I emigrated to Australia one and a half years’ ago, having lived in Greece (and Cyprus) prior to my move. I worked in recruitment before coming to Australia and now specialise in recruiting Engineering and Project Management / Control roles, primarily for the Mining & Resources sectors. The differences between the state of play in the Mining & Resources sector in Australia with that of the Greek economy cannot be more striking and are worthy of some comparison.

I have recently been out on many client visits and while this isn’t out of the ordinary, it has been a great reminder for me that caring about your clients and candidates and saying thank you is such an important factor of being a recruitment consultant.

Well ladies 2012 has just begun so this week’s blog is one is for us; yes, ‘Girl Power’. How many times do we have to make a stance to be heard above our male counterparts?

In recent months the life of the internet had been taunted with two American legislative proposals SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) causing massive discussions and debates worldwide. The two acts backed by the film and music distributors aimed to protect intellectual property – in layman’s terms; to stop pirated music, films and all property indirectly associated with the owner – by shutting down and essentially making the host site ‘invisible’ without prior warning. So what caused Congress to defer the bill? Social Media.

I had the good fortune of speaking with a long term client yesterday about his recruiting needs for 2012. I first started recruiting for this client in 1997 and he is now the Chief Executive Officer of a mining services business. He is planning to recruit a couple of Project Managers, one Financial Controller and a team of Analysts within the first quarter of 2012. When I sat back and examined his essential criteria for each role, I found the following:

* Flexibility and adaptability
* The demonstrated ability to deliver projects in a cost effective and timely manner

As a Manager of a team of talented Consultants I am tasked with the responsibility of consistently delivering high performance results across multiple revenue streams in a highly competitive industry.  My role is far from unique; many managers face the same challenge whether they are working in the recruitment, financial services, property, retail or wholesale trade, business consulting, professional services, advertising, resources, engineering services, education, not-for-profit or government sectors.  I am in awe of companies and teams that have delivered and continue to delive

I have just had the pleasure of spending the best part of last week in our Perth office. As well as experiencing some of the most beautiful weather and blue skies, I was able to indulge in another one of my favourite pleasures; late night political talk shows. I know that this is a strange hobby for me to indulge in; some would even call it “nerdy”.

Having the pleasure of taking two weeks off over Christmas gave me time to sit back and consider just how lucky we really are to work and live in Australia.  But to realise this I first noted how I had wrapped up 2011.  I was in a race to finish up everything in time for holidays.  Every morning getting off the train and simply floating through the city each morning.  I realised as it was a new year it was time to stop taking the little things for granted.

In the last Blog for the year I thought it would be remiss of me not to write a bit about the season we are now in and how it has an effect on us. Christmas is a fantastic time of year for so many reasons. A lot of us use the Christmas period to take time out and spend quality time with family and friends.

For many of us, the traditional New Year resolutions are often health based - e.g. eat, smoke or drink less and exercise more.  However, often one of the areas in which we are most dissatisfied in is work.

New Year is the perfect time for undergoing major changes and advancing your career. 

Taking the next step in your career either means changing the direction of your career or the company you work for, or progressing and getting promoted in your current company.

As the holiday season quickly approaches thoughts turn to the season of goodwill, stories of Santa Clause and of course, the last minute Christmas shopping. Christmas songs start dominating radio stations and families everywhere finish off the final preparations for the perfect Christmas tree.  It's the most wonderful time of the year and along with the cheer and celebration comes the Christmas parties.

Originally from an HR Generalist background, when I was approached to pursue a career in Recruitment I was surrounded by negative comments like “you will be no better than a second hand car salesman”, or “you will not be respected in the industry” and even “you will be throwing your degree away”, and the list goes on… I can truly say that they were wrong!

Having recently arrived back from a trip to Europe, I had the opportunity to observe what was happening in places like France, Spain and the UK.  What was particularly interesting was seeing for myself what impact the Debt Crisis has had on some of the EU's largest economies, and from an employment point of view what opportunities, or lack thereof were available.

I was having a positive discussion with Ben Walsh, General Manager of Optimum Recruitment - Qld, and we were discussing my first two years with Optimum – what the future holds, and more importantly, what one can do to mould and sculpt it!

