Speaker: Helen O’Keefe, Director, HOK Talent Solutions
Recruiting and retaining OHS staff
It was a great start to a new year of presentations with Helen O'Keefe's insights into the OHS recruitment scene. As it happened to be St Valentine's Day, Helen gave her presentation a cute twist by drawing an analogy between the employee life cycle and a marriage, and it fitted surprisingly well. She covered the full gamut from recruitment as the dating phase; onboarding & retention equating to a marriage; and separation as a divorce. To avoid the latter, Helen gave several tips on how to maintain a happy marriage in the work sense.
She explained how January started as strongly as 2022 did, which had already broken records with the number of positions being advertised. In particular it is specialists that are being sought. Post lockdown candidates have become more selective, which is making recruitment harder. Position descriptions are changing as a result of this, so that they are more like an advertisement to attract people. Helen gave some practical suggestions about how to make a PD more attractive.
Helen also had some great tips during her presentation for retaining staff, and further tips came up during the engaging discussion afterwards. One fascinating insight was how important a platform like LinkedIn has become. Having an up-to-date profile is advantageous for both a candidate and a potential employer, because it can show how well-connected you are and the range of activities you are involved in. In fact, Helen predicts that CVs will become obsolete and will be replaced by a LinkedIn profile or similar.
Helen is such an enthusiastic speaker on her topic and the attendees really appreciated her expertise.
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