HRM Report: Recruitment Practices and Female Talent in Australia

This report provides an overview of human resource management practices in Australia, specifically focusing on recruitment strategies. It examines talent acquisition planning, key trends, and budget considerations within the Australian context. The report details the general recruitment process, highlighting the importance of attracting and retaining top talent, including female candidates. It also addresses common mistakes in the recruitment process and provides recommendations for improvement, emphasizing the need for gender diversity and inclusive hiring practices. The report concludes with a summary of the main points and its analysis of the recruitment landscape in Australia, offering insights into best practices and future trends.

Running head: HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Executive Summary
The report states the various methodologies and practices involved in recruitment of
candidates in Australia. The main aspects of recruiting a candidate is highlighted in this
report along with the key metrics by which the success of the recruitment process can be
judged. These metrics are mainly the skill of the candidate and the time period a candidate
stays with the hiring company. The report also discusses the general hiring process in
Australia in detail and mentions the shortcoming of the Australian recruitment procedures.
The report also illustrates on the need for hiring women in organisations to increase gender
diversity and also states the ways to encourage more women to join the companies. The
report also states few recommendation that may be implemented to streamline the recruitment
process further. The report concludes by summarising the main points of the report and its
analysis.

2HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Discussion..................................................................................................................................3
Talent acquisition planning and key trends............................................................................3
Recruitment budget planning and utilisation.........................................................................4
Recruitment process...............................................................................................................5
Recruitment of top female talents..........................................................................................6
Common mistakes in the recruitment process.......................................................................6
Recommendations for better recruitment including recruiting talented women........................7
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................7
Bibliography...............................................................................................................................9

3HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Introduction
In today’s world talent acquisition plays a major role. Talent leaders feel much more
confident when they start feeling that their own department is defining the future of their
company they are working at. In Australia more than 79% of the company management
leaders feel that talent acquisition should be given number one priority in their companies.
More than 45% of the Australian business leaders feel that a new talent acquisition’s success
should be measured by the volume of talent acquired, the period that the new talent stays with
the company and the satisfaction of the talent manager (Business.linkedin.com, 2019). Most
of the employers feel that top talents are attracted to a company with a bigger brand names.
Therefore, major widely known companies easily attract the top talents as most of the bright
people want to work there. This has led to the decision to invest more in company branding to
increase brand name.
The top leaders in industry recruitments claim that most top talents want to join a
company which has a career growth driven company moto and talks about challenges and
company culture. In this report, the recruitment strategy followed by top Australian talent
recruiters will be discussed with a special focus on recruiting female talent.
Discussion
The recruiting compartment of the company is not the most sophisticated or highly marketed
department of the company. It is not flashy because it does not help in generating revenue or
developing unique products for the company. Still it is one of the most important departments
behind the success of the company as it is responsible for recruiting quality employees for
the company whose hard work brings in revenues and creates unique products. The HR team
has become a key part of the company’s workforce.
Talent acquisition planning and key trends
Though most of the business leaders agree that the talent acquisition is the most important
part of the business, they all mention that the team size for a particular division would not
increase in the coming years. This is because the companies nowadays are focussing more on
the quality rather than the quantity. The talent recruiters are more dedicated in finding people
who are bright, energetic and willing to work in the company for a longer duration of time.
In the following section some important recruiting trends of Australian businesses are given
below:

4HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
1. More and more focus is being given on team size and quality. Most of the companies
are expecting a huge influx in the hiring volumes. The business leaders and HR
managers are expecting to keep the team size constant but hire quality talents who
will help in increasing the productivity of the companies (Almeida and Fernando,
2017).
2. The companies measure the recruiting success based on a few well defined metrics.
These metrics include the length of time a new recruit stays and works in the
company, the satisfaction level achieved by the hiring managers from the new recruits
and the time required to fill in a vacancy or the time period of the hiring process
(Doneley, Jervis-Tracey and Sim, 2018).
3. The most important roles that are kept in mind are the most crucial and revenue
generating departments of the company. A survey done in Australia reported that the
most important department which is heavily recruited is the Operation department
followed by Sales, Information technology, business development and engineering.
4. Another top cause for concern while recruiting top talents among business leaders is
the competition around them (Cloutman and Jenkins, 2019). The best way employers
feel to tackle this situation is by increasing the company’s brand image.
Recruitment budget planning and utilisation
The increase in the budget has been stopped for most of the employers in Australia. In
fact a survey done pointed out that more than 50% of the business leaders have decided to
keep the recruiting budget same for the next few years (Business.linkedin.com, 2019). This
will result in better budget management from the teams’ side. The lowest amount of the
budget allotted is spend on creating and managing recruitment events, employee referral
program and employer branding. The majority of the amount is generally spend in job boards
or advertising followed by handling recruitment agency costs and recruitment tools such as
ATS, sourcing and screening.
The most of the HR recruiters have realised by now and acknowledged that most
important of all the events in recruitment, the employer branding is the most important
aspect. Yet it is allotted the least amount of budget. The Australian talent recruiters feel that
they are being limited by the lack of proper funding and if they had proper funding they
would spend more on employer branding and the recruitment tools. The things on which the
recruiters would have spent if they had unlimited budget are as follows
(Business.linkedin.com, 2019):

5HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
1. Employer branding ranks here as number one as it play the biggest factor while
recruiting top talents.
2. The second most important factor to invest in according to the HR recruiters is new
technology development.
3. The third most important factor to invest in is the years of experience the candidate
has. The more experienced the candidate has the better the productivity.
4. The fourth most important factor is the investment in procuring much more advanced
and better sourcing tools.
5. The CRM tools are the least important as per the HR managers so they are kept at last
for investment as per the budget.
The points mentioned above is totally based on surveys conducted across Australia by
interviewing with many human resource recruiters and managers.
Recruitment process
The following steps are generally performed while recruiting talent for Australian companies.
This process is common to both men and women (Uzair, Majeed and Shakeel, 2017).
1. First the candidate either submits his application via an online portal or is contacted
by the human resource department of the company. Once the team of the company
receives the candidate’s application it is assessed by the company.
2. The large amount of applications are assessed and then a shortlisted list is sent to the
recruitment consultant who conducts a phone interview to get basic details from the
candidates and schedule an interview with the candidate either through the phone call
or via email.
3. The candidate is then interviewed face to face by the hiring manager and other team
members. The candidate is asked about his or her technical knowledge, basic details,
their expectations and is also briefed about the role offered. The candidate is given a
chance to ask any questions he wants in this round.
4. The next step is generally a set of background checks for the selected candidates
before drafting the final list. The company checks for the validity of the information
provided by the candidate along with any criminal history check required. The
references provided by the candidate are also cross checked.
5. After all these checks the final list is drafted and the offer of employment is given to
the selected candidates. The candidate can either accept the offer if he or she wants to

6HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
work there or reject the offer. Once accepted, the official letter of appointment is
provided to the candidate by the hiring manager or recruiter.
6. A feedback form is provided to the candidates in some companies to further improve
their recruitment process and avoid common mistakes.
Recruitment of top female talents
The main focus while recruiting female candidates should be on the job advertisements and
the proper use of gender neutral language. The recruiters must check whether there is
something in their recruiting agenda that is discouraging or preventing women from joining
the organisation (Skiba et al. 2019). The companies should also try and shortlist more women
in order to finding more female talents. They can hire analysts and consultants to conduct
surveys and know about the shortcomings in their interview processes by getting feedback
from the candidates (HRM online, 2019). The interview process and the brand name are key
factors that can affect the recruitment of more female candidates in organisations. The
companies can use software out there in the market that can scan job ads and report what is
missing from these ads to perfect the marketing aspect of recruitment. Finally, these
employers can change their own hiring models and implement new strategies to attract more
female talents.
Common mistakes in the recruitment process
The rejection mail from a company can be sad for a candidate but if the recruitment process
is worse and is not up to the mark it can create a negative impression of the company among
the candidates. The section below highlights some common mistakes made in Australian
recruitment process (Muldowney, 2019).
1. One of the most common and frequent mistakes done by recruiting agencies and
teams is the lack of response or silence from their end. Many times a company
does not reply to the applications of other rejected candidates. A survey done
reports around 40% plus Australian workers never hear back from the company
they applied at.
2. Another big mistake is that the Australian employers do not give a rejection
reason to the candidates who apply to those companies. This eliminates the
opportunity for the candidates to improve their inefficiencies. A survey by SEEK
shows that more than 80% of the candidates want to get a rejection response from
the recruiters.

7HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
3. Another mistake is when employers put out incomplete or confusing job ads that
lack key details like location of the interview.
4. Another mistake that recruiters do is that they tend to not read the candidates
resume sometimes and are not prepared at all while interviewing them.
5. The last and major mistake most of the recruiters do is that they fail to
communicate with the candidates properly. Most of the recruiting agencies do that
as they promise a candidate to give response within a few days and then not reply
for a month.
Recommendations for better recruitment including recruiting talented
women
The gender diversity aspect of a company is a very important part of the recruitment. The
following steps can be followed to optimise the recruitment process (Humanrights.gov.au,
2019):
1. Establish guidelines and targets for separate male and female candidates’ interviews
and shortlisting process.
2. Train the hiring staff to prevent biases and gender stereotyping (Tiainen and Berki,
2019).
3. In interview offer women an opportunity to display their skills (Spence et al. 2017).
4. Increase the pool for potential male and female candidates by selecting people for
even non-traditional roles.
5. Divide the recruitment process into multiple age groups to pick talented male and
female candidates from all age groups.
6. Help those women candidates who are re-entering the workspace after an elongated
break by making the process comfortable for them.
7. The obtaining proper feedback and giving response on time can improve the
recruitment experience for both the male and female candidates.
8. Starting an induction system would help women to transition into the organisation
smoothly.
Conclusion
To conclude the recruitment process in Australia is dedicated to hire top talents for their
organisations. The recruitment department in Australia hires maximum candidates for the
operations department, followed by sales and information technology. The HR department of

8HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
most companies in Australia are shifting towards quality over quantity while hiring
candidates. In this report, the main trends regarding the Australian hiring process have been
discussed with increased importance on proper budget planning and utilisation. The
competition faced by the companies while recruiting along with the standard set of metrics
defines the success of the recruitment process in Australia.
In this report, the above mentioned metrics and the recruitment process has been
discussed in detail. The recruitment process discussed here is based on the general outline of
the recruitment procedure in Australia. After highlighting the recruitment process, the report
illustrates the common mistakes made by employers while recruiting top talents for their
companies. This report also included a section which stated the possible recommendations
and suggestions that can be applied to improve the overall recruitment process and streamline
it further. The recommendation section also gives suggestions to use while recruiting top
women talents and how to increase gender diversity in a workplace. Overall the report
discusses on all aspects of the candidate recruitment process in Australia along with a special
interest in recruiting top female candidates.

9HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Bibliography
Almeida, S. and Fernando, M., 2017. Making the cut: occupation-specific factors influencing
employers in their recruitment and selection of immigrant professionals in the information
technology and accounting occupations in regional Australia. The International Journal of
Human Resource Management, 28(6), pp.880-912.
Business.linkedin.com.(2019).[online]Availableat:https://business.linkedin.com/content/
dam/me/business/enus/talentsolutions/resources/pdfs/
Australia_Recruiting_Trends_2017_c.compressed.pdf [Accessed 4 May 2019].
Cloutman, J. and Jenkins, G., 2019. Facing Recruitment Challenges: Entering Workplace
Practices. In Challenging Future Practice Possibilities (pp. 187-198). Brill Sense.
Doneley, L., Jervis-Tracey, P. and Sim, C., 2018. Principal succession and recruitment:
Trends and challenges. Leading and Managing, 24(1), p.59.
HRM online. (2019). Video: Recruiting top talent, and how to recruit women - HRM online.
[online] Available at: https://www.hrmonline.com.au/section/ahri-blog/recruiting-top-talent-
recruit-women/ [Accessed 4 May 2019].
Humanrights.gov.au. (2019). Chapter 3: Recruitment | Australian Human Rights
Commission. [online] Available at: https://www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/women-
male-dominated-industries-toolkit-strategies-2013/chapter-3-recruitment [Accessed 4 May
2019].
Larkin, P. and O’Connor, D., 2017. Talent identification and recruitment in youth soccer:
Recruiter’s perceptions of the key attributes for player recruitment. PloS one, 12(4),
p.e0175716.
Loomes, S., Owens, A. and McCarthy, G., 2019. Patterns of recruitment of academic leaders
to Australian universities and implications for the future of higher education. Journal of
Higher Education Policy and Management, pp.1-16.
McGloin, C. and Georgeou, N., 2016. ‘Looks good on your CV’: The sociology of
voluntourism recruitment in higher education. Journal of Sociology, 52(2), pp.403-417.

10HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Muldowney, S. (2019). 5 recruitment mistakes that could be putting candidates off-side.
[online] Seek Insights and Resources. Available at: https://insightsresources.seek.com.au/5-
recruitment-mistakes-that-could-be-putting-candidates-off-side [Accessed 4 May 2019].
Robinson, S., 2015. Rethinking recruitment in policing in Australia: Can the continued use of
masculinised recruitment tests and pass standards that limit the number of women be
justified?. Salus Journal, 3(2), p.34.
Skiba, M.A., Bell, R.J., Islam, R.M. and Davis, S.R., 2019. Challenges in recruitment to an
epidemiological study of young Australian women: the Grollo‐Ruzzene Foundation Young
Women’s Health Study. Australian and New Zealand journal of public health.
Smith, S., 2018. Beyond board capital: probing inside the black box of Australian board
recruitment and dynamics.
Spence, J., Putt, C., Chan, L., Barrett, J., Bennett, S. and Newman, M., 2017. Enhancing
Gender Diversity in Police Recruitment. Australia & New Zealand Journal of Evidence
Based Policing, 2(1), pp.38-44.
Tiainen, T. and Berki, E., 2019. The re-production process of gender bias: A case of ICT
professors through recruitment in a gender-neutral country. Studies in Higher
Education, 44(1), pp.170-184.
Uzair, S., Majeed, A. and Shakeel, S., 2017. Recruitment, Selection Policies and
Procedure. Int. J. of Multidisciplinary and Current research, 5.

11HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT