Flagship infrastructure projects, unprecedented digital transformation and a multitude of large multi-million dollar initiatives have seen expenditure grow significantly across the NSW Government sector over the last few years.
According to the NSW Treasurer, The Hon. Dominic Perrottet, budget surpluses are being forecasted for the next four years and with new projects in the pipeline (such as Metro West), it’s easy to see how those expecting the lavish spending on the regeneration and transformation of NSW to continue, will be proved correct.
Whilst it is great to read these headlines and assume nothing but progression for those involved, it’s important to note that with booming sectors comes fierce competition. To remain competitive, organisations must innovate to stay ahead of the curve. Over the past few years the NSW Government recruitment landscape has developed into a highly prized environment where accounts and relationships are hotly contested.
Historically, it would have been easier for large organisations to have maintained exclusivity across the market, hence the domination by those agencies that were first to attain key supplier status on the former Government c100 panel. The dynamic across the NSW Public Sector recruitment arena is now very different.
With the introduction of Managed Service Providers as key Relationship Managers across the majority of government agency clusters, there is now a lot more parity and fairness in terms of job distribution. Smaller recruitment organisations are preferred to larger ones, as the NSW Government encourages and supports the development of SME’s. Whilst this is a positive initiative, it adds additional fire to an already highly competitive marketplace.
In order to remain ahead of the chasing pack, a successful agency needs to ensure a high (and consistent) level of competency across the following four pillars:
- Intimate understanding of the brief
- The ability to connect with candidates through unique sourcing methods
- Exceptional level of candidate preparation and support
- Outstanding customer service and communication with clients and candidates (both successful and unsuccessful) alike
And all of the above is acutely underpinned by the most important pillar of all; staff retention.
Without staff retention you lose. You lose the confidence of hiring managers and the MSP teams your consultants work with, you lose the IP and you lose the continuity. You lose the experience you’ve worked so hard to nurture and you lose the candidates. You lose relationships, you lose niche methods of candidate generation and you lose exposure to key projects.
At Charterhouse we’ve been successful in not only retaining key staff across the NSW Government team but growing that team aggressively over the past 18 months. The new hires, alongside the existing team have been solely responsible for the rapid transformation from ‘new kids on the block’ to the dependable, reliable and consistent team of consultants. The rise from obscurity to a top #4 supplier across the SCM0007 panel in a mere 3.5 years is down to them.
To say that I am proud of what the Charterhouse NSW government team has accomplished would be an understatement.
Their dedication to understanding the nuances of the projects they source for, the way they have developed their stakeholder relationships, their unwavering commitment to ensuring candidate and client experience are positive, the way they constantly source with a lens of diversity and inclusion, has resulted in the outstanding position they are in today.
