Coronavirus recruitment crises and recruitment industry awards

March 28th, 2020 | Industry News

Whilst companies like Amazon and Ocado are recruiting madly to fulfil orders being placed by panicked consumers, other sectors like travel and hospitality are being hit hard – as are specialist recruitment organisations in those areas. Flybe has already gone out of business, and hotels and cruise lines are predicting the worse crisis for twenty years.

Much recruitment software is also struggling – first to keep pace with the demand for temporary retail and driving staff who are needed to work 24/7 to keep shelves stocked and orders packed and delivered, and second to be the kind of applicant tracking system that UK employers need; able to recognise and track people not just through skills but through travel patterns, so that high risk individuals can be recognised and infection flashpoints can be avoided.

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Communications and immigration both challenge recruiters

March 17th, 2020 | Industry News

In a recent American survey, one of the key problems businesses experience when dealing with recruiters is… poor communication. While it may seem astonishing that clients are still experiencing a lack of feedback, one in four of the companies surveyed said that this was a major reason they ceased working with a recruitment agency.

Recruitment software is a good aid, but it’s not enough… the best recruitment CRM has inbuilt systems that encourage agencies to engage with their client base and even automates many communication processes such as six month follow-ups for placements, which it can be easy to neglect when a recruiter has moved on to the next task. Equally unpopular though, was necessary communication – ‘update calls’ containing no updates and general waffling when the client calls to find out the progress on their recruitment. Creating positive experiences is as vital for agencies as finding the right candidates. An applicant tracking system allows a consultancy to rapidly search all potential candidates and respond quickly to client queries.

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Screening and software – when data is a recruiter’s friend

March 2nd, 2020 | Industry News

One of the most important developments in recruitment has been the effect of digital processes. Smart recruiters use recruitment agency software to identify candidates, streamline recruitment and follow up on placements. Increasingly, recruiters use web based recruitment software as a screening process to identify likely locations for strong candidates and to investigate their backgrounds. Regulatory regimes are tightening up on how recruiters can screen candidates at the same time as employers are demanding deeper and more powerful evaluations of candidates, including social media activity, before interview. SAAS recruitment agencies have a distinct advantage, because they can use real-time data to update and inform their candidate profiles and to share relevant information with employers before decisions are made.

The Recruitment and Employment Confederation has recently published a blog post talking about what people need to know before starting a recruitment business. The second heading in this blog is ‘Data is your friend’. For sure! While they go on to plug their reports – and at Recruit So Simple we agree that knowing your industry is vital to success – we’d say that “data is your friend” in a much more fundamental way, when it comes to recruitment. Recruitment software can make or break your business for three reasons:

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Recruitment in focus

February 7th, 2020 | Industry News

The Recruitment and Employment Confederation has recently reported that on any given day in the previous year, the recruitment industry had placed over 1.1 million people in temporary and contract roles. It’s a great success story for the industry, especially as the report goes on to say that 82% of the firms that used recruitment agencies were satisfied with their service. A warning note is sounded by the average operating profit of 3.8%… suggesting that many agencies are not able to convert enough of their gross profit to operating profit. The reasons for this may be:

1. Excessive agency costs

The best online recruitment software helps agencies streamline their back office costs so they can reduce expenditure and create more operating profit.

2. Fire fighting

Recruiters can get stuck in a cycle of working on last minute placements or filling and refilling temporary placements in hard to recruit sectors. Over focusing on this kind of problem recruitment means they miss out on opportunities to expand. Recruitment management software that is sophisticated enough to automate many processes can free up consultants to look past the immediate issue and pursue longer-term strategies to grow their sectors.

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Recruitment 2020 – how to ride the trends to success

January 24th, 2020 | Industry News

There’s been a vast amount of change in the recruitment industry in the past decade, and no sign of these changes slowing down. In fact they seem to be accelerating. So how can recruitment agencies ride the crests and avoid the troughs?

The best recruitment CRM builds resilience in recruiters as well as in placements

Candidate relationship management software isn’t obviously a solution to the problems of recruiter stress and resilience, but increasingly we see that truly good recruitment management software actually helps an agency to be more adaptable and buoyant, for three reasons:

1. Recruitment software that supports relationship building with candidates often frees consultants up to focus on clients, building strong links and creating bonds
2. Recruitment CRM software allows consultants to check out their intuitive responses to a candidate boosting that difficult-to-define but invaluable element that allows a good consultant to make a judgement call about the way a candidate will fit into an organisation
3. Web-based recruitment software provides recruiters with the ability to instantaneously review and update candidate profiles and client vacancies, meaning that the agency moves faster to fill need, which boosts confidence as well as income.

