Employment Agencies
New Zealand Employment Agencies
Employment agencies help employers and job seekers nationwide, providing a third party solution for the filling of jobs in a broad range of industries and sectors. Read on for more information if you are seeking employment or searching for good employees.
Employment agencies in New Zealand provide a service matching job seekers to job vacancies. Also known as recruitment agencies, these organisations provide employers with candidates for jobs, offering complementary screening, selection, interview and headhunting services. In this article we take a look at what recruitment agencies do and what types of New Zealand employment agencies there are, covering several different specialised fields.
What do employment agencies in New Zealand do?
NZ employment agencies perform a variety of tasks concerned with, at a basic level, getting people into jobs. They generally offer a two way service, that is, for both employers and job seekers. We’ll look at employers first.
Employer services
An employment agency provides employers with a range of job services including:
- Advertising vacancies on behalf of clients using various channels, such as newspapers or professional publications; graduate recruitment programmes; online job boards and websites; and sometimes even through radio advertising.
- Building up a relationship with the employer through meetings, email communication and phone conversations, in order to understand what kind of staff are required and discuss how to find them.
- Screening and selecting job candidates; potential candidates will be filtered and whittled down by certain agreed criteria in order to only interview the most appropriate candidates for a job.
- Interviewing potential employees; conducting comprehensive job interviews of applicants on behalf of the employer, including phone interviews and face to face meetings.
- Checking references and communicating with a candidate’s referees to assess suitability for a position.
- Testing potential employees; including psychometric personality testing to determine traits that show suitability, or otherwise, for a position.
Job candidate services
New Zealand recruitment agencies also aid those looking for jobs in New Zealand by:
- Taking them through available New Zealand jobs and giving employment information and job application advice.
- Advising candidates on New Zealand job market activity in their areas of interest, providing guidance, information and career management services.
- Giving them the opportunity to apply for jobs that are taken straight by New Zealand businesses to recruitment agencies; that is, jobs that would not be advertised otherwise.
- Providing guidance in the job seeking process by helping candidates create an effective CV’s and going over interview preparation strategy.
- Summarising a candidate's strengths, experience and suitability for a position; this will, in turn, be presented to the employer.
Headhunting
Some New Zealand employment agencies engage in headhunting practices. Headhunting occurs where recruiters actively seek out employees working at other workplaces; it is normally used where standard recruitment efforts have failed to find a suitable candidate. Techniques used in headhunting include: purchasing lists and company databases of prospects, networking, cold calling and extensive use of online candidate records. Some New Zealand companies need to make special efforts to protect in-demand employees from being headhunted and employed by competitors.
Temporary or permanent employment
Employment agencies in New Zealand are usually classified as providing permanent or temporary jobs, or a mixture of the two. Temporary recruitment agencies specialise in fulfilling employer client’s needs by placing staff into short-term positions. These may be across a large range of industries. However, many temporary jobs end up becoming permanent, especially if the candidate does a good job! A good example of a well known and successful temporary recruitment agency is Student Job Search, which places thousands of New Zealand students into short-term work every year and helps them minimise their student loans. Permanent recruitment agencies place candidates into permanent job roles.
Industry specific recruitment agencies
Many recruitment agencies in New Zealand operate in a particular industry niche or area of expertise. For example, an agency may specialise in healthcare, hospitality, design, accounting, advertising or IT recruitment. Another example is an agency working with high level executive appointments only, regardless of industry. Industry specific recruitment agencies will generally have an extensive network of contacts and relationships with the employers in their chosen field, making them a sensible choice for many job seekers. In addition, many specialist recruiters will work to attract overseas candidates, providing them with the tools and guidance to immigrate and gain the necessary work visas, as well as helping them settle in to their new home once they arrive.
Recruitment agencies are a growth industry, as many employers see the value in outsourcing some portion or in some cases all of their staffing function to a professional consultancy. However, over recent times the market in New Zealand has been consolidated as large international recruitment companies take over smaller local ones. This is a trend that will likely continue, as global recruitment firms attempt to generate massive employer and candidate databases, which are interchangeable between countries.
Looking for more job recruitment information? Find employment agencies in the NZS.com directory.
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Business images from Flickr: Employment Interview, New Zealand Flag and Wellington Buildings.
