas have expressed interest in joining the Queensland Police following its global recruitment drive announced in February this year. Under an agreement struck between the state and federal governments, the Queensland Police Service, QPS, has approval for 500 international recruits to join the service each year for five years.
00:03:36
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Queensland Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll said 314 applicants are already in the pipeline since the program kicked off in February. We hope to get the first of those in the academy by October, she said. We have had interest from everywhere, Singapore, Fiji, South Africa and across the world and this is already without really starting to advertise in other countries. I think we'll easily fill that 500 each year for the next five years.
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The recruits would complete a fast-track four-month training course instead of the usual eight months at the academy. Commissioner Carroll said recruits relocating from the UK or Canada would also benefit from other incentives, such as receiving $10,000 when they start at the academy and another $10,000 at the end of their first year in the force.
Hiring Retirees in Australia
00:04:24
Speaker
Nearly 6 in 10 employers across Australia have hired a retiree in the past 12 months in a bid to bridge the gaps within their workforce, according to a new report. Recruitment agency Robert Half found that 58% of 300 hiring managers said they'd employed someone who'd retired, but has since returned to the workforce in the past year. Another 37% of employers said they were considering the possibility of hiring a retiree, while only 5% said they have no future plans to do so.
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For 47% of those employers who hired a retiree, they said they would do it again. According to the report, the most common reason stated by employers for hiring a retiree were
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They have specialised expertise, nominated by 60% of employers. Two, they can contribute quickly, 57%. Three, they have strong business acumen and knowledge of key business issues, 51%. And four, they can mentor less experienced colleagues, 49%. On July the 1st, the retirement age in Australia was increased to 67 years of age, although it remains illegal to force someone to quit once they reach the official retirement age.
Greg Savage's Book Tour
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And this week sees the start of the Australian leg of the Greg Savage Book Tour promoting the release of his second book, Recruit the Savage Way, the follow up to his 2020 book, The Savage Truth. Promoted by APSCO, the Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth events are on this week and next week the Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane events take place. For more information about these events you can visit APSCOAU.org.
Criticism of Recruitment Agencies
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Last week the NSW Health Minister Ryan Park vowed to crack down on the use of private recruitment firms
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saying the government's over-reliance on costly third-party companies to service the state's health system is unsustainable. Park, who's ordered a special commission of inquiry into health spending due to release its terms of reference imminently, said the system had become over-reliant on what he described as a temporary fix to regional and rural health worker shortages. The Sydney Morning Herald kicked off the debate earlier last week when it quoted State Greens MP Amanda Cone
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Speaker
who worked as a local doctor in regional New South Wales towns for years before entering Parliament at the last election, accusing recruitment agencies of deliberately driving up staff costs while also discouraging medical workers from taking full-time jobs in the public health system. Cone said that because some recruitment agencies were paid via commission, they were incentivised to price gouge our hospitals.
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Russ, you wrote a blog about this last news article this week and I know you had a little bit more to say than just what we've reported. Yes, yes I did Adele. It is unfortunately a
00:07:19
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And the currents from time to time where recruitment agencies are an easy target for people with a bit of a media profile. And this happened again this week. And yes, I did devote my blog this week to having a go back, shall we say. Tell us what points you were making. Tell us the basis of it.
00:07:39
Speaker
Well, I suppose a couple of the main points were that the Herald was accusing recruitment agencies of discouraging health workers from taking full-time jobs by having a breakage fee in the contract. Now, that may not sound familiar to listeners, but what they were referring to by a breakage fee was a temp-to-perm fee.
00:08:06
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And of course, as we all know, Attempt to Perm Fee is not exclusive to the health sector and certainly not exclusive to contracts with New South Wales Health. Attempt to Perm Fee is in fact the feature of all recruitment agency contracts. Why? Well,
00:08:21
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protect ourselves because otherwise there is the incentive for an employer to hire attempt for a week and go you're great we'll hire you permanently and we're not going to pay a fee. In other words an employer is using two separate services from a recruitment agency but only paying for one. So commercially it would be completely unviable for recruitment agencies to operate without attempt to perm fee
00:08:46
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And the way the Herald have written about attempt to perm fee is if it's something that is illegal or immoral or unethical and that is absolutely not the case. The second major point that really irritates me about this is what we're talking about is the supply issue.
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OK, New South Wales Health is using recruitment agencies because they're not able to access the doctors that they need. And guess what? They're not very good at doing it themselves, because if they were good at doing it themselves, they would not need recruitment agencies. So recruitment agencies are filling a vital need. We are helping where demand is there to meet it with supply.
00:09:35
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Recruitment agencies cannot restrict supply and that's one of the inferences of the article in some way we're restricting supply we can only act as an intermediary we cannot restrict or expand supply.
00:09:54
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who can restrict and expand supply, governments and the professional organisations that represent medical professionals. So, for example, the Australian College of GPs, the Australian, or Royal, I think they are Royal Australian College of GPs, the Royal Australian College of Surgeons,
00:10:12
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They restrict the number of doctors who can operate in those respective fields because of the compliance and exam requirements for people to be a member of those respective bodies. So in fact, we have nothing to do with restricting supply. It's governments and those agencies that are all those professional bodies that aren't. That's what pisses me off because we get the blame for something that is not of our making.
00:10:42
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It sounds like a bashing, I agree, and it sounds like they are condemning the firefighters as opposed to going and seeking out the arsonists. You've got to go back down to the cause, not the people that are trying to fix it at the front end or help with it at the front end.
