Recruitment goes from strength to strength

March 29th, 2021 | Industry News

We all know it’s been an unbelievable 12 months for the recruitment sector. Agencies making use of SaaS (software as a service) platforms in particular have been able to observe the trends, mainly negative, that have shaped the past year in recruiting, but finally there seems to be blue skies above the clouds that have affected every industry. From the USA, comes encouraging news about temporary employment. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that 9 out of 15 major industry sectors posted positive employment levels in February 2021. Highlights include the much needed 355,000 new temporary jobs in the Hospitality, Leisure and Tourism sector. On the other hand, a decrease of 86,000 jobs in education is evidence that there’s still a long way to go. Sadly, the Bureau agrees with everything that recruitment software is also saying – all 15 sectors are still employing fewer people than a year ago.

UK evidence of recovery

And from the UK, a recent survey suggests that while the toughest times may be over, and the government plans to help us out of the lockdown and any potential recession, there may still be trouble ahead. The good news is that the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has upgraded its growth forecast to 5.1%. It’s a low figure, but for a nation coming out of a pandemic AND a recession, it’s pretty well the best we could expect. Unsurprisingly, the highest level of job activity, from both job seekers and organisations came towards the end of 2020. Online recruitment software has been a boon to organisations trying to maintain their position whilst having most employees still working from home. It’s allowed them to recruit temporary staff and seek new permanent employees who can help them adjust to a world in which online has become the norm for everything. Web based recruitment software has shown that, unlike the USA, the education sector has had some of the highest job growth, whereas – just like the USA – retail was one of the hardest hit areas.

Some things haven’t changed though; most jobs are still posted on a Friday, and the most popular day for people to send in job applications is Tuesday, showing that most of us spend the weekend working on our application forms. Recruiting software is invaluable for dealing with those Tuesday morning inundations of application forms, especially where online recruitment processes are used to simplify the process from advertising a vacancy to tracking applicants through to online interviews and digital inductions. And some sectors actually achieve growth in 2020, such as IT and online retail.