www.scirecruitment.co.nz

Transactional recruitment rules in the current job market in New Zealand. You don’t like it? So what are you going to do about it?

September 16, 2010 at 3:05 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Like it or not transactional recruitment has almost entirely taken control of the job market in New Zealand over the last couple of years. If you have been in the market looking for a job recently chances are you have experienced transactional recruitment at its worst. The same can be said about employers who have tried to fill senior roles within their organisations by listing their vacancy with multiple agencies.

While transactional recruiters have been around for many years often claiming most of the credit for the industry’s bad press, the tight current job market has tempted many non-transactional recruiters to adopt a less professional approach to recruitment in an effort to improve their cash flow. One of the worst examples of transactional recruitment has to be the Chartered Accounting sector.

Recently a candidate who had just accepted an offer and signed employment contract with one of our clients in the CA sector was approached by another recruitment company that offered him to consider the same role he had accepted a few days before. We had a good laugh with our candidate who could not believe the pitch the recruitment agent gave him about ‘an actual job’ that did not really exist. However, this example reflects a very serious problem not only in the Chartered Accounting sector but across a wide range of industries in the current job market in New Zealand.

This problem is serious and symptomatic of a worsening job market. Why you might ask? Simply because it is a ‘lose-lose’ situation for everyone involved in the process. Employers usually adopt a transactional recruitment approach with the idea of reducing their costs and/or gaining access to a wider range of candidates. Typically they open up their vacancy to a number of recruitment agencies and often advertise the vacancy themselves as well.

The result is scores of confused and often frustrated candidates trying to find out more about the role and who actually is in charge of the recruitment process for it. Employers get equally frustrated with the large number of applicants, many of whom are essentially irrelevant on the basis of their qualifications or experience or often both.

Recruiters compete on how quickly they can get a CV through to ‘their client’, rather than following a rigorous and professional screening, selection and interviewing process. In many cases recruiters forward the CV’s for candidates they believe will meet their client’s criteria as soon as they receive them and before even phone screening the candidates in question.

By doing that they clearly skip an essential part of the recruitment and selection process, which often has long lasting negative consequences. Transactional recruitment means no proper evaluation and assessment of the technical and behavioural competencies and personal attributes of selected candidates. It often means verbal reference checks are not conducted in a targeted manner and therefore do not provide the assurances they are meant to give a prospective employer.

Remember in a transactional recruitment situation it is all about who will register the candidate or candidates of potential interest for the vacancy first and not about who will do a better job of assessing and matching the candidates to the role and the organisation.

This is how the usually structured and systemic selection and recruitment process turns in to a CV flicking exercise. Needless to say the quality of the recruitment process (or lack of it) is often reflected by appointments that turn out to be disastrous for the organisation involved. Such appointments inevitably lead to increased costs, which arguably could reach up to 60% of the gross remuneration package offered to the appointed candidate. I come across examples of poor recruitment decisions resulting from the transactional approach every month.

The irony is that all parties involved – employers, candidates and recruiters – complain about the lack of professionalism in the recruitment industry and the New Zealand job market as a whole but no one seems to be interested in doing anything to improve the situation. Most employers I have spoken to in recent months are unhappy about the overwhelming number of irrelevant candidates applying for roles in their organisations. I agree and the reason for that most of the time is the way these roles are advertised and the quality of the ads which lack well-defined requirements in terms of technical and behavioural competencies and personal attributes.

Just about every candidate I meet has experienced various forms of the above described transactional approach. Most candidates are tired of the lack of acknowledgement and poor communication on the progress of their applications. I come across an increasing number of candidates who are unhappy with the incompetence and lack of understanding of their functional areas on the part of internal and external recruiters. This of course has a negative and often long-term impact on the organisations represented by the recruiters in question. I keep coming across candidates who have a list of organisations (both employers and recruiters) they do not want to consider or deal with. The reason most of the time is either the candidate’s personal experience with the organisation or, even worse, the persistent bad rumours about the organisation in the industry.

You might say it is the market that dictates how organisations recruit and I think it is partly the tight job market that has contributed to the poor quality of recruitment in recent times. However I am a firm believer that the job market and the recruitment industry are only as good (or as bad) as the key players in them. Employers can substantially improve the recruitment process by adopting a more non-transactional and selective approach to recruitment and how they choose their external recruiters. They should consider filling their senior vacancies through retained/exclusive recruitment or search assignments instead of transactional/contingent campaigns. The pros of such an approach are numerous and more than outweigh any perceived cons.

Candidates can also play an important part in improving the current job market and recruitment practices by supporting consultancies that are non-transactional, ethical and professional. Most importantly candidates should regain control of their CV’s and the overall job search process and make sure recruitment consultants do not approach organisations prior to consulting them. Always make sure that you know and keep track of where your CV goes and who sees it!

Last but not least professional recruiters should stick with the non-transactional and ethical approach to recruitment even if this means being less profitable in the short term. As we all know we operate in a small market where the ethical and reliable operators will inevitably be recognised by most employers and candidates.

The fact is the current job market is dominated by transactional recruiters and you can either accept that and go with the flow or play your part and try to improve it. Remember the job market and the recruitment industry are only as good (or as bad) as the key participants in them.