Getting comfortable with competition

Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash

I loved recruitment from day one. 

A job that involves meeting and talking to people on the phone all day? Sign me up!

Learning about people’s career journeys and aspirations and playing a part in their next step? A privilege.

Learning about what an organisation does and what their future plans are, then telling this story to others? This feeds my curiosity and allows me to flex my storytelling muscle, dream job!

I’ve never worked for a traditional recruitment business (aka commissions based on placement) which means I’ve never worked in competition with my colleagues.

But I’ve always worked with competition for talent. 

I started out in recruitment in pre-GFC London (2005), managing a very busy portfolio of client needs for temporary marketing resources to start ‘yesterday’. It was a wild time. Demand for short term contractors and freelancers was high and the market moved fast. At any given time I would have 25-30 jobs to fill and some days I would make / take close to 100 phone calls.

At 26 years old, there was so much I didn’t know about business (and life, and the world). But I’m a fast learner and what I lacked in knowledge I more than made up for in being a strong communicator, super focused, efficient and ever-curious. I am also driven and quite competitive!

Those wild days are long gone and most of the recruitment we do for clients is permanent and fixed term contract roles, so the pace and volume is different, yet one thing remains.

Competition.

Competition for talent is a constant. Leaders, employers and people teams need to get comfortable with competition. Then let’s figure out how to tackle it.

Intense competition for talent is a given. 

Our research shows 1 in 4 NFP employers have ‘lost’ a preferred candidate to another job offer. At least 40% of Australian employers face persistent recruitment challenges and 1 in 3 leaders believe turnover will remain unchanged. 

Average tenure in the Australian workforce is less than half of what it was a decade ago.

If you lead a team, talent attraction and retention is an always-on priority. But competing for talent isn’t simply about being better.

Read more about how to be competitive in the era of talent in this free download.

For a confidential chat about your talent strategy and how to attract the right talent to your team, get in touch with Cynthia Harris.