Abacus Recruitment - A Complete Recruitment Solutions

Our focus is on changing who and how companies hire - our specialization, our obsession, is fishing in the pools of talent that others ignore. To find the very best of the amazing people in these pools for our clients. Abacus provides complete solutions recruitment problems... http://www.abacusrecruit.com.au

In this article we are not going to focus on the mechanics of recruiting - There are only 2 methods to attract quality planners to your practice:

1. Recruit them yourself by spending time building a pool of potential candidates. You then get to know them and build mutual trust, and after 3, 6 or even 12 months, some of them will join you.

The best way to meet your pool is at industry functions and conferences. Another way is to run a series of ads in the trade press, inviting people to 'commence a dialogue' with you. A single ad is unlikely to be effective, and does not send a 'we are committed' message.

Some practice or regional managers have made an art form out of this, such as industry veteran Peter Fysh of Financial Services Partners. He would be the first to acknowledge that his success comes after significant time and effort. However, many dealer groups are simply too short term focused to make this investment.

We would recommend that all practices follow this pool approach, as it is low cost and will deliver quality planners. However, if your need is more urgent, or your time is scarce or if you need more than 1 or 2 planners, then%u2026

2. Form a trust based partnership with a specialist planning recruitment consultant. There is simply no point in briefing multiple agencies - you will just get 'disgruntled bank planners' sent to you! Again, don't expect quick results from this method, though it's more likely with an experienced partner than if you work on your own.

This advice to work with a consultant begs the question of how you find a partner you can trust? There are well over a hundred 'consultants' trying to do planning recruitment in Sydney, probably about a hundred in Melbourne, and proportionately similar numbers elsewhere.

One approach is to ask your industry colleagues for endorsements. If you can't find a consultant who is strongly endorsed, don't feel discouraged as it's not unusual (see Inside Knowledge for why many recruiters make insurance salesmen from the 1980s look good!).

Without an endorsement, you need to put recruiters through a 'beauty parade', and ask them some tough questions. A practical piece of advice would be to ask some of these questions over the phone to narrow the Melbourne Cup sized field - your time is too precious to waste in meetings. We'll only look at 4 broad filters here, and there is more analysis on Inside Knowledge.

Firstly, if they try to sell you an expensive mass media advertisement, eliminate them. You are just paying for their publicity. It is also likely that they overly rely on such advertisements and haven't built other recruitment skills such as search.

Secondly, have they recruited 3 or more planners in the last 12 months? If not, let someone else's business pay to teach them the incredible complexities of financial planning. A generalist recruiter just won't have the knowledge you need, nor understand that there is no such thing as a generic planner - there are 40 or more different categories, some would argue over 100.

Thirdly, have they at least 2 years recruiting experience, and hopefully a lot more? It takes time to learn the mass of detail in our industry, as it does in yours.

And finally, do they have trust-based relationships with 2 or more financial planning groups? If they haven't, they probably don't have the skills or temperament to move away from a short-term transaction focus.

The one factor that is critical in successfully recruiting planners is trust. You, or you and your recruitment consultant partner, have to invest the time to build it.
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Here's some food for thought this coming holiday; the recruitment industry is inefficient, it is fundamentally flawed and cannot cope with the complexities of the current labour market. And if that weren't enough, our consummation with the being 'first' in the war for talent has blinkers us from a potential available workforce of approximately one million plus Australians, who cannot currently find work.

It all starts with how you remunerate your consultants. Virtually all recruitment consultants are paid commission, even those people who appear to be on salaries; the reality is that the only thing they are judged on is revenue. So if each quarter the only thing that determines whether you keep your job or not is how many placements you've made, well that's commission.

We must undergo a fundamental change to the way we incentivise our people, as did the
insurance industry, we will enjoy better success for our clients, candidates and ultimately the reputation of the industry.

The most important thing the industry needs is for clients and candidates to have the perception that the more expensive candidate will get a bigger shove from the recruiter - and why wouldn't they? If you have one candidate who wants $100K and another who wants $120K and the fee you charge rises according to salary level then why wouldn't you push the higher earner?"

It's a fair point and one which many recruiters would probably have difficulty arguing against. With the pressure from management to reach targets each quarter - it seems the only incentive for consultants is to bring in as much revenue as possible and all within deadline - is it any wonder many organizations have such a poor opinion of the industry, when we're actually forcing our people to treat the recruitment process with such
a transactional approach. We call it spray and pray, sending bodies out to clients in the hope that they'll stick - somewhere.

