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Episode 102 - Tips on running a recruitment process concurrently alongside your client
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News for 25 March 2025 and question - what tips do you have for running a recruitment process concurrently alongside you clients process
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Transcript
AI in Recruitment
00:00:07
Speaker
AI is the buzzword of this decade. Bullhorn is embedding AI capabilities across the entire recruitment lifecycle to empower all your recruiters to work like your best recruiters. Use AI to quickly automate key activities throughout your recruiting workflow.
00:00:22
Speaker
AI agents take on entire workflows, saving recruiters time, increasing their output and giving them more time for human interaction. Contact Bullhorn today to find out more.
Australia's Employment Landscape
00:00:33
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This is the news for the 25th of March 2025. I'm Ross Klenit.
00:00:38
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Australia's unemployment rate remained steady at 4.1 per cent, seasonally adjusted, although total employment and the number of people out of work both declined in February. According to the ABS Labor Market Update released last Thursday, employers shared 52,800 jobs last month at odds with the forecast of a 30,000 increase in employment.
00:00:56
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Total unemployed people dropped by 11,200 612,400 seasonally adjusted. The participation rate dropped 66.8% record high 67.2% January. seasonally adjusted the participation rate dropped to sixty six point eight per percent from a record high of sixty seven point two per percent in january BetterShares Chief Economist, David Bassanese, said the apparent steep fall in employment during February needs to be taken with a grain of salt, pointing to turn-of-the-year seasonal adjustment problems since the pandemic.
00:01:22
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Callum Pickering, economist at Indeed, noted it was the biggest fall in employment since December 2023, but described the jobs market as remaining healthy. That earlier decline didn't derail Australia's jobs boom, and I suspect that'll be true of the February decline as well, he said.
Veritas Recruitment Rebranding
00:01:38
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The directors of Veritas Recruitment have announced they have split the business along state lines, with Veritas New South Wales founding directors Natalie Pedamont and Ursula Lusk rebranding their business as Elements Recruitment Australia based in Parramatta.
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The founding Veritas Victoria directors, Rodney Cox and Georgie Stocker, together with director Carolyn Tarrant, continue as Veritas recruitment at the existing Veritas Melbourne offices in Clayton and Essendon Fields.
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According to the respective company websites, Elements has 15 employees and Veritas has 24 employees. Veritas was established in 2010 by Lusk, Pedermont, Stocker and Cox, who all had previously worked together at Link Recruitment before its purchase by the business that is now known as Randstad Australia.
00:02:27
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NASDAQ-listed RPO provider Hudson Global, a separate company to the recruitment business Hudson Australia, reported challenging conditions in the fourth quarter of 2024. Revenue fell 8.1% year-over-year in constant currency to US$33.9 million. u s dollars All of the decline came from the Asia-Pacific region, the company's largest market, where revenue fell 9.5%.
Julia Creek's GP Search
00:02:51
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The group bottom line declined from $2.2 million dollars profit in to a $4.8 million loss in Q4 2024.
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The tiny Queensland outback town of Julia Creek, population 660, is once again on the hunt for a permanent GP, just two years after its last recruitment campaign made national headlines.
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The pay packet of over $600,000 is about double water GP would expect to make in Brisbane. The town's advertisement captured the attention of Brisbane-based Dr Adam Luz, convincing his family to move to Julia Creek in 2023.
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Dr Luz, his wife Simone and their four young children packed up their inner-city lives, travelling 1,600 kilometres northwest to arrive in the town in March two years ago, they're now returning to Brisbane for family reasons.
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McKinley Shire Mayor Janisi Feagan now faces the prospect of a town without a permanent doctor, a situation the community endured for two years before the Luz family arrived. But Mayor Feagan told ABC News she felt confident the next long-term community doctor was out there waiting to discover Julia Creek.
Qantas Labor Agreements
00:04:00
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More than 750 Qantas Labor High cabin crew members will receive pay increases of up to $20,000 annum. After negotiations between Qantas and the Flight Attendants Association of Australia, the FAAA, were recently concluded, the agreements with labour hire firms Qantas Domestic, Morris Alexander Management and Altera will see their domestic cabin crews receive the same wages as directly employed Qantas cabin crew under the federal government's same job, same pay legislation.
