In the complex world of business, staying informed about key economic indicators is crucial for both job seekers and businesses.
Whether you’re searching for a job or managing a company, understanding these indicators can guide your decisions and strategies effectively.
Below, we will simplify these economic signals to help you understand their impact on job markets and industries. Plus, we’ll provide practical tips on how to use this information to your advantage:
Unemployment Rate
As of early 2024, the unemployment rate has declined to 4.7% – suggesting a tightening job market with increased competition for available positions (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2024). This is a critical indicator for the overall job market.
Actionable Advice
A low unemployment rate doesn’t guarantee instant success in finding a job, but it does indicate a favourable environment. Use this time to refine your skills, network actively and pursue opportunities that align with your career goals. For businesses, a low unemployment rate can signal a competitive hiring landscape. To attract top talent, focus on offering attractive compensation packages, fostering a positive company culture and investing in employee development programs.
GDP Growth
The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) measures the economic activity within a country, reflecting the condition of the economy. The GDP growth rate recently reported a robust increase of 3.2% for the fiscal year 2024, indicating a vibrant economy (World Bank, 2024).
Actionable Advice
Job Seekers should pay attention to GDP growth trends to identify industries and regions experiencing an economic boost. Consider targeting your job search in sectors that are expected for growth and investment.
Businesses should use GDP growth data to plan strategic decisions about expansion, hiring and investment. A robust GDP growth rate may present opportunities to scale your business and capitalise on emerging markets.
Wage Growth
Wage growth indicates the increase in average wages of labour and its demand. Recent trends show a 5.3% increase in average wages across sectors in 2024, suggesting tightening labour conditions and a competitive job market (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2024).
Actionable Advice
Job Seekers can focus on negotiating for competitive salaries based on market trends. Invest in skills development to enhance your value in the job market. Consider industries or roles experiencing higher wage growth for better earning potential.
Businesses must stay competitive by offering competitive wages and benefits packages to attract and retain top talent. Monitoring wage growth trends to anticipate changes in labour market dynamics can help in adjusting recruitment and retention strategies accordingly. Invest in employee training and development to ensure workforce productivity and satisfaction, contributing to long-term growth and success.
Conclusion
Navigating the economic indicators is important for informed decision-making in your career or business. By understanding and interpreting these signals, you can strategically position yourself to take advantage of the dynamic job market and economic conditions.
Remember, in the vast expanse of economic seas, knowledge is your compass, and foresight your guiding star. Arm yourself with insights, adapt to changing tides and chart a course towards success in the world of work and commerce.
Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Federal Reserve Economic Data, World Bank
Recruiting new talent is a fundamental aspect of business growth and development.
However, the process of finding, vetting and hiring the right candidates is often resource-intensive and can place significant strain on a business.
By exploring the true cost of recruitment and the benefits of partnering with a recruitment agency, businesses can make informed decisions to optimise their hiring processes and mitigate operational pressures.
The True Cost of Recruiting
Recruitment isn’t just about posting a job ad and waiting for applications to roll in. It involves a complex and often costly series of steps:
1. Advertising and Job Boards: Posting on popular job boards and industry-specific sites can quickly add up. Premium listings, featured ads and sponsored posts increase visibility, but come with higher price tags.
2. Time Investment: The time spent by HR and management teams in crafting job descriptions, reviewing resumes, conducting interviews and communicating with candidates is substantial. This time investment translates directly into financial costs, as these hours could be spent on core business activities.
3. Screening and Assessment: Background checks, skills assessments and personality tests are essential to ensure candidate suitability. These services often require external vendors, adding to the overall expense.
4. Opportunity Cost: The longer a position remains unfilled, the greater the impact on productivity and, potentially, revenue. Delays in hiring can stall projects, overburden existing staff and lead to burnout and reduced morale.
The Strain on Business Operations
The recruitment process can strain a business in several ways:
• HR Overload: For smaller companies, the HR team may already be stretched thin – managing payroll, benefits and employee relations. Adding the recruitment process can lead to burnout and decreased efficiency.
