Hi all and welcome back to a shiny new year of recruiting japes and general shenanigans. Happy New Year etc. Nice break? Good.
Now let’s get on with things.
I usually kick the new year off with a Whiteboard post suggesting some “dusting off” and “gearing up” and “easing back into…” type anecdotes but this year appears to have got off to a hiss and a roar. Certainly, us optimistic recruitment types are often hungrily eyeing up any glimmer of positivity or green shoots of economic recovery and hiring intentions. But now it seems the media have jumped on that particular bandwagon and boom, it appears that it’s the gospel truth of what 2014 has in store for the NZ economy. Happy days, eh?
Those of you who returned to your desks last week probably managed to sit down and take a breath around about Wednesday lunchtime. Many in recruitment had a real fizzer of a start to the year, and this week hasn’t let up. “Never been so busy” is a refrain getting bandied about but let’s take a moment, this drizzly Friday morning, to take stock shall we? A projected 3% economic growth for 2014 is welcome news indeed, but this is not 2006 all over again, this is still recruitment in 2014.
Attitudes towards recruitment, what works, and what offers no value, have changed considerably since we last felt so bullish.
We’re not going to suddenly find our most placeable candidates via online job boards.
We’re not going to see Hudson et al suddenly splashing their client-paid job adverts across the Herald jobs pages again (although I love this article where Hudson’s Roman Rogers suggests cautiousness remains with a big picture of a newspaper jobs page – I wonder who chose that image for the press release).
Prospective new clients aren’t going to be swayed to use your services by the size of your candidate database.
The simple fact is that some recruitment companies will thrive amidst this refreshed positivity and economic growth, whilst others will continue to flounder and fail. There are still a number of hangovers remaining in our industry from businesses resorting to unethical practices to drag themselves through the downturn years, most notoriously exemplified in this article about Ultimate Recruitment that crept onto the business pages over the holiday period.
If you run a good business, in a proper and ethical way, with a positive culture and clear vision of how to achieve your goals for the year ahead with ongoing embracing of recruitment innovations, then 2014 will be an exciting ride. It will be a good year for good businesses. Your improved bottom line will be at the expense of your competitors who think this is 2006 all over again. You’re going to have a blast and we hope to be there with you the whole way.
In fact, we have ourselves kicked off 2014 by growing our numbers by 50%, as this week we welcomed David Gordon into the team as Business Manager for virtualRPO. David has recruited in the UK and NZ, in agency and internal, and will be taking v.RPO onwards and upwards in 2014. He might also fire off the odd grammatically suspect tweet and even an occasional grumpy recruitment rant blog post right here on The Whiteboard (I’m not the only one…) so watch this space.
Welcome Flash!
