Nice to see so many of you at the SEEK bash at Auckland Art Gallery last night.  An interesting venue that certainly went a long way to refining the more debauched hedonism of the SEEK Annual Recruitment Awards at the tail end of 2011 (sadly).  And who says we recruiters are an uncultured mob?  I saw many recruiters meandering and ambling their way amongst pieces of New Zealand modern art last night, although I suspect that the toilets being at the other end of the galleries may have had a lot to do with it too.

I was also encouraged to see so many internal recruiters in attendance.  Into the lion’s den they ventured, and remained surprisingly unmolested by all of us snarling agency types, which they clearly relished.  And there was one conversation piece that repeatedly came up time and time again in my internal recruiter chats last night.  In fact it was almost universally the opening gambit of our encounter, the universal ice-breaker, and said with not a hint of sheepishness, but declared out loud and proud.

The top topic of conversation?  How much they have succeeded in reducing recruitment agency spend over the past year.  Every single time, albeit with varying degrees of relish, but always with unashamed pride:

University of Auckland?  “We’ve cut a 1/4 mill. from our agency spend in the first quarter of 2012 alone.”

Telecom?  “We have halved the number of agency contractors in our business over the past year and recruit more and more directly.”

BNZ, Vodafone, ASB and more – all a similar story.  But here’s the thing that really interests me:  Recruitment agencies are growing.  The agency rec-to-rec side of my business is as strong as ever and quality recruitment talent is in incredibly high demand.

So who is to be believed then?  Because surely both sides can’t be right.

Well in fact they can.  The other interesting thing that the internal recruiters were telling me last night was that they would never seek to totally eliminate agency spend entirely.  They still see value in keeping that sourcing channel open, along with their plethora of new channels at their disposal these days.  But now more than ever they are able to closely monitor the value they are getting from their agency supplier and demand better quality of delivery and service.  They still want to partner with top agency recruiters, but the word “partner” was the watchword last night.  Less and less can agencies get away with bypassing increasingly savvy internal recruitment teams and go direct to hiring managers.  No more is it acceptable to flick B-Grade CV’s as an “ad-chase” to businesses with which you have no understanding or relationship.

But don’t resort to throwing your hands in the air in despair, because there is some common ground still, and those willing to stand up and be counted will still get an audience, and maybe even some business, from the more savvy internal recruiters out there.

SEEK are in a similar position to lots of agencies.  They are constantly being told that their days are numbered.  The future is Linked In and its increasing suite of premium products.  But the reality is that SEEK is going as strong as ever, testament to which was the event they kindly put on for us all last night.  Keep an eye on trends (going mobile according to SEEK’s GM Janet Faulding) but don’t believe the constant doomsday hype.  Agencies have plenty of life and fight left in them still, but only with consistent delivery of quality services coupled with a true partnering approach to the client/supplier relationship.

And because it’s Friday, and many of you might be feeling a little jaded or delicate this morning, here’s something to make you laugh.  Thanks to the internal recruiter that shared it with us!

Have a great weekend.

Earlier this week saw a sizeable gathering of Auckland’s recruitment community for a breakfast panel presentation with a clutch of New Zealand’s recruitment leaders.  Hosted by the cheeky, chirpy James Cozens we were treated to 90 minutes of valuable insights, leathery bacon, worthwhile reminders and a smattering of smug back-patting and hilarious chest-thumping.  For all the hard times recruitment has gone through in recent years it’s great to see the indomitable spirit of competitiveness and self-belief remains.

A range of pre-prepared questions were enough to elicit some interesting responses from the panel.  However, the questions were so far-reaching that the responses could have formed a whole day’s conference given proper consideration.  As it was, we ended up with a rather hurried hour and a half where the lack of time and the understandable “caginess” in a room of competitors led to an examination of recruitment in 2012 that barely really scratched the surface.

Nevertheless, in a panel discussion that started off with an over-abundance of words like “challenges” and “pressure”, some pearls of positivity shone through, and some fine points were made.  Here’s my pick (paraphrasing):

Jacqui Barratt from Salt on PSA’s and fee reductions:

“We have to believe in the value of the service we are offering and not be so willing to always drop to the lowest fee going.  You need the courage to push back when downward pressure is placed on fees and margins.  We must say to Mr HR and Mr Procurement that we are not your paperclip provider, we are your talent provider, and we can add value to your entire business.”

For another take on the downside of downward fee pressure have a read of this fabulous post, essential reading for all procurement people considering implementing PSA’s for recruitment services.

Simon Bennett from Madison on Social Recruiting:

“We made a conscious decision to develop our overall social media recruitment strategy and tailor our output to the conversations and content that the different clients in our business really want to hear.  More than that, we realised the importance of developing our recruiters’ personal brands.  In the past this consisted of no more than placing their photo on our website and then screening their calls.  Now they are actively encouraged to engage with their social media networks in a more personal way.”

Check out my blog from a couple of weeks ago for more on personal branding in recruitment.

George Brooks from OCG on contingency versus retained recruitment:

“We have appointed Colmar Brunton to conduct an in-depth survey of our clients’ expectations of us as an industry.  Without revealing the entire findings, one of the most striking things that came out of it was that they don’t expect, or even want, us to recruit contingently.  Overall they are surprised that we are willing to work for nothing and would actually prefer us to offer our services on a retained basis.  The most surprised were our government clients who didn’t quite realise how contingency recruitment worked and revealed that it is not even legal for them to accept services from any supplier for free.”

One of retained recruitment’s most vociferous supporters, Aaron Dodd, speaks on the subject here.

Mike Davies from Adecco with an “outsider’s” view:

“After a long career in various other industries I came into recruitment five years ago and I have to say it is the toughest industry I have ever worked in.  This room is full of some of the most professional, competent and hard-working people in business and what we are doing is dealing in people, which makes it so important but also so tough.  Our industry is not always portrayed in the best light but I can assure you this is the toughest industry I’ve ever had to run a business in.”

