Talent and the skill-short marketplace

A message from APSCo Australia Chair Stephen Smith, CEO/Co-founder Sirius People

With 2021 being in full swing and the economy bouncing back, we leaders have a much clearer picture of this year's challenges and opportunities and are now able to turn our focus back towards the growth and development of our people business.

Although things are far from certain, I personally have met unrestricted positivity from pretty much everyone I have spoken to about the economy in the last weeks. From my real estate agent who sold my house last month to my banker who firmly put my concerns of government debt to rest (the message was: Government debt is global and Australia is not even close to the debt levels of many exporting countries with whom we compete with).

So what is the main challenge this year? I think it’s universal: Talent and the skill-short marketplace.

Attracting top talent for our customers is becoming increasingly hard as the demand outstrips the supply by far. This is likely to increase until the opening of international borders will eventually provide some relief.

As much, but possibly even more challenging is attracting talent to join recruitment businesses. With the exodus of many recruiters from the industry, (I have heard that as much as 25% left the industry in 2020) we are left with a much smaller talent pool to source from. This talent pool is also under attack as corporates look to rehire many of their internal jobs that were made redundant last year. Agencies like ours seem to supply exactly the type of talent that is needed to fill the headcount deficit.

So what now? What should our focus be in 2021? Talent Development!

The investment into the personal development of our recruiters should be our priority for the year. Here at Sirius, training programs for new consultants are fully underway and we started to offer individually tailored training courses to our more experienced consultants to enable them to upskill. The goal is to train up a new generation of recruiters who not just has the right skill set but who also has a new understanding of recruitment to deliver into a new, slightly different economy.

In the time I have been operating in the Australian recruitment market, I haven’t seen a start into a new year as busy and demanding as this one. What makes the difference is a new (at least partially remote) workplace, the changes in legislation, a deep focus on compliance as well as navigating around an ever-changing complexity in advertising and marketing. It has become more difficult to train a well-rounded 360 recruiter. It’s not something we necessarily have under control in the recruitment sector, but without a doubt, it's a challenge that will keep a lot of us busy this year.