Wave News:?Upticks in jobs and applications, the shifting relevance of a degree, and much more

By Emily Buckley

Hello and welcome to the September?edition of Wave News!In this edition you’ll find:

?? Talent Matters London: a morning of insights

?? Upticks in jobs and applications

?? How to ensure a positive candidate experience with the right tech

?? The shifting relevance of a degree in today’s job market

??? Countdown to the Recruitment Agency Expo

?? We welcome a new Waver to the team

?? Talent Matters London: a morning of insights

We can’t start this issue of Wave News without first mentioning Talent Matters London - our first live, in-person Talent Matters event since the pandemic. It was fantastic to get a host of recruitment leaders in a room at the same time to network and listen to insight-packed talks from our expert speakers from LinkedIn and TotalJobs.

Alex Charraudeau and Glenn Bloxham-Mundy (LinkedIn) and Julius Probst, PhD and Raj Lal (TotalJobs) presented us with a wide range of in-depth insights.

There was a lot to unpack in those talks so we wanted to highlight the key takeaways from a morning full labour market insights, talent trends, and advice on how to tackle some of the biggest challenges for recruiters right now and in the near future. Read our article highlighting the key takeaways to see what we learnt.

?? Upticks in jobs and applications

September to me always feels like the month of fresh starts, even more so than January. It probably comes down to all those years at school when, having been to WHSmiths for all my new stationery and Clarks for shiny new shoes, I felt ready to begin a new school year with a fresh mindset. Having school-age children myself now, it’s that same feeling again but with the added vigour of getting back to a normal routine having ferried the kids round to clubs, family and friends all summer. The house is quiet, we’ve all had time to reflect and refresh after our own holidays and we’re ready to get back to business with renewed energy and focus.

And that is what traditionally makes September such an active month in the jobs market. Businesses are putting hiring plans in place now that there’s a better chance of all decision makers being around for interviews and, having had the chance to realign their goals over the summer, more active candidates tend to enter the market.

There have been suggestions that it will be a quieter month than usual as vacancies continue to drop but that’s not what we’re seeing in our data. August - historically a less active month - saw rises in both jobs and applications from July. In fact, barring June (which had the highest number of jobs thus far all year), August had both the highest number of jobs and the highest number of applications since March.

Why? An uptick in applications is largely likely to be due to people feeling the pinch because of the cost of living and either taking on second jobs, searching for jobs with an increased salary, or re-joining the job market.

The Office for National Statistics has been showing a steady decrease in the economic inactivity rate (those out of work but not looking for work) up until a very slight increase in May to July and flow estimates have shown a large net movement from economic inactivity into unemployment in the first 6 months of the year. So more people are now actively looking for work but not finding what they need.

The uptick in jobs is interesting. Following a very slow July, employers and recruiters seemed to step up a gear, which is positive news for the influx of candidates into the market.

?? How to ensure a positive candidate experience with the right tech

Whatever the market, ensuring a positive candidate experience with the right tech is crucial. The candidate experience is such a critical element of the recruitment process and is a huge part of what makes a piece of tech great.

This topic is even more relevant now that there are so many conversations around AI and whether it can help or de-humanise the recruitment process. The answer is that it can both be a huge help and - used well - work to inject more humanity into the process by gifting recruiters more time to make those calls and foster those important candidate and client relationships. This article explains that and offers advice on how to utilise their tech stack to ensure the candidate experience remains positive.

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The candidate experience is also a huge part of increasing website conversions. Successfully driving traffic to your recruitment website is a cause for celebration but it’s just one half of the journey to your goals being met. You need those visitors to act. Those actions might be registering a CV, signing up for job alerts, applying for a job, filling out the contact form, or subscribing to a newsletter or blog.

The bottom line is, you need your visitors to convert or your website is not fulfilling its potential or working hard enough for you. In ‘How to increase website conversions’ we dig into tips to increase those all-important conversions, as well as looking at the basics - what a conversion rate means, what you should be measuring, and how you can measure it.

?? The shifting relevance of a degree in today’s job market

I published the 4th edition of The Deep Dive at the beginning of September on LinkedIn and it should have also landed in your inboxes a couple of weeks ago.

If you missed it, this one focuses on the value of a university degree in today’s job market. With skills-based hiring steadily replacing more traditional methods of recruitment, the number and range of apprenticeships increasing, and a tighter labour market leading recruiters to look beyond traditional requirements, university degrees are gradually falling off the ‘must have’ lists on job ads.

With the prospect of graduating with high levels of debt souring the university dream, I investigated whether the degree is losing its relevancy.

??? Countdown to the Recruitment Agency Expo

As one event concludes, we ramp up our preparations for another. The Recruitment Agency Expo at the NEC in Birmingham is just around the corner. From 4th-5th October, we’ll be bringing the tunes with our resident DJ Chris (AKA our Marketing Executive, a man of many talents!) and ready to chat about our latest updates and new features, plus take you on a spin of our products.

If you’re attending, please do come and say hello - you’ll find us on stand C18.

?? We welcome a new Waver to the team

Last but most certainly not least (and speaking of fresh starts!), we are delighted to welcome a new Waver to the team! Janelle Baguioro, our new Web Designer, comes to us with extensive digital design experience and will be working alongside our Developers to produce beautiful websites that function perfectly.

?? What we are reading

• Top tips to attract candidates to hard-to-fill vacancies - Hard-to-fill vacancies are one of the biggest challenges of 2023 – and will likely remain critical into 2024. When competition is fierce for certain positions, there are a number of things you could and should be doing to attract candidates, as I outline in an article for UK Recruiter.
• Why reducing time to fill is critical in a labour shortage - The faster recruiters place (qualified) candidates the better in a market beset by labour shortages. There are tips on how to streamline the recruitment process as well as suggestions of alternative ways to widen the talent pool and attract a greater range of candidates.
• 10 ‘recruiter rules’ to live by - While recruitment needs to involve a strong process, it’s actually the ‘craft‘ of recruitment that is the leverage point. These ‘recruiter rules’ will help you to hone your craft as a first-class recruiter.
• The era of digital compliance -Compliance - it may not be sexy but it is vital to all recruitment agencies. This article looks at how recruitment processes and pre-employment checks need to align with hybrid models of working, through digital?platforms and new technology. It also stresses the need for pre-employment checks to be faster in order to match the pace of recruitment, and that this can only be done digitally.
• AI’s transformative impact on the recruitment tech landscape - An interesting take on the impact AI will have on recruitment from the SVP of automation and AI at Bullhorn. My favourite quote: “The real risk to recruiters is not being replaced by AI; it’s being replaced by other recruiters who use AI more effectively.” I think that could be said about many roles in many industries.

? Before you go...

Thanks to everyone who responded to our survey question on whether you’re seeing an uplift in applications if the job role offers flexible working. A huge 90% of respondents said that they receive a greater number of applications for jobs with flexible working, with just 10% saying they haven’t noticed a difference in application numbers when flexible working is offered.

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We are seeing a growing number of recruiters moving to a skills-based hiring approach and this month we’d love to know whether you currently are or are planning on adopting a similar approach.

If you could spare a minute to answer this question, we’d be really grateful:

Have you adapted your recruitment strategy to focus on skills rather than qualifications?

a) Yes, we are taking a more skills-based approach to candidate sourcing

b) No, but it is something we are considering

c) No, qualifications are important in the industry I recruit in

Let us know in the comments below ??