Recruitment survey finds some employers may have themselves to blame for hiring difficulties

More than three quarters of firms in a new Australia-wide survey say they are finding it difficult to recruit staff, yet many firms are devoting scant resources to their recruitment operations.

Leading global recruitment agency, Kelly Services sought the views of senior HR managers from 136 large and medium sized organizations around Australia
in August. The findings are contained in the report, Recruitment Process

Outsourcing: Usage and Trends in Australia.

A shortage of skilled candidates was nominated by 91% of respondents as the major difficulty faced in recruiting staff.

The report found the despite the widespread difficulty in recruiting candidates, many HR departments were devoting relatively few resources to recruitment activities, instead focusing on other HR activities in the organisation.

Almost half (43%) of those surveyed said that they spent less than 10% of their time on recruitment.

At a time when it is harder than ever to attract talent, it is a little surprising that so many internal HR departments devote so little resources to recruitment, said Steve Shepherd, Director, Professional, Technical and Staffing Alternatives, Kelly Services.

Given the pivotal role of recruitment in setting organisational culture, performance and strategic direction, it is worth considering whether some firms are giving it the priority it deserves, he said.

Most organisations surveyed had relatively small in-house recruitment teams with one to three staff that performed a range of HR duties in addition to recruitment. Only 13% of those surveyed performed full time recruitment duties.

Steve Shepherd said the survey was aimed at identifying the direction of recruitment outsourcing in Australia, and some of the factors driving firms to either outsource recruitment or retain it in-house.

For most organisations, recruitment is not core business. Even for those with some HR capability, recruitment itself is largely process-driven and often well suited to being outsourced from day-to-day operations.

This allows the internal HR team to focus on its core business and organisational strategy, rather than the tactical and transactional work of hiring, he said.

It’s not surprising that with almost half of the HR departments surveyed dedicating less than 10% of their time to recruitment duties, and with a tight labour market, firms are experiencing stalled or delayed hiring processes.

Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) is a form of business outsourcing in which an employer outsources or transfers all or part of the staffing process to an external service provider.

When asked to identify the factors that were stalling or delaying the hiring process, 79% of those surveyed identified ’the quality of hires’.

Some 43% of organisations surveyed said they would consider outsourcing their recruitment processes in the future. Job categories most likely to be outsourced include mid-senior professionals, business operations support, administration and contact centre staff.

The main expectation of an organisation partnering with an RPO provider was to help speed up the recruitment process. A secondary consideration was to lower the overall cost of recruitment.

The report shows what can occur when HR departments with limited resources face tight deadlines to fill positions. For many of these, outsourcing is a realistic option.

When the recruitment process works well, it can cut costs, reduce cycle times, leverage best practice and attract and retain the right people, he said.