The Recruitment Dilemma in 2020

The recruitment landscape has changed so significantly over the past 2 to 3 years. With unemployment at close to all time lows (3.9% NSW, 4.5% VIC, 6.0% QLD, and 5.3% National according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics), employers are simply finding it more and more difficult to find people of quality to fill vacancies.

Based on our everyday dealings, some of the reasons why clients are finding it so difficult are as follows:

1. Many clients are still relying on placing a seek advertisement, as the only method of marketing their roles;
2. Many clients simply do not have enough time to properly manage an effective recruitment process, mainly because they are caught up in their day-to-day business activities;
3. Many clients have no social media strategy, and generally no other plan for marketing their roles (other than using 1 or maybe 2 job boards);
4. Many clients have no method or strategy for capturing passive jobseekers;
5. Many clients lack understanding of how their “benefits” and rates of pay compares with other like roles in the marketplace.

In our experience, most of the time the failure of internal recruitment effort comes down to one, or a combination of the above reasons.

So when the internal recruitment fails, the natural response is to seek a recruitment agent. Whilst some agents are effective in particular situations, others have left our clients disappointed and frustrated. Here’s some analysis on some of the failed recruitment agent experience:

1. Some agents place nothing more than generic adverts with virtually no information about the company, which doesn’t present particularly well to a jobseeker. It often leaves the jobseeker to question whether it is even a real role, or if it is just general fishing for certain occupations to fill the recruiters databases.
2. Some agents provide candidates that have been sitting on their books for some weeks or months. Ask yourself, does a high performing employee/candidate sit around idle not being able to secure their own opportunity?
3. Some agents are providing a minimal time guarantee making it impossible to establish the long-term potential, or effectiveness, of a candidate.

How do we solve this dilemma? Let’s first examine what it takes to have an effective recruitment strategy in 2019:

1. Having a well written and “company branded” advert across multiple job platforms, where the benefits are clearly understood and sold to potential candidates;
2. Creating more traffic to adverts by implementing a social media strategy to capture more active job seekers;
3. Through a social media strategy, increase our application numbers by tapping into the “passive” job seeker market, capturing their attention with a new opportunity they weren’t even looking for;
4. Dedicating time EACH DAY so that responses to candidates can be faster than other companies competing for the same types of candidates. Remember in 2019, candidates are applying for multiple jobs at one time, and many platforms have streamlined the application process, so candidates can click one button to apply for multiple roles.

On Demand HR provides assistance to our clients to carry out effective recruitment processes in one of two ways:

1. By providing detailed training to key personnel who have the time available to implement the strategies outlined above; or
2. By providing a “pay by the hour service” to implement a company branded strategy for clients who can’t devote adequate time each day to do it themselves.

If you feel stuck or frustrated with your recruitment results, give us a call to discuss your options, and we will show you a better path forward.