Brexit, hiring priorities and the role of software in recruitment
February 8th, 2019 | Industry News
To start February rolling we’ve got a mash-up of the biggest stories in recruitment right now, and it turns out they have a linking thread…
Deal? No deal? Backstop? Everybody’s feeling confused about where we stand and what happens next, which is why the recent comments by Neil Carberry, chief executive of the Recruitment & Employment Confederation are significant. “A no deal Brexit is not a tolerable way forward,” he said, before pointing out that “Political paralysis is already impacting firms – slowing down investment decisions and damaging our reputation globally.”
Sadly, no recruitment software can provide certainty about our future, but one thing that online recruitment software can provide is flexibility. A recent survey by CV-Library reveals that while 72% of UK organisations are planning to work harder on recruitment in 2019, over 80% of recruitment professionals are experiencing a lack of ‘relevant talent’ which bring us to the question of the role of software (and even hardware!) in recruitment.
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We predict the recruitment fireworks and damp squibs of 2019
January 6th, 2019 | Industry News
When monster.com reports that the biggest job application day of the year is 27th January, with the number of applications that day being 75% above the daily average, we know we have a phenomenon on our hands. But like the dating market (where match.com reports a 42% increase in new members on their most popular day, 7 January) there’s also a tendency for job applicants, like online daters, to never take any further action (41% of dating app users never go on a date!).
The drivers for seeking a new job include:
- spending time with friends and family over Christmas and being asked how work is going
- overspending during the holidays
- doing something at the office party that you really don’t want to have to face up to in the New Year!
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Recruit So Simple’s year end round-up
December 23rd, 2018 | Industry News
Well, it wouldn’t be a round-up if we didn’t include Brexit, and with the latest Office of National Statistics report showing that net EU migration has fallen to its lowest since 2012, everybody’s focusing on how to recruit, where to recruit and most of all – how to retain, key staff.
As candidate availability reduces, and employers struggle to take on more work because they aren’t confident that they can recruit the necessary staff, recruitment agency software needs to be more sensitive, more selective and more rapid in responding to client need.
Online recruitment software has two major advantages:
- it allows consultants, and candidates, to update and amend information outside office hours
- it permits experienced recruitment consultants to interrogate data in ways that deliver the right information rapidly and succinctly to the hiring client.
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Christmas, New Year and new horizons for recruitment
December 14th, 2018 | Industry News
This year’s daft December story goes to the recruitment agency Logical Resources which has decided to publicise its 2018 Christmas party by hiring a PR agency to puff it. And it’s worth puffing, as the company’s UK and Australia teams re going to be flown to Phuket for an all-expenses paid seven night ‘blow out’. Wow.
Now there’s no way that even the best recruiting software could help a company make decisions about this kind of activity – but perhaps it would be better if it could. While meeting targets should definitely be rewarded, we’re wondering if recruitment is starting to look like the city traders of 2000 – and we all know how that ended!
There’s another reason that big Christmas and New Year parties aren’t always a great idea in the recruitment sector and that’s because the New Year is when many candidates start to look around.
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Recruitment engagement and salary gaps
November 27th, 2018 | Industry News
A LinkedIn survey shows that once again, the UK has the most socially engaged recruitment agencies. LinkedIn found that four out of the top ten socially engaged agencies were British, with 20 of the top 25 socially engaged recruiting consultancies in Europe, the Middle East and Africa located in the UK.
Why social engagement matters for recruitment
Recruiters in the UK clearly recognise the value of social media integration in building strong brand identities – which in turn boosts their ability to engage both lucrative clients and high calibre candidates. The best recruitment CRM draws upon social media engagement to identify networks of interest that can then be explored when creating recruitment strategies. Not only that, but strong social media engagement feeds recruiting software, giving recruiting consultancies a chance to recognise change and to spot social trends that can give the agency’s consultants a chance to inform and educate their clients about developing workplace issues, concerns and opportunities.
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When software fails and what to do about it
November 9th, 2018 | Industry News
One topic dominates the blogs and industry publications this month – diversity
Over in the USA, the advertising industry is battling with its engagement with the #MeToo movement. It’s not just the problem of an obvious lack of women and people of colour in senior positions in advertising – with the PR problems this brings. It’s also that this can cause some notable backfires in major advertising campaigns, for example Pepsi’s appalling campaign that used Kendall Jenner as a ‘peace maker’ at a Black Lives Matter rally… by offering a police officer a can of soft drink. Described as ‘trivialising’, ‘tone deaf’ ‘dangerously complacent’ the ad was quickly pulled and cost the PepsiCo president Brad Jakeman his job.
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Disability and Brexit – failures and opportunities for recruitment
October 22nd, 2018 | Industry News
According to the UK’s Recruitment Industry Disability Initiative, 70% of employers don’t know where to find disabled talent and only 11% of HR professionals are ‘confident’ that they can locate and recruit disabled candidates.
As our next piece reveals, this is a major failure of recruitment for two different reasons:
- Ethically – the failure to recruit and utilise talent, regardless of ‘ability’ weakens an organization, can damage confidence of employees (particularly Gen X and Z, who are much more inclusive and non-abilist than their predecessors) and weakens brand reputation
- Economically – as the UK struggles with talent acquisition in the run up to Brexit, failure to identify talent and to retain it, particularly at the senior level, leaves businesses open to a reduction of their skills and experience base and a diminution of the competitiveness in the marketplace.
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Recruitment fails and why they matter
October 11th, 2018 | Industry News
A recent study produced by University College Dublin reveals that companies that give candidates a poor experience may actually be helping their rivals to succeed.
It’s related to a psychological phenomenon called The Immutable Law of the Ex, which is the process in which footballers outperform their usual standards when they are playing against their former club. So what does this mean for employers?
People who feel badly treated or overlooked by a potential employer are twice as likely to share that information online as those who have a good experience – not only that, but then they go all out be a total winner in the next job they do get, to prove the ‘bad’ employer wrong. The recruitment industry is barely aware of this phenomenon, but it’s likely to have a huge social impact on the reputation of both employers and recruitment agencies. When assessing what makes a ‘bad experience’ in recruitment, three key issues stand out:
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Creative hiring and untrustworthy recruitment agencies
September 26th, 2018 | Industry News
How to find good candidates in a buyers’ market
Every HR department knows that recruiting is getting more difficult. While recruitment software can help sift through the available candidates, it can’t magic suitable candidates out of thin air! So how can recruitment agencies and HR teams find those elusive ‘suitable candidates’?
One way is to move from job descriptions to position personas. The standard recruitment outline describes the job and the person required to do it in terms of skills, qualifications and experience. In a shrinking candidate pool, persona descriptions look at softer skills, empathy, resilience, self-propulsion, sociability etc. – they enlarge the candidate base by allowing organisations to use their web based recruitment software to identify people who could be up-skilled or re-qualified to fulfil the job description.
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Rules for new recruitment agencies and recruiting for e-commerce
September 11th, 2018 | Industry News
The recruitment sector is often said to be one of the faster growing industries in the UK – which ignores the fact that as many agencies close as open. It’s certainly true to say that the industry is one of the fastest-moving; agencies come and go with lighting speed! So what gives a new recruitment agency longevity?
1. Knowing how the sector operates – ‘disruptors’ have ideas about how to make recruitment faster, more reliable or less labour intensive. Good for them. But when disruptors don’t actually know how recruitment works, they have a one-dimensional view of the sector. The reputation of an agency depends on:
- matching demand with supply
- sourcing high calibre candidates
- building great client relationships
- securing a recruitment package that suits both sides.
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