#RHUBNZ – A Glimpse at Recruitment’s Future

Over the past two days the Recruiter’s Hub roadshow rolled into Auckland and I must say I have been blown away by the whole event.  Having attended these in Australia I was keen to see if we could put on a similar kind of show in New Zealand.  By the end of the event, with Paul Jacobs telling us the recruitment industry can learn a lot from the porn industry, and everyone’s thoughts drifting towards the bar area, I felt pretty sure that we had completely outclassed the Aussie conferences by a long way.

OK I’m probably a little biased, being a sponsor, a speaker and a party host and all that, but well done New Zealand Recruitment.  A sold out conference when it is the very first time it has ever been here shows huge levels of faith, belief and interest in what we are doing and where we are going.  I was also impressed at the relaxed and comfortable vibe between the internal and agency sides, far better than the strained tension always in existence at the Aussie versions.  I sincerely hope we can keep communicating well between each side and making it clear what we expect from each other.

I now find myself rather bleary eyed at work, kind of muddled thinking, and my voice gave up the ghost completely and jumped off the Viaduct bridge en route to the Wynyard Quarter post-conference.  So I think I will spare you all my incoherent ramblings and just share with you some of the most pertinent take aways from yesterday’s speakers with a particular focus on commentary around recruitment’s future:

Greg Savage from Firebrand Talent:

• CEO’s around the world are aware more than ever that when the market improves the challenge will be access to talent.  This doesn’t always include third party recruiters and the cost of using agencies is under more scrutiny than ever.  They know the battle will be for talent and they are starting to prepare for that future right now.  The future of recruitment is access to talent.

(A more detailed and far better written summation of Greg’s presentation can be found here in Hassanah Rudd’s blog post).

Alan Ward from The University of Auckland:

• Organisations that actively pursue talent attraction on a daily basis are 99% ahead of the market average in shareholder return and profitability – Boston Consulting

Tina Morgan from NZ Post:

• Developing more innovative and modern candidate attraction methods is changing the Employer Value Proposition at NZ Post.  Use of JobGrams has worked and they’ve doubled the number of followers on their Linked In page.  Look out Air New Zealand!
• NZ Post’s operational future is parcels rather than mail.  And a lot of that is thanks to Trade Me!

Richard Long of Talent Solutions Group / Shine Lawyers

• Social recruiting works best when you can fully immerse job seekers into your employer brand.  This works best by connecting with jobseekers at an emotional level and creating a community of shared interests.  Focus on real world community as well as on online one.

Sonya Bloomfield, Vodafone:

• There is a subconscious bias in recruitment that must be overcome by Diversity Sourcing.  The future for getting women into leadership positions starts by educating in the classroom and showing kids that maths and science can lead to great opportunities in technology in the future.

Panel of Keith Muirhead (Air NZ), Matt Pontin (Fulton Hogan), Victoria Hayward (BNZ) and Alan Ward (University of Auckland):

• All still see a future for recruitment agencies that have expert insights into a particular vertical and can partner up closely with their business.  This might just involve consulting around shortlists or market mapping, rather than the full end-to-end process.  But recruiters shouldn’t waste their time with a strategy involving getting onto a PSA.  All of them now use agencies for less than 3% of their roles.  The SME market is the real future for current agency models.

Dave Newick from Global Attract:

• New Zealand’s future in talent attraction depends on encouraging kiwis to return from overseas.  We have to offer more than the “white sandy beaches and pohutakawas” lifestyle that we have tried trading off for too long.

Josh Comrie from Potentia

• Recognise the difference between invention and innovation.  When the tin can was invented, it took a further 85 years (roughly?) for the innovation of a can opener to appear.  Don’t be scared to innovate.  Look at Kodak as a reason why you must be brave and go for it, have a go.  Kodak invented the digital camera but refused to develop it further in order to protect their film business.  Now they’re gone entirely.

Paul Jacobs of JobGram:

• The future is like Planet of the Apes, but will be Planet of the Recruiters instead.  Recruitment will not be such a specialism as everyone will be recruiting.  Oh yeah, and the porn bit…apparently we can learn about their multiple channels of communication including video and blogging!

There were many more speakers and contributors and a whole load more of interesting insights and commentaries but I’m out of time and this needs posting!

Thanks to everyone who attended, you can always claim to have been a part of the very first RHUB in New Zealand, and cheers to everyone who attended our pre-conference RHUB Social on Wednesday night.  All of us at Rice Consulting loved having you here, we had a blast.

Til next time.