Excipion, part of the STR Group
We asked 500 people 5 questions about what they think of the recruitment industry, and here’s what they said.
The aim of the survey was to see what the public perception of our industry is in both England and Scotland today and to see what lessons our industry can learn in order to improve what we do and how we do it.
Methodology
The survey was conducted by Google Consumer Surveys between 13th August 2014 and 18th August 2014 and based on 500 online responses. The sample was of the general population of the UK by filtered by gender and age.
The age groups targeted were 25 – 34, 35 – 44, and 45 – 54 year olds. These age brackets were selected to give an indication of the professional population in the UK.
If you would like access to all of the data that we gathered just email us and ask!
What is your general impression of recruitment agencies?
This was the first question we asked. The idea was to see if there was any difference in how people north and south of the boarder viewed the recruitment industry.
It turns out that people in Scotland have a lower overall impression of the recruitment industry than those in England.
Broken down by age group we can see that those in the 35 – 44 age group have a high view of the industry in both England and Scotland. However what is suprising is that people aged 25 – 34 in England have a much higher view of recruitment agencies than those of the same age in Scotland.
What 3 words best describe a recruitment agent?
We then asked people to outline their thoughts in three words.
England
While not overwhelmingly positive respondents in England were fairly balanced.
Scotland
On the other hand respondents from Scotland were a lot more negative which ties in to the first question.
Did you use a recruitment agency to find your last job?
The next question was a straight yes/no question. Our respondents show that there is a significant difference between the numbers of people that use recruitment agencies north and south of the boarder. A higher percentage of people use recruitment agencies in England, over 21%.
If we again break the results down by age group we can see as people get older they use recruitment companies less and less.
How would you describe your experience with recruitment agencies?
Bearing in mind the answers to the first question the answers to this one may surprise you. Even though people in Scotland have a lower option of the recruitment industry it turns out that they are more satisfied with the experience that they have received.
This is true across all age groups. Again the group aged between 35 – 44 reported a better experience then the other two age groups.
Would you use a recruitment agency to find your next job?
This final question was again a simple yes/no answer. Perhaps surprisingly due to the fact that only 21% of people in England said that they used a recruitment agent for their last job and that satisfaction was not reported to be high nearly half of all English respondents said that they would use a recruitment to find their next job.
However even though Scottish respondents were more positive towards previous recruitment agency experiences they were less likely to use a recruitment company than those in England.
Breaking the two groups down by age shows a major difference between Scottish and English respondents. This is the intentions of the younger group, those aged 25 – 34. In England over half said that they intended to use a recruitment agent, whereas only a quarter of Scottish respondents said the same.
Conclusions
Overall it seems that people’s perceptions of the recruitment industry doesn’t match their experiences, this is especially true in Scotland. In Scotland the respondents had the lower impression even though those that used a recruitment agency reported better experiences than those in England.
One of the main questions that this survey poses is why do people have low options of the industry when so many are planning to use the industry’s services in the future? How as an industry can we change this perception?