Lastest trends in Australia's recruitment industry

18 October 2023

If there’s anyone who has a well-rounded and accurate analysis of the current state of the workforce, it’s LinkedIn.

Coming a close second behind them is us. We’d like to think so, wink wink.

But where LinkedIn pips us to the post is the fact that they have the ability to collect data from around the world and then have key members of their community analyse the said data while advising on labour market trends and the knock-on effect they have.

Okay, so maybe we aren’t a close second. But if you learnt anything then it should be that LinkedIn knows their stuff and they’re right about most things (except for how many times someone can post a poll).

If you read their October 2023 Global Talent Trends article* there are a few major takeaways and even though there are 4 we’re going to break them down into 3.

1. Australia is hiring at the 4th slowest rate in the world

Yep, it's declining at a pace of 25% than the previous year to be exact.

LinkedIn’s Chief Economist Karin Kimbrough says that this could be a sign of stabilisation and a time for the labour market to rebalance itself, which all in all is a good thing.

Essentially what this means is that although employers are hiring, they’re doing it at a slower pace because they’re being more cautious of making smart hires. This then has the knock-on effect of employees staying put for longer, lowering hiring costs and reducing the number of available roles.

If you’re an employer you might already be experiencing/doing this and working with your talent team to help put measures in place to future-proof your organisation, which is smart.

But if this is the first time you’re hearing of this, we’d recommend focusing on keeping your business agile and optimising this chance to understand and develop your internal talent (which we’ll dive into further later in the blog).

In conjunction with this, LinkedIn tells us that the rate at which people are applying for jobs within Australia has risen by 16%.

What this means is that there is an increase in applications and if you’re a TA or a hiring manager now is the best time for you to hone in and look at your hiring process to best ensure your organisation is hiring the right people. This is because although you might be getting more applications, it’s key to not rush the hiring process and accurately assess who is the best fit.

2. If you’re an employer, it’s more important than ever to personalise your career development plans for employees

What the below graph shows us is that employees in Australia have the second lowest confidence in career development in the world. Yep, the world.

With career development plans being a key reason why people stay or leave a company it makes a whole lot of sense to put the effort into helping your employees set clear career goals and then identifying what you can do to then ensure they’ll achieve them.

Stephanie Conway (Senior Director of Talent Development at LinkedIn) provided her insight to the article which features her key tip to helping employees through this.

The tip is to then shift away from setting a goal based entirely on a specific job title and rather set a goal that is focused on gaining a specific set of skills.

This doesn’t mean your team member has to give up the idea of being a “Chief of People and Culture” or “Lead Engineer”, but instead the goal may be to gain more leadership or people managing skills that’ll then help them in these said positions.

This then means that skills take priority over job titles and if you have followed us for some time, you’ll know that skills vs job titles is one battle we won’t back down on.

3. It’s all about internal mobility

We could go on all day about how gaining and showcasing your skills are important and why they should be at the top of your priority list.

And shocker, we’re about to talk about it again.

As an employer, when you help your employees build upon their skill sets, the company actually also benefits as it helps with internal mobility.

LinkedIn even gave us a great example (below) which demonstrates how beneficial this is to you because a. it helps retain staff but also b. it could help you solve a vacancy in your team if the replacement is within your broader team.

LinkedIn’s VP of Global Talent Acquisition Jennifer Shappley backs this up by saying that it’s become more important than ever to have your talent acquisition and talent development working closely together because we can no longer rely on ‘buying’ new skills, and instead, we should focus on developing them.

It’s a win-win and no-brainer really.