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What is a recruiter's role in handling DEI with clients?
93 Plays1 month ago
Episode 95 features news for 3 February 2025 and Question of the Week, "What is a recruiter's role in handling DEI with clients?
#RecruitmentPodcast #RecruitmentNewsAustralia #Recruitment
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Transcript
Upcoming Bullhorn Engage Event
00:00:08
Speaker
So Adele, quick reminder, it's five weeks until Bullhorn Engage on Thursday, the 6th of March, 2025 at the Wingstand at the Royal Randwick Racecourse in Sydney. But are there still tickets available, Ross? There are $299 each, but less than 100 tickets remain. Discover how to more effectively engage talent and learn about the future of recruitment at Engage. For more information, visit engage dot.bullhorn dot.com.
00:00:38
Speaker
and we look forward to seeing you there.
Trends in Recruitment Activity and Staffing Expectations
00:00:41
Speaker
This is the news for the 3rd of February, 2025. I'm Ross Clennett. According to the JSA Recruitment Experiences and Outlook Survey of over 1,000 employers in December, 2024, national recruitment activity rose with 44% of employers recruiting a one-point rise compared to November. The national recruitment difficulty rate of 47% of recruiting employers declined by three points compared to November.
00:01:05
Speaker
The proportion of recruiting employers who were unable to fill their vacancies within a month fell by five percentage points to 43% in December, only one percentage point higher than the recorded low of 42% in July last year. The share of employers expecting to increase their staffing levels in the upcoming three months increased by 1.219%.
00:01:28
Speaker
Queensland Health has launched an investigation into medical recruitment at Mackay-based Hospital after senior doctors raised concerns. The review will examine the credentialing process over the past two years and where the senior medical officers are working within the scope of their role, education, training, experience and competence. Queensland Health Director General David Rosengren said some doctors were concerned about the uncertainty of clinical scope and supervision requirements for non-specialist senior medical staff. Dr. Rosengren said the review would cover a two-year period from January 23 to December 24. Queensland Health Minister Tim Nichols said, I'm confident Queensland Health has rigorous senior medical officer recruitment and credentialing requirements, so I fully support this investigative work to ensure they're being met. While I understand the community may be concerned on hearing about this investigation,
00:02:23
Speaker
I'm assured clinical reviews to date found no patient harm had occurred.
Healthcare Recruitment Concerns at Mackay Hospital
00:02:28
Speaker
Robert Half revenue fell 6.1% in the fourth quarter of the company reported last week. Most business units posted year-over-year revenue declines except for the productivity division where revenue rose 5.3%. Permanent placement revenue dropped 11.4% and contractor income was down 11.8%.
00:02:47
Speaker
On a 2024 calendar year basis, Robert Half reported revenue was down 9.3% to $5.8 billion, dollars gross profit was down 12.7%, and operating profit was down 39% to $251.6 million. dollars Manpower Group reported 2024 Q4 revenue fell 2.9% in constant currency to $4.4 billion. dollars Gross profit dropped 4.9% to $755 million. dollars US revenue for Manpower Group was up 1%, but revenue fell by 5.5% in France, the company's largest single market. Manpower APAC was down 4% in the quarter.
00:03:28
Speaker
On a calendar year basis, manpower reported revenue was down 3.4% to $17.85 billion dollars and gross profit was down 6.2% to $3.09
Financial Results and Revenue Trends in Recruitment Companies
00:03:39
Speaker
billion. dollars LinkedIn's revenue rose 9% to $4.59 billion dollars in the quarter ended 31 December 2024, parent company Microsoft announced last Wednesday. Microsoft CEO Amy Hood said, in our talent solutions business, results were slightly below expectations driven by continued weakness in the hiring markets and key verticals. LinkedIn Premium surpassed $2 billion dollars in revenue for the first time this quarter, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella noted.
00:04:10
Speaker
subscriber growth has increased nearly 50% over the past two years and nearly 40% of subscribers have used our AI features to improve their profiles, he said. New Zealand has relaxed its visa requirements to attract so-called digital nomads in an attempt to increase the number of days international visitors spend in the country. Under the new rules, visitors can work remotely for a foreign employer while holidaying in the country for up to 90 days, after which they may have to pay residents tax.
00:04:39
Speaker
The change will enable many visitors to extend their stays, which will lead to more money being spent in the country, Immigration Minister Erica Stanford said. The government said the change is applied to all visitor visas, including tourists and people visiting family, partners and guardians on longer term visas. It added that only remote work-based overseas was allowed, while visitors whose employment required them to be in the country still had to obtain appropriate visas.
