Recruitment Trends – Winter 2008…

Directors Rohan Bowyer and Ian Beattie established RIOT Recruitment with the vision of providing "Revolutionary Recruitment" services in Hawke’s Bay.

What does this mean?

Revolutionary Recruitment means bringing great businesses and great people together with great "fit".

At RIOT Recruitment we believe in partnering with leading Hawke’s Bay businesses. We are business people, working with other business people and we recognize the challenges involved in building winning teams.

Recruitment decisions often rank amongst the hardest and most thought provoking decisions made within most organisations. Get the "right fit" and everyone wins.

Getting this "right fit" is an evolving challenge, and there are a number of trends (both old & new) that continue to shape the recruitment landscape. We explore a few in this article.

Dynamic Employment Market

Fundamental cultural & societal changes have seen the employment market become increasingly dynamic; employees today change jobs more often than in previous generations (indeed, people are likely to change careers several times throughout their working life). "Lifers" are dwindling, and organisations are increasingly being forced to plan for higher turnover of staff. This has lead to ever increasing demands on human resource and recruitment services. By way of example, "Generation Y" (people born between 1982 & 1994), generally speaking, pose totally different challenges to prior generations (a 2008 UK employment survey suggests that Gen Y are generally more ambitious, brand conscious and tend to move jobs more often than ever before). The generation following Gen Y (known as Gen Z, Gen C or "digital natives") will bring further changes to the employment market. One thing that stands above all else is that the pace of change continues to accelerate.

TREND = employment markets are more complex today than ever before. Businesses will continue to develop acquisition & retention strategies around these broad generational differences.

Shrinking Boundaries

The advent and ongoing evolution of the internet, along with technological advancements in travel & telecommunications, has effectively "shrunk the globe". This shrinkage has created opportunities for people to research destinations & opportunities more extensively, and to more easily make the transition to a life based in another country.

This trend works in two ways for a regional employment market such as Hawke’s Bay. On the one hand, we are in a constant struggle to retain emerging talent, and to retain highly successful organisations within our regional boundaries. Out of region movements are inevitable, and the broadening of horizons should be encouraged. Many organisations now recognise & embrace this extension of the talent pool and plan for the long term (with the possibility that people will return to Hawke’s Bay later in life, and will have a predisposition to their prior employer).

On the other hand, the Hawke’s Bay continues to attract people looking for work-life balance, in a region with good infrastructure & a sufficient population to sustain a breadth of private and public sector organisations, across various market sectors. This draw of talent continues to refresh and challenge local business thinking, and to inject new direction into the region.

Our ongoing challenge as a region and within individual organisations is to differentiate our brand/s, and in doing so, attract top talent. This means continued development of employment brands, and just as importantly of the Wine Country regional brand (as well as support of other regional development initiatives).

TREND = Hawke’s Bay remains a highly desirable location for individuals & families, with the strong lifestyle (life-balance) draw. This will continue to appeal to both the national and off-shore markets.

Targeted Talent Acquisition

With the ongoing challenges associated with finding, attracting and retaining good people the emphasis has for some time been switching from the traditional "advertise & filter" approach, to a more focused acquisition strategy. This approach will often include a well thought out marketing campaign (capturing active and passive candidate markets), as well as incorporating a proactive "head-hunting" strategy. Once the "right fit" has been found the retention strategies are crucial.

In a short space of time within the Hawke’s Bay, RIOT Recruitment has established a point of difference & a strong reputation in this targeted talent acquisition space.

TREND = more emphasis will be placed on targeted talent acquisition ongoing, as advertising channels become more complex and fragmented.

From "Agency" to "Partnership"

Hawke’s Bay employers have traditionally worked on a basis of either recruiting directly themselves, or engaging recruitment agencies to assist on an "ad-hoc" basis. This has largely been driven by a misconception that recruitment services "sit outside of the business", and are independent of the organisations strategic direction. In today’s marketplace a businesses recruitment partner needs to be able to align themselves to that business (both culturally and commercially). They should be seen as an extension of the business, effectively acting as a brand champion in the wider market, and promoting that business beyond pure recruitment needs.

TREND = Globally, trends show us that recruitment businesses are being recognised as adding more & more value to organisations (both large & small). This has largely stemmed from the fact that business managers and owners are seeing real value in working closely in "partnership" with recruitment companies that can add real strategic value to their business and challenge their thinking. RIOT Recruitment was established with this as one of its founding principles, and businesses will continue to shift to this model.

Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO)

RPO is an industry buzzword (much like "social networking" and "talent acquisition"). The phrase Recruitment Process Outsourcing (and the moniker RPO) has been around for quite some time, and has it origins tracing back to Silicon Valley in the 1970’s. RPO is more widely implemented in global and national markets, and has yet to become "mainstream" in Hawke’s Bay.

Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) is a tailored recruitment strategy providing businesses with planning and execution for recruitment needs. Successful RPO providers will create a process that seamlessly integrates into an organisations operation reducing needless recruitment complexities. This implementation of outsourced services maximizes a company’s ability to rapidly scale and adapt, creating the flexibility and agility to effectively respond to the constantly changing talent acquisition environment.

A significant separation between pure RPO providers and staffing agencies is the goal of making the recruiting function a core-competency and integrating this with overall business process (versus simply filling open opportunities or ad-hoc engagement).

TREND = While RPO is predominantly the domain of larger organisations, this will become more widespread in smaller and medium organisations over time, as businesses seek expertise in "cradle to cradle" recruitment services.

Economic Factors

Economic factors play a critical part in our recruitment & retention strategy. Today, we are very much part of a global economy and people will benchmark local market conditions with offshore opportunity. As a region (indeed as a country) we cannot compete on a global scale in terms of job opportunity or pay scales. Our ongoing challenge is to play to our local strengths, and to innovate, building niche "value-add" products and services based around the future. Attracting top talent remains focused on "quality of life" elements that we can offer as a region.

If you would like to discuss your ongoing recruitment needs the RIOT Recruitment team would be delighted to hear from you.