Category: Talent Acquisition Strategy

PeopleScout Canada Jobs Report Analysis — April 2019

Posted on by nfuqua

Statistics Canada reported that the nation’s unemployment fell to 5.7% and that 107,000 jobs were gained after shedding jobs in March. This is the biggest one month increase with records going back to 1976. The record job growth beat market expectations of an addition of just 12,000 jobs or less. Canada added 426,400 jobs over the past 12 months, up 2.3%, which is the largest one-year increase since 2007 before the Great Recession. In the last two years, the economy has added 700,000 jobs.

April 2019 OVERALL Overall Jobs Gained/Lost: +107,000 Overall Unemployment Rate: 5.7 per cent (Down arrow) Overall Weekly Wage Change: + 2.1 per cent (Down arrow) INDUSTRY BREAKDOWN (Table 2 for Job Changes) (Statistics Canada Website Weekly Wages Canada) Finance, Insurance, Real Estate, Rental and Leasing Jobs Change: +8,200 Manufacturing Jobs Change: +5,700 Transportation and Warehousing Jobs Change: +600 Wholesale and Retail Jobs Change: +32,400 Educational Services Jobs Change: -2,200 Health Care and Social Assistance Jobs Change: +6,600 Accomodation and Food Services Jobs Change: +3,700 Professional, Scientific and Technical Services Jobs Change: -14,900 Year over Year Weekly Wage Changes All Workers 15 and Over: +2.1% Management Occupations: +0.4% Business Finance and Administration Occupations: +3.8% Health Occupations: +2.2% Occupations in education, law and social, community and government services: +1.5% Occupations in art, culture, recreation and sport: +3.7% Sales and service occupations: +2.5% Trades, transport and equipment operators and related occupations: +2.2% Occupations in manufacturing and utilities: +6.4% Observations Statistics Canada reported that the nation’s unemployment fell to 5.7% and that 107,000 jobs were gained after shedding jobs in March. This is the largest one month increase with records going back to 1976. Analysts expected an increase of 12,000 jobs. Weekly annual wage increases were up 2.1%. The increase in wages falls short of the wage growth in mid-2018 and has continued the trend of sluggish growth since the start of the year.

The Numbers

107,000: The economy added 107,000 jobs in April.

5.7%: The unemployment rate fell to 5.7%.

2.1%: Weekly wages increased 2.1% over the last year.

The Good

Employment increased in Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and Prince Edward Island. Several important sectors posted positive job numbers including wholesale and retail trade; construction; information, culture and recreation; public administration; and agriculture. The employment situation improved for some key demographic groups as well. There were job increases for youth aged 15 to 24, people aged 55 and older and women in the core working ages of 25 to 54.

In a hopeful sign for the economy, youth employment accounted for much of the gains in jobs in April, as unemployment for those aged 15 to 24 hit its lowest rate in 43 years. The Labour Force Survey reported that youth unemployment rate fell to 10.3% with jobs for Canada’s younger workers growing by 89,000 over the past year. The rate has not been that low since Statistics Canada starting using its current statistical criteria in 1976.

While the annual wage growth numbers are still not strong compared to other advanced economies, there are some signs of progress. While annual weekly wages decreased from last month, annual hourly wage gains increased to 2.5% in April, the fastest annual gain since September and up from 2.4% in March. Pay increases for permanent employees jumped to 2.6%, the largest increase since August.

The jobs report was welcomed by some analysts as a sign that employers are demonstrating confidence in the Canadian economy:

“’Nearly every indicator of quality came in strong this month: The best-ever gain came with solid full-time job growth, all in employees — rather than self-employed — more Canadians were drawn into labour markets and wages were up,’ said Brian DePratto, senior economist for TD Economics, in a written statement about the results.

‘Chalk this one up as a solid message that employers still have faith in the Canadian economy.’”

The Bad

While the report contained good news for much of Canada’s workforce, not every sector, province or demographic group fared well. Employment decreased in professional, scientific and technical services and in New Brunswick. The employment gains for the remaining provinces were negligible compared to Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and Prince Edward Island.

Contrasting with the vote of confidence that some have interpreted from the April report, some leading economists have recently expressed modest expectations for Canada’s economic growth this year:

“Deloitte’s latest economic advisory report projects a year of slower economic growth, a weak Canadian dollar, and a vulnerable economy. Though the dreaded “R-word” (recession) remains a possibility, the consultancy projects modest growth of 1.3% in 2019 and 1.5% in 2020 for Canada.

After posting strong growth of 3% in 2017, the Canadian economy slowed to 1.8% in 2018, and has little momentum heading into this year. Factors such as a drop in residential investment, weaker consumer spending, and a decelerating US economy are projected to moderate growth to 1.3% in 2019, according to Deloitte Canada.

Though the firm says a recession isn’t the most likely outcome, slowed economic growth does make Canada more vulnerable to risks like protectionism, Brexit, and low global interest rates.”

The Unknown

The validity of the data in the April report and the conclusions drawn by many economists was questioned on the day the report was released in Bloomberg:

“A loss of 7,200 jobs in March, and then a gain of 106,500 jobs in April. For David Rosenberg, Canada’s latest employment data just doesn’t add up.

Statistics Canada said Friday that Canadian employment increased by 106,500 positions in April, the biggest one-month increase in data going back to 1976. The country’s jobless rate fell to 5.7%, compared to 5.85 in March.

But Rosenberg, chief economist and strategist at Gluskin Sheff + Associates, says the country’s latest jobs numbers are hard to believe, given what’s happening in the Canadian economy.

‘Did you really believe that the Canadian labour market is so volatile that we could have a [7,200] decline in the labour force in one month, followed by a 100,000-increase in the next month? Is our labour market more volatile than the stock market is? It’s hard to believe,’ Rosenberg said in an interview with BNN Bloomberg Friday.