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2020 – the vision for recruitment

January 14th, 2020 | Industry News

APSCo (The Association of Professional Staffing Companies) says that the number of recruitment companies in the UK has increased by 500% since the turn of the millennium. It’s an astonishing figure – even given the short life of a reasonable percentage of recruitment start-ups – so why the massive growth?

1. There isn’t universal agreement on the figures… other analysts suggest lower numbers are more accurate. Recruiting software isn’t purely purchased by recruitment agencies, many enterprises, such as consulting firms, purchase web based recruitment software as they have elements of head-hunting or employee retention activity in their remit.

2. Recruitment has become a much more specialised business in the last twenty years. Recruitment management software allows sophisticated applicant tracking, automated communications with potential clients and deep investigation of CVs to help highly focused recruitment decisions to be made rapidly but with stringent analysis. This individuation of the recruitment sector has led to many more smaller agencies establishing themselves in niche areas of the job market.

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Volatility and dishonesty: what recruitment software must contend with in 2020

December 23rd, 2019 | Industry News

Employment turbulence and recruitment agencies

Hong Kong and the UK are experiencing similar recruitment problems – for somewhat different reasons. Hong Kong’s democracy protests have had a huge effect on business activity and a recent survey shows that 84% of those who took part believe their business has been negatively affected. In addition, more than two-thirds believed that their business would either shrink or not grow (37% expected to lose turnover, 33% thought that turnover would remain flat) and only 11% of employers were planning to hire more staff, whilst 28% were intending to raise staff pay to try and retain key employees. Online recruitment software needs to be able find flexible employees for crisis situations, which is as much an exercise in exploring soft skills and risk profiles as in calibrating qualifications and experience.

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Back to the future: Recruit So Simple’s recruitment forecast for 2020

December 11th, 2019 | Industry News

Every year we like to take a look at the recruitment industry, exploring everything from recruitment software to heart-warming, or heart-breaking, stories.

Out of the world job on offer

It’s been a decade since the European Space Agency ran a recruitment campaign, but in 2020 a British candidate may be chosen to head to the International Space Station. The average recruitment database software programme might struggle to find the ideal person who should be “27-37 years old with a masters degree in science, engineering or medicine and ideally a qualified pilot”. Speaking Russian is a definite advantage – otherwise you have to learn it, and public speaking, a calm temperament and psychological robustness are also valued. Finally, while you don’t need military experience, you will have to go through an intense physical testing process. Of course, if you’re the lucky candidate… the sky’s the limit.

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Cost-per-hire and back office: areas that trip up recruitment agencies

November 24th, 2019 | Industry News

Understanding cost-per-hire (CPH) is vital if any recruitment consultancy is to master and improve its internal metrics. Cost per hire includes all the financial expenses that relate to successful recruiting for a role: travel, fees, advertising spend, time etc. but doesn’t include induction and training costs. If costs per hire are too high, there are problems with the recruiting process itself and evaluating CPH allows you to identify your team’s successes and failures.

Industry costs – the hidden costs of recruiting

In 2017, one research programme calculated that it cost an average of £11,000 to replace a UK employee earning around £28,000. That’s a huge amount for the average organisation. CPH also varies from sector to sector, recruiting for healthcare tends to average around £7,000 whilst manufacturing recruitment runs to £8,500 to £10,000.

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Transport and travel – the recruitment industry faces 2020

November 8th, 2019 | Industry News

Transport and driving – the challenges ahead

A recent American study of recruitment in transport shows that the impact of the Internet of Things is substantial, and the problem for recruiters is equally weighty. 82% of those who responded expect their transport workforce to increase in 2020 – and 79% expect that to be a problem. Recruiting software faces the challenge of finding suitable candidates for a relatively low paid but highly demanding job sector and online shopping: from Amazon to grocery ordering, is a major influence on where transportation workers choose to spend their time. 40% of drivers, from PSV to ‘last mile delivery’ have more than one driving job. This means that online recruitment software is often trying to balance portfolio employees with the complex legal demands of different forms of driving. Applicant tracking system, UK based systems have to balance employer need, legal constraints and the individual’s desire to pursue a range of driving jobs that allow them to balance their hours and their routes. In the US, companies are advertising more aggressively and offering better referral incentives to try to obtain the driving staff they need, while in the UK retraining and benefit packages appear to be the major strategy that employers are using to try and find the right employees.

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