Nothing to add to that really other than a tip of the hat to Mike and a thank you for the recognition.

Plenty was also said that didn’t quite ring so true.  Without dissecting it all in too much detail, I’m not in agreement that we need to be regulated as an industry.  The entrepreneurialism of recruiters is what makes them perform to the best of their abilities.  Sure, there’s cowboys, but with the growth of social media and fast-spreading word-of-mouth it’s hard to get away with dodgy practices so much nowadays.  I don’t need a qualification or license to prove my worth.  You can look at my Linked In recommendations for that.  As for the next RCSA conference in Fiji, this just smacks of being a bit 2006 to me.  Times are still tough for many and this doesn’t send the right message.

Lots was also said that we’ve all heard before.  “Job boards are on the way out”.  Yep, we know, and so do they, believe me.  “I don’t want to read Tweets about what you had for dinner last night”.  This is the classic response of someone who entirely misses the point of what Twitter is all about.  It is neither a job board, not Linked In, nor Facebook, but a mixture of all whereby you can get across a succinct message, tie it into your professional work, while also developing a more humanised brand for your business.  Yes, many miss the point, but I don’t Tweet about what I had for dinner anyway (I haven’t checked so I might be opening myself up to further criticism here, but go ahead and dig in if you like!)

Were you there?  What were your thoughts?

Here is a simple equation for all recruitment business owners seeking to hire A-Grade recruiters into their business:  If your office environment is A-Grade, they will come; If it isn’t, they won’t.

Let me elaborate:  Three times this week I have had the hiring process influenced in a major way by the working environments of prospective recruitment employers.  One high calibre candidate, who had the initial interview in a local trendy coffee shop, went along to second interview all fired up and excited about the opportunity ahead.  This time, attending the recruitment firm’s actual offices, the recruiter encountered a shabby commercial space squeezed in behind a retail parade.  Ascending a rickety staircase they were buzzed through into a dark, dingy and overcrowded work space that even had a non-recruitment part of the business squatting in the kitchenette.  No matter how charming, gregarious and visionary the ensuing pitch of the owner, this recruiter could just never picture themselves working in that environment.

Hiring chances zero.

Another candidate came the other way, approaching me to find him a new job because of the chaotic, unstructured and endlessly distracting environment he was currently being forced to work in.  Despite a good salary, great commission, a strong portfolio of contractors and bought-in clients, he didn’t feel it was orderly, uncluttered, or inspirational enough, and is considering moving on.

The third occurrence was sadly a missed opportunity for us.  A candidate referred by word of mouth was approached and invited in for interview.  Looking great on paper and sounding perfect on the phone, we had a range of quality openings for said candidate to consider.  Sadly it never even reached interview stage as the (Gen-Y) candidate had already been offered a role at a firm with a pool table and jukebox and that alone was enough to compel them to just accept without considering any other options.

There is little doubt in my mind that the working environment has overtaken salary levels and career opportunities on the list of importance of today’s brightest and best potential recruits for your business.  If you’re still unsure then have a peep at the world of Red Frog Events in Chicago in the fascinating article The Case for Building Your Employees a Treehouse.  The number one direct benefit of having a creative workspace?

“1. Easier recruitment. We’ve touted our creative work environment at more than 100 job fairs at universities across the country and now receive more than 2,000 resumes from eager applicants every single month. Camp Red Frog attracts top talent.”

More and more today we are hearing words like “creative”, “inspirational” and “modern” thrown around to attract top talent.  As rec-to-rec recruiters we operate in a candidate short market (well, top-talent short, anyway).  We often find ourselves having to pitch our clients’ businesses to prospective candidates rather than the other, more traditional, way round of pitching a candidate into a client.  More and more we find ourselves describing the clients’ company culture and working environment before we even get close to talking numbers, packages, salaries, commission percentages etc.

So what constitutes an inspirational work space?  When I first got into recruitment it was all about being in the gleaming glass towers at the big end of town.  Cavernous lobbies with a coffee franchise tucked in the corner, leading to soothingly speaking lifts wafting you skywards towards marble-floored receptions, frosted glass meeting rooms and an abundance of chrome.  Nowadays, I’m not so sure.  Inspiration seems to come more from buildings with character, with some history.  Creativity oozes from unplastered walls with exposed bricks.  Modernity is ironically almost a throwback to student days, denoted by jukeboxes, space invaders, pool tables, or bean bags.

Times have changed.  Recruitment environments need to encourage creative thinking and easy collaboration, inspirational meetings and out-of-the-square ideas.  The old prescriptive recruitment techniques are having less effect.  Sterile work environments are making your teams impotent and suffocating their abilities to find solutions for their clients.

A Grade work environments = A Grade recruiting talent.  Go get it.

The time has long gone when a recruiter of dubious moral and ethical standing can hide behind the glossy corporate image of their particular employer of choice.  In the age of advanced recruitment technology, social media, digital content sharing and mobilised networks, a recruiter’s own personal brand has taken on far greater importance and prominence.

For some this is a problem.  Where they could previously ply their recruiting trade behind the standardised processes, phone scripts and e-mail templates of their publically-listed firm they could get away with a range of behaviours.  Not so nowadays, and for some others this is in fact a very good thing.  It enables recruiters in lesser-resourced boutique firms to make a name for themselves, showcase their credentials, magnify their credibility and carve a more enduring niche into their industry of choice.

For those in the larger corporate firms, the goldfish bowl of modern day recruiting gives them an opportunity to develop their own personal brand and brush off the feathers they have been tarred with by association with a firm whose reputation was based on the behaviour and reputation of previous colleagues and other divisions.

