How the recruitment industry has changed in Australia over the past 10-15 years, what you can do to give yourself the best chance of success.

It is hard not to feel your age when you start writing about how an industry has changed over a 10-15 year period.

For the purpose of this, I will focus on accounting, however I do think it is reasonable to draw similar conclusions for most industries.

The biggest change really is the addressability of the market. 

When I first started in recruitment there was not much publicly available information on anyone in any industry really. 

From a business development point of view the database of the recruitment agency you worked for was crucial because that is where you would find the key details of the key decision makers for the businesses you wanted to recruit for. 

You would need to go out on client meetings, ask the person you met with who else is worth meeting in the business etc, and then build out your contact list that way. 

In doing all this, you would have a far better understanding of what the business actually does, what the challenges are for the hiring manager, the structure of the teams, the growth potential in a role and why someone would want to work for a business.

It could take years to build out a decent list of contacts and there was significant value in the relationship.

On the candidate side, more people would apply to jobs on job boards, but really it was all about referrals. 

You needed to help someone get the job they wanted and in doing so, they would refer friends, colleagues etc who you could then help, so on and so forth.

Because of this, if you did not deliver a high quality service, you would not get referrals.

An average interview would take 45-60 minutes and you would have multiple phone calls with a candidate prior to them accepting a job.

Compare that to today, where the vast majority of people are on sites like LinkedIn.

If you have never recruited a role in an industry before, I would argue it would take about 2-3 days to build out a reasonable database of contacts.

You can easily find out the surface level of what a business or team does without meeting anyone and as a result it is not uncommon for a recruiter to fill a job with a business without meeting a single person in the organisation.

On the candidate side, it is far more transactional as well, very few candidates apply for jobs on job boards and it is far less about referrals.

Most placements would come as a result of people making themselves open to new opportunities on LinkedIn, they would then receive about 100 messages from recruiters, all telling them they have the best job and it becomes a race to place.

Candidates, especially at the junior level, are far more likely to accept a position on a superficial value like size of business, than for reasons that are actually going to help them develop and advance their career.

The reason this happens is because most recruiters don’t meet candidates anymore. 

They will have a quick phone call and then send them a list of businesses. The candidate will usually agree to meet the 5 biggest companies because that is the perceived safer choice/easiest job for a recruiter to sell.

What does this mean for businesses?

Simply put, the incentive for a recruiter has changed from helping someone find the best job so you get referrals/good businesses keep dealing with you, to we need to get this candidate off the market as quickly as possible otherwise someone else will place them.

What this means is that the risk of someone accepting a job with incomplete information is far greater than it was before, resulting higher staff turnover.

That is assuming you are able to meet the candidates in the first place, for smaller businesses it can often mean being unable to hire people because recruiters are not investing the time to make sure they have all the information to effectively sell a job to a candidate.

This is an oversimplification however for the most part rings true.

What does this mean for candidates?

Basically, if you put yourself in a position where you have multiple recruiters in a race to place you, you can end up accepting a job for the wrong reasons.

How do we solve the problem?

On the company side, we need to slow down the process, only deal with recruiters you have met and that you are confident can effectively sell your business and the opportunity within your business to the people you want to hire.

Take a more proactive approach to recruitment, meet with passive candidates that fit the profile of the person you want to bring in, rather than only meeting with prospective candidates when you have a live job to fill.

There are lots of excellent people in the market that are pretty happy where they are, who would be open to having conversations with businesses but they are reluctant to do so because they may not be ready to move straight away.

Taking this approach will open up a whole new pool of candidates to you and will give you a better understanding of what is available in the market.

On the candidate side, it is a similar idea, you want to start speaking with recruiters when you are not looking for a job. Good recruiters are happy to have conversations with candidates 6-12 months before they are ready to change jobs. 

They will give you lots of different ideas about what is and is not important, and they will, for the most part, encourage you to stay where you are if they think you are in a good role/business.

Please feel free to give in contact if you are interested in discussing further peter@halbowman.com.au or view our webinar on the topic which we be put out on 28 August.