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What are the top 5 things you wish you knew when you started in recruitment?
94 Plays15 days ago
News for 4 November 2024 and Question of the Week, "What are the top 5 things you wish you knew when you started in recruitment?"
#RNA #RecruitmentPodcast #RecruitmentNewsAustralia
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Transcript
Introduction & Sponsorship
00:00:09
Speaker
Adele and I are pleased to have Bullhorn as a sponsor of recruitment news Australia. In today's world, your agency's database must be in the cloud, secured and accessible wherever you are in an office, at home or on the move. Bullhorn's recruitment software is a home base for your team. Not only does it help you manage your entire recruitment process, but it also acts as a central hub for the rest of your tech stack. Visit bullhorn dot.com for more information.
HACE's Exit Strategy
00:00:38
Speaker
and this is the news for the week commencing the 4th of November 2024. I'm Adele Last. Australia's largest recruitment agency, HACE, has exited the largest employing sector in the country with the formal notification by the new global chief executive, Dirk Hahn, that healthcare and social assistance was no longer a specialism HACE would operate in Australia. In the HACE 2024 annual report, Hahn says,
00:01:04
Speaker
we have conducted detailed analysis of our operations on a business line basis. In financial year 24, this has led to a number of businesses being closed, including our healthcare and social care businesses in Australia, New Zealand, and UK and Ireland, which were subscale. Healthcare and social assistance, HSA, is easily the largest employing sector in Australia, with 2.26 million workers accounting for 15.6% of the nation's workforce.
00:01:32
Speaker
In the annual report, Hahn, in talking about the decision to close various business lines around the globe, says, we have been decisive and there are some early signs of success, particularly in Australia where the changes our MD Matthew Dickerson and team have made are starting to bear fruit. Also in the report, Hahn states his golden rule, which is operating profit growth must be greater than fee growth, which in turn must be greater than headcount growth through the cycle, suggesting other underperforming specialisms are under the microscope and may suffer the same fate as healthcare.
Economic Indicators & Inflation Concerns
00:02:04
Speaker
The September quarter consumer price index released by the ABS last Wednesday saw prices increase 0.2% in the quarter with the annual rate of headline inflation easing to 2.8%. This marked the first time the quarterly measure has fallen into the ah RBA's target band in more than three years. As expected, the cooler CPI has been mainly driven by the introduction of electricity rebates and lower automotive fuel prices.
00:02:31
Speaker
While the headline CPI is good news, economists think it is unlikely the ah RBA will ease interest rates as the impact of electricity rebates on inflation is temporary and does a little to address the RBA's concerns about inflationary pressures. Underlying inflation was three and a half percent for the year to September, still outside the ah RBA's target band.
Leadership Scandal at Wisetech
00:02:53
Speaker
Australian billionaire Richard White has stepped down as the CEO of technology company Wisetech.
00:02:59
Speaker
effective immediately after multiple allegations were made about White's inappropriate behaviour. The saga began with wellness entrepreneur Linda Rogan's federal court battle against White over a bankruptcy note he issued to her relating to a $90,000 furniture bill. Rogan had alleged White expected her to enter into a sexual relationship with him in exchange for investment in her business, but earlier last week she filed a notice of discontinuance after the two parties reached a settlement.
00:03:28
Speaker
An investigation by the nine newspapers revealed allegations of bullying and sexual harassment against White as well as a seven-year relationship with an employee which ended with her being gifted a luxury waterfront mansion worth $7 million, dollars none of which was disclosed to the WiseTech board. The company's share price has fallen over the past week after details of the number of relationships White had with female employees and people outside his company.
00:03:53
Speaker
Wight co-founded WiseTech Global in 1994 and still owns 37.5% of the company. The company's market capitalisation of $39 billion dollars makes it Australia's biggest ASX-listed tech company, although it has lost 17% of its value in the past month. The WiseTech board has announced Wight will take a short break and then transition to a full-time consultancy role, with his compensation unchanged at $1 million dollars a year.