I myself discovered this at an early stage in my recruitment career.  Hays is a global recruitment firm that seems to court industry disapproval and criticism in whatever region it might operate in.  Despite its ability to turn a profit that many recruitment businesses can only dream of, it seems to be the widely-accepted wisdom amongst most others in the industry that Hays operates in an unethical, underhand and overly aggressive manner.  From my own personal experiences, I found this to be true in some instances, but in many others I found I worked with top quality recruiters who benefitted from excellent training and well-developed technology.  Nevertheless, it became very quickly apparent that I would need to develop my own personal brand in my particular industry in order to avoid being regarded in a poor light purely because of who I worked for.  Recruiting in niche industries probably made this easier, but in my time there I developed a recruitment style that I continue to this day, and the way I recruit is irrelevant to the brand that might happen to sit at the end of my e-mails or on the top of CV profiles.

I recently heard a couple of stories that shoved this straight to the front of my mind again.  On a Group Linked In discussion recently there was a long comment left by an internal recruiter who wanted to justify why they can appear to behave like such obstacles, rather than conduits, to the work of agency recruiters.  Receiving a call from another large-agency recruiter, she informed him that she couldn’t see his candidate as his firm wasn’t on their PSA (heard that one before right?)  She later found out that he bypassed her and went straight to the hiring manager with his candidate.  The hiring manager liked the CV, so she had to take the time to sit down and look through it and work out a shortlist for interview.  Upon challenging the behaviour of the recruiter, he informed her that his Divisional Manager had told him to do it, and to say that “…it is only fair that your hiring manager know who the best available talent is on the market.“  As it turned out, the candidate had applied elsewhere in the company in the past and had spectacularly bombed at interview, so wasn’t at all suitable anyway.

Naturally, this particular internal recruitment team now have a one-size-fits-all impression of all recruiters within that entire global brand, just because of the behaviour of one recruiter and his particular division (and how it was led).  Only by developing a strong personal recruiting brand will any future recruiters from that firm be able to get this particular team to return their calls.

Then yesterday I spoke to a very senior candidate who had had a fantastic experience dealing with the Permanent Executive recruiter within a particular firm.  After agreeing to be represented to a couple of senior positions, they then decided she would also benefit from a look at some Executive Leasing opportunities they had on, and so she was passed onto the firm’s Contracting Recruiter.  This experience didn’t go so well.  With just a cursory look at the CV and previous interview notes, she was asked bluntly about what hourly rate she was expecting.  Caught a little off guard, and not having worked on an hourly basis previously, she said that it would depend on the particular role, what level of leadership and responsibility etc.  She was then abruptly cut off and told, “Listen, you need to give Recruiter’s a straight answer.  This is Contracting and we don’t have time to talk generally around the questions asked.“  The candidate walked away.

So again, the good work of one was undone by his colleague.  This candidate could quite likely end up being a client of  that firm one day and, whilst she might be open to using them for Permanent recruitment, there is no chance of Contracting getting a look in.

Good quality recruiters have nothing to fear from all of this.  The technology is there, the social recruiting platforms are there, the speed-of-light referral systems are there.  It’s time to make sure you are using them to your utmost advantage and developing your own personal brand.

___________________________

To finish off today with a quick personal plug:  One man who knows plenty about recruitment reputations and personal branding is the recruitment trainer Ross Clennett.  As one of Australia’s most prominent recruitment trainers and outspoken bloggers, Ross will be coming to Auckland on 14th-15th March to run two full day workshops and provide a keynote presentation on the evening in between.  We at Rice Consulting are exclusively hosting these events at our very cool workspace in Auckland’s CBD, Generator.  Seats are selling out fast but you can still register for one or more of the events by clicking here, and each workshop ticket purchased also gives one free ticket to the evening keynote, Q&A, and free networking drinks afterwards.

See you there!

When HR thought leader Dr John Sullivan ponders upon whether QR Codes might be the next Big Thing in recruiting technology, it’s worth paying attention.  But when a marketing agency make a QR Code out of Oreo cookies then you know this is something that requires serious consideration.  QR (Quick Response) Codes, originally developed by Toyota in the 90′s, and used occasionally in manufacturing, have found themselves suddenly thrust into the limelight of the new smartphone enabled mobile recruiting sect.

But boy do they look ugly.  They’re a bit like the Susan Boyle of the digital world.  Spending most of their lives knocking around low-key establishments and singing for their Mum, it takes the development of fancy new technology and a sparkling, brightly-lit platform, for their talent to finally make the world stand up and take notice.  No wonder ad agencies are having to dream up creative ways to make their appearance more exciting.

But being ugly never held anyone back, just ask Peter Beardsley.  QR codes are a cool, quick and easy way to feed data into your smartphone, whether it be a link to your website, a code to produce your boarding pass at the airport gate, a special offer campaign, or contact information fed straight into your phone’s contact list.

The question remains, though, of how us in the recruitment industry can make the most of this technology.  The recruitment community appears, to me, more open than most to the embracing of new ideas and technology, but possibly fall behind in the effective implementation of those ideas.  I think that the internal recruitment sector, in particular, can do some pretty interesting things with QR Code technology.  Placing banners at Graduate careers fairs to take the scanner to the company’s website.  Printed on handouts or business cards to steer scanners towards the careers page.  Check out some of these examples from the UK recruitment market.

Jobseekers, too, can use these codes on CVs to direct the reader towards their Linked In profile, maybe even a video resume for the brave.

And what about agencies?  This is where the benefits can start to get more tenuous.  I have seen print media job ads bearing QR Codes that take the reader to the online ad so they can quickly send a CV, but this would only work if your phone has your CV stored so you can send it as an attachment (I’m no expert but apps like Dropbox should enable you to do this).  We here at Rice Consulting have added QR Codes to our e-mail signatures which take the scanner to a smartphone ”business card” that can be immediately saved to your Contacts.  Maybe there are smartphones everywhere carrying my contact information now…but I’ve had no feedback yet to suggest this!

QR Codes are a developing trend that the recruitment industry needs to keep a close eye on.  Benefits, and opportunities, will emerge as people get more imaginative and creative, and it’s something worth having some fun with for now.  And one thing is for sure: like any new fad, people can’t resist getting involved when they see one.  I will scan any QR code when I see it, just to see what happens.

