Recent Council Recruitment Trends - 2018

Looking at the big picture of recruitment advertising occasionally uncovers interesting trends.

Analysis of recruitment advertising of Australian councils by job type over the last 12 months, reveals some surprises. Councils are known to be very stable employers with low levels of attrition typically less than 10% per year on average vs more than 20% per year in the private sector. As well, many unique skillsets are sought by Councils and these can cover over 200 job categories, almost half of which are unique to the sector.

Patterns of Council recruitment

CouncilJobs is known for its depth of candidates in the traditionally unique roles of Engineering, Planning, Community Services, Environment and Executive Management. These are the job categories that advertisers know they can particularly rely on CouncilJobs to be able to tap into for highly experienced candidates. In our experience and operating for almost 20 years, our subscriber profile mirrors what Advertisers are looking for.

Here’s where it gets interesting lately;

(The above chart shows recruitment patterns by Job categories – blue is the share of jobs advertised over the last 12 months vs red which is the share of jobs advertised more recently over the past 3 months vs the green which is the share of CouncilJobs Subscribers in each category. Normally all these 3 lines align.)

What can we conclude from all this?

Above average rates of recruitment of HR, Building and Procurement roles suggest that councils may be gearing up for major project activity.

Since May this year, CouncilJobs has seen a marked jump in recruitment activity. Overall recruitment advertising is up more than 30% per month over the previous 12 months as recruiters rush to fill key roles, many of which have been on hold for over 12 months due to factors like hiring freezes, reorganisations, etc.

This demand has seen higher than usual activity in lead-indicator roles including HR, Building and Procurement, suggesting that there may be further growth in councils’ recruitment overall in coming months.

Happy job hunting