But the problem doesn't stop there, because it's absolutely imperative that recruiters insist on working with clients exclusively but who should drive this client or recruiter? We have to educate clients. It's quite straightforward really, why would you take a brief and do three or four serious days work on it if you didn't have the role exclusively - you wouldn't - you'd return to your desk look up your database and the activity would end there.

It's this industry race to the line that clients drive, which ultimately returns little more than a list of names. On top of that it's not very satisfying work, churning out short-lists against the click - that's production line stuff, it's neither professional nor interesting.

At this point in this article I can almost picture a sea of readers nodding in agreement but how many of you can put your hands up and say you honestly don't accept this way of working with clients? Not many I bet.

For a familiar and simple solution to online recruitment just visit: www.abacusrecruit.com.au

It sounds like the beginning of an off-color joke: what is the only industry where the salespeople control the quality of the product they're
hawking? The answer of course is the recruitment industry. Yet despite this truism, one of Australia's leading recruiters, author Toby Marshall, is
convinced the sector is fundamentally failing employers and job seekers alike.

Whether in person or in his new book, Get great people: Your road map to hiring the best, Mr Marshall doesn't mince words about the industry charged
with rounding up willing and able workers for eager bosses facing a scarcity of skilled labour. For starters, he doesn't believe there is a labour
scarcity.

"It's a perceived shortage", says Mr Marshall, the director of Abacus Recruitment Solutions. "People are all fishing in the same pond ... People
believe there is a shortage because recruitment says there is. But you've got to define talent more broadly. You've got to fish differently from
everyone else." He says the country's current unemployment rate of just over five per cent is misleading; the percentage of people who are underemployed
(he points out that one need only to work 90 minutes a week to be considered employed) is around 15 per cent.

Mr Marshall also doesn't put much stock in what he calls the "non-debate" that is industrial relations reforms - saying that bosses, workers and
politicians all seem to be missing the point. The issue isn't just creating jobs and filling them. "The real issue is creating jobs people actually want
to work in", he says. "People only want a couple of things: we want a job where we can feel useful and feed our kids. Nothing else matters. Everything
else is crap." Yet time and again, Mr Marshall says, recruiters continue to lose sight of what matters to workers and what employers need.

The biggest problem with traditional recruiters is the vast majority of them work on strict commission and want 100 per cent of their fee paid up front,
regardless if the employees they supply are a good fit or end up staying with a company long enough to become profitable. Mr Marshall writes in his
book that a good recruiter needs to have experience, maturity and industry knowledge, and without these prerequisites their advice becomes
questionable. Unfortunately, the driving force behind many recruiters is not to deliver thoughtful advice on which candidates are best suited for which
roles, but to make a "sale" at any cost.

"If the consultant's earnings are commission-driven it can be difficult to receive trustworthy advice", Mr Marshall writes. "Over 90 per cent of
recruiters are on commission-based remuneration, which undermines the objectivity of their advice. How is your consultant being paid?"
Mr Marshall writes that it is crucial to find a consultant who won't force "bodies" or useless ads on bosses who need to hire. Often, many agencies use
impressive-looking senior sales people to sell to a company looking for workers, but then delegate the actual recruiting to a junior staff member
with less experience and fewer connections.

There is tremendous turnover in the recruitment field - the average tenure of a new consultant is only between six and 11 months. Mr Marshall says the
reason why so many leave the industry so soon is because of the stress of putting sales over delivery.

"Most young recruiters today are young, untrained, inexperienced and under pressure", he says. "It's a very bad combination."

To improve recruiting practices, companies need to find consultants who are willing to take their payments over the long haul rather than expect a full
commission up front. Mr Marshall suggests a 25/25/50 split: 25 per cent when the recruiter starts working, 25 per cent when the recruited employee starts
working, and 50 per cent after about a three-month period when it's clear the employee has become established in the job and a good fit for the
company.

Unfortunately, most recruiters baulk at the idea of delaying their commission payments over such a long period. The trend is to keep the notion
of recruitment divorced from the notion of retention. In other words, most consultants take the money, fill the job and run.

Mr Marshall writes in his book:
"The simple truth is: most people can be good employees if they are in the right job and the right company at the right stage in their career. Beware
the recruitment consultant who tells you otherwise and tries to convince you they have 'great people' on their books."

One of the main arguments of Get great people is that too often talented workers end up in the wrong place at the wrong time of their careers. How do
talented people end up in the wrong job? Mr Marshall writes:
"They focus on money and not other important factors
"They were pushed into it by a recruitment consultant who was keen to 'sell' them to the company regardless of fit."

