Needing defenders and becoming social – UK recruitment practices in the spotlight

February 21st, 2018 | Industry News

A survey of recruitment consultants in January 2018 revealed that 80% are ‘sick of defending their profession’ from claims they are unscrupulous and greedy. Why does recruitment have such a bad reputation?

Partly it’s historical, recruiters were equated with second-hand car dealers because they were paid like them – if you only got money when you filled a vacancy you lied, cheated and manipulated to get anybody into any job. But partly it’s modern – the average recruitment database is filled with candidates who are never contacted and therefore feel neglected and unwanted. Today’s recruitment system doesn’t generally focus on the candidate, and it’s easy for them to feel like little more than job fodder unless they are highly skilled, head-huntable individuals who get wined and dined before being offered jobs!

But that’s not how it has to be. Today’s online recruitment software is capable of automating many tasks so that both clients and candidates are kept in touch with recruitment progress. In addition, easy to use recruitment software gives recruitment consultants lots more time to spend with both clients and candidates, doing the part of the job that really matters, understanding needs, communicating and matching up perfect candidates with ideal jobs.

Trends to watch in recruitment

The tendency to use social recruitment is growing and growing – and the reasons why are very clear. The average adult now spends two and a half hours on social channels every day, including weekends. For recruiters this has key advantages:

• Otherwise unavailable candidates can be located using social media – every recruiter knows that the best candidates aren’t usually hunting for jobs, so having a mechanism to reach them with enticing offers is invaluable.
• Social media is cheap compared to other forms of candidate attraction – being able to run cost-effective campaigns is a huge benefit in terms of turnover.
• Talent tapping – there is nothing like social media for sharing, and when job opportunities get shared in social circles, they tend to have extra weight. This means that Facebook and LinkedIn do the work for the recruiter, putting a stamp of approval on a forwarded opportunity that can reach a potential candidate through friendship circles that the recruiter could never otherwise penetrate.

For social recruitment to work effectively, cloud recruitment software has to keep pace with social developments and utilise applicant tracking software to maintain touch with a wide range of diffuse candidates so that the recruiter can recognise social patterns and respond to them rapidly. This is called ‘building talent circles’ and it gives a recruiter constituencies of potential to call on.