Recruiters get lots of KICK but not enough KISS!

Heavy-handed agencies already facing staff shortages, risk losing key recruiters


Conventionally, recruitment consultants relied upon their agency to provide the infrastructure, budgets and strategy to facilitate the flow of candidates to fill vacancies. However, a mounting candidate famine has already distorted this guiding principle, especially for harder-to-find applicant categories.

This has resulted in many recruitment agencies placing a high degree of reliance; even total expectation, upon the capability of their recruiters to produce candidates for interview. This puts recruitment consultants under considerable additional pressure. Indeed, the continuity of the livelihood of some recruiters not only depends upon their ability to win, pitch and manage new clients and to interview/select candidates. In addition, many recruiters are either wholly or partly responsible for finding candidates for interview. The pressure and stress this creates is pushing many highly successful recruiters to question their current position or leave the industry entirely.

If recruiters are to enjoy any degree of career stability and have confidence in the working environment provided by their employers, it is reasonable for them to expect agencies to do more to generate candidates. Agencies should therefore be re-appraising the level of responsibility and budget applied to providing this essential component of the recruitment process. Certainly, the longer agencies distance themselves from being actively responsible for candidate resources, the more vulnerable they and profitability will become.

Continuity of candidate supply is the fundamental factor to facilitate client patronage and revenue generation. Therefore, there is a need for many agencies to strengthen their ability to secure continuity of candidate resources and consider making a greater investment in this crucial phase of the recruitment process.

In the UK, the number of unemployed workers has reached record lows with more of the labour-force now in work. Private sector employment was up for the 11th consecutive month by June 2004. The steep rise in demand included: Services, Construction and Manufacturing which are all boosting employment levels. (NTC Research/Reuters Employment Index) This trend is a firm indicator that current shortages of candidates for a wide range of candidate profiles, are certain to increase.

This alarming candidate famine has already reached a number of sectors with candidate availability declining every month since November 2003. The range of Permanent skills reported to be particularly sparse includes Secretaries, Customer Services Personnel, Software Programmers and Nurses, with significant shortages of Care Workers, PAís and Chefs within Temporary skills categories.

Other UK sectors that are experiencing particularly rapid growth include Media, Marketing and Advertising. Demand in Construction follows closely with a staggering 75% increase in the number of positions available in 2004 compared to last year.

The UK economy is one of the most successful on the planet. On face value, the creation of thousands of new jobs means more potential placement revenue for recruitment agencies. However, when the rising tide of existing un-filled vacancies, estimated by Gordon Brown the Chancellor of the Exchequer in June 2004 at 600,000, is combined with a steady flow of new vacancies, the dynamics take on a worrying perspective.

A further variable in this already sombre equation is the influence of labour demographics across the EU. To help put this into perspective, at the June 2004 ëRecruiting in Cyberspace Conferenceí in London, organised by the Centre for Economic Performance / London School of Economics, Keith Robinson Director of Totaljobs, referred to the wisdom of the UK opening itís borders to workers from the new EU member states.

Robinson said, ìThe working population of Europe would plunge on a scale not seen since the Black Death giving a shortfall of 38 million workers in the EU.î The full impact of this alarming prospect is probably a decade or two away. However, we have already reached the point where many employers are finding it necessary to apply unusually creative strategies to bring high-demand candidates to interview.

Furthermore, with easily filled jobs and IT skills continuing to be attractive targets for commodity-based operators, a range of agencies should expect a shortfall in both placement volume and margins. High street agencies will find it ever more difficult to respond to increased demand for Temps as Permanent positions become harder to fill. Furthermore, with demand already driving up salaries, the volume of available Temporary resources is unlikely to be sufficient to fill the vacuum. Pressure to fill Temporary vacancies has already affected pay and in June 2004, average Temp rates rose again for the 13th month running.

There are two primary short-term concerns for the UK Recruitment Industry. The first is the growing shortage of Recruiters. The mediocre management of work-life balance issues and the pressure many agencies continue to pile upon their Recruitment Teams are together rapidly fuelling this problem. The second dilemma is precisely how to respond to the serious candidate scarcity that is starting to have severe impact upon middle/senior level candidates with established experience or qualified expertise.

A multiplicity of technical, sales, marketing and management areas are already under pressure, with further steep increases expected against current high-demand levels. This will almost certainly affect job categories with salaries of over 25k, especially where a record of accomplishment or experience is an indispensable interview pre-requisite. As verification, in June 2004, average salaries for new Permanent jobs rose for the 11th consecutive month.

The recruitment business is cyclic and we have been here before. However, this time a modest adjustment in tactics will probably fail to protect any agency resolutely sticking to the old recruitment business models. Obviously, clients and recruiters both need candidates for interview. There is also no doubt that many Agencies need to rebuild the working environment they provide for their Recruitment Teams and for many, the traditional ìKICKî agency management style quickly needs to be replaced by ìKISSî. In addition, an appropriate level of investment to generate the essential interviewees for the increased volume of vacancies may be another burning priority. Unless a degree of urgency is applied to implementing these measures, disgruntled clients and recruiters will simply go elsewhere.

The Recruitment Careers Centre