The Candidate Market of 2021

The following article is written by William Spengler, Principal Recruiter & Founder of Frederick Fox, a national executive search business.

The unemployment rate nationally fell to 6% unemployment through the end of March 2021. What is interesting to note is unemployment for degreed professionals is now under 5% and 1.5% away from hitting its all-time low, which was achieved in 2019.

So, what does this mean for the staffing market and talent acquisition?

It means we have a candidate market surfacing, an increase in demand for recruiting professionals, and fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you looking at it, an increase in recruiting spend permeating through multiple industries and disciplines.

Frederick Fox is seeing a surge of hiring nationally and through all industries. We are currently experiencing a candidate shortage and what the business calls a “candidate market” surfacing again. That’s right, it is NOT 2020, it is 2021. And if you thought the candidate market was tough in 2019, we are predicting 2021 is going to be one of the toughest talent wars the industry has faced in the last 10 years. Just wait for Q3 & Q4 :)

David Perry, Owner of Perry Martel International recently published, “We are entering the golden age of talent acquisition”.

The candidate-driven market is now more difficult than it was in 2019 for a variety of reasons even though the unemployment is not as low as it was in 2019. We believe the candidate shortage is being influenced by the following factors in 2021.

·       Stability with current employment is continuing to remain important to the labor market during uncertain times

·       Corporate Salaries have not adjusted to the candidate shortage in the market

·       Candidates are requiring remote, work from home opportunities to consider job movements

·       Companies are hiring, and onboarding faster due to virtual technology than we have seen previously (the average shelf life of a software engineer on the job market is 4 days in 2021)

We believe at Frederick Fox, there is a candidate shortage in 2021 and we predict this trend will continue its velocity.  To make hiring more difficult, we are experiencing a data privacy surge, an increase in pricing to data, and an increase in cybersecurity and anti-spamming/anti-phishing policies online.

What does this mean for Talent Acquisition?

When you bundle all of these factors together, we believe it means there will be a huge demand for recruiters, data, and hiring results. The demand for recruiting and professional recruiters will continue to increase, while the effectiveness of each recruiter will continue to decrease due to regulations, access to data, and restrictions.

It is the firms that can maintain personalized service while leveraging big data, automation, and intelligence that will create the best experience for their customers.