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The RCSA has made another big step forward this year with the release, in conjunction with Mercer Consulting (Australia), of the first Australian Recruitment and Staffing Industry Remuneration Survey.

Salary surveys of our industry are not new, but nobody has ever gone as deep as Mercer in receiving and reporting on the level of specific detail that previous surveys have not provided (nor were designed to provide).

The 107 page report reports on data provided by 43 recruitment agencies based in Australia, with a median headcount of 23. Participating agencies included Manpower, Clicks, Davidson, people2people, Cornerstone Medical, and PeopleIN.

There is a wealth of data that I found fascinating.

I’ve picked out a few nuggets to share (all data is national data unless otherwise noted):

Remuneration

  • Median base salary (exc. super) for a recruitment consultant was $68,000
  • Median base salary (exc. super) for a senior recruitment consultant was $95,000
  • Median total employee reward for a team leader was $140,396
  • Median total employee reward for senior perm recruiters was 15% higher than for senior temp recruiters
  • By specialisation for senior recruiters, executive search recruiters ranked first for median total employee reward, followed by health medical recruiters, then professional services/sales recruiters and engineering/technical recruiters in fourth place

Bonus/commission/incentive structures

  • 88% of perm recruiters and 75% of temp recruiters in non-leadership roles had a reward structure that included a sales incentive
  • 44% of resourcers/para-consultants had a reward structure that included a sales incentive
  • 55% of temp recruiters received a sales incentive based on % margin on sales, whereas 25% receive a dollar amount for targets achieved
  • Sales incentives for qualitative measures (eg lead generation, customer retention, customer satisfaction etc) were most prevalent for managers and resourcers
  • A vast majority of incentive structures had no cap, although a cap was more prevalent for temp recruiters than for perm recruiters
  • 80% of a perm recruitment manager’s incentive was tied to their billings
  • 57% of agencies provided ‘additional gateways beyond performance thresholds,’ i.e. a higher tier (“super profit”) of incentive payment

Payment of incentives

  • A large majority of agencies paid incentives quarterly
  • 33% of agencies have no incentive clawback but when a clawback exists the primary trigger is ‘unpaid invoice’
  • 14% of agencies defer payment of a proportion of incentive earned by the employee until a future period

Working hours/arrangments

  • A large majority of full-time agency employees work between 38 and 40 hours per week
  • 26% of managers work an average of 41-45 hours and 18% work more than 45 hours per week on average
  • Remote work was available for around 80% of agency employees (the more senior the employee the more likely remote work was available)

Leave

  • 21 days annual leave is the average annual leave provided by agencies to employees (20 days is the legal minimum)
  • 43% of agencies provide paid parental leave to the primary carer and 30% to the secondary carer

Other

  • Gifts, vouchers and team lunches/dinners/drinks were the most common non-monetary benefits provided to employees (93% of agencies) with tenure (84%) and an individual ‘going the extra mile’ (82%) the most commonly cited reasons
  • 55% of owners/leaders were forecasting an increase in headcount in the upcoming 12 months
  • 65% of owners/leaders assessed their current company morale as either high or very high
  • Median employee annual turnover was 28%

What I have provided above is just a small selection of information available in the survey. There is a considerable amount of specific detail on all aspects of consultant and leader remuneration that has never been available before in our industry.

The RCSA is to be commended for this initiative as I have long advocated for the RCSA to invest more resources into research, especially utilising the vast amount of data each member has access to regarding its practices and the client and candidate data it collects daily.

I urge you to support the RCSA in this investment by responding to research participation requests and purchasing surveys such as this one.

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