Following visits to several conferences in the past 10 months, I thought I should capture some of the recruitment trends that are becoming evident.
- The ease of success for recruitment is not returning to pre-recessionary levels. It is more difficult to achieve similar levels of recruitment margin and success today when compared to 2007 or before.
- Alternative recruitment models and strategies are becoming mainstream. These vary from recruitment by the hour to firms focused on RPO and VMS.
- There are recruitment firms growing by becoming VMS (Vendor Managed Service) providers. These are perceived as low recruitment margin, high volume types of work. If you have a good process, low margin VMS business becomes very good recruitment margin.
- Websites like freelance.com will in time have an impact on the level of placement done by recruitment agencies. Less low-level, short duration work being done by recruiters.
- The “Branch Office” strategy is evolving. During the recession, many branch locations were consolidated in the home office. There is a trend to handle more from a central location and have recruiters that focus on the former branch geography working from a home office or remote location.
- There are some hot spots for recruitment on a global basis. Poland and Eastern Europe continue to be hot, while South America seems to be heating up, particularly Colombia.
- There is a recruitment trend pointing toward offshore outsourcing for some back-office and non-client facing work. If you are not doing this, then you are creating a cost differential to your competitors that will eventually impact your success.
- Integration of social media is no longer an idea to consider. Successful recruitment agencies have it factored in to everything they do.
- Top-producing and benchmarked firms have integrated technology into their recruitment process. This includes video interviewing, CRM, social media, and other back-office tools.
- If you are not benchmarking against a peer group, you are missing an opportunity to decrease cost, increase effectiveness and grow recruitment margin. The best firms belong to peer networks or benchmark against a peer group regularly.
Do you see any recruitment trends that are evident that I missed on my list? I’m sure there are more than a few!
