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Do your terms cover you when a client says - we already have that candidate?
113 Plays12 days ago
News for 24 Feb and questions of the week - do your terms cover you when a client says - we already have that candidate?
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Transcript
Bullhorn Engage Event Overview
00:00:13
Speaker
A quick reminder, Adele, Bullhorn Engage is next week. It's Thursday, the 6th of March at the Winkstand Royal Randwick Racecourse in Sydney. I'm excited about this, Ross.
00:00:24
Speaker
Are there still tickets available? Only a handful, Adele, as already over 500 people have snapped up their tickets.
Unemployment and Economic Trends
00:00:33
Speaker
Bullhorn Engage is the place to learn about the future of recruitment.
00:00:37
Speaker
For more information, visit engage.bullhorn.com. We look forward to seeing you there. This is the news for the 24th of February 2025. I'm Ross Clennett.
00:00:49
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Australia's unemployment rate rose by 0.1% to 4.1% in January. However, economists say the labour market is showing few signs of slackening. According to the ABS, employment increased by 44,000 month.
00:01:03
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driven by an increase in full-time positions while part-time employment fell. The participation rate rose to a new record high of 67.3%, which was the major cause of the rising unemployment rate.
00:01:14
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The ABS said most of the rise in both employment and unemployment in January was due to more women in the workforce. Female employment rose by 44,000 and unemployment by 24,000. In contrast, male employment and male unemployment both changed by less than 1,000 people, ABS head of Labor Statistics beyond Java said.
00:01:34
Speaker
The ratio of people employed compared to the total population size hit a new high 64.6% in January. point six per cent in january Capital Economics described it as a hot jobs report, demonstrating further tightness in the labour market and likely to keep the ah RBA from cutting interest rates much further.
Interest Rate Updates and Market Impacts
00:01:52
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Sean Langkate from Oxford Economics Australia described it as a relatively strong month for jobs growth and said increased flexibility was attracting new entrants to the labour market and encouraging people to stay in the workforce.
00:02:06
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As expected, the Reserve Bank of Australia cut interest rates last Tuesday for the first time in more than four years, bringing long-awaited financial relief to mortgage holders holders and a likely boost to consumer confidence that many businesses are hoping for.
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The central bank's board lowered the official cash rate target by 25 points to 4.1% after 13 rate rises since May 2022, which left interest rates their highest level 15 years.
Financial Performance of Recruitment Firms
00:02:32
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which left interest rates at their highest level in fifteen years The easing of interest rates was welcome news for the Federal Government with the election due by 17
00:02:41
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Hayes ANZ net fees for the six months to 31 December 2024 dropped by 19% as Hayes Worldwide reported double-digit falls in all four of its global divisions for the first half of the 2025 financial year.
00:02:55
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Hayes Australia's net fees fell by 16% while Hayes New Zealand's net fees decreased by 35%. Overall in Hayes ANZ, temp and contracting net fees decreased by 11% with volumes down 15%.
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Permanent net fees decreased by 28% with volumes down 29%. In commentary accompanying the results, Hayes said ANZ Consultant Fee productivity has improved by 12% year year,
00:03:20
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to reach its highest level since the 2022 financial year. Adding, our new management team has increased accountability and alignment to a performance-based culture. We've removed, split, perm temp desks, more clearly differentiated between 180 degree and 360 degree consultants, and moved up the value chain in temp and contracting.
00:03:40
Speaker
Hayes Group operating profit of ยฃ25.5 million pounds represented a like-for-like decrease of 56% compared to the corresponding period last year, with sales down 5% and gross profit down 15%. Seek Limited's results for the July to December 2024 half-year were announced last week, with revenue declining by 4%, adjusted EBITDA dropped 9%,
00:04:03
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nine percent and adjusted net profit after tax declined 28% to $77 million. dollars CK&Z EBITDA dropped 6% to $216 million. dollars Paid job ad volumes were down 12%, offset partially by 10% increase in average paid ad yield due to dynamic pricing, increase in depth adoption, and strengthening SME customer mix.
00:04:27
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ASX listed
Corporate Growth and Strategic Acquisitions
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Ignite reported revenue from continuing operations fell by 7% in the half-year into 31 December 2024 to million. dollars Gross profit was down to million.
