Recruitment challenges in a post-COVID market

Recruitment awakening

The promise of Freedom Day has hailed a recruitment awakening. Businesses have renewed confidence (and urgency) to realise their growth plans, at pace. Recruiting the right talent, with the right skills is a primary priority to facilitate these expansion plans.

And therein lies the challenge. 

The perfect storm

This confidence extends to candidates who are considering fresh career opportunities. Candidates are spoiled for choice and businesses are vying for best talent. The perfect storm. 

It's an invigorating time for recruiters. I’m excited about our prospects to support companies scale and advance people’s career ambitions. Regardless, with an evolved market, and hiring at the top of many company’s agendas, recruiters are faced with new challenges.

With 18 years in recruitment, I’ve seen my fair share of volatility in the markets. The current climate feels more frenzied that I’ve experienced before. So, what are the challenges our recruiters are facing and as recruitment managers, how do we support them to keep calm and carry on recruiting? 

The rise of the counter offer

There is no shortage of jobs and very little business development to be done to attract clients. A great position to be in, for sure. 

The flip side of this is that candidates are in demand and spoiled for choice. They have more control and time is on their side, in their decision making. With many candidates  financially motivated, we’re seeing counter offers becoming typical. It’s no longer a case of the job’s filled and move on. Anything can happen in that eleventh hour. 

Counter offers cause a huge delay in processes, with candidates accepting offers and then changing their minds. We’re adapting our process to overcome this increasingly frequent challenge. 

And that starts with the client. This is as much an unpredictable and fluctuating recruitment market for them as it is for us. Educating our clients is critical for them to understand not only why they have to adapt, but how. 

Clients need to move quickly. The candidate ‘sale’ is now on and you don’t want to miss out on the best buys. 

We’ve introduced timings to our recruitment process with our clients to make sure that they don’t miss out on securing the best talent, when it’s in front of them. 

Part of educating our clients includes managing expectations. Even with the best laid plans to create a smoother way of working, talent can still slip through the net. It’s important for clients to be aware of this and understand that we are operating in the most efficient way to support them achieve their people development goals. 

Creative candidate attraction 

We’re always looking at more creative ways to proactively generate interest with professionals who are considering a move to increase our candidate pipeline. We’re in a fortunate position at Source, that we have a well-established network of creative, digital and media professionals with whom we have worked with for years. 

That’s why we will continue to ask for referrals and recommendations, this  has always been a great way to reach more of the passive market.

Wrap up

Our most recent quarter has equally been one of the most challenging and rewarding we’ve experienced on our team. 

It’s been a team effort and I’m very grateful for the people that have pulled together to discuss the challenges, come up with great ideas on how to overcome them, highlight our learns and share in best practices.  

We’d love to hear your biggest challenges as a recruiter and share ideas on how to overcome them. It would be great for our industry to come together to take the opportunity we have now, to improve our collective reputation. 

Thanks for reading.