• Management Distraction: Leaders and managers need to be involved in the hiring process to ensure candidates align with company goals and culture. However, this involvement can distract them from strategic decision-making and other critical tasks.
• Inconsistent Hiring Outcomes: Without dedicated recruitment expertise, the process can be inconsistent – leading to suboptimal hires. This can result in higher turnover rates, which, in turn, repeat the cycle of recruitment costs and operational strain.
Why Engage with a Recruitment Agency?
Partnering with a recruitment agency can alleviate many of the costs and pressures associated with hiring. Here’s how:
1. Expertise and Efficiency: Recruitment agencies specialise in identifying and attracting talent. Their expertise ensures a more efficient process, reducing the time to hire and increasing the quality of candidates presented.
2. Cost-Effective Solution: While there is an upfront cost to engaging an agency, it often pales in comparison to the cumulative costs of a prolonged, in-house recruitment process. Agencies streamline the hiring process, minimising downtime and lost productivity.
3. Access to a Wider Talent Pool: Agencies have extensive networks and databases of pre-vetted candidates.
4. Mitigation of Hiring Risks: Agencies often provide guarantees, offering replacements if a hire doesn’t work out within a certain period. This reduces the risk associated with recruitment and provides peace of mind.
5. Focus on Core Business Activities: By outsourcing the recruitment process, businesses can focus on what they do best – driving growth, innovation and serving their customers. This delegation can lead to better overall performance and employee satisfaction.
Recruitment is a critical but costly and time-consuming process. The strain it places on businesses can be significant, impacting productivity and growth. By partnering with a recruitment agency, businesses can leverage specialised expertise, reduce costs and ensure a more efficient and effective hiring process. In the long run, this strategic move can lead to better hiring outcomes, improved operational efficiency and a stronger, more focused organisation.
In an era defined by economic shifts and global uncertainties, job seekers are faced with unique challenges.
The PERSOLKELLY 2023-24 Economic and Employment Key Insights and Salary Guide is your job-seeking compass, guiding you through the intricate maze of career choices and salary landscapes.
Here are seven ways this comprehensive guide can be your ultimate tool for making informed decisions and securing the right job in a rapidly evolving employment market:
1. Navigating the economic waves
Understand the impact of inflation and geopolitical instability on job markets globally.
Gain insights into how these factors influence salary trends across industries, helping you align your expectations with the current economic climate.
2. Decoding the Australian and New Zealand job markets
Explore the economic slowdown in Australia and New Zealand, and its direct impact on job opportunities.
Leverage information on changing government policies to identify sectors with burgeoning job prospects.
3. Tailoring your job search strategy
Uncover the challenges organisations face in talent acquisition and position yourself as the solution.
Use our Salary Guide to align your skills with industry needs, making your job search more targeted and effective.
4. PERSOLKELLY’s 2023-24 Salary Guide: Your personalised resource
Discover how the guide compiles salary data from industry experts, offering a detailed breakdown across various sectors.
Access tips and tricks tailored for candidates, providing insider knowledge on securing the right job in a competitive market.
5. Industry insights for informed decision-making
Gain a comprehensive understanding of salaries in your desired industry, enabling you to negotiate effectively during job offers.
Utilise real-time statistics to benchmark your salary expectations against industry standards, ensuring you receive fair compensation.
6. Your job search companion: Tips, blogs and stats
Explore the guide’s supplementary resources, including tips and tricks for acing interviews and standing out in the job market.
Stay informed through blogs and statistical insights, empowering you with the knowledge needed to navigate the evolving landscape of employment.
7. Building your future with PERSOLKELLY
Embrace the Salary Guide as more than just a tool – it’s your companion in making strategic career decisions.
Utilise the guide’s holistic approach to understanding salaries, industries and job market dynamics, ensuring you’re well-equipped to shape your professional future.
Embark on your job search journey armed with the insights and resources provided by PERSOLKELLY’s 2023-24 Salary Guide.
