Employee Recruitment

With the skills shortage raging, finding the right employees is more crucial than ever - Cameron Bayley looks at how you can upgrade your recruitment process, whatever your budget.

In the current skills shortage climate it seems the real winners are potential employees. But if SMEs take a positive approach to improving their recruitment process, it can be a win-win situation.

“It’s an employees market out there,” says Dr Danica Hooper, behavioural profiling specialist for Drake International. “They’re very spoilt for choice, and they have fast and easy access to those choices. So, if you’re not offering a fantastic opportunity, they’ll go somewhere else.”

The process of recruiting staff used to be a simple choice between doing it yourself or outsourcing the whole task to a recruitment firm. But things are changing. “People sometimes have the misconception that if they hire a recruitment agency, the agency advertises and does everything from beginning to end. But that’s not true any more,” advises Hooper. “You see a lot more flexibility in recruitment agencies these days.”

Turning to a recruiter, says Hooper, is about two things: time and expertise. For most small businesses time really is money, and many can’t afford to tear themselves away from the coalface to place an ad and sift through resumes, let alone conduct a round of interviews. “It’s really about sticking to your core business and getting somebody in who has the expertise and the time to do this for you,” Hooper says. “It’s about selecting the aspects which you don’t necessarily have the expertise in, or the time to do, and outsourcing those aspects.”

For software company Belkin Australia, using a recruitment company makes sense to source all casual staff, as well as various other positions such as admin and IT. With a team of about 100, time management is key and an agency is vital to cull a pile of resumes down to a manageable shortlist of interview candidates. “For some positions you can get 100 to 150 resumes that you’ve got to go through,” says Alison Carlisle, marketing coordinator. “To cut the beginning part of the process and just get the ones who can do the job, or the best, or the top five, or whatever we request, makes our life a lot easier.”

Carlisle says the agency Belkin was using when she joined wasn’t satisfactory and they had to shop around. “We weren’t really impressed with the service or the quality of people. Our HR manager spoke to a few different people about what they had to offer and their prices, the whole kit and caboodle, and from there we went with the one we liked the most.”

From an agency perspective, Hooper says most are more than happy to discuss their options with clients. “Any reputable recruitment agency will have people on hand to come out and meet with small businesses, no obligation, just have a chat about what their services are and what they can offer.”

Costs vary widely between agencies, so it’s worth doing some research. As a general rule they’ll charge a percentage (such as 10 to 15 percent) of the advertised position’s annual salary. However, the costing is largely on a case by case basis, taking in factors such as what services you require from the agency, the seniority of the role to be filled, and how many positions you’re looking to fill.