‘Somehow we’re creating record jobs and in the same survey in the United States, they’re losing jobs in a significant way. So what I’m trying to say is, calm down a little bit. There’s no way that the Canadian economy is nearly as strong as this number would lead you to suggest.’

Rosenberg took issue with a few details in StatsCan’s labour force survey, pointing to how most of the job gains were concentrated among youth, and in sectors such as construction and retail.

‘I thought we were battling a housing bubble in this country,’ Rosenberg said. ‘Meanwhile, we know that consumers are going on the debt treadmill and doing more to repair their balance sheets than head out to the shopping malls.’

Rosenberg, who has been known for his bearish views on Bay Street, questioned any cheering of the April labour figures.

‘It’s like you’re a teacher in high school and your dumbest student just handed in an ‘A’ report and you just don’t really know what to do with it,’ Rosenberg said. ‘I don’t give it an ‘A’ by the way.’”

High-Volume Global RPO Solution for International Hospitality Brand

Posted on by Kate
High-Volume Global RPO Solution for International Hospitality Brand

Global RPO

High-Volume Global RPO Solution for International Hospitality Brand

An international hospitality brand—and longstanding PeopleScout client—was experiencing growing pains after an acquisition. The client needed to source, screen and hire an additional 20,000 staff for both corporate and on-site positions at hotel properties across multiple continents—bringing the annual headcount to 65,000 new hires. PeopleScout’s global RPO solution proved agile enough to seamlessly scale up to absorb the increased hiring volume, while hitting target service levels across regions.

65,000 Annual Hires
90 % Customer Satisfaction Scores Among Hiring Managers
84 % Time-to-Fill Targets Achieved for In-Market Roles
100 % Time-to-Fill Targets Achieved for Corporate Roles

Situation

PeopleScout facilitates more than 65,000 hires annually for the hospitality brand, delivering RPO through a 350-member team across continents. Roles include management and hourly hiring needs in both corporate and in-market environments, including sales, accounting, technology, e-commerce, infrastructure, risk management, engineering, architecture, property management, customer service, housekeeping, culinary and more.

In addition to corporate hiring in the U.S. and Canada, we’ve recruited for their operations centers in the UK and India and hospitality properties spanning North America, Latin America, EMEA and APAC.

Solution

Starting with a small pilot in 2007, our relationship has developed into a strategic partnership over 15 years. At the start, the client had disjointed hiring processes across regions. PeopleScout’s RPO team streamlined their recruitment processes and developed robust, standardized compliance practices across the entire recruiting program.

Following an acquisition in 2017, the client gained nearly 1,300 properties across over 100 countries. PeopleScout scaled our global talent acquisition program to ensure the established standardized processes and compliance practices were applied to the newly acquired properties, while keeping costs down.

PeopleScout seamlessly absorbed a 20,000-position increase and easily increased resources to meet a 50% increase in the scope of services. This included scaling our RPO solution to cover the end-to-end recruitment process for management positions for all hotel locations and the U.S. and Canadian headquarters. This allowed the in-house HR team to focus on training, workforce planning and employer branding.

PeopleScout also supported the client through three talent technology transitions over the course of the partnership, creating new levels of efficiency through automation. Plus, our in-house creative agency TMP assisted the client with their recruitment marketing efforts, creating attraction content in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish.

Results

In just two months, PeopleScout was able to achieve the same level of performance at the newly acquired locations as they had at the legacy locations.

  • Created standardized recruitment processes and robust compliance practices across all in-market locations resulting in significant cost savings through efficiency
  • 84% time-to-fill targets achieved for in-market hires
  • Nearly 100% time-to-fill targets achieved for corporate hires
  • 90%+ customer satisfaction scores hit for both in-market and management hires
  • Achieved nearly 100% consistency in SLAs thanks to standardized operations across PeopleScout’s global delivery centers.

At a Glance

  • COMPANY: International hospitality brand
  • INDUSTRY: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS: Recruitment Process Outsourcing
  • ANNUAL HIRES: 65,000
  • LOCATIONS: Hospitality properties, corporate offices and operational centers across North America, Latin America, Europe and APAC
Let’s Connect

PeopleScout U.S. Jobs Report Analysis — April 2019

Posted on by skatz

The Labor Department released its April jobs report which shows that U.S. employers added 263,000 jobs in March, beating analyst expectations. The unemployment rate fell to 3.6 percent last month. Year-over-year wage growth remained at 3.2 percent, which is well ahead of the rate of inflation. U.S. employers have added to payrolls for 103 straight months, extending the longest continuous jobs expansion on record.

U.S. Jobs Report – April 2019

The Numbers

263,000: The economy added 263,000 jobs in April.

3.6%: The unemployment rate fell to 3.8%.

3.2%: Wages increased at a rate of 3.2% growth over the last year.

The Good

The U.S. economy demonstrated its resilience with the strong April Jobs report. After shedding jobs in March, manufacturing had a modest rebound adding 4,000 positions while other key economic sectors had impressive gains. Leisure and hospitality added 34,000 positions, education and health services increased by 62,000 jobs and business and professional services jobs grew by 76,000.

The jobs report was generally greeted with enthusiasm by analysts who tempered their responses with caveats about the meaning of the data as in this reporting by Bloomberg.

“It’s clearly telling you this economy is still chugging along very nicely,” Torsten Slok, chief economist at Deutsche Bank Securities, said on Bloomberg Television. “It is inflationary in the sense that wages did go up but they didn’t go up as much as we had expected. Goldilocks is the best description of this,” Slok said.

The surprising overall robustness – which didn’t reflect any surge in temporary hires for the 2020 Census, as some analysts had flagged – follows months of broad labor market strength. While the expansion is poised to become the nation’s longest on record at midyear, economists expect a deceleration this year even after a strong first quarter.

