Food and the future – recruitment in focus

February 23rd, 2021 | Industry News

Many industries have been hard hit by the pandemic – but the food industry has been one of those most affected. Attracting new talent to a sector that has traditionally been a less attractive area because salaries tend to be low and hours long and anti-social, isn’t being made easier by the traditional approaches to recruitment. A recent survey shows that Gen Z (those born after 1997) finds the food industry unappealing. Online recruitment software can help by pointing out the role of technology not just in recruitment but in the food sector itself. Food retailers and manufacturers can benefit by using recruitment management software to highlight the range of career paths to those entering the sector and then using recruitment CRM software to manage relationships with senior executives and talents in the industry to prove relevance and highlight company culture in ways that create awareness of the contribution of food sectors to communities.

The new Future of Work survey shows that despite pandemic woes, the recruitment sector is feeling more confident about the year ahead. 82% of employers globally said they were planning to recruit in 2021.

Talent acquisition is a large hurdle though. Recruitment agency software may help employers to find their feet in the new post-pandemic recruiting world. Challenges include a widening skills gap, pandemic effects such as an epidemic of mental health issues at every level and in every country and the need to increase diversity not just in the workplace but in approaches to work itself. While nearly 60% of banking and finance companies said they expected to fill vacancies created by the pandemic, re-skilling a work force is a major problem, especially as ‘year out’ candidates will have lost touch with the latest technology and changes in their sector. The best recruitment CRM drills down into the gaps in CVs and helps both recruiters and their potential candidates work out career paths that help individuals find the right jobs and organisations build more robust work cultures that allow people to engage quickly with their organisational ethos.

This is another area where diversity matters – being able to integrate people quickly, allowing a workforce to flow through an organisation, take sabbaticals or go and learn elsewhere and then return, or developing new ways of working that allow a wider range of individuals to contribute effectively to the company’s success, are all part of the new world of virtual work.