Council Recruitment Trends and Insights
A joint report with CouncilJobs.com.au and Leonards Advertising on skills shortages, an ageing workforce and the technology reshaping council recruitment.
The local government recruitment sector has endured unprecedented stress and evolution over the past three years, not only due to the 2019 summer bushfires or the 2020 pandemic response.
Concerned with how different council recruiters were coping with the challenges they faced, we pooled our resources with CouncilJobs.com.au and Leonards Advertising to share some insights that might help those involved in council recruitment. Our report covers:
- The skills shortage in a few key areas: engineering, planning and governance
- An ageing workforce
- Staff mobility
- Councils having to do more with less at every level
- Rapidly evolving technology solutions, including HRIS, e-recruitment and social media
Skills shortage
Our report showed a shortage of engineers, town planners, and health and building surveyors and inspectors. What can councils do to attract the right applicant for their culture and community?
Local government now seen as an employer of choice
We are seeing a definite move away from the city to regional and rural areas. This started pre-COVID, as many people sought tree and sea changes, and it has continued to escalate during the pandemic, resulting in more candidates for local government roles in regional and rural locations. As an extension of this, many applicants from the private sector are now seeing local government as a profession of choice.
66% of councils agree or strongly agree many technically competent applicants lack necessary leadership skills
Almost without exception, particularly for management level positions but also for other roles, we are finding councils looking for well developed leadership skills and demonstrated achievements through the use of those skills. This is critically important, as we believe leadership is the major determinant of culture, and if you get your culture right, the people in that culture will continue to amaze you. We have seen many real and powerful examples of this, and we have also seen the opposite impact where leadership is not at the standard needed.