Guest post by Jude-Martin Etuka, speaker at the Sourcing Summit
To those, who, as a matter of standard operating business practice, leverage diversity as fundamental to achieving key strategic objectives in the talent acquisition life-cycle – this topic might rightfully appear a contradiction in terms. ‘Diversity Sourcing’? “What is that?” one might ask. It was the same question I asked myself when requested to be part of a panel addressing the topic at the recently concluded 2012 Australasian Sourcing Summit.  Read more...

Sourcing Summit 2011 was a huge success. Thanks to our presenter we are making the presentations available for free.  Read more...

Irina Shamaeva, Sourcing Summit 2012 from Phillip Tusing on Vimeo.

RPO or Recruitment Process Outsourcing, a form of outsourcing where an employer transfers all or part of its recruitment functions to an external service provider, has been around for some time in Australia.

But very little data is available to gauge the size, prevalence, types and extent of  RPO adoption by companies in Australia. Anecdotal evidences seem to suggest that adoption is increasing, driven in large part by the fact that there is no one-size-fits-all RPO model. In fact the type of RPO models differ across industry sectors and locations, influenced greatly by size of organisation, culture, volume of jobs and the expertise of suppliers.  Read more...

What does a typical sourcer look like? What tools and techniques are most frequently used to find talent? How much do sourcers typically earn? These and many other questions about sourcing and those who practice it remains largely unanswered. In fact, little data exists in Australia or NZ.  Read more...

I recently spoke to four people who have very different backgrounds but share a common interest in sourcing. All four will be speaking at the Australasian Sourcing Summit.

Click images to read the interviews.

Jason Timor, Qantas                            Andrea Mitchell, ARN

Gad Weinbach, Talent Partners         Paul Jacobs, Engage

We started the Job Board Awards project in December to recognise excellence in online recruitment. 

Given time restrictions, the original plan to have the public (advertisers) vote for their favourite job boards did not materialise fully. In the end, a panel of judges selected winners in five categories.

Finally, we present below, the job boards who stood out (and we think deserves your attention) in the last 12 months.  Read more...

If social media is going to be part of your recruitment game plan, it’s worth noting that it’s currently the least trusted source of information amongst 14 measured by Edelman in Australia (refer chart).

Q. Please tell me how credible you believe each one of them is as a source of information about a company  Read more...

If you are a recruiter, the best way to make sense of the national unemployment rate, which currently sits at 5.3%, is to ignore it. Well, not really. But the real meat of the unemployment story lies in regional data. Broken down by states, Tasmania and NSW lead the nation in unemployment numbers, while employers in states like NT and ACT are likely to struggle with recruiting the right staff (Refer chart. Source: ABS).

 Read more...

The Australian Public Service Commission (APS) released stage one of a report which evaluated recruitment advertising activities across different agencies.

Some interesting results:  Read more...

• Data collection – Of the 104 FMA agencies only 45 FMA agencies collected source-of-hire data (Only those who collected data were included in the evaluation). Not surprisingly data collection problems exist  – “Response to the evaluation survey suggests that those agencies that utilise an e-recruitment system were able to provide detailed survey responses more efficiently than those agencies that had to manually check through paper files. There was also anecdotal evidence that an e-recruitment system, however, does not ensure accuracy of applicant information. An agency advised that applicants appeared to be selecting the first item on a drop-down list of advertisement sources”

Linkedin introduced a new Faceted Search functionality. I did a trial run and it’s very impressive. Filtering search results is quick and easy (A search for Project Manager returned 2,608,432 profiles, by selecting ACT as a location it cough up a manageable 17 profiles). I think as far as finding people is concerned, Linkedin is getting better by the day.

PS: On another note, I recently bought Linkedin’s DirectAds and while the setup is painless, the results were far from effective. What is your experience with Linkedin?

An estimated 4,000 open source professionals exist in Australia (a total of 10,000 are employed in the industry). Highly paid and in demand, they form one of the most important subcultures in the technology sector.

If a top-notch Ruby on Rails coder is looking for a new job, which recruitment firm would she turn to? Can you name a company who stands out as an ‘employer of choice’ for open source professionals? Does a specific job board or a community for php developers exist? I know of none. From a recruitment perspective no one in particular owns (serve) the open source space.  Read more...

Dilbert humor aside, mobile phones are ubiquitous in our lives, and it is highly likely that they will soon be a major recruitment tool.

I had lunch with a developer yesterday, and he showed off his iPhone, demonstrating in detail how it has become a part of his everyday life. Using it for reading books, emails, browsing the internet, listening to music, navigating traffic and of course for talking. All signs are pointing that it will be his preferred channel to search and find jobs. I have parroted a lot about the potential of mobiles (here and here), but adoption is happening much more quicker than I imagined. I believe our industry is in the cusp of big changes.

The latest Digital Outlook Report 09 by Razorfish is a must read.  The chart below display the adoption pattern of popular digital channels.

From where does your talent come from? Which sources are the most effective?

The latest CareerXroads report re-affirms referrals as the most successful source of new staff, followed by corporate websites and commercial job boards.

CareerXroads report is based on US data. There is a paucity of similar data in Australia. Vedior’s ‘Asia-Pacific Employment Trends Survey 2008’ traced the most popular sourcing tools (unlike the CareerXroad study which measure successful hires) amongst  employers.  Interestingly, Job boards are more popular than referrals in Asia-pacific.  Read more...