What COVID-19 means for recruitment

August 24th, 2020 | Industry News

There’s good and bad this month as we look at the future of recruitment in the UK. As the
Recruitment and Employment Confederation has just become a signatory to the Race at Work Charter which seeks to improve opportunities for black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) individuals in the recruitment industry, web based recruitment software has a role to play, not just in improving recruitment of people of colour, but in benefiting the recruitment industry by offering a more diverse and robust recruiting industry itself.

How?

Online recruitment software has the ability to strip away information that can support unconscious bias, which has been demonstrated to limit profitability and productivity. A more diverse recruiting industry would, in turn, have less (or at least different!) unconscious bias, leading to exactly the kind of stronger, more profitable organisations that we’re going to need post COVID-19.

Staffing and contract sectors face a tough future

On the other hand, staffing agencies, those who primarily find temporary and contract workers, are seen to be a major victim of COVID-19, in a major international report. Virtually every staffing market worldwide is expected to lose up to 50% of revenue in the next 12 months, depending on the recovery path each economy takes. Recruiting software needs to respond to several different trajectories, from the ‘tick’ (rapid fall, quick partial recovery [often supported by government initiatives] and slow rise to full recovery) to the ‘W’ where lockdowns, either local or national, come and go over the next couple of years, as countries or regions fight the pandemic with varying degrees of success and have to address the results of government decisions about opening schools, closing borders etc.

The best recruitment CRM allows recruiters to stay in touch with candidates even in full lockdown, whilst engaging in best practice Coronavirus management by allowing personnel to work from home while supporting key industries needing to find temporary or contract staff in difficult circumstances.

In this report the UK is predicted to have a difficult recovery with a 27% decline in activity in a ‘tick’ and a 45% decline in a ‘W’. If this scenario proves true, then recruitment management software may not only determine which agencies survive but may also help decide which scenario the overall national economic recovery takes.