The New York Times noted that the elements of the strong job market have defied conventional economic expectations and could assuage fears of an economic downturn.

“Not that long ago, the overwhelming consensus among economists would have been that you couldn’t have a 3.6% unemployment rate without also seeing the rate of job creation slowing (where are new workers going to come from with so few out of work, after all?) and having an inflation surge (a worker shortage should mean employers bidding up wages, right?).

And yet that is what has happened, with the April employment numbers putting an exclamation point on the trend. The jobless rate receded to its lowest level in five decades. Employers also added 263,000 jobs; the job creation estimates of previous months were revised up; and average hourly earnings continued to rise at a steady rate — up 3.2 percent over the last year…

In particular, it now appears that recession fears that emerged at the end of 2018 were misguided — especially once the Fed backed off its campaign of rate increases at the start of 2019.”

The Bad

The participation rate, those who are working or want to work, decreased in April. The broadest measure of unemployment, which includes part-time workers who want to work full-time has remained virtually unchanged since February. Despite a strong job market and rising wages, some Americans are opting out of the workforce and those who want to more fully participate have not been able to do so.

The April report also showed that the robust job market has not impacted two categories of potential talent over the last year. In April, 1.4 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, little different from a year earlier. These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.

Among the marginally attached, there were 454,000 discouraged workers in April, basically unchanged from a year earlier. Discouraged workers are those not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them.

The Unknown

Jobs in the retail sector decreased by 12,000 in April and by over 49,000 in the last year. The extensive closing of retail locations has come to be known as the “retail apocalypse.” The number of store closings so far in 2019 is already larger than in all of 2018 as Business Insider reports:

“The retail apocalypse is raging on with almost 6,000 store closings announced so far in 2019 — more than the entirety of last year. According to a new report from Coresight Research, U.S. retailers have announced 5,994 store closings this year, compared with 5,864 store closings in all of 2018…Coresight Research CEO Deborah Weinswig predicted that this trend would continue. “The flood of store closures will likely continue for quite some time,” she said. An April UBS report predicted that 75,000 stores would close across North America from this year to 2026. It said e-commerce would make up a quarter of total retail sales by then.”

Retail workers affected by store closings can bring employers important transferrable skills such as customer service and inventory tracking. It remains to be seen how many of these workers will stay in the broad retail sector, including e-commerce, or be attracted into other sectors which can leverage their skills and experience.

Legal Services Recruitment with Full-Cycle RPO

Posted on by akessler
Legal Services Recruitment with Full-Cycle RPO

Legal Services Recruitment with Full-Cycle RPO

How we helped this long-term legal services client revamp their talent acquisition program

Solution

PeopleScout has been RPO partner to this client for over 10 years. The relationship started as a co-sourced solution, where our recruiters partnered with the client’s internal talent acquisition team. As our partnership deepended, PeopleScout has taken responsibility for fully outsourced recruitment program and now also acts in a talent advisory capacity.

The onsite PeopleScout team is responsible for managing the end-to-end recruitment process for all fixed term and permanent hires. This includes strategic and innovative sourcing approaches, competitor mapping for key job groups, process enhancement through technology automation, candidate and hiring manager engagement and satisfaction, onboarding and induction.

PeopleScout achieved some key business-critical initiatives including:

  • Reducing turnover through improved quality-of-hire
  • Delivering a positive candidate experience and employer brand reputation
  • Taking over the end-to-end recruitment campaign for graduates and early careers from a different outsourced provider
  • Building talent pipelines for hard-to-fill positions including auditors, economists and lawyers
  • Recruiting senior executive and specialist roles
  • Project recruitment for recruitment intake following new law reforms

Talent Advisory Services

As part of this solution, PeopleScout has delivered a number of additional services in order to drive continuous improvement. The following is a summary of some of the services that have been successfully implemented:

  • Redesigned and promoted the employee referral program (ERP)
  • Developed hiring manager interview guides and conducted interview training
  • Developed microsites for a recruitment campaign for lawyers
  • Conducted D&I consulting
  • Supported the client’s internal mobility program leveraging the Affinix talent acquisition suite
  • Automated recruitment reports
  • Developed a company LinkedIn profile and alumni page to promote candidate attraction

Results

The solution continues to achieve positive results for the business including:

  • Reducing agency spend by over $3 million
  • Achieving an average time-to-fill of just 29 days including for senior level positions

At a Glance

  • COMPANY: Law firm
  • INDUSTRY: Legal Services
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS: Recruitment Process Outsourcing, Talent Advisory
Let’s Connect

PeopleScout New Zealand Jobs Report Analysis — March Quarter 2019

Posted on by nfuqua

Stats NZ released the March Quarter Labour Market Report which reported that the unemployment fell to 4.2% in the first three months of the year, from 4.3% in the final quarter of 2018. Economists expected a jobless rate of 4.3%. The number of people unemployed declined at a faster rate than the number of people in the labour force. The result was the unemployment rate falling close to its 10-year low of 4.0%, set in mid-2018. The labour market underutilisation rate was 11.3% in the first quarter, the lowest rate since the December 2008 quarter.