In order for someone to excel as a recruitment consultant in my opinion, requires a blend of several types of skills; without these skills the role can be very demoralising.
It is not hard to land yourself a role in recruitment, after all recruitment is a sales role and therefore does not necessarily require a strong academic background (very much like myself). Being a good recruitment consultant is incredibly difficult - so I will try to explain why it is so difficult and how you can position yourself to be successful.

Why the role can be difficult

I returned to work this week, a happily married man.  As is often the case with watershed moments in one's life, I took the opportunity to reflect on my journey so far and looked forward to what I hoped the future would hold for my new wife and I.  I realised that several of the key turning points in my life were directly related to changes in my professional career or in that of my father when I was still a young lad. 

Delivering feedback to both candidates and clients is often difficult, painful and awkward. This will hopefully make the task more effective and a bit easier. What matters most is not only how you deliver the feedback, but how you listen and respond with compassion afterwards.

Our company has invested heavily in social media over the past 12 months in both time and money. We have redesigned our website, set up both Twitter and LinkedIn accounts and built a Facebook page. I have also attended webinars and workshops on how to create these sites and engage with our “online communities” and “passive candidates”.  All of which has made me think, are our candidates & clients using social media to find their next job or are recruitment companies ahead of the game with social media recruitment?

Have I heard every excuse under the sun? I do sometimes think that I have. Over the past 15 years in recruitment, I have had some classical excuses passed on to me so I thought I would share some of the more humorous anecdotes with you.

Having been in the recruitment industry for some time now both in Australia and the United Kingdom, one question appears to always dominate, "How do I get my foot in the door?" which is generally directed to a particular industry or to continue career development internally in an organisation.

I am writing this blog from our Perth office this week and I just walked past the lunch room and read all about the sacking of Mark Harvey, the former coach of the Fremantle Dockers. For those of you that are not AFL fans, Harvey was sacked just after having breakfast with the CEO, who didn't mention a thing, and replaced by Ross Lyon, the St Kilda coach who was still under contract. Interestingly, both Harvey and Lyon were managed by the same management company and they were not aware of the machinations behind the scenes.

Having been around this industry for 20 or so years I guess i have seen some interesting situations and met some amazing people.  I have travelled and worked across four continents for my profession and enjoyed all the highs and felt the pain of all the lows!  There are however some constants that I believe to be intrinsic in being a successful recruiter, so over the next few lines I will focus on one of them that I believe to be instrumental in being successful in this industry.

I personally cannot believe that it is now ten years since the events of September 11, 2001. For me, it will always be one of those "I remember where I was" moments and it has changed the world more than any moment over the past 50 years. As we approach this anniversary, I thought that it would be fitting to reflect on the day and how it changed the world as we knew it.

Working in recruitment we are privy to a wealth of information about our candidates, the companies we deal with and the contacts within those companies.  But do we use the tools that are at our disposal effectively? 

There has been a love hate relationship between Recruitment Consultants and Human Resources from the beginning of time. Both sides have respect for each other and essentially both are looking to help each other but the relationship tends to break down when one or the other feels like they are not being included in the recruitment process.

Well, if you are anything like me, you must be confused with the market movements over the past couple of weeks. The share market has been loosely described as volatile but for me, it has just been plain confusing. A close friend of mine wrote a blog earlier this week where he called it the “Australian Paradox”. He correctly argued that Australia, being closely linked to Asia and being fundamentally sound, should be immune to the economic misfortunes of Europe and America.

Each new generation that has entered the workforce has bought with it adaptations to the workplace. Each generation has contributed new technology, workplace design and working styles.

After recently making the move from full time study into the corporate working environment I have come to a quick realisation just how tough and competitive the market is.  I had the knowledge gained from my degree but where to now?  I came to a vast realisation that a degree is very rarely enough.  All that time and money invested, has not been immediately useful but is there for a long term gain.  I now realise my degree is an experience which enabled me to grow my personal knowledge base but isn't really useful at the present time. 

As a recruitment consultant I have a vested interest in ensuring value is added not just to my candidate's careers but also to the clients I service and their organisations.  In my opinion recruitment is about growing the business and increasing the talent pool for an organisation.  In fact I would go as far as to say, recruiting is about having the right people in the right roles for the right reasons.

Currently in Perth there are many opportunities for job seekers across all Markets. What has and will always be surprising though is the amount of candidates who don't have good attention to detail when it comes to the small little things. When time is of the essence these little things can be the difference between getting a call, getting to interview or even the final job offer.