00:10:59
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So true, Adil. And this is just typical of the media. They want something that creates debate and they want an easy target. And the recruitment sector in their world is an easy target rather than actually digging into the issue and understanding what's causing the problem. And one thing is for absolute sure.
00:11:20
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It's not recruitment agencies and it's not the recruitment sector causing this problem. It is the government and those professional bodies that are the major cause. But will we see those stakeholders taken to task by the Sydney Morning Herald? Highly unlikely. That would require real journalism, Russ. Yes, and that unfortunately is in thin supply
00:11:46
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within the Sydney Morning Herald and the age over the past few years in my experience. Sure. So your local medical recruiter will be feeling a bit bashed around the ears this week. Maybe they'll need a hug. Yes. Reach out to your local medical recruiter. Thank them for the great work that they're doing and support them when you have the opportunity to do so because they sure as hell have not received any support from the state government and New South Wales Health this week.
Instilling Urgency in New Recruiters
00:12:24
Speaker
So this week's question of the week for us is one that I get from a lot of my clients. It's a bit of a complaint or perhaps an area of concern around new recruiters. With my program, I'm placing a lot of new recruiters into recruitment agencies. And the question is, how do I get my rookie to work with a greater sense of urgency or understand the sense of urgency required in this recruitment role?
00:12:49
Speaker
So I get that because when I think back to my very first job in London at accountancy personnel, I would have thought that if you'd asked my boss Kim at the time, where could Ross improve the most? I suspect she would have said, urgency. He's not showing enough urgency. So I completely get that.
00:13:09
Speaker
So firstly, setting expectations about urgency. Clearly, recruitment agencies are agencies that are going to be successful because they feel jobs quickly. And that's kind of like doer obvious to us old hardened veterans. But for a new person, this is not obvious at all. So actually spelling it out.
00:13:30
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It's not just filling jobs that clients give us, but filling jobs quickly, not just quickly, but faster than any other way that the client can get the job filled through another agency or through their own sources. So that's the first thing. Secondly is model it. Have it modeled for the rookie. In other words, have the rookie sit next to and shadow the person in the team or the company who demonstrates the greatest amount of urgency. Like there's nothing
00:13:59
Speaker
Like sitting next to someone who's pumping out phone call after phone call, talking to candidates, talking to candidates, talking to candidates, calling the client, calling candidates back, arranging interviews, confirming interviews, like actually seeing it for real is very powerful. And then finally, it's just giving the rookie feedback about their urgency, making sure it's one of the things that's very explicit in the way
00:14:30
Speaker
the end of the day or the feedback that's been provided at the end of the week, how urgent they have shown themselves to be. And again, considering the benchmark of just starting out where you rate that and what else they could or should be doing to increase that sense of urgency. What about you? What what else or firstly, do you agree with those things and what else might you add, Adele?
00:14:57
Speaker
Yeah, I do agree with them. I would probably add one more around looking at some control measures or tools that you could use to help increase somebody's urgency or understand that urgency. So, you know, diary blocking or, you know, making it a little bit more of a game, perhaps even where you're sort of challenging them to, you know, okay, we're taking this job order, I'm going to give you 10 minutes to go and find a candidate, come back to me, let's reconvene and trying to
00:15:27
Speaker
put a time clock around things so that they start to feel that pressure of moving more quickly and using some of those, as I said, control measures around diary management or blocking or putting a time limit on it so that they have to move by a particular time of the day to get something done. So I'd look at control measures. But often what I'm doing with this question, Ross, is I'm actually doing some conditioning
00:15:55
Speaker
with my client or with the manager themselves because I try to get them to remember what it was like when they were a rookie because I think that's part of the issue with this. It's a bit distorted that for some people, it's 20, 30 years ago when they were a rookie and they forget what it's like, that the urgency comes from being able to do things on repeat, that the repetition is what makes us faster at it.
00:16:21
Speaker
If you think about an analogy like making a cake, the first time you ever make a cake, it might take you an hour. You don't know what you're doing. You've got to read everything carefully, follow the instructions, weigh everything out, really go slow. But once you've been making cakes for years, you could probably whip it out quick without a recipe, even in 20 minutes. It's a much easier thing to do the more that you've done it. So often it is about those things you're talking about in
00:16:48
Speaker
helping the rookie and modeling and measuring and setting expectations, sure. But I'm often also saying to the leader or the manager, just give it a little bit of time. They're still learning. You should remember what it's like. Just take a step back and let them develop that urgency once the repetition of the job or the task is under the belt. It reminds me of one time I had
00:17:16
Speaker
my wife and I had a couple over for dinner and I realized I hadn't prepared the hummus. So I've made hummus a lot. So I just prepared the hummus in front of this couple without a recipe because I don't need one. And I just remember the guy just kind of being slightly gobsmacked by after I'd made it and then he tasted it and he said like, wow, this is fantastic. And he said, you just made that in like five minutes. I said, well, yeah, I've made it like,
00:17:44
Speaker
I don't know, hundreds of times before he was quite flabbergasted because... I'm expecting some hummus, Ross. I want to taste that, please. Or I'd like the recipe. Well, you know, it depends. Do you like it more garlicky or more lemony or slightly a little more dairy with a bit more yogurt? So it's a bit creamy. It depends. I can make it according to your taste at all. Very good. That's a wrap.
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