Online is where it’s at, right? All the statistics say so. The majority of adults in Australia have a smartphone with direct connection to the internet, marketers love web-based advertising as they can measure campaigns effectively, and it’s a cost-effective way to find your next team member using sites like SEEK or LinkedIn.
When looking for specialist skills in a narrow market, unless you have the processes in place to manage the applicants from these direct applicants, you can minimise your chances of securing the right person for the job.
I think SEEK is a great place to start when recruiting for your payroll team. But it’s a driftnet approach. You throw the net out far and wide and hope to find the diamond in the sea of applicants. The issue is, if you miss that diamond, who just happened to be looking on SEEK that day, you may never find them again.
We have recently worked with some organisations who have run great ads on SEEK. So good, that they received hundreds of responses. Unfortunately the time and energy that it takes to weed out the applicants effectively is significant. Those with aspirations of moving to the lucky country without a working visa, or unqualified applicants who haven’t read the detail of what you are looking for or overqualified applicants who want to be paid $50,000 more than the vacancy is worth.
Managing these responses in a timely manner becomes critical. We regularly work with payroll candidates that have responded to a direct ad and been missed in the dragnet by the employer. Eventually the employer gets the assistance of a recruiter who has a pool of candidates they carefully manage. If a candidate has already applied directly and received no response, they will generally refuse to be considered for the role. Why?
Well they applied months ago, got no response, and are now questioning what the problem is. Are there cultural issues in the organisation? Is there high turnover?
Would they be walking into a payroll disaster? Why did the last person leave? Are there management problems?
It’s like seeing a house for sale for months in a hot property market. A potential buyer is certain the house has leaky pipes, is under the flight path or beside a potential nuclear reactor construction site.
Often none of these things are true about the payroll position. In fact, they are just symptoms of a badly managed recruitment campaign.
So next time you decide to advertise for staff online, make sure you have the processes in place to manage the responses appropriately and identify the diamond if they fall into your net.
Tracy is the founder and chief executive officer at the Australian Payroll Association and the director of Payroll HQ.
