Budget responses and candidate ‘journeys’

November 16th, 2021 | Industry News

When Rishi Sunak suggested that funding for apprenticeships, skills bootcamps and creating new Institutes of Technology would help fill the vacancies gap, the response from the Recruitment & Employment Confederation was swift. Whilst welcoming these initiatives a spokesperson said that the apprenticeship levy was ‘acting as a brake on prospects for young people’.

Recruitment database software confirms that many younger candidates lack entry level skills for a lot of jobs, and that while the proposed numeracy programme – Multiply – may help, recruitment management software cannot resolve the issue that access to training and development is unevenly applied across the UK.

For employers, especially when recruiting at the entry level, this can be a huge issue. There’s not much scope for relocation or commuting at that end of the career spectrum, and yet without good candidates at the base level, organisations cannot up-skill or train employees to grow with their employer.

In addition, career journeys have become derailed in the past two years. Brexit and COVID-19 have both put huge detours into everybody’s work trajectory. The best recruitment CRM is keeping pace with the vagaries of the pandemic and helping establish two-way communication with candidates whose relationship to work has changed rapidly. It’s as good at tracking skills, goals and interests as keeping on top of qualifications and experience, and this is one of the key ways that recruiters can build an effective relationship that allows them to engage effectively with potential employees and identify where they may fit best into employment. That’s the easy bit. Digging down to long term plans and buried goals can help a good recruiter to see the long term value of a potential employee, plotting a career path through an organisation that offers staff retention and engagement, which reduces the overall HR overhead and creates a sense of permanency that has become a rare and precious career element recently.

Working with candidates to ensure they are a good fit, and creating a dialogue that causes them to want to work for that employer, in that role, at that time, requires both skill and time, and that’s where recruiter energy is best spent, leaving recruitment management software to manage standard communications with all candidates, so that those for whom the right role has not yet been found, still feel they are valued and not forgotten.