Recruitment goes from strength to strength

March 29th, 2021 | Industry News

We all know it’s been an unbelievable 12 months for the recruitment sector. Agencies making use of SaaS (software as a service) platforms in particular have been able to observe the trends, mainly negative, that have shaped the past year in recruiting, but finally there seems to be blue skies above the clouds that have affected every industry. From the USA, comes encouraging news about temporary employment. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that 9 out of 15 major industry sectors posted positive employment levels in February 2021. Highlights include the much needed 355,000 new temporary jobs in the Hospitality, Leisure and Tourism sector. On the other hand, a decrease of 86,000 jobs in education is evidence that there’s still a long way to go. Sadly, the Bureau agrees with everything that recruitment software is also saying – all 15 sectors are still employing fewer people than a year ago.

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How to improve your company’s productivity in 2021

March 9th, 2021 | Industry News

New research from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation claims that professional recruitment boosts UK productivity by £7.7 billion annually. However, the research also shows that while 52% of those consulted say that businesses are recruiting efficiently that leaves 48% who think more can be done to achieve effective recruitment. Online recruitment software has had a major impact on recruitment since the pandemic hit. By June 2020 37% of employees were working from home full-time and happy about it, and a further 32% hoped that the future would bring a better work-life balance by allowing them to work from home at least part of the time in the future. Happier workers are more productive, so this trend is likely to benefit both employers and employees.

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Food and the future – recruitment in focus

February 23rd, 2021 | Industry News

Many industries have been hard hit by the pandemic – but the food industry has been one of those most affected. Attracting new talent to a sector that has traditionally been a less attractive area because salaries tend to be low and hours long and anti-social, isn’t being made easier by the traditional approaches to recruitment. A recent survey shows that Gen Z (those born after 1997) finds the food industry unappealing. Online recruitment software can help by pointing out the role of technology not just in recruitment but in the food sector itself. Food retailers and manufacturers can benefit by using recruitment management software to highlight the range of career paths to those entering the sector and then using recruitment CRM software to manage relationships with senior executives and talents in the industry to prove relevance and highlight company culture in ways that create awareness of the contribution of food sectors to communities.

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Financial services recruitment bounces back plus future of work

February 12th, 2021 | Industry News

It’s been a long time coming. For over a decade the financial services industry in the UK has struggled to survive debt crisis after debt crisis, Brexit woes and worries, and finally the pandemic. However, following a regular reduction in financial services recruitment year-on-year, the final decision around Brexit has given some optimism. Understaffing is a real concern, and there’s a low level talent war going on, as London repositions itself as a finance powerhouse. The best recruitment CRM is designed to help organisations find the best talent, whether in finance or any other sector.

While many customer-facing roles are expected to grow in the next two years, fintech (financial technology) is the current buzzword and web based recruitment software is ideally placed to identify any kind of tech specialist, especially fintech, as these are candidates whose online presence and portfolio should be easily identifiable, giving recruiters a major advantage in spotting and engaging with up-and-coming talent globally.

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Recruitment, responsibility and law

January 25th, 2021 | Industry News

It can be easy to think that other people’s problems are not our own. So when the The Responsible Business Alliance (RBA) recently announced the release of a Responsible Recruitment Due Diligence Toolkit, it may not have seemed particularly relevant to the UK. However, the toolkit, designed to prevent forced labour in supply chains, is definitely something that temporary hire agencies should at least be aware of. Recruitment software UK based hasn’t always focused on forced labour – but the Morecambe Bay tragedy showed that gang labour can be problematic here too. The difficulties are that there’s often a long supply chain between end hire and agency consultant, which makes due diligence difficult, and the nature of temporary contracts can make in-depth investigation of every link in that chain simply unmanageable. The best recruitment software for agencies should ensure that a clear documentation trail exists both for the contractor and the contractee, which means that patterns and oddities can be traced.

