Is your recruitment ad worth sharing around?

Below is a graduate recruitment video from Dare, a marketing agency based in the UK. Besides being a big fan of infographics, I think Dare’s story telling and presentation of company info is entertaining and useful. In fact, I think it is worth sharing around.

We live in an age of sharing. Social media thrives on sharing. But, it’s usually the good stuff that always gets passed around. Do you noticed that job ads that get retweeted the most are the ones which are either funny, clever or out of the ordinary.  Read more...

Early this year Destination Talent & SixFigures collaborated to produce the first Executive Monitor, a study conducted in 2009 to understand the perception, behaviour and expectation of executives in Australia.

A year on we are on the verge of embarking on the second round of study.  Last year’s survey was conducted right after the GFC, so it will be interesting to see how behaviour and attitudes have changed since.

Broadly the study is divided into five main areas:  Read more...

The annual State of the Australian CIO Research reveals two important trends relevant to the IT recruitment community.

Firstly, it appears that IT departments’ love affair with outsourcing continues. The number of CIOs planning to outsource their in-house IT function has increased significantly. When asked the question – are you planning to outsource any significant IT function currently being managed in-house in 2010? A quarter of respondents replied yes, which is an increase from 18% in 2008. There is no change in the number of CIOs who are planning to bring a previously outsourced function in-house.  Read more...

I am dabbling with a set of tools to monitor the collective health of the Australian recruitment sector. One of the tools is a time series index to track the progress of recruitment firms listed on the ASX.

To my knowledge, there are about 18 companies listed on the ASX who are either directly or indirectly involved in the business of recruitment. Below is a list of companies whose main business is providing recruitment or related services:    Read more...

The findings from the latest CEO Survey, conducted jointly by Australia Industry Group and Deloitte, bring good news for third-party talent solution providers.

Firstly, three quarters of all businesses are planning to hire new staff in the next two years. The larger the company turnover the more bullish the hiring intentions;  almost 90% with revenue of $200 million intend to hire additional staff (refer chart). Confidence is high in the construction sector with 85.7% of respondents indicating they will hire new staff.  Read more...

My good friend Jeff Dickey-Chasins (aka Job Board Doctor) recently released the results of a study – Job Board Future Survey – he conducted between August and September. At 275 participants, the sample size is not overly large, but it’s unique in that three different demographic groups – job seekers, job board owners and recruiters – participated in the survey.

Though the report relates to the US marketplace it throws up interesting insights on why job seekers and recruiters use job boards.  Read more...

The second annual Information & Communications Statistical Compendium released by the ACS (Australian Computer Society) reveals interesting new data on the behaviour and status of the ICT workforce.

Two things stood out. Female representation in the workforce is surprisingly high.  23.5% of all ICT trade, technical and professional jobs are performed by women. In some areas like graphics and web design, 50% of the workforce are women. Almost 60% of ICT trainers are women.  Read more...

Depression affects more than 800,000 Australians each year. So, it’s likely to directly or directly touch most of us, including our workplaces. In fact, it is estimated that over 6 million full days of work is lost each year.

It’s RUOK Day today. It’s a day dedicated to address the scourge of mental illness and highlight ways to prevent it. The organisation behind it encourages everyone to reach out to someone else and enquire if they are OK.  Read more...

We have written in length about the disparity between male and female executives in workplaces across Australia (here, here and here).

EOWA (Equal Opportunity for Women Agency) released new data on the status of female executives in workplaces across Australia, specifically senior executives within the ASX 200. It’s not pretty.

Women continues to be denied top jobs. Only 8.4 % of board positions and key Management positions are held by women. And there are only six women leading the top 200 Australian companies. We are also behind other developed nations in terms of female representation in the workforce.  Read more...

Monash University & Entity Solutions joined forces to produce the second IPro Index, a survey report investigating the behaviour of contractors in Australia.  IPro, coined by Entity Solutions, is short for ‘Independent Professionals’ (A magnet for Apple’s legal team?) and is used to refer mainly white collar contractors.

With 372 participants the sample size is not particularly large, but the survey served up some interesting questions and results.  Read more...

An estimated 400,000 to 2 million Australians experience bullying at work and it costs businesses an estimated $3 billion per year. We asked Harriet Stacey from Wise Workplace Investigations if potential bullies can be identified early in the recruitment process.

Recognised as an international problem, bullying has a major cost for Australian employers. Measurable costs such as those incurred from law suites and payouts and hidden cost from absenteeism, sick leave and high staff turnover. It is estimated that bullying by employees costs Australian business an estimated $3 billion per year .  Read more...

The latest Business Characteristics Survey (BCS) conducted by the ABS shed interesting light on what skills are critical to businesses, and short in supply.

Survey participants were asked to list the type of skills used in undertaking core business activities (businesses can identify more than one type of skills). Trades (27%) and financial (26%) skills were most widely used, while scientific and research (4.6%) skills was used the least by businesses.  Read more...

Yesterday I listened to a 24 year old (who runs three job boards) detailing his plans to launch a new job board focusing on the hospitality sector. His reason – it’s huge.

How big is the services sector?  Read more...

The good folks at IQPC (organisers of the recruitment and retention conference) sent me the results of a survey they conducted at their conference last year. One of the questions attendees were asked was whether recruitment firms still offer value.

The attendees voted. The verdict?

Not unlike the recent hung parliament delivered by a divided electorate, opinion on recruiters is evenly split, with 38% agreeing or strongly agreeing that they add value, and 41.6% disagreeing or strongly disagreeing.  Read more...

It’s raining conferences! A year ago, I argued that in spite of the many available alternatives, conferences are worth the trouble. In a world of tweetups and webinars, I still think there’s immense value in physically attending a conference. Besides, committing oneself to a whole day of networking, listening and learning can never be a bad thing (if the price is right, of course). Do you think conferences add value? Have your say here (only 3 questions).  Read more...