Potential Merger in Employment Sector
00:04:20
Speaker
The boards of MEGT Australia and GeForce Employment and Recruitment announced last week that they were exploring a potential merger. MEGT is a not-for-profit business group training organisation established in 1982.
00:04:34
Speaker
with two offices in Melbourne, one in Adelaide and one in Albany in West Australia. GeForce Employment and Recruitment is a for-purpose community organisation that supplies employment and recruitment services across vi regional Victoria via eight offices. The boards have affirmed they believe Emerger would provide strategic benefits for both organisations and have started a due diligence process. Further update is expected once that is complete with the aim for Emerger decision by the 31st of March next year.
Revenue Trends in Recruitment Firms
00:05:06
Speaker
ASX listed Jaime reported September 2024 revenue of $7.7 million dollars up 11% compared to the same period a year ago, although down by 5.1% from the June 2024 quarter after the one off effect of losing a large client contract. The group also reported a record gross profit of $804,000 for the first quarter up 8.4% compared to the September quarter last year and up by 1.6% quarter on quarter.
00:05:35
Speaker
Randstad reported revenue per working day was down 5.9% year on year in the third quarter of 2024 to 6.01 billion euros. Gross profit was down 10% year on year. EBITDA adjusted for one offs was down 28% and operating profit was down 32% to 167 million euros. Total revenue in the Asia Pacific region was down 5% with Randstad ANZ down 14%.
00:06:04
Speaker
APAC operating profit declined 28% to 23 million euros. New Zealand listed recruiter Accordant Group Limited has announced a $1.4 million dollars loss for the six months to the 30th of September this year on the back of a 31% year-on-year declining group revenue to $89 million. Accordant's white collar brands, Madison Recruitment, Absolute IT, Jackson Stone & Partners and Hobson Levy were responsible for a 28.6% year-on-year fall in revenue and a dramatic plunge in profitability from a 3.3 million half-year profit last year to a $330,000 loss this year.
LinkedIn's Growth & AI Innovations
00:06:44
Speaker
LinkedIn revenue rose 10% in its fiscal first quarter to $3.23 billion, u s dollars according to parent company Microsoft, which announced results for the quarter ended 30th of September.
00:06:56
Speaker
In a conference call with analysts, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also touted LinkedIn's new AI-powered hiring assistant for recruiters saying, already hirers who have used AI-assisted messages see a 44% higher acceptance rate compared to those who don't.
Workplace Flexibility Controversy
00:07:14
Speaker
The Commonwealth Bank has threatened staff with the loss of bonuses if they did not return to the office. Last year, ComBank announced a return to the office requiring staff to attend their physical place of work at least 50% of the time.
00:07:27
Speaker
with the edict coming to effect earlier this year. While the majority of our people are meeting the expectation, we continue to see some patterns of attendance that are falling short, ComBank said in an email. ComBank warned staff their office connection would be reviewed every month for the next 12 months. Employees will receive a warning if they do not attend the office, followed by a formal letter if they continue not to meet the in-person requirements.
00:07:51
Speaker
Finance Sector Union National Secretary Julia Agrisano slammed the letter accusing the Bank of bullying staff. Despite louding itself as the most technologically advanced bank and spending billions on technology so that customers are increasingly being forced to self-service, the bank is demanding staff act as if technology and flexibility doesn't exist, Agrisano told the Australian. If this email is confirmation that face-to-face engagement is so important to the bank, we look forward to the CBA reopening the bank branches they took from customers.
US Economic Outlook
00:08:22
Speaker
The US economy expanded at a robust pace in the September quarter as inflation-adjusted gross domestic product increased at a 2.8% annualised rate after rising 3% in the previous quarter, according to the government's initial estimate published last Wednesday. The figures should keep the Federal Reserve on track to continue cutting interest rates in the coming quarters, including at their meeting this week.
