Recruitment
Hiring in Australia remains unquestionably racist
Nearly three decades ago I was recruiting for the Australian head office of an Asian international airline. The hiring manager, a white Australian, told me he didn’t want any Asian candidates for a junior accounting vacancy as “…they all just go back home if there are any family issues in their home country”. Thankfully, it…
Read MoreRemote work and the 4 day week are winning in the fight to hire and retain talent
Do you know the highest-ranked keyword search on SEEK over the past seven months? After the lockdowns finished in Australia in the second half of 2021 what do you think happened to the proportion of jobs that included “work from home”, within the job ad? They continued to climb to now where there are around…
Read MoreJobs boom continues thanks to surging local population and China reopening
Despite the many recent headlines highlighting large-scale job losses in huge global companies, predominantly in the technology and consulting sectors, the employment outlook in Australia remains positive. Last Thursday’s job vacancy data for February showed both total vacancies (438,500 – see graph, above) and the proportion of businesses reporting at least one vacancy (24.3%), exceeding…
Read MoreDeaths and big fines leave agency owners on notice about workplace risk
From time to time, as an FRCSA, I am asked to be part of a Professional Conduct Review Committee to help RCSA members resolve professional conduct grievances that have been made against them by stakeholders. Almost always the conduct under investigation is conduct that could not reasonably be described as reckless or intentionally illegal. Frequently…
Read MoreAI powers its way into recruiters’ jobs with GPT-4 (and its cousins)
Illustration by Matt Kenyon / Ikon Images The worker and skills shortages in developed countries all around the world have quickly elevated the importance of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics as a way of minimising the reliance on human skills and availability. Management consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, in their white paper of three months…
Read MoreFifth CEO of Ignite chairman’s nine year tenure (hmm, who might be the problem?)
What is there left for me to say about the clown car show that is Ignite? Garry Sladden, who has been a board member since September 2013 and Chairman since November 2013 has just announced the appointment of the fifth CEO of his tenure, after the announcement of incumbent CEO, Tim Moran’s departure. The company’s…
Read MoreSourcr 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…
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