Accelerating Growth - Bullhorn 2011 UK Staffing and Recruitment Trends
As hiring in the UK resumed and job orders began to flow more freely in 2010, the bottleneck naturally shifted to finding the right candidates.
When asked what adjustments they’d made to their businesses in the past year that worked well, many respondents reported adding staff and new technology to their agencies. Others mentioned diversification into new areas and services in order to boost revenue. Agencies commonly reported being more proactive about candidate sourcing and uncovering placement opportunities.
UK respondents report that the most effective way to find candidates is job boards — but job boards also garnered the highest votes for least effective. A closer look at the data, once weighted, revealed the following order of preference for sourcing strategies:
- Networking
- Referrals
- In-house candidate database
- Job boards
- Social media
Finding quality candidates is a big focus and challenge for many agencies. Thus, UK recruiters are increasingly using social media to source candidates. Overall, 88 percent of firms reported using social media in 2010, with 79 percent intent on increasing their use in 2011. While LinkedIn is already a tried and tested tool for the vast majority of UK recruitment agencies, use of Twitter and Facebook is expected to grow rapidly, from 38 and 27 percent respectively in 2010, to 52 and 43 percent in 2011.
Agencies with a keen grasp on the basics — such as networking, relationship building and client management — are also primed to grab additional market share as the year progresses. And as always, continued use of technology will be key to their success, as the industry recuperates and thrives once again.
Download the full Bullhorn UK Staffing and Recruitment Trends report to find out how agencies measure success, top candidate sourcing strategies, client acquisition and development approaches, pay package trends and more.
