Recruitment begins to recover from Coronavirus

July 11th, 2020 | Industry News

While there’s evidence that recruitment is starting to pick up after the lockdown process, there are also painful signs that COVID-19 has hit the sector hard. Big recruitment agencies have laid people off, while some smaller agencies will not be reopening at all. Candidate supply still outstrips demand, but there’s more evidence of large corporations running recruitment drives. The best recruitment software for agencies is helping recruitment consultancies to drive new business. Online recruitment software can be used for much more than simply tracking applicants and managing the administration of each vacancy. It can also be used to predict trends to to help recruitment consultants to be proactive in approaching clients and finding new business.

As employers return staff from furlough, there are also opportunities for recruitment agencies to use recruitment management software to help fill gaps or to engage with businesses that are changing direction as a result of the Coronavirus outbreak.

Sectors that are definitely recruiting include public relations, marketing and retail. The first two have budgets that need to be spent in a hurry, while retail has continued to adjust to the new conditions, first by recruiting for warehousing and distribution, then by pushing online retail as an alternative to bricks and mortar and now by attempting to restore traditional shopping habits with new and safer social distancing measures. Online recruitment software helps agencies chart where each client is in the return to normality and to suggest where and when new recruitment will be needed to support economic growth.

The downside to all this is that experts are suggesting hard decisions will need to be made about recruitment as the whole economy faces a slew of insolvencies. Recruitment will not be immune from the difficult decisions facing the UK. The recruitment agencies most at risk will be those who cannot adapt easily to the demands of a rapidly changing and often fragile economy. Recruitment agencies who make use of SaaS solutions are likely to fare better than others, as they will have the opportunity (a) to allow consultants to work from home and to engage with clients who are doing the same and (b) will be able to search their candidate pool to rapidly identify candidates. The best recruitment CRM is designed to help agencies adjust to changes in their environment and help their client base to navigate the same changes with confidence.