Creating a QR code is easy.  You can visit Vodafone to make your own ones here.  Go to your App store or Android marketplace thingy and download a QR Reader to your smartphone, and have a go at scanning the one below that I made earlier:

Now you can take The Whiteboard with you wherever you may go.  Enjoy!

My first ever real sales job was in a car rental office in Southern California.  There are many things I can recall from my first week there.  There’s a lot of remarkable things for a 22 year old English guy to experience in his first few days in America.  But one thing really stood out for me.  The branch Assistant Manager, an exotically-named Californian with a deep tan and teeth only matched in brightness by his crisp, white shirt, swaggering in from the outside where he had escorted his customers into a waiting hire car.  Brandishing the signed car hire agreement, he strode up to a bell secured atop a filing cupboard and with two confident swipes of his hand, tapped out two loud rings and breathed out the words “Full boat, baby…”

This was what happened in our office when someone sold a hire car customer the full insurance package: Damage Waiver, Personal Injury Insurance and Liability Cover.  This was a hard sell, asking customers to part with an extra $20/day on top of the price they had been quoted for just the car, and in a society where using your credit card to pay for a hire car provided it’s own insurance coverage anyway.

I was bewitched.  I loved it.  I wanted to ring that bell.  I guess it was at that point that my career in sales really began.  Then my sales career eventually found its way into the recruitment world…

Now recruiters, in general, know how to celebrate success.  It’s something we’re really quite good at.  I’ve experienced a number of different offices, and companies, and all have their rituals for celebrating the making of placements, applauding the closing of a deal and the candidate putting pen to paper on a contract.  Whether it be a rookie recruiter’s first placement sending the whole office to the nearest bar for a round of shots.  Whether it be a cap gun firing, a bell ringing, or just a simple round of applause, there’s some strange and entertaining practices out there.

Probably the most cringe-worthy one of all, for me, was the whole office having to get up and dance around a wobbling, gyrating, choking chicken as it belted some cheesy song in a “strangled-chicken-voice” kind of manner.  I refused to get up and dance.  I thought it was ridiculous.  I was made to feel like I wasn’t towing the company line.  So imagine my surprise when I learned recently that this same recruitment team had taken their placement dancing mascot to a client meeting where they were discussing the renewal of their preferred supplier panel?  I can only imagine the impression made on the client when the placement dance was performed live in front of them, as an example of how the zany, crazy, fun-lovin’ recruitment team “celebrate success”.

But perhaps I’m being churlish here.  Just because I prefer celebrating in a more liquid form, who’s to say that’s any better than dancing to an annoying, strangled chicken.  Is this whole ritual a bit cheesy and passe nowadays?  Or still an essential part of the sales culture?

What works for you?

The cupboard has been unlocked, the heavy door groaned backwards, and from the musty semi-darkness here it comes.  On squeaky wheels, with 2011′s words still faintly visible, The Whiteboard rattles and shakes its way into the bright lights of Recruitment 2012.

Welcome back.

I love this time of year.  The phone and e-mails hum quietly, sporadically, non-intrusively and it is actually possible to get everything done.  The commute across the bridge is oh so dreamy.  And hey, as I look out the window right now, it is glorious sunshine in Auckland!  It is also the time of year that excites many a football fan, as the 3rd Round of the FA Cup kicks off (the round when the Premiership teams join in the fabled contest).

And this year the Magic of the Cup got off to a flyer.  No, I’m not referring to Macclesfield’s 2-2 draw with Bolton, I ‘m afraid.  I’m referring to the return of an Arsenal legend, Thierry Henry, on loan from New York Red Bulls for 6 weeks.  Henry is Arsenal’s greatest ever goal scorer and won a host of silverware in his time at the club between 1999 – 2007.  Due to a hiatus in the American league’s season he was training with Arsenal in London to keep fit.  Facing an upcoming shortage of strikers due to the African Cup of Nations (and their inability to actually score goals anyway, apart from the mercurial Van Persie), Arsene Wenger was swayed by what we in recruitment all know as the Contractor Solution.  Yep, he plumped for interim workforce solutions and decided to plug the gap in his “project” with some experienced and immediately-available talent.

Arsenal have won nothing since the time of Henry & Co in the Noughties so there was a frisson of excitement and anticipation amongst fans to see him sitting with the players on the bench, and warming up throughout the game, during Arsenal’s FA Cup match against Leeds on Monday night.  The obdurate Leeds team, playing for a draw, managed to blunt the Arsenal attack and the match seemed to petering out towards a frustrating 0-0 draw.  So with 20 minutes to go, Wenger played his wild card and re-introduced Henry to the pitch in the stadium he had been so instrumental in building.  10 minutes later Henry collected a pass in the box.  With the kind of touch you either have or you don’t, he effortlessly controlled the ball, taking it away from the defender, and in one fluid motion curled it around the goalkeeper’s dive and inside the far post for the winning goal.

Cue pandemonium, raw passion from fans and player alike, and overflowing sentimentality from trophy-starved fans who in an instant were reminded why it is they love the sport so much.  The legend had returned.  Not playing for selfish reasons.  Not playing purely for money.  Not trying to use the club to showcase his skills to more glamorous clubs around Europe.  An Arsenal fan to the core, he celebrated with the fans, as one of them, before running to hug his mentor Arsene Wenger on the touch-line.

Warm and fuzzies abound.  But it isn’t always this way when an ex-employee returns, particularly in our recruitment industry, and especially on the agency side.  In all my years doing rec-to-rec recruitment, the instances of recruiters returning to agencies they previously worked for are very rare indeed, and even more rare is the number of times it actually works out for all parties involved.

If a recruiter quits their workplace for another agency, unless they are leaving under a particularly dark cloud, it is quite common for their line manager or Director to assure them the door is always open for them to return should things not work out.  But really, deep down, this is often pure lip-service.  It is the thing to say.  In reality there just seems to be too much pride, ego, and emotion in the agency world for this to fly.  Sure, sometimes the grass isn’t greener, and the move doesn’t work out.  But most recruiters do what they do because they are competitive, proud, and willing to push themselves beyond the comfort zone.  Whilst returning to an old employer is nice and cosy (you know the systems, the processes, the best place to park, the cafe downstairs know how to make your coffee just so) it just goes against everything in a recruiter’s make up to return, cap in hand, and quietly pick up where they left off.

The best recruiters are ridiculous optimists and they never like to admit defeat.  So, it is little wonder the agency recruitment world rarely experiences the kind of legendary return witnessed at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium on Monday night.  There are well-documented examples of this working spectacularly well in the wider business world.  Steve Jobs’ revolutionary return to Apple.  Matt Pontin’s reappearance at Fulton Hogan.

But I very rarely see it working in the agency recruitment world, and in an industry of relatively high staff turnover, this is kind of surprising.  I wonder, as we continue our painstaking recovery from recession, whether we will see many ex-employees joining up with old teams again, working under old manager’s again, building up their old portfolios again?

It would seem an obvious pattern to witness.  But I very much doubt it will.

Hmmm, there seem to be rather a lot of predictions for 2012 wafting around the social media blogosphere in recent days.  How on earth is one to know what to do with themselves as the impending end of 2011 looms ever closer?  How can one prepare for the trials and tribulations of 2012 with such conflicting logic and predictions afoot?

Aha, well it is just as well you visited The Whiteboard today, for below you will find all you need to know about what is in store for recruitment in 2012:

1.  Social Recruiting

The surge in social media for recruitment we all witnessed in 2011 will continue unabated into the next year.  Nearly every recruitment firm in the world will develop a Twitter profile and link it to their new cloud-based ATS so that every job ad written gets automatically posted to Twitter.  So many job ads will flood Twitter that the only people who read tweets will be other recruitment agents trying to work out who their competitors are recruiting for.  Upon realising this Twitter will lengthen the number of characters per tweet to 1,400 and start charging recruitment companies for each job tweet posted.  They will then change their name to Tweet Board.  Meanwhile Facebook will take notice of the fact that more jobseekers found their last role through Facebook than any other social media network.  Clever algorithms will be developed so that any status update or wall post that includes positive sentiments about work will create geo-based ads for local career managers and talent management while negative connotations will lead the user to ads for recruitment agencies or, based on the relative youth of the user, Work and Income.  Interaction through gamification and virtualization will encourage users to enter RecruitVille and undertake an augmented reality set of interviews before being steered towards the most relevant corporate careers page or agency company Facebook page.

Social Recruiters intent on using these mediums to build cohesive and engaged online communities and share useful, genuinely interesting content, will be treated with suspicion and distrust, and will probably migrate towards Google+ for good.  The most radical thinking of these new breed will take social media interaction to a whole new level and go “all retro” with telephones to arrange actual face to face meetings.

2.  Technology

Recruitment teams will continue to be early adopters of the most cutting edge technology.  QR codes (Quick Response codes, like a 3D bar code, download the i-Nigma app to read them), will start to appear on all job ads both online and in print media.  They will also appear on recruitment adverts at bus shelters, on stands at careers fairs, on recruiter business cards, and even on the ties of recruiters still wearing them in 2012 (about 1%).  Problems will persist around what information the QR code can reveal to the scanner that isn’t already containable within the medium carrying the code, but that will not deter forward-thinking recruiters.  In a similar vein, iPads will become commonplace and replace the good old black compendium folder.  Client Visit KPI expectations will be halved as the length of time the meetings take is doubled as recruiters struggle with the funny touch screen keyboard and predictive text and have to keep asking their clients to repeat what they just said.

3.  Mobile Recruiting

Recruiting will go mobile like never before.  Not only will every recruitment business make their websites smartphone-friendly and jobseekers store their CVs onto easily retrievable cloud-based Apps, but new smartphone hardware technology will enable plug-and-play add-ons that unfold out of the back of the smartphone or tablet.  Wherever a recruiter may be, with one press of an icon, a designer desk and reclinable swivel chair (with arm rests) will unfold along with mini filing cabinet and in-tray.  Not only will recruiters be able to harness technology to operate solo from their kitchen tables, by 2012 they will be able to instantly pop-up an entire mobile office wherever they may be.

4.  Job Board Innovation

Under continued threat from the phenomenon of social recruiting (especially Twitter’s evolution into a Tweet Board) job boards will be forced to continue to innovate.  Trade Me Jobs will stop trying to be like SEEK and start to actually make interesting press releases that Kiwis really want to read.  Meanwhile, SEEK will on-board groundbreaking technology to enable them to issue invoices via e-mail as opposed to their current cutting edge snail mail versions.

5.  Internal Recruitment

Internal recruitment departments will continue to increase in number, sometimes also in quality, but not often.  Employment branding will become the hot topic as they compete for the top talent in a talent short market.  Large technology businesses will change their names to those of various fruits, with the more funky and whacky workplaces plumping for the citrus varieties.  At least one large professional services firm will change their global branding to an archaic symbol, and become known mysteriously to potential recruits as “The accountancy firm formerly known as…”  A new trend will start to emerge whereby internal recruitment functions begin realising that the quality of delivery and service they get from their agency partners is directly correlated to the fee percentage ensconced into their PSA agreements.  One or two bright teams will agree to paying full fee for recruitment services and suddenly encounter greater levels of talent in the marketplace.

6.  Talent Shortages

Talent will become so crucifyingly short in such an expanding range of sectors that submissions will be made by the recruitment industry governing bodies to have the actual word “Talent” shortened officially in the English language.  After much lobbying the latter part of 2012 will see the Oxford Press make an offical release proclaiming that the word “Talent” is no longer the correct and modern usage of the word and it will hitherto become spelt simply as “Tlt”.  This will be music to the ears of employment commentators, large global recruitment firm press releases, and Twitter hash-taggers with limited space to say their piece.

