Unique Source of Young Professional Talent

Northeast Quadrant adds value to its clients by sourcing high calibre young professionals from our database. However, we may not have fully explained why it’s unique and how it’s effective.

We have been using web-based applicant tracking software since 2004 allowing candidates to apply to jobs and register online for future opportunities. Our applicants range from fresh graduates through to professionals with up to 10 years experience. We review and rate every applicant and regularly purge the database of candidates who don’t meet our quality criteria. Currently we have 22,700 quality-screened candidates, nearly all within the 0 to 10 years experience level.

What is unique is our ability to reach “first move” candidates who are still with their original graduate employer. Many graduates still with their first employer are not active job seekers, so they haven’t registered with other employers or traditional agencies. And from our own research, most are not on LinkedIn. To put it into perspective, a 2004 graduate on our database is now a young professional with 7 years experience, a 2005 graduate with 6 years experience and so on. So they represent a unique source of talent.

Why it’s effective is because of our candidate relationships and our search techniques. We always focus on careers, not jobs and approach non-job seekers to present and discuss new career options. It’s especially powerful to discuss employers or industries that they had never previously considered. That’s a real advantage over employer direct recruitment.

In a database search the key to success is going beyond the easy search. For example, searching for a financial accountant with 5 years experience who registered within the past two months is easy, because that candidate is an active job seeker. But reaching out to a candidate who registered three years earlier, is tapping into the non-job seeker segment. It requires advanced search techniques, career trajectory interpretation and making phone calls. More than half of our placements with clients result from this.

Young Professional Engineers Want to Come Back to the City!

Back in the 2007 pre-GFC employment peak, early career engineers were in huge demand, receiving premium remuneration packages to work in remote or regional locations. A trend we have observed this year is a marked increase in engineers with 3 to 5 years experience who now want to move back to a major city. They want the city lifestyle or have a partner in the city and the commute is taking its toll! Almost unanimously candidates have said they are prepared to take a salary cut to get back to a major city.

Demand for Young Professionals Slowing

The Australian unemployment rate has increased from 4.9% in June to the August result of 5.3%. This trend is consistent with a softening in employer demand for young professionals since July. Weak confidence among consumers and the non-resource business sector, amid global market volatility is leading many businesses to proceed with caution. We anticipate total unemployment will continue to edge up over the balance of this year.

July 2011

Implications of LinkedIn for Employers

What are the implications for employers now that LinkedIn has repositioned itself as largely a recruitment solutions site? LinkedIn started out in 2003 as an online professional networking site. But over time, found that its path to commercial success was to leverage its popularity as a global recruitment database. So when the company went public this year, it confirmed its primary source of revenue was from providing “hiring solutions” to reach job seekers.

So why should employers care? Well, how many employees from your organisation have LinkedIn profiles inviting career and job enquiries? When professionals create a profile with LinkedIn they can nominate which form of contact they are open to. That includes career opportunities and job enquiries. And with the recruitment tools offered by LinkedIn, that presents an open invitation to anyone, a competitor or a recruitment agency, to make contact with that person. Remember the purpose of LinkedIn has shifted from a professional networking site to a hiring solutions business.

Organisation charts with employee names and titles are confidential information. But it’s pretty easy to recreate them using LinkedIn. I think employers will eventually wise up to this and develop HR policies to protect confidentiality and the loss of staff.

Opportunity Cost of a Vacant Position

As most large employers have moved to a direct recruitment model, they use agencies for hard-to-fill or specialist roles. Our clients turn to us for high calibre graduates and young professionals and increasingly for contract assignments. Interestingly for Northeast Quadrant, this has led to a higher success rate filling experienced young professional positions, coming mostly from our candidate database and networks, which of course is where we add value.

But there are some organisations that have the mindset that they must fill all positions themselves, regardless how long it takes. What they’re not considering is the opportunity cost to the business from a vacant position. Lost revenue, poor decision making, diminished performance and stress on other employees are just some of the outcomes of vacant roles. I wonder if the KPI’s for these internal recruiters include “time-to-fill”.

Young Professional Market Remains Balanced

Supply and demand for high calibre young professionals remains balanced i.e. a normal market, where it is not easy to find quality people. One market dynamic we have seen more recently is the influx of experienced young professionals from North America and the UK seeking career opportunities in Australia’s stronger economy. With 12 months working holiday visas and previous blue-chip employers they represent great value as contractors for parental leave cover or projects.

China Auto Industry Booms

And finally, through our global affiliates we have seen strong demand from China’s auto industry for experienced engineering and management professionals. They are looking to hire returning Chinese professionals with Australian auto industry experience. Not surprisingly, we have seen an increase in the number of young professionals wanting to leave the local industry!

April 2011

The market for young professionals is in balance - a healthy tension where sourcing high calibre professionals is not easy.

There has been a strong uptake in graduate recruitment. We have seen organisations entering the graduate recruitment market for the first time. While established graduate recruiters are lifting their game. IT remains the most competitive sector for employers, simply due to the lower number of enrolling IT students. Strong graduate recruitment activity is an indicator that employers see the demand for experienced talent becoming very competitive.

