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Episode 134 - Are interviews effective in assessing skills?
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Episode 134 - Are Interviews effective in assessing skills?
News includes a bit of sunshine in the job market results. merger between CMR and YDJ and results from Randstad and Robert Half as well as an interesting survey about elite university bias in the recruitment process. RCSA awards are open now to the whole industry.
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsorship
00:00:08
Speaker
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00:00:23
Speaker
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Recruitment Trends and Challenges
00:00:33
Speaker
This is the news for the 28th of October, 2025. I'm Clennett.
00:00:36
Speaker
i'm rosslenet And I'm Adele Last. We've got good news for recruiters on all fronts with the latest data releases showing the recruitment rate up, recruitment difficulty up, job ads up, and employers providing a bullish forecast of headcount growth for the second month in a row.
00:00:54
Speaker
In September 2025, the recruitment rate ticked up one point to 51% of Australian employers. Compared to the same period last year, recruitment rate is now six percentage points higher, according to the September update of JSA's Recruitment Experiences and Outlook survey.
00:01:11
Speaker
In the capital cities, 50% of employers recruited in September, a two-point decline, whereas outside the capital cities reported seven-point rise to 55%. Compared to a year ago, recruitment rate in capital cities has increased by nine percentage points, while non-capital city area employers have seen a more modest increase of four points.
Job Market Growth in Australia
00:01:32
Speaker
The recruitment difficulty rate increased by five percentage points to 45% of recruiting employers in September. And the proportion of recruiting employers who were unable to fill their vacancies within a month increased by two percentage points to 44% in September, the same as a year ago.
00:01:49
Speaker
Almost a quarter of Australian employers are forecasting to increase headcount in the next three months at 24%. A one-point decline after a six-point jump in August from the 19% recorded in recorded in july And SEEK's employment report for September showed job ad volumes rose both month-on-month and quarter-on-quarter in September, although year-on-year there was a decline at 1.1%, which is the slowest year-on-year decline since November 2022.
00:02:19
Speaker
South Australia and WA were the only two states or territories to record annual growth, up 3.9% and 0.4% respectively. And the annual growth rate in w WA was due to continued demand for workers,
00:02:31
Speaker
Here's some of the state's largest hiring industries, such as mining, resources and energy, manufacturing, transport and logistics and construction. Nationally, there was broad-based industry growth led by demand in retail and consumer products, where job ads were up 2.4%.
00:02:50
Speaker
Manufacturing, transport and logistics ads were up 1.5% and construction
00:02:58
Speaker
also recorded positive gains So Adele, although the unemployment rate jumped last month, all the other labour market indicators were broadly showing green, which augurs well for better times ahead.
Strategic Acquisition in Medical Recruitment
00:03:12
Speaker
In acquisition news, Your Doctor Jobs has been acquired by Cornerstone Medical Recruitment. CMR founder and CEO Samantha Miklas announced the move in a LinkedIn post last week.
00:03:24
Speaker
Hobart-based Your Doctor Jobs was founded by Justin Smith in October 2015 and fifteen and recruits doctors across Australia, New Zealand and Canada. According to the company's website, Your Doctor Jobs has nine employees.
00:03:38
Speaker
Brisbane-based Cornerstone Medical Recruitment was founded in March 2012 and currently has 107 employees. Your Doctor Jobs is the company's first acquisition. In a media release last Tuesday, it was noted the partnership strengthens CMR's doctor recruitment division, with Miklas saying, we couldn't be more excited about this acquisition. This isn't about one brand absorbing another. It's about amplifying what makes each of us great.
00:04:02
Speaker
Together, we're building a happier healthcare workforce with heart, expanding our capacity, reach and impact in the doctor's division. and unlocking new ways to serve our communities even better.
00:04:14
Speaker
Well, Adele, it will be interesting to see whether this acquisition is the beginning of a rapid growth by acquisition strategy by CMR or it's a one-off for now.
Expansion of RCSA Awards
00:04:25
Speaker
On to awards news, the RCSA is expanding their awards to include the whole recruitment and staffing sector, Ross.
00:04:33
Speaker
I think that's a good idea, Adele. If you're promoting your awards as the industry awards, then having all participants in the industry eligible is a very good thing.
00:04:46
Speaker
Obviously, the RCSA wants to keep up with SEEK because, of course, SEEK ah have everyone eligible for their awards. So I think it was kind of a necessary thing for the RCSA to do.
