DAV RECRUITMENT
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Y ou ’ re h ired ! Ingrid Kast, CEO at DAV Professional Placement Group, chats to South Africa Magazine.
By Ian Armitage
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ngrid Kast knows that attracting and keeping top talent is key challenge. Having the right people is fundamental to the success of any company. Her firm is a recognised leader in the recruitment industry and a company that attracts as many sector excellence awards as it does top candidates. Ingrid founded DAV Professional Placement Group in 1975. It has offices in Johannesburg and Cape Town and is a leading player in the engineering and ICT industries. It also has specialist divisions in the financial markets, office support, German and foreign language speakers to mid- to top-level management. “Our recruitment process, benchmarked against the best in the world, identifies the most exceptional candidates - the top 20 percent - and we place them with companies,“ says Kast.
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DAV focus Recruitment
I was fortunate enough to ask her a few questions‌ Ingrid, great to speak with you; tell me a little bit more about the industry? Have things turned around? Recruitment is still recovering from the effects of the 2008/2009 recession, which was the worst in more than a decade. Our business volumes dropped by 30 percent, but we were one of the best performers during that time. Remember that during a recession, candidates become more risk-averse by holding on to their current jobs. The incentive of companies to hire during a recession is reduced and candidates’ willingness to change jobs is also reduced. It took two-and-a-half years from August 2008 to February 2011 to reach the peak volumes that we achieved before the recession. Many staffing companies are still struggling, particularly the smaller ones who do not have the sophisticated candidate databases and technology of the larger agencies. According to staffing industry association APSO, the number of agencies in the country dropped from 3,200 to 2,600 between 2008 and 2011. At the same time, membership with APSO increased from 720 to 800. The recession induced pressure on the smaller agencies to consolidate or become compliant by joining the industry association and those who did not tended to go out of business. The recession has made the industry more professional and competitive by driving out less reputable agencies and increasing the use of those staffing agencies that have high standards and a stable track record.
We have grown substantially despite the very sharp recession
Are there lots of opportunities for DAV then? Tremendous opportunities! We have grown substantially despite the very sharp recession. Since the bottom of the cycle reached in 2008, we have nearly doubled our volumes. We have a unique business model in terms of the candidates that we attract and the staff that we retain. We differentiate ourselves by offering the best candidate and client experience. What are some recent trends? One is that there is strong employment growth in the professional and management categories. In South Africa the unemployment rate for professionals – doctors, lawyers, engineers, finance specialists, www.southafricamag.com
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DAV Company focus name Recruitment focus ???????
skills shortage has put enormous upward pressure on remuneration and benefits - not just monetary benefits, but also recognition, responsibility, time off and other things. What’s more, our universities cannot cope with the demand for skills. The net growth of entry-level candidates in the accounting and legal fields (i.e. newly qualified people less exits of retired people) is just 0.5 percent per annum, although the demand is growing at seven to eight percent per annum. technology professionals, economists, and so on – is very low, around 1.4 percent. There is also a shortage of talented and experienced management candidates, driven by employment equity laws, emigration of skilled people, and other factors. Staffing agencies that focus on professional and management positions have tended to do very well, because their clients (the employers) do not have access to large pools of skills in these areas. Another trend is that candidates have become very discerning. The new generation of jobseekers is much more likely to change jobs than previous generations. In contrast with their parents, today’s men and women have shared responsibilities for childrearing and housekeeping. This makes the search for “work-life balance” much stronger than it was before. The new generation is very choosy when it comes to taking a new job and, at the same time, they are happy to change jobs every three to four years, or even less. That sounds like quite a challenge? The shortage of skills certainly is. According to Adcorp research there are currently 829,000 unfilled vacancies in the country. These are positions that could be filled fairly easily if only the candidates with the right skills were available. The 4
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It seems strange then that new restrictions on immigration have been brought in? Yes, restrictions on immigration are a challenge. Companies can no longer apply for quota work permits. Each application must be dealt with individually. These restrictions will have a significant impact on the availability of high-skilled people in South Africa because high-skilled immigrants make up more than 10 percent of total placements in the country. If we aren’t growing a sufficient number of high-skilled candidates internally within the country, and we can’t import scarce skills from abroad to the extent we are used to, this will compound the shortage of skilled people. An interesting observation however is the number of South Africans returning from abroad. Over the past year, more than 120,000 South Africans living and working abroad have returned home. This has been driven by difficult economic conditions in the world’s major English-speaking economies but also the so-called “brain drain” appears to be slowly and steadily reversing, due to the stabilisation of crime rates, sharp increases in local vis-à-vis international wage levels relative to the cost of living and the growing availability of high-quality private schooling options for South Africans.
