Successful or self-defeating? How recruiters are facing current challenges

July 26th, 2023 | Industry News

Several commentators have recently pointed out that it’s self-defeating for organisations to cut costs, or corners, on recruitment at present.

Sadly, the industry knows that it’s happening. In a way, the best recruitment software for agencies may have fed this behaviour, by suggesting that recruiting software can do the job of trained professionals, whereas the reality is that even the best recruitment crm can only aid a recruiter to do their job, not replace them. Part of a recruiters role is to advise their clients. While budgets can often be pruned in recruitment – recruitment website design, for example, can be tailored to act as a passive recruitment tool which saves money on advertising, there is still a necessity to help clients understand that recruitment is a complex and sensitive process, which needs the right level of investment to ensure successful hires are made, and stay.

Having a good ‘tech strategy’ allows recruitment agencies, and recruiters generally, to have a more self-confident approach to recruiting, which often leads to success. In nuts and bolts terms this looks like:

• creating a user-friendly, intuitive, simplified application process – the best candidates are usually already working and don’t have time to fill in lengthy and difficult to access application forms
• ensuring prompt and personalised communication – standard forms and replies are a turn off for everybody
• delivering an effective interview experience that respects the client and the candidate and demonstrates awareness of the candidate’s skills and experience
• clearly conveying the client brand to the candidate at all levels of the recruitment process
• deploying applicant tracking systems to free up HR personnel and consultants to do the face-to-face part of their roles more efficiently.

And what does the self-defeating approach look like?

• Paper-heavy recruiting where information isn’t updated regularly or well enough so clients feel neglected and candidates have a poor sense of their importance to the process and/or of the client brand
• Uncertain and unclear routes through the recruitment activity, causing clients to feel that have been forgotten or sidelined and candidates to lose confidence in the recruiter
• Slow administration, often requiring sign off from people who aren’t around rather than using recruitment agency software to enable rapid processing of data, and swift decision-making
• Lack of agility – treating all recruitment as the same, so urgent or vital recruitment activity becomes bogged down in paperwork.

In the long run, successful recruiters will use technology to give them a higher profile with candidates and a stronger understanding of clients – and that results in better recruitment all round.