00:04:59
Speaker
i think that was the sentiment that Charles conveyed to me that If they were going to provide a recognition program across the industry, it needed to include the whole industry. So I agree. I think it's good news. There will be no charge for RCSA members. That's, I guess, the benefit of being a member.
00:05:14
Speaker
But you can enter, if you're a non-member, $150 plus GST for individual categories and $350 plus GST for any corporate categories. There are 12 categories, entries close on the 15th of December. So you have seven weeks to get your entry in. Go to the rcisa website RCSA website, rcsa.com.au for more information.
00:05:37
Speaker
And onto results.
Financial Results of Recruitment Firms
00:05:38
Speaker
Firstly, the world's largest staffing firm, Randstad reported their Q3 results and organic revenue per working day was down 1.2% over year in the quarter.
00:05:52
Speaker
to a total of 5.8 billion euros. Gross profit was down 5%, operating profit was down 19% to 136 million euros, and Randstad ANZ revenue was down 4%, although the APAC region as a whole for Randstad was up 2%.
00:06:13
Speaker
Moving to the US, Robert Half reported global revenue fell 7.5% to billion u s dollars for the third quarter. However, they are forecasting that Q4 revenue will grow sequentially, and that will be for the first time since the second quarter of 2022.
00:06:32
Speaker
US revenue was down for Robert Half, 8.6% year over year. International revenue fell by a slightly smaller 3.8%. three point eight percent Global gross profit dropped 11.8% year on year.
00:06:45
Speaker
And in the staffing business, temp GP was down 10.1% and perm placement income fell 10.7%. point seven per percent And Ross, if I want to be one of the elusive million dollar billers, apparently i need to work in the executive search market.
Executive Search Market Analysis
00:07:03
Speaker
Certainly seems like it. The most recent annual benchmark survey from ESIX would indicate that because the average search fee paid was per placement $194,000 US. s That's four a year if I'm going to bill a million dollars?
00:07:23
Speaker
No, it's five a year, Adele. What is ESIX? ah It is a global community of internal executive search professionals. They have this body. There's over 300 organisations globally that contribute to this survey to give us data about how internal search consultants operate compared to external search consultants.
00:07:49
Speaker
I didn't even know this kind of role existed. So you're talking about an internal recruiter who is focused on executive level positions In a search capacity, in a headhunting capacity, Correct.
00:08:02
Speaker
yeah And what did the survey provide? What sort of data did the survey provide? ah Well, a range of things. I've just told you the average fee, so other pieces of information of relevance. Internal search teams took an average of 90 days to fill a role compared to 138 days. So that's more than 50% more time for an external firm.
00:08:24
Speaker
Shortlist, time to shortlist, internal teams took an average of 42 compared to days external firm and candidates presented per field job. 6.1 candidates for an internal search team compared to 10 for an external search consultant.
00:08:44
Speaker
And number of current assignments at any one time, 7.6 for an internal recruiter. And they averaged annually about 20 such but searches a year. So there you go.
00:09:01
Speaker
So they're earning much more than a million dollars by the sounds of it, but it sounds like their results speak for themselves. they're obviously um a very force to be reckoned with within the executive search space in America.
00:09:15
Speaker
i Well, it's more than just America. This is um including some global data, although i don't know how much. Certainly in Australia, I've not met a person whose sole job as an internal recruiter is executive search, but no doubt they exist. I mean, if I had to guess, surely there's no more than, don't know, 40 or 50 of those people in Australian firms. What do you reckon?
00:09:38
Speaker
Oh, I wonder if any of them are our listeners. Let us know if you're an internal executive search recruiter. Yeah, certainly would would love to know a little bit about that part of the market. It's obviously very, very small part of the market in Australia, but I'd imagine it's probably growing.
Bias in Hiring and Diversity Initiatives
00:09:53
Speaker
And our last article is about education bias in the university space, Ross. Tell us more about this. Well, it's to do with preference for job applicants from elite universities. There's been a new report from the Diversity Council of Australia. It's called Class Inclusion at Work.
00:10:12
Speaker
And the headline findings, 36% of respondents say their organisation always or often prefers candidates from elite universities, while 42% of respondents say their organisation rarely or never prefers candidates from an elite university.
