I appreciate that Kate Ross (who works here) has had a year where keeping going has been hard. However, the screening that she mentions is (for most businesses, who cannot afford to have a huge HR department) a good reason to use her service

An example of this – last week we advertised a middle management role. We had 9000 views, 750 applicants read the advertisement and over 300 applied statistics from Seek. 300! We have numerous positions to fill and this is incredibly time consuming when 90 per cent of the applicants do not even meet the brief. When clients have a few roles to recruit they will approach an agency and ask for the “best price.” Fair enough, we all need to be flexible.

via Kate Ross: What have recruitment agencies learned from 2009? – page 2 – Business – NZ Herald News.

In health the problem is getting enough quality staff. It takes at least 14    years to train a spccailist. It takes at least 7 -10 years to train a nurse or social worker (I know their degrees take three years, but they need a lot of supervision for at least some years). Good people are hard to find. Hiring bad people is very very expensive both emotionally, financially and often not acceptable from a risk management point of view.

So, we have been recruiting in health. For empty jobs. However, the ceiling on these jobs is shrinking, as we are being asked to make even more cuts.

Kate sees some hope for next  year, based on what she is seeing happening over the last few months. This timing fits with a typical recession. The risk, however, is that the recession elsewhere will be prolonged and worsened by US and EU policies. As we rely on exports, the recovery elsewhere is as important (or more so) than our domestic situation.