From decoding industry salaries to mastering the art of job interviews, this guide is your key to unlocking opportunities and navigating the evolving world of work with confidence.
Authored by See Yang Foo, Managing Director & Country Head, Singapore.
In recent years, the recruitment world has undergone a significant transformation following the emergence of AI-powered tools. AI recruitment tools are becoming increasingly common in the hiring process, from screening candidates to conducting initial interviews. While this AI technology enables an effective hiring process, it also raises questions about the future of human recruiters.
Will AI recruitment systems eventually replace human recruiters altogether?
While AI tools bring undeniable advantages to the recruitment process, it’s crucial to pinpoint which aspects of hiring we can efficiently automate. To improve AI and human recruiters’ collaboration in hiring, we must identify tasks suitable for technology and those needing human involvement.
Therefore, what are the main recruitment tasks that we can efficiently automate?
Our connections on LinkedIn have provided us with insights into the hiring processes that could benefit from AI enhancements. Some of these processes include:
The Rise of AI in Hiring
The existence of AI technology in hiring marks a significant shift in how organisations seek, identify and select potential candidates for job openings. Artificial Intelligence has rapidly evolved to become a game-changer in the recruitment landscape.
The desire for faster, more cost-effective and fairer hiring processes has driven this technological evolution. Traditional recruitment methods frequently led to extended hiring cycles, missed opportunities and, occasionally, unintended biases. AI aims to address these shortcomings by taking advantage of its ability to analyse huge datasets with unmatched speed and precision.
They identify patterns, extract meaningful insights and make data-driven decisions in real time. Additionally, they excel at identifying top talent, predicting candidate success and optimising the hiring process from start to finish. The move towards AI recruitment isn’t just a trend – it’s a strategic step towards a more efficient, data-driven and fair hiring future.
Four Roles of AI in Recruitment
As AI keeps changing the recruitment industry and altering how recruiters fill job openings, it takes on several important roles in helping organisations and human resources find talent.
Here are four of them:
Enhancing Job Descriptions and Visibility
AI uses advanced natural language processing to create better and more inclusive job descriptions by studying successful previous listings. This can attract a broader range of candidates. Its tools find keywords and phrases, making job postings more visible on different platforms and easier for candidates to find.
Streamlining Resume Screening
AI has significantly improved the initial screening of resumes and job applications. Traditional methods of screening candidates usually involve manual sorting, which is slow and can be unfair. AI-powered applicant tracking systems can quickly review and filter many applications, identifying the best candidates according to set criteria.
Improving Candidate Assessment
Another key area of AI is its creation of predictive analytics tools that assess how well candidates match job titles based on their skills, experience and alignment with the company’s culture. These tools use past hiring data to find trends and connections, assisting recruiters in making informed choices during applicant screening.
Optimising Candidate Sourcing
AI algorithms can search online platforms and databases to find potential candidates with the skills and experience that the offered jobs require. This automation streamlines the sourcing process, enabling recruiters to focus their efforts on building relationships and conducting in-depth interviews.
The transformative power of AI in recruitment is undeniable. It has changed how organisations find their ideal candidate and connect with them, from making job descriptions more inclusive to making the initial screening process more efficient.
Three Advantages of Recruiting with AI
While AI’s involvement in hiring brings many benefits, it’s essential for us to explore the specific advantages it has to offer.
Let’s look at how AI can significantly impact talent acquisition through these three points.
Efficiency
AI is incredibly fast at handling large volumes of data, making the process of finding and hiring qualified candidates much quicker. This efficiency saves recruiters a significant amount of time and resources. They can focus on strategic aspects of talent acquisition as AI can handle data tasks quickly and accurately.
Cost Savings
Automation in recruitment delivers significant cost savings for organisations. It helps save money on advertising by reaching the right candidates efficiently and reduces administrative costs through task automation. In essence, it streamlines recruitment processes, leading to overall cost-efficiency and resource optimisation.
