Everything, it seems, is at our fingertips nowadays. We can have a tax return submitted, a loan application completed or a holiday booked within the hour, having not left the house. Sometimes that’s great, especially when you’re pushed for time.
After all, who wants to spend hours with their accountant? The prospect of hanging out with a travel agent on a busy Saturday afternoon is only slightly more appealing.
But in reality, you would have seen a few extra dollars in your tax return if you’d invested the time and sat with your accountant for a while. And the mortgage broker’s advice on which loan type is right for you would surely have saved you time shopping around, and perhaps even saved you a bit in interest and fees.
While it’s tempting in our technology-enabled world to do things on our own, having an expert in your corner can pay dividends in the long run. It ensures you’re armed with the right knowledge, and have access to advice and guidance when you need it – without having to do the legwork yourself.
The same theory plays out when looking for a job. Why search for a job online, submit an application for something that sounds okay and hope for the best? How about working with a professional, a human coach who you can bounce ideas off? Who can give you advice and guidance? Who has your interests – not a desire to fill a role with any body – driving them?
We are living in an era of information saturation and data overload. We simply haven’t got the time in our day to read everything there is to read out there, to decipher all of the data we can access.
In fact, it can be overwhelming if you try to do it yourself – whether you’re searching for the perfect holiday, the best loan or the best possible job. How do you know – with long-term certainty – what to look at and what to ignore?
Ideally, we need someone who knows what they’re talking about to help us along. Where recruiters will add further value in coming years is as a talent agent – similar to the likes of NFL and AFL players. We’ll be career managers.
The best recruiters concentrate on the right position; plan your next move strategically, while looking at the skills you need to develop to either step-up the ladder where you are or move into a genuinely career-advancing role in three years’ time.
That role of talent agent or career coach, where you work with someone over a number of years and trust them implicitly, can only be done by a human – and an intelligent, emotionally-sensitive one at that.
Technology will continue to help make parts of the process more efficient. However, technology is not going to be able to know that, for example, you and your partner are planning children in a year’s time, so you’d like to be in a role closer to home with flexible working arrangements.
Or help you discover that, actually, the sector you’re currently in isn’t fulfilling you, but with a little external training your core skills would be ideal for company X. Or that because you work in a certain industry at present, your pay TV subscription and that magazine you love are potentially tax-deductible.
For that insight and advice, you need an expert in your corner and the team at HR Partners is exactly that. To meet our team of recruiters and hear about the latest jobs in your field contact us on 1800 239 475.