Adapting to new ways of recruiting post Covid

In the healthcare recruiting sector, meanwhile, Green Cross Health’s People and Capability Administrator, Phoebe Sutton, says it was business as usual during Level 4 lockdown.

Green Cross does recruiting for a range of pharmacies, medical centres, finding general support office and finance people as well as doctors, nurses, and health care assistants, many of them essential service workers.

“Last year everybody went into panic mode when we first went into lockdown with people unsure of what was happening and what they should be doing,” says Phoebe.

“Now, if anything, there’s been an increase, because they’ve set up quite a few vaccination centres,” she says. There are also roles to fill in quite a few pharmacies and clinics, so there’s been a bit of a race to hire in the past few months.

New hires, meanwhile, continued to start new jobs during lockdown Level 4, according to recruitment leaders.

Fleur says this year’s lockdown led to AWF accelerating plans to onboard new employees with limited face to face contact, reducing the usual time involved from two hours to half an hour.

Only drug screening, individual employment agreements (IEA) and Health & Safety onboarding are done face to face. Documentation and assessments have been customised for AWF and can be completed on a smartphone or PC. Candidates like being able to fill out documentation and assessments when they choose, says Fleur.

In such a candidate-short market, the interview and onboarding process must be smooth and efficient, adds Christian. Madison has a centralised sourcing and onboarding team across the business which has led to much greater efficiency in getting new hires up and running.

As for employers’ capabilities, this time round, they were far savvier with the tech needed to communicate and manage staff through the high level lockdowns, recruiters report.

Last lockdown, Christchurch firm, Greenlight Recruitment helped train clients on how to connect with staff, run communications, and so on, says director, Tim Webb.

“The last lockdown we were doing furious hours to help give everyone the ability to work remotely. This time, we’ve heard nothing, people have learned to adapt,” says Tim, whose firm recruits in the warehousing, logistics, freight forwarding, insurance and sales sectors.

Now, the biggest difference he’s noticed is in the permanent role space.

“It’s carried on as if nothing had happened. Last time, it was like a light switch was turned off, even if there was an offer on the table, it was delayed,” says Tim.

Jobs were not being offered until the country is back at Level 2 because they still want to meet people, he adds.

According to the Christchurch-based recruiter, the garden city is clearly benefiting from the fact that Auckland tends to have the most protracted lockdowns. Canterbury’s relatively affordable house prices don’t hurt either.

“We’ve never seen so many people moving to Christchurch, the sheer number in the last 12 months is quite phenomenal. We’ve always had people inquiring, but now they’re genuinely asking, the financial burden is too much up there,” says Tim.

In light of Auckland being the most exposed to Level 4 and 3 lockdowns, companies have been thinking about adding to their other operations in the country and spreading the risk. Around 20% of the employers Greenlight works with have looked at headcount in Canterbury which could give additional support to Auckland, says Tim.

Another trend Tim’s seeing is that employers are fighting back when a good staff member comes to them to say they’ve had an approach from another firm.

“There are a lot of counter offers. Traditionally they would just let staff go, but now we’re seeing a lot more people saying, ‘we’ll increase your salary,” says Tim. It’s fantastic that workers are getting better salaries though it will put pressure on smaller businesses to compete to get good staff.

The market’s still suffering from really low numbers of candidates, stresses the Greenlight director. He’s found it harder to find good staff for key roles in middle management as well as sales and office managers.

And the hardest areas to recruit in at the moment are in freight forwarding and shipping where the world’s disrupted supply chain makes for challenging work conditions.

Employers, generally, are having to work a lot harder to incentivise someone to move companies, says Tim. “Before lockdown, yes, you had to offer a good salary but now there’s a shift towards people wanting to feel valued for what they’re doing, making an impact and being valued in the business.

The most important question candidates want to know is what is a company’s culture like and does it have flexible working policies,

“People are asking how businesses looked after staff during lockdown, what expectations were like during lockdown,” says Tim.

Good candidates are also asking for specifics around career progression. Tim knows of one high riser who was placed at a company four years ago and she’s transitioned three times up the chain since. That’s a good news story the company can tell.

One upside Madison GM, Christian Brown found at Level 4 lockdown, was that engagement from popular candidates increased significantly because people were at home and were more available to speak to recruiters.

This was after a six month period of waning engagement from candidates. But engagement from candidates dropped again in parts of the country outside of Auckland when it dropped to Level 2, he says.

Another contrast between this year and last year’s first lockdown, is that job candidates are more picky compared with coming out of lockdown Level 4, says Christian.

“This time round, candidates are more aware of their value, with greater confidence about being able to secure a role,” he says.

The market has had a new supply of candidates, coming from the retail and hospitality sectors, for whom the August Level 4 lockdown was the “last straw”.

“We found that there was a surge of candidates from these industries who started looking at new roles in different industries – for example, looking at permanent contact centre roles that would allow them to work from home should New Zealand experience more lockdowns in the future,” says Christian.

At AWF, Fleur Board has found that candidates were more open to temporary work, still seeing them as career enhancing opportunities, because clients are willing to invest in training and upskilling, as well as offering more permanent transition opportunities down the track.