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Episode 14
373 Plays1 year ago
Episode 14
This weeks Recruitment News Podcast covers all the news from around Australian and includes some international content for the industry. Join industry heavy weights Ross Clennett & Adele Last and see if they agree on this weeks burning question.
Question of the Week: What to look for when hiring a 'rookie' for your team?
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Transcript
Australia's Employment Overview
00:00:07
Speaker
This is the news for the week beginning Monday 19th June 2023.
00:00:15
Speaker
The Australian labour market continued its bull run with a seasonally adjusted unemployment rate dropping from 3.7% in April to 3.6% in May, even though the participation rate reached a record high of 66.9%. Total employment rose 75,900 to exceed 14 million workers for the first time and the total number of unemployed declined by 16,500. Just over three quarters of the new jobs were full-time roles.
00:00:44
Speaker
Job advertisements, as recorded by the Internet Vacancy Index, decreased by 2.9% month on month in seasonally adjusted terms in May 2023 to standard 282,300. This follows an increase of 3.1% in April.
00:01:01
Speaker
According to the SEEK Employment Report, applications per job ad rose 4.8% between April and May, and are now only 1% lower than in May 2019. In the year since May 2022, Australia has recorded 3.4% total employment growth, outstripping the US's 2.7%, and Canada's 1.8%.
US Staffing and Recruitment Trends
00:01:26
Speaker
This year, staffing industry analysts counted 251 staffing firms with $100 million or more in US revenue up from 225 last year, according to the largest staffing firms in the US 2023 report. Healthcare staffing firms represented 30% of the firms on the list, while IT staffing providers represented 28%, and industrial firms represented 25%.
00:01:53
Speaker
The top five firms by US generated revenue representing 16.9% of the total spend on US staffing services are Allegious Group with 11.4 billion, AR Healthcare with 11.2 billion, Randstad with 5.4 billion, AMN Healthcare Services 4.6 billion, and Express Employment Professionals at 4.3 billion.
00:02:20
Speaker
US Jobs Board Zipper estimates that there are just over 222,000 corporate recruiters currently employed in the United States. 62.5% of all corporate recruiters are women while 37.5% are men. The average age of an employed corporate recruiter is 41 years old. In 2023, female recruiters in the US earn 94% of what a male corporate recruiter earned.
00:02:48
Speaker
69,504 compared to 74,173.
00:02:55
Speaker
Global hiring plans are more optimistic than earlier this year, according to the latest Manpower Group Employment Outlook survey of nearly 39,000 employers in 41 countries for the third quarter. The research is based on survey responses in April 2023. The Net Employment Outlook, NEO, is 5% higher at 28% than the previous quarter at 23%.
00:03:19
Speaker
The NEO is calculated by subtracting the percentage of employers who anticipate reductions in staffing levels from those who plan to hire. Manpower Group's data showed that 43% of employers plan to hire in Quarter 3, while 15% expect a staffing decrease, 39% plan to keep workforce levels steady, and 3% are undecided.
Australian Workforce Challenges and Solutions
00:03:44
Speaker
For the rest of the world, it was the great resignation that immensely challenged workplaces at the peak of the pandemic. However, in Australia it's the so-called great burnout.
00:03:54
Speaker
This is the conclusion of researchers from the Future of Work Lab at the University of Melbourne, who discovered in a survey of 1,400 Australians the lasting toll of the pandemic on the workforce. In the 2023 State of the Future Work Report, it found that young 18 to 34-year-olds and middle-aged 35 to 54-year-old employees have poor mental health. In fact, poorer mental health than other workers, where one in two said they feel exhausted at work.
00:04:23
Speaker
These prime age workers are less motivated about their work and unable to concentrate at work because of their responsibilities outside of work, the report said. These prime age workers are also twice as likely to feel that they don't have enough time at work to do everything that they need to do. The situation is prompting over one in three prime age workers to consider leaving their roles.