Improved Candidate Experience
AI chatbots and automated emails in recruitment make the candidate experience better. They provide quick updates and feedback, keeping candidates engaged and satisfied. Chatbots answer questions instantly, while automated emails acknowledge applications and offer initial feedback – showing professionalism and care.
Humans and AI: A Cooperative Approach
While AI technology has the potential to enhance and expedite the recruitment process, it’s unlikely to replace human recruiters entirely. Human touch is important for evaluating soft skills, cultural fit and other qualities that AI struggles to assess. Recruiters also play a crucial role in building relationships with candidates and ensuring a positive candidate experience.
The ideal approach is a cooperative one, where AI accommodates the abilities of human recruiters. By automating everyday tasks, AI allows recruiters to concentrate on more important activities like conducting a thorough interview process – be it through in-person or video interviews – and offering personalised support to candidates.
Conclusion
As explored in this blog, AI recruitment is a powerful tool that can potentially transform the hiring process. It can help companies save time and resources by automating repetitive tasks like resume screening and candidate matching. However, as powerful as AI is, it cannot replace the human element in recruitment. Human recruiters play a crucial role in assessing qualities like communication skills, cultural fit and emotional intelligence, which cannot be measured by algorithms alone.
The future of recruitment is one where AI and human recruiters work together in a complementary way. AI can help automate low-level tasks, freeing up recruiters’ time to build relationships with candidates and clients and assess the intangible qualities that make a candidate a good fit for a role and a company.
At PERSOLKELLY, we believe that the future of recruitment is a team effort between AI and human recruiters. Our team is leading the way in creative recruitment solutions that leverage the power of AI while valuing the expertise and insight of human recruiters. We invite you to join us on this exciting journey and explore the possibilities of the dynamic world of AI-powered hiring. Connect with us today and learn how you can become a part of shaping the future of recruitment.
If you’re looking for a change to a challenging yet rewarding job, then a role in recruitment could be the perfect move for you. You never know where it’ll take you.
We’re always on the hunt for great people to join our team. If you’re confident and caring, proactive and passionate, smart and resourceful, and want to kick-start or continue your career in helping others achieve their career goals, then we’d love to hear from you.
At PERSOLKELLY Australia, we take pride in our teams of experts who specialise in providing recruitment solutions for a wide range of industries. We understand the unique challenges that businesses face when it comes to finding and hiring the right talent, which is why we offer tailored solutions that can help businesses reduce the time, effort, and cost of recruitment.
Our team of experts is made up of experienced recruiters who specialise in the following industries:
Professional Services: Our team has a deep understanding of the professional services industry and can help businesses find top talent for roles in accounting and finance, business support, human resources, legal and procurement.
ICT: With a strong background in information and communication technology, our team can help businesses find skilled professionals for all roles within the IT sector, including software development, project management and cybersecurity.
Government: Our team has a thorough understanding of the government sector and can help businesses find top talent across all levels of government.
STEM: Our team has a deep understanding of the STEM industry and can help businesses find skilled professionals for roles in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
Management & Executive: Our team has extensive experience in executive search and can help businesses find top-level talent for key management and leadership roles.
Specialist Recruitment: Our team has expertise in niche recruitment areas such as Japanese Services and Veterans Employment and Training Services, providing businesses with access to specialised talent pools.
By outsourcing recruitment to our team of experts, businesses can benefit from a range of advantages that include:
Reducing the time and effort spent on recruitment: With our team handling the recruitment process, businesses can free up valuable time and resources to focus on other areas of their operations.
Accessing a wider pool of candidates: Our team has access to a wide range of networks and channels, enabling them to source top talent from a diverse range of backgrounds.
Reducing the cost of recruitment: By outsourcing to us, businesses can reduce the effort of recruitment while still accessing high-quality talent.
At PERSOLKELLY Australia, we understand the importance of finding the right talent for your business. With our team of experts and tailored solutions, we can help businesses reduce the time, effort, and cost of recruitment while finding the best candidates for the job. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help your business grow.
Recruitment is an essential process for any business, but it can also be costly. The time, effort, and resources required to attract, screen, and hire candidates can quickly add up. The average cost of a bad hire can be up to 30% of the employee’s first-year earnings.