OVERALL Quarter Covering January-March 2019 Employment Change: -0.2% (Down arrow) Overall Unemployment Rate: 4.2% (Down arrow) Participation Rate: 70.2% (Down arrow) Overall Weekly Wage Change: + 2.0% (Up arrow) INDUSTRY BREAKDOWN (Statistics NZ Website Table 9) Manufacturing Jobs Change: +600 Construction Jobs Change: -1,000 Wholesale Trade Jobs Change: -400 Retail Trade, Accommodation and Food Services Jobs Change: -3,000 Transport, Postal and Warehousing Jobs Change: -3,500 Information, Media and Telecommunications Jobs Change: -200 Financial and Insurance Services Jobs Change: +5,900 Rental, Hiring and Real Estate Services Jobs Change: +4,200 Professional, scientific, technical, administrative, and support services Jobs Changes: +20,600 Public Administration and Safety Jobs Changes: +400 Education and Training Jobs Changes: -5,200 Health Care and Social Services Jobs Changes: +0 Observations Stats NZ released the March Quarter Labour Market Report which reported that the unemployment fell to 4.2% in the first three months of the year, from 4.3% in the final quarter of 2018. Economists expected a jobless rate of 4.3%. The number of people unemployed declined at a faster rate than the number of people in the labour force. The result was the unemployment rate falling close to its 10-year low of 4.0%, set in mid-2018. The labour market underutilisation rate was 11.3% in the first quarter, the lowest rate since the December 2008 quarter.

The Numbers

-4,000:  The economy lost 4,000 jobs in the first quarter of 2019.

4.2%: The unemployment rate fell to 4.2%.

2.0%: Overall wages increased  2.0% over the last year.

The Good

Stats NZ released the March Quarter Labour Market Report which reported that the unemployment fell to 4.2% in the first three months of the year, from 4.3% in the final quarter of 2018 and beating analyst expectations. The number of unemployed declined at a faster rate than the number of people in the labour force. As a result, the unemployment rate fell close to its 10-year low of 4.0% set last year. Compared to last year, 38,200 more people were employed, an increase of 1.5% – comprised of 25,400 women and 12,800 men.

The labour market underutilisation rate was 11.3% in the first quarter, the lowest rate since the fourth quarter of 2008. Underutilisation provides a broad gauge of untapped capacity in New Zealand’s labour market. In the first quarter, the number of people underutilised decreased by 14,000 to 324,000. There were 8,000 fewer underutilised women and 6,000 fewer underutilised men.

The Bad

For the first time in more than four years, the New Zealand economy lost jobs. In addition, the number of jobs created over the past year was slightly more than half the rate of the previous year.  Coupled together, these figures indicate a weakening and possible end of the steady job market growth seen in recent years. The slowing job market may have implications for the economy as a whole as Stats NZ Senior Manager Jason Attewell noted:

“Generally, employment growth tends to lag broader economic growth by about three months, New Zealand has seen a softening of economic growth as measured by gross domestic product over the last six months, and we now are seeing that softening come through the employment rate.”

Wage growth is also frustratingly low, even in a tight labour market, as the New Zealand Herald reports:

“ANZ economists have picked unemployment to remain flat at 4.3% although they acknowledge risks in either direction depending on the flow through from business confidence.

Regardless, it looks set to remain at levels which economists often describe technically as ‘full employment.’

That has led to some debate as to why wage growth has remained so subdued. In fact, it has been a major source of economic uncertainty globally as well as locally.

‘More significant government-related increases are likely to come later in the year,’ Westpac’s Gordon says.

‘Wage growth tends to lag the broader economic cycle. Even if the demand for new workers is fading, there appears to be enough accumulated pressure in the labour market to support a pickup in wage growth over the next couple of years.’

ASB’s Mark Smith described this year as a pivotal one for wage trends.

‘Our view had been that stretched labour market capacity and the boost to wages provided by minimum wage increases and moves towards more Fair Pay agreements would be sufficient to trigger a generalised firming in overall wages,’ he wrote.

‘The failure to date for wages to come to the party has challenged that view.’”

The Unknown

What will the impact of new technology be on New Zealand’s future workforce? The New Zealand government asked the Productivity Commission to conduct an inquiry into technological change and the future of work. The result is an issues paper that presents four possible scenarios as presented in CIO Magazine:

  1. More Tech More Jobs: Technology adoption accelerates in this scenario, and the technologies adopted create more jobs than they replace. Both capital and labour productivity rise in this scenario, perhaps substantially.
  2. More Tech and Fewer Jobs: This scenario, in common with the first one, is driven by accelerating technology adoption. However, it differs in that the technology adopted is, overall, labour replacing. Capital productivity rises substantially in this scenario, as firms increasingly adopt productivity-enhancing technologies. Labour productivity might also rise, as lower-skilled roles are increasingly automated. An expected consequence of this combination of drivers is widespread unemployment.
  3. Stagnation: In this scenario, the pace of technological adoption slows. This could be due to declining innovation, as technological bottlenecks prove harder to overcome than expected. Alternatively, slower change could occur as technology adoption by firms slows – perhaps because newer technologies are less productivity enhancing for firms than those of the past.
  4. Steady As: In this scenario, the technological drivers of labour market change over the next one-to-two decades stay within the bounds of New Zealand experience over the past one-to-two decades. This future offers ongoing change, according to the paper, but the rate of that change is roughly that which New Zealanders are familiar with.

Regardless of how or whether these scenarios take place in New Zealand’s economic future, New Zealanders appear to be unconcerned about losing their jobs to technology. The New Zealand Herald reports that a  recent Massey University study found 87.5% of respondents either disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement “smart technology, artificial intelligence, robotics or algorithms could take my job.”

How Google Jobs is Taking On Talent Acquisition

Posted on by skatz

Google’s first commercial for the 2019 Super Bowl showcased Translate, Google’s language translation feature. Google’s second commercial of the night was also about the power of translation, only this time the focus was on helping veterans translate their military skills into civilian careers.

The aforementioned ad illustrated how Google for Jobs helps veterans and other U.S. service members quickly find civilian jobs by searching “jobs for veterans” on Google and then entering their military occupational specialty codes. They are then provided with search results for civilian jobs with similar skills to those used in their military roles. Now, a group of job seekers that had difficulty finding roles online can easily conduct a simple Google job search.