00:08:47
Speaker
GDP held above 2.5% for the sixth consecutive quarter. That's the longest stretch of such solid growth since 2006, Bill Adams, Chief Economist at Cometrica Bank, said in a note. In additional positive news, US consumer confidence rose in October with its largest single-month gain since March 2021, reflecting optimism in business conditions, the job market and incomes.
00:09:12
Speaker
The share of US consumers that said jobs were plentiful rose to 35.1% in October, up from 31.3% in September.
Benefits of Hybrid Work
00:09:22
Speaker
Trip dot.com, one of the world's largest online travel companies with 40,000 employees, has recently completed substantial research into the impact of hybrid work, concluding that there were no overall changes in employee productivity. However, employee satisfaction rose and the rate of employee turnover fell.
00:09:41
Speaker
Approximately 1,600 of its China-based employees in marketing, finance, accounting and engineering volunteered for the study and were randomised into two groups based on whether their birthdays fell on even or odd dates. The control group went into the office five days a week for six months. The treatment group went into the office on the same three days each week within the same timeframe. After a analysing data for the six-month experiment and subsequent performance reviews for the next two years,
00:10:08
Speaker
The two groups showed no difference in productivity, performance review grade or promotion. Those working under the hybrid model had a higher satisfaction rate and 35% lower attrition. Quit rate reductions were the largest for female employees, non-managers and those with commutes of more than one and a half hours. Overall, company quit rates fell by more than a third, saving the company millions of dollars a year in recruitment, induction and training costs.
00:10:33
Speaker
The researchers identified three key factors contributing to the success of hybrid working at Trip dot.com. They were that the company had rigorous performance management systems, employees have a coordinated schedule of when their team will be in the office together, and the company executive leadership team is supportive of a hybrid policy. Trip dot.com's data showed hybrid employees were working about one and a half hours less per home day, superficially suggesting these employees were working less However, in examining the data closely, it was discovered hybrid employees put in longer hours on their office days and weekends to ensure they continually met rigorous performance expectations. And that's the news for the week beginning the 4th of November, 2024.
Recruitment Lessons with Adele & Ross
00:11:19
Speaker
I'm Ross Clennett. Stay tuned now for Question of the Week.
00:11:35
Speaker
Question of the week this week is, what are the top five things you wish you knew when you started in recruitment? What do you think Russ? Uh, Adil, the first thing that comes to mind is that people lie and don't take it personally. Like I was so naive when I started in recruitment, I was 22 and a half. And, uh, oh yes, I'll get back to you tomorrow about booking interviews.
00:12:03
Speaker
Yes, I'll definitely attend that interview tomorrow. Oh, that sounds like a really good job. Let me check with my partner and I'll come back to you. Blah, blah, bla blah, blah. It's just the nature of recruitment. People lie. They don't lie like maliciously, but they just lie. And it just took me a long while to realize, it's not personal, Ross. People lie. You've just got to factor that in. You can't call them a liar.
00:12:30
Speaker
but you you've just got to follow up. Like if the client says, I'll call you tomorrow and I'll have the interviews confirmed. And if they haven't called you by five o'clock, then ring them at five past five, hold them to account for the things that they said. So it just took me a long while to realize that it just wasn't personal. It happens to all recruiters and I just had to factor it in. Okay. I've got one around people as well and For me, it was about the idea that I couldn't help everybody. And I know it's a clichรฉ. I know people say, oh, you get into recruitment to help people. But you do when you start. You get in thinking that you're going to, you know, change the world a little. You're going to make somebody's day. You're going to be able to give great feedback. I remember getting feedback that I thought was fantastic and really helpful for a candidate. And when I delivered it to the candidate, they got really angry with me.
00:13:24
Speaker
So the idea that I can't help everyone and I can't give them, you know, all of the things that they need, it took me a while to learn in recruitment. And I had to tone that down and come back from that a little more ah in terms of, yeah, trying to help everybody. I had similar thing. I remember, I think it was month 2 of my career in London, one of my colleagues took me to the pub.