Fortunately, there is a solution to reduce the cost of recruitment while still attracting top talent: partnering to a professional recruiter like PERSOLKELLY.
Here are some of the ways in which outsourcing recruitment to PERSOLKELLY can help businesses save time and money:
Reduce advertising costs: One of the biggest expenses in recruitment is advertising job openings. Posting job listings on job boards or in newspapers can be expensive, particularly for businesses with multiple openings. PERSOLKELLY has an extensive network of job boards and social media channels that it uses to advertise job openings, reducing the cost of advertising for businesses.
Streamline the hiring process: The hiring process can be lengthy and time-consuming, particularly for businesses that lack a dedicated HR team. PERSOLKELLY can help businesses streamline the hiring process by handling all aspects of the process, including screening resumes, scheduling interviews, and conducting background checks. We can also support you in areas that people don’t often talk about, like counter offers. This can reduce the amount of time and effort required from internal staff, freeing them up to focus on other business priorities.
Access to a wider pool of talent: Businesses that try to recruit candidates internally may miss out on top talent who are not actively looking for work or do not see your company’s job ad. PERSOLKELLY has an extensive network of candidates, including passive candidates who are open to new opportunities. These relationships have been built over many years with the time invested in building our candidate database. This can help businesses find the best candidate for the job and reduce the cost of turnover.
Expertise in candidate assessment: One of the biggest costs to a business is investing in the wrong candidate. PERSOLKELLY has extensive experience in candidate assessment, including conducting skills tests and assessing cultural fit. This can help businesses reduce the risk of hiring the wrong candidate and save money in the long run. Additionally, if the candidate does not progress as expected, partnering with PERSOLKELLY provides you with a replacement guarantee, ensuring the investment is not lost.
Partnering with a professional recruiter like PERSOLKELLY can help businesses reduce the cost of recruitment while still attracting top talent. By leveraging the agency’s expertise, businesses can streamline the hiring process, access a wider pool of talent and reduce the risk of hiring the wrong candidate.
Recruitment is a crucial process for any business, as it helps to identify and attract the most talented and qualified candidates for job openings. However, it can also be a painful and time-consuming task for hiring managers, particularly for those who lack experience in the hiring process. Fortunately, partnering with a professional recruitment company can bring numerous benefits, making it a wise investment for any business.
One of the most significant benefits of outsourcing recruitment is that it saves time and resources. A dedicated recruitment company can handle all aspects of the hiring process, from screening resumes to scheduling interviews, allowing hiring managers to focus on their core responsibilities. This can be particularly beneficial for small and medium-sized businesses that do not have a dedicated HR department, as it can help them avoid the cost of hiring additional staff.
Another key advantage of working with a recruitment partner is the access to a wider pool of talent. Recruitment companies typically have a vast network of candidates, including passive candidates who are not actively looking for work but may be open to new opportunities. This can be especially beneficial for businesses seeking to fill specialized or hard-to-fill positions, as it can be challenging for internal recruiters to reach these candidates.
Finally, outsourcing recruitment can also lead to better-quality hires. Professional recruiters have extensive experience in assessing candidate skills, qualifications, and experience. They can use their expertise to identify the best candidates for the job and ensure that they are a good fit for the company culture. This can help businesses reduce the risk of hiring the wrong candidate, which can be costly in terms of time and resources.
Partnering with PERSOLKELLY can bring numerous benefits to businesses, including saving time and resources, accessing a wider pool of both passive and active talent and making better-quality hires. By leaving recruitment to the experts, hiring managers can focus on their core responsibilities and ensure that their business has access to the best talent available.
The accounting industry has undergone significant changes over the past few years due to advancements in technology and changing business environments. These changes have given rise to new emerging trends that are expected to shape the industry’s future. In this blog, we will explore some of the key emerging trends in the accounting industry.
