The team at Grow Advisors have just come back from the annual @NPAWorldwide Conference at the Windsor Hotel in Melbourne. Tony and I went down earlier for the Owners Conference, and I was honoured to wrap the day up with key takeaways. Here is a glimpse of “Building the future together”, which was the conference theme:
Recruitment
- Headhunting skills are winning over posting skills
- Focus on either having great relationships with clients or securing hard to find candidates. If you don’t have either, you won’t have a job.
- We need to find out who the ideal persona is that you are advertising towards (ours is Nigel!)
- In the changing world, contracts will run shorter and it will be about skills acquisition, not talent acquisition.
- You need to identify what the gap is in the market and what you actually offer to bridge that gap
- It’s not enough to just be a “people person” anymore.
- Recency bias often contorts our opinions
NPA
- NPA meets most of the metrics for a top performing association and it can act as an incubator for young recruiters.
- We need to impart the trust that our clients have in us, to secure other work for our NPA colleagues
- There are no d!ckheads in the NPA but plenty elsewhere
- You should use NPA as the reason to meet with clients and you need to tell the story of NPA, not just add the logo.
The Industry
- Independent contracting should only be for those that have the capacity to manage their affairs
- We all need to work with more Japanese companies as they pay early
- 26.4 days late on payment terms makes companies in Australia the worst in the World in this category.
- @Charles Cameron (RCSA CEO) likes calling out hypocritical behaviour
- No-one wants to be bitten by the RCSA
- We need to show that we as an industry, we do genuinely care
- Those recruiters on the NSW State Government 007 panel have been shaken, not stirred!
The Future
- Just because it’s tech, doesn’t make it right
- You must have an online offering in the future.
- Reference checking could potentially be replaced by reviews
- Australian laws are sometimes getting subverted by platforms going offshore
- In the future, it may become unlawful to conduct an interview
- The psychological contract between employer and employee is being re-imagined into the cohort feeling
If you are a company, candidate or recruiter eager to find more about NPA, happy to provide further detail.
