A New Age of Recruitment? The Co-vid Effect

At no time in recent history has there been such a plethora of high quality talent available, and for so few jobs. It’s definitely an employer’s market at the moment, and it looks set to stay that way for many months to come. One would think therefore that it makes the job of recruiting easier. This is however very much not the case, and if anything it has made it more difficult by virtue of the sheer volume of potential candidates you need to screen, select and de-select before drawing up your interview list. Put simply, an employer needs to process four or five times as many candidates than prior to Covid, and that puts a real strain on busy line managers, HR Managers and Directors whose attention rightly enough needs to be given over to higher value tasks ( little things like running the business for example ).

This may seem strange coming from me, because I own and run a Recruitment Company, but whereas in the past an agency might have helped you find those candidates that might have been considered “ buried treasure ” ( that’s recruitment lingo for those candidates who are both successful and happy in their jobs and would not in normal times be motivated to reply to a recruitment advert ), in today’s conditions the treasure is no longer buried and is lying around at ground level and in plain sight for all to see.

Does this mean that you’ll never need to use a Recruitment Consultancy for the foreseeable future? Well the answer to that is both yes and no.

Certainly with the amount of identifiable talent currently available and in full view, there seems little point employing an agency to dig for treasure when it’s lying on the surface anyway. Yesterday’s buried treasure is today’s low hanging fruit!

However, going back to the starting point, many Senior Managers and Directors find the process of managing and handling the current high volume of advert responses quite a chore, competing for their time with their day jobs ( interesting fact; 84% of Recruiting Managers feel that the task of recruitment either costs them sales, or otherwise diminishes their efficiency as a Manager as a direct result of distracting them from their day jobs. Interesting fact no 2 – 47% of managers admit the recruitment process leads to their work spilling over to the weekends and evenings, time which they would much prefer spending with their families or undertaking leisure activities ). Whichever way you cut it, recruitment is very time consuming and puts people under ( even more ) day to day pressure.

It’s interesting however ( and also a great relief ) that in times when some say the very future of the recruitment industry is under threat, we are doing a brisk trade! Not as much in end to end recruitment however; rather we are being retained to undertake the advertising, the response handling and the selection / de-selection of the candidates ( the grunt work as one of my clients put it recently ), leaving the Managers / Directors free to run their Companies. Their only involvement is the interviews which they can now approach with the absolute confidence that they are seeing the cream of the crop!

The typical cost for such an exercise is in the region of ￡1,500, however that can be offset against the cost of any advertising which is often considerably less expensive through a Recruitment Consultancy, as they tend to have special deals in place with most media. Many good agencies are quite willing to pass on those cost savings to you, the client ).

I’d argue that’s money well spent, and of course if you don’t come up trumps you can always upgrade to a full search and selection campaign at a later date ( and if you’re nice, I might even knock the ￡1,500 off to help contain the costs ).

It’s difficult times for many industry sectors at present, but I cannot help but be reminded of that old Army adage “ adapt and overcome ”.

Here’s to the future, whatever it brings !