So we all remember the story earlier this year of the “Beer Sample Tester” employed at Australia's oldest brewery who had clocked up over thirty one years in what many would consider a “dream job”.  Well, he really did “drink” it all away and was subsequently sacked for his actions. 

I have an old acquaintance that worked at Heathrow airport for a European airline that could (and did) travel around the world for less than one hundred dollars in total, but started to dislike the job she did, but stayed because of the travel benefits.

As a Recruitment Consultant there is nothing more frustrating than going through the process with candidates who change their minds like they change their underwear.  There have been too many times when candidates haven't set clear and concise expectations of their job search from the first meeting with their consultant. This can negatively impact their chances of obtaining their desired position.  Setting these expectations is not just for the consultants benefit, but also for the candidates as it ensures both the candidate and consultant have a clear path to work with.

An interesting topic of conversation at the moment is whether industry experience is valued the same if not more than technical experience. Being in the recruitment industry, we see industry experience come up a lot as a job requirement for sourcing potential candidates. Does that necessarily mean that someone with industry experience would perform the role better than someone who doesn't have industry experience? Does industry experience qualify as a critical success factor?

 We have been hearing a common theme across meetings with Clients in the Energy, Mining and Engineering industries recently.  This can be summed up with the question - how are we going to support all the projected growth?

The past two months has seen a real resurgence in the IT job market, with the growth in jobs across the sector being positive; especially in the Business Analysis and Project Management spaces.  But what has also been good to see is the return in the Technical space (particularly Development and Testing)

When meeting candidates I have found that far too many are unable to tell me what they do, how they do it, what their strengths are and are unable to provide me with their records of achievement. There are a couple of main reasons for this being that they don't think about it and they think well it's my job I just do it. When putting together a resume, an application and preparing for the interview it is absolutely imperative that candidates understand who they are and why they should be the candidate of choice.

When considering a move to Brisbane or having just recently arrived, there are to be a variety of reasons why you may have made the move such as, recently returned from working abroad, moved interstate for a lifestyle change, or recently immigrated to Australia and decided on settling in Brisbane as the preferred destination.

The art of sales is lost on many, it is a fact that in the main it is completely misunderstood.  Misunderstood by people who are far more comfortable just inviting.

Today I want to speak about a conversation I had some ten minutes a go with one of my contractors. I am probably raving mad to put this out there….let's just hope my wonderful boss acknowledges that I understand the error of my ways…

We are told every day that we must study hard at school if we want to be successful in life – if we go to University that we will be very successful in our career etc.

Well what do you think? Having gone to University myself – I have never used my degree in any of my occupations and yes I have had a few different roles!

School - well apart from the basic's like spelling, maths and reading etc there was a lot that was really a waste of time for me. School and University taught me social skills and how to interact with society but is it right for everyone?

I actually started to write the blog today while sitting in a lounge at the Sydney Airport. I was actually going to write the blog today on the importance of career management and not letting a spike in salaries be the determining factor in changing jobs. However, this can wait until another day.

I have decided to write today about privacy and the importance of controlling your own personal information. I have been inspired to do so based on the events I have witnessed and overheard this afternoon in the Sydney Airport.

Now I'm not a recruiter, sadly, nor would I call myself a people person, but working in a recruitment consultancy for five and half years I have dealt with hundreds of different people, however there seems to be a growing number of people I deal with who don't seem to be fully aware of what impression of themselves they are leaving.

Teamwork is the organised cooperation of a group of individuals.  It is the key ingredient that unites people and enables them to work together to achieve a common goal.

Wind the clock back four years to 2007 when the demand for staff was so high candidates were getting multiple offers and massive counter offers were being made to keep staff.

This is starting to happen again in 2011. The resources industry and the supporting industries are all beginning to scrap over personnel. We are even seeing businesses enter into non-compete clauses for staff when joining ventures for scopes of work.

Social media is where the future of recruitment is heading. Whether we like it or not, we are increasingly relying on social media more and more in the workplace. Whilst we can only speculate how this will manifest itself in the future, we are already seeing the benefits and possibilities starting to emerge.  However, with these potential benefits, there are also risks. When engaging with social media in relation to business and employment there are opportunities and drawbacks to employees, employers and recruiters that need to be considered.