Automation
One of the most significant trends in the accounting industry is the increasing use of automation. Automation has become a popular solution for repetitive and time-consuming accounting tasks such as data entry, reconciliations, and reporting. Automation tools such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotic process automation are used to automate these tasks, reducing errors, improving accuracy, and saving time.
Cloud-based Accounting
Cloud-based accounting is another emerging trend in the industry. Cloud-based accounting solutions offer several benefits over traditional accounting software. These include remote accessibility, scalability, automatic software updates, and improved data security. Cloud-based accounting also allows for better collaboration between accounting firms and their clients, allowing them to work together in real-time.
Outsourcing
Outsourcing is another emerging trend in the accounting industry. Accounting firms are increasingly outsourcing non-core functions such as bookkeeping, tax preparation, and payroll processing to specialized service providers. Outsourcing allows firms to reduce costs, improve efficiency, and focus on their core competencies. It also enables firms to offer specialized services to clients without having to invest in additional resources.
Advisory Services
Accounting firms are increasingly offering advisory services to their clients, providing strategic advice on business growth, risk management, and financial planning. Advisory services require a broader range of skills beyond traditional accounting expertise, including industry knowledge, business acumen, and analytical skills. Offering advisory services allows accounting firms to differentiate themselves from their competitors and offer additional value to clients.
Data Analytics
Data analytics is an emerging trend that is transforming the accounting industry. Data analytics allows firms to analyze large volumes of financial data, providing insights into trends, patterns, and anomalies. This information can be used to identify opportunities, manage risk, and make informed business decisions. Data analytics also enables firms to offer more accurate and timely financial reporting, improving the quality of information available to clients.
The accounting industry is undergoing significant changes due to advancements in technology and changing business environments. Automation, cloud-based accounting, outsourcing, advisory services, and data analytics are emerging trends that are expected to shape the industry’s future. Accounting firms that embrace these trends and adapt to the changing landscape are likely to thrive in the years ahead.
PERSOLKELLY Australia is a leading recruitment company that can help businesses find the right employees to meet their business needs in the Accounting and Finance space. Our experienced recruitment team uses a range of sourcing methods and selection tools to identify and attract top talent. We work closely with clients to understand their specific requirements and culture, ensuring we find candidates who fit the job and the organisation.
By Kurt Gillam, Executive General Manager PERSOLKELLY Australia.
The field of recruitment is not only fast-paced, challenging and dynamic, but it also offers a plethora of opportunities. Consultants can not only advance their own career trajectory but help others with their own careers as well. If you’re looking for a new direction, a move into recruitment could be worth considering.
Here are five reasons to consider a recruitment career:
1. Gain valuable and in-demand skills One of the great things about working in recruitment is the skills you gather while working in the industry. A role in recruitment can build your interpersonal, communication and relationship management skills. These skills are all transferable to other industries, making them invaluable no matter which field you may choose to work in future. Recruitment is extremely people-focused and centres around interacting with a variety of individuals in a range of situations. Helping you develop soft and interactive skills and gain experience dealing with people from all walks of life.
Recruiters can conduct job matching, character assessments, interviews, background checks and due diligence in a typical day. As such, the job naturally suits analytical and organised individuals with excellent time management skills. A job in recruitment will help you learn and further develop a range of easily transferable skills that you’ll continue to draw on for years to come, no matter what industry you end up in.
2. Help others while you also advance A career in recruitment means regularly interacting with employers and job seekers, helping you improve your interpersonal skills and active listening ability. It’s important to be able to carefully listen to both clients and candidates to find out exactly what they’re looking for. Doing so can vastly improve your problem-solving skills and foster critical thinking while helping individuals and companies find their perfect matches.
Finding good fits for both active or passive job seekers and organisations will widen your understanding of the job market and how it differs between industries and roles. Finding these perfect fits involves interacting with hiring managers, human resources teams and high-profile positions with companies, helping you build up a valuable range of connections.
You may use these connections to help find candidates or even for the advancement of your own career.
