INTERNET....is more speed always a good thing?
CANDIDATE SCARCITY...truth or misleading perception?
Is it true that, eventually, instead of the candidates going to the job, the jobs will go to them ... or is this just reserved for those elite few who are attractive to the aloof search firms?
Well, talking from personal experience as an owner of a mid level recruitment firm, there are a few things that might be driving this step change in the recruitment process. They appear to be predominantly related to the perception of candidate scarcity (just a mind set thing most of the time I mention my reasoning later in this email) and the effect of the internet on the speed of the recruitment process and the effect this having on any personalised candidate contact (as back in the olden days two to three years ago).
I think employers, recruiters and HR Managers are now well and truly over the idea that the internet recruitment advertising would actually take over from the main press, being The Melbourne Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. Most of us are now aware that the response levels from the internet advertising are dramatically smaller than those from the newspapers. The internet also lacks the browse factor (in other words, ads don't catch the eye on the net, you actually search for them by categories and key words).
The other issue with the internet and all of the generalist job sites is that their sub-categories are often not relevant (ie, at Technical Focus we struggle to use the majority of these because they only have engineering and mining, but does not have manufacturing, science or logistics categories). The other issue with internet advertising, is that it is primarily used by recruitment firms and hardly any employers are present on the sites. This means that instead of 40,000 jobs on these sites as claimed at any one point in time, there may only actually be 10 or 20,000, as each actual job vacancy is duplicated by recruitment firms all looking to fulfil the same contingency job brief. Toby Marshall recently made the point at an AHRI seminar on Sea Change in Recruitment that the internet job market lacks the "richness and reach" to be of any real direct value to end employers yet.
It also seems to me that the internet and pace of business these days is driving the employers into transaction mode with recruitment firms rather than into deeper preferred supplier and true synergistic partnerships (I really believe this stuff even though it may sound bitter and twisted, my view is based on actual revenue proportions in Technical Focus over the last three years). Perhaps the blame should be squarely fixed upon the shoulders of the recruitment industry management for lack of leadership strength and vision? Are we the ones who are really driving the move towards the quick transaction in our rush to fill the position?
We receive numerous requests to bid for preferred supplier tenders by large organisations. Unfortunately I believe that only the professional few actually go through this process for genuinely holistic reasons. The majority, in my opinion, are just designed to take a few percentage points off the recruitment fee and we are very lucky if we even receive a written reply for our efforts. This process is driving down the time and resources that management recruitment firms can invest in their process, which is having a knock on effect on the way candidates are treated.
Why do I believe that this is a mind set thing most of the time?
I believe that there are so many fine tuning aspects to the recruitment process that need to be addressed before anyone can use the excuse of candidate scarcity. Here's a few of those aspects:
At Technical Focus we are adamant that there is always a number of candidates that are suitable and interested in any role, obviously with a few minor exceptions. The main issue seems to be the way candidates are treated throughout the recruitment process or used and abused, which is more often the case.
I believe the majority of candidates are just bored, tired or not interested in some of the solicitations or approaches or recruitment adverts that are in the newspapers and internet these days. Some employers fail to recognise that candidates are chasing a career, not just another job title and that dollars are important to them. Even if it's not the main priority it is still an extremely important consideration, which in most cases relates directly to the standard of living of their family. If this is the case, how is it that so many recruitment ads have a basic job title and do not even cover the salary or the location of the position? The rationale behind this is often that the employer wants someone to be passionate about what they do and be less focused on the salary, which I think is fair enough, however, this misreads the psychology of responding to adverts.
The famous 4 seconds that we have to attract the eye of the newspaper browser is more gut and reptilian mind based and one cannot assume or generalise that all candidates who apply are just chasing the dollars. Don't forget we equally use the dollars in an advert to position the job so it is not seen to be too high a level, also, particularly if we are using a Manager title and it is a first time manager opportunity. For those employers who are afraid of internal employees finding out or becoming jealous then there are more deep seated market salary level versus internal salary level parity challenges ahead.
There also seems to be an obvious change by most candidates to be more conscious of life balance. Candidates, generally speaking are becoming more and more sensitive of commuting hours, as the traffic in Sydney or Melbourne increases.
A growing number of candidates are also twice or three times bitten and more times shy about the redundancy factor and are often put off roles or not attracted to them because of the possibility of the company not being around in the next year.
We work hard to counsel our candidates on this because quite often this is where the exciting roles exist, dot coms etc Let's face it, you can join the biggest, most successful company in Sydney, but then in the next few months it may be bought out by a global company that has $10 or $15 billion in cash reserves and aggressively swallows them up.
The other irony of candidate scarcity is that numerous recruitment ads do not even allow you to ring up the employer directly and ask about the job role. I think an open and honest communication on the job at hand, including trip points and slight negatives or challenges is also important, so that candidate's can see any job opportunity in a realistic light without being oversold. In our experience the strong leaders will relish the fact that a culture is very challenging if they know they have senior management support and acknowledgment of the existing situation.