The Best Recruitment Conditions in 10 Years?

We are now in the second half of the year and I can’t quite believe that this is my first blog post of 2018. This won’t happen again, but it is also an indication of how busy this year has been so far.

We are still experiencing the political instability that we have seen of late around the world. Brexit, elections and corruption in Brazil, President Trump saying whatever he likes and even dragging China into a trade war, just shows you that unpredictable politics remains a force in the world that we currently live in. While all of this goes on, I can confidently say that I am seeing the best recruitment conditions I have for possibly 10 years. During this period I have seen little peaks but that has usually been followed by a trough that quickly pulls us back into check. What I see now are strong global economies that all possess good fundamentals (i.e. low unemployment and rising GDP) meaning that we are seeing increased demand for in-house recruiters and experts specialising in talent and learning as companies desperately try to hang onto their best talent.

While we are not at a point where I’d say there is a “war for talent” (please note that I’ve never believed in this term as talent exists everywhere!), in-house teams do need to start reacting to what is going on around them. The days of sitting and waiting to see who might apply for a role have long gone, we are starting to experience a market where candidates are being made multiple offers or have multiple options to choose from where they can cherry-pick where they want to go and what they do. This in turn changes the interview process, rather than candidates chasing the role, the clients will be chasing the candidates. I’ve never been a believer of grilling someone at the 1st stage but even more importantly clients need to start selling to a candidate early on in the process. They need to feel a rapport or connection with the client and if they don’t get that early on they will exit the process sooner rather than later. With all this positivity there is always a caveat.

North America and Asia appear to be ahead of EMEA in this process, with Brexit still weighing slightly on the minds of businesses with a hub in the UK. We are also seeing more activity at “mid-level”, so the senior end of the market is still quite slow but all of these actions usually mean that the demand will come over time. Predicting what lies ahead is always difficult, there will no doubt be something that happens over the next 1-2 years that will have a great effect on the global economy. However as I write this I am more positive about how things look than I have been for a long time and now is genuinely the time for people to sit up, look around and enjoy the growth and development that we’ve been craving. For too long HR has been about cutting back, doing more with less and essentially working on the smallest of budgets. For once I can see us starting to put additional investment into HR, caring even more for the people that work for us (because we have more time) and ultimately investing more in them.

If you would like to discuss the global market further, you can get in touch with me at se@elliottscotthr.com