There has been plenty written about the changes in the recruitment market in Australia since the bottom fell out of our economy in the last six months of 2008. There are a multitude of facts and figures wherever we look and they can become very confusing... I am a great believer in the uncomplicated approach and in this article I will step back and give the reader a "common sense" view of what is really happening with our candidate market.

To begin with, there are a couple of simple facts…

• The number of Job ads is primarily dependent upon business confidence… when business confidence is low… there are less jobs advertised because employees rather the “devil they know than the devil they don’t”… and as a result do not change jobs. Likewise companies will not commit to new projects, expansions, etc because they are less sure of the outcome. When confidence is low there are still jobs in the job market… just less of them… alternatively when business confidence is high employees move and it is this movement that substantially increases the job numbers.

• Unemployment in Australia is at 5.7%... it will rise… but right now it still means the top 94.3% of the workforce is employed…. So there is still a shortage of good candidates…

The problem currently being faced by companies and recruiters alike is that when they advertise a role they get hammered with dozens and dozens of applications… in fact I heard a staggering figure last week… some job ads in China are getting 200,000 plus applications… and this is the big ILLUSION!

There is a perception that high numbers of job applications means there are good candidates looking for work.. It is simply not true… it never has been true in the past… and it is not true now… and…we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg!

When Frontline opened its doors in the early mid 1990’s the unemployment rate in Australia was at 8.6%. I reckon (because I do not have exact numbers) that at that time, with that unemployment rate, we were receiving less than 5 percent of the applications that we are now… and unemployment is now still 2.9% below that figure… I shudder to think how many applications we will be receiving when the rate climbs further.

So what is different?

In 1994… to apply for a role an applicant had to get their resume typed, printed, buy an envelope and stamp, get to a mailbox and mail it…. Some more techno savvy applicants were faxing… but most applicants were uncomfortable presenting resumes in a faxed format and were also concerned about confidentiality with faxes (but that is another story).

In 2009… to apply for a role, you simply choose the most appropriate resume from your “resume stable” make some “tweaks” for the role and hit send… it is that easy…

The 1994 “self filtering” process…i.e. the work that went into sending a resume... is no longer there… So we must brace ourselves because as unemployment ticks higher and higher, (as it will over the next six to twelve months) then… the number of applications we receive will climb exponentially (see complex graph in this article).

Complex Graph

The problem for those who are advertising and receiving these responses is that finding the “gold nuggets” in amongst the “chaff” will get harder and harder and because of the exponentially increasing volume takes longer and longer.

Sorry, but I need to use some facts and figures here….according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics in a November 2008 survey only 5% of the Australian workforce found their job via the recruitment and employment services industry i.e. a recruiter. The joint federal and state government website www.myfuture.edu.au claims that most jobs are “hidden” i.e. not advertised (the exact figure is hard to pin down but it is probably somewhere between 80-85%) meaning most jobs are filled by companies themselves… and more specifically filled by the employees within that company effectively utilising their own contacts, networks and succession plans.

It is only a small number of roles that are advertised and of that less than a third are filled by recruiters… and here is the important part… just like good companies, good recruiters will fill a large number of the roles they list through their contacts and networks…and here is the plug for Frontline…experienced “industry specialist” recruiters have strong networks.

In the larger scheme of things… high numbers of ad responses have little to do with filling important roles… and the illusion they give of a candidate rich employment market is simply that…. an illusion…  

Please feel free to contact us at Frontline Retail. with any recruitment requirements - we are here to help.