Planning your recruitment and selection approach at the outset will put you in a good position to employ the person best suited to the role and your agency’s needs.
Legal requirements
Division 4 of Part 4 of the GSE Act provides the legal basis for the employment and assignment of Public Service senior executives.
Division 5 of Part 4 of the GSE Act provides the legal basis for the employment and assignment of Public Service non-executives.
In addition, the GSE Regulation and the GSE Rules deal with employment issues relating to senior executives and non-executive employees in the Public Service. Recruitment and selection under the GSE framework is the process of employing a person in a kind of employment and assigning them to a role.
Approach to recruitment and selection
Effective planning at the outset of your recruitment and selection process may take a little longer, but will set you up to employ the best person for the role. It also positively affects candidates’ experience of the process and their view of your agency.
This includes thinking about how you can promote diversity and inclusion and prevent discrimination in your recruitment and selection process. It is a good time to consider:
- Using GSE rule 26 to enable the employment of eligible persons from designated groups (an Aboriginal person or Torres Strait Islander, a person with a disability, a person under the age of 25 years or a person on a Refugee and Humanitarian (Migrant) (Class XB) visa – see rule 26 for specific details)
- Flexible working options.
Talk to the HR or diversity teams in your agency for further advice or see:
- PSC’s disability and accessibility resources for more information on using rule 26 to employ people with disability
- Australian Human Rights Commission - A step-by-step guide to preventing discrimination in recruitment.
What to think about in planning your recruitment approach
Some of the main things to think about in planning your recruitment approach are set out below.
Advertising and assessment requirements
The kind of employment (ongoing, temporary, term or casual) being offered impacts on the legal requirements for:
- Advertising – external advertising or advertising across the Public Service
- Assessment – comparative assessment or suitability assessment.
The Fill a role decision tree will help you with the advertising and assessment requirements for the recruitment or mobility process you are doing.
Also consider whether you want to target the role to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders or people with disability. You can modify the assessment and advertising requirements under rule 26 when seeking to employ people from these and other eligible groups. Some agencies have an Aboriginal Services Unit (or equivalent) that can advise on recruiting for Aboriginal identified or targeted roles.
The GSE Rules also provide flexibility to design the assessment process to assess the capabilities, knowledge and experience needed for the role.
See: Designing the assessment process and Attracting candidates for practical guidance on assessment and advertising approaches.
Tip
Before deciding on your advertising and assessment approach, it is important to think ahead and consider whether there is any chance that at some future time you may want to:
- extend the length of temporary employment (see example 1)
- convert temporary or term employment to ongoing employment (see example 2).
Number of vacancies
When recruiting to fill a large number of vacancies, or to form a talent pool, consider using an assessment centre approach, which allows you to assess a high volume of candidates efficiently and effectively.
Recruiting to fill an individual vacancy is best limited to when you want to fill a specialised or less common role.
When deciding on your approach, think about both current vacancies and projected vacancies for the same or similar roles in the next 12 months.
Check with your HR team to see whether there is an existing talent pool that you could draw from to fill your role. Employing someone from a talent pool can save you from having to run a lengthy recruitment process.
The PSC’s Talent pools guide for HR and hiring managers has information about how to set up and use talent pools.
Features of the role
Consider the features of the role when developing your recruitment and selection approach. For example, the role may:
- be specialised (e.g. involving specialised technical or professional knowledge or experience)
- be hard to fill (e.g. professions where there are skills shortages)
- be a critical role
- have an essential job requirement (e.g. identifying as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander).
Depending on the features of the role, you may want to reach the broadest field or narrow in on candidates who are most likely to suit the role.
The following table shows how the features of different roles impact on the recruitment and selection approach.
| Essential requirement, e.g. Aboriginal identified role (specialised or common role) | Targeted role e.g. targeted to people with disability | Specialised, hard-to-fill role, e.g. geotechnical engineer | Common role with an essential requirement, e.g. graduate policy officer | Common role with no essential requirements, e.g. policy officer | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Recruitment approach | Role-by-role | Role-by-role or talent pool for 18 months | Role-by-role | Bulk | Bulk to form a talent pool for 18 months |
| Attracting candidates | Ad on I work for NSW Targeted ads (e.g. Koori Mail, Our Mob) and working with specialist providers | Ad on I work for NSW Targeted ads and working with specialist providers | Ad on I work for NSW Targeted ads (e.g. with industry associations) | Ad on I work for NSW Targeted ads (e.g. graduate online platforms) | Ad on I work for NSW |
| Pre-screening | Disqualification question on meeting essential requirement of Aboriginality | Disqualification question on meeting essential requirement of Aboriginality | Disqualification question on engineering qualification | Disqualification question on degree qualification Targeted question on motivation | Targeted questions on capability or motivation |
| Design of assessments | Assessments measure capabilities Consider modifications under GSE rule 26 At least one assessor is an Aboriginal person | Assessments measure capabilities Consider modifications under GSE rule 26 At least one assessor is a person with disability | Assessments measure specialist knowledge and experience as well as capabilities (including occupation-specific capabilities) | Assessments measure capabilities | Assessments measure capabilities |
Resources
Budget, availability of in-house expertise, and capacity of internal staff to deliver assessments will have an impact on your approach to recruitment and selection. Alternatively, whether you need to procure services from the Talent Acquisition Scheme to design and deliver assessments, undertake a talent search and provide and administer psychometric assessment tools and recruitment technologies.
Bulk recruitment approaches can seem time consuming and costly, but when executed well, they reduce the time and cost to hire per role in the longer term.
Designing and delivering assessments in-house is a good option where you have the available resources and expertise.
It may be worth investing more when recruiting to roles with high-level responsibility or roles that need specialist skills. You can procure services from the Talent Acquisition Scheme to design and deliver assessments, undertake a talent search and provide and administer psychometric assessment tools and recruitment technologies.