Written by the Hiring Made East Team


Leaders are well aware of the need for a pool of talented employees in their company, and they are all too familiar with the concept of highly skilled and experienced workers leaving either for more money, for a better position or for more meaning in their jobs. Employees at the top of their profession will naturally choose work environments that will encourage and nurture their skills, making it easy for them to flourish and succeed. 

Company Culture

For years management experts have been saying that the culture of a company will have a significant impact on employee morale, efficiency and output as well as how attractive it is as a workplace to potential employees.  It finally seems as though some companies are getting the message.

While the concept of workplace “culture” can mean different things to different people, everyone has a good understanding of what having to work in a “bad culture” might be, including a non-existent work/life balance, poor recognition of effort, bullying and bad management practices in general.     On the flip side, the companies that most talented workers aim for routinely end up those that treat their employees as human beings, with real emotions, personal requirements and goals and dreams.  This can be seen in Fortune 500’s Best Companies To Work For 2014 survey that found that the top 5 companies – including Google, SAS and The Boston Consulting Group – had found ways to tap into their employees’ needs.  The initiatives and management strategies they promote range from having on site health care facilities, job sharing, compressed or flexible work weeks and philanthropy and volunteer programs.[1]

A strong culture, one that the majority of potential job seekers would recognise and look forward to joining, will attract the right kind of employees with similar values, and work ethic.

Career Planning And Development

Another critical attribute of these companies in attracting top level talent is that they provide excellent career planning and development opportunities for their employees.  Having a clear career path with a company, with chances to acquire additional experience, knowledge and skills along the way, can help to increase employee retention rates and overall job satisfaction. 

No one likes uncertainty, and succession planning – transitioning out older workers and making way for younger generations – can help to create an environment where employees can see a real and interesting future ahead of them.   Providing on the job training and professional development opportunities that are tailored to the employee are also effective ways to demonstrate how the company values its staff.

Unlike Google, not every company can spend large amounts of money on extra curricular activities or employee programs.  However having perks such as an onsite canteen that provides free lunches or basketball courts will not necessary attract the type of talented worker leaders want or need.  They need to look instead at the type of culture they want to cultivate and promote this through recruitment and selection, ongoing career and succession planning and development opportunities.



[1] http://fortune.com/best-companies/google-1/

It is interesting to note a recent Hays Quarterly Report suggesting that small to medium enterprises (SMEs) will be helping to stimulate the economy later this year through an increased demand for skilled workers and an upbeat financial outlook.  It is anticipated that around one in four small to medium businesses expect to hire more permanent staff in the coming months, especially in the financial, accountancy, property, construction, healthcare and aged care sectors.[1]

With recruiting agencies reporting higher than ever numbers of people looking for work and submitting cv’s for positions – with figures as high as 200 or more applicants for certain roles – how do businesses ensure that they attract and recruit the best possible candidates?  We’ve highlighted five of the top tips that will help SMEs with their search and selection with smarter hiring practices.

The Hiring Process

Large corporate businesses tend to have a large HR staff who are dedicated to creating job ads and for running the whole search and selection process.  Chances are that most SMEs do not have such resources.  This makes it even more important to put aside some time to look at the suitability of your hiring process, and practical issues such as who will be conducting interviews, writing the job description and taking enquiries, and making the final decision.  Even matters such as where the interviews should be conducted are important as they can help to avoid last minute confusion (and ensure you don’t end up talking to candidates in the local café).

Get Your Requirements Right

Advertised a position but getting the wrong type of candidates or people who do not match the requirements?  Your initial job requirements may be based on wrong assumptions or no match the needs of the business at all.  Depending on whether you’re filling an empty position, in succession planning mode or creating an entirely new job, you will have to spend some time thinking carefully about what skills or experience you really need.   Talk to as many stakeholders as possible (for example, management and direct reports) to help you organise your requirements into “necessities” and “nice to haves”.

The Job Description

Getting your requirements nailed down is one thing; communicating this properly to potential candidates is another.  Remember to keep your requirements straight forward, and avoid using words that are confusing or could be open to interpretation.  In general, a good job description will mention the following elements:

• Main responsibilities of the role
• Reporting lines
• Type of work, from permanent to part time, contract or even casual
• Mandatory qualifications and skills
• Nice to have skills, level of experience and personality or qualifications
• Salary and rewards (including general sales targets if required)

Including as much information as possible, in clear and easy to understand language will help cut down on the number of questions you might receive, as well as quickly discount unsuitable candidates.

