Today's post is a first for my blog - it is written by a guest writer. Over the next few weeks and months I have a number of fantastic guest writers lined up to share with you some great content from the world of recruitment. They are all experts in their particular subject matter, and none of them are particularly shy about that fact, either!
So expect to raise a few eyebrows, draw deep breathes and get your keyboard ready to comment on them!!
The subject of the recession is very close to a recruiters heart - but more importantly their wallet!! Recruiters are rewarded on successfully placing candidates, but if the jobs are not there, then, well the rest is obvious. So where do recruiters go from here?
Let me introduce Bill Boorman....
Some of you in the recruitment industry will already know Bill as a successful recruitment trainer (he is the MD of Bill Boorman Consultancy, supporting recruiters and recruitment companies across Europe) , but lately he is becoming better known for his use of social media, particlarly Twitter (you can follow him @billboorman) as communication tools in the recruitment sphere. He also hosts a Blogtalk radio show and is very active as the owner of his LinkedIn Group - The Good News Group (Recruiters). Last week he presented an interesting topic - Phoenix Recruiting - to the recruitment conference in Dallas, TalentNetLive.
I asked him to share what I felt were some very salient points from his presentation, and they do make for good reading. As I said earlier, you may choose to agree or disagree with Bill's point of view. But one thing is for sure, the Recruitment Phoenix is rising, and recruiters are going to have to change.
Over to you Bill...........
In terms of timing, recruiters are in a unique position to predict where the market is going next because we are closest to employer confidence and deal with a wide range of companies across most sectors. Based on this, you can split the recession in to 4 key stages:
Stage 1: Temp business increases while perm business stalls. Lots of jobs withdrawn at the final stages as companies get concerned about future business. Happened in the UK from July – October last year. Temp recruiters were asking “What recession” and applying the ostrich strategy.
Stage 2: Temp business drops dramatically with little or no perm activity or opportunity. Recruiters go in to panic mode with no pipeline. What jobs are around have little or no commitment. Discover social media to look busy! From November 08 – March 09 plenty of recruiters exit, become career coaches or become experts in outplacement. The dark days.
Stage 3: Temp numbers slowly increase. (I measure number of companies using) rather than total numbers. Perm placements start to happen with some pipeline appearing. Recruiters dare to think ahead. Better conversions of jobs to placements. Week on week this has slowly happened from March 2009. The key here is not to compare with last year (all time high) but last quarter. Employer confidence is returning with skeleton workforce stretched by new business. Employers dip their toe in through temp & interim to cope then plunge in to full time hires.
Stage 4: Temp numbers reach a high with plenty of perm jobs converting. Business back to respectable level. Happy days again :-) My forecast for this is May 11th 2011!
Time to get the new car brochures out and remember what it was like to eat out and go on holiday
Where are we now and what does it mean?
We are now firmly in stage 3. The CIPD report that 60% of employed staff are unhappy in their current role. They have accepted pay cuts, overtime bans and other cuts to stay employed but feel unappreciated. They will enter the job market once they feel confident in the economic recovery. For recruiters this will create both a flood of well qualified, working candidates and a churn in the job market with more opportunities to place and make money.
Candidates however are looking for a very different service to the one they got 12 months ago. Relationship is key along with trust. The challenge is to engage with these semi-passive job seekers now to become known for when the time is right. Don’t mistake network with candidate base. Your network knows you on one level, your candidate base has a relationship with you. Concentrate on building relationships with the top 10% by face to face meetings, calls etc. Social Media will have an important part to play in building the network, but it is the phone and face to face conversation that builds understanding and relationships, full interviews that go beyond skills and experience, feedback, briefing and most importantly keeping in touch whether you have a vacancy to offer now or not.
The decision making cycle for both candidates and clients has gone from 3 to 6 weeks with the businesses I work with. The general feedback I get is that all sectors have experienced the same doubling in length of decision making time because the appointment has to be 110% right for both the candidate and the client. There are more hoops to jump through on both sides including tests, interviews at higher levels, HR involvement etc etc.
The key for recruiters here is back to the relationship. You need to keep both the candidate and the client focused on a positive outcome. This means regular contact, prompting without pushing and influence rather than “control”.
This means plenty of phone time and the old fashioned recruitment skills that have become redundant during the boom times where speed took over from quality and service.
Finally, the biggest challenge comes from social media itself. This gives candidates direct access to hiring managers and vice a versa, and the flood of applications and “venues” for keeping in touch have meant that both are looking for true service, value, expertise and relationship or they WILL do it themselves. A warning for recruiters to do much more than post, hope and trawl the CV databases.
Enjoy the ride but learn the skills quickly. Recruiting is a much better job for it!
A big thanks to Bill for this post. What do you think, has he got it right? Has he got it wrong?
