UK recruitment focus – March 2018

March 22nd, 2018 | Industry News

The next recruitment crisis – STEM

Most industries already know that recruiting STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) candidates is getting tougher. Even the best recruitment CRM can struggle to identify more than a few available candidates for senior level positions in these fields. A recent survey of 186 chemists reveals that they believe their profession is in crisis. A third of those who responded said that low recruitment numbers were creating a serious problem. Why? Well, despite Breaking Bad, chemistry is not as exciting as some other science fields and lacks the big public awareness stories that physics (Large Hadron Collider) and biology (Human Genome Project) use to drive recruitment. Over half of those surveyed said public understanding of chemistry also presented a problem – they were seen as mad boffins but never as providing the solutions to problems e.g. solving climate change.

STEM candidates are definitely in a buyer’s market and one way that recruiting software can help organisations find the best personnel is by charting the ‘soft appeal’ that can convince an individual that a job or project is right for them. For example, a large engineering project recently recruited several structural engineers by highlighting international level opportunities in their sporting interests, including touring a velodrome with one keen cyclist! The extent to which soft appeal converts sought after candidates is often debated, but SaaS recruitment agencies know that when all else is equal, these details can be vital to a successful recruitment process.

It’s not all bad news for recruiters

There’s been a plethora of miserable messages about UK recruitment, which is why it can be sometimes helpful to get a bigger perspective. A recent talk by the President of the World Employment Confederation called on a range of industry data to suggest that recruiters would have a more social role in future, giving candidates career guidance and touching base with them at various points in their working life. Annemarie Muntz’s comments suggest that any applicant tracking system UK based will need to balance the sensitivity of new data protection legislation with sophisticated reporting functions that allow recruiting agencies to spot the points when candidates may be ready for a move, or simply for career guidance, and make the contact that gives them access to a great candidate pool.

This approach is increasingly being taken by the world’s major recruitment consultancies and it requires online recruitment software that allows for 24/7 updating of candidate and client information, strong reporting structures and sophistication of data entry so that personalised candidate profiles can be created to track talent throughout an entire career.