Well done to our top 3 fundraisers:

Shannon Barlow $536.73
Meaghan Gleeson $485.00
Jason Conroy $461.00

Special mention also goes to Mark Smith and Shannon Barlow who managed to go dry for the whole month.  My friends were shocked by the results of my “science experiment” and rewarded my seemingly superhuman effort by digging extra deep into their wallets to donate.

2010 has been the biggest fundraising year yet with over $2.4 million raised.  People are really getting behind this cause and this year there were over 9000 Dry Julyers.

Well done and thanks to all the p2p team:

Mark Smith
Kaden Kennedy
Meaghan Gleeson
Catherine Rowe
Lisa Johnson
Jason Conroy
Liam Hassell
Shannon Barlow

shannon barlow

Recruitment Consultant - onsiite

So, you will know that the purpose of the working holiday visa is travel around the country enjoying the unique experiences Australia has to offer: getting sun burnt at Bondi, eating a kangaroo tail on the way to Uluru, croc spotting in NT, sinking schooners with the locals, going camping and being thankful that a dingo hasn’t got your baby.  All that good stuff!  Officially, it’s not meant to be about landing a job with a blue chip company, but sometimes you strike it lucky.  Be aware though, you are only allowed to work for the same employer for a maximum of six months.

But who is my employer?

Chances are you’re working through an agency and since they’re the ones putting money in your account, surely they are your employer.  Well yes, and no.  For most purposes the agency is your employer, but in terms of your visa obligations the ‘employer’ is considered to be the business for which you are working directly even if you are being paid by an agency or labour supplier.

But I really like working for this company!  Is there any way I can work longer than six months with them?

You can request to extend your employment period beyond six months due to ‘exceptional circumstances’.  However, your definition of exceptional circumstances is likely to differ widely from the immigration office’s definition, and even if you are successful, the extension is limited to less than a month.  Another option is to apply for a second Working Holiday visa.  The main requirement for a second visa is that you have completed three months of specified work in regional Australia.  Specified work can be:

• Plant and animal cultivation
• Fishing and pearling
• Tree farming and felling
• Mining
• Construction

Once you’ve pulled on your pack and gone somewhere sunny to pick fruit for three months you can apply for your second visa.  The clock will then reset and you can return to work for a further six months with a previous employer.  Happy days!

To find out more go to the Immigration website.

Whilst I can safely say I have never seen an Australian company or recruitment business advertise a vacancy and actively exclude the unemployed, I have seen advertisements that do include potentially discriminatory language. The most common are those ad’s that ask for years of experience - you know the ones “..you must have 2 years experience” or “..at least 5 years experience..” kind of ad’s.

Why can’t I advertise for years of experience?

Fundamentally asking for a minimum number of years experience can lead to ‘indirect discrimination’.  For example someone may have only gained 21 months experience because of parental commitments (eg. they went on maternity leave) and if they feel that they cannot apply for the role because you have specified a minimum of 2 years experience, the person may feel that they are indirectly discriminated against because of their parental responsibilities.  It’s a blurry, fuzzy grey area that quite frankly you are much better off avoiding altogether.

But I know that the person that I want in this job is probably going to have worked in a similar role for at least 5 years to be at the level that I want!

I understand that you are saying, I really do - but EEO legislation doesn’t work well with ‘probably’ statements.  When you think about it, what you want is someone who has developed extensive experience at that level - and that extensive experience does not necessarily refer to how long the person has done the job, but to how in depth the experience is.

Let me put it like this:

Candidate A has been an Executive Assistant for the past five years.  During this time, this person has provided diary and travel management support for a Managing Director as well as developed considerable skills in word processing (80wpm), taking minutes and preparing reports. 

Candidate B has been an Executive Assistant for three and a half years.  Working in a large multinational, this person has been supporting the Managing Director and the Sales Director.  As well as taking care of national and international travel and diary arrangements, this person coordinates various projects using Visio, manages expense claims and has a typing speed of 95wpm.  This person has also had responsibility for preparing reports, but has had to liaise with senior management throughout the South Pacific to obtain the information.

As you can see both of these candidates have been working at the EA level but even though Candidate B has less experience in terms of years, he/she has more experience in terms of the depth of  skills developed. Often the depth of experience is more about the type of work, or even the size of the company that the person has worked in and just advertising for years of experience is not going to identify these people.

Isn’t this all just a bit too politically correct?  If I cant ‘discriminate’ against people then I would have to employ every person that applied for a job!

Recruitment is realistically all about discrimination.  You HAVE to discriminate between applicants to find the best person for the job.  But you have to make sure that how you discriminate meets your EEO and Anti-Discrimination legislative requirements.  For example, you cannot actively just eliminate all women from your search because you don’t ‘think’ a woman is the right person for the job.  You cannot refuse to employ someone because of their religious beliefs or their ethniticity.  You cannot refuse to employ someone just because they are a single parent and you think that this will mean that they are unreliable and you cannot tell someone they aren’t getting the job because they are gay.

You need to discriminate based on the skills, abilities and experience required to do the job. 