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ebiter for the halfyear rose by forty five percent to seven hundred and twenty four thousand dollars and off the tax profit almost tripled to six hundred and fifteen thousand dollars ASX-listed training and labour hire firm Ashley Services reported half-year revenue of $266 million, a year-on-year fall of 8.5%.
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Reported EBITDA was up 6.6% and net profit after tax rose from $1 million dollars in the corresponding period last year to $1.8 million this financial year.
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ASX-listed IT recruiter Hitech Group reported revenue for the six months ended 31 December 2024, of $34.4 million, dollars up 1.3% compared to the corresponding period last year.
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Gross profit was up 2.8% and pre-tax profit rose 13.8% $4.7 million. dollars Persol, the Japanese owner of local brands, ProGrand and Persol Kelly reported revenue increased 9.6% for the nine months ended 31 December 2024 when compared to the same period in 2023.
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Operating profit was up 18.3% and adjusted EBITDA was 15.7%. AsiaPak revenue was up 16.4% $2.35 billion. asia packc revenue was up sixteen point four percent two point three five billion u s dollars Brisbane-based Talent Path and Melbourne-based Dixon Appointments have announced a new strategic partnership.
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Talent Path co-founders Jodie Felsdeen and Dionne Sharp have purchased a 60% majority share in Dixon Appointments, with Dixon's current owners Catherine Fitzgerald and Lucy Rickeneck remaining as significant shareholders and leaders of the brand.
00:06:24
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According to their respective websites, Talent Path, established in 2007, has 23 employees and Dixon appointments established in 1998 has 16 staff. Both
Workplace Compliance and Employee Relations
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businesses saw an opportunity in a partnership that would allow us to grow and accelerate our strategic goals, said Felsdeen.
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There's been deep alignment between us, so much synergy. We're both very very passionate, people-oriented businesses. Our actual sets of values are so similar. When Catherine and I began exploring opportunities for Dixon appointments, our main focus was finding a way to unlock the next level of growth and success for our brand, added Reconnect.
00:07:01
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JSA's Internet Vacancy Index reported national job ads increased month-on-month by 4% in seasonally adjusted terms in January, to stand at $225,300.
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The post-COVID peak was just over 302,000 vacancies in June 2022. It was the first rise in monthly vacancies since September last year, with the strongest increases recorded in South Australia, up by 7.7%, followed by the Northern Territory, up by 5.7%, and Victoria, up 4.7%.
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and victoria up by four point seven per percent By the eight major occupation groups, the most significant increases in the month were for sales workers, up by 8.6%, followed by machinery operators and drivers, up by 8%.
00:07:47
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Relationships Australia Queensland has backpaid 980 staff, more than $5.6 million, dollars call including superannuation and interest, and signed an enforceable undertaking with the Fair Work Ombudsman to embed workplace compliance.
00:08:02
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RAQ initially identified underpayments while negotiating its 2019 Enterprise Agreement and a compliance review it put in place subsequently identified further underpayments that led RAQ to self-report to Fair Work in April 2023. The underpaid employees worked in a range of full-time, part-time and casual positions covering counselling and casework offices through to back office and support roles.
00:08:27
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Individual back payments ranged from a few hundred dollars to over $55,000. The average back payment was just under $4,400. RAQ has fully backpaid all the workers it has been able to locate.
00:08:42
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According to recent
Workplace Culture and Trends
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studies, office romances aren't just surviving hybrid work, they're thriving in it. Nearly four in 10 US workers have dated a co-worker, a survey from resume platform, Resume Genius, has revealed.
00:08:53
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And the latest research from the career website, Zeti, found that 86% of employees believe remote working has made it easier to form romantic connections with colleagues. Gen Zed grew up being more naturally transparent and open about their relationships, thanks to social media and dating apps, said Eva Chan, career expert at Resume ma Genius.
00:09:11
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Their willingness to date across hierarchies has blurred the lines between personal and professional lives in a way we haven't seen before. The numbers back it up. According to Resume Geniuses survey of 1,000 workers in the US, 45% of Gen Z workers report having slept with a colleague, while 11% have dated their manager, significantly greater than any other generation.
00:09:32
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Meanwhile, 1 in 10 Gen Z employees say their workplace romance has helped them get promoted. Still, the large majority of workplace romances remain undercover. Resume Juniors found that seven in ten relationships are kept private from ah HR or management, secrecy that can lead to challenges, especially when relationships go south or involve an imbalance of power.