Screening With Pre-employment Testing

Pre employment tests, also called personality and aptitude testing, can help quickly and effectively screen potential candidates before they ever walk through your door.  Today many SMEs employ basic online screening tests as part of their hiring process, and these can be as simple - for example, maths and literacy skills - or as complex as needed, with detailed IQ, personality, aptitude or highly technical tests also available. The Prevue Job Assessments is the one we use. Check it out here

Smart Interview Techniques

You’ve narrowed the candidate pool down to a shortlist of candidates you’d like to interview in person.  Don’t take the interview process for granted – doing a little preparation before hand can save you time and effort later on.  Before each interview read the candidate’s cv to ensure you have a good understanding of their skills and experience.  When the interview begins, let the candidate know exactly what will happen and how much time you expect it to run for – people will relax and be more informative once they understand the process to come.  Be as relaxed as you can as well, as this will put candidates at ease and they are more likely to show their true personality.  Finally, don’t forget to take notes during the interview, as this will help when you come to review the candidate’s application once they have left and to rate them against others on the shortlist.



[1] http://www.accountantsdaily.com.au/columns/7591-smes-drive-permanent-jobs-activity-as-confidence-returns

Written by the HME team.

These days it is tempting to delegate time-consuming tasks to other people, especially those as challenging as the recruitment and selection of new team members.  Especially in larger organisations, there are often entire HR divisions and groups of personnel managers who will help with the recruitment process, with the team leader only occasionally required to discuss requirements or to turn up for final interviews.  While potentially saving time and effort, leaving critical hiring decisions to people who will not ultimately be responsible for the employees can be a bad choice.

Ultimately, when hiring new employees it is the leader’s responsibility to closely manage tasks such as job descriptions, interviews and the final selection of candidates.  Taking the time to personally select new employees can have two major benefits:  firstly, it will give you control over the type of person you want in the organisation – only by personally interviewing candidates and reviewing their cv’s will you get a true understanding of their abilities and experience.  Secondly, putting aside a considerable amount of time to finding and interviewing new recruits demonstrates your interest in your employees, showing that you understand that people are your most important strategic asset.

Other reasons why leaders need to be personally involved in the selection and recruitment of employees include:

· Successful teams are generally made up of the right type of people – employees who work well together and are suited to their individual roles within a group. While internal HR managers (or head hunters) may focus on finding people who will fit into the general culture of the company, as a leader you should be looking for people who will add value to your team, both from a work perspective and personally.  Only you have the inside knowledge and experience to know if a potential candidate can do this.

· The consequences of hiring badly are very costly, time-consuming and can be terrible for overall team morale.  Unhappy employees can be disruptive and cause efficiency levels to fall throughout an entire group of workers, and it has been estimated that companies may have to spend up to 3 times the salary to replace an employee who has decided to leave or is fired.[1]  There are many reasons why some employees simply don’t work out – from personality issues, mismatched expectations or a misleading job description to poor team chemistry – but a thorough and well-planned selection process can help to iron out many of the potential problems before interviews even begin.   As long as a team leader is heavily involved during this initial phase critical factors such as the job description and role requirements will help to narrow down potential candidates.

Part of being a leader is taking responsibility for the people in your team and their performance.  Having a measure of control over the type of candidates your company hires is critical to ensuring that not only your team but also the whole organisation will be set up for future success.



[1] http://leadingwithtrust.com/2014/07/20/the-one-responsibility-a-leader-cant-delegate/

Written by the HME Team.

The Internet is transforming recruiting practices at an astonishing rate – who would have thought just ten years ago, for example, that for some companies would be encouraging people to submit their resumes on video via Youtube.  Online recruiting sites such as Seek are providing a convenient and broad way to attract candidates, and are now so popular that many companies are choosing to cut out the middle men – the traditional recruiting agencies and head hunting firms - and find potential candidates themselves.  Social media networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are also helping to change the face of recruitment and succession planning.  Nowadays job seekers ignore social media at their peril, and companies who are not using the power of such networks for search and selection of employees may be missing out on a whole sector of internet-savvy candidates.

Most social media started out life as social gathering and sharing places (Facebook and Twitter being great examples) and have since morphed into a variety of uses as people discover how powerful they can be to spread a message, a brand or useful information.

Sites such as Facebook give passive or active job seekers direct access to a company or organisation, providing a level of interaction that was previously unheard of.  Most companies these days will advertise upcoming roles on Facebook or Twitter, or even have separate pages for careers advice and general opportunities.

