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...

The Executive Monitor 2011 report is ready for download.

The annual study is an on-going attempt to better understand the behaviour of executives and high-income earners in Australia. This year we revisit familiar themes, addressed in the first study, like education, remuneration and work, but also touch on new subject matters. In particular we looked at the issue of workplace diversity and discrimination. We also explored the view of executives on recruiters, jobs, social media, best places to work and study.   Read more...

Last month I ran into Joris Luijke at the AHRI conference where we briefly discussed about his new plans to work with recruitment firms. Atlassian revealed their new engagement process last week.

Atlassian, of course, is not new to innovating their HR/recruitment processes. When you are growing at great speed, there is little choice, but to innovate. Trial and error often rules the roost, but a key driving force for Joris is ‘not wasting time’. Running a team of three and servicing offices in three continents is no easy task. It’s easy to see why Atlassian frequently experiment. Standing still is not an option.  Read more...

The RBA revealed new ABS data on employment trends yesterday.

There is no real surprise that the Australian economy is dominated by the services sector (refer chart below). Over a period of one year, sectors like professional service and health care added 60,000 full-time jobs. In contrast, the manufacturing sector shed more than 20,000 jobs in the same period.

Meanwhile, the Australian Industry Group released its latest PMI (Performance of Manufacturing Index) results, which recorded a slight increase in overall employment numbers. However, long-term prospects are not rosy.  Read more...

The use of social media to find employment is not widespread amongst graduates, according to the latest OneTest report.

Popular social networking sites like Linkedin is primarily a playground for more accomplished professionals to find new opportunities; it’s less useful for a new graduate who’s looking for her first job. So, it’s understandable that a large percentage (40%) do not find social media useful in their job search.  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...

Worth $19 billion and employing 289,000 people, the digital industry – which comprise of software, website, animation, video, computer games – contributes 3% of the nation’s GDP. In NSW alone there are 36,192 creative digital businesses operating. Without doubt, given our love affair with anything digital, the industry is growing fast.

A new research by Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) claims that skills shortage is acute in the digital industry and it is fuelling a $2 billion trade deficit. A survey of employers carried out early in the year found a disconnect between graduates and the skills required by employers.  Read more...

To say Australians love social media is an understatement of the highest order; we lead the world in social media usage.

There seems to be a lot of anecdotal evidence that job seekers are using social media to look for employment opportunities and in some instances actually land a new job. In fact, a growing number of career advisors are encouraging the use of social media. In addition, the idea of using social media to promote one’s ‘personal brand’ is increasingly becoming popular. But, are Australians using social media to find jobs? If so, how widespread is the practice?  Read more...

Here’s the latest ABS data on the distribution of the Australian workforce (refer table). Health Care industry is by far the largest employer. Sectors like mining, in spite of getting all the media attention, employs only 1.5% of the workforce. While the manufacturing sector, arguably a dying industry, is the fourth largest employer it’s clear that the Australia is predominantly a service economy. And that trend is likely to continue for years to come.  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...

How do executive recruiters navigate the evolving sourcing landscape? Paul Jury (Head of Executive Recruitment) sheds light on Talent2’s experience.

Talent2 was founded as a high-touch executive recruitment business focused on middle- and senior-level permanent and contract appointments. It has an experienced team of recruitment consultants who are recognised as leaders in their specialist areas. While our brand proposition might not traditionally be associated with the use of job boards, we strongly believe they can be utilised to greatly compliment high-quality executive level recruitment assignments.  Read more...

Jeff Weiner, CEO of Linkedin, wants the company to be synonymous with ‘talent’ just as ‘Internet Search’ is for Google. In an interview with Techcrunch, he talks about past achievements and sheds light on future plans. Not surprisingly, Linkedin’s recruitment products are the largest and fastest growing part of the business. However, Jeff is careful to differentiate Linkedin from job boards. Here’s his take:  Read more...

How can employers and recruiters work together more efficiently? What processes are broken and require fixes? How can the client-supplier relationship in the recruitment industry be improved?

Of course, there are no easy answers. It’s my hunch, though, that the vast majority of friction between employers and recruiters occur mainly because both groups understand very little of how the other operates. At Destination Talent we wanted to start addressing the many challenges and problems inherent in the client-supplier relationship. To begin with, we are going to mobilise and present the perspective (voices) of the recruitment community. To that end, we are inviting recruiters to voice their opinion on how to improve a wide range of issues including:  Read more...

Growth of Job Boards: Serving a 2.4 million strong workforce, the NZ job board sector is comparatively smaller in size, but nonetheless as vibrant and colourful as its Australian counterpart. We monitored 89 online destinations which qualified as being a job board. The actual number is likely to be much higher.  Read more...