The unprecedented events of the past couple of years have caused swings from feast to famine in the global recruitment landscape. Honestly, it doesn’t feel like two minutes ago that you were neck deep in mountains of applications for vacancies that wouldn’t usually attract above average interest.
But now, in mid-2022, the tables have turned. The hunters are now the hunted. The hottest talent is calling the shots. And you’re likely having to dig deep, get creative and adapt your usual criterion, just to attract candidates per se. And given some economic outlooks, it could all change again!
In this article, we’re going to take a closer look at the state of play in the U.S, Australia and the UK. Different continents. But how similar are their recruitment landscapes? Where do they differ?
And crucially, how can an all-encompassing ATS (recruiting software) ease the issues that recruitment teams in all corners of the globe are experiencing?
How Does the Recruiting Landscape Across the Continents Compare and Contrast?
- The U.S. – Arizonan-based Recruiterie affirms that a lack of readily available skills is the heftiest challenge to the ongoing success and growth of American businesses. It describes “… in 2022… 55% of owners and recruiters admitting a struggle finding qualified applicants for positions they are trying to fill”.There are many reasons for America’s cavernous gap between open vacancies and job-hungry candidates. They include –
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- The so-called Great Resignation
- Contentious vaccination mandates
- A loss of key skills exiting the workforce, with “10,000 baby boomers hitting retirement every day for the next 19 years”
- As a result of these combined factors, it’s estimated that the recruitment landcape in the U.S. is one of the most demanding in the world.
- Australia – The talent search in Australia is at an all-time high, much the same as the U.S. and the UK.Australian recruitment professionals are finding themselves fishing in a smaller pond. This is partly due to a lack of mass return of the non-native workforce that left their home countries at the onset of lockdown. Its hard-edged border closures, which have only recently been eased, are a contributory factor.Chris Croller, of Sydney ethical recruitment firm Ambition, reports that “… the number of adverts on Seek in April 2022 was up an astonishing 59.7% compared to the same month 3 years ago. Job postings continue to rise month on month but what is interesting to note is that applications for April 2022 compared to March 2022 are down almost 8%, and if we compare April 2022 to April 2019 applications are down almost 50%!”
- UK – It’s a similar scenario for UK recruiters. According to the CIPD’s Jonathan Boys in his Spring 2022 analysis
- 76% of employers have vacancies
- 46% of these employers have hard-to-fill vacancies that call for multiple and repeated job board posting in order to reach a narrower talent pool
- Boys goes on to define that “Hard-to-fill vacancies are most common in healthcare (54%), the voluntary sector (49%) and education (49%)”. It’s double jeopardy. These sectors are notorious for burgeoning skills shortages. In addition, they can also be infamous their complex recruitment processes.
- British and Australian recruiters have both indicated a steep upward trajectory in salary bands. But this trend can’t continue exponentially. “… looking forward, just 27% of employers with hard-to-fill vacancies indicated that they would respond by raising wages in the future. It may be that employers are reaching the limit of this strategy,” Boys concluded.
Navigating the current back-breaking landscape can feel like wading through treacle. It’s tough. But recruitment professionals are known for their resilience and don’t go down easily without a fight. So, it’s far from all doom and gloom.
The fact is that things can be less grisly and more gratifying for you and your team, with the help of best-in-class recruiting software for superior candidate management and expedited time-to-hire, no matter which side of the equator you’re on.
Here’s some ideas to get your creative juice flowing…
What Attributes of a Leading ATS are Universally Valuable?
It’s clear that the recruitment landscape in the U.S., Australia and the UK shares more commonalities than differences. But where ever you’re based, whatever your specific challenges are, exceptional recruiting software will help to –
- Minimize superfluous admin AND stress levels
- Supercharge effectiveness
- Save time AND money
It supports your objectives by putting an array of amazing features at your disposal. For example –
- Job Board Analytics – When uptake is low, you might be tempted to go down ‘the more the merrier’ route. But ‘spraying and praying’ is costly. And it isn’t the answer for attracting needles in a haystack.An elite ATS provides you with invaluable analytics around which job boards are producing the best results for you –
- By job type
- By department
- By location
- By any other categories you want to scrutinize
So, you’re better-placed to laser target your ad spend in the places you’re most likely to get the desired results.
- Social Media Integration – Integration with your ATS allows for simultaneous job ad posting to your social media platforms. It’s a powerful addition to job board ads, given the global scale of social media usage. Your reach can be significantly boosted. Plus, it’s a super easy way for potential candidates to apply at the click of a button. When they do, their applications will land in your ATS alongside applications from other sources, ready for automated screening.
- Building a Talent Pool – Have you ever thoughts about passive candidates? They might not be actively looking to change jobs, but they’re interested in and engaged with your organization. And what about candidates who are screened out of the application process for a particular job? But they could be highly viable propositions for future vacancies.
Having a careers site and building a talent pool is the ideal way to draw them in to your world and keep them on side, ready to spring in to action as soon as you put a relevant vacancy on the market.
It enables you to drip feed benefits to them, such as continuous development, hybrid or remote working, flextime and workplace wellbeing. These are all areas that employers in the U.S., Australia and the UK are upping their focus on to leverage competitive edge.
And the brilliant news? Your careers site seamlessly pairs with a premium ATS. So, you can manage your site from your ATS platform, effortlessly and cohesively.
- Values-Based Recruitment – Having your ATS hooked up to your careers site opens up a wonderful world of content possibilities to delight and entice candidates. It empowers you to put your values at the front and centre of your recruitment campaigns, by developing a library of –
- Video clips
- Interviews
- Case studies and testimonials
And then there’s the application process. Values-based screening questions are ideal for following on from initial minimum criteria killer questions. Think about it. In a climate of record numbers of open and hard-to-fill vacancies, values-based questions can be infinitely more effective than reams of skills-based questions. It’s like ‘finding your tribe’. A candidate might not match your list of desirable skills and experience. But, if you’re both on the same page, they might have a whole lot of alternative assets to bring to the table.
Literally thousands of all these different types of application questions come as standard with a superior ATS such as HR Recruit.
- Easier Application Processes – With quality applications hard to come by, the last thing you want is to so is send potential candidates running for the hills, no thanks to Hurclean application processes. So, perhaps dialling it down might reel them in?
How about replacing your existing applications forms with mini-app forms and CVs for now? In fact, how about taking it a step further by temporarily scrapping screening questions for hard-to-fill vacancies? You see, a powerful ATS is purpose-designed to adapt and attune to your changing needs. So, you’re equipped to experiment and see what works, and what doesn’t. And you can confidently continue to change things back, up and sideways as the landscape evolves.
At HireRoad, our game-changing ATS – Recruit by HireRoad – has been expertly designed, by recruitment specialists, to stay ahead of the global talent acquisition landscape. We understand the current challenges. And it’s our mission to provide you with the tools you need to proactively rise to the challenges ahead.
We currently have capacity for show-and-tells for recruitment professionals in the U.S., Australia and the UK. So, if any of the above information resonates with you, let’s arrange an initial chat.