3. It’s a fast-moving and ever-changing industry Recruitment is dynamic, offering countless opportunities for change and growth. As industries and job markets change, the recruitment industry evolves. New technologies have come along and transformed the way the recruitment process is conducted. From paperless applications, and digital background checks through to remote video interviews and testing suites. While application Tracking Systems (ATS) have streamlined and automated parts of the hiring process.
Advancing technologies have also brought about numerous improvements in learning opportunities available to recruiters, such as online training and conferences. You’ll have the chance to develop leadership skills, set clear directions and be agile as you advance through your career in recruitment.
4. Autonomy can assist in better mental health Recruitment is a people business that revolves around servicing the needs of candidates and clients. Like many roles over the past few years, recruitment has become more agile and flexible in terms of the location in which work is conducted. As consultants will often meet with clients and candidates both in and out of the office, it’s a career that suits driven individuals that thrive working autonomously.
According to Mental Health UK, autonomy in the workplace can help promote better mental health and even prevent excess stress and burnout.
5. It’s an in-demand profession The 2021 Business Market Insights report predicted that the online recruitment industry in APAC is expected to grow from USD6.8 billion in 2021 to USD12.4 billion by 2028, nearly doubling in just seven years.
As the job market continues to boom after being heavily impacted by the pandemic, the search for clients will ensure the demand for qualified recruitment consultants remains high. Resulting in great prospects for those either already in the industry or looking to enter recruitment.
Conclusion There’s no doubt that a career in an established recruitment firm has many long-term benefits for your career. Transferrable skills, and building your network while also helping candidates achieve their career goals are just a few of the things to be gained from a career in the industry.
Once you build your career, the rewards are endless. Quite often, there is nothing quite as rewarding that the long-term friendships that you will build with your colleagues as a result of working in a vibrant company culture, however, you will have the opportunity to get back from what you put in – be it interstate or overseas travel, awards and prizes, learning and development opportunities, promotions and uncapped earning potential. The sky really is the limit.
If you’re looking for a change to a challenging yet rewarding job, then a role in recruitment could be the perfect move for you. You never know where it’ll take you.
We’re always on the hunt for great people to join our team. If you’re confident and caring, proactive and passionate, smart and resourceful, and want to kick-start or continue your career in helping others achieve their career goals, then we’d love to hear from you.
We saw it early last year, but the job market continued to bounce back throughout the rest of 2021 and into 2022 after taking a hit during the first year of the pandemic.
Compared to February 2019, the number of job ads rose by 41% in February 2022 according to SEEK research. Add to this that job applications are at very low levels compared to historical data. As such, there’s an increased demand for workers, forcing companies to offer more enticing salaries, packages and benefits to get the best employees to fill vacancies.
Some of the key sectors in demand by job ad volume, increase year on year, include admin and office support, education and training, retail and consumer products and manufacturing, training and logistics.
In March 2022, SEEK reported that applications per job ad had fallen by 7.6% from the previous month. Versus three years earlier, applications per ad were down 47%. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, there are an extra 170,000 job vacancies since the borders closed. At the same time, unemployment is the equal lowest since 2008 at 4%, which is contributing to rising salaries in advertised positions.
While wages are forecast to increase by around three per cent over the next year, unfortunately, inflation is set to rise by more than that amount. At an annual rate of 5.1% in Australia, the highest in two decades, the surging inflation rate will be one of the biggest challenges for workers managing their personal budgets moving forwards.
Interestingly, 40% of candidates say that salary and compensation are now more important than they were pre-COVID. Not getting paid enough is the main trigger for candidates looking for a new job. Those on the lookout seek 10-20% extra in their pay packet before accepting a new role. Highlighting that changing jobs is the most straightforward way to keep ahead of the rising costs of inflation.
However, it’s not simply remuneration alone that comes into play when choosing a place to work. When workers in a recent survey were asked if they’d refuse to work at a place with poor diversity, equity and inclusion, 67% said they agreed or strongly agreed. While 85% of respondents said they believed their current organisation hires a broad mix of people. Pleasingly 82% agreed that they feel included and belong in their organisation.
