The recruiter mindset – and how it needs to change

March 6th, 2023 | Industry News

Despite the continuing volatility in the hiring market, employers and recruiters still tend to think in the old established patterns such as ‘we’re sharing this job with the marketplace and we’ll chose the best candidate’ or ‘we’re opening this opportunity up to the talent pool’. This can be shortsighted. A 2021 survey of 5,000 UK employees found that 89% were thinking about changing jobs. The so called ‘talent pool’ now includes all the people a company already employs and – while employers cast out their lines into the talent pool – other employers are fishing in their existing workforce!

Giving candidates what they want is essential both to retaining employees and – more demandingly – to recruiting them. Web based recruitment software can be an asset, but only if it’s supporting new ideas about recruitment rather than taking their place. And the gap between candidate desire and recruiter activity is widening.

Culture counts for much

Where do many candidates hear about vacancies? On websites. And the best recruitment websites don’t just advertise roles but convey mission, values and culture, which one in five of candidates under 30 say is their top consideration when looking for a job. Thinking of your recruitment website template not so much as a way of ‘finding’ candidates but rather as a way of ‘persuading’ them is a mental shift that recruiters need to make if they are to create web copy that causes candidates to continue with their application.

Given choice – candidates choose clarity and speed

This should be a no brainer – of course people choose clear options that have defined timelines – when we order goods online, we don’t ever opt for the ‘may arrive any time in the next 21 days’ seller. So why do recruiters think that it’s okay to have a fuzzy recruitment process, with no clear deadlines, and to move those deadlines if their circumstances change, without communicating that to their candidates? Rhetorical question, obviously, but many employers do this and wonder why they lose their ‘talent’ along the way. The best recruitment software for agencies and employers alike allows them to explain if something changes in the planned recruitment process – it’s not that candidates can’t accept change, it’s simply that they want to be informed about it!

Moving to the candidate perspective increases recruitment success

It’s clear that adjusting thinking to the candidate’s point of view can only help recruiters, and that what candidates want is hardly unreasonable. Using technology to develop and reinforce the mindset that puts candidate need at the forefront makes economic sense in a climate where candidates need reassurance and clients need candidates.