EU – UK trade deal
January 16th, 2021 | Industry News
The less than snappily named UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement has finally been presented to parliament and will become law. It’s been in effect since 31 December but given the new UK lockdown the effect of many of its provisions remains largely untried.
Of most significance to the UK recruitment industry is the failure to provide automatic recognition systems for professional qualifications. This process means that medical personnel, chefs, architects, accountants etc will now have to demonstrate either competence or equivalency through mechanisms that have not, as yet, been designed, let alone tested. Applicant tracking system UK centred software will now have to cope with this factor. SAAS recruitment agencies are likely to have an advantage in this area, assuming they are not bespoke systems which may therefore require substantial reconfiguration. This is because software designed to be used online with ‘software as a service’ capacity is usually constructed to handle rapid updates and to integrate with other administrative systems.
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12 months of recruitment in focus
December 30th, 2020 | Industry News
The UK’s recruitment sector increased to a £42.3 billion turnover in pre-pandemic 2019, that’s an overall 8% expansion and totals 2.1% of the contribution to the UK economy of each industry. That’s a greater benefit to the UK as a whole than education or the arts. More interesting to those seeking the best recruitment CRM is the breakdown between temp and contract and permanent placement/headhunting. Just £4.5 billion of that total comes from headhunting and permanent placement activity. After the impact of COVID-19, which has challenged the temp and contract sector with boom and flatline cycles that have taxed even the best recruiting software to keep pace, permanent placement has started to look like an attractive proposition to hard-hit smaller agencies. And that’s most of us. 81% of the recruitment agencies in the UK have fewer than ten staff and 2020 has forced many small operations to merge or go under.
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Remote hiring and hurried hiring – December’s recruitment trends
December 14th, 2020 | Industry News
A survey into the key trends we can expect in recruiting in the year ahead has generated responses from 20 countries and 15 industries. The most significant result was the discovery that COVID-19 has changed the interviewing and recruitment processes for nearly everybody. Nearly 80% of those who responded said that their processes were not completely remote. Recruitment software has obviously both driven and responded to this trend and new technologies are being used, and added, on a more or less weekly basis. Recruiting software than can manage the applicant tracking process is benefitting both recruitment agencies and HR departments, as it allows them to post vacancies, handle responses, shortlist candidates, conduct video interviews and even onboard recruits. SAAS recruitment agencies have an added benefit – they allow consultants to work remotely, so that they can stay in touch with clients and candidates without putting any body at risk.
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From foundations to glass ceiling – how recruitment software helps
November 30th, 2020 | Industry News
Every organisation has found 2020 stressful, today Recruit So Simple is looking at how one sector is finding mass hires for essential work. At the other end of the scale, we’re exploring how recruiting software is helping find key talent at the executive and board level.
Building from the ground up
One industry that has always struggled with recruitment is construction – and this has been made worse by the pandemic. After difficult years, notably 2008, construction has found it difficult to fill qualified and experienced roles. Developing creative recruitment systems has been key to helping successful building firms stay afloat. For example, the traditional apprentice route had been revitalised by government schemes, but COVID-19 has required much more virtual recruiting such as:
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Lockdown II and recruitment
November 22nd, 2020 | Industry News
One industry that was hard hit by the first lockdown was the legal sector. New law graduates have been finding it hard to find employment because of the hiring freeze in many chambers and ‘zoom court’ has in itself limited who can participate in legal activities. Recruitment agency software in the UK shows an underlying new trend though, a demand for contract and restructuring expertise. This is the result of damaged supply chains and disappointed clients, as well as the need to manage employment contracts for senior personnel during lockdown. That trend has just accelerated again, as online recruitment software reveals, because employers are trying to work out how they can balance the legal requirement to ‘agree changes to employee contracts in advance’ with the 60 hours notice or a return to lockdown. Particularly for senior personnel and those who have tailored contracts, this chop and change approach to employment requires care and attention at a time when many are working from home and unable to easily access legal advice on how to handle critical employee decisions.
