4.5% for 2022. Whilst the economic bounceback at the beginning of 2021 was a welcome relief, one constraint unexpected by many businesses was the difficulty in hiring staff. As we enter 2022, access to talent will remain constricted, and I anticipate an even tougher challenge ahead.  Why, might you ask? There are dual factors at play. Firstly, Australia has been suffering from a talent shortage for some time. With our ageing population exiting the workforce, our current birth rates are not at replacement level, with 3.54% in 1961 vs 1.66% reported in 2019. If you have hired infrequently over the last few years, you may not have fully felt or realised how acute the situation has become.   The other factor is Covid-19, which has exacerbated the situation, bringing our talent crisis to the surface at an alarming speed. Immigration decreased sharply and we saw a change in workforce attitude, with preferences for part-time and remote working, and even people opting out. Job security also became a priority, resulting in a reluctance to leave jobs.  For Australia, the result is a significantly reduced talent pool. If businesses are relying on talent acquisition as part of their growth strategy, they have a significant problem.  A window of opportunity One solution? Hire over the Christmas and New Year period. Most businesses leave this time for festivities – and why not? For a lot of businesses, it’s down time. But turn it into your ‘up time’ instead. It’s a simple math equation: fewer companies hiring increases your chances of securing talent.   Another reason businesses have traditionally not hired over this period has been to save on the cost of paying public holidays. But in today’s market, the costs saved by not paying the public holidays are insignificant compared with the prolonged costs of an empty seat, or worse, burnout and lack of retention among your team from the additional workload, or the costs of dissatisfied customers not being looked after due to staff shortages. Consider hiring during this period an investment, not a cost.  If this is a quieter time in your business, even more reason to consider hiring. Use this time for training, upskilling, onboarding, and securing engagement, which is critical as a retention strategy.  To fully benefit from a Christmas hiring strategy, consider the following: ·        Know your value proposition: What people are seeking in a work environment now has all changed. Align with collective thinking and trends. That means offering flexible working hours, reskilling workers, and delivering greater meaning through a socially conscious business. ·        Write a job advert: It is all about the person applying, so make it attractive. The purpose of the advert is to draw people in. Include the benefits and appealing aspects of the job and company. Avoid listing duties and tasks like a shopping list. ·        Pay market salary and not below: Remember, it’s highly competitive, and you can bet the candidate interviewing with you is also interviewing elsewhere. If you decide to pay below the market, you may find yourself competing with everyone else in February, and because your job has been open for so long, it may be perceived as having something wrong with it. ·        Be efficient: Don’t run a recruitment process with multiple interviews spaced over weeks just to justify your selection. You may lose that first fabulous candidate. Know what good looks like, and don’t wait to benchmark. ·        Compromise and be flexible: A cookie-cutter approach of matching CVs to job specifications doesn’t work anymore. Consider wildcard candidates and look for great attributes such as dependability, resilience, flexibility, and optimism, matched with a wonderful attitude.  Having a competitive advantage is a must in business. This Christmas period could provide an excellent opportunity to reshape your process and shift old habits, bringing more predictability to this unpredictable world. Hiring over the Christmas period is a recruiter’s best-kept secret. This is the season to be jolly and recruiting.