With the holiday season in full swing and in keeping with the Dickens classic, ‘A Christmas Carol’, we will be exploring recruitment past, present and future. Throughout the years there has been a number of changes within the recruitment industry and as time goes on more changes are predicted to happen, with the speed of change increasing year by year it will be very interesting to see what the recruitment industry will be like in 10 years’ time!

According to the ninth annual report from the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) the value of the recruitment industry to the UK economy is £35.1 billion a year, and this figure is set to grow between 2.9% and 6.9% in 2017! This predicted growth can be for a number of reasons, but with growth we are bound to see some changes within the industry.

Past:

During the days before mobile phones, computers and the internet the world of recruitment was a very different place! There were no online job boards for new roles to be advertised on where they reach 100’s and 1000’s of potential candidates. Once a recruiter had worked hard to pick up a job it would have been a laborious task to then get that role advertised and eventually filled. Ways of advertising would have included word of mouth, speaking directly to candidates as well placing advertisements in local papers and sector relevant magazines to get their roles advertised and then later filled. There would have been no online databases to store all the candidate details so files and filing cabinets where common in the workplace! As well as no online database there would have been no internet or emails, so obtaining a CV would have had to have been done via post, fax or meeting a candidate face to face, which was crucial during the registration process where a lot of paperwork would have been filled out, yet another time-consuming process!

Present:

Despite the economic uncertainty experienced this year there has been growth within the recruitment industry, but this growth has been at a slower pace than previous years. Across different sectors there has been a skills shortage creating a problem with candidate availability. Brexit has had a knock-on effect on the hiring of permanent staff as hiring decisions have been delayed due to the initial uncertainty Brexit has caused. Despite this, overall there has been continued growth within the industry and there has also been a fall in unemployment. With more recruitment agencies starting up than ever before there is a lot of competition within the industry meaning recruiters need to be at the top of their game or risk losing brilliant roles and excellent clients to their competitors. Within such a fast-paced industry continuous training and personal development is vital, recruiters not only need to know how to pick up roles and fill them they need to know how to market themselves as well as market the role. 94% of LinkedIn users are recruiters, so present day recruiters need to consider these platforms that have a high level of engagement with their target audience and use them to reach out to both those actively seeking roles and passive candidates.

Future:

Social media within recruitment is the way forward! Social media can be utilised in a number of ways to aid and benefit the recruitment process. With 54% of candidates using their mobiles and tablets for job seeking, job sites and company websites need to be optimised for these devices so they offer the same great, quick and efficient service as they do on their desktop sites.  One-click-apply buttons will be as crucial as ever as this makes applying for roles on mobile devices as simple as possible, convenience is key, if the process is easy candidates are more likely to apply. As so much emphasis is now on digital and online recruitment company websites are so important, use of the site should be simple as well as engaging! The company brand experience can determine whether a candidate is happy to work with your organisation or not, it also allows you to promote the values of your organisation whilst building a positive reputation. Using Social media allows you to attract the candidates you specifically want to target a lot more precisely, making the sourcing process efficient as well as effective. Long gone are the days of meeting every candidate face-to-face, interviews can be done via video, using apps such as Skype! Video interviews are becoming more and more popular within the recruitment industry.

The recruitment industry is constantly changing which means those within the industry need to constantly be adapting and responding to these changes, or risk falling behind their competitors!