00:13:47
Speaker
And she said, Ross, you look really stressed. And I told her about these candidates that I was feeling stressed. I hadn't got interviews for. And she said, Ross, let me tell you something. You can't help everyone. If they don't have skills that you can commercially utilize and place, it's not your fault. And it was like, oh, it was like, like Globe lit up for me. It's like, oh, I don't have to help everyone. So yes, I absolutely agree with that.
00:14:16
Speaker
Good. What else have you got on your list? ah So as an extrovert Adele, I talked too much and it took me too long to learn, particularly recruiting accountants. Most accountants are introverts, not all of them, but most. And so I needed to not talk as much.
00:14:37
Speaker
I needed to talk slowly. I needed to pause. I needed to give them time to think and respond. I was terrified of dead air. And so I'd jump in and I'd keep talking. And I just remember coming back from a client meeting one day and greg Greg Savage had come to the meeting with me as my director.
00:15:00
Speaker
And we got into the car and I thought the meeting had gone really well and I was expecting Greg to give me this really sort of effusive feedback. And we're driving off and Greg just said, you talk too much for us. I was like, oh, okay. like like ah So that was a powerful lesson. And yeah, it just took me a bit too long to learn.
00:15:24
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a really valuable valuable one for everybody because we'd need to have better listening skills. You know, that active listening would definitely all, I think, probably be accused of talking too much. So I agree with that one. ah Another one I had was um I would have done more work in planning and organizing. I think I just jumped in a lot of times, you know, you were just so enthusiastic and keen to get something done and and just jump in and and action things.
00:15:51
Speaker
And you did it to your detrire own detriment sometimes because you fell over yourself or or things fell over because you weren't organized around it. So if I could go back now, I would have, yeah, be better at planning and organizing myself earlier in my career. I think I would have had better outcomes sooner. Took me a while to learn that one. No doubt the same for me, Adele, when you say that.
00:16:13
Speaker
I was just go, go, go, just the day got underway and I'm just in action the whole time, which is great. Cause of course that's what helps you be successful. But I think back now and just carving out more time to just stop and review. Like I did do that, but I think if I'd done it more frequently or ah had done it for longer periods of time, I definitely would have benefited.
00:16:43
Speaker
Another one I had down was a bit of a leadership one. When I started to manage people, I learned that, you know, your actions speak louder than words, you know, it didn't matter how much you sort of said to people or how well crafted something was in terms of it being written or verbally delivered. At the end of the day, people observed what you did, you know, how, how your behavior and your responses to things impacted the team. And that was really powerful for me when I learned that one as an early leader.
00:17:12
Speaker
Yes, again, I would say the same that ah I didn't think when I was first promoted to be a leader, I was still predominantly just focusing on recruiting and I just wasn't thinking clearly enough about particularly the action in spending time with my people.
00:17:36
Speaker
Because ultimately, you can say you care about people, you can say you care about their performance. But if you're spending most of your time with candidates and clients, and you're not devoting yourself to the people that report to you, then yeah, that that kind of sends a pretty clear message and not a very good one.
Podcast Conclusion & Listener Engagement
00:17:56
Speaker
I think for me, um all jobs are not the same. That just took me too long to learn. I Again, like many rookie recruiters, when you start out and you get jobs in, you're like, oh, you know, I want to fill this job and you work hard and you keep working hard and you keep working hard.
00:18:18
Speaker
regardless of how close you are to filling it. And certainly now, what I recognize was that I treated all jobs like they were high probability jobs. And many jobs, as many recruiters, particularly when they start get started on, is low probability jobs. Now, nothing wrong with working on low probability jobs.
00:18:40
Speaker
Just don't spend fifteen hours for example on a low probability job spend two or three hours see if you can make sufficient progress see if you can get interviews booked or whatever.
00:18:51
Speaker
but just don't keep working on it. And I think, again, like many recruiters, I got seduced by the fee, like, oh, the fee is going to be this amount, rather than objectively and critically and soberly looking at well what's the likelihood of firstly filling the job, and then secondly, of the job staying filled. Because of course, you can fill a job, but if they're not a great quality client, the job's probably going to go credit.