00:05:06
Speaker
New Zealand is the latest among a number of countries including Japan, South Korea, Brazil, Spain and Portugal that have introduced visa programs for digital nomads over the past few years.
Economic Indicators and Policy Responses
00:05:17
Speaker
An interest rate cut this month is more likely, with official figures showing the RBA's preferred measure of inflation fell to 3.2% over the year to December. According to ABS figures released last week, consumer prices rose less than expected in the final quarter of 2024, while measures of underlying inflation also eased. The trimmed mean, a measure of underlying inflation, slowed to 0.5% in the quarter, below economist forecasts of a 0.6% rise.
00:05:45
Speaker
In the wake of the release, financial markets were pricing in more than a 90% chance of an interest rate cut this month. The RBA will meet on Tuesday 18 February.
Corporate Work Policies and Employee Reactions
00:05:57
Speaker
WPP PLC, the British multinational communications advertising and PR holding company, has sparked a backlash amongst its 115,000 employees after CEO Mark Reed sent a memo earlier last month ordering all group employees back to the office four days a week as of this April.
00:06:15
Speaker
The memo also explained that employees will be required to work from the office on at least two Fridays per month with the flexibility to choose which other days they work remotely. WPP Australia has over 3,000 staff covering subsidiaries including Group M, Ogilvy, Burson, Mindshare and WaveMaker. Since the announcement a petition opposing the policy followed by an open letter to read initiated by an anonymous Australian-based WPP employee have both gained significant traction with the petition currently just short of 20,000 signatures. It is unknown how many of the signatures are from WPP staff. In his memo to staff, Reid had defended the decision writing, I believe that we do our best work when we're together in person. It's easy to learn from each other. It's a better way to mentor colleagues starting out in the industry and it helps us win pitches as a truly integrated team.
00:07:08
Speaker
WPP share prices declined 6.9% since Reid's initial memo was sent. Western Australia has held off a fast-finishing Queensland to remain the country's best performing economy in the latest COMSEC State of the States report released last Monday. Now in its 16th year, the quarterly report tracks eight key economic indicators and compares the latest data with decade averages to rank Australia's six states and two territories.
00:07:33
Speaker
WA top five of the eight economic indicators to lead the national performance rankings in the September 2024 report for the second quarter in a row and only the second time in a decade.
00:07:43
Speaker
While economies had slowed in response to high interest rates in inflation, CommSec chief economist Ryan Fellsman said states and territories had proved resilient due to a strong job market and solid population growth. Queensland moved from third to join South Australia in second spot. Victoria remained in fourth spot and Tasmania was steady in fifth. New South Wales leapfrogged the ACT from seventh to sixth while the Northern Territory remained eighth.
00:08:10
Speaker
WA's top performances across retail spending, unemployment, population growth, housing finance and dwelling starts helped it retain its leading position. South Australia led the nation on real economic growth. Victoria was strongest for construction work and the Northern Territory ranked first for equipment investment. According to SEEK, December 2024, job ads declined for the third consecutive month, down 3% and 12.2% year on year.
00:08:38
Speaker
All states and territories, as did most industries, contributed to the decline. Queensland has remained the most consistent year-on-year with ad volume falling just 4.7% compared to 18.5% in Western Australia and 16.4% in the ACT. Legal 2.5% and farming animals and conservation 1.4% were the only two industries in which job ads rose year-on-year.
00:09:04
Speaker
Over the year, candidate demand, as measured by applications per job ad, was strongest for roles in government and defence, healthcare and medical, and education and training.
Talent Shortage Challenges in the APAC Region
00:09:14
Speaker
77% of employers in the APAC region are struggling to find skilled talent, marking a significant increase from 45% in 2014 and exceeding the global average of 74% according to the 2025 Manpower Group's latest talent shortage survey. The survey, which gathered insights from 10,095 employers across the APAC region,
00:09:37
Speaker
indicates the most difficult to find skills are IT and data, 32 percent, engineering, 27 percent and sales and marketing, 24 percent. According to the report, the APAC IT sector was experiencing the highest level talent scarcity, with 81 percent of employees in the sector noting they are facing talent shortages.
Shift to Four-Day Workweeks in the UK
00:09:57
Speaker
Two hundred yeah UK companies have signed up for a permanent four day working week for all their employees with no loss of pay.
00:10:04
Speaker
in the latest landmark in the campaign to reinvent Britain's working week. According to the latest update from the four-day week foundation, the companies employ more than 5,000 people collectively. Marketing, advertising and PR firms led the charge with 30 adopting the policy. This was followed by 29 organisations in the NGO and social care industry and 24 in IT. and Another 22 companies in the consulting sector had also permanently offered four-day weeks to staff.
