Post Lockdown Recruiting in this Jobs ‘Market’

Nu-Recruit, Jobs & the very different jobs ‘Market’…..

I’m the most ancient of Recruiters. I’ve done this job for over 29yrs & since April 2021 I am still finding my feet & in fact its fair to say broadsided with the state of the jobs market since the Pandemic. If this is indeed, ‘Post’ pandemic.

I recruit office support. I do do other recruiting but in the main that’s what it is. Nice offices, good jobs, happy careers & really smashing straightforward candidates. And pre-pandemic I’d get inundated with applicants for jobs. Of course, lots of applicants weren’t successful & great tranches of my day was spent rejecting candidates en masse. Not a great way to spend days but important to let candidates know the state of play & move on.

Fast forward to April 2021 & the reopening of the economy & the reinflation of clients & employers having gaps in their staff & needing to cope with the new landscape of resignations / changing employees etc.

These lovely successful, happy clients of mine with great offices & brilliant staff (lots of whom I placed) did what they always have done. They called me, sent the job spec or described what & who they’re after & off I’d go to advertise & hunt. And that’s when it dawned on me how much things had changed.

I couldn’t fill any jobs without hunting now. Thank goodness I always did fill jobs via my own hunting & tenacity & contacts but now, blunt facts are that most of my roles are filled this way. Confirmed with Jobs Boards, the number of candidates registering their CVS online is increasing but they’re not replying, not answering emails, not engaging like they used to. They’re popping their CV up there & basically parking it. I’m getting applications, going back to them & hearing nothing back. That is so rare pre this year. My website brings in good candidates I admit but again not in the numbers I’m used to – nowhere near them.

To add more issues to the above too, once I get the all-important applicants & go through the jobs at length, for the first time ever I’m having to handle no-shows for my arranged interviews (so far none with clients). And for full horror disclosure, to top it all off, a First of Firsts….a candidate who didn’t show for the first day of work. (We did suss a week before the start as we got The Silence. But still). This was a £30k job. It took me about 10 days to recover & I’m still not over it.

And short-term, won’t lead to perm, Temping? Proving to be so very hard to get candidates interested. They’ve spent a long time at home & are hard to tempt for Temp.

So this is what I think. If you’re recruiting you need to know that unless you’re able to offer a damn decent (not hovering around the average) salary, decent holidays (not skimpy) & some nice chunky & ideally innovative extras, this market is really going to challenge you. And I’m being polite…it’ll throttle your recruiting. I am so lucky in that my clients have great packages, tend to be individually flexible & focused SME’s & they listen to me. The listening bit is so important – they employ me to bring my experience & expertise & yes, ideally to fill their jobs, but all of them have the good grace & business sense to listen & adapt & up their package game if they must.

To be ‘An Employer of Choice’ these days is no longer an empty claim. You must be. You must adapt, raise your package game or you’ll die in this very tight recruitment market. Might sound brutal but it really is my daily experience.

I’m Roseanne & I successfully run Nu-Recruit– I place permanent & temporary candidates of the very best quality into great local employers & jobs in Chester, Liverpool, & Wirral. In a no-fuss, no-nonsense way.

And I love what I do.

Call me if you think my experience will help you get the best candidate for your job!