The Job’s On! Blog

A report on the News.com.au website reveals that public servants and government employees are the worst offenders at taking sickies from work.

The report cites a study by Direct Health Solutions that suggests that the average worker takes 8.62 days off per year, in addition to their regular leave entitlements.  The study found that only 80% of sick days were taken legitimately.

The Australian average of 8.62 days off a year compares with an absentee rate of 5 days per year in the USA.  The UK average is similar to the Australian average.

Direct Health Solutions goes on to explain that there is no proven correlation between an organisation’s employment policies/programs and its absentee rate.  That means that organisations are likely to experience the same levels of absenteeism, regardless of the initiatives they put in place to reduce absenteeism.  That’s a worrying statistic, because much of the contemporary thought on ’soft’ HRM strategies suggests that absenteeism can be reduced.

The worrying statistic for Canberra is the fact that public servants and government employees take an average of 10.8 days off per year in addition to their regular entitlements.  Perhaps it’s about time to tighten the conditions for public servants so that this figure can be reduced?

Direct Health Solutions, which consults to companies on staff absenteeism, said that they have clients with even higher absenteeism - some are experiencing averages of 20 sick days per year for their staff.  Up to 8% of the entire workforce won’t be at work on any given day.

The survey shows that, on average,  $354 is lost by business for each day that an employee is absent.  The stress on other employees, who are forced to ‘cover’ for the absent staff member, is another cost.

I must admit that I have taken ’sickies’ in the past - but not too many (hopefully none of my former employees read this).  It seems like the ’sickie’ is an ingrained part of Australian culture.  I suspect that many of us at some stage of our working lives have called in sick to go to the cricket, extended our weekends, or stayed in bed to catch up on sleep (hangover?).  Have you?

Source: http://www.news.com.au/business/story/0,27753,24662006-5012428,00.html?referrer=email

Link: Direct Health Solutions http://www.dhs.net.au/

Selection criteria.  Those who work in government are familiar with these two words - to win their job, they had to complete a detailed response to the position’s designated ’selection criteria’. 

What are Selection Criteria?
Selection criteria are a list of essential and desirable skills, attributes, experience, and education standard, which an organisation decides are necessary for a job vacancy.

Why are Selection Criteria used?
Selection criteria are used to help select the most experienced and qualified person for the job. Applicants must demonstrate and prove the ways in which they will be of value for the job and the organisation. They are most commonly used by government departments to meet their stringent merit requirements.

An application may not be short listed if it fails to demonstrate how the applicant meets any one of the criteria. From the organisation’s point of view, selection criteria help to standardise the recruitment process and to reduce the field of candidates to the most suitable applicants.

Steps in addressing Selection Criteria

Create a new document.  Include a header or title that includes your name, the job title and position number, and a brief title indicating the purpose of the document. Suitable titles include: Statement of Claims against the Selection Criteria, Selection Criteria Statement, Selection Criteria Summary, or Summary Addressing Selection Criteria.

Use each of the selection criteria as a heading.  Enter each selection criterion as a separate heading in the new document, leaving space after heading to address that selection criterion.

Prove your ability to meet each criterion (this is time consuming and requires thought!).  In addressing each criterion, summarise the way in which your skills, qualifications, experience and personal attributes are relevant for that particular criterion.  Use examples and quantify/qualify your experience – who, where, how much/many, what, when, why. 

When writing your response… 

• Understand key phrases and address these in your application (eg. ‘Experience in’,'Knowledge of’). Often there are subtle differences in meaning that can be crucial to selection.
• Understand the difference in the ‘level’ of qualities being sought and provide evidence and concrete examples to illustrate you meet the required level. For example, “I have seven years experience in…”.
• Understand the differences in key roles or functions described. For example, the roles of managing, leading, supervising, organising and administering are often confused or articulated poorly.
• Provide concrete examples and descriptions of skills and abilities. Common areas include contributing to the work group, interacting with people and managing your own performance.
• Support your claims about your skills that are based on personal opinion alone. For example, it is not enough to say “I have well developed presentation and liaison skills”. You should select and include evidence from your employment history or education to support any assertions of competence. For example, “my excellent management ability is demonstrated by…”. The best examples illustrate the complexity and demands of the tasks.
• Use direct, active verbs, and using verbs which indicate exactly what your contribution was.
• Address all parts of the selection criteria.
• Use selective and appropriate dot points rather than long paragraphs of text.
• Avoid words and phrases which reduce your credibility (eg some, a little, limited).
• Be concise
• Organise and format your application neatly
• Give relevant personal details
• Comment on the extent to which your claims match the selection criteria giving concrete examples
• Check for spelling and grammatical errors – it’s often best to have a friend read over the criteria before submitting.
• Submit your application on time
• Include a covering letter and resume with your statement addressing the selection criteria

Don’t…

• Don’t give great detail about duties performed many years ago that are not relevant to the current position
• Don’t include a photograph, your date of birth or provide superfluous information about your personal life
• Don’t waffle!

There is an art to writing selection criteria responses - and everyone has a different opinion on how they should be written. 

It is recommended that you take a look at the selection criteria bible - How to Write and Talk to Selection Criteria by Ann D. Villiers.

The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics figures suggest that there has been a strong rise in part-time employment at the expense of full-time work.

The ABS figures show that full-time work fell by 9,200 people, while part-time went up 43,500.