00:10:29
Speaker
I suspect this data has changed over recent times, but interestingly, what do they define as or who do they define as the elite universities? Well, here is the list, Adele. University of Melbourne, ANU, University of Sydney, University of Queensland, University of WA, University of Adelaide, Monash University and UNSW. So sadly,
00:10:51
Speaker
The University of Tasmania, my alma mater, did not qualify. So I did not graduate from an elite university. What you? I can just make it in there with a Monash Uni, I'm pleased to say. But as I said, I feel like this data has changed over time. There would have been a time when it would have been much higher than 36%. So I'm pleased to see this.
00:11:11
Speaker
I suspect you're right, for sure. And Catherine Hunter, the CEO of the Diversity Council of Australia, said, your social class shouldn't determine your career opportunities, yet our research shows class bias still impacts who gets ahead and who is left behind.
00:11:31
Speaker
And she urges organizations to recruit for class diversity to promote inclusion in their workplace, where I think they should probably start with lecturing the accounting firms and the law firms because I suspect they're responsible for a large part of that bias towards elite universities. Do you think I'm being unfair, Adele?
00:11:53
Speaker
No, I totally agree.
Improving Interview Processes
00:11:58
Speaker
um
00:12:02
Speaker
Question of the week. Are interviews effective in assessing skills? Well, my instinctive reaction, Adele, is probably not. And in fact, a recent piece of research suggests my instinct's probably right.
00:12:19
Speaker
This is some solid research from Harvard. Tell us about it, Ross. It's Harvard Business School's Managing the Future of Work project. And this involved reviewing 23,000 interview transcripts across forty four companies and one thousand three hundred and 11 positions. And the headline was, the analysis found that although job descriptions serve as detailed roadnaps for what employers claim to need, interviews often veer off course.
00:12:51
Speaker
does Does that surprise you, Adele? Not at all. We're talking about humans here. Yes, that's right. They get into a little bit more detail. It depends on what skills are being assessed.
00:13:04
Speaker
So basically, across all skill categories, 72% of well-covered skills are addressed again across a multiple of interviews.
00:13:16
Speaker
However, it really depends on what type of skills So specifically, it talks about soft skills. So soft skills are comprehensively covered about 76% of the time, but when it gets down to deep technical skills, it's as low as 50% to 55% of the time.
00:13:40
Speaker
So this suggests that there is a lack of structure in drilling down into candidates' technical skills, skills that can often be the differentiator and whether a candidate is assessed as ah better candidate. And this really leads to the question of, well,
00:13:59
Speaker
how well trained are hiring managers or anyone that's conducting these interviews. And there's been lots of talk about this in recent times of really focusing on people's soft skills. So maybe we've gone too far the other way.
00:14:13
Speaker
Did the survey results make any suggestions around this? They did, and probably no surprise for people ah like us who have done quite a bit of recruitment training. So there were five recommendations. So let's go through these one by one. Firstly, it says implement structured interview guides. It says intentional questioning matters.
00:14:34
Speaker
Companies should develop comprehensive interview guides that ensure all critical skills receive explicit attention and include mechanisms to track interviewers' compliance during the process.
00:14:46
Speaker
Seems pretty basic recruitment 101, but I'm pretty sure that that's probably an area where a lot of organisations fail. And we're probably talking more about your your client here or the employer directly, really, than the agency.
00:14:57
Speaker
ah for For sure. And this is a classic example of where hiring managers think they know the questions to ask to understand somebody's skill. But in my experience, far too often, they look at the resume and they make assumptions about a candidate's skill based on the amount of experience that they have.
00:15:18
Speaker
But as you and i know, and as I think any recruiter really knows, that Just because someone has a lot of experience, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're highly skilled. And you do need to have a structured way of drilling down to understand exactly the level of technical skill a candidate has compared to other candidates.
00:15:36
Speaker
I'm going to guess the PD has a pretty big a part to play in this as well. It does. Part of the second recommendation, audit job descriptions against actual interviews.
00:15:49
Speaker
HBR goes on to say, organisations should regularly review whether their interview processes actually assess the skills they claim to value. This audit should examine whether skills are not just mentioned, but evaluated in sufficient depth.
00:16:04
Speaker
This one I find really interesting because it's often where clients will tell you the person doesn't fit, isn't quite right, and they might base it on a particular competency or skill in um from a PD. And I always encourage recruiters to question that with a client and say, what was the competency you're assessing and how did you assess it? That's right. What questions did you ask to help you determine whether the person had that skill or not?
