Back in April we helped TalentNexus undertake a “state of the industry” survey. New research from this month’s Recruitment Pulse Survey in partnership with Talent Nexus and UK Recruiter sheds light on some positive trends.
Impact on recruitment businesses
Clients are starting to re-engage. In April, 65% of agencies said their clients were unreachable. Now 57% say their clients have started to get back in touch.
“Clients that went quiet earlier in the year are gradually starting to re-engage. They’re starting to think further ahead”.
Candidate start dates are starting to return to normal. In April, 53% said their clients were changing the start dates of their candidates . Now 30% of say their clients have resumed their normal schedule.
During these tough times, prices are still getting squeezed. Many clients are still renegotiating fees with their recruitment agencies (24%), and most agencies that have already modified their fee structure haven’t resumed their normal fees (14%).
New priorities for recruitment agencies
The top priorities for recruitment agencies have changed significantly during the pandemic. In August 2020, these were the most common priorities that agency owners and teams identified:
Impact on jobs
It’s not surprising that 95% of agencies have fewer roles to recruit for now, compared to before the pandemic.
With massive uncertainty and a sense of desperation for many candidates, we’re seeing very different behaviours.
66% said they were finding it easier to attract candidates than before the pandemic.
Recruiters are starting to face the opposite challenge which is that they’re receiving ‘too many’ or ‘irrelevant’ applications.
However, for 21%, the pandemic hasn’t impacted their candidate attraction.
These changes don’t seem to have affected budgets, with only half having made any changes to their budget throughout the pandemic.
Returning to the office
39% of recruitment agency staff have already returned to the office.
29% expected to be back in the office within 6 months – which means close to half of all agency staff are expecting to be working from home right through into spring of next year.
The trend towards remote work continues, with 27% not planning to work from the office in the future.
Working with job boards
79% of agencies have changed the way they work with traditional job boards in the last 6 months.
The most common changes have been to budgets. Uncertainty and fluctuating demand has forced agencies to look for more flexible ways to manage their job board advertising.
Many job boards have allowed advertisers to be more flexible, through a range of initiatives designed to support budget reductions or re-allocations.
Very few have cancelled completely (less than 10%).
21% haven’t changed the way they work with traditional job boards (e.g. Total Jobs, Reed.co.uk, CV Library).
Of the agencies currently utilising pay per performance boards (e.g. Indeed, Adzuna, Talent.com) only 10% said they’d had to cancel budgets – due to the more flexible nature of the contracts.
Working with technology providers
29% haven’t changed the way they work with tech providers.
From those who have, 29% have reduced their budgets and only 2% have cancelled any contracts.
16% have increased their budgets or started new contracts, highlighting how many are beginning to adopt new solutions in response to challenges emerging around new ways of working.
Register to see the full results report at www.talentnexus.com/pulse (includes data on changes to candidate behaviours, impact on people and planning for recovery)
