LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM — (Marketwired) — 09/29/15 —
UK recruiters need more than monetary compensation to attract best talent
Recruitment professionals are struggling to match hires to employer demand
Social recruiting is emerging as a recruitment imperative
According to Jobvite (), the leading comprehensive recruiting platform for emerging and enterprise companies, a large majority of UK recruiters (86%) expect that the job market will stay as competitive, or become even more challenging, in the next twelve months. This is while 58% already say that the lack of skilled or qualified workers is their biggest challenge when it comes to hiring quality talent.
It–s a case of supply and demand — with a diminishing talent pool becoming more demanding! 40% of recruiters cite working from home, or flexible working, as a way of swaying candidate choices, followed by employer matched defined contribution pension plans (36%), free transportation/ parking (30%), a casual dress code (30%), free snacks (22%), and open floor office design (22%).
These findings are revealed in first ever , conducted by independent research firm RedShift Research. This survey, which has been undertaken and published in the US for the past eight years as the Social Recruiting Survey, garnered the opinions of 500 UK-based recruiters and HR professionals across several industries. It examined employers– strategies with regards to winning the war for talent and explored the UK recruitment market–s relationship with social recruiting.
Recruiters are being squeezed from both sides — between candidate demands on one hand and recruitment rising higher up the boardroom agenda on the other. UK companies and their executive teams have come to expect high levels of performance from recruiters. 68% of recruiters can onboard a candidate in 11-60 days, but 49% are experiencing increased pressure to hire the right candidates faster. This pressure is largely driven by senior management (67%), lines of business managers (39%) and the board (20%) — supporting the belief that more than ever, the right talent is a key building block for successful businesses today.
Despite increased pressure to hire better and faster, investment in technologies that can expedite recruiting and ensure that better talent is found and hired faster is very low. 60% of UK recruiters spend less than £ 1,000 a year on career sites, mobile career websites, social media recruiting, job boards, and Applicant Tracking Systems. But, at least a fifth of the market (21%) still spends between £ 5,000-15000 a year on outside recruitment agencies — a backwards step when you consider that the highest quality candidates are sourced from employee referrals (22%), direct applications (19%), and social and professional networks (14%).
“Increased competition and a widening skills gap are driving recruiters to find new ways of engaging with talent,” said Dan Finnigan, CEO at Jobvite. “It–s clear that the UK recruiting industry is moving towards a more dynamic and exciting way to attract, identify, and onboard talent. Many organisations are starting to realise the importance of investing in their own employer brand instead of relying so heavily on outside recruiting agencies, as was standard in the past.”
The latest official figures by the show faltering employment growth, with unemployment rising. This may reflect the fact that recruiters are actually facing greater hiring difficulties because of a countrywide skills shortages. A shrinking skills pool means that recruiters will need to find new ways of casting their nets wider to find the best and brightest candidates.
Social recruiting is the next frontier. 92% of recruiters in the US are using social media to enhance their candidate identification capabilities. In contrast, the opportunity isn–t being as widely exploited in the UK, where just 40% of recruiters are busy on social. But this is about to change, with one third (33%) of all recruiters planning to increase investment in social recruiting in the next 12 months. Indeed, over a quarter (27%) of recruiters have found social or professional networks to be the most effective means through which to grow their employer brands, and that number is expected to rise quickly.
Finnigan goes on to say that, “Recruiters are also rapidly becoming aware of the power of social recruiting in their quest for the highest quality candidates. Jobvite, which has helped companies such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Gamesys to strengthen their talent pipelines and candidate engagement, is poised to help companies in Western Europe find the talent needed to fuel their growth and achieve their business objectives.”
With the UK–s new Flexible Working Policy in place, the most desired benefit from a candidate perspective is working from home/flexible working (40%)
This is followed by employer matched defined contribution pension plans (36%), free transportation/parking (30%), and a casual dress code (30%)
UK recruiters are increasingly competing within a limited pool of highly skilled and qualified candidates. This explains why 46% of those not using social media today are considering, or have already started, planning their strategy for the next 12 months
Of the 40% of recruiters in the UK using social media for candidate identification today, 75% turn to Facebook, 57% to Twitter, and 38% to LinkedIn or search
US based recruiters on the other hand turn to LinkedIn (87%), Facebook (55%), Twitter (47%), and Glassdoor (38%)
Social channels are a goldmine of information for recruiters. When looking at a candidate–s profile, they focus on the length of average job tenure (57%), length of tenure with current employer, commitment to professional organisations (42%), and mutual connections (29%)
But it also requires candidates to think smart. Things that are most frowned upon include references to marijuana use (65%), spelling/grammar errors in posts/tweets (54%), and pictures of the consumption of alcohol (46%)
Candidates should also think twice before posting selfies. 34% of recruiters view these snaps in a negative light
There–s good news for candidates also; 61% of recruiters would be more or much more likely to reconsider a hiring decision based on the positive content on a candidate–s social media profiles
Jobvite is the leading recruiting platform for the modern business. Today–s fastest-growing companies use applicant tracking, recruiter CRM and social recruiting software solutions from Jobvite to target the right talent and build the best teams. Jobvite is a complete, modular Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform which can optimize the speed, cost-effectiveness and ease of recruiting for any company. For more information, visit and follow us .
In its first year, Jobvite–s annual UK Social Recruitment Survey one of the most comprehensive surveys of its kind. The survey, conducted online in July 2015 by RedShift Research on behalf of Jobvite, garnered the opinions of 500 recruiting and human resources professionals. These professionals were spanned several industries, including Software/Technology, Retail, Finance, Education, Communication, Construction, Government and Healthcare. Participants were comprised of both Jobvite customers and noncustomers.
The is a continuation of the US Social Recruiting Survey, which has been conducted and published for the past eight years in the States. This year, the US team also released findings of its own . In the , there are numerous UK and US comparisons, which make for very interesting reading, revealing different recruitment and talent attraction strategies across the pond.
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