Recruitment’s elephants in the room

November 20th, 2017 | Industry News

It’s been an unusual month for the recruitment industry which has – on several fronts – faced a hard reality check. One development will soon be adding extra pressure to the work of recruitment agencies dealing with construction and HR departments in the building and construction industries. A campaign to convince up to 1500 overseas construction workers to move to New Zealand is offering fast track visas and ‘experiences’ including fishing, surfing and cultural activities to qualified construction workers. This talent trawl is designed to entice building professionals who are feeling worried by Brexit, and recruitment professionals in the UK will need to have a clear and comprehensive offer to compete.

This means working with a recruiting platform that does much more than simply track candidates: hiring and keeping skilled trade professionals inside the UK will require recruitment software that identifies key candidates as soon as they become available and processes them through an applicant tracking system that creates a conversation between recruiter and candidate. Above all, in an industry like construction where downtime is expensive, cloud recruitment software may be vital to effective candidate adherence – building professionals seek rapid and professional placement and one key offering that could keep workers in the UK is being placed speedily into a new job, rather than waiting for visa application and clearance procedures to move abroad.

Financial recruitment and sexual harassment

A recent article opens up the degree of sexual harassment it is claimed goes on in the financial recruitment sector. Hiring discussions include chest size and emails circulate throughout firms detailing the sexual behaviours of senior personnel and their junior employees. On the other hand, some firms claim to be cracking down on sexism in the financial services sector by sacking senior consultants who harass their colleagues. Recruitment systems need to be sensitive enough to track patterns of hire and fire that can help industries be accountable and assist firms in being alert to company cultures that not only damage individuals but have negative impacts on recruitment and retention.

Multilingual recruitment

The search for multilingual employees is hotting up. Around the world, organisations are seeking a multilingual workforce that can really handle working in two or more languages. Recruitment technology is being harnessed to screen language claims through the recruitment software database before they are shortlisted to the employer. Online interviews, including language-based role-plays and tasks, are frequently used to refine the shortlist and help select candidates whose language skills can be proven to deliver in real-time.