1. Asia Pacific War For Talent - HR &
Recruitment Predictions 2013
The world of work, HR and recruitment is
changing. This presentation will briefly
outline why change needs to take place
and makes some predictions about what
innovative companies will do in 2013 to
meet such changes. Please follow me on
Twitter @JarradNorthover for on-going
updates.

2. If its Not Broke Don’t Fix It! – The
analogy of the misinformed!
• HR and recruitment may not be broken, but some would
argue HR and recruiting is not working very well. Why?
• Rapid social, technological, attitudinal and demographic
changes, yet HR REMAINS LARGELY STAGNATE.
• Recruitment remains largely reactive to organisational
needs both in the short term and the long term.
• Negative management and employee attitudes towards
HR and recruitment as a value adding business function.
• Talent will become scarce, but searching for talent using the
OLD WAYS of recruiting will become more cumbersome and
incredibly expensive.

3. Asia Pacific Demographic Changes yet to be fully
understood by HR Pros and Recruiters
• Soon half of India’s 1.2 billion population will be under 30!
• By 2025 China’s middle class size will be equal to the USA –
China is urbanizing the equivalent to the entire population of
Australia (22 million people) every year!
- Economic power is shifting from West to East
• Indonesian GDP is growing at 7% per year with half of
Indonesia’s 235 million population under 30.
• More women are educated, empowered and independent
than ever before, yet senior management is still dominated by
men from similar backgrounds who generally think alike.
• In the near future, workers in Australia, New Zealand, Japan
and China will be swamped by a growing retired population,
causing issues for macro-economic productivity.

4. Technological Changes in HR and Recruitment
• The rapid adoption of social media platforms and information sharing
about people and ideas allows talent finders and HR staff access to a new
body of information that was previously unavailable, yet understanding of
how to use social media for relationship building, recruitment and
employer branding remains poor.
• By the end of 2014 most of the world’s internet traffic will be from mobile
devices, yet most career portals are not optimized for mobile.
• Millions of apps are downloaded every day, yet HR has failed to recognise
the competitive advantages that apps could create for recruitment in the
“war for talent”.
• Continued advances in data capture and search algorithms by Google
allow recruiters to more easily find information about people, their skills,
their networks and their interests yet such advances are not being widely
exploited for recruiting.
• The rise of cloud computing, semantic search and social recruiting
platforms allows HR access to great technology for competitive
advantages, yet uptake is still slow.

5. Attitudinal Changes for the new generation
of workers
• Shortly Gen Y will dominate workplaces after the baby
bombers retire.
• In demand, skilled professionals are demanding more benefits
and freedom in the way they work.
• Gen Y has new ways of thinking, working and adding value
within organisations which is often misinterpreted and
mismanaged by business leaders.
Employees and Prospective Employees are
behaving like CUSTOMERS!
How are you going to deal with that as a HR
and/or Recruitment Professional?

6. If its Not Broke Don’t Fix It! – The current inferior and
costly methods of HR pros and recruiters
Recruiters are hiring RESUMES, NOT PEOPLE!
HR pro’s and internal recruiters are spending thousands via recruitment agents, when they
can learn how to source candidates with partnership agencies.
Strict selection criteria's and rigid applicant tracking systems push out strong talent not
based on what their capable of, but on what they have done and how long they have
been working within the one profession.
Too much emphasis on job titles and organisational reputation as opposed to what skills
and insights were gained from previous employment and life experiences.
Too much emphasis on quantity of work experience and a lack of emphasis about quality of
work experiences.
Placing non-socially engaging job advertisements in mass audience job boards both online
and in print which can be quite expensive.
Believing that having thousands of connections on LinkedIn is somehow going to give you
an advantage over everybody else.
Cold calling all the time instead of diversifying sourcing strategy through ongoing trail and
error sourcing innovation.
Putting little to no time into employer branding and employee engagement
communications.
Blaming new hires for lack of performance, but refusing to invest in a supportive and
intellectually engaging on-boarding/induction strategy.

7. What does this all mean for HR in
2013?
• Firstly, HR Pros and Recruiters must
conceptualise such changes and adapt HR and
recruitment strategy to survive and thrive.
“It is not the strongest of the species that
survives, nor the most intelligent that
survives. It is the one that is the most
adaptable to change” – Charles Darwin

8. Companies that win the war on talent in
2013 will:
• Source candidates through innovative means such as using social media
(and not just LinkedIn!).
• Understand that social media is a conversation (DO NOT SPAM, DO NOT
SPEAK AT TALENT, SPEAK WITH THEM!)
• Understand the technicalities of Google X-ray and Boolean search strings.
• Understand that the value is in the relationship, not the connection (you
may have to be a little more social than just connecting on LinkedIn!)
• Collaborate with talent sourcer’s or RPO providers (not necessarily
mainstream agents) to build their internal capabilities for the future.
• Engaging in employer branding communications on social media and have
conversations with talent on social media.
• Focus on attraction and retention by loosening the grip on their
employees (flexible working hours, having fun at work!, empowerment,
encouraging intrapreneurship ect).
• Optimize career web presence for mobile device use and entertain the
idea of creating a 3rd party recruitment app.

9. Companies that win the war on
talent in 2013 will (cont):
• Understand that competitors can access candidate and employee data (you can no
longer hide your top performers so engage them!).
• Every employee is a recruiter! – Encourage your staff to build networks and
socialise with their professional peers to build a talent pipeline.
• Develop supportive induction programs for new hires.
• Understand that “off the shelf turn-key solutions” are not appropriate whatsoever,
all recruiting strategies need to be tailored.
• Monitor blogs, twitter feeds, LinkedIn discussion forums so you can find talent
based on what someone is doing rather than simply what someone has done (CV
approach).
• Use socially engaging, highly targeted adverts when undertaking recruitment
marketing.
• Allow staff to attend networking events and collaborate with other professionals
outside their organisation.
• Engage in remote recruitment (interviews on Skype or Google+).
• Understand that social media is a risk, if you don’t embrace it.

10. 1 key thought to take away!
Millions more professionals will be entering
the social web in Asia over the coming years,
so please try and understand the implications
for your HR and recruitment functions!

11. What social media apps can help me with
sourcing, recruiting and engaging talent?
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Multi-Platform
Work For Us Followerwonk Who Works.At Hootsuite
Jobcast Social Bro Slideshare Buffer
BeKnown Crowd Booster Signal Bullhorn Reach
BranchOut Twileshare Scavado
Manage Flitter
TweetDeck
This list is not exhaustive.
Also checkout befound.com.au (Australia) Remarkable Hire (For IT
Professionals), Meetup.com groups (for professional meetup groups in your
area)
Remember Google+ is essential for SEO and is fantastic for sourcing and
categorising talent with 400 million searchable profiles.