7.  RCSA Conferences

Following on from the RCSA Conference in Fiji in 2012, recruitment company owners struggling to pay their contractors on time and angry mobs of “fat cat” shouting jobseekers will force the region’s recruitment industry body to consider less exotic climes for 2013.  After much debate, conjecture and hand-wringing, the board will settle on Kalgoorlie in Western Australia.  Symbolic of the mining industry that is the driving force behind much of the industry’s billings, they will nevertheless discover that delegates in fact spend more time actually attending the conference they went there for in the first place, as the hotel will be the only sufficiently air-conditioned building in the vicinity.  The kiwi delegate numbers will increase.  Although further to travel than Fiji was, they will be unable to resist the allure of pubs with topless barmaids.

8.  Youth Unemployment

Unemployment rates of New Zealand youth will hit such highs that every school-leaver and graduate under 25 years of age will leave for Australia to work in the mines.  So many holes will be dug into the country’s interior furnace that the country will eventually lose its moorings and start drifting across the Tasman towards New Zealand like a big, brown, iceberg.  The two countries will collide by late 2012, providing instantly devastating access for Australia’s wildlife to “introduce” itself to New Zealand’s bush.  By December 2012 the assorted creatures will have razed New Zealand’s pristine foliage to the ground, doing the Greens out of a role in Parliament and clearing the path for more lucrative mining of the South Island.  New Zealand’s prodigal youth will return to mine their own land and be greeted as saviours.  John Key will take the plaudits for developing the policies that led to them leaving for Australia in the first place.

9.  Recruitment: The Movie

Rumours are already starting to circulate that Warner Brothers have commissioned the filming of a movie based on the recruitment industry, following on from the success of the pilot series “”Top Recruiter” Reality TV show.  Rumours circulating around Twitter suggest that casting has begun with Daniel Radcliffe playing the “gutsy upstart” IT temp desk Recruiter and Steven Seagal as the renegade Auckland GM.  Actors to have agency recruiters quaking in their boots include Alan Rickman as the “ball-breaking” HRD with Chris Rock the wise-cracking know-it-all internal recruiter.  Rumours continue to circulate on Twitter and are trending under #recruitmentmovie.  Seriously.

10.

Ten?  Why does there always have to be ten?  In fact the rules will change for 2012.  It will be perfectly acceptable to compile a list of any number ranging from 3 to about 287.  What is absolutely obligatory for 2012, though, is that all articles, blogs and press releases shared on social media must consist of a list, for readers will henceforth be blind to anything that isn’t in list format.  The suggested logic is that it makes the content more easily digestible.  The real reason is it increases the number of times the piece is shared and improves SEO.  Look at the Linked In Today headlines on your LinkedIn homepage if you don’t believe in this emerging trend.

What a year 2011 has been.  Hard work, but it feels good.  It’s been a hugely eventful year in New Zealand and I feel the recruitment industry has come through stronger and better than ever.  Clearly I need a good break, and am very much looking forward to one soon!  This will be the last blog post from The Whiteboard for 2011.  Thanks to all of my readers and especially those who took the time to contribute, comment and debate.

Happy Christmas and see you all again in 2012.

Last year, around about this time, The Whiteboard brought to you my predictions for what 2011 had in store for us in the world of recruitment.  Next week I will be wheeling out a similar offering, although cunningly this time I will be issuing forth predictions for Recruitment 2012.  Just to keep you all interested you see.

But casting my mind’s eye back to sitting in this very spot 12 months ago, I couldn’t resist shifting a quick glance at my predictions for 2011, and seeing how prophetic / pathetic [delete as appropriate] my 2011 predictions were.

So like a hopeless gambler, drunk in the TAB, shooting a bleary-eyed look at the endlessly circling four-legged betting vessels, and staggering towards the till, betting slips gripped in shaking fingers, I subject my predictions to you, my critical readers, to decide whether I might be a thought leader or a thought loser.

I am Captain Hindsight...Oh Yes

Here was last year’s offering:  Nine Factors to Shape Recruitment in 2011.

Now then, let’s see:

Prediction 1:  Growth

Those of you in external recruitment will have a wonderful opportunity to get back to pre-recession levels of billings in 2011.  Those of you in internal recruitment will get increasing pressure from line managers and stakeholders to deliver on increasing numbers of roles.  Be prepared to work hard to take advantage of this upswing in business because if you don’t, someone else will.

2011 Reality:  External recruiters did indeed have that opportunity, but not all of them took it.  The year brought far tougher trading conditions than many expected and, whilst the demand for labour grew, the lengths you had to go to to make those placements ramped up significantly.  Quality recruiters able to provide a true consultancy service coupled with drive, determination and tenacity were able to increase their billings.  The other 80% were not.  On the internal side, resources were stretched tighter and more was expected for less.  The number of roles to recruit increased but you didn’t see an increase in support or colleagues around you.  HR and Finance departments looked increasingly to improve the quality of their internal recruitment functions rather than the number within it.

Prediction 2:  Competition

2011 will see the introduction of more and more recruitment businesses into the market place.  Some will spring up organically within New Zealand and some will enter from overseas.  What the big players need to realise is that these smaller boutiques can pose a bigger threat to their business than perhaps they could in the past.  With the amount of technology so easily available nowadays, small solo operators can move quickly, efficiently and with great flexibility and will work very hard at developing tight client relationships.

2011 Reality:  The booming economy of Australia got stuck in neutral and eventually crunched into a “two-speed economy” with QLD, WA and SA (courtesy of the Olympic Dam project) providing all the torque to drag NSW and VIC along with it.  Recent jitters in their banking and financial services sectors have further quelled aspirations for growth.  As such good old New Zealand was firmly placed in the “too hard” basket and we didn’t see any significant entries from overseas recruitment businesses.  Already existing players such as Candle, Talent International, Talent 2 and Skilled maintained a “steady as she goes” course and pretty much maintained their shape, although Skilled did recently offload the Tradeforce part of their business to AWF.  We did indeed see some organically grown businesses spring up, however, with Alexander James, Sourced and Talent Magnet being front of mind.  Companies such as Manpower, OCG, Robert Walters, Madison, Debbie Graham and Candle provided the experience and expertise for these new businesses to launch.

