Recruitment statistics and methods for winter 2020

October 7th, 2020 | Industry News

A recent survey shows that despite all the ups and downs of COVID-19, UK companies are a little more optimistic about permanent hiring. The Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) says that short-term demand rose by around 11% between June and August. Recruitment software evidence bears out this trend, and while business confidence is still in the negative zone it’s also picking up. On the other hand most employers apparently still think that the economy will worsen before it gets better, but their negative view is somewhat less developed than in a previous survey in April.

Recruitment CRM software reveals that the lifting of public health restrictions through the summer helped the employment sector get on the move. Another positive influence has been that employers also have a better strategy to cope with this (hopefully) unique crisis. Job advertising has begun to increase slowly and SAAS recruitment agencies in particular are seeing a benefit from being online, as work from home recruiters find it easy to navigate the complexities of hiring without an office and with a team working virtually.

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Recruitment software predictions and new trends in interviewing

September 29th, 2020 | Industry News

The most recent report exploring the global recruitment software market says that market value will reach £2.3 billion by 2027 growing at a compound annual growth rate of 6%. This prediction recognises the impact of COVID-19 on the recruitment sector, which has been an acceleration of demand due to the need to source, recruit and onboard people remotely.

It’s a rare positive prediction in a world that’s become increasingly challenging for employers, recruitment professionals and recruitment agencies.

Video interviewing – the future?

There’s a growing interest in video interviewing, which is not the same and a Zoom or Google Hangouts interview. Both the latter are live activities whereas a video interview, particularly for senior and executive positions, is a pre-recorded activity that amplifies a candidate’s CV and gives a deeper, more three dimensional understanding of the individual. Recruiting software has a great role to play in this process as it allows recruiters, whether HR departments or recruitment consultants, to revisit the process that has led to shortlisting and will result in the interview process and pick out questions for the candidates to answer that will illuminate their fit for the role.

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Recruiting in 2020 – what to aim for

September 10th, 2020 | Industry News

Few sectors have been as hard hit, or expected to recover as fast, as recruitment. What can recruitment agencies, and recruiters, expect from the rest of 2020?

Inbound marketing will boom

With digital technologies becoming matter of fact in many areas like conferencing and interviewing, recruitment database software that can make a contribution to inbound marketing will be invaluable. Inbound marketing aims to grow an organisation by creating lasting relationships with clients, candidates and influencers. It has three phases – attraction (bringing people with great content and engagement skills into the organisation’s orbit), engagement (offering solutions, insights or innovations that match the pain points of the audience, creating a sense of trust) and delight (helping, supporting, cheering on the audience so they feel engaged with the organisation and its offerings). Recruitment CRM software has an essential role in identifying potential influencers that a recruitment consultancy can bring into their outreach activity. For example, at least one Recruit So Simple client has had great success in getting candidates to blog for them – many have gone on to obtain positions or placements and others have generated a ‘buzz’ that leads to more candidates of their calibre and skillset signing up with the agency, leading to a superb talent pool that can be marketed to clients.

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What COVID-19 means for recruitment

August 24th, 2020 | Industry News

There’s good and bad this month as we look at the future of recruitment in the UK. As the
Recruitment and Employment Confederation has just become a signatory to the Race at Work Charter which seeks to improve opportunities for black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) individuals in the recruitment industry, web based recruitment software has a role to play, not just in improving recruitment of people of colour, but in benefiting the recruitment industry by offering a more diverse and robust recruiting industry itself.

How?

Online recruitment software has the ability to strip away information that can support unconscious bias, which has been demonstrated to limit profitability and productivity. A more diverse recruiting industry would, in turn, have less (or at least different!) unconscious bias, leading to exactly the kind of stronger, more profitable organisations that we’re going to need post COVID-19.

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COVID-19’s unexpected effects on recruitment

August 12th, 2020 | Industry News

There are some surprising developments in the impact of COVID-19. For example, in the USA, recruiting doctors has dropped by 30% since April, although specialist recruitment has increased substantially.

