Recruitment Roundtable: approvals, agencies and other annoyances

30 September 2009

3 minute read

Recruitment Roundtable: approvals, agencies and other annoyances

In the second of a two-part series, we summarise more of the key discussions from the recent eFinancialCareers recruitment roundtable. If you haven't read part I yet, click here. The event was attended by 12 HR professionals from leading foreign and domestic financial institutions. Delegates asked not to be named in this report.

Bad news if you've just applied for a job - the approval process is likely to take several weeks (or even months). Even with the job market in recovery mode, sign-off is still slow.

It's also tough. Many of the roundtable attendees said they have recently ramped up their use of psychometric testing in a bid to reduce turnover by ensuring better cultural fit between candidate and company. Psych testing is becoming particularly popular for front-office roles.

There are more interview rounds compared to 12 months ago, with foreign firms needing overseas approval even for junior jobs in Australia.

But it's not only employers who are putting up hurdles in the hiring process. "Candidates' fear of being last in, first out might be subsiding compared to last year, but it's definitely something that HR has to overcome," commented one delegate.

Being able to offer career progression opportunities is key to convincing cautious candidates. "Even younger applicants are asking for a long-term commitment. You have to show them what you can offer them for the future," said one roundtable panelist.

Not surprisingly, HR people are having to handle more difficult questions than in the easy-interviewing days before the collapse of Lehman Brothers. "Candidates don't take things at face value any more. They look for evidence that the position you're offering is a genuine one, especially if it's in a new product group."

Does that mean HR professionals have essentially become salespeople for their firms' vacancies? No, said one attendee: "It's not so much about selling the role - that implies some kind of spin - as being very honest and open about it."

So with all these obstacles in the way, what is motivating people to move jobs these days? "Hours and stress are coming into the equation more and more these days, especially for people whose teams have been cut and who've had to work harder as a result."

The trouble with recruiters...

The use of recruitment agencies has dropped over the last year and firms are still under pressure to reduce costs by doing their own hiring. Global banks told the roundtable that they need head-office authorisation before they can use a recruiter.

Delegates were divided as to when and if they will start increasing their agency mandates again when vacancy numbers rise. But they agreed that direct-sourcing will remain at a higher percentage of overall recruitment than it was before the financial crisis. The role of agencies will be to supplement internal HR teams, rather than replace them.

One panelist had some stern words for mass-market recruiters. "Sometimes I'm getting 10 calls a day, but they're asking 'can you help me out and give me a role', rather than trying to build a long-term relationship."

Other roundtable attendees bemoaned the loss of relationships as a result of job losses in the recruitment industry. "With staff numbers falling, knowledge levels are decreasing, especially at the large firms. By contrast, niche providers with specialist, in-depth skills are becoming more respected."

Using search firms for senior roles is still considered worthwhile. "It adds a lot of value over what we can do."

AUTHORSimon Mortlock

Content Manager

ma
marcus
15 October 2009
The independent variable here is IQ score and the dependent variable is the years and type of industry experience and environment of the population sample. You will find that academician and newly graduates will score better because they have been bombarded with these types of questions while they are purely studying and coming out fresh from the university. Hence the working class in the financial industry will be disadvantaged. IQ test does not take away the bias on academic culture. This is why this test is not a good measure. Observations will also tell you that the older the employees the lesser they are exposed to this types of questions.
If you will ask me a better measure is emotional intelligence because this does not have any bias on whatever environment or culture the subject was accustomed.
Most recently Psychometric exam ie IQ test was proven ineffective and non-correlated to the performance of employees. A lot of global corporations used this as a measure and it did not help them foresee the financial crisis. The statement that IQ test can predict financial success is false. Singapore and Japan was the hardest hit of financial crisis US and UK.
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ma
marcus
15 October 2009
I do not agree on psychometric exams because people who have been working most of the time do not encounter these types of questions in the real world hence they are vulnerable to not getting a better result. These types of test are only advantageous for pure academicians and newly graduate students because they had the time to sit down and the opportunity to deal with these types of questions while in the campus.
I am studying statistics myself probability of result depends on the variables within the environment of the subject experiment. For example if you ask questions based on variables collected from the actual data/information/problems in the real work environment globally and locally between a person who worked for twenty years in a financial industry as opposed to a person who was a pure academician or a student or someone in a different industry you will find the later subjects more vulnerable not to provide better result.
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ma
mack
8 October 2009
agree top both comments above..........all thumbs up
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ne
nelson
8 October 2009
To make it easy for the banks replace all your credit team (head of credit, credit analyst) and risk management team prior 2008. Base on our survey with commentts from traders and RMs. A lot of the credit limit for Australian companies was not renewed since 2003. The credit and risk team concentrated on just funding banks/FI. Making the bank's loan portfolio vulnerable to the the financial crisis. This in fact caused systematic risk resulting to the financial crisis.
Note that your credit anayst, head of credit, risk manager, equity analyst, portfolio managers have PHD and degrees but this did not help. Psychometric exams is useless to measure this.
To make the recruitement easy for recruiters just avoid these candidates. Please do not move them from one company to another in the same role.
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ne
nelson
8 October 2009
To make it more easy for recruiters and HRs do not hire credit analyst, risk managers, head of credit, and auditors who held these roles prior 2008. Like avoid getting from NAB, CBA, ANZ, Westpac, Societe Generale, Macquarie, etc actually all of them have dirt in their hands. This better rather than putting your energy on a nonsense psychometric exams.
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