The recruitment industry is normally the first industry to suffer in a recession, but also one of the first to fight back when they start coming out of it.
What will the next 12 months look like for the recruitment industry?
Personally, I think it will become an employers market. This means that companies will need to be more flexible around staff working practices and a lot more working from home with small office spaces. Employers will be looking for employees who have the facilities to work from home efficiently and are self-driven, this will change the process of recruiting staff. Additionally, I think there could be more start-up recruitment agencies who have evaluated their careers and what they want to do, during the pandemic, and consequently realised they can work from home without the expense of having large offices, by simply interviewing candidates online. The digital recruitment agencies will be more efficient and dynamic and are able to quickly adapt to market conditions. This could put even more pressure on the larger agencies who have large fixed costs and a lot of mouths to feed!
The contract market is going to be stronger than ever, with most employers not wanting to commit to full time staff so they can gauge what the market is like, especially with Brexit coming up at the end of the year. If you are not in the contract market, I advise that you should start considering that as an option.
There is going to be a large talent pool out there where you have very skilled workers looking for jobs, so if you can demonstrate you are matching the right candidate with the right job, then there will be a lot of fees being raised.
Your firm needs to be visible and active to ensure candidates and employers know you are out there looking to help both of them. You will also need to make sure you are using the right social media channels where your clients and candidates can be found. For example, there is no point using Instagram if your target customer isn’t one you would usually find on that platform..
Many recruitment agencies that were strong in one particular market, e.g. hospitality, have started to look at other markets to ensure they have a good spread of sectors. So what you need to ask yourself is; have you started evaluating your existing markets to make sure you are ready to venture in the new markets and that you have the necessary level of experience in house to be ready for that?
You will definitely need to add value to your clients through good content to differentiate yourself from your competitors. Our Marketing Manager predicts recruitment agencies will need to focus their efforts on inbound marketing to ensure that you are building stronger relationships with passive candidates and prospects than ever before. Take some time to re-look at your sales and marketing strategy to ensure you are focussing your efforts in the right places.
Finally, I think it will be the agencies that come up with new ideas of how to communicate with clients and candidates, how to offer increased service levels and review their existing working practices and internal staffing levels - that will survive this and come out the other end even stronger.
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