Difficult to understand at first view, it makes perfect sense in the wider recruiting picture. Recruitment management software reveals that in fact, healthcare spending in the USA has all but collapsed, with the most dramatic spending decline since 1959. Add to this abnormally high expenses as a result of coping with the demands of the pandemic, and many US healthcare organisations have opted for a spending freeze. It’s good news for the UK, where we may actually have a buyer’s market for healthcare that benefits from a surplus of general practitioners looking for employment.

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How optimistic are we about recruitment?

July 23rd, 2020 | Industry News

Very. A recent survey of the impact of COVID-19 on the recruiting industry suggests that only 2% think there will be a ‘sustained depression’ that continues longer than 2021. More than half also expect the economy to improve by the end of 2020.

More surprisingly, hard data seems to back up this positive view. A third of those surveyed said that their businesses are doing as well, or better, than they were a year ago. Of course this might be a sectoral response and as we all know healthcare and IT have been in demand all the way through the pandemic.

Online recruitment software has been a major contributor to recruitment success – not just because of the obvious sense in which it has allowed recruitment consultancies to continue to operate during lockdown, but also because it has been able to support an internal workforce in a way that other recruitment agencies just haven’t been able to manage.

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Recruitment begins to recover from Coronavirus

July 11th, 2020 | Industry News

While there’s evidence that recruitment is starting to pick up after the lockdown process, there are also painful signs that COVID-19 has hit the sector hard. Big recruitment agencies have laid people off, while some smaller agencies will not be reopening at all. Candidate supply still outstrips demand, but there’s more evidence of large corporations running recruitment drives. The best recruitment software for agencies is helping recruitment consultancies to drive new business. Online recruitment software can be used for much more than simply tracking applicants and managing the administration of each vacancy. It can also be used to predict trends to to help recruitment consultants to be proactive in approaching clients and finding new business.

As employers return staff from furlough, there are also opportunities for recruitment agencies to use recruitment management software to help fill gaps or to engage with businesses that are changing direction as a result of the Coronavirus outbreak.

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Getting started in recruitment

June 24th, 2020 | Industry News

Recruit So Simple has been observing the recent changes in the UK economy with interest. One thing that seems to be happening is a small upsurge in the opening of new recruitment agencies. Why? Several reasons:

A depressed economy brings opportunities for new start-ups

While many of us might be hesitant about leaving a good job to start our own business, the effect of COVID-19 has been to cause people to look around and ask themselves if they couldn’t be doing better. The slowing down of the recruitment industry means that we’ve moved from a candidate driven to an employer driven market. This means that good recruitment CRM software can now power through the steps of converting the recruitment process from an applicant tracking system, UK or even worldwide, to a client-led ‘search and onboard’ process. A nimble start up agency can make a great start by focusing on this new paradigm and working closely with a small client base that is just starting to hire again.

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COVID-19 and recruitment – the story continues

June 12th, 2020 | Industry News

Today Recruit So Simple is focusing on the national stage – how is COVID-19 affecting the UK recruitment industry as a whole, and what challenges is recruiting software going to face in the weeks ahead?

The Coronavirus Job Retention scheme has been an interesting development for recruiters – whilst it has underpinned existing positions and given companies a chance to continue recruitment programmes for existing jobs, it has acted as something of a brake both on the creation of new jobs and on the movement of potential candidates who have felt the certainty of an existing position to be much more attractive than the lure of an unknown (and untested) one.

Record numbers of people have used online recruitment resources in the past few months, evidence of the way that web based recruitment software is likely to lead the way in future recruitment initiatives.

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COVID Secure working – what does it mean for the recruitment industry?

May 26th, 2020 | Industry News

Recently, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that “anyone who can’t work from home… should be actively encouraged to go to work”. However, several recruitment bodies have criticised the lack of clarity in the statement. Recruitment software was never designed to cope with current circumstances and yet it will be vital to restoring the UK to a fully-functioning economy.

The needs of workers, including temporary staff, need to be built into any reopening plan, bearing in mind that no business can guarantee a COVID-19 free workplace, and no online recruitment software can deliver certainty about roles, responsibilities and daily tasks in a period of such upheaval.

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