Launched in 2017, Google for Jobs, or Google Jobs, is a job search platform that goes well beyond simple search efforts by pulling relevant job-related data from multiple partners and company sites into one intelligent search function. In this article, we will walk through an explanation of what Google Jobs is, how it works, how it can affect talent acquisition and what to keep in mind before incorporating Google Jobs into your recruitment strategy.

What is Google for Jobs?

Google Jobs connects interested job seekers with relevant positions from job boards and career websites around the world. Google allows users to filter job searches the same way you can search for anything else online, with criteria like location, posting date, type of company, etc. It even includes pay estimates from several outside sources. With more than one-third of Google’s monthly searches coming from job-related requests, Google Jobs helps bridge the gap between job seekers searching for career opportunities and employers looking to provide them.

How Does Google Jobs Work?

Google Jobs pulls job board listings from around the web into its platform through partnerships with LinkedIn, CareerBuilder, Facebook, Monster and others. Postings on a company’s career site are also pulled into the Google Jobs engine. Initially launched in the United States, the platform is available to millions of job seekers from North and South America, Latin America, Africa, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

When a user searches for a job, Google serves up the most relevant job description, location, seniority, job types and salary content available courtesy of machine learning. Machine learning is a subset of AI that adjusts and learns without being explicitly programmed. Traditional Google search queries use algorithms to sort through hundreds of billions of web pages to find and present the most relevant, useful results to a user. Google Jobs’ search mechanism operates similarly, only its enhanced use of machine learning only retrieves results from job postings, which it lists at the top of a user’s search results.

If you start by searching directly in Google for “jobs near me for ‘Nurses,’” using Chicago as a location, roles with a few local healthcare organizations, along with 100+ more jobs, appear. Additional filters also are available, such as jobs posted in the “past 3 days” or “full-time” jobs. Users can view these filters at the top of the screen.

Google Jobs screenshot

If a user clicks to see additional jobs using the “100+ jobs” link at the bottom of the results page, this next screen appears:

Google Jobs screenshot

Users can then explore their Google Jobs search using the following features:

  • Jobs are displayed in the left column.
  • Filters are available across the top of the screen, such as title, date posted and type of employer. For example, if you click on “title,” related titles appear, such as a surgical or clinical nurse.
  • Pay comparisons are available at the bottom of the listing from other sources such as Glassdoor.
  • Alerts are available for your job search in the lower left-hand corner. You can turn alerts on or off with your Gmail account and save for future use.

How Does Google Jobs Affect Talent Acquisition?

Extending your recruiting strategy by integrating with Google Jobs benefits talent acquisition programs through increased reach, better candidate choice and reduced costs.

Expands Your Reach

Google Jobs expands your pool of candidates by crawling millions of job listings across the internet and presenting jobs relevant to a user’s inquiry that may not appear during a traditional search.

So, once you’ve posted your open positions on job boards integrated with the Google Jobs platform – your reach is instantly amplified.

Google also provides developers and website owners access to the new “jobs search feature” where they can embed company logos, job seeker reviews, ratings and job details. This feature functions outside of organic and paid search on Google, so job postings are easier to find and more prominent than before.

And for organizations with smaller recruiting teams, Google Jobs helps level the playing field by allowing their job postings to appear organically to the same candidates as those advertising on job boards.

Filtering Out Unqualified Candidates

When a job gets posted online, recruiters get inundated with a torrent of qualified and unqualified candidates alike. Filtering through these resumes is time-consuming and reduces a recruiter’s ability to quickly identify quality job candidates.

With Google Jobs’ multiple filters, it is possible for recruiters to better target candidates and only receive the resumes that best align with specific roles.

For example, instead of receiving generic resumes for nurses, now it is possible to filter results so that recruiters only receive resumes from entry-level nurses with two-years of experience in a hospital setting who live in Atlanta and expect to be paid $35K-$70K annually.

Reduces Cost

Increasingly, the need to go to CareerBuilder, Glassdoor, LinkedIn and others to post your job listing is waning as Google Jobs principally provides the same service in a more cost-effective manner. The average cost of interviewing, scheduling, and hiring a candidate is thousands of dollars; this cost could be reduced if recruiters work with fewer third-party job boards and advertising partners.

Considerations

Before your job postings begin appearing in millions of Google searches, here are a few tips to get started.

Optimize Your Job Listings

Keep your descriptions short and specific. Avoid any internal jargon that candidates would not search for or know. Study other ads in the market to make sure your job description has some similarity. Also, check to make sure your listing is consistent with your employer brand.

Enhance SEO

Google Jobs is a powerful tool. However, to harness its full potential, you should make sure your job postings are optimized for search. This means making sure you are tagging the correct keywords, titles and other attributes.

Mobile Ready

Make sure your listings are updated for mobile search, where 90% of job seekers now search first. You can use the quick test Google offers to check to see if your website is currently mobile-optimized as well.

What to Keep in Mind?

Connect Your Job Listings

There are a few main paths to connect your listings with Google Jobs. If you post jobs directly through your website, you can connect directly with Google. However, this option requires some technical knowledge such as marking up jobs, crawling, indexing, enriched search, APIs and structured data. This direct connection path can also come through your applicant tracking system (ATS) provider. Another option is to work through a third-party to manage your postings, e.g. LinkedIn.

Remove Old Listings

Google may penalize your site if job postings that have been filled are still being displayed, so make sure you regularly remove old listings.

Understand Not Everyone is Involved (Yet)

Certain jobs may not be included in Google Jobs search results, as some job boards are not integrated into the platform. As of April 2019, job search giant Indeed has not yet partnered with Google Jobs, so any efforts talent acquisition groups have with Indeed remain separate for now.

