A financial services staff recruiter has many tips on employing good staff but the main one is for senior managers to beware of delegating the hiring role.
| Entrepreneur |
David Jones, Managing Director |
| Company |
Robert Half Australia/New Zealand (part of Robert Half International) |
| Business type |
Accounting/finance recruitment |
| Founded |
1998 (Australia and New Zealand) |
| Employees |
60 (Australia and New Zealand) |
| Head office |
Sydney (other offices in Parramatta, Melbourne and Auckland) |
| Contact details |
+61 2 9241 6255 |
Key Learning Points |
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Hiring staff
Stay involved in your company's recruitment process, test applicants against competency-based criteria, and never ignore background checks.
Training
A combination of classroom study, on-the-job training and mentoring works best. But each employee is different. Avoid a standardised approach.
New clients
Seek out the line managers at target companies. Your advice to that company should reflect those managers' needs.
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The Robert Half Australia/New Zealand Story
The accounting and finance recruitment market in Australia and New Zealand is crowded with companies trying to stay one step ahead of their competitors. It is a mature market and a tough niche in which to secure a foothold. To survive and prosper, recruitment companies such as Robert Half require a comprehensive strategy to differentiate themselves.
Robert Half's Managing Director, David Jones, says: "Because the market is so saturated, the quality of recruiting firms is perhaps not what it should be. So one way we need to differentiate ourselves is by the quality of the people we employ internally and hopefully, the quality of candidates that they represent to client companies." Jones arrived in Australia from Britain in May 2003 to take the helm of Robert Half's Australia-New Zealand operation.
Jones says: "Lots of recruitment companies hire people who've been recruitment consultants elsewhere. In the UK, I decided to buck that trend. I would hire people either from the disciplines in which they recruit for, or just hire professional, educated people in other business-to-business service industries and train them up ourselves. A big advantage is that staff turnover decreases dramatically. Our business depends on developing relationships. Those relationships are that much stronger because people tend to stay with us for a longer period."
The company offers four main product lines: permanent recruitment (clerical accountants to CFO’s), temporary recruitment, office staff recruitment, and a fourth division in Sydney and Melbourne known as management resources (interim project professionals from qualified accountants to senior project leaders). The latter is the company's fastest growing market segment in Australia.
Jones started the same division successfully for Robert Half in Britain after the early 1990s recession. He says: "A large volume of high-end finance professionals had been made redundant so there was a huge depth of expertise available. But the marketplace was extremely ageist. Everybody wanted sexy 28-35 year old somethings rather than 40-plus-year-old accountants. We found, however, that those people were invaluable to companies on a contract basis."
When Jones arrived in Australia, he was told that the management resources market was difficult to establish here and that senior finance people sourced their own projects directly with client companies. However, revenue from this market sector has more than doubled in the ensuing six to eight months. Jones says: "Most of our client companies here don't think that this type of individual exists. They think everybody is looking for a permanent job. The reality is that there are a number of older accountants who are extremely valuable to the market and are available to do contract work."
Jones says many of Robert Half's competitors follow a preferred supplier agreement strategy, which favours clients with significant purchasing power. In practice, this means dealing directly with either HR or procurement departments. As a result, Jones says, margins and fees get very much reduced because of the quantity of work that is performed for these clients.
In contrast, Robert Half's international strategy has been to go after small and medium-size organisations, enabling the company to deal directly with line managers as opposed to HR or procurement departments. Jones says: "It means we can be truly value-added. We can consult with the line manager, understand their issues and give them better advice."
Jones says senior managers should be directly involved in hiring staff. "When I was a regional director for the company in the UK, I began delegating the hiring role. Months later, my boss asked me, 'David, can you name one thing that is more important than hiring people for our company? Why have you decided not to be involved in the interview process?' I had no adequate reply. It's fine to delegate part of that role but you should still be involved along with subordinates because you can train people to interview better."
When interviewing candidates, Jones says it is wise to avoid wide-ranging hypothetical questions that elicit hypothetical answers. The best plan is to define the key competencies required for a position and then discover whether the candidate has demonstrated those competencies in past employment. "Fewer topics, but more detail," he says. "Then when you check references, you check against those examples."