The UK labour market is challenging due to labor shortages, and many companies need external help to hit hiring goals and find ways to recruit effectively. Agencies can offer a lot of support in this regard. In the current challenging market, this is even more important – there continues to be a lot of vacant jobs but few available workers. Recruitment agencies can add value in finding the right people for the right jobs at the right time.
The Office for National Statistics figures show that the employment rate in the UK is currently very high, with unemployment at just 3.7%. While decreasing in recent months, the number of vacancies is also high, and the UK Parliament has been considering the issues seen around labour shortages across the UK. The labour market is tight, and recruiters have found that due to the high levels of vacancies, employees can to some degree pick and choose between roles. Shortages exist in all sectors, particularly in health, hospitality, tourism, manufacturing, construction, and logistics.
Recruiters face more pressure than ever before to try and find suitable talent to fill available roles. This means that optimising recruitment practices is needed to achieve success. The following discussion indicates steps staffing agencies can take to compete effectively and win in this challenging market.
In the much-tougher recruitment environment that staffing agencies face, it is time to revisit recruitment strategies to ensure they are still working. What worked last year may not be suitable now. Recruitment strategies need to be based not just on addressing problematic areas of skill shortages, but also on succession and developing effective leadership pipelines to ease the way. Good recruitment marketing software can facilitate this process by taking an innovative approach to techniques that better fit current needs.
If recruitment strategies are reactive, it is time to transform them – making them proactive. Planning is everything. Consider what can be done to ensure the right messages are in front of the right people at the right time. Look at ways to hone processes so that recruitment marketing activities are ahead of the game, rather than always being on the back foot.
Tip: Partnering with a recruitment marketing platform can be beneficial. This has the benefit of enabling greater adaptability to adjust to continually evolving needs. This can position the company to be better placed to attract sought-after skilled workers.
Numbers speak, so a focus on analytics can help measure strategy effectiveness and better understand what is going on with recruitment efforts. Understanding the actual return on investment of different actions helps gain a holistic understanding of recruitment. This enables more confident decision making and smart action. It also ensures the cost-effectiveness of recruitment campaigns.
There are a wide variety of analytics that can be used, and end-to-end analytics systems may help in really understanding cost-per-hire. Automation can be built into such systems to help companies save time and money. End-to-end analytics can provide insights that allow users to be tracked from first click-through to hire. This enables a complete understanding of the whole recruitment funnel from top to bottom in one easy-to-understand dashboard. It is also much more helpful than working without data since guesswork may not be accurate.
Custom analytics platforms, in particular, can be tailored to help understand job seeker attribution and properly pinpoint performance. This helps in taking a more strategic approach to recruiting. An at a glance dashboard can provide a visual alert highlighting potential issues. This is much easier than manually trawling the data, driving cost savings.
Analytics help provide key insights to improve and fine-tune recruitment marketing so that it meets goals. Where analytics solutions are adopted, it is easier to see what adjustments are needed and where. Analytics can improve talent acquisition and attraction by helping the staffing firm see possible employee turnover issues and pinpoint possibilities for planning ahead for these scenarios. Without insights into data, hiring professionals can only make guesses and hope the company’s recruitment efforts are working.
Programmatic job advertising enables recruiting agencies to identify where best to allocate funds. This allows them to get more for their money by redeploying the budget to the most valuable places. Implementing programmatic job advertising will mean that recruitment technology is programmed to buy, place, and improve job advertisements. It helps ensure that an advertisement is placed in the right place at the right time to target suitable candidates wherever they are.
While doing this, also be mindful that varied marketing approaches may be better suited to finding the right talent. Focusing on maximising different opportunities is critical. For example, the organization should regularly engage with candidates both in an active and passive manner. Ensuring the employer brand is clear, consistent, and well-promoted is critical.
In today’s market, a diversified media mix is essential to distribute job adverts far and wide – so that they may be seen by all relevant candidates. Relying on one job board, or even just one media form, will not get a job advert in front of a sufficiently diverse audience to attract top talent.
Researching different options can help identify the optimal diversified media mix for the particular role – and it is important to note that this will not be the same mix for other roles. Considering the likely profile of the right talent is important because from this, it is possible to know where the audience is and where to target. Utilising the same platforms to advertise for a senior professional services role and an unskilled seasonal role may not be appropriate. There are many media sources and content publishers to use, from Google for Jobs to LinkedIn. Examining all the different options will help to cast a wider net, including employment sites, job aggregators, and boards.
Top recruitment markers will not focus on online platforms alone (unless they are going to be the best for finding candidates for a specific role). It's crucial to examine other possibilities, such as local television, radio advertising, and even cinema ads in some cases. Social media may be suitable for some job roles but not others.
Taking a strategic approach is important. It is best to aim for a rifle approach rather than having a shotgun strategy. While getting the ad out there in places where it will be seen is essential, placing it just anywhere to ensure it is “far and wide” is likely to be unhelpful. A targeted diversified strategy will drive a lower CPA and be cost-effective overall. This is all about knowing who the audience is and targeting them appropriately.
While once it might have been acceptable to stick to the old tried and tested methods of the past to attract candidates, more is needed in this current market. Job seekers may be looking for jobs in many different places. This means that continually reviewing where jobs are posted to source different kinds of candidates for various roles is important. For example, to attract a younger audience, a new platform to consider for recruitment may be TikTok. These individuals may not necessarily look at traditional job boards alone.
On the other hand, to fill shortages in the workforce, the UK Government is seeking to attract people who are 50+ years old back to work. TikTok is unlikely to be the best place to find people of this age group. Yet good candidates for some roles might be both older or younger. This means casting the net wide while remaining targeted is critical in attracting sufficient and relevant candidates to any given position.
Candidates will follow a range of different routes to see job descriptions, so only being present on one platform is no longer effective when recruiting top talent.
Now is the time to optimise recruitment practices to ensure a competitive edge and secure top talent. Looking at the strategies used, and how to implement technology to work for the business is necessary to succeed. Understanding that possible candidates may be sourced from a more diverse range of platforms or via a broader range of media than in the past is also essential to success. Above all, being more proactive than reactive will help staffing agencies achieve success in a tough market.
To hire successfully, partnering with a team who can leverage real-time data to pivot, innovate, and collaborate to help you become more precise, intuitive, and efficient is essential. The team at Recruitics has passion to make talent acquisition easier for you, and we are able to leverage our industry iONTM Platform to target candidates effectively. Reach out today to learn how we can help produce results for your team!