Conclusion

Working with Google Jobs benefits talent acquisition programs through increased reach, better candidate filtering and reduced costs. Before integrating Google Jobs into your TA strategy, organizations need to optimize their job postings. Companies need to understand the pros and cons of managing a Google Jobs program in-house versus working through an ATS provider or third-party integrator. Most ATS providers are optimized for Google Jobs, but make sure to confirm with your vendor. Talent acquisition leaders can also consider using the ATS module within PeopleScout’s proprietary talent technology platform, Affinix. Google Jobs is available today through Affinix.

Talking Talent: Applying Global Lessons in Talent Acquisition with Guy Bryant-Fenn

Posted on by skatz

Guy Bryant-Fenn doesn’t like to sit still. In the two decades he’s worked in HR, he’s moved from an IT search to PeopleScout’s APAC managing director, transplanting from London to Sydney along the way. This global recruitment experience has given him a future-focused point of view and humility – a value he says drives honesty, integrity, ambition and tenacity.

We spoke with Guy from PeopleScout’s Sydney headquarters about the biggest issues in the Australia and New Zealand talent market and how they are shaping the talent acquisition industry. In our open conversation, Guy shares how the lessons from innovation in APAC should influence leaders around the world.

What are the biggest challenges facing the Australia/New Zealand region in talent acquisition right now?

That’s a great question. There are numerous challenges facing Australia, New Zealand and the broader APAC market in talent acquisition at present. First off is the availability of talent. It really is a compressed market here. We’re seeing a lot of employment growth in the healthcare and social assistance market, construction, education and training and professional. As we look forward to 2023, we’re seeing projected growth of half a million jobs or more, and the challenge that lies within that is the availability of skilled labor to fulfill those roles.

What are some of the biggest trends that you’re seeing?

The biggest trends that I think we’re seeing are a reaction to the availability of talent. So, we’re seeing a high degree of recruitment solutions that are focusing on passive sourcing—not those active candidates in the market, but those left-handed astronauts out there that we need to tap on the shoulder and attract into our clients’ organizations. We’re seeing a keen focus on market insights to provide the information of where that skilled labor is, who they are working for and how we can best attract them. That is done by a symbiotic relationship between people and technology, which means using advanced AI technology and attraction strategies that are enabling the people components to drive that passive sourcing.

Another big focus is diversity and inclusion. Organizations obviously see the benefit of diversity within their companies, and they want to ensure that they have a workforce that is reflective of the national demographic. So, they’re trying to balance the lack of availability of talent within the market but also drive a more inclusive workforce.

The final piece for me is really a greater focus on attraction and assessment. Organizations are wanting to understand the perception of what they are saying to the market. How does their employer brand portray them as an organization? What are the values that they are speaking to within market, and how do those values really flow through to how and who and what they are assessing within the recruitment process?

It sounds like in dealing with these challenges and working with these trends, technology plays a significant role. So, can you tell me a little bit about the role that tech has in transforming the industry and tackling the biggest issues you’re seeing now?

Tech is increasing in importance across the industry. We’re seeing an emergence within the HR tech industry of technologies that sit across each element of the lifecycle. So, workforce planning tools, AI passive sourcing tools, various different assessment tools from personality profiles to realistic job previews, situational judgment – and they go all the way through to onboarding and employment. The trick for us as a provider is to ensure that we are utilizing the best of those tools that will enable the recruitment process but also drive automation and efficiencies that allow us to elevate our talent acquisition teams to act as more as a business partner or in an advisory capacity.

What are some lessons from Australia/New Zealand that leaders in other markets should be paying attention to and learning from? 

I’ve lived and worked in Australia now for eight years, having come from the EMEA market, and what I continuously enjoy is the lateral thinking of talent acquisition leaders across Australia and New Zealand. We are not afraid to look at things through a different lens, take the best of the learnings from the Americas and EMEA and rightsize that for the Australia/New Zealand and broader APAC market.

We are also seeing a faster adoption and emergence of total workforce solutions, where providers have a view of both permanent and contingent labor across their enterprise. That’s partly because of lateral thinking, but that’s also because we are smaller in scale and can be more agile which allows for us to innovate quickly.

What are you most excited about for the future of talent acquisition?

We touched on it in pockets throughout this conversation—the advancement of technology is an exciting component. I firmly believe that there will always be a human element in what we do, but how can we continue to create that symbiotic relationship between people and technology and really evolve and advance our solutions?

An example of that for me is evolving the planning element of what we do from a data and insights perspective. Right now, organizations are working on their resource forecasts driven by a demand plan. Where we will see this evolving to is true workforce planning, future-backed workforce planning, where organizations will be able to predict the resources that they need – one, two, three years out. We will also see the emergence of that workforce planning component flowing across the whole recruitment lifecycle, and it will enable us as a business to ensure that we are driving those passive candidate pipelines.

We are setting ourselves up across both our attraction and assessment strategies to really enable our clients’ business objectives and ensure that we are executing talent at a strategic level and acting as a true business enabler for our clients’ organizations. What I’m most excited about is really the elevation of talent acquisition to that level, and it can’t happen quickly enough.

What is a Managed Service Provider (MSP)?

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A Managed Service Provider (MSP) is a contingent workforce management solution implemented by an external organization. An MSP combines process, personal expertise and technology to support an organization’s gig, temporary, temp-to-hire, direct hire, independent contractor administration, Statement of Work (SOW) hiring and other complex services such as vendor management.

There is a spectrum of organizations seeking MSP staffing services – some are looking for the first time, others have mature programs focused on driving continuous improvements and others that are transitioning into a Total Workforce Solution.

When an organization partners with an MSP provider to outsource its contingent staffing and SOW management, the MSP provider assumes all or portions of an organization’s procurement or HR functions, managing the contingent staffing lifecycle from requisition through invoicing and payment. They are often HR Generalists between the Supplier community who employ the workers and the Hiring Managers working within a client’s organization. In addition, they are often workforce consultants who provide insights into the ever-changing talent landscape and workforce needs of a client.