It is common knowledge that Australia is currently experiencing a boom in the resources sector which has, overall, created a growth in the job market. This growth has in turn created a demand for talent. So where we have previously seen a job short market with an overflow of candidates needing work, we are now seeing the reverse, where in a job rich market, candidate's have the power of choice. And so I would like to address the importance of prompt interview feedback from both clients and candidates in this climate.

It is common knowledge that Australia is currently experiencing a boom in the resources sector which has, overall, created a growth in the job market. This growth has in turn created a demand for talent. So where we have previously seen a job short market with an overflow of candidates needing work, we are now seeing the reverse, where in a job rich market, candidate's have the power of choice. And so I would like to address the importance of prompt interview feedback from both clients and candidates in this climate.

Congratulations, you've just accepted an offer for the job you've been chasing for months. It's the career move you have been looking for! Great career progression, training and development and the list goes on. Your dream job! The right move....

But wait... All of a sudden the months of hating your job, the feeling of being unappreciated and unvalued by your current employer drastically disappear when they present you with a counter offer. Strange, all of a sudden you develop a little case of amnesia!

It is coming up to 6 months since I moved to Brisbane from Cyprus and joined Optimum Recruitment. Although I have 4 years of recruitment experience, I was still a little weary when asked to prepare the weekly O-group blog.

The IT market in 2011 is in relatively good position, and has seen a positive return since the GFC.

2011 has started off as a year that will present opportunities for professionals working in the financial services and insurance industries in Brisbane.

Searching for your next role whether it be temporary or permanent can be a full time job in itself. Whether you use an agency or go direct to the employer, you need to be on top of your applications and your behaviors throughout your job search. Going on six years in recruitment I have had my share of candidates who have “lost control” of their job search. I believe control starts from the moment you hit the “apply” button and here is why.

RESUME

Working in the Public sector has been an attraction for a long time for a lot of people and today is no different. There are many reasons for this but the main ones would definitely be job security, added benefits, flexibility and the so called “work, life, balance”.

In the Recruitment world pre-employment screening and reference checks are part of the job – but how successful are they?

Having myself been stung twice in the two months leading up to Christmas with fantastic verbal references being supplied by the candidate and then completed by myself - only to find out on an “off the record verbal reference” that all is not what it seems. This came about by our clients hearing something on the grapevine that all was not well in this camp which prompted us to delve deeper and deeper. So how accurate are they?

More and more employees are aiming to come across as individual and express their fashion sense at work. Finding the right look will still allow you to express your personal style, but in a way that portrays your corporate image.

In recent times, and as a recruiter with a number of years experience  I have thought long and hard about how recruitment has changed through the years.  Some recruiters that have been doing this job for a short time may not remember the old days. Let me enlighten you , and this is something that has been shared with our office, as technology has embraced our industry and our industry has embraced technology.

A lot has been written recently regarding the effect of the Global Financial Crisis on the employment market. However looking at where we stand today – a good 12 months on – are there any positives to be taken out of such a downturn in our economy? While there were job losses, redundancies, reductions in available positions and a more concentrated pool of applicants available in the market on an overall scale – it is interesting to concentrate our view on the effect of the GFC in a particular segment of the employment market, namely Generation Y.

As we are approaching the Christmas break, we tend to "wind down" a little and use the time to reflect on the year past and plan for the year ahead. By rights, January should be a quiet month for recruiters; the majority of clients and candidates are on holidays and very few new roles are called in. However, past experiences have debunked this theory and we are gearing up for yet another busy January.

A lot of people (especially recruiters) cringe at the thought of psychometric testing being a standard part of the job selection process, however from the employers point of view psychometric testing can be a cost-effective, valid and objective way of getting the right person for their job. The information from these psychometric assessments can supplement other information collected including interview notes, reference checks and demonstrated work history so that decisions are balanced and fair.

The term work/life balance has no meaning for me because we all manage to work and live simultaneously.  In my experience work/life balance is something that people talk about when they aren't enjoying their job and when they feel they have lost control of their career.  

In the past twelve months I have observed a number of interesting things that have come out of the Global Financial Crisis. Firstly, a large number of experienced accounting candidates who have been made redundant that don't have their CA or CPA.

These people have gone through their careers working in stable environments, doing a good job to only come unstuck and become redundant without professional qualifications. Several candidates told me "I didn't think I needed my CPA".