Don’t you know it. The world continues to evolve at such a rapid pace that if you blink, you will miss the next trend, no matter what industry or profession you are in. It is no different in the talent search sector. I thought that it was probably timely to spend a bit of energy updating you on some of the newer trends in recruitment and talent search so that if you are engaging in your own staff recruitment, you will be up to date with some of the changes that are happening. I will also give you some insight into the challenges that are being faced across the industry and some of the tips that may help you find that next all important staff member.
How many of you, when you begin the process of looking for a new staff member, just whack a hurriedly constructed advertisement up on seek.com or one of the other talent websites and then sit back and wait for the candidates to start flowing through the door? And, yes of course they
do. But then you start to scratch your head and ask yourself ‘Where have all the good candidates gone?’ If you are lucky, you will get a candidate or two that somewhat resembles the person you think you are looking for, with some modification required to either the position or to the person.
The days have gone when you could place an advertisement on a job board (electronic or, the old fashioned way, newspaper) and you would receive a multitude of candidates that matched exactly what you were looking for…
with your eyes lighting up and you become like a hyperactive child, alone in a lolly shop not knowing which one to choose. These days the analogy of this would be that the lolly shop is closed; you can only get them
over the internet; your choice is limited and, you know, it’s not quite the same as it used to be.
Well, you had better get used to it because times have a changed, you know! The first issue that seems to have been around for quite some time now, but gets labelled a different name each year, is our ‘skills shortage’, with this year no different, now becoming a ‘super skills shortage’. According to recruitment firm Hays, while employers are ready to start hiring more employees in the next year or so, they will find it difficult to secure the qualified candidates they need for high-profile or technical positions. One sector that will specifically struggle is construction. This coincides with a building boom that is expected to continue this year, as developer’s ramp up high-rise inner-city apartment projects and as interest rates continue to drop.
As such, many businesses will need to re-evaluate their existing attraction and retention policies to ensure they are capable of attracting and keeping the best talent. But this is not going to be as easy as it sounds because the balance of power has now shifted.
So what does that mean, balance of power? In an article written by Recruiting Intelligence in January of this year, 83 percent of recruiters or employers who have recruited recently report that the power has shifted away from where it has been for years, the employer, and is now in the hands of the candidate. In a candidate driven marketplace, ‘traditional recruiting approaches’ simply stop working. Well, you say, now what do we do? If you have not been building your networks in your specialised field, then you have either best get cracking or connect with someone who is well connected in your space. Now is the time when you need to tap into the ‘passive’ recruitment market. In Australia, just fewer than 80 per cent of professionals consider themselves to be ‘passive’ in their approach to their career and to gain access to these professionals, you must be connected. I know, next question, so how do we get connected?
Firstly, you need to talk with your prospective audience through the medium that ‘they’ want to be spoken to by, such as Mobile Recruitment. Up to 72 per cent of active candidates and 62 per cent of passive candidates now use mobile devices to research and apply for positions in a mobile optimised format. They are also active in searching and watching business for signs of their next opportunity. A simple start is to ensure that if you are posting anything on job boards, websites or social media that it is written ‘mobile-optimised’. To you and me that means short bullet points that are
straight to the point. Don’t waffle on with long sentences and motherhood statements. They are not interested and don’t take the time to read them anyway.
The last area that I wanted to touch on is social media and the online job boards. Social professional networks are the fastest source of quality successful hires globally and this has increased 73 per cent over the
past four years. Social professional networks now account for around 59 per cent of all successful hires. Interestingly though, a very large proportion of these successful hires come from that passive market. So get connected!
So now that you are up to date and you know where to look, happy searching. And as always, if you find yourself in a bit of a pickle, give me a call.