The Status of Professional Employment
The Status of Professional Employment - A Recruiter's Perspective
Irrespective of whether you are an employer of people or looking for opportunities yourself, or both, you will not have failed to notice changes in the market place over the last few years.
Working in the international resources scene and specialising in executive and senior technical professional appointments for companies around the globe, it is clear to us that some broad generalisations can be made with regard to employment:
- People are no longer carried. There is an emphasis on performance management and change is a fact of life, as is speed of delivery
- Company focus now is on improvement strategies to deliver against required outcomes. No longer is "adequate performance" the norm. Few companies do not have short term targets that "improve" on the previous years results.
- The new technologies have accelerated the globalisation of the minerals industry and speeded up the analysis of data, the availability of information, and its transfer. Awareness of the global competition to your business is the norm now.
How does this impact on the recruitment side of the business? Trends we see regularly are:
- Searches for people who can not only fulfill the role but also offer an upside potential.
- Searches no longer restricted to the home countries. "We want the best, wherever they are". Professionals accepting that they will change employers and even country during their careers. We have one client that has given us a brief to look out for former employees who have gained valuable experience externally and may be receptive to returning to them with their additional skills. This international roving used to be the prerogative of geologists only but no more.
- Clients value candidates who have a range of experiences and are more worldly. The ability to have operated successfully internationally tells you something about the person.
Where are the opportunities? Without a doubt there is both an increase in the number of vacancies and a shortage of qualified people. This is a result of people changing positions more regularly than before, and of an increase in worldwide activities in the resources sector. Whereas technology application has reduced professional numbers in some areas this is more an offset by the number of new opportunities. Basically the resources industry has upskilled itself, although we have not done a good job in communicating this. The current boom in commodity prices has a flow-on effect in increasing exploration activities, new company listings, new mines being planned and developed, and new markets being opened up.
This has presented a vast array of opportunities for professionals and equally a challenge for companies to recruit people and dare I suggest retain employees. Commodity knowledge does not seem to make a difference at the senior levels however it is a preference for technical professionals at site. Companies are now more receptive to parallel commodity experience and resumes now emphasise as a selling point the person's achievements as well as their role descriptions.
The shortage of professionals is seen around the world. This is a reflection on the lack of people that are joining our industry which flows back to the perception of our industry, the declining number of graduates and post-graduates courses and enrolments in the key technical disciplines, and more fundamentally the general dumbing down of teaching science in schools. The pool of candidates is shrinking and the number of companies drinking from this is increasing. Maybe Canada is leading the way back. They have been actively promoting the industry, lifestyles and career opportunities and are starting to see a resurgence in enrolments (O'Hara; Canadian Mining Journal, October 2003: "Resurgence in Canadian Mining Schools Long Overdue"). Traditionally a shortage of skilled professionals in one country has meant that you source people from another. British people typically went to Africa, then later on to Australia. Canadians moved to the US and South America, and in resource rich Australia you used to be able to source people from those companies whose commodity prices were low, returnees, and be content with the general immigrant flow to "the lucky country". No longer. Sure it still goes on but the opportunities are now global, notwithstanding that you may not want that position in Angola, Columbia, Iraq, or Pakistan (How times change though as witnessed by Swann's recent work in Vietnam, Tanzania and China). Impediments to international moves used to be the work permit and various localization schemes. The former while still is in place, is made easier as government realize the potential value of incoming professionals. The latter is laudable in intent but there is now an awareness, governments notwithstanding, that the process will generally take longer than was planned.
An interesting debate is what factors influence people's choice of employer? There is an excellent article in the London Mining Journal (30-01-04), by industry expert Brian Hosking titled "Employers we love to work for". He identified that there is a gap between the perception of the employer and the potential employee. This leads to the comment that there needs to be a better mutual understanding of these issues if companies are to maximize their attractiveness and ease of recruiting people. Simply paying more money may not be the best solution.
The way of finding skilled professional people successfully is changing. Advertising is generally the cheapest as long as the opportunity is perceived to be attractive to candidates. An ad only attracts people who read it. This sounds obvious but there are plenty of people who do not read the adverts on a page and indeed there are people who don't get the copy to read in the first place. Internet advertising gets a bigger audience but carries the same problems as above. Search is commonly used and technology has speeded up the research and communication tremendously. Most professional people have a profile which, with diligence, can be found. For the majors in the resources arena international boundaries and time zones are not an issue. The Swann Group for instance services its clients in all continents from its Australian base. It sources candidates internationally. One of the issues faced with candidates is verification of their credentials, from degrees to work experience and seniority. On a national level this should be achievable but gaining a true understanding of people from another continent is much more difficult.
In summary, there is and will continue to be a global shortage of talented minerals professionals. We should all be concerned, and agitate for a higher profile for teaching of science in schools; we need to educate governments about the impacts of not producing sufficient numbers of technically capable graduates for our industries; we need to increase the attractiveness of our business to these graduates; we need to consider what employers and employees are really looking for; and we need to do it now!
Business is booming in the recruitment sector.
Ron MorlandPartner, The Swann Group
Ron is a geologist by training. After a period in the oil industry in London he moved to take up exploration and mining opportunities in South Africa, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe, before moving to Australia in 1981. He joined the Swann Group in 1997 and now heads up the Resources Practice of the company. He is a Fellow of the AusIMM and is Chairman of their Melbourne Branch.
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