00:04:29
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Qantas domestic cabin crew will see their base pay packets increased by up to $20,000 per year, while MAM and Altara casual employees will earn up to 42.5% more in hourly pay, excluding allowances.
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The FAAA welcomed the result and thanked the three companies for working with the union instead of opposing the applications. This result demonstrates what can be achieved when companies like Qantas sit down and work with their employees.
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Qantas has shown that big business can lead the way and do things better, and we welcome the change under Vanessa Hudson's leadership, Terry O'Toole, National Secretary of the FAAA said. Allowances will increase starting next month, with full base pay increases coming into effect on 14 July for Qantas Domestic and 11 August for MAM and Altera.
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Employees at all three firms will be backpaid to November last year.
National Recruitment Trends
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According to the JSA Recruitment Experience as an Outlook survey of over 1,000 employers in February 2025, national recruitment activity rose with 49% of employers recruiting, the same as one year ago and five points higher than December's result.
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Recruitment activity rates of capital city employers rose by four points from December to 46%, whereas non-capital city employers reported a nine-point rise in recruitment activity to 55%.
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The national recruitment difficulty rate, 43% of recruiting employers, declined by 11 points compared to February 2024 and it's at its lowest level since February 2021. The share of employers expecting to increase their staffing levels in the upcoming three months remains steady at 20%.
00:06:07
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After a notable rise in January, February job ads dropped 1.8% month on month, according to SEEK's employment report for February. With ad volumes down just 7.5% year over year, this is the most stable the market has been since pre-COVID.
00:06:22
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All states and territories recorded job ad declines month on month, apart from WA, where a 0.4% rise was mainly due to construction ads rising 7.1% and healthcare and medical ads increasing by 5%.
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Most industries contributed to the job ad decline in February. Notably, trades and services was down 3.9% and manufacturing, transport and logistics was down 3.4%.
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Community services and development was up 0.9% and administration of support up 0.4% were among the few industries to record job ad volume growth month on month.
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The internet vacancy index also recorded a decline in job ads in February 2025 of 5.9% ah five point nine percent to stand at 209,900. The decline since February 2024 is 15%.
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Analysis of over 2.4 million online job applications in Australia reveals that the median time to fill a vacancy is 32 days, with each role attracting 65 applications.
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The research by corporate ATS platform Smart Recruiters also reveals that of the 65 applicants per job, 6% typically get invited to interview resulting in 2% receiving job offers.
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The 12 months of aggregated application data collected between September 23 and August 24 reveals that job applications in Australia are reviewed on average in six days, with interviews taking place on an average of 13 days after applications are received.
AI Impact on Hiring Speed
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Global companies using AI to fill vacancies do 26% faster than those not using it The research examined 89 million job applications across Australia, France, Germany, the US and the UK.
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According to the study, 83% of Australian applicants accept their job offer, but only 3% of applicants come from referrals and 4% from internal hires, which is significantly below the global average.
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In-house recruiters in Australia are highly efficient, bringing on 78% more hires per recruiter than the global average. Rebecca Carr, CEO of Smart Recruiters, said the data shows that Australian businesses are ahead of France, Germany, the US and the yeah UK when it comes to moving from application to job offer, perhaps reflecting the competition for talent in the Australian job market.
00:08:41
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New data from global consulting firm McKinsey, reported by WorkLife, reinforces the long-held argument that location has a lot less to do with productivity and performance than many bosses think it does.
00:08:52
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In a survey of more than 8,000 employees across a range of industries in the United States, McKinsey found that it's people's work experience that needs an overhaul, regardless of where they do their work.
00:09:04
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The policy mandate itself is far less important than the work environment organisations create and the practices that accompany a policy's implementation, the study determined. Companies that hope to reach their stated organisational effectiveness goals should look beyond RTO policies themselves to address the chronic problems that continue to take a toll on employee experience and productivity.
