Posts by Ross Clennett
Sourcr hit the panic button
It’s certainly been a busy couple of weeks since Shortlist put the cat among the pigeons with their article ($ subscriber link) on 22 February that pointed to the questionable legality of some functionality available to recruitment agency customers of SEEK-owned, Sourcr. The following day I covered the story on this blog noting the failure…
Read MoreA curious run of global executive departures at Hays
By their standards, it was a disappointing first half of the 2023 financial year for Hays globally. Hays’s global July to December 2022 half-year results saw net fees rise 12%, on a like-for-like basis, to a new record but operating profit declined 8% and pre-tax profit dropped 7 per cent. All Hays regions reported net…
Read MoreSEEK’s Sourcr under ACCC scrutiny for third-party recruiter reviews
Nearly five years ago, after attending the 2018 ATC, I wrote a blog A.I. will change agency recruitment but in an unexpected way in which I predicted the rapidly increasing importance of recruiter reviews, specifically; What is very different about the A.I. era of specialisation is the accompanying transparency that recruiters are now just starting…
Read MoreMerit-based hiring remains a struggle for some employers
Two separate, but related, recent events show the level of ignorance displayed by people who should know much, much better. Last month news.com.au ran published an article featuring the response to a Reddit post that included a screenshot of a “pre-interview questionnaire” the user had recently been sent by a firm after applying for a…
Read MoreWhat if George Santos had been hired, not elected?
Since getting elected in November to represent New York’s 3rd Congressional District, Republican George Santos (pictured, above) has been under fire for misrepresenting portions of his biography, including his work history, education, religion and charity work, as well as falsely claiming his grandmother was a Holocaust victim and that his mother died in the 9/11…
Read MoreThe key skill for recruiters in 2023
One of the questions I am commonly asked during training sessions or in conversations with individual recruiters and owners is about the future of agency recruiters, especially given relentless advances in technology, of which ChatGPT is just the latest. I always answer that I am very positive about the future of agency recruiters; in fact,…
Read MoreLabour market in holding pattern as no sign (yet) of jobs slump
The start of the new calendar year has the recruitment industry engaging in its annual guessing game of what the year ahead might bring. The last two years produced bumper results for most of the industry as vacancies soared and many employers, including governments, struggled to effectively respond to the significant shift in the balance…
Read MoreThe best news of 2022 – new respect for unretired and won’t-retire workers
The most significant, and welcome, aspect of 2022 has been the near-50-year low in the unemployment rate. This is not just for obvious reasons: fewer people out of work, more people earning a living wage, and more business for recruitment agencies. The best thing to come from the low availability of active workforce participants is…
Read MoreThe best recruiters have an opinion (and they’re not afraid to voice it)
As a music fan, I love going down the proverbial rabbit hole with Rick Beato’s YouTube channel. Beato is a musician, songwriter, and producer whose 3.27 million subscribers sign up to hear him opine on all things music. He has produced over 100 episodes of What Makes This Song Great, most of which generate over…
Read MoreDon’t sexually harass your staff (and other retention tips)
After 33 years observing, reading, and writing about workplaces, I am rarely surprised by the many self-defeating things executives, leaders and hiring managers do to fundamentally undermine the retention of valuable employees. The eye-popping cost of one company’s staggering turnover problem was laid bare less than two months ago when the contents of an internal…
Read More