Dynamic Business

As Vedior Asia Pacific celebrates 20 years of recruitment in Australia, CEO Debbie Loveridge explains what SMEs can learn from two decades of hiring, particularly in challenging economic times.

Prior to 1988, if anyone had offered me a long career in recruitment, I probably would have declined on the spot. Yet part of my curiosity for the industry was because its adverse reputation preceded it.

The perception of the recruitment industry in the late eighties was not great. It was an unregulated industry and seen as a necessary evil. Recruitment for lesser-skilled staff in small businesses was largely done via a ‘help wanted’ sign and an ad in the local paper, and using a recruitment agency was often seen as the domain of larger organisations.

Until the late eighties, most small businesses favoured recruiting permanent positions, with an air of certainty in the economy allowing business growth. Then, by the early nineties, the economy came to a halt, as the recession took a stranglehold of many businesses. Small businesses often find themselves on the frontline of negative market conditions, operating without the security or buffer of a large multinational organisation. This was indeed the case for small business growth in the late eighties, with permanent recruitment grinding to a halt.

Some businesses stopped employing altogether, while others were faced with making redundancies to get them through. There was an increase in the demand for temporary staff, to fill staffing gaps in the interim. Recruitment consultants had to work very closely with small businesses during the recession to understand their needs and help them through this tough time. We provided businesses and ex-employees with professional and personal coaching and consulting services, now officially known as outplacement services.
During the nineties recession, employees became fearful at the prospect of losing their job, and as a result, people began working longer hours in an effort to ‘prove their worth’. I recall staying back late on Thursday nights to conduct interviews for clients and working on weekends became commonplace.

Today, it is essential for small business employers to offer work/life balance in order to compete with larger organisations for talent. The concept of work/life balance 20 years ago was almost non-existent. People felt they needed to stay at their desks and work long hours to keep their job. Moreover, recruiting for small business was very different from what it is today, with small business employers, and employers in general, less knowledgeable about political correctness in the workplace than they are today. Job descriptions from 20 years ago were certainly a lot more discriminatory and particular jobs would have specified gender preference. Dress code for women in business was also much more formal stating that skirts were to be worn, and some environments even allowed smoking in the office.

On par with any economic influences that have shaped recruitment for small businesses has definitely been the advent of digital communication. It started with mobile phones, making it easier to arrange interviews at any time of day, then email soon took the place of faxes and snail mail for sending and receiving resumes.

Employing for small businesses became faster, more streamlined and allowed for a more scientific and thorough approach to finding the right candidate, which was once the luxury of large organisations who could afford the time and money.

Today, we can place an advertisement for a position online and receive overwhelming number of applications. This opens up a new challenge for small business when it comes to employing staff: finding the right candidate for the role.

This has been made a lot tougher in recent times with a shortage of skilled workers leaving many small business owners who are ready to expand their workforce on the cusp of growth, due to the increasing competition for candidates. It is the modern day human capital version of ‘water everywhere, but not a drop to drink’.

Small business employers have now entered a period where there appears to be a huge pool of talent, accessible 24/7 through dialogue that can target niche groups online, yet due to this easily accessible information in addition to the skills shortage, finding the candidate that fits the role’s criteria and the workplace can be difficult.

Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Second Life have become to small businesses and jobseekers in the 2000’s what the storefront was for the ‘help wanted’ sign in the eighties. Employers can use these social networks to tap into networks from around the world, and establish their employer brand online. From ‘help wanted’, the employer branding message has evolved into ‘come and work for a flexible, diverse, Employer of Choice’, and small businesses now have a relatively inexpensive medium to communicate this message to prospective employees.

But beware. Unlike 20 years ago, word spreads quickly among online talent and employers alike. Your employer brand is your best asset, and it only takes one disgruntled party to throw a brick (or blog) through your ‘digital’ store window.

-Debbie Loveridge is CEO of specialist recruitment network Vedior Asia Pacific (www.vedior.com.au).