By now, most people are back to work in full swing and the New Year holiday seems like a distance memory, however we’re still taking advantage of the iconic kiwi summer on the weekends (when the weather permits of course!).

As New Zealand’s largest recruitment agency, we took the opportunity at the end of 2017 to speak with 122 of our clients about some of their recruitment challenges and pain points.

The reason we questioned our wonderful clients for information is to understand how we can better assist them in 2018, what we can put on the radar as a potential headache, and take the time to do a kind of recruitment WOF.

Who did we speak to? We spoke to HR Managers, Recruitment Managers, Hiring Managers and CEO’s across New Zealand including Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington and Christchurch; and across various business sectors.

Themes… The overarching theme, possibly due to the perennial nature of recruitment, is that another year seems to have served up more of the same challenges.

A couple of key highlights include an increased focus on Skill Shortages in New Zealand. With our aging workforce and recent plateauing of net permanent and long term migration*, it’s no wonder employers are looking off-shore to bring the skills in to grow for the future. So it is no surprise that the next point to note is the renewed focus on retaining their people.

Let’s do this!  As mentioned, it is ‘much of the same’ but interestingly, there is an air of seriousness and intent about 2018 – almost as if our clients have been talking about this for too long and decided to put plans into action and, in the words of our new PM, there is a ‘let’s do this!’ attitude to the new year. Let’s invest, let’s wrap a strategy around attraction and retention and make it something we are proud to hang our hat on… and that, for us anyway, is the interesting bit – the tone, the intent and the focus.

There are a few bullet points below summarising some of our findings. Madison’s next Employment Market Report (EMR) is due April 2018 – speak to one of our recruitment consultants to receive your full copy when it is available.

Aside from salary, the issues our clients asked for information or expertise on are as follows:

Most frequently discussed topics:

• Non-salary incentives / information about total remuneration packages, e.g. car, bonus, insurance; compared with benefits other companies provide
• Benchmarking Packages – comparing salary only roles to salary + incentive jobs
• How to deliver meaningful psychometric testing
• Reference checking guidance
• Salary setting on specialist roles or newly created roles
• Guidance on performance reviews / Benchmarking employee performance
• Trends – i.e. future predictions, upcoming areas of candidate shortages, how roles are evolving based on trends (e.g. how social media is changing marketing roles)
• Consulting (i.e. contracts, job descriptions, check lists)
• Recruiting internationally – the legalities

What trends have you seen in sourcing, selecting and retaining talent for 2017?

• Advancing Industry Technology:

• • Tech skills
  • Video interviewing
  • Blogs, meet ups, websites
  • Social media / LinkedIn
  • Seek Talent Search
  • AI
  • Automation

What would you like to see happen in 2018?

• A focus on immigration and international candidate sourcing
• Better retention strategies to address skills shortages
  • Training and Development
• Greater flexibility in recruitment processes
• Appealing to candidates preferences:
  • Business models created to encourage the flexibility to recruit contractors or permanent employees
  • Develop agile and accessible recruitment processes. Candidates want to work for start-ups, known for their attractive recruitment processes.

What are your top recruitment related priorities for 2018?

Top responses:

• Development / training / upskilling / internal cross-skilling and knowledge sharing – recruiting for the future
• Improving retention
• Actively recruiting for soft skills / attitude
• International candidate sourcing and recruitment
• Hiring the right people through a robust and appropriate selection process

Role types mentioned most:

• Several specific IT roles
• Engineers
• Construction / blue collar roles
• Sales / Business Development

With so much to look forward to in 2018, the recent economic and (to a degree) political stability has afforded many New Zealand businesses the opportunity to stretch their legs. With increased conversations on potential and opportunity, staffing that growth will be the next big serious challenge we face. We cannot wait to see how 2018 unfolds.

P.S.  Don’t forget to contact your Madison recruiter for your copy of the 2018 EMR, released in April!

*Source from Stats NZ