SALARY     JOB-HOPPING     TALENT ATTRACTION

Singapore – Hiring managers are having to do more with less, as the salary expectations of job-seeking Singaporeans continues to exceed hiring budgets.

With nearly seven in 10 Singapore employees on the lookout for higher-paying jobs, two-thirds of employers are saying they are worried about losing their high-performers.

Hudson’s Salary and Employment Insights 2012 report revealed about 80% of Singapore employees feel they deserve a pay rise this year. While 42% of employers said they are planning to increase permanent staff levels this year, they said their best candidates are requesting for amounts exceeding their hiring budgets.

This poses a dilemma to employers who seek to attract high performing candidates who can help propel their businesses forward without any cost, Andrew Tomich, Executive General Manager, Hudson Singapore, said.

“Hiring managers now have to do more with less, which is especially difficult when salary is the top driver for 27% of candidates and many employees believe it’s easy to find a similar package elsewhere,” he said.

In fact, over eight in 10 hiring managers reported the salary expectations of their preferred candidates exceed their budget.  As a result, 48% said they increased their budget to secure the best candidate, while the remaining employers settled for their second-choice.

“The most talented mid-to-senior hires are able to secure higher salaries,” Tomich said. “In order to help companies manage their wage bills, we recommend employers adjust their recruitment processes to help them identify the candidates that offer the best value – in other words, those that can make the biggest difference to the bottom line.”

To identify high achievers, Hudson advised employers to broaden their approach from traditional methods of selecting new hires that focus on technical qualifications and experience. Current approaches have been costly for a number of employers who have reported that 54% of employees were described as ‘average’ or ‘bad’ in 2012.

Employers can include assessments that measure candidates’ motivational and behavioural attributes, which have been shown to be more accurate indicators of performance, the report suggested.

Next, organisations also need to understand their priorities in terms of the harder-to-fill strategic roles that help take an organisation forward, and the ‘critical’ and ‘core’ roles that keep the organisation functioning on a day-to-day basis, the report said.

“Many businesses need to review their recruitment function – from the brief they give to their recruitment consultants, through to interview and on-boarding procedures,” Tomich said. “Recruitment is cost-driven and much is compromised by time constraints, yet poor hires can cause untold damage in terms of culture, morale, productivity and profits.”
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