An MSP provider works alongside a client’s internal HR and Procurement teams and can perform its duties remotely and onsite at a client’s facility. Below, we highlight a few reasons why organizations seek MSP providers, and conversely, when MSP may not be a good fit:

Reasons to engage an MSP provider:

  • If your organization is looking for better cost control amongst your staffing vendors
  • If your organization wants faster access to high-quality talent through vendors, directly sourced or through other hiring vehicles
  • If your organization is looking for greater compliance protection from potential litigation due to worker misclassification across all categories of non-permanent workers
  • If your organization is looking for more detailed reporting, workforce analytics and key insights to make better and more informed contingent labor decisions
  • If your organization is looking for a workforce consultant to advise them on labor trends and custom solutions that will work within your culture.

Reasons not to engage an MSP provider:

  • If your organization is not comfortable or willing to have an external organization manage your contingent workforce and SOW needs
  • If internal stakeholders are not ready for a centralized program and are still operating in decentralized governance.
  • If your contingent workforce volume isn’t high enough to justify the use/cost of an MSP

What is a Managed Service Provider in the Staffing Industry? What Can a Managed Service Provider Do For My Contingent Staffing Needs?

At its most basic service and delivery level, a managed service provider can help your organization improve contingent staffing process efficiency, boost talent supply chain efficacy, introduce better cost controls and provide you with superior access to contingent workers.


MSP programs can alleviate the pressures placed on both your HR talent acquisition and Procurement functions by managing your contingent staffing program in a way that is both cost-effective and compliant. Similar to recruitment process outsourcing programs, MSP programs can be customized, planned, managed and implemented in a manner that truly reflects your organization’s needs, your position in the market and your Employer Value Proposition (EVP).


MSPs leverage the influence of your EVP and reputation in the market to source contingent and SOW workers through the management of preferred suppliers, reduce your agency spend, and ensure that you secure the best talent in every market at competitive rates, not just the most readily available talent on the market. An MSP partner should also provide market intelligence on where to find the best talent and at what price.

Common MSP program services include:

  • Engagement of all forms of contingent and SOW workers
  • Building pools of high-quality candidates
  • Review of current supplier and vendor contracts
  • Contract management
  • Providing reporting and analysis for the contingent workforce program
  • Management of the supplier base
  • Management and payment of staffing supplier invoices
  • Talent advisement of key labor trends
  • Partnership in the creation and execution of workforce solutions customized to fit the client

Your MSP provider will deliver these services through dedicated support teams that leverage their experience and expertise to provide a tailored level of service to your organization. This allows your HR and procurement teams to focus on what really matters: meeting strategic and day-to-day business goals.

Want to learn more? Next, we will get into the finer details of how a managed service provider can help elevate your contingent labor program.

Vendor-Neutral Managed Service Providers Improve Visibility and Cost Controls

In a survey conducted by Deloitte titled Human Capital Trends, 42% of executives surveyed said they plan to increase or significantly increase the use of contingent workers over the next three to five years. Conversely, only 16% of executives expect to decrease the size of their contingent workforce.

And for good reason. Contingent labor provides organizations with a cost-effective, flexible workforce while offering workers the flexibility and balance not typically found in traditional forms of employment. A win-win for both parties.

Whether you currently manage your contingent workforce centrally or through a fragmented approach throughout your organization, unless you have dedicated resources constantly observing labor markets, it’s going to be hard to have true visibility to a labor market and its rates. This can lead to hiring the wrong people, at the wrong rate, with the wrong experience.

Managed service providers that value a vendor-neutral approach are dedicated to providing clients with the most reliable, trustworthy and cost-effective suppliers with an emphasis on sourcing the highest quality of talent. This approach removes much of an organization’s legwork required in vetting the right supplier for a client’s needs as the managed service provider assumes these responsibilities. This ensures that the best staffing providers are chosen based on the client’s specific objectives, strengths and weaknesses.

Vendor-neutral managed service providers have no conflicts of interest with staffing suppliers, so an organization can be certain that their MSP is operating for their benefit only – fulfilling staffing requirements with the best available talent and opening up the process to competitive rates to drive cost savings.

A vendor-neutral MSP has the independence to design, implement, manage, negotiate and optimize your contingent program with no hidden agenda.

Better Vendor Engagement and Lower Contingent Staffing Spend

When you partner with a managed service provider, they assume responsibility for the engagement and management of your current staffing agency vendors. They can introduce new vendors and negotiate new rates with existing ones, opening up the competitive playing field, making sure you get the right talent for the right price.

In addition to these vendor engagement strategies, your managed service provider may also provide feedback to vendors to inform them of which approaches worked well and which did not equip vendors with the tools and resources they need to be successful and host supplier summits to discuss strategy and optimize the program.

contingent staffing

Additionally, MSP providers can consolidate invoicing to save the amount of time spent managing and reconciling individual invoices, allowing the client to make one payment to the MSP provider who then pays vendors and suppliers on the client’s behalf. This means that vendors and suppliers are paid faster than if invoices were paid individually.

Your MSP provider will not only improve your current vendor relationships, but they will grant you access to new, proven and trusted suppliers you might not otherwise have come across, all managed by a single point of contact: your MSP provider.

This can help reduce the workload on your internal HR and procurement functions and ensure your contingent workforce is managed by a specialist dedicated to your organization. This level of workforce management is unique to the MSP model and can only be provided through a workforce management specialist.

Managed Service Providers Improve Governance and Compliance and Reduce Risk

So, your organization has increased its use of contingent labor to enhance your workforce outcomes. Great! But with growth comes growing pains, such as the need to centralize your contingent workforce management program.

