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.

The arrival of AI has been much discussed, but you only need to look at some AI activity – such as Inspirobot – to discover that things can go hideously awry. While Inspirobot is definitely tongue in cheek, it proves that an AI can never do what a dedicated recruitment consultant can and should. A couple of recent examples that we’ve heard about from Recruit So Simple software users to explain what we mean:

• A senior recruiter suggested that a geographer specialising in plate tectonics might be the ideal addition to an interdisciplinary team working in nanotechnology – he was right and they now have a major patent pending
• A relatively junior recruitment consultant matched a fifty-something female administrator with a group of young but high-flying derivatives sales traders. They were expecting to hire a male geek with algorithmic skills, and yet their new team admin hasn’t just helped increase business, she’s nearly doubled their customer satisfaction ratings.

In each case the consultant looked at the talent gap and made an imaginative leap through deep knowledge of their candidate base. For this to happen, recruiters need to be freed from the tyranny of endless paper work and database updates, so they can focus on understanding both clients and candidates. They also need recruitment database software that allows them to parse data in ways that will support intuitive understanding of client need, and respond to queries based on that intuitive grasp of individuals and organisations that no AI will ever master. Or, as Inspirobot so pertinently puts it: