Job seekers are benefiting from an improving economy and the services of recruitment brokers, writes Paul McIntyre.
Recruitment brokers are becoming more common in the United States and Europe. Australia, however, has been slower out of the blocks in adopting this approach to job placement.
That is, except for RSP (Recruitment Service Providers), which was featured last year in the BRW "Fast 100" companies list. RSP acts as a go-between for businesses and 45 independent recruitment firms in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, and another dozen in Asia.
RSP's chief executive, Matt Lodge, says sales and marketing has emerged as a hot category in recent months. Corporate briefs for marketing jobs are on the rise, Lodge says, along with a significant increase in demand for retail and call centre sales and service positions.
He says RSP is filling about 100 marketing and sales positions each week, mostly for call centres looking to meet increased demand from banks, telecommunications, aviation and IT companies.
The general upturn in the economy means companies are seeking more sales and marketing people, he says.
"Sales and marketing positions tend to be the areas that fall off when there's uncertainty in the market."
Lodge says demand for business-to-business and business-to-consumer development managers is also strong; clients such as Hutchison 3, for which RSP has an exclusive "master contract", are hungry for sales people to service small businesses and community associations.
Last year, RSP filled 850 sales and marketing positions for Hutchison 3. Other RSP clients, including Unisys, Toyota, ABC, Nokia, Telecom NZ, Datacom, UCMS and other financial services companies, are also increasing their employment requirements in this area.
Lodge says RSP's broker approach is aimed at helping smaller, independent and specialised recruitment firms remain competitive with the larger players.
According to the Recruitment and Consulting Services Association, 60 per cent of the $10.2 billion employment services market in Australia in 2002 was generated by firms with fewer than five employees. In many cases they were one-person operations with specialist knowledge of particular sectors or professions.
RSP has about 20,000 candidates on its books but its appeal to larger companies is its access to a broader field of people via its network. "We've got about 20,000 people [listed with us] but we've got access to up to 3 million resumes through our 45 partners," says Lodge. "Obviously, there is some duplication among those resumes, but our message is starting to be heard by companies."
For five years Lodge has promoted the efficiencies of using a recruitment broker to manage the dozens of recruitment firms a company might use to find staff.
"I came from the employer side of the business, where the traditional recruitment model had large panels of [recruitment] suppliers and you just spent a lot of time dealing with them and not enough doing what you're paid to.
"What we ask for is exclusivity with our clients where they have one contract and one set of terms and conditions with one company but they're getting access to candidates from multiple agencies.
"The benefits for job candidates are the same. They don't have to register with 10 agencies if they don't want to. If they register with RSP, they get access to all the jobs registered with our partner agencies as well."
Lodge says that "a good handful" of partner agencies say RSP is one of their top clients in revenue terms. "They supply us with a stream of candidates and we supply them with ongoing job briefs and business," he says.
RSP is also developing its Asian network. It has about a dozen recruitment firms on its books and an office opening in Singapore in the next two months.