00:04:45
Speaker
The report is urging workplaces to prioritise mental health and provide greater support that addresses issues like burnout and mental distress. We need to acknowledge the trauma of the pandemic is lingering and identify clear solutions to support this exhausted, fatigued and overexerted workforce. A new way of working such as flexible work is also essential, as they've been shown to lessen the burden for many workers, according to the report. We must understand pre-pandemic ways of working didn't work for many,
00:05:13
Speaker
especially didn't work for parents, didn't work for caregivers, didn't work for people living with chronic illness, didn't work for groups vulnerable to discrimination at work. It didn't work for people forced to commute long distances. So going back to normal means continued disadvantage for these groups, the report concluded.
Technological Awareness in Australia
00:05:32
Speaker
Writing a resume is the most common work-related use for chat GPT according to a YouGov survey. However, only just under half of all Australians have heard of chat GPT. 34% of Australian men have used chat GPT compared to only 14% of Australian women. Of those who have used chat GPT, 51% have used it for business or work purposes, with the most common use being writing a resume, which was nominated by 32% of users.
00:06:01
Speaker
while 21% of chat GPT users admitted they had used it to write an online dating profile.
CBA Underpayment Issue
00:06:09
Speaker
Employees of the Commonwealth Bank were underpaid by over $16 million, according to the bank, as it admitted that it knowingly underpaid its staff through widespread use of individual flexibility arrangements, IFAs. The CBA has been accused by the Fair Work Ombudsman of failing to pay $9.74 million to 5,014 employees, while its subsidiary ComSec failed to pay $6.36 million
00:06:37
Speaker
to 2,422 staff. The company has been accused of using its IFAs to omit various entitlements and enterprise agreements such as rostered days off, pay increases, overtime pay, annual leave loading and allowances in exchange for higher salary and bonuses. Due to the alleged breaches meeting the serious contravention threshold, the CBA could be fined $666,000 per violation if found guilty.
Recruitment Key Qualities and Skills
00:07:14
Speaker
Question of the week, this week Adele, is what should I look for when hiring a rookie? Over to you. Yeah, well, I think we probably should define rookie for the purpose of answering this question because obviously it could be just somebody new to recruitment who has other work experience. But in this example, why don't we use the definition of being a rookie as somebody who's, I guess, more like a graduate.
00:07:41
Speaker
who may have limited work experience, limited corporate office work experience for the purpose of defining it in here. Okay, great. All right. So what are a couple of things that you would regard as non-negotiable when assessing such a person to work as an agency recruiter? Well, I am often asked this question and there really are three key ones for me that stand out always and have been the same, I guess.
00:08:11
Speaker
throughout my career, but they're common, but they're common and obvious for a reason because they are relevant. The first one would be resilience. We know this one. This is probably the number one, in my opinion, in terms of what somebody needs to demonstrate in order to be successful in recruitment. So you want to try and identify their ability to recover, I suppose, from adversity, which is the definition of resilience. So you're looking for resilience
00:08:40
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which is a tough one actually because a lot of young people struggle to demonstrate this one. They haven't had a lot of life experience. They haven't had sometimes very adverse situations, particularly in a work situation. So you sometimes get some responses to questions around this that are a little light on, but I still think it's worth looking for elements of resilience in somebody's character. The next one I would say would be influencing. So I think having the ability to
00:09:09
Speaker
influence somebody's thoughts and outcomes and behaviours is important. You need to be able to have intelligent, professional conversations with people that are able to get your point across, whether that's, you know, talking to a client about a candidate or trying to profile a job to a candidate, those kind of things. So you've got to be able to influence people with your language, with the way that you conduct yourself with
00:09:35
Speaker
how you may follow up and respond to people as well. So influential, influencing skills, I think are really critical when you're looking for a rookie. And the final one would be problem solving. So looking for people that have that natural ability to solve problems, that want to be curious and investigate things to find an answer. And even more importantly, in recruitment, I talk about this in my training, that
00:10:01
Speaker
Problem solving and recruitment is about finding an alternative solution, in fact. So it isn't just finding the most obvious solution and working through that. It's about having a plan B, having a candidate B, having another option or a solution that you can go back to the client with when the first one won't work. So they're the top three for me. Ross, what would you add? Well, firstly, I agree with your three. I don't have any dispute about any of those three. So I'd add.
00:10:29
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achievement, rival results, orientation. People have to care about the result because what you want and what is inherent in every great recruiter
00:10:42
Speaker
is that it really hurts when they lose a job. It hurts when a good candidate gets a job through another means. The best people are passionate about delivering the result. And because they're more focused about the result, they're more likely to put in the extra effort to generate the result. Closely aligned to that is being coachable.
