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Episode 10
379 Plays1 year ago
Episode 10
Subscribers are telling us that the weekly dose of recruitment news in 15mins is welcomed. Join Adele and Ross in running through all the news you need to know.
Question of the Week:How do I respond to a client that wants to see more candidates at any part of the process when the client is saying to me "send me more" or "who else have you got"?
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Transcript
Australian Labor Market Trends
00:00:07
Speaker
Welcome to Recruitment News Australia. This is the news for the week beginning Monday the 22nd of May 2023.
00:00:16
Speaker
The latest internet vacancy index results continue to point to the ongoing strength of the Australian labor market, with job advertisements increasing by 3.6% in April to stand at 294,500, the highest result since August last year. All six dates recorded increases in ads across April compared to March, with South Australia up 8.2% leading the way, followed by Victoria and Western Australia.
00:00:44
Speaker
SEEK's employment dashboard for the same month reported slightly less sunny results with a 1.4% decline in April job ads compared to March. SEEK's results showed rises isolated to just South Australia and Western Australia with the four other states recording month on month declines. Applications per job ad increased by 7.7% in April compared to March.
Business Insolvencies in Construction
00:01:09
Speaker
Business failures are grabbing the headlines with official data confirming that it has been tougher for businesses to survive in 2023 compared to 2022. Figures from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission show that there were 828 insolvencies in March compared to 464 at the same time last year. The March result was a three and a half year high and 15 percentage points above the pre-COVID average of 720 insolvencies.
00:01:39
Speaker
Business collapses dropped to record lows during the pandemic as a result of government stimulus and an enforcement hiatus from the Australian tax office. Construction firms, including high-profile casualties like Porter Davis, have been by far the hardest hit with just over 1,600 insolvencies in the financial year to date, with the accommodation and food services sector next hardest hit with 818 insolvencies.
00:02:06
Speaker
SEEK's temporary and casual staffing platform Sidekicker appears to be going through a turbulent time, with a significant number of voluntary and involuntary departures across the sales team in recent months, with much recruitment sector experience being lost.
LinkedIn's New Job Seeker Feature
00:02:21
Speaker
And Insider told me that hospitality placements, the main driver of Sidekicker's revenue, has recently lost steam and the overall business is significantly behind budget.
00:02:32
Speaker
LinkedIn has taken notice of the age of the purpose-driven company as job seekers increasingly want the places they work for to align with their values. In response, it's rolling out a new feature allowing job seekers to search for companies that share their values. The tool called Commitments lets organizations on LinkedIn select and display their values from a set list of five, including work-life balance, diversity, equity, and inclusion, career growth and learning,
00:03:01
Speaker
social impact and environmental sustainability. When looking for career opportunities, users can filter their job searches by those commitments. Next to a company's commitments, job seekers can click on a question mark that leads to more information about the tool, including this disclaimer, LinkedIn does not review every submission. Displaying commitments is an honor system that relies on organizational administrators uploading authentic material.
Japanese Staffing Firms Revenue Report
00:03:30
Speaker
Japanese staffing giant Persol reported revenue for the full year ended 31 March 2023.
00:03:36
Speaker
up 15.4% compared to the same time the previous year. Gross profit was up 17.3% and EBITDA rose 13.8%. In the Asia Pacific segment, represented by the Purcell Kelly brand in Asia and the programmed brand in Australia, revenue was up 26.8% to US$2.7 billion.
00:04:01
Speaker
Recruit Holdings, Japanese headquartered owner of local brands Chandler McLeod and People Bank reported revenue for the fourth quarter ended 31 March 2023, up 9% when compared to the same period last year, although operating profit was down 57%. Nasdaq listed Kelly Services reported first quarter revenue fell 1.4% year over year in constant currency. Asia Pacific revenue for Kelly Services rose 6.5%.
00:04:31
Speaker
Japanese recruiter Will Group, owner of local brands DFP Recruitment, Key Appointments and Ethos Speech Chapman reported revenue was up 9.8% for the full year ended 31 December 2022 compared to the same period a year prior. Gross profit was up 39% although operating profit was down 2.8%.
