In New Zealand, the number of job ads posted on-line has risen from close to zero six years ago, to just over 78,000 now. This is now only a shade below ads in newspapers.

One industry insider says the number of job ads placed in one leading daily metropolitan newspaper this year is down 30% on last year, the biggest ever fall in job ad-traffic volume. These two trends are of course related. New internet recruiting tools alter the economics of traditional recruiting, which in turn changes the value of using external agencies.

Another factor driving the current groundswell of change in the recruiting sector is the worldwide shortage of skilled staff. This is forcing the abandonment of old ways of doing business in favour of new and innovative ways of finding qualified people.

New Zealand is not immune to this skills shortage. This years PWC survey of 1,122 local businesses, diverse by industry geography and size, revealed staffing to be the number one concern. Fully 23% of Kiwi businesspeople said staffing was the biggest issue keeping them awake at night. The next largest was cost management at 14% of the sample.

Within staffing, it was the recruitment of skilled staff which was the big worry. More than two-thirds (69%) said this was a significant challenge. The next largest significant challenge in staffing was the management of low performers at 42%. Only 25% of respondents saw the hiring of any staff as a significant challenge.

So what are Kiwi businesses doing to stay ahead of the forces reshaping the recruitment industry?

Less than they need to it appears. The general consensus among commentators is that New Zealand is about three to five years behind what is happening in the US. Another observation is that Kiwi firms are not effectively using the tools they do have.

One technology that has got some solid traction here is applicant tracking systems. These essentially automate the recruitment process, quickly identifying suitable candidates, and building a record of candidate activity to be matched with future vacancies.

A sprinkling of some of our largest companies have implemented ATS software. Telecom uses a US developed product called Taleo and outsources the management of this to Futurestep, a service line of recruitment company Korn Ferry. Fonterra also uses Futurestep, but has adopted an ATS product called Snaphire.

Some of the off-shore ATS products are too large for many New Zealand businesses. Another locally developed ATS product is StaffCV, used by the likes of DB Breweries, Delegats, Heinz Watties, Meridian Energy, and WINZ.  

StaffCV marketing manager Gayleen Robinson (pictured) says ATS systems are one area where Kiwi companies are “showing they’re starting to take e-recruitment a lot more seriously.”

Much of the impetus for changes in the industry is coming from intermediaries rather than from companies themselves. Local firm Firstrate specialises in providing search engine optimisation products. These are aimed at making it easier for firms to be found by jobseekers, and also for companies to find suitable people who aren’t currently seeking work.

This innovation story is also true of job boards. These will remain an important basic tool for companies, but interesting variants of the traditional ‘post and pray’ job board are starting to emerge. In New Zealand, QJumpers allows companies to search a large talent pool and contact candidates who interest them.

QuietAgent.com, another local firm, works the other way. It allows candidates to register, remain anonymous, and put a ‘firewall’ around themselves so that they can only be found by employers who meet all their career interests. If a company likes what it sees, it can invite a career seeker to release their private details. The hiring company only pays a fee when career seekers accept, minimising recruiting costs.

QJumpers marketing executive Sally Crown (pictured) says the shift to on-line recruiting is inexorable. However she adds the traditional newspaper will be with us for some time yet, commenting that “New Zealanders are rather set in their ways”.

Much of the new ‘technology’ in e-recruitment is in ‘soft’ areas such as branding rather than ‘hard’ areas such as new software. So a specialist local recruitment communications agency such as Haines helps build a brand presence that will steer jobseekers to a company’s website. This can encompass such things as the most appropriate ways and outlets to advertise, and building a specialist career ‘microsite’ within a company’s major website.

Haines director Vaughan Bradley says the biggest area for improvement amongst Kiwi companies is building talent pools. “We see companies buying systems, but then there’s no follow through, and no relationship built”.

Active use of systems to manage relationships with those in a firm’s talent pool is the key to making the most of these recruitment advancements.

February 2007

By Roger Boyd

If the local recruitment industry is clearly undergoing significant change, then offshore what seems to be occurring is a classic example of former Intel CEO Andy Grove’s idea of a ‘10X’ force change, a shift in an industry so profound that it re-writes the rules of the game. So the emerging competition for recruitment companies is their traditional clients and customers.

The endgame of what is occurring is allowing companies to find suitable candidates, and candidates to find suitable companies. Recruiters, the intermediaries, are being squeezed out. They are perceived as unproductive hoarders of candidate information, and historically also as bad managers of that information.

However the trend for more direct contact between companies and jobseekers carries greater potential risk for firms. With no intermediary to blame for a bad job seeking experience, one industry commentator notes that it will be more important for companies to be very clear about their employment strategies.

From the company side, a major trend offshore is employment branding. This is a series of actions specifically designed to raise awareness of the company as an attractive place to work. One action might be including blogs of workers talking about their jobs on the company website. Another might be getting mentioned in a survey of ‘best companies to work for’. Local IT company Intergen has successfully used this latter as its main recruiting tool. Overseas, major US strategy consulting firm Marakon Associates launched a book publishing division solely with the aim of making itself more visible and attractive to jobseekers.

On the candidate side, one noticeable overseas trend has been the creation of sites such as MySpace and LinkedIn where jobseekers can post their CV’s for hirers to search. Monster.Com receives 40,000 CV’s a day for posting on its site.

Job seekers are also creating interactive CV’s complete with video-clips and pod casts which link to their personal blogs.

Change is occurring in New Zealand, albeit slowly. For instance, one major retail chain which still handles all its recruiting on an Excel spreadsheet is now investigating ATS and CRM systems, and looking at outsourcing.

But as companies and hiring managers look around at the changes occurring locally and offshore, and those still to come, they might do worse than heed Andy Grove’s other well-known dictum, “only the paranoid survive”.

Further Reading

• StaffCV explains the future of smart recruitment

• e-Recruiting the next generation

• e-Recruitment works - here's the proof

• StaffCV e-recruitment completes PayGlobal HR suite

• Need staff now? Take a dip in your talent pool

• Delegat's growth drives online recruitment model

• Harnessing DB Breweries’ brand pull

• Could I have a quiet word (Local) Gov?

• Quietword allows ‘let’s find each other’ recruitment - alleviates theft

• NZ-developed QuietAgent in operation in US

• Springdoo gives free talking email to the world

• Springdoo video makes email personal

• NZ’s QuietAgent recruitment software partners with Forbes.com

For more information visit the e-Recruitment Research Pavilion