We have said this before but the globalization of young professional talent continues to increase. We have recruited top Australian software engineers into the US, while importing international young professionals into Australia. Having returned last month from a recruitment conference in the US, it’s clear that geographic boundaries in recruitment are disintegrating.

Most large employers nowadays use a combination of direct recruitment, referrals and external agencies. The latter assigned to hard-to-fill or specialist roles. But depending on the volume of direct recruitment, there is always a fine balance when it comes to employer branding if potential employees see repeat job ads or too many.

Counter offers – an interesting story. We had a candidate who reneged on a verbal job acceptance when his current employer counter offered a few days later. But now everyone in that company knows about it. The candidate had told all of his colleagues he had resigned, so when he later announced he was staying, naturally everyone wanted to know what happened – so he told them! The precedent for counter offers in that company has been set.

March 2011 The Australian recruitment market is back to normal. We have seen consistent strength since November 2010. There is an even balance between jobs and candidates but as always quality candidates remain difficult to entice from their current employers.

We have also seen a pick up in graduate recruitment activity, with new employers entering the market or current graduate hirers increasing numbers. Graduate recruitment is always a good predictor of demand for talent.

December 2010 A rebound in hiring activity by employers has seen new demand for young professionals. This extends over to graduates.

November 2010 Australian unemployment rate jumps from 5.1% to 5.4%. Economists are taken by surprise. But its' no surprise to us based on what we had seen across the market (see October's post). We believe employment demand will remain patch until February 2011.

October 2010

Young Professional Market Update

After a surge of hiring activity in the first half of 2010, new recruitment activity has dropped away over the past few months. Patchy is the best market description and this is likely to continue into early 2011. While the national unemployment rate remains steady at 5.1% (compared to 4.3% two years ago), the latest ANZ Job Advertisements Series indicates that job advertisements rose by only 0.7% in September and “noted that the pace of growth is now easing.”

This is consistent with McKinsey’s September 2010 Global Survey of Economic Conditions , which reports that “optimism on the current state of the economy compared with six months earlier started to fall in June and has taken a sharp dive in the past month”. Executives have a “greater attention to changes in markets, improved risk management and much stronger consciousness of costs.” Most survey respondents don’t expect permanent changes in their workforce size, most commonly because of uncertainty about consumer demand. The sectors that are more likely to hire are technology, telecommunications and manufacturing.

What Are Young Professionals Doing?

While job growth in the Australian market is easing, we have seen an increase in the number of quality job seekers. While it’s not substantial there is a noticeable increase of high calibre young professionals responding to quality career opportunities. This is a change from earlier in 2010.

For employers who are hiring, the market conditions present a great opportunity to reach high calibre candidates.

Graduate Recruitment Graduate recruitment and employer interest in graduates has remained solid. This is a rebound from the 33% decline in graduate hiring during 2009. We expect interest in graduate recruitment will continue to gain momentum in 2011.

Candidate Interview Experience

SHL recently shared the Australian survey results of the interview experience of candidates who had been interviewed for a job in the past two years. The sample was representative of the general population. Here are some eye-opening results.

August 2010 Australia unemployment rate rises from 5.1% to 5.3% Economists may have been surprised but it reflects what we have seen the past three months. Patchy hiring activity by employers.

Aug 2010

Employer Counter Offers What happens when employees find out that the company has offered more money to an employee who was resigning? Loyal employees will ask themselves is that what it takes to get recognised? I could name some global companies who have done that in Australia. I'm sure the HR policy would quickly change when managers have a queue of employees wanting to discuss salaries.

Aug 2010

Are career aspirations of young professionals (Gen Y) changing? We are seeing signs that some Gen Y candidates have set their career goals over a much shorter timeframe than their predecessors. For example a marketing graduate defines career success as being a Brand Manager five years into their career. But what comes after that? Many don’t want to climb the corporate ladder beyond that opting for lifestyle over work.

What Are Young Professionals Doing? Young professionals are still reluctant to move. This contradicts the sentiment in 2009 when they were staying with their employer until the economy picked up in 2010. Either employers have responded with effective retention strategies or young professionals remain risk averse due to economic uncertainty.

For active job seekers it’s common for them to be pursuing multiple job opportunities. Counter offers from current employers remain prevalent.

Finding Young Professionals Headhunting has become a more mainstream approach to source candidates even at the young professional level. Sites such as Linkedin and Linkme have been the drivers of this. However, effectiveness varies widely. One candidate told the story of receiving an email from a recruiter only to find that two colleagues in her group received the same email. They all deleted the email. Telephone contact remains the most effective approach.

The majority of employers are now doing direct recruitment. The biggest benefit is taking the “low hanging fruit” from the 15% of the candidate market that is actively job seeking. And with a strong employer brand direct job ads attract people who identify with the organisation.

But direct advertising doesn’t reach the passive market. It can also negatively impact the employer brand due to high volume or repetition of employer job ads. For example, a leading consumer goods company currently has ten job ads for various commercial and financial analysts. Candidates are asking, why is there such high turnover, do I want to join this company?

Globalisation Finally, the globalization of candidate sourcing continues and is filtering down to the young professional level. Recent Northeast Quadrant assignments have included sourcing Australian candidates for the Middle East, USA and China.