00:09:56
Speaker
Job board and careers platform Work180 will list every Australian employer with more than 100 employees on its platform for the first time, reported Smart Company. with its CEO declaring that transparency is no longer a nice-to-have, it's non-negotiable.
00:10:12
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Work180 co-founders CEO Gemma Lloyd and Chief Customer Officer Valeria Ignativa created the first transparent job board for women in 2015 after their personal experiences of discrimination in the tech sector.
00:10:26
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The expansion, which was announced last Monday, has already been rolled out across the platform. We'll see users able to view and compare employers based on employee benefits, workplace policies, pay equity initiatives, paid parental leave and flexible working arrangements.
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Job seekers can access
News Summary
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the data sourced directly from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency for more than 5,000 Australian employers across every industry. And that's the news for the 24th of February 2025. I'm Adele Last.
Ethics in Recruitment
00:10:57
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Stay tuned now for Question of the Week.
00:11:08
Speaker
Question of the week is, do your terms cover you when a client says, we already have that candidate? ah This is an old one, Adele. Has something happened recently for you to raise this today?
00:11:21
Speaker
Yeah, there has been a bit of an argument going on on LinkedIn. There has been a yeah UK recruiter this week who posted about this sort of situation where they'd presented a candidate to a client. The client came back and said, um we already have that candidate from another agency.
00:11:38
Speaker
um As it so turned out in this scenario, the first recruiter hadn't told the candidate, the company. They'd given them all the details about the company except the name. Second agency recruiter had given the name and had the candidate's permission to send the details off.
00:11:51
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Client took the candidate from that second agency. First recruiter was on LinkedIn um blasting you know his trumpet saying, it's wrong. I was first. The candidate should come for me. It's first in best dressed.
00:12:03
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you know I hate this scenario when this happens with clients. Right. Well, I was not trained first in best dressed. Was that how you were trained? No, it was really interesting.
00:12:15
Speaker
It was actually very interesting. There were about half and half. There were half the people who had made comments saying, yes, the client's done the wrong thing and it should come to you. You were first. So that's actually what surprised me about it and made me want to raise it as a question this week.
00:12:28
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But yes, I agree with you. I came from the school of training of it is not first in best dressed. Yeah, um I mean, under the Privacy Act, I was trained the to respect the candidate's private and confidential information, in other words, their resume, predominantly their resume, that you gain their explicit permission.
00:12:49
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to refer them to a specific job with a specific employer, not just a coverall, you can send me anywhere, anytime to anyone. I don't think that's a responsible way to handle a candidate's details.
00:13:05
Speaker
And so my training and the way that I always recruited was that I never sent a resume without the candidate's explicit permission. And this raises a bit of an interesting point because I think we focus a lot on terms of business with our clients.
00:13:19
Speaker
making sure that you know those sorts of scenarios are covered with a client. We don't have terms with a candidate, but maybe we should, Ross? Well, we should have an agreement where this sort of thing is outlined.
00:13:34
Speaker
I mean, there's normally a privacy release form, but they might it might be useful to Well, certainly within the privacy release form, I'd suggest that the agency should be stating what their policy is in terms of the referral of the candidate's details.
00:13:51
Speaker
Yeah. So what about the client's terms, though? What could we be doing to make sure that the terms with your client cover this sort of eventuality? Well, I certainly... okay the caveat is I'm not a lawyer.
00:14:05
Speaker
But I certainly think it's very helpful in um your, let's call it legal and moral position, when your terms state very clearly that a fee is due for a valid referral.
00:14:21
Speaker
regardless of whether the candidate is known to the client or the candidate is a first level LinkedIn connection of the client or whether the candidate's resume is on the client's database.
00:14:35
Speaker
To me, none of those things are relevant. What's critical is that as a recruiter, I alerted up a particular candidate to this job at this point in time and the candidate has not been spoken to about that role either by the end user client or by another agency.
00:14:56
Speaker
They want to be referred to that position and they give me permission and then therefore I make the referral. So therefore the terms clearly cover that and when the client says, oh but they're already on our database, then I'm ready to sort of go back at them.
00:15:13
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like there is a missing part of this in that one, making sure our terms are clear and concise about these sorts of of eventualities. But the second part is recruiters actually understanding it and being able to explain it to a client because I think they're too quick to sort of put the the terms of business under the client's nose, quickly get it signed off, move on. i just want to start working on the role.