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Impact and output – COVID-19 and recruiting
October 22nd, 2020 | Industry News
A recent survey from the USA suggests that optimism is growing in the recruitment sector, despite the difficulties of COVID-19. 800 people responded, worldwide. The great news is that nearly a third of organisations are doing as well or better than they were a year ago, but the bad news is that 28% say their income has dropped, by as much as 30%. Unsurprisingly, nearly half of those experiencing this level of difficulty are hospitality and travel based. It’s also evident that temp agencies have risen with the tide, whilst those agencies specialising in headhunting and permanent recruitment have found it harder to maintain position. Recruitment management software has helped agencies in two ways: first it has given opportunities to conduct the recruitment process online from initial contact through to onboarding. Second, it has allowed agencies to automate many administrative stages, giving recruiters more chance to use their time effectively in meetings, interviews and maintaining contact with clients and candidates.
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Recruitment statistics and methods for winter 2020
October 7th, 2020 | Industry News
A recent survey shows that despite all the ups and downs of COVID-19, UK companies are a little more optimistic about permanent hiring. The Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) says that short-term demand rose by around 11% between June and August. Recruitment software evidence bears out this trend, and while business confidence is still in the negative zone it’s also picking up. On the other hand most employers apparently still think that the economy will worsen before it gets better, but their negative view is somewhat less developed than in a previous survey in April.
Recruitment CRM software reveals that the lifting of public health restrictions through the summer helped the employment sector get on the move. Another positive influence has been that employers also have a better strategy to cope with this (hopefully) unique crisis. Job advertising has begun to increase slowly and SAAS recruitment agencies in particular are seeing a benefit from being online, as work from home recruiters find it easy to navigate the complexities of hiring without an office and with a team working virtually.
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Recruitment software predictions and new trends in interviewing
September 29th, 2020 | Industry News
The most recent report exploring the global recruitment software market says that market value will reach £2.3 billion by 2027 growing at a compound annual growth rate of 6%. This prediction recognises the impact of COVID-19 on the recruitment sector, which has been an acceleration of demand due to the need to source, recruit and onboard people remotely.
It’s a rare positive prediction in a world that’s become increasingly challenging for employers, recruitment professionals and recruitment agencies.
Video interviewing – the future?
There’s a growing interest in video interviewing, which is not the same and a Zoom or Google Hangouts interview. Both the latter are live activities whereas a video interview, particularly for senior and executive positions, is a pre-recorded activity that amplifies a candidate’s CV and gives a deeper, more three dimensional understanding of the individual. Recruiting software has a great role to play in this process as it allows recruiters, whether HR departments or recruitment consultants, to revisit the process that has led to shortlisting and will result in the interview process and pick out questions for the candidates to answer that will illuminate their fit for the role.
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Recruiting in 2020 – what to aim for
September 10th, 2020 | Industry News
Few sectors have been as hard hit, or expected to recover as fast, as recruitment. What can recruitment agencies, and recruiters, expect from the rest of 2020?
Inbound marketing will boom
With digital technologies becoming matter of fact in many areas like conferencing and interviewing, recruitment database software that can make a contribution to inbound marketing will be invaluable. Inbound marketing aims to grow an organisation by creating lasting relationships with clients, candidates and influencers. It has three phases – attraction (bringing people with great content and engagement skills into the organisation’s orbit), engagement (offering solutions, insights or innovations that match the pain points of the audience, creating a sense of trust) and delight (helping, supporting, cheering on the audience so they feel engaged with the organisation and its offerings). Recruitment CRM software has an essential role in identifying potential influencers that a recruitment consultancy can bring into their outreach activity. For example, at least one Recruit So Simple client has had great success in getting candidates to blog for them – many have gone on to obtain positions or placements and others have generated a ‘buzz’ that leads to more candidates of their calibre and skillset signing up with the agency, leading to a superb talent pool that can be marketed to clients.
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What COVID-19 means for recruitment
August 24th, 2020 | Industry News
There’s good and bad this month as we look at the future of recruitment in the UK. As the
Recruitment and Employment Confederation has just become a signatory to the Race at Work Charter which seeks to improve opportunities for black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) individuals in the recruitment industry, web based recruitment software has a role to play, not just in improving recruitment of people of colour, but in benefiting the recruitment industry by offering a more diverse and robust recruiting industry itself.
How?
Online recruitment software has the ability to strip away information that can support unconscious bias, which has been demonstrated to limit profitability and productivity. A more diverse recruiting industry would, in turn, have less (or at least different!) unconscious bias, leading to exactly the kind of stronger, more profitable organisations that we’re going to need post COVID-19.
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