But what about culture fit?  My vacancy is not just about the skills required to do the job; it’s about finding the person who is the best fit with our company.

You are absolutely right.  How many times have we seen people with the best technical skills crash and burn at a job where they just didn’t fit into the team?  Finding the person who is going be a ‘fit’ is the biggest challenge because putting someone who is not going to work well in a team into the role is an expensive failure waiting to happen.  And there are real tangible costs associated with bad hiring decisions.

The problem is that you really need to be objective about your ‘culture’.  Just saying “well I want a middle aged woman in this role because that has always worked for me in the past” is not an objective view of your culture.  You need to think about why those people do so well - what behaviours they had, how they worked with the people around them, what was it that made them such a good fit.  When you look at the behaviours  you will be able to really start to put a finger on what your company culture is.  Then, when considering candidates, you can look for examples of those behaviours.

There are a lot of psychometric testing systems out there in the market that can help you analyse candidate behaviour, but you don’t always have to go down that track - and in my experience psych testing a candidate adds very little value if you don’t fundamentally understand the job requirements and your company culture / team fit. By objectively analysing what you need the person to do (the job function) and identifying the behaviours of a successful employee you can start to identify (and eliminate) a potential new employee.

I don’t have time to sit around and think about our culture!

Fair call.  But do you have time to constantly be recruiting for new staff?  Do you have time to sit and listen to team members whingeing because they have to pick up the work when a role is vacant?  Do you have time to lose your best employees because you employed the first cab off the rank and it turns out he/she is a psychopath who has made every single person in the company miserable?  Recruiting the right person is a really big deal and you need to give recruitment the time and energy it requires to make sure you make the right decision.

I don’t know how to analyse my company culture - where do I start?

Well if you have an HR department - start there.  The HR team should have the skills and experience to help you analyse, identify and develop the best job profile.  In fact if you tell them you need help like this they are likely to throw their hands in the air with joy.  If you don’t have a good HR team, partner with an experienced recruiter and allow them to guide you through the job analysis process.  Doing a really indepth job analysis will allow you to identify the behaviours you need to work in the team / company.  But be aware - this is not a process that you can do in 30 minutes in between other meetings.  You need to dedicate real time and energy to this.  Failure to do so means, well, failure.

So if I do this job analysis and behaviour stuff will it mean I will be guaranteed on hiring the right person?

Ah no.  In fact I think it’s tragic that recruitment companies even feel the need to offer a guarantee to be honest.  People are a fickle product. When I am interviewing for potential recruitment consultants I go out of my way to tell them that if they want a job selling a reliable, consistent product who will always do what you want it to do when you want it then this is not the industry for them.  No matter what you do, there will always be some person who goes off the deep end OR some company that has a manager that offends an employee.  The job analysis / culture fit process is not going to give you a rock solid guarantee that you are going to always make the right decision in employing someone; but it will reduce the number of times you make a bad decision based on vague ideas or feelings about what you think might be right.

You will never make the right decision 100% of the time.  If you did recruitment companies would go out of business tomorrow.  But if you are smart about how you go about doing things you will make more right decisions than wrong ones. 

lisa johnson
manager, onsiite

Ward Young

Consultant

Kirsten Garrett

Senior Consultant

people2people also has a team participating in Dry July which sees us abstaining from alcohol for a month to raise funds to support people living with cancer.  This year proceeds from our efforts will go to the Prince of Wales Hospital Foundation. The Prince of Wales hospital treats approximately 1000 new cancer patients per year and 3000 ongoing patients.   The funds raised go directly towards enabling fantastic changes within the oncology wards, the surrounding environments and updates in equipment.  With a week left in July, the people2people team has put in a great effort and has raised $1850 so far.  Donations can be made until the end of August through www.dryjuly.com/groups/people2people

shannon barlow
recruitment specialist

Here is an example of what I thought was a fairly straight forward question:

Q: Briefly summarise your experience within the healthcare industry.

and here are some of the frustrating responses I received:

• “See resume”
• a generic cover letter copied and pasted into the answer field
• a page long answer detailing every position they have held in the industry
• an employment profile including only position titles and dates of employment

The candidates in this example may think they are saving themselves time, or improving their chances of progressing by giving extra information, but really it puts them on the back foot from the start. We all know how important first impressions are and in this case my first impressions are that none of these candidates can follow instructions, some are a bit lazy, one is a try-hard and all have problems communicating concisely. The more worrying thing for the candidate though is that they have all managed to annoy me before I’ve even looked at their resume and cover letter, which is bound to influence my overall judgement of their application.

So here are a couple of tips for answering filter questions and avoiding getting on the bad side of the person reviewing your application:

Answer the question. Yes, we will read your resume and can piece together the information, but we want you to put it in your words and test your writing skills at the same time.

Just answer the question that is being asked. You can include a full cover letter separately in the application, so don’t think that you have to prove your suitability for the role purely within one filter question.

Pretty simple advice, but as I said, they’re pretty simple questions! 

Got any examples of bad responses to filter questions?

shannon barlow

recruitment specialist

Ward Young

Temporary Accounting Services

Catherine Rowe
Senior Consultant