00:10:34
Speaker
Supporters say the four-day week is a useful way of attracting and retaining employees and improving productivity. To date, London-based firms are the most enthusiastic accounting for 30% of the total. Research by Spark Market Research suggests that younger workers are the most likely to resist traditional working patterns. About 78% of 18 to 34-year-olds in the yeah UK believe a four-day working week will become the norm in five years' time.
00:11:00
Speaker
while 65% said they did not want to see a return to working in the office full-time. And that's the news for the 3rd of February, 2025. I'm Adele Last. Stay tuned now for our Question of the Week.
The Role of DE&I in Recruitment
00:11:20
Speaker
Question of the Week is, what is our role in handling DE&I with our clients? I think I know why you are asking this question Adele. Yes. I think it's because of President Trump and his recent pronouncements. Firstly, freezing all DEI initiatives in the federal government and I think making people tasked with DEI redundant or
00:11:53
Speaker
um ask him to go and leave. And then secondly, with that tragic ah plane crash in Washington, D.C., where a commercial airliner hit a helicopter and led to 60-odd deaths, that President Trump came out and basically, without any evidence,
00:12:15
Speaker
says that it's DE and I's fault that this has happened and had a go at Pete Buttigieg, the previous secretary of the Department of Transportation and the policies which have lowered hiring standards and led to incompetent people um taking on senior roles. And I assume he's pointing to in air traffic control towers. So that that's why we're talking about it.
00:12:45
Speaker
Let's hope we never have to recruit for Donald Trump or any part of his administration or us, but tell us locally here, you know, DNI is prevalent with many of our clients. So um what is our role in it here, though, locally with your own clients? Well, let lets but let's firstly.
00:13:05
Speaker
the basics of what DE and&I is from a recruitment point of view. DE&I is kind of to me very Aussie. It's about a fair go for all. It's about maximising the likelihood.
00:13:20
Speaker
that everybody, regardless of their background, gets a fair go. Like it's a level playing field for everybody. And where Trump seems to either deliberately misunderstand or he's just ignorant about DE and&I, the way he's presenting it is that it gives opportunities to unqualified candidates. Like it's effectively putting unqualified candidates, unsuitable candidates into roles ahead of qualified candidates. And that's not what the DE&I is about. Or certainly in the pure application of it, that's not what it's about. That's not what should be happening. It's about a level playing field for all. Locally on the ground, our clients
00:14:10
Speaker
apply you know their own policies to us or they may have their own biases. you know we're In the recruitment process, we're coming across this every day. So we are you know presenting candidates who get rejected for all manner of different reasons from our clients. And you know this is a hard one sometimes for recruiters to to overcome, right?
00:14:30
Speaker
Well, it is and a good starting point is to use the client's own policies as a foundation for conversation. So certainly if you're recruiting for any organization, a starting point would be to go online.
00:14:45
Speaker
um on that organization's website, do they have anything to do with the DE&I policy? And if they don't, dealing with the hiring manager, is the hiring manager aware of the company's DE&I policy? Do they have one? And if the hiring manager is not sure, then to assuming that they have HR to ask them.
00:15:07
Speaker
Because if you're as a recruiter attempting to give your candidates a fair go with a client, then generally the most helpful way is to do it through the prism of the client's own DE and&I policy. OK, so that sounds kind of perfect. But, you know, we know the reality in recruitment is that ah the client just wants what they want. They want a candidate that has done the role before and fits in their mind a particular ah criteria around what the person you know looks like, talks like, all of the things. So you know yes, there might be policies or maybe there isn't, but how do we actually get clients to keep a level playing field? And and even in some ways, you know we're trying to broaden their view, ah which will obviously make
00:15:57
Speaker
recruiting the role a little bit easier. How are we going to do this? Well, one of the things to listen out for Adele is when the client says the candidate has to have something. Okay. Have Australian experience. Have five years experience in the industry. Have worked in this role before.
00:16:23
Speaker
Because none of those things guarantee a particular level of competence. It's like the example I always use which is.
00:16:34
Speaker
I've been playing golf for 47 years, so I have 47 years of playing golf. And do you think that gives you any idea of how competent, like, are you confident to make a statement as to my competence in golf? No, because it depends on how often you've played, depends on the training you've had, depends on who you've played against, it depends on the courses you've played in, all of those Factors would influence how good a goal for you are after 47 years. Precisely. So what I have in terms of golf experience is not relevant. What's relevant is what I can do with golf clubs. In other words, what score for 9 or 18 holes am I likely to um rap report?
