2024 was one of the toughest years for the recruitment market, ever! Recruiters with 25-30 years’ experience were talking about it as being unprecedented, having never seen a market as tough in all their years of working in the industry.
It is anticipated that “Things Can Only Get Better” (D:Ream) in 2025 but will that be the case? With all the changes over the last few years in employer and job seeker requirements, what challenges still exist? The aim of this blog is to make some of those challenges clear, as we see them, and provides some solutions that will help you and your business navigate this ever changing market.
BTW – apologies if “Things can only get better” is living rent free in your head right now, please read on regardless!
Economic Constraints & Budget Pressures
The impact of November’s budget announcement has been well documented, particularly the increases in N.I. costs to Employers. No business is immune from this so how can your business navigate this challenge, and succeed?
- Prioritise Critical Roles – Larger organisations may have several roles that they are looking to fill but, for smaller businesses, it could be a simple choice between recruiting a business development manager OR an Admin Assistant. Prioritising the position/s that provide the most value for the organisation is key here.
- Flexible Hiring Models – The N.I. increase can be offset by looking at other ways of securing necessary resources. Employing part-time workers can reduce costs, and also freelance or contractors can mean the work gets done while providing more control over costs and FTE levels.
- Invest in Retention – Controversial opinion for a recruitment platform that relies on employers posting their jobs but, nevertheless, this is a great solution to budgetary challenges. Implementing clear career progression paths, employee recognition schemes and wellbeing programs can really help with employee retention.
Skills Gaps & Workforce Shortages
Technology has developed at a rapid pace, leading to a number of skills gaps within businesses. Understanding and working with AI, cyber security and data analytics have all become critical, but due to their speedy development, the skills required to successfully manage them are at a premium. In other sectors, like healthcare and logistics, there are chronic workforce shortages. So, what can be done?
- Upskilling & Reskilling Programs – Investing in internal training can be money well spent to use your existing workforce, those who understand your business and the culture of your company, to move into these new roles.
- Partner with Educational Institutes – A lot of educational institutes now have local employer engagement programmes. Local businesses can effectively access a well educated student for free, the student gets valuable work experience and the school, college or university achieves better grades from more qualified students – it’s a massive WIN, WIN, WIN scenario!
- Focus on Transferable Skills – Obviously relevant previous experience is ideal when hiring into your business. However, identifying the key skills required in these roles and basing your hiring process can mean that you get some great candidates at a cheaper cost than someone with the relevant experience.
Use of Technology in Recruitment
The focus on automation in recruitment is a major advance and perhaps you already use something in your business. The sooner you can get to a shortlist of the best candidates, with the least amount of effort, the more time and money you save! Smaller organisations can’t always justify the cost of implementing these tools and larger one’s can struggle to integrate them into their processes.
- Adopt AI & Automation – AI can streamline your recruitment processes and is relatively easy to use under your own steam. For larger companies, most recruitment solutions use AI to make their processes faster and more efficient, including 365Jobs!
- Enhance Candidate Experiences – Using technology to post jobs and filter candidates is great for you, but what about the candidate experience? At a time when the brand your present as an employer is a real asset, keeping candidates up to date with the status of their application (as an example) can be very powerful. So using technology to do this, like 365Jobs, will help your reputation as an employer.
Employer Branding in a Competitive Market
With a candidate heavy market, why should a candidate want to work for your business? Standing out from the crowd can be tough, particularly if your company operates in a highly competitive market. Embracing the following points can help improve the perception of your brand to candidates:
- Highlight your values & culture – Use storytelling to showcase your organisation’s mission and values. Get some case studies or experiences from current employees, and get these onto the careers page on your website to advertise why your company is the place where candidates want to work.
- Leverage social media – Sounds like a no-brainer but a strong social media presence is essential to attract top talent. You don’t necessarily have to post every day on every platform, but perhaps identify the places where your demographic of candidates usually reside and start building your brand! Your company culture can be clearly seen by your social media posts and interactions from staff and followers, so be authentic with your posts and be consistent. Building a strong brand takes time, so consistency and showing up and being brave is key.
Hopefully you’ve found this blog useful and some of these points can help you successfully recruit in 2025! Of course, there are plenty of other challenges that the recruitment process brings, and we’ve developed 365Jobs to take care of a lot of these for you. If you’d like to find out more, please get in touch by calling 0345 11 66 365 or e-mailing hello@365Jobs.co.uk