00:16:30
Speaker
Precisely. It's like, is the question... allowing the candidate to provide an answer that gives you a realistic chance of assessing that skill.
00:16:41
Speaker
And I suspect many interviewers aren't asking the right questions. All right, third one, integrate AI assessment into hiring practices. HBR say, given the technology's growing importance, companies should develop specific strategies for evaluating candidates' AI capabilities, comfort with technological change, and potential development.
00:17:01
Speaker
for developing AI related skills. what you think here Adele? This one makes me laugh Ross given the vast majority of people, the managers themselves probably are not au fait with AI in the way they should be and so how do you assess somebody else's capability when yours might be limited in itself?
00:17:21
Speaker
Well, I think you can ask a couple of straightforward questions. One is, um how are you using AI in your day-to-day job? And then the second question is, well, what difference has that made?
00:17:31
Speaker
In other words, are you more productive? Are you generating better results? whatever Whatever it might be. So those two questions, I think, are ah pretty obvious ones for me that I'd be recommending that all all interviewers ask all candidates.
00:17:46
Speaker
We may even see a return to actual skills testing of these types of skills. You know, back in the day, we used to test, you know, keyboarding skills and and Microsoft Word and Excel skills or You know, you would test an accountant's ability to, you know, add numbers, et cetera. So maybe we might see a return to AI testing platforms. It would not surprise me at all. Fourth one, reduce redundancy while increasing coverage, which is ah very long way of saying rather than conduct more interviews, make each interview more comprehensive and more targeted to me is again a very
00:18:24
Speaker
common problem in many organisations that this default to more interviews means more accurate assessment. And frankly, in my experience, I don't think that's true.
00:18:36
Speaker
That if you've got fewer interviews, you've got more pressure on those hiring managers or interviewers to do a proper assessment of the candidate. And then make sure they're providing a document at the end of the interview that's got some objective assessment of the most important technical skills.
00:18:53
Speaker
It really isn't an area where where quantity is more important than quality, of course. yeah Obviously, a really long, drawn-out interview process can make or break the outcome in some ways as well. So most people aren't going to perform at their peak in an interview process when you get to five, six, seven, eight, nine interviews. So, yeah, I agree with this one. Make it ah more focused, more targeted,
00:19:19
Speaker
in less time and ask the right questions so that you can get to the crux of what you're trying to find out. And then finally, train interviewers on comprehensive assessment. HBOW says the research suggests many interviewers may lack the tools or training to systematically evaluate candidates against job requirements.
00:19:35
Speaker
Investing in interviewer development could yield significant returns in hiring quality. So Adele, I'm going to ask you a question to which I know you won't know the answer, but just give me your best guess. so What percentage...
00:19:47
Speaker
of Australian hiring managers across the whole economy, would you say, have received formal interview training? ah It's got to be no more than 15%. Gee, i was I was going to say something between 5% and 10%.
00:20:02
Speaker
It's got to be low, I think. I've done training internally for hiring managers and I know that for the most part, bulk a lot of managers will not have had formal training in interview processes.
00:20:13
Speaker
But this is going that one step further with the assessment of the interview. And I can tell you having worked internally as a recruiter myself, that this is really lacking. You know, even where they've had a bit of skill interviewing somebody or they've got the confidence as a leader to have a conversation, follow a string scripted interview guide, it's the assessment afterwards that seemed to always baffle me when we sat down as a panel because I was on ah working in a government organisation, was always a panel interviewer.
00:20:42
Speaker
The panel had to sit down, rate assess and then record our results and then come to a conclusion. And it really baffled me the lack of science behind that. Let's say the lack of continuity, the lack of um objective assessment. It was really, you know, did they like the person? Did they not? You know, in some cases, you know, they were known to them. You know, it just seemed very...
00:21:05
Speaker
fluid, that part of the process. And my assessment would be it's because in many cases, and not just in panel interviews, the difference between an answer that's a five out of five, a four out of five, a three out of five, et cetera, is not defined. There should be a definition of what a five out of five answer looks like compared to a two or a three.
00:21:29
Speaker
And if you do not have that, then of course, each person is going to make ah subjective assessment. And just as you say, what does the default assessment refer Probably the sense of likability of the candidate, according to that assessor.
00:21:46
Speaker
So we're answering that question, Ross. Are interviews effective in assessing skills? It appears not. It would seem to suggest that frequently not very effective would be the answer.