What can recruiters learn from candidates?

Toby Conibear

Research undertaken on behalf of Bond International Software has set out to discover the current state of the recruitment market – from candidates’ job search preferences to the ways in which individuals now address a change in career.

After years of workplace stagnation, increased economic confidence over the past couple of years has encouraged individuals to make a change. According to Bond research, over a quarter of office workers have looked for a job in the last six months and a massive 72% have looked for a job within the last three years.

While this obviously creates an opportunity within the recruitment industry, this employment fluidity is leaving recruiters with significant challenges in order to keep up with a variety of motivators within the millennial age bracket. For example, 91% want flexible working, 100% said that it is important that the company they work for stands for something, and 91% believe themselves to be entrepreneurial.

Candidate confusion?

Two-thirds of respondents have used a recruitment agency in the past to help with a job search. Of these, well over half (58%) found the agency via an online search, while 20% had been approached by a recruiter when they were not actively searching for a job.

The dominance of the online search in attracting potential candidates, however, has significant ramifications for recruitment agencies, especially given candidates’ growing preference for skills and/or industry-focused recruitment activity – as demonstrated by the use of specific job boards. For example, 46% of individuals go to online job sites because they feel they will offer the most up-to-date jobs – yet just 31% believe a recruitment company will be up to date. Since the majority of jobs posted online are created by recruitment companies, there is clearly a perception issue that needs to be addressed.

As well as this, the majority of respondents feel that recruiters put the needs of the employer first. While this is perhaps unsurprising given the employers foot the bill, perhaps more consideration to candidates would provide a more positive outcome for all parties. This could ultimately come down to the type of agency. For example, a boutique agency could take more time with a candidate, whereas a larger organisation may or may not have a ‘one size fits all’ approach to candidate communication due to not having enough time for a personalised approach.

Getting the house in order

The research suggests that it is market specialism rather than social media which is set to have the biggest impact on the market over the next few years. From the surprisingly limited use of social media and rise of industry-specific job boards, to the growth of industry-specific networks that join together industry-specific social media and industry sector job boards, recruiters need to get specialist.

The research has identified a number of key issues for recruiters to consider.

With the continued preference for job boards over social media and the rise of industry/skills-specific job boards, recruiters need to focus on vertical market expertise. As well as this, SEO strategies must be refined and improved given the candidates’ reliance on search engines to locate a recruitment agency.

Variable attitudes across demographics – from age to skill and job role – reinforce the need to tailor the way jobs are promoted to different age groups and roles. Measurement is key to ensure strategies are maximising value. Combined with this, the fact that there are some misperceptions about the role recruitment agencies play should be a concern, especially given the lack of skills and good candidates in the market. Those agencies that actively nurture candidates can gain an edge.

To be effective at every stage of this process, recruiters need rapid access to in-depth information. From improving the candidate experience to measuring the value of different specialist job sites and refining SEO strategies, one thing is for sure: excellent insight into end-to-end recruitment processes has never been more important.

Toby Conibear is Global Sales Director at Bond International Software

To find out more, please visit: http://www.bondinternationalsoftware.com