00:19:19
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with that one. I think early on, you just sort of so desperate, aren't you? You're so hungry to to get a run on the board and you probably accept jobs that later on in your career, you'd say that's not a job, but sometimes not even a job at all. Yeah. I'm just going to walk away from it. Yeah. What about for you? What's another one? Another one is that I think that um I would have had better balance, you know, when I look at it now, I,
00:19:47
Speaker
really threw myself into the job. I was, you know, I was young and single. And I worked, you know, 10 hour days every day, for for months to years, like it was not unusual that I just lost, you know, hours and hours of my own time, which I loved at the time, I didn't think anything of it, I just worked and worked and worked. And I was loving the job and earning lots of money and all of those things. But it was at the detriment of, you know, some personal friendships and and relationships and things that I lost focus on outside of work. And I regret that. I regret that I didn't keep a better balance early on. And I certainly encourage people to to try to do that and keep the balance earlier. um Because, yeah, as I said, I think it can get out of balance really quickly. I think you just get so focused on the job and you think, you know, that friend's going to be there when you go back to call the months later and they're not and they're gone or, you know, the friendship's gone or it's started to wither away. So
00:20:43
Speaker
you know, keep those friendships. That's what helps you be a good recruiter. I think that's the bit that people miss, you know. yeah It's how you build yourself up outside of work and be rounded as a person, which actually makes you better as a recruiter. You know, it's a bit like saying, you know, parents who get to sleep are better parents. You know, if they can have a good night's sleep, they come back as better parents. It's the same thing with recruitment, I think. If you, if you're kind to yourself outside of work and keep a bit of balance, exercise if that's what it is for you or you know, read a book or keep keep the other activities going outside of work because they're as important to keep you in ship shape for the job itself. Yeah. Again, I agree. When I look at my, certainly in Australia, when I returned from the UK, I, when I was working at Temporary Solutions, I was starting work at sort of, sort of 7.30. Well, I was getting to work at 7.30. I was probably starting work at 8.
00:21:37
Speaker
And I was leaving work sort of between 5.30 and quarter to six. And I really wasn't taking much of a lunch hour. I was eating, we didn't even, we didn't actually even have a lunch room. So, I mean, I was eating lunch at my desk. So I was working very solid, you know, pretty much 10, close to 10 hours, certainly nine and a half hour days. These recruiters today don't know what they've got. We didn't even have lunch rooms back then. hey Yeah.
00:22:03
Speaker
let alone fridges that were and full of full of everything. But yeah, certainly, I think my family went in Sydney, and that's where I was working. So it was easy for me to just work the hours, socialize with the people I work with, because I really enjoyed their company. They were at a similar stage of life to me. They were working hard like me.
00:22:23
Speaker
Um, so that, that's just kind of the way that was, but I remember one night I fell asleep at a Jeff Healy concert in, at the Enmore Theatre and my mate was just horrified because Jeff Healy plays pretty loud guitar. but I was so exhausted. So yes, I certainly think I overworked. There you go. Well, is that five? Have we done five each? We probably have five earnings. Uh, well, you've got one more.
00:22:47
Speaker
um Well, just one I think is just target market. It just took me too long to work out which companies were worth pursuing, which organizations weren't. And again, like many people, when they start their recruitment career, all clients look the same. but It took a while to realize that some clients were just too hard to recruit for for varying reasons or didn't they have enough volume, weren't profitable enough. And yeah, just took a bit too long for me to learn that.
00:23:13
Speaker
So that's some really interesting um learnings from both Ross and myself. Hopefully you heard some there that might resonate with you or you know give you some food for thought about where you're currently on the path in your recruitment career. And certainly a nice trip back down memory lane Adele. Hey, are you liking listening to our podcast, Recruitment News Australia? If you are, it would really help if you could give Ross Kleiner and I a five star review on whatever podcast app you listen to it on.
00:23:42
Speaker
please hop onto the review section and give us a review next time you're listening on your favourite episode. And thanks for listening.