00:17:23
Speaker
And it's the same in recruitment. When a client asks for a candidate has to have X, Y, and Z, what the recruiter should be listening for is, well, what does that mean they can do? In other words, the client says, I want someone with five years leadership experience. Okay, so if the candidate has five years experience in leadership, what do you expect they're competent to do? Yeah, great. right Because If that's the critical thing, it's not how much or what type of experience, it's what someone can
Improving Candidate Representation in Recruitment
00:17:56
Speaker
do. you know the old you know The one that we all know in recruitment where the client says, I don't want anyone
00:18:02
Speaker
um without Australian experience. Or local. I just want local experience. Precisely. I just want local experience. Now, when you think about it, that's ludicrous because there's nothing unique about Australian experience. Why can't you have gained the skills and motivation for the job in New Zealand or Hong Kong or Malaysia or Zimbabwe? like Yes, in some jobs, there's specific Australian laws that you'll need to know, like if you're an accountant, for example, and certainly a lawyer. But those jobs are the minority of jobs, really. A majority of jobs, you don't need Australian experience. It's it's really the skills to do the job. they' ah They're the critical thing. Well, I think that's an interesting point you make there as well, is that if you base it on the competency to demonstrate that skill,
00:18:56
Speaker
then you don't have to have done it either. I mean, I've only played golf two or three times in my life, but if I was able to ah demonstrate the competency, if I had, ah you know, practiced that and could demonstrate I could, you know, hit the golf ball, then it would be equivalent, you know, it could be equivalent to to the 47 years. You're never going to know that until you start to ask the right questions and test it. So like you said, if if somebody has experienced from overseas, you want to understand, and even if it is relevant, something like accounting or law, have they further um expanded their knowledge locally? Have they got themselves across the local legislation? So have they worked out how to apply their years of experience overseas?
00:19:39
Speaker
through into the current legislative market here? And in a lot of cases, that answer is yes. And that's what clients are missing, right? Well, there was a fairly famous study, I think it was in the US, where there was a comparison between GPs who were like three decades experience as a medical practitioner, and ah GPs who were like within three years coming out of medical school.
00:20:04
Speaker
And the more recent graduates in other words the far less experience gps had a much more or certainly is significantly better accurate diagnosis of patients and.
00:20:20
Speaker
That tells you, I mean, that's just one example. It's not to do with experience. They've probably got more up-to-date training. They're probably paying more attention. They're making fewer assumptions compared to GPs with three or four decades experience. So it is a common misnomer that just because someone is more experienced, it does not make them better at a job automatically compared to people with less experience.
00:20:49
Speaker
So bringing it back to our original question around our role in managing DEI with our clients, it comes down to educating the client. It comes down to challenging, respectfully challenging the client on some of these biases. But ultimately, it's the ability to influence, right? How can we influence our client to get them to create a more level playing field and see people based on merit?
00:21:14
Speaker
That's right. We should never be seen by our clients as the anti-discrimination board or the political correctness police. That's not what our role is. Our role is to genuinely present the candidates that we believe are best suited to the job. Now, that may conflict with the client's view of, oh, they've got to have local experience.
00:21:38
Speaker
with our competence as a recruiter, if we can accurately assess the candidate skills, and even if they've not worked in Australia, and we believe those skills are the equal of another two or three candidates that we've got for our shortlist, then we should present that candidate and explain to the client why. Yes, I know they don't have local experience. However, you said you were after X skill,
00:22:04
Speaker
and why skill and let me tell you why rajesh has x skill and y skill at the level that you need and it's being willing to deal in a constructive. Conversation where there's likely to be tension and.
00:22:23
Speaker
remembering that you're attempting to educate the client. You should not be forcing the client to hire anyone or forcing them to interview anyone because they're not going to do it anyway. But educating the client and having them understand why you are making this particular recommendation about a candidate. And the why comes from you really knowing your candidate, knowing intimate information and detail about your candidate. You've got to have detailed conversations and interviews, you know, recruiters doing You know, 10, 15 minute screening calls and thinking they've got a great candidate to present is just not going to cut it. No, it's not. um I saw a show on Netflix once where the lawyer, very high profile, very successful lawyer, she said ah in response to the question, why are you so good? And she said, I make it.
00:23:12
Speaker
um a personal standard to know more about this case, the facts of the case than anybody else involved in this case. And it's the same thing in a recruiter. If you know more facts about your candidates based on interviews, ah reference checks and other sorts of tests, you've got a much greater likelihood of effectively representing that candidate and educating the client who's typically going to be pushing back just based on a 20 second read of a resume.
00:23:42
Speaker
This is some of the best advice, free advice I've heard in a long time. Ross, will you give me some free advice on my golf game as well? Yes, my free advice is see a golf professional and get proper tuition. Don't rely on well-meaning friends like me to try and ah get you up to speed with golf. Seek professional advice.