00:09:24
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McKinsey reported that leaders were much more optimistic about the effectiveness of their organisation's working practices practices than their employees, with a median difference of 27 points, covering skill development, mentorship, innovation, connectivity and collaboration.
00:09:41
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And that's the news for the 25th of March 2025. I'm Adele Last. Stay tuned now for Question of the Week.
Managing Recruitment Processes
00:09:53
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the
00:09:57
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Question of the week this week came from a conversation I had at Bullhorn Engage. What are your best tips for running a recruitment process concurrently alongside your client? Okay, so are we assuming firstly this is a permanent role and secondly that the recruiter has made a request for the processes to be merged and the recruiter to run the whole thing and the client has declined? Okay.
00:10:21
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Yes, it was a permanent role and yes, they had tried to get the client to hand their candidates over so the recruiter could run the whole process, which was declined. And so now they found themselves in that situation of running it concurrently.
00:10:34
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All right. First thing to say is the likelihood of filling this job is low. So proceed with caution. This is a classic where recruiters think their enthusiasm will substitute for the fact that the client will have to pay for a fee.
00:10:55
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And the reality is, if in doubt, the client will go for the candidate where there's no fee attached. So you, if you decide to proceed, are putting pressure on yourself to find a candidate that is clearly better than anyone that the client's found because the client will then agree to pay a fee.
00:11:16
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So you don't know if your candidate's going to be better. You say you need to find ah a much better candidate. You're not going to know that. So from a sourcing perspective, where do you start with this?
00:11:27
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Well, you start with understanding what the client's done so far. so has the client So assuming that none of this has been communicated to you when you've been taking the job, to find to say to the client, um what have you done so far to fill this job?
00:11:40
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So the client says, either we've done nothing or we've done something. um So if they've done nothing and you've attempted to pitch for exclusivity and the client says, no, we're doing our own process and you say, well, what have you done? They say nothing so far. or you ask the client, um okay, so assuming the client has, or the client tells you they've done something, what is that something?
00:12:02
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Like, have they put an ad up? How many responses have they put? How many of those candidates were interviewed? And critically, are there any candidates that are still in the process? And that is an absolutely critical question to ask.
00:12:18
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You need to understand that if there are candidates still in the process and the client hasn't ah told them no, then clearly there's a massive risk here that you're just running a comparison process.
00:12:31
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The client finds that you can't find better candidates or all your candidates are equivalent, so they go with their own candidate. So this is why you're saying that the fillability of this is low, the probability of filling it is low, but what can you do to try and, you know, balance that more in your favour?
00:12:49
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Okay, great. So if you decide... that you're going to source candidates while the client is also doing that, then my recommendation is you say to the client, okay,
00:13:06
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I'm willing to run a concurrent process, but given you're running your process and you're obviously going to prefer ah candidate through your process, what I'm asking for is not a fee upfront or a service fee, but I'm asking for your commitment to interview my best two candidates so they get a fair shot.
00:13:25
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Because I'm concerned I'm going to go through a process, spend a lot of time and get candidates who I think are good, excited about this, knowing your organisation, and then nothing comes of it. And that doesn't that's a waste of my time and it reflects badly in your employer brand.
00:13:39
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So what I'm asking for is a commitment to interview my two best candidates. And clearly, i take the responsibility to ensure that they are valid candidates. So you want the client to say, yes, Ross, I will commit to seeing your two best candidates. And even if I only commit to one better than none.
00:13:59
Speaker
But if they decline to make that commitment, either two candidates interviewed from you or one, frankly, odd I don't think I'd want to go forward. Like, that's telling you pretty clearly the client is really looking at you as an absolute last resort.
00:14:16
Speaker
That's really good advice. I like that idea. Obviously, you're not getting a fee up front, a retainer or or a service fee. So getting that commitment to at least agree to interview your two best candidates is a really clever piece of advice in managing this sort of process and making sure that you've got um the best chance at filling it for the work that you're going to put in. I mean, presumably, if the client is still in the sourcing phase, um you wouldn't want to advertise either, right? Obviously, you want to be sourcing from your own network,
00:14:44
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From your database. You're trying to find candidates the client can't find. Is that right? I'd certainly recommend not advertising. Like, what's the point of putting your own ad up against the client's ad?