The unemployment rate remained steady at 4.3 percent.  The number of people looking for work increased by 7,000 to 487,900.

Here’s another document template I’ve put together - it’s an exit interview form for your business.  When staff decide to leave, you can use the form as a tool when interviewing them.

I hope that you find it useful.

I have spent the last few days knocking together a step-by-step guide to help organisations recruit staff effectively. 

To run an effective recruitment process, there are plenty of considerations and details that you need to attend to - although some of these may not be immediately apparent.  Hopefully the guide will assist organisations to ‘cover all bases’ in their recruitment processes.

The 9-step guide is 17 pages in length and contains three accompanying documents - an Interview Proforma, a Reference Check Proforma and a list of behavioural interview questions.  The four PDF documents are provided in ZIP format (just under 500Kb)

You can download the pack here:

http://www.capitaljobs.com.au/Subscribers/Newsletters/Effective-Staff-Recruitment-Pack.zip

We would appreciate any feedback - info@capitaljobs.com.au

The number of job advertisements has fallen for a sixth straight month as employers steeled themselves against the worsening economic downturn.  

After falling 1.4 percent in September, job ads in the print media and on the internet fell 5.9% in October, according to an ANZ survey.  The October 2008 figure is 9.8 percent less than the volume of job advertisements in October 2007.

Thankfully for online jobs boards such as ours, most of the pain was experienced in the print advertising sector.  Print Job ads are down 12.2% in October (12.8% in the ACT).  Compared to October last year, the newspapers displayed 34.7 percent less ads in October 2008.

Today I came to the conclusion that organisations that have engaged the services of a recruitment firm should undertake their own reference checks, rather than have the recruitment firm undertake these on their behalf.

As an ex-recruiter, it saddens me to say it, but I really think that you will get a better result if you do it yourself.

I was contacted late this afternoon by a female recruiter from Sydney seeking a reference check for a former work colleague of mine.  When I told her that I was ‘out shopping’, she insisted that it would ‘only take 5 minutes’.  I acquiesced and found a quiet corner to respond to her questions, but perhaps I shouldn’t have…

The candidate who was the subject of the ref check is not perfect - he has some faults.  And I am generally loathe to give glowing reports when I know that the story doesn’t match the person.  I always try and give a well-rounded view of the candidate with some discussion of their strengths and weaknesses.   After all, that’s what ref checks are for.

But in this instance, I really didn’t see the point in giving any detail, because the recruiter clearly wanted to ‘tick the boxes’ quickly and be on her way.  She fired a bunch of very general questions at me, refused to probe or question further, and was satisfied with my largely non-descript responses.

Herein lies the problem.  Recruiters want to make the placement so that they can get their commission.  They are incentivised when they make placements. Recruiters DON’T want to hear anything bad from the referee, because a negative comment could ultimately jeopardise their placement. 

Ref checks are typically done just before placement, which means that this is the ‘final hurdle’ that a recruiter must negotiate before seeing dollar signs.  Is it likely, then, that the resultant ref check is going to provide deep, insightful analysis, replete with juicy information that was hitherto unknown about the candidate?  I think not.

Today’s reference check was a complete waste of time.  Amidst all of the superlatives - ‘fantastic’, ‘awesome’, ‘wonderful’ - on the other end of the phone, I did try to offer some ‘leads’ that would help the recruiter to uncover some useful information, but she wasn’t taking the bait.  The boxes were already ticked before the phone conversation began.

For all the recruiters out there - you can’t hope to become a respected service provider if you don’t offer any value in your recruitment process.  Do it right, or don’t do it at all.

For the organisations seeking staff - consider doing your own reference checks.  Nobody likes doing them, but the outcome might be better than the tripe offered up by some of the recruiters out there.

I am a real fan of Timothy Ferriss.  Ferriss wrote the New York Bestseller List book, The Four Hour Work Week, which I have previously reviewed on this blog.

A recent post on Ferriss’ own blog provides some excellent advice on actions that should appear on your ‘not-to-do list’:

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/08/16/the-not-to-do-list-9-habits-to-stop-now/

A report from the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors shows that the annual take-home salaries of 69 CEOs from Australia’s leading public companies has risen by 106 percent between 2001 and 2007.  The research is cited on the Fairfax Digital website today.

That figure is over three times the growth of the average adult weekly earnings over the same time period.  Normal wage earners have had a 32.3% increase.

The average fixed salary of CEOs rose from $888,407 in 2001 to $1.8 million in 2007.  When incentive payments and bonuses are thrown in to the mix, the comparison becomes $2.64 million (2001) and $5.53 million (2006).  A significant hike.

The highest paid CEO was Alan Moss from Macquarie Bank, who was paid a princely sum of $33.5 million.

It’s probably no wonder that the Rudd Government is now investigating ways to cap executive remuneration and to introduce higher taxation brackets for mega-earners.  Certainly, corporations will find it increasingly difficult to justify huge CEO pay packets in the wake of universal share price falls.

Job losses across Australia are inevitable, according to the Treasurer Wayne Swan.  Experts suggest that national growth could slow to 1.25 percent next year which could translate into the axeing of 200,000 jobs across the country.

Economists have already warned that the Australian economy will likely be in recession by Christmas, despite the government’s $10.4 billion rescue package which will kick in from early December.