As South Africa’s #1 quality candidate provider, all of us at CareerJunction invest a great deal of time and effort in making sure we build strong long-lasting relationships and trust with all our clients. We’ve been very fortunate to have DAV Professional Placement Group as a client for many years and look forward to contributing to their continued success. Happy online recruiting.
Visit us at www.careerjunction.co.za Please join us on
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In the last year you’ve launched a new division specialising in recruitment in Africa and emerging markets. Tell me more? We have. With the growth explosion in emerging markets, the shortage of top talent is already a major challenge - businesses that are expanding, establishing or simply maintaining operations are fast realising how critical it is to have top talent on the ground to achieve long-term success. This division is perfectly positioned to identify and assess the right skills for operations outside of South Africa and they have had a fantastic, successful year, mostly placing into Egypt, Ghana, Swaziland, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. You’ve also got a level 2 AAA rating EmpowerDex. You must be please with that? Delighted! We were thrilled when for the first time DAV received a level 2 AAA rating from EmpowerDex. In addition, DAV is classified as a ‘value adding supplier’, allowing our clients to claim back 156,25 percent against their own procurement scorecard. 2012 has been something of a year for awards too? It has. We received six Diamond Arrow Awards from PMR who surveyed staffing solutions companies with clients all over South Africa. That is the highest number of awards any company has ever received in this survey, which has been conducted annually since 2004. In addition, we received two Golden Arrow Awards and one Silver Arrow Award from PMR and we were Winner of the “Diversity in the Work Place” Award from National Business Awards. 6
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Ingrid, you’ve built a superb company, but is there anything you would like to improve? Continuous improvement is completely entrenched in our culture – we never think “we have arrived” and we know that our business will only stay successful as long as we have great, motivated people and we strive for on-going world class training and improvement. Resting on our laurels is never an option. We are constantly looking for ways to do things in a better way so we can keep delivering a fantastic service to our clients and candidates! What’s next for DAV? We are doing well, we are above target for this year so far, in fact we are on an expansion drive right now, which means that we want to grow every one of our divisions - engineering, IT and telecoms, German speaking professionals, financial markets, office professionals, Africa and emerging markets, mid- to top-level management and executive search. We have historically always made placements into Africa especially in our engineering and IT and telecoms divisions but have never had a team that focuses solely on Africa and other emerging markets. Our aim is always to innovate, using new technologies, recruitment training and approaches to stay ahead of market trends. We also aim to continuously grow and develop our people and so we invest a lot of time and money into training. New technologies cannot replace selecting the right people for the right positions but technology and social media add a new dimension and make the hiring process even more complex. Our aim of course is always to exceed our target to give our shareholders a good return on their investment.
DAV focus Recruitment
We are constantly looking for ways to do things in a better way so we can keep delivering a fantastic service to our clients
Finally, is there anything you’d like to add? Yes! Being on an expansion drive we are looking for great people to join DAV, the kind of person who truly wants to make a difference in this world to candidates and clients’ lives. We have created an unbelievable culture, where people truly care about each other and every client and candidate and have an outstanding work ethic. The person who wants to leap out of bed in the mornings, run into the office and do their work with passion, purpose and enthusiasm. South Africa has a shortage of talent so the recruitment consultant who can identify, assess and place top talent into the ideal job with DAV will have a very fulfilling career. END To learn more visit www.dav.co.za.
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3rd Floor West Tower Nelson Mandela Square at Sandton City Fifth Street off Rivonia Road Sandton Tel: +27 11 217-0000 Fax: +27 11 217-0001 Email: info@dav.co.za
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