00:14:57
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Again, it's going to take you more time. It's going to cost you money to put the ad up. Don't do that. Simply look at your own database. And there's a second thing that's critical. So when the client's sourcing your own candidates at all,
00:15:11
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All we're getting is the resume, maybe a cover letter. So if you want your candidates to stand out, then you need to do all that you can to enhance the credibility of your candidates.
00:15:28
Speaker
Do you know what I mean by credibility? ah Tell me, what do you mean by that? So, I mean, the documentation supporting the case that you're recommending these candidates be interviewed. So, what I mean by that specifically is um ah reference transcript, an academic transcript.
00:15:46
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It could be the results of tests. Maybe you've put them through, don't know, for a junior administrative job, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, something like that. If your candidates come with that ah additional evidence...
00:15:59
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as to their capability and suitability, clearly the client is going to be looking at them and all that evidence versus just resumes that they're getting from their ad response.
00:16:11
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So of course, it's not a guarantee that your candidates will be interviewed, but certainly it's going to greatly increase the chances that your client sees your candidates favorably because of this additional evidence about the candidate's capability.
00:16:27
Speaker
I think that's a really good point ah that you're making there as well, that you are in a position to provide so much more information about a candidate than the client would normally get from their standard applications, even really from their phone screen. I mean, you know, you're an expert recruiter. You know what you're doing. You know how to ask the right questions. so in addition to um the factual data, like you said, might be a reference check result, might be some test results, might be a piece of work you can give as an example,
00:16:57
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You'll also have your own notes from your conversation, either phone call or interview or both, so to further boost the resume. That's the information that's not on the resume, right? Isn't that what we get as recruiters? We get that additional info that's going to make the client hopefully that much more interested in your candidate and also make them sort of go, well, this is just an easy process. What comes from the recruit is really good quality data.
00:17:20
Speaker
Precisely. Resumes are just, let's call it one dimensional data. So when you provide that ah additional information, that's adding a second dimension.
00:17:31
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And obviously the third dimension is the candidate in person. So the interview. And that's where the recruiter, that if they are going to take this on as an opportunity, i would say, if you're not providing that additional evidence with your candidates, then you're not providing enough compelling reasons for your clients to consider your candidates as certainly worth interviewing. Secondly, worthy of a fee that they wouldn't be paying from the candidates they've sourced themselves.
00:18:02
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really good point. you're You're really making sure that the fee that you're um going to charge at the end of that process is justified. You've done some work for that fee. You've not just thrown up a couple of resumes to see whether they compare.
00:18:16
Speaker
You've actually done your job as a source, as a recruiter in sourcing, um preparing the candidate, um putting them forward with, as you said, that additional data. I know some agencies are using video profiles as well, getting the candidate to do a little live video so the client has, you know, seen how they communicate even before they get in front of them.
00:18:35
Speaker
there's There's a lot of other things they could be doing, um recruiters can be doing to make sure that they're, you know, putting a substantial um stamp on their candidate as differentiated from their client's own.
00:18:47
Speaker
And to your earlier point, the the client, even if they don't hire your candidate, they look at the additional evidence that you've provided about candidate capability.
00:19:02
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And hopefully next time they have an opportunity that's relevant for you as a recruiter, they go, you know what, I like that additional evidence that came from Adele and her candidates.
00:19:15
Speaker
I don't think I'm going to go through my own process. I'd prefer to get that sort of white glove service from Adele. So that's the other thing, that even if you lose the battle, you win the war because the client's sufficiently impressed with the service that they'll come back to you.
00:19:30
Speaker
Excellent. Some really great tips and advice. I hope the person who asked me the question is listening and ah gets that feedback around the best advice we can give you on managing that process with your client.
00:19:44
Speaker
Thanks for listening to Recruitment News Australia. If you're enjoying the podcast, please give us a review on your favourite podcast platform or share the details of the podcast with a friend.