Confidence and collaboration on the up

Jo Faragher

Further evidence this week that employers’ confidence has turned a corner, with the latest JobsOutlook survey from the REC finding that 53% are happy with the state of the economy – up 19 percentage points from January, and the highest score registered this year. 

What’s more, REC’s survey found that 97% of employers plan to increase or maintain their permanent workforce and 95% will increase or maintain their use of agency workers over the next year.

How recruiters respond to this regained confidence could determine their survival in the long-term. Focusing purely on filling roles and being the first to field a candidate might get you the business in the short-term, but it’s how you partner with clients on their future hiring strategies, and your empathy for where they plan their business to go, that will keep your agency on their preferred supplier list.

Perhaps most encouraging as an indicator of confidence this week was news from headhunting firm Interexec that senior level hires are on the rise. Recruiting at this level not only shows confidence in potential growth, but can also highlight plans to expand and move into new markets or regions with strong new leaders in tow. What will be interesting to see will be the evolution in executive pay – how these new senior hires are incentivised and remunerated after so much bad press around bonuses and inflated salaries.

This week Recruitment Agency Now met with Tempo, the recently established alliance between temporary agencies and hirers. It’s fair to say the recruitment industry has its fair share of membership bodies, and from time to time they like to air their disagreements, so it was refreshing to hear Tempo chair Keith Faulkner call for more collaboration.

REC chief executive Kevin Green already hinted at collaboration between industry bodies in a speech earlier this year, but whether this will happen in a formal way remains to be seen. As it is, on issues such as the Government’s review of the Conduct Regulations, most of the bodies share similar views, so it makes sense to lobby as a collective.

Finally, today marks GCSE results day, and 16-year-olds across the country will be planning whether to continue their education or move into paid employment. More and more of them will be eschewing A-levels and the prospect of further education to take on vocational qualifications such as apprenticeships – and as this trend develops, recruiters will need to adapt their skills assessments and processes to cater for young people who have followed a different course from the ‘traditional’ graduate route, but who may well have a more rounded experience of the world of work.

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