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EU – UK trade deal

January 16th, 2021 | Industry News

The less than snappily named UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement has finally been presented to parliament and will become law. It’s been in effect since 31 December but given the new UK lockdown the effect of many of its provisions remains largely untried.

Of most significance to the UK recruitment industry is the failure to provide automatic recognition systems for professional qualifications. This process means that medical personnel, chefs, architects, accountants etc will now have to demonstrate either competence or equivalency through mechanisms that have not, as yet, been designed, let alone tested. Applicant tracking system UK centred software will now have to cope with this factor. SAAS recruitment agencies are likely to have an advantage in this area, assuming they are not bespoke systems which may therefore require substantial reconfiguration. This is because software designed to be used online with ‘software as a service’ capacity is usually constructed to handle rapid updates and to integrate with other administrative systems.

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12 months of recruitment in focus

December 30th, 2020 | Industry News

The UK’s recruitment sector increased to a £42.3 billion turnover in pre-pandemic 2019, that’s an overall 8% expansion and totals 2.1% of the contribution to the UK economy of each industry. That’s a greater benefit to the UK as a whole than education or the arts. More interesting to those seeking the best recruitment CRM is the breakdown between temp and contract and permanent placement/headhunting. Just £4.5 billion of that total comes from headhunting and permanent placement activity. After the impact of COVID-19, which has challenged the temp and contract sector with boom and flatline cycles that have taxed even the best recruiting software to keep pace, permanent placement has started to look like an attractive proposition to hard-hit smaller agencies. And that’s most of us. 81% of the recruitment agencies in the UK have fewer than ten staff and 2020 has forced many small operations to merge or go under.

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Remote hiring and hurried hiring – December’s recruitment trends

December 14th, 2020 | Industry News

A survey into the key trends we can expect in recruiting in the year ahead has generated responses from 20 countries and 15 industries. The most significant result was the discovery that COVID-19 has changed the interviewing and recruitment processes for nearly everybody. Nearly 80% of those who responded said that their processes were not completely remote. Recruitment software has obviously both driven and responded to this trend and new technologies are being used, and added, on a more or less weekly basis. Recruiting software than can manage the applicant tracking process is benefitting both recruitment agencies and HR departments, as it allows them to post vacancies, handle responses, shortlist candidates, conduct video interviews and even onboard recruits. SAAS recruitment agencies have an added benefit – they allow consultants to work remotely, so that they can stay in touch with clients and candidates without putting any body at risk.

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From foundations to glass ceiling – how recruitment software helps

November 30th, 2020 | Industry News

Every organisation has found 2020 stressful, today Recruit So Simple is looking at how one sector is finding mass hires for essential work. At the other end of the scale, we’re exploring how recruiting software is helping find key talent at the executive and board level.

Building from the ground up

One industry that has always struggled with recruitment is construction – and this has been made worse by the pandemic. After difficult years, notably 2008, construction has found it difficult to fill qualified and experienced roles. Developing creative recruitment systems has been key to helping successful building firms stay afloat. For example, the traditional apprentice route had been revitalised by government schemes, but COVID-19 has required much more virtual recruiting such as:

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Lockdown II and recruitment

November 22nd, 2020 | Industry News

One industry that was hard hit by the first lockdown was the legal sector. New law graduates have been finding it hard to find employment because of the hiring freeze in many chambers and ‘zoom court’ has in itself limited who can participate in legal activities. Recruitment agency software in the UK shows an underlying new trend though, a demand for contract and restructuring expertise. This is the result of damaged supply chains and disappointed clients, as well as the need to manage employment contracts for senior personnel during lockdown. That trend has just accelerated again, as online recruitment software reveals, because employers are trying to work out how they can balance the legal requirement to ‘agree changes to employee contracts in advance’ with the 60 hours notice or a return to lockdown. Particularly for senior personnel and those who have tailored contracts, this chop and change approach to employment requires care and attention at a time when many are working from home and unable to easily access legal advice on how to handle critical employee decisions.

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