Development and implementation of a Recruitment Strategy

WHAT DID BEST-PRACTICE RECRUITMENT LOOK LIKE DURING THE 1990S?

In the 1990s post-recession period:

The strategic profile of recruitment was elevated to an executive level with input from marketing professionals to align recruitment messaging to all related forms of internal and external communications.

Diversity and inclusion were viewed as an essential component in creating truly innovative, vibrant and competitive business environments, and it was more common to find corporate recruitment initiatives regarding:

1. disability programs

2. youth employment schemes

3. proactive affirmative action

4. indigenous staffing considerations

Employment Branding was established as a cornerstone of a best-practice talent acquisition model, with employers showcasing their values and aspirations directly to employees, the community and job market (this was not just advertising spin but a strategic communication of ‘who we are’ and ‘what we aspire to’).

Employers who actively contributed to diversity and social equity were considered within the community to be Employers of Choice (and therefore able to attract the best quality talent).

Employers practiced social equity by assisting those in the community who would be further disadvantaged by the inevitable increase in job application numbers –in other words: they were quite open about their positive discrimination interventions.

There was a much greater focus on Workforce Planning and the delivery of candidate care, approaching recruitment from a more holistic, proactive, caring perspective rather than previous mindset of recruitment as a transactional process.

Employers began to practice proactive recruitment: meeting an ongoing flow of people seeking work, not just reactively going to market when they had specific roles to fill (implementing what we would refer to today as effective Talent Management).

Employers actively sought to employ people who aligned first and foremost to their values, culture and strategic business needs, and this was established as both a best-practice strategy and a proven enabler of workplace diversity, performance and productivity.

Pre-employment Assessment Centres were commonplace, revisiting a proven methodology much used by large Australian employers’ years before.

In time, the values-based recruitment consulting firms responded to the elevated aspirations of the market, allowing for employers to outsource these new recruitment methodologies, at a reduced