Recruiting OH&S/HSE people

[erica]

Hi, I’m an internal recruiter looking for some insights as to how people go recruiting mid level OH&S /HSE people.

What is the market like - I'd like to set some reasonable expectations for the manager!

Do you find any particular job boards or other advertising products better than others?

And if you use job boards what categories do you advertise in? (OH&S jobs seem to be all over the place).

Also, do you call it an OH&S job, or an HSE job? (are they essentially the same thing?)

Any advice would be much appreciated

Cheers,
Erica

PS. I can't use recruitment agencies for this!

[Lynette]

My advise to you is to go back to your management and discuss the reasons why you are unable to go to an agency for this. With so little market knowledge you are setting yourself up for failure. These people are often in high demand and like talking to people who understand them and their industry. You will have a lot better chance of success if you find a local specialist with a good track record and partner with them to fill in the knowledge you need.

The answers to the questions you ask will depend on what state and industry you are in.

[Lisa-Jane]

Hi Erica,

Most job boards have OHS as a category under HR & Recruitment. For any OHS practitioner OHS and HSE are interchangable so I do not think it matters what you call it.
There are some OHS jobs being advertised currently with packages in the 60 to 80 range. Thera are also combined HR/OHS jobs being advertised. I have found that there are plenty of applicants if you are happy to accept an applicant with a degree in a related discipline.
Jobs in HR advertise OHS roles as well.

Hope this helps,

Lisa-Jane.

[erica]

Thanks Lisa-Jane and Lynette for your advice.

When advertising vacancies I like to cover a few different bases, so I try to use a mix of targeted advertising plus at least one of the big job boards.

I try to figure out where the particular job seekers look and how they look for jobs, so I start by trying to put myself in their shoes. This helps me decide what advertising products to use and how to categorise the job when using a large job board.

With a targeted product such as Jobs in HR (thanks for the tip Lisa-Jane!) it's quite straightforward, but with a large job board such as Seek, I search for a the relevant type of job and see how easy it is to find what I'm looking for.

When I first looked for OH&S jobs on Seek I naturally looked under HR and sure enough there was an OH&S category, but there were only a few hundred jobs listed nationally, which I thought was a bit suspicious. So I did a keyword search for OH&S and got about 1800 results. Then I tried HSE and got over 2000 results. Looking at the results in more detail I found that OH&S and HSE jobs were listed in all sorts of different sub categories. Which makes it very difficult (or expensive) to cover all the bases.

On the other hand this might mean that OH&S people tend to look for jobs in a particular industry. Obviously an OS&H person from a manufacturing environment would have very different knowledge and experience to an OH&S person from say a Bank.

Does anyone know how much movement there is of OH&S people between industry sectors ?

If I’m looking for someone to work in service industry is it worth trying to attract people from manufacturing or white collar environments ?

Cheers,
Erica

PS. Lynette, using an agency is not out of the question, but there's no way I would get approval until I can show that I have had a good go at doing it ourselves.

[Lisa-Jane]

Hi Erica,

OHS like any other profession can be quite specialised. My advice would be to determine whether you would like to attract specialist OHS professionals or generalists. Generalists would be more likely to move between industries, while specialists tend to stay in industries they are familiar with.
For example a generalist may look under HR & Recruitment on Seek while a specialist may search within their industry only.

Hope this helps,

Lisa-Jane.

[erica]

It certainly does!

Thanks

[Lynette]

Hi Erica,

When recruiting for OHS/HSE people I prefer to look for someone with industry experience especially if it is a hands on role. A lot of OHS specialists within manufacturing will be trying to head more into the mining fields as they are highly sought after and therefore well paid and must have a mining/manufacturing/heavy industry background. If you are looking for someone for a service industry you would be better off looking in the generalist or HR type fields or you might find you are competing with some larger salaries.

As Lisa says it is worth while working out what skills you need and which industries are likely to provide them and then advertise in those particular fields. This should narrow down your search a lot so you needn't advertise in all OHS fields on something like Seek.

Good luck!

[erica]

Thanks for your suggestions.

Cheers,
Erica