Engineering Recruitment, Engineers Recruitment, Engineering Employment, Engineering Professionals, Engineering Jobs, WA, Australia

John Masters, 28 February 2011

Indulge me and reminisce for a moment over a bygone era of rural idyll where small scale mixed farms made optimum use of resources with minimum waste thanks to recycling of livestock waste into land to improve fertility; unused portions of crops which can be used to feed livestock or as bedding; optimum crop rotation and husbandry to improve soil fertility. Food packed with nutrients from natural sources, and devoid of chemical fertilisers, hormones, antibiotics.

Now imagine walking through a modern large scale farm managed under a monoculture system. It could be carrot farming for example. Large modern machinery has been used to harvest the crop (carrot lifters) inspect the fields and you will be staggered at the waste this modern high tech system has introduced. It doesn’t stop there. Large scale farming means most produce is far from the consumers and transport packaging introduces more inefficiencies and degradation of food quality. Let us not even venture into the indirect impact this all has on the rest of our environment.

Anti-globalisation activists and free market critics – I am sorry you are not about to recruit another voice to your cause – but this analogy allows me to draw a distinction between two options available in the crazy world of engineering recruitment.

One size fits all

And so we enter an era of supplier rationalisation and the “dreaded” PSA. For years companies (our clients) would sit back and allow a multitude of recruiters – all shapes and sizes – to compete over their swelling vacancy lists. Some recruiters have a short term view, flogging resumes aggressively from their databases built on dodgy candidate management practices. Others focus on building their reputation among employers and candidates in their specialist sector, preferring to capitalise on a loyal professional network (talent pool) and some hard earned goodwill for when recruitment volumes return to modest levels and employers become more selective in whom to outsource their recruitment to.

What happens? The large generalist recruiters with services dominated by aggressive sales tactics and using processes designed to work across a range of skills, from trades to professional engineers, nurses to chartered accountants, draftsmen to general managers typically get onto the lucrative labour hire PSA’s. While smaller specialised recruiters fall victim to rationalisation which in my view is just another HR word for providing their businesses with mediocrity and denying their hiring managers (their clients) access to the quality service they previously enjoyed from smaller specialised agencies. Do they realise that this threatens the very existence of the service levels enjoyed by their hiring managers? Perhaps denying their access to an external and targeted pool of talent which takes years to nurture?

What is their excuse? “Of course specialised agencies typically provide a better service” say the HR team; “boutique recruiters often do - it’s just that they are too small to meet our demands”. Could this be another way of saying: “that we (HR) prefer the convenience of managing a smaller number of larger one-size-fits-all firms”? Making their job easier at the expense of the recruitment services you may otherwise have had at your disposal. So what if a few highly suitable hard to find engineers lie discarded like perfectly good carrots laid to waste by a large modern harvester.

Can the HR profession count?

But here’s what really gets to me: Australia has less than 370,000 registered professional engineers technologists and associates in its labour force. Break this down into different disciplines, occupational categories, job functions and industry experience and the number of potentially suitable candidates for a particular role become remarkably small (well below 1,000 in most cases). Then from this available pool of talent only a very small portion would be seeking new employment at any one time. Fewer still would actually make themselves available for temporary (contract) type employment, and experience shows that they typically end up on the databases of almost all recognised recruitment agencies active in the location they hope to secure that contract work.

Based on the above reality a reasonable estimate would suggest that a so called boutique agent (specialising exclusively in this profession) may in any given year only be required to source and on-hire (contract) up to a few dozen professionals to a client company with say 2,500 staff. So why do we need to resort to a “large scale farm managed under a monoculture system”? In other words why do the proponents of PSA’s believe that large generalist recruiters with hastily assembled local desks purporting to specialise in the engineering team better make up a shortlist of preferred suppliers than a dedicated local firm that recruits in a defined skill sector and have consistently met the needs of their clients?

Small is better and small can cope

It is my considered opinion that small so called boutique agencies are quite capable of meeting the expectations in terms of process, systems, quality management, and in particular sourcing and screening talent. Small agencies can cope – once you can demonstrate knowledge and experience of your specialist skill sector and associated industries (such as the engineering profession) then add the superior, ethical and effective service levels typical of many small specialist agencies, the rest almost takes care of itself.

I am sorry to say this but your internal recruiters and HR departments may be misleading their hiring managers! Selecting suppliers that provide better service because “they are boutique and typically have higher service levels” does make sense. Payroll management and contracting and other HR functions that go alongside specialist recruitment in a defined skill set are basic functions it’s not rocket science! Smaller can be better and small can cope!

As we walk through this modern large scale farm managed under a monoculture system (the conventional wisdom of internal recruitment teams managing PSA’s) we will be staggered at the waste this streamlined system has introduced – instead of wasted carrots cast aside by mass harvesting, we see scarce engineering talent falling victim to a dysfunctional recruitment industry where quality service, ethical behaviour, product knowledge and experience is placed second to apparent economies of scale and prescribed mediocrity.