As businesses wind down for the holiday period, it’s always worth taking a moment to reflect on the year that was and what may lie ahead for the year to come.

For us at HorizonOne, recruitment in 2024 was very much a continuation of the previous year. Our team continues to grow and evolve, with some of the highlights we celebrated being:

• Winning Recruitment Brand of the Year at the 2024 TIARA Recruitment Awards ANZ
• Selected as finalists for the APSCo 2024 Best Workplace Culture Award
• Supporting a leading indigenous business throughout the year with over 30 recruitment processes selecting talent all over Australia, including remote areas
• The launch of our specialist Cyber Recruitment team working in partnership with the Canberra Cyber Hub
• Continuing to support our charity partners to continue their great work including Cancer Council, Dementia Australia, Karinya House and the Pyjama Foundation

In the broader recruitment market, we saw four key themes play out during the year, which were:

Rapid public sector growth

Since the election of the Albanese government, more than 26,000 permanent public service positions have been added – and over half of these are Canberra based. For us this has meant working closely with our government clients to help them source skilled talent for these roles and developing innovative employer brand campaigns to drive reach, engagement, and awareness among candidates.

Increased talent pool for the private sector

Not all contractors want to join the public sector, so in line with the reduction of contracting roles, we’ve seen a higher proportion of skilled professionals pivoting to the private sector and/or leaving Canberra. This has been a win for industry which typically struggles to compete with federal government contract arrangements.

Declining job mobility

According to ABS data, the number of employees changing employers has continued to decrease over the past two years. This suggests an end to “The Great Resignation” theme that followed the pandemic, and is likely a reflection of cost of living pressures where people are prioritising job stability, even with unemployment figures remaining low.

Roll out of Whole of Government (WoG) panels

We’ve seen Buy ICT replace the Digital Marketplace as a WoG platform for digital procurement, and now the Department of Finance has almost completed its phased roll out of the new People Panel. This is designed with an intent to streamline recruitment for federal government departments, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out over the coming 12 to 24 months.

Looking ahead to 2025

With an upcoming election, it’s anyone’s guess as to how next year will unfold. HorizonOne will celebrate its 17^th birthday in 2025, so we’re no strangers to caretaker periods and potential leadership changes.

Regardless of political and economic tides, our focus always remains the same – supporting our clients with 360 degree recruitment and connecting our extensive network of talented professionals with opportunities that best align with their skills, values and aspirations.

We know recruitment mistakes can be very costly for organisations, and in more ways than one. Hiring someone who clashes with a team’s culture and completely disrupts its dynamic, or someone who looks perfect on paper but is unlikely to stay longer than a few months, can have significant repercussions. Preventing these situations from happening in the first place demands a special blend of access to the right talent, robust vetting, intuition, and influence.

We’re proud to have honed our special blend to a fine art over almost 20 years, and I believe this is largely driven by the way we nurture our own talent. We don’t just produce recruitment coordinators, but cultivate insightful recruitment consultants with robust skills and impressive networks.  

So whatever appears on the horizon in the year ahead, we’ll stay focussed on what we do best: helping clients secure the right people, and partnering with candidates to find opportunities that make their life better.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone – our team, clients, candidates, and industry partners – who have worked with us during the year. Have a safe and happy holiday, and we’ll see you again in 2025!