Recruitment
Remote work reaches a fork in the road
Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter was followed by his first email to employees banning remote work unless they have a specific exception (managers will send the exception lists to Musk for his personal review and approval) and setting out the expectation that staff will be in the office for at least 40 hours per week.…
Read MoreInnovation is overrated
Innovation is important. Innovation is necessary. Without innovation, a company is almost certainly doomed to compete primarily on price. However, innovation is also overrated. Innovation is overrated because many companies, in my experience, aren’t even getting the basics right. Qantas is a classic case in point. Yesterday, the announcement of the annual Choice Shonky Awards…
Read MoreThe hidden truth of how Andrew Banks became a million dollar biller
Yesterday Andrew Banks gave me an insight about interviewing that had never occurred to me, yet it was obviously correct the moment he uttered it. In the Confessions of a Recruiter podcast, co-hosted by recruitment agency owners Blake Thompson, and Declan Kluver, Banks shared; “The best thing ever out of an interview is that you…
Read MoreWill overseas workers live in tents? (because there’s no housing for them)
Four months ago I wrote about the importance of improving Australia’s labour force participation rate given, with 480,000 vacancies. Even if Australia’s participation rate rose only one percentage point (to 67.7%) that would still represent an additional 210,000 immediately available workers. There are one million Australians who want to work but have barriers preventing them…
Read MoreWhy recruiters need to identify conscientiousness and neuroticism
Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World, by economist Tyler Cowen and tech entrepreneur Daniel Gross provides a fascinating piece of information pertaining to hiring low-skill workers. In their book Gross and Cowen explore personality and its relationship with talent, noting: “Personality and conscientiousness matter most at the bottom of the…
Read MoreSolving the problem of being ‘too busy’ for BD in a jobs-rich market
Any agency leader attempting to incentivise, urge, or encourage their consultant to do “more BD” will be familiar with the response coming from their harried team member. “I don’t have time; I’m too busy filling jobs.” Consultants wanting to avoid picking up their phone to make BD calls know that the lure of another placement…
Read MoreReinventing the interview – a masterclass from the creator of ABC’s “You Can’t Ask That”
In my recent blog on the 2022 RCSA SHAPE Conference I outlined how I saw the need for the mindset of recruiters to evolve due to ‘conformist’ candidates now being outnumbered by ‘individualists’. To use a powerful metaphor offered by Nuriah Jadai on the first morning of last week’s RCSA SHAPE Conference – we need…
Read MoreInterview with 2022 RCSA (NZ) Recruiter of the Year: Anand Ranchhod of CoLegal
On July 7 the RCSA New Zealand Industry Awards were announced at a gala function in Auckland. The Recruitment Professional of the Year was won by CoLegal Managing Director, Anand Ranchhod APRCSA. I first met Anand four years ago when he participated in my Advanced Recruiter Program. Across the program’s three-month duration it was apparent…
Read MoreMusings from the 2022 RCSA Conference: The age of the individualist is here – are you ready?
My most recent blog about the contrasting approaches of two prospective employers prominent in my daughter’s recent search for a new job has drawn many comments; on the original blog, in person to me at the RSCA Conference last week in Hobart, and via a LinkedIn post. The comment that perfectly encapsulated the difference between…
Read MoreIs there really a ‘skills shortage’? A tale of two interviews
It’s hard to have any sympathy for employers who are bemoaning the ‘skills shortage’ only to learn their behaviour demonstrates a mindset more akin to last century’s rather than the present one. My 21-year-old daughter, Nikki (photo, right) , recently completed her Certificate 111 in Patisserie after a disrupted year of full-time study in 2021…
Read More