Prediction 3:  Internal Recruitment

2011 will herald a new era for internal recruitment teams but the full effects won’t start to really show through until later years.  More companies will implement an internal recruitment function, and all will do so with the best intentions, but not all of them will get it right first time.

2011 Reality:  Pretty happy with this prediction, although I’m willing to field comments to the contrary.  Internal recruitment functions have become smarter and more savvy in some instances but whilst we have witnessed an increase in the efforts of corporates to develop their internal recruitment functions, many are still subjugated to the interferences of naive HR and Finance departments who don’t understand the value of top talent.  There is clearly an increase of will to get this right, to the extent we now operate a successful desk recruiting purely for the internal recruitment market (ahem, shameless plug), but let me put it this way:  $50k gets you a recruitment administrator who will do nothing to command the respect of your hiring managers and develop a strategic hiring, talent pooling, employment branding and social recruiting function.  $100k probably will.  Oh yes…and you’ll probably save over $50k in the process.

Prediction 4:  Flexibility:

No longer the sole occupancy of fiery, energetic, young Grads, more and more recruitment desks are populated by more experienced, commercially-astute and business-minded consultants.

2011 Reality:  The technology did indeed continue to advance and enable more and more recruiters to continue working without being physically chained to their desk.  However, while this suited the return-to-work Mums and return-to-NZ ex-pat Kiwis seeking work/life balance, it also became an expectation of Gen-Y and Gen-Z recruiters too.  With the advance of cloud-based recruitment systems such as PeopleCloud it is becoming an expectation rather than a luxury for recruiters to access their databases from home computers and smartphones, with one client in Brisbane handing out iPads as a matter of course to all new recruits.

Prediction 5:  Contracting

Following on from flexible working practices, the concept of contracting will take off in a big way in New Zealand in 2011.  Lagging behind much of the developed world, this has been slower to properly catch on in New Zealand, but many recruitment companies will look to grow their contractor offerings at all levels.

2011 Reality:  Hmmm…you tell me.  Undoubtedly many recruitment businesses have sought to grow their contracting capabilities (many recruitment company owners recognise that a profitable contractor book adds far more to their business’s worth than past Perm billings) but in reality the appetite in New Zealand remains reluctant.  Some firms have pointed to an increase in demand for temporary workers as hiring freezes and frozen headcounts continue post-recession and flexible workers offer a way around it.  However, anecdotal evidence from Wellington is that their contractor market has died and the IT sector as a whole is bringing in more Perm than Contractor staff in an effort to get better value for money.

Prediction 6:  Salaries

Whilst there has been pressure during 2010, many recruitment firms have managed to hold true to their principles and newly austere approach.  This is already under severe pressure now, but in 2011 it will break….Expect to see these beefed back up 10%-20% again by the second Quarter of 2011.

2011 Reality:  Lets be honest.  2011 didn’t end up delivering the surge in economic recovery many of us expected hoped to see and there was never any real pressure on recruitment company owners to increase the base salaries of staff.  The figures proffered in last year’s blog hold about true today, so there has been little or no change.  What we did witness, though, was the increased difficulty in prising top recruitment talent out of competing firms.  As demand for the services of the better agencies increased, so did their own demand for quality recruitment staff to meet the demands of their clients.  Base salary increases of 20% or higher were frequently engineered to leverage such moves.  If you are a recruiter that did get a base salary increase in 2011 then feel lucky and proud, because the average New Zealander saw a rise of just 3%.

Prediction 7:  Probity Checks

Although impossible to monitor, more and more clients and recruiters will also be conducting “informal” background checking through social media channels such as Facebook, Linked In and Twitter.

2011 Reality:  Currently a hot topic, this did indeed come to pass, and was the feature of a widely-shared infographic revealing that 91% of the surveyed “hiring professionals” used social networks to screen candidates.  It has probably reached the stage where if you don’t check at least one of Linked In, Twitter or Facebook then you are doing your client a disservice in allowing that candidate onto your shortlist.

Prediction 8:  Social Media

2010 saw the uptake of Linked In in a big way by recruiters looking to build innovation into their old-fashioned sourcing techniques.  In 2011 the same will happen with Twitter and, to a lesser extent, with Facebook.

2011 Reality:  The recruitment industry’s love affair with Linked In continues unabated while Linked In, like a teasing harlot, seems intent on developing more and more revenue-generating applications that actually serve the corporate internal recruitment market more favourably than us agency recruiters.  However, Linked In now being a publicly listed entity means they don’t care who the money comes from, and just as before it will likely be the agency recruiters who harness the power of Linked In’s premium offerings the most.  Twitter has indeed grown in popularity amongst recruitment businesses but, sadly, many still seem to regard it as an appropriate forum to list their current job vacancies.  Guess what?  It isn’t.  And subscribing to a smart piece of software to automatically regurgitate your database’s job listings onto Twitter is not Social Recruiting.  It is Being a Prick.  Facebook for recruiting?  2011:  meh.  2012?  Come back next week.

Prediction 9:  Corporate Social Responsibility

As profits rise and firms look to give a little back, as well as elevating their perceived image in the wider community, 2011 will see an increasing focus on CSR with many SME kiwi recruitment firms developing new approaches.

2011 Reality:  I did detect a slight shifting of intentions towards this overall but circumstances conspired against and eventually little more than lip service was paid towards CSR by the recruitment industry.  Tough trading conditions, share market fluctuations, Eurozone crises and faltering confidence all negatively affected recruitment company profits and downward pressure on fees continued from shorter-sighted corporate employers.  Suffice to say CSR never reached top-of-agenda at recruitment board meetings, but we did enjoy speaking to one recruiter from Kelly Services on the day she was dressed as a fairy helping out at a charity for disadvantaged children!