If companies want to avoid the pitfalls of traditional recruitment, HR managers must realise they have the power to take charge of their own hiring
provided they cherry pick sensible strategies from the recruitment industry and marry them to a broader philosophy about employment. For
example: one of the mistakes HR managers often make is buying one-time ads in newspapers or on the web each time a position becomes available. Mr
Marshall suggests doing what the recruiters do - buying bundles of 10 ads and advertising a position four times. A simple strategy, but it works.
Conversely, a shift in philosophy for an HR manager involves defining talent more broadly than recruiters do and to refrain from passing judgment on
potential employees based strictly on the hard skills (or lack thereof) on their resumes.

"It continues to amaze me: most companies hire on skill and fire on fit", says Mr Marshall. He points out that to locate people with the precise
skills to do a particular job, hire them, discover that they aren't a good fit for the culture of the company, and then get rid of them, is a costly
and inefficient way to operate. Conversely, to hire workers who are an excellent fit for the company and who have some of the needed skills (or
skills broadly related to the needed skills) and then train them to fill the gaps in their knowledge makes much more sense. Yet companies remain
reluctant to do this.

The interviewing process is another area that needs a radical shake-up, according to Mr Marshall. Usually, the person who will be the successful
candidate's direct manager along with his or her own direct manager are the ones who conduct job interviews. "But what do most job ads say?" asks Mr
Marshall. "They say 'we are looking for a team player'. What does that even mean? It usually means we want a compliant person who will work their ass
off for the company." If employers are serious about getting a team player, Mr Marshall says, why not invite one or more members of the actual team to
participate in the interview? As these people will be working alongside the new employee, they may be able to provide some insight into whether he or
she will make a good fit for the team.

Gen Y not?
Much has been written about what the elusive workers from Generation Y (born after 1977) want in a career, and Mr Marshall holds strong opinions about
what it takes to recruit and retain this pool of talent. He dismisses a recent study that shows Gen Yers are primarily concerned with how much money
they will be making and says they are no more or less greedy than anyone else.

"It's hard to pin down anything about this generation, but if you can say one thing about them it's that they travel in packs", he says. "They travel
in packs and they want to work in an environment that is fun; [essentially] they want to want to work in a good pack."

By taking some of the emphasis away from hard skills and focusing on relationships between team players, companies will find it easier to acquire
and hold on to younger workers. Often, Gen Yers turn to their ever-expanding network of friends, rather than the newspaper or the web, to get the jump on
good jobs. Likewise, managers should consider hiring new workers from existing employees' circle of friends and acquaintances. There may even come
a day when companies will be more inclined to hire whole packs of friends rather than just individuals.
www.abacusrecruit.com.au

There are several ways where your can find a job for yourself, like newspapers ads, online recruitment agencies etc. But most of them prefer to find a job through recruitment agencies as it is very convenient for them. These organizations are very helpful for most of the people in finding a right job. A good certified recruiting agency will frequently been approached by large firms, because they will be in need of staffs.

These agencies provide a great advantage to both the jobseeker and the company. Because they help in finding the right candidate for the company who suits their business needs and at the same time the jobseeker also gets the right job which he/she needs. This eradicates the tiring job hunting and interviews. So in you want to find good employees for your firm recruitment agencies are the best place to search for.

One major benefit from R-agencies for both the employer and the company is, employees will be inspected by the agency to judge how appropriate they are for the positions. Companies can provide a job description to the recruitment agency so that the agency can sort out throughout the data bases of job finders to seek the ideal candidate who suits your company.

Recruitment firms only have access to a small percentage of the available jobs out there; in fact many are not advertised or are 'hidden'. It is estimated that up to 80% of jobs are hidden as only 10% of positions ever make their way into the hands of recruitment companies. And given the proliferation of agencies vying for a share of the lucrative commissions, at best even the largest, most well-resourced recruitment firm has only 2% of the job market in a job seekers sector. But herein lays the bigger problem. As the job seeker is not the one paying the recruiters, they are not the recruiter's number one priority.

So, there are few things you must keep in mind when you are finding a job through a recruitment agency. You must not pay them for their services, as the employers will already pay them off to find them an ideal candidate. And the second thing is to design a perfect CV (Curriculum Vitae) to find you a right job, and another thing is to maintain a good relationship with some of the recruitment agencies, because this will ensure you get selected for interviews.

Therefore if you are trying to find a job through a recruitment agencies, you must have a healthy relationship with them by phone, e-mail or directly. So if you are trying to get in to the golden opportunity be in contact and pass on your needs to the agent anyway, make sure they recognize your future desires and plans. Get a top recruitment agent to find you your dream job.
www.abacusrecruit.com.au