In May, I spoke on IT remuneration and recruitment trends at the IIR’s ICT Skills Shortage Conference (Representing my previous employer). The first half of my presentation hovers around one central theme – money is important, but the IT workforce wants more. Accordingly, employers are migrating towards ‘total rewards’, including paying more attention on intrinsic rewards. I also explored the factors driving remuneration trends in the Australian IT sector.
However, I have taken out the second half of the presentation (recruitment trends and shift in the behaviour of candidates), VIDEO clips and all proprietary data associated with my previous employer, so you might find the presentation a bit disjointed. I’ll post the missing parts as new stand-alone presentations at a later stage. As usual, requests for copies of the slides can be directed to info (at) destinationtalent.com.au, otherwise the presentation is on Slideshare to view.
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The bad news on the global financial meltdown is relentless.
In response a spate of local reports paint a pessimistic outlook on employment and hiring:
It is easy to be distracted by the news of the day.
The reality is, regardless of short-term economic dips the fundamental challenges faced by recruiters remains intact. Finding good talent is still critical and requires hard and innovative work. Besides, skill shortage doesn’t go away overnight because the economy suffered. The problem of ageing population is still with us (See Mercer’s new Workforce 2012 report). National Unemployment rate in Australia hovers around 4.3% (wake me out when it hits 5%), half the country still reels under unemployment rate of 3.0% and below (Not all regional economies are the same).
If we, however, did move into a recession or a long period of downturn, than it is even more important for employers to pay attention to recruiting good talent, people who will ensure business survive or even thrive during a down period. One benefit of an economic downturn, if any, is it highlighted the stark difference between recruiters who deliver real value and run of the mill players who just shows up to ride the boom times.
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It can be a daunting task to try and navigate a recruitment landscape of close to three thousand firms, of varying sizes, reach, specialisation and business models. For employers who are new to the industry and looking to work with recruitment firms, the annual achievers’ list is a good place to start. Listed below are various awards recognising the best of the best in the recruitment industry for 2008.
SARA (SEEK Annual Recruitment Award) winners, 2008
(Also, check out previous winners of SARA since 2003)
FEMA (Fairfax Employment Marketing Award) winners, 2008
- Recruitment company of the year : Hays
- Executive recruitment company of the year: Talent2
- Best small recruitment company : SG Group
- Best recruitment advertising agency : Adcorp
- Best candidate care : Hays
- Recruiter of the year – Carolyn Ezzy of 2Discover and Erin McLoughlin of Hays (joint winner)
- Executive recruiter of the year : Pat Hart, Hudson
- Rookie of the year : Rebecca Penning of West Recruitment
- Best recruitment advertising agency employee : Rachel Beable of The Face
- Best employer brand : Connect East
- Best promotion of graduate careers: Sinclair Knight Merz
- Best onsite communications team: Westpac
- TMP Worldwide : Best art direction; best online campaign; best promotion of regional careers; best promotion of public sector and education careers.
- Reagent : Best creative/most innovative campaign; best integrated campaign; best corporate careers website.
(Previous winners of FEMA can be found here)
BRW’s fastest growing companies in 2008
Fourteen recruitment firms made it to the BRW list of fastest growing companies in Australia.
- Judd Farris , 8th place
- Hender Care, 9th place
- Staffrite Recruitment, 19th place
- Profusion Group, 26th place
- Zoom Recruitment, 28th place
- CiT Professionals, 33rd place
- Design & Build Recruitment, 43rd place
- Market U, 46th place
- Johnson Executive Search, 47th place
- West Recruitment, 58th place
- Accel Group, 62nd place
- People in Property, 63rd place
- Salt & Shein, 70th place
- Labour Solutions Australia, 75th place
Telstra Business Awards 2008 Finalist
Other awards related to the recruitment/human capital industry
Hewitt’s best employers for 2008 (Website)
Great place to work 2008 winners (website)
Other awards which are yet to be announced
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I’ll continue my series on IT talent shortage next week. I am also on the verge of announcing a new business. Will keep everyone posted. Happy reading.
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Australia’s No 1 Job board SEEK makes further inroad into China’s fast growing employment classifieds market, by increasing its stake in local job board Zhaoping.com to 49.2.% . Marketing recruitment firm, Aquent, also moved into India’s burgeoning recruitment market, confirming its acquisition of Professionele Consulting.
Given the enormous long-term potential offered by both China and India, it is surprising that Australian talent service providers (considering our close proximity to the region and existing good trading relationship in other sectors) are not swarming to the region. Already, both China and India are top source of outbound talent, it is only a matter of time that the local employment market in the two growing countries will mimic the sophistication of those in the west. In India, for instance, returning expats (inbound talent), keen to capitalise on India’s growing economic prowess, are driving demand for recruitment services.
Do the math – If 1% of India’s estimated 500 million workforce change their employer in a calendar year ( a conservative number given attrition rate is as high as 15-20% in some sectors like call centre), there are around 5 million employment transactions (either job board activity or recruitment placement) taking place.
From here, it looks like SEEK and Aquent are making the right move.
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