Pretty content with the validity of my 2011 projections overall.  Clearly the impacts of the Christchurch Earthquake and ongoing global economic wobbles took their toll on my rose-tinted optimism, but all things considered we in Recruitment NZ did pretty bloody well.  Hats off to you all.

Please let me know your thoughts on the above and come back next week for The Whiteboard’s predictions for 2012.

Contingent recruiters have long held a universal gripe about the nature of their work.  As recruiters working on a contingent basis, they often find themselves working on multi-listed roles, as in worked by a number of competing recruitment firms at the same time.  The contingent part of the whole process means that they only get to bill the client a fee for the work they have done if they are the “lucky” firm to find the right candidate and secure the placement.  The others?  Well they get nothing.

This process, of course, is scoffed at by the braver, and probably smarter, recruiters who refuse to partake in this often futile and desperate exercise.  The recruiters who have the guts to walk away from work that is listed with multiple competing firms, work that demands you spend time, money and effort for often no reward.  These recruiters that work only on roles if they have it exclusively, and often on a retained basis too, making sure part of the fee is paid up front so some money is made even if there is no eventual successful placement made.

But, as we all know, the world of recruitment is fast changing.  As HR departments learn how to advertise themselves on job boards, and more savvy, switched on internal recruitment teams are formed, then agency recruiters find themselves increasingly marginalised and having to compete with more recruiters for less business.  I can argue all day long for the quality that can be brought to the hiring process by a professional recruitment agency, well-networked, with expert knowledge in their chosen field, and why roles should be given to them exclusively and also on a retained basis.  But sadly the world is changing.

There is a new word nowadays for businesses doing lots of work for nothing.  It is called Crowdsourcing.  Heard it?  Here is the definition from Wikipedia:

Crowdsourcing is the act of sourcing tasks traditionally performed by specific individuals to a group of people or community (crowd) through an open call.

Jeff Howe established that the concept of crowdsourcing depends essentially on the fact that because it is an open call to a group of people, it gathers those who are most fit to perform tasks, solve complex problems and contribute with the most relevant and fresh ideas.

In fact, this has been going on in recruitment for some time now, even before the term was coined.  I remember one of my first recruitment meetings in New Zealand was attending a “function” at a large engineering consultancy in Auckland.  Nibbles were provided and I discovered I was one of about fifteen other engineering recruiters of various shapes and sizes, all gathered to be briefed on  the same major power generation project that was in project planning stage in Asia.  About ten hard-to-fill roles were dished out to the hungry gathering, and off we all went to try and fill the roles.

More recently I heard that Hewlett-Packard in New Zealand do the same thing.  Dispensing with the cosy familiarity of the on-site meeting, they have found even greater efficiencies by gathering all of their preferred suppliers onto a conference call and wheeling in the hiring manager to brief the listening recruiters on their current vacancy.

With advances in technology this concept of Crowdsourcing Recruitment is appearing in increasingly smart ways.  In the US www.bountyjobs.com is a New York-based online marketplace that connects internal corporate recruiters with a network of headhunters.  The idea is that a company registers its vacant position on the site and sets the fee it is willing to pay.  They are then contacted by recruiters interested in working the role and the hiring client can review the recruiter’s profile and past history before allowing them to recruit for the role.  This may sound pie-in-sky kind of stuff but it has recently raised $5 million in new Venture Capital funding.

Here in New Zealand the recently-launched NBR Talent is pulling on similar influences.  The original plan of having recruitment firms upload the details of interviewed candidates to the “Talent Database” for employers to search through to fill roles in their organisation (at a reduced fee of 10%) has faltered under the basic crapness of recruiters having no time or patience to do the admin piece in uploading and skill-matching their candidates.  But flipping it around, they are now proactively putting up their vacancies, for the recruiters involved to see, who can then put forward candidates they might have on their books.  This is similar to the Bounty Jobs idea, and seems to be generating more success, as even at 10% it is a way recruiters not on the large PSA’s can still make placements into large corporates and make the most of candidates they have interviewed that might not be quite right for their existing vacancies.

So whilst the prospect of many people doing the same thing for little or no reward seems like madness, this is in fact a phenomenon that has existed in recruitment for quite some time now.  Efforts by more altruistic recruiters to rebuff the contingent model, to demand they only work on roles exclusively, are made harder and harder as the concept of Crowdsourcing Recruitment takes hold.

But here is where it all falls down:

Crowdsourcing is supposed to gather those “most fit to perform certain tasks”.  Do the above online apps really contain all of the very best recruiters in the market?  Bounty Jobs only contains recruiters who have taken the time to register their profile whilst NBR Talent seems to contain a range of well-known but seemingly arbitrarily chosen recruitment businesses – under what criteria were they invited to join?

Crowdsourcing is supposed to enable the solving of complex problems.  This is highly relevant in recruitment.  This is what we do, particularly on hard-to-fill roles in a talent short market.  But the driving force behind these apps seems to be to reduce cost and increase speed of response.  Will a recruiter really put as much time and effort into a crowdsourced vacancy at 10% or less, compared to the role he has on with a client who he has met with, got to properly understand their business, and agreed a fee of 15% or higher?

Crowdsourcing is supposed to unearth the most relevant and fresh ideas.  What these apps are promoting is the provision of a recruiter’s B-grade candidate pool (or worse).  The top ones (you know, the ones referred to as walking placements), are not going to be coded up and dumped into an online talent database, they are going to be well-treated, looked after, listened to, and steered or coaxed towards the recruiter’s favourite clients, who probably also pay 15% or higher.

We knew it as Contingent Recruitment.  It is becoming known as Crowdsourcing Recruitment.  But the outcome is the same.  The concept will increase the options at a client’s disposal, provide opportunities for collaborative problem solving, increase speed of results, and reduce overall spend.  But will it actually enable a client to really partner with an expert recruiter and ensure they get delivered the very best talent on the market place?

Probably not.