As a social media network LinkedIn is portably a job seeker’s most powerful tool, as it was originally launched in 2003 as a professional business networking platform.  While Facebook was designed to share information with friends and family, LinkedIn is more about building a personal brand in a work environment.  It has several advantages for someone looking for a new role:  the ability to connect directly or indirectly with key personnel at companies, to publish a detailed personal resume as well as its extensive job listing service.  LinkedIn has also just announced a new standalone job search mobile app that will expand its recruitment services dramatically.[1]

Apart from searching for jobs directly, social media networks also provide a fantastic opportunity to build and enhance your career prospects.  Having a professional profile on LinkedIn, with relevant up to date information, will be the best advertisement for your abilities if companies and recruiting agencies are looking for talent with your particular skills or in your industry.

A word of warning:  we’ve all heard of the stories of business professionals making terrible blunders using (or mis-using) social media networks such as Twitter.  Often they are as simple as one-off comments that mean little out of context, but no matter how small and insignificant they might seem at the time, these can be career-ending moves.  A good rule of thumb with posting information, comments, photos or anything else online is to apply the “mother” rule – that is, ask yourself (before you press the send button) whether it’s something you’d be happy for your mother to read or to see.

Another important rule about the social media networks is that if you don’t know how to do something, do nothing.  Posting content that is wrong, or not reading or understanding the rules of a social network such as Facebook or Twitter are all rookie mistakes that are very hard to erase.  Taking the time to learn the right way to use things like online forums is critical in making you look professional and helping you build a personal brand that will hopefully attract potential employers.


[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2014/06/24/linkedin-expands-its-job-listings-efforts-with-standalone-job-search-app/

Written by the HME Team

According to the Black Dog Institute, a staggering 1 in 6 people working today in Australia will be affected by mental illness and depression caused or exacerbated by their jobs.[1]  For anyone in a managerial role, this means that it is very likely they will supervise an employee with a workplace-related illness.  This is a broader issue for businesses as well, with stress-related conditions such as anxiety and depression considered to be one of the leading causes of low productivity, poor attendance at work, health implications and low morale.

There are known factors that can contribute to the development of or even worsen existing anxiety, stress, depression and workplace illness.  These so-called “red flags” should be identified and monitored by managers and by HR to ensure they are either being minimised or managed.  They include roles that are traditionally seen as high-pressured but also lack autonomy.  In this case, employees may feel they have a great deal of responsibility without normal levels of decision-making or control.

Other danger factors can include:

• Low job security combined with pressure to perform and a lack of appropriate resources or learning opportunities.  An increased workload with long working hours can particularly take a toll on employees if the rewards or recognition is not in proportion to the effort exerted.
• Poor interpersonal relationships with colleagues and management.  This type of daily or ongoing stress can be emotionally debilitating, especially if there is workplace bullying involved.
• There is little recognition or understanding of the concept of work/life balance in the workplace.
• Workplaces where mental illness and depression are stigmatised in the workplace or management is not seen to take such issues seriously.

Despite increasing research, there is no one “average” example of someone suffering with a mental illness in the workplace – this is because there are just so many complex factors involved, including whether someone developed depression or an illness before starting work or in the course of employment, the type of illness or condition and its symptoms, whether the employee has identified a problem and is receiving workplace support, manages it themselves without help or is suffering in silence.  It is clear, however, that early intervention for employees who have been identified as at risk or already experiencing symptoms of workplace illness can have a positive impact with lasting results.  Intervention should take the form of practical solutions and reforms, and should come from management in conjunction with HR.  They can include:

• The establishment of an organisational-wide committee that gives employees genuine input into workplace issues such as working hours and rewards.
• Strategies for workplace health and fitness promotion, with a focus on both physical and mental health.  Some workplaces may even wish to think about introducing relaxation or meditation classes.
• Workplace counselling should be promoted and be on offer to all employees.

Finally, perhaps unsurprisingly, it has been found that workplaces in which management are given on the job training in mental health and depression issues are also the least likely to have severe cases of workplace stress and anxiety.  Because of the levels of control they have, managers and supervisory staff are likely to have the biggest negative or positive effect on employees – an environment in which all workers feels safe and able to voice any concerns or anxiety they may feel will ultimately be a healthier, happier and more productive place to be.



[1] http://www.blackdoginstitute.org.au/docs/WorkplaceWellbeing.pdf