00:15:35
Speaker
But it is really important you stop and take the time to explain to the client the important clauses in the terms generally but also to explain to them what our service is. Explain to them that the recruitment service we're providing is about sourcing people and attracting them to the role and getting them interested and getting them to the table.
00:15:54
Speaker
That's what we're actually doing. I mean, in small niche markets, all clients and candidates might know each other, yes but that's irrelevant. We're bringing the person to the table at that right time. Yes.
00:16:04
Speaker
And the the client... in trying to get something for nothing will act or or may act all wounded when they hear from you that you're still asserting your ownership of the candidate referral.
00:16:21
Speaker
And they're like, oh, this is this is outrageous, at what ah whatever. But ultimately, the candidate sitting on a client's database is not a candidate that knows about the job.
00:16:35
Speaker
So I don't get what client logic there is in saying the candidates are on our database. To me, this is part of taking a job as a recruiter, that you should ask the client, do you have your, I mean, assuming you don't know this information, what have you done about assessing resumes that you have on your own database or have in some way sourced previously?
00:16:58
Speaker
And then see what the client says. And then whatever they say, then say, just to be clear, When I speak to a candidate about this role, I will ask them whether they've been spoken to about this role recently. And if they haven't and they are interested and they do give me permission, if you want to hire the candidate, a fee is due, regardless of whether you later find them on your database or whether someone in your finance department has them as a first level connection on LinkedIn.
00:17:27
Speaker
It's irrelevant. Yeah, it's almost stating to them, Now that you've engaged me to work on it, you know all previous you know conversations and database populations are irrelevant. I'm now working in the market in its current state and bringing you the best talent that's available.
00:17:43
Speaker
That's right. And that's what you pay a recruiter to do, to advocate on behalf of a client and their job. And a candidate sitting on someone's database isn't having any job advocated to them.
00:17:57
Speaker
They're waiting for someone to contact them. And clearly, if that client is serious about utilising their own database, they would have done all that before they'd called any recruiters. Yeah.
00:18:07
Speaker
And in this scenario in particular, it was two agencies actually arguing. So the candidate wasn't sitting on the database. It was the candidate that got presented by two recruiters, you know, virtually at the same time, so to speak. But, um you know, it's the same same argument really, isn't it?
00:18:23
Speaker
It is. and And in the case of this LinkedIn back and forth that you're talking about, um um'm I'm sorry, ah really don't have any sympathy for the ah recruiter who did not mention the client company.
00:18:35
Speaker
I mean, doesn't sound like there was any confidentiality issues. Why the hell wouldn't you um The recruiter that did mention the client company and the candidate knew who they or who their details were being referred to, it's like, well, ultimately, i think that um recruiter is due the fee, assuming that the candidate is hired, of course.
00:18:55
Speaker
Yeah, it did it did sound like they hadn't quite done their job. So hopefully they learned a lesson from that. Well, this is a very common area, Adele. And i I've got to say, I'm frequently surprised that recruiters aren't trained to within an inch of their life in how to deal with this, because not only is common, it's probably just going to continue to become more common as LinkedIn is more populated and And due to various platforms, anyone can assert they know anyone and therefore no fee is due. And that's clearly ridiculous.
00:19:29
Speaker
But, um you know, frankly, plenty of clients will try it on. And look, as trainers, we're going to say that. We're going to say train your staff, but we really mean it. This is really important. Sit down and have these conversations with your recruiters.
00:19:42
Speaker
Play out these scenarios. Have a policy around it. You know, be really clear about how are we going to handle this with with a client with each of the different scenarios so that you're really ready and prepared.
00:19:53
Speaker
That's right. You need to deal with it in the moment. When the client says, oh, sorry, but we're not going to accept Gemma because she's on our database, you can't um and ah or say, I don't think that's right. I'll get back to you. In the moment, you should be able to say, oh, so um Adele, I'm not sure why you're raising this. Why why is it relevant that Gemma's on your database?
00:20:15
Speaker
Like, you've got to be ready for that. You've got to make the client feel awkward or embarrassed that they're raising something that clearly they're not on the moral high ground about.
00:20:28
Speaker
um Thanks for listening to Recruitment News Australia. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please share it with a friend, like us or follow us on LinkedIn,
00:20:43
Speaker
or give us a five-star review on your favourite podcast platform. Thanks for listening.