When an organization begins to bolster its contingent workforce, it opens itself up to increased compliance and liability risks associated with non-permanent employees. The most common risks include worker credentialing, worker misclassification, co-employment issues, unemployment claims and workers’ compensation claims. Failure to properly address these risks can result in fines, tax penalties and other consequences that can set your organization back.

With an MSP model, organizations benefit from external expertise on compliance best practices along with insights on local, regional and global regulations and processes that adhere to relevant laws. A managed service provider can also help your organization vet suppliers and workers to mitigate risk.

If you hire independent contractors or temporary workers directly, a managed service provider can advise you on the best structure to analyze and assess your current processes to help ensure that you are staying in compliance with these directly sourced workers. In today’s changing labor economies, these worker types are coming under increased scrutiny by governments the world over, so having a trusted partner to advise you on risk-reducing strategies and the implementation of best practices is essential.

Manage Service Providers Can Give You Access to World-Class Technology

An expert managed service provider possesses in-depth knowledge and experience with major VMS platforms and can operate in a client’s legacy systems. What’s more, in some MSP programs, the managed service provider will collaborate with a client to select the right contingent vendor management software (or VMS) for their needs. Another critical technology in addition to the VMS is a centralized business intelligence reporting and analytics tool such as PeopleScout’s proprietary AffinixTM platform that can easily show you how your organization is buying and managing contingent labor today.

Through the use of cutting-edge contingent workforce management technology, your organization can automate many of the key processes of workforce management and can gain insights into program performance.

For example, your MSP provider can leverage a VMS to help transform your recruiting strategy from a fragmented process to a unified and centralized database that gives your organization visibility into worker wages, the most effective sourcing methods, where your workers are located, payment tools and much more.

FMS technology is newer and better able to process freelancer information (in addition to other types of contingent workers), compared with VMS technology, so depending on your contingent workforce requirements, your MSP provider can deploy the right technology solution to meet your organization’s needs.

Conclusion:

With contingent and SOW labor playing an increasingly important role in the talent acquisition and procurement mix, organizations can no longer depend on ad hoc and disparate approaches to managing their contingent workforce.

When you engage a managed service provider, your organization can more effectively manage your contingent workforce by leveraging your MSP provider’s expertise in supply chain and vendor management, risk mitigation and compliance, talent technology and talent markets.

This expertise and experience will proactively ensure that your organization gets the contingent talent you need, exactly when and where you need it, from a cost-effective and centralized contingent staffing program.

Talking Talent: Getting the Most Out of RPO

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On this episode of Talking Talent, we’re talking about Recruitment Process Outsourcing or RPO.

RPO is a type of business process outsourcing where an external organization, an RPO provider, supports an employer’s talent acquisition function by assuming responsibility for parts or all facets of talent acquisition for some or all of an employer’s hiring needs.

During an RPO engagement, the RPO company works closely with a client’s talent acquisition or HR department and hiring managers to learn the organization’s long-term talent acquisition strategy, hiring challenges and goals.

RPO providers then design a customized recruiting program tailored to support the client’s specific needs. This focus on client consultation and partnership distinguishes an RPO program from standard staffing agencies and headhunters.

RPO engagements are not only about outsourcing your recruiting, they are also about finding the best partner to help manage the people, process, technology and strategy of your talent acquisition function.

To talk about RPO, joining us is Jessie McGowan, PeopleScout’s leader of business development in North America. She spends the majority of her time talking to prospective customers about our solutions here at PeopleScout, but she is client delivery at heart.

Jessie talks about the factors that drive RPO buyers, what makes an RPO partnership different than other third-party vendors and how you can set the right SLAs and KPIs to drive success in your program. Looking forward, Jessie digs into what technology and the push toward total workforce solutions mean for talent acquisition.

Learn from our other PeopleScout experts in previous Talking Talent episodes:

PeopleScout Australia Jobs Report Analysis – March 2019

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The 25,700 jobs added in March were in line with analyst expectations. The increase was made up entirely by full-time positions, which surged up 48,300. That was offset by a decrease of 22,600 part-time jobs. The unemployment rate fell to 5%, a slight increase from February’s eight-year low of 4.9%, but it is due in an increase in Australians participating in the workforce.

AU Jobs Report – March 2019

The Numbers

25,700: The Australian economy added 25,700 jobs in March.

5.0%: The Australian unemployment rate rose to 5.0%.

65.7%: Labour force participation rose to 65.7%.

+7: The Business Confidence Index increased to +7 in the latest NAB release.

Upside

Despite the increase in the unemployment rate, the March numbers are good news for the Australian economy. According to Reuters, analysts expected an increase in employment of just 12,000. The economy added more than double that number. The largest increases were in Queensland with 10,400 jobs and Victoria with 10,000.

Full-time employment rose by 48,300 in March, which was offset by a decrease of 22,600 in part-time jobs. Experts say these numbers point to a “fundamentally healthy” Australian economy.

Additionally, the reason for the increase in the unemployment rate is because more Australians entered the job market in March, bringing the labor participation rate up to 65.7%.

Downside

While the overall numbers are positive, experts say they notice some concerning trends. The under-employment rate, which measures the proportion of the workforce that have a job but would like to work more hours, increased to 8.2%, and labour market underutilisation, which is the broadest measure of labour market slack including both unemployed and underemployed workers, also increased to 13.2%.

Experts say that these figures suggest Australia will continue to experience sluggish wage growth. They also expect unemployment to increase further by the end of 2019.

Unknown

The new numbers raise questions about when the Reserve Bank of Australia will cut rates. The West Australian reports:

“Some private economists now believe the RBA will have to cut rates three times over the next 18 months – by 0.75 points – because nationwide inflation is tracking near a three-year low, wages are hardly rising, and key employment markets are struggling. That would put the official interest rate at 0.75% – historically unprecedented territory.”

The West Australian