00:04:54
Speaker
Japanese staffing firm Outsourcing, owner of local brands Klix, Hoban, Bluefin Resources, PM Partners, Jigsaw Talent Management and Horizon One reported revenue rose 13.2% for the first quarter ended 31 March 2023. Gross profit was up 11.5% and profit before tax was up 19.6%.
00:05:19
Speaker
The April seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in Australia rose to 3.7% from 3.5% in March.
Western Australia's Workforce Incentives
00:05:28
Speaker
Compared to March, total employment declined by 4,300 jobs, unemployment rose by 18,400 workers and the participation rate declined 0.01% to 66.7%.
00:05:44
Speaker
Western Australia is launching a new five and a half million dollar program that aims to put older workers into work and incentivise employers to do just that. The Job Reconnect Program targets job seekers who are age 45 and above, as well as those exiting the justice system and facing other barriers to employment, according to the WA government.
00:06:06
Speaker
JobReconnect targets workers who may be overlooked by employers because now more than ever their transferable life skills, knowledge and experience can be harnessed to fill jobs in demand, said the WA Training Minister Simone McGurk in a statement. With the initiative, the WA government is looking to ease shortages across the state in the construction, hospitality and health industries, according to the statement.
New Zealand's Health Sector Investment
00:06:30
Speaker
The New Zealand government is earmarking an additional $1.3 billion to hike wages and recruit more talent in the country's challenged health sector. To help stabilise our workforce, we are investing over $1 billion in increasing health workers' wages and boosting staff numbers with a focus on areas facing greatest demand," said Health Minister Aisha Veral. This budget includes $63 million of funding to recruit an additional 500 new nurses in the country.
00:06:59
Speaker
New Zealand's budget 2022 saw the investment of $76 million over four years to boost the health workforce, particularly primary care and nurses.
Recruitment Process Challenges
00:07:21
Speaker
Question of the week is, how do I respond to a client that wants to see more candidates at any part of the process?
00:07:29
Speaker
the client is saying to me send me more or who else have you got? Well I think let's start with the assumption this is a new client. If you're dealing with someone you've dealt with before hopefully you have a way of working where this doesn't happen or happens infrequently. So this starts when you take the job and you're dealing with a new client
00:07:49
Speaker
You have a conversation with the client firstly about the expectation in terms of timeframe. So how soon are you expecting to present candidates? And when we say shortlist, it could be one candidate or it could be four. It doesn't really matter because the concept is the same when you present a candidate or candidates. And when you do that,
00:08:14
Speaker
Hopefully you know enough about the market for the role that you're being asked to recruit where you can accurately approximate the number of candidates where you say to the client, this is a tough brief. And if we get one or two, that'd be great. Or I'm confident that this is one that I can, um, deal with fairly promptly and I can have a short list of four candidates by next Monday, whatever it might be.
00:08:43
Speaker
And then you say to the client, when I present candidates, I'm recommending you interview them all for the simple fact I would not be recommending them unless I believe they were appropriately matched to the brief that you've given me.
00:09:01
Speaker
So are you willing to interview all the candidates that I recommend? Actually ask the client. Like it might seem a bit confronting, but better to know upfront whether they're the sort of client that's going to go, Oh yes, you know, I'm going to trust you that unless there's some red flag, I'm going to see them all. Or the client says something like, Oh, well, actually I need to check with such and such. And you find out that there's some other decision maker that's actually involved.
00:09:28
Speaker
So a lot of time can be saved by having that sort of conversation when you take the job brief. So Del, what about the next step? What about when you actually then get to present the candidates? How can you maximize the likelihood the client doesn't just sit on the referrals and actually agrees to interview all the referrals? Yeah, such good advice you've given there, Ross, at the start of the process. And you're right. The next step is when you're making that presentation.