00:11:06
Speaker
And if you look at the three things that determine someone being coachable, firstly, an interest and willingness to learn. So given a rookie by definition hasn't worked in the recruitment industry, what interest and willingness do they demonstrate in understanding the industry and what the job involves? Secondly, ability to seek out, accept and integrate feedback without being defensive.
00:11:32
Speaker
I think we've all had the experience of working with someone who is just automatically defensive and how frustrating that is and how slowly they learn because of that.
00:11:42
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And then third action, in other words, the demonstration of attempts to try new actions to get improved results. You want to see that people don't just intellectually understand feedback, that they act on it, that they're actually putting into practice the things that will make a very big difference. So they're the two things that I'd add to what you've said.
00:12:07
Speaker
Great. So what about assessing?
Evaluating Recruitment Candidates
00:12:10
Speaker
So without going into assessment tools, what are some questions or perhaps little challenges or tasks that you might suggest for agency owners or leaders to assess those three things that you have mentioned? Yeah, you really want to utilize your behavioral based questioning here and make sure you've got some very structured questions around each of the competencies there. So
00:12:34
Speaker
for things like resilience or influencing or even that drive outcome orientation that you referenced, you want to find out examples where they could demonstrate that from previous work experience, from university, from other activities that they may do. So you'd start with your behavioral questioning and make sure they're really good, detailed questions.
00:12:57
Speaker
Um, but you could also use activities or practice, um, application as well. And I like to do that, particularly for problem solving as an example. I like to give people a common problem that they may have to solve in recruitment and get them to give me the most obvious response as to how they'd solve it. And then to sit back and think about some alternative responses. So really exercising that problem solving muscle and pushing them to that next level of going, well, I'm not just going to take the easy road. What else could I have?
00:13:27
Speaker
lined up to have another alternative to provide as a solution. So I think definitely behavioral questions and practicing some of those skills or demonstrating some of those skills in an interview are going to be some of the best ways to assess that.
00:13:42
Speaker
Great, and I agree, achievement drive, a simple way of assessing achievement drive, or sorry, I shouldn't say a simple way, but a starting point for assessing achievement drive is to ask a candidate on a scale of zero to 10, zero being low and 10 being high, what would you rate your competitiveness? And then whatever answer they give you or whatever number to say, okay, great, can you give me an example of that? Like, why do you rate yourself that way?
00:14:12
Speaker
and explore their background in terms of what they start talking about. Have they been very competitive in sport in an academic sense or in some other sense? Because it's highly unlikely someone's going to demonstrate high achievement drive in recruitment if previously you can't really find a degree of competitiveness in any other aspect of their life today.
00:14:37
Speaker
So that's a starting point and coachability. So a question to assess coachability would be to ask someone such as a question such as, so tell me about the most challenging piece of feedback that you've ever received.
00:14:54
Speaker
What was it? Why was it challenging? What did you do with it? And listen to what they say. Because as we all know in recruitment, you can get some very challenging feedback from clients, candidates, from the person you report to. And you can't just toss your toys out of your pram. You've got to be able to handle it. And of course, it's got to be delivered in an appropriate way on not endorsing
00:15:21
Speaker
People being yelled at or anything like that, but you've got to be coachable because in recruitment you win and lose very quickly jobs can be lost very quickly and it could just be one thing that you say in a conversation might make a difference and being open to your boss saying something like You know put the person on hold and let's have a quick conversation about what you now should be saying next and be open to that because that's the sort of thing that
00:15:49
Speaker
happens in recruitment and so the person's got to be open to receiving that sort of feedback. Yeah, totally agree. I think that's a really good summary and hopefully that gives everybody a bit of an idea, a bit of a checklist and some of the ways to assess when you're looking for your next rookie.
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00:16:05
Speaker
Great. Well, it's a starting point. There are plenty of other things that you can do, but we'd suggest that if you focus on those five, you've got a pretty good foundation for making a smart decision about hiring that rookie or not.
00:16:18
Speaker
Thanks Adele. Thanks Russ. That's a wrap. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts from. Google, Apple, Spotify, or on our website.