00:09:57
Speaker
of candidates to the client, I think it's really important that you are using that kind of language where you're saying to them, the presentation of a candidate by me is a recommendation. I'm referring them to you for the explicit purpose of the interview. I'm not just sending people to see whether they fit. So I think being really confident and using the right sort of language around it, presenting the candidates to the client, ideally,
00:10:23
Speaker
directly, manually, in person or on a video call or on a phone call is a great way to make sure that the client is able to discuss any concerns or objections they may have with you. If you just send across your shortlist on an email, you're opening yourself up potentially for a ghosting opportunity there or perhaps a lack of detailed feedback. So by saying to the client, part of my process involves me presenting that shortlist back to you. Just let them know that's part of the process. This is how I work.
00:10:53
Speaker
and getting a second meeting, as I said, in person or in another form, but actually sitting down with the client and walking them through your shortlist to make sure they understand who you're presenting and why they can voice any concerns or objections they might have. You can counteract or counterbalance those with your knowledge and detail of the candidate with the aim of getting 100% conversion there. If you present three candidates, then you want to get three interviews. You want the client to interview
00:11:21
Speaker
all of your recommendations so that you have a better chance of filling the job, but also of being able to understand what's really needed by the client. So it's important that you're building trust with the client all the way through the process, because a lot of this comes from the way the client feels about you and trusts your advice. And also looking at your influencing skills, I think is really critical. So if you're struggling with this one, I think it might be something to address. If you feel like you're
00:11:50
Speaker
presenting to clients and they keep asking for more candidates that you might need to address your own influencing skills and perhaps pick up some training in that space. So a couple of things I'd say I absolutely endorse using the word recommended. These are candidates that I'm recommending. I'm recommending that you interview them.
00:12:13
Speaker
Like not just, do you want to interview this candidate? The moment you ask that question, you're handing control over to the client. It sounds like you have doubt about the candidate. And I was trained never to have doubt, or if you've got doubt, then express some concern, but you're still recommending an interview, but you might raise a question mark about a particular candidate.
00:12:39
Speaker
The other thing that I'd add to what you said Adele is provide context.
00:12:46
Speaker
And what I mean by context is if you just present candidates without context, the client will assume you've just plucked the closest candidates off the database. Whereas if you explain to the client with metrics, these are the number of candidates I've considered. This is the number of conversations I've had, the number of interviews I conducted. And if you actually, it's called the funnel technique. If you take the client through the funnel,
00:13:15
Speaker
the steps, effectively the long list, the phone screen and the interviews and then the shortlist that I'm now presenting to you, that context helps the client here. You've done the work. You've actually gone through a process. You haven't just picked the candidate or candidates you think are best based on they turned up in your search first. You've actually gone through an assessment process.
00:13:43
Speaker
That maximizes the likelihood that the client is satisfied, at least for the time being, to interview the candidates that you've recommended rather than wants to sit on them and ask you to go back to the world to get some more water here. Yeah, and you absolutely don't want to be submitting more candidates till you have feedback on the ones in play. So, never accept that, you know, I'm calling the Cookie Monster Syndrome of
00:14:11
Speaker
You know, me want more cookies, me want more candidates. Don't accept that from a client. If they haven't given you feedback, if they haven't responded to you in detail about why they think the candidates are not suitable, then don't go and send any more. It's really important that you get your candidates to be interviewed by the client ideally so that you can also fine-tune the process if you need to. Especially in those early stages of a new relationship, that first interview your client does is critical.
00:14:37
Speaker
in helping you understand whether you've got the brief right. And this is a partnership approach. If you've done all of that work to refer candidates, the client's not fulfilling their part of the bargain by saying, well, actually, I'm not going to give you feedback yet. Send me more candidates. It's like, no, no, no, no.
00:14:53
Speaker
I'm not looking for any more candidates. I need feedback, not just on the candidates based on my recommendations, but on at least one interview. Like, at least interview one candidate because that gives me something concrete to go on. And I'm recommending candidate X.
00:15:10
Speaker
So again this could be a little bit challenging for a new recruiter but i tell you what if you just allow the client to keep asking for more resume's and you like a good puppy dog goes and plays fetch with the ball you are setting yourself up for just more and more of the same. Great advice thanks Ross. Thanks Adele that's a wrap.
00:15:33
Speaker
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