UK businesses are in a conundrum - they are under immense pressure to fill job openings but cannot find enough skilled candidates. This means companies are in fierce competition for the same group of workers.

According to the British Chamber of Commerce's Quarterly Recruitment Outlook in 2023, 80% of businesses trying to hire new employees encountered difficulties. The sectors facing the highest recruitment obstacles were hospitality and manufacturing, with a reported difficulty rate of 83%. The construction and engineering sectors were followed closely at 81%, followed by professional services, and the public, education, and health sector, all with a reported difficulty rate of 79%.

How did we get here? There are a few catalysts:

Brexit has limited the migration of people from Europe. As of September 2022, the UK labour force in a Changing Europe reported a notable deficit of approximately 460,000 workers originating from the EU. While businesses can employ individuals from overseas for certain roles, it involves visa sponsorships and comparatively more paperwork. Besides, visa sponsorships don't cover roles such as shelf stackers and security guards.

Also, post-pandemic, there's been immense economic inactivity. According to Resolution Foundation's Post-pandemic Participation Report, since the beginning of the pandemic, there has been an increase of 830,000 in economic inactivity among adults, of which 76 percent (630,000) are individuals aged 50 and above.

This means that it has never been harder to find the people that you are looking for. Data released by the Office for National Statistics shows that between May and July 2023, there were 1.02 million vacancies compared to 817,000 between May and July 2019 and 834,000 during the same period in 2018. The accommodation and food service activity industry saw a total of 124,000 openings and the retail industry saw 84,000 job vacancies.

Demographic trends like an ageing workforce and fundamental shifts in expectations and work attitudes from the incoming generation mean that these issues will persist or worsen. As a result, you can't continue age-old recruitment practices and expect to close your vacancies.

So, how can businesses fill their vacant positions and discover the necessary talent? Employers should take proactive measures to adapt their strategy and lean into new thinking and technologies to navigate a new world are those who will get ahead.

Time to Reinvent Talent Acquisition in a Job Seekers Market

The job market is undergoing transformation, with more than just economic factors and employer preferences driving the change. Job seekers themselves are also evolving.

Millennials and Gen Z, a significant portion of the workforce, are strongly inclined toward utilising social media for job hunting. Research from The Caterer's recruitment campaign and jobs board revealed that nearly 80% of people in the age group 18-30 years want new and creative ways to apply for jobs. The digital age has rendered legacy platforms cumbersome, often requiring lengthy application processes. According to the same research, around 67% also said writing a CV or cover letter is tedious. Seven out of ten people gave up on a job application because it took too long.

Moreover, a growing number of passive job seekers have altered the landscape. According to Workable, 45% of UK candidates are passive job seekers, open to new opportunities but not actively seeking them. This underscores the need for strategic sourcing techniques to tap into this latent talent pool.

Candidate experience is pivotal in acquiring and retaining talent. As per HR Grapevine, 1 out of 3 candidates turn down job offers due to poor hiring procedures. Businesses need to enhance their focus on elevating the application journey.

The transformation in job application methods underscores the significance of catering to generational preferences, streamlining application processes, targeting passive candidates, and prioritising candidate experience to stay competitive in the evolving job market.

Explore and Expand Passive Talent

There has been a noteworthy change in how candidates seek and engage with job opportunities. Those enterprises that embrace adaptation and innovation in recruitment will gain an advantage. Whether in hospitality, retail, or any other industry, accessing a larger talent pool is the need of the hour.

Our job distribution platform expands access to untapped resource pools. With features like talent spotting, enhanced brand visibility, and a focus on delivering an exceptional candidate experience, we're here to take your recruitment efforts to the next level.

We strengthen your employer brand visibility for passive job seekers with multi-channel campaigns on Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Google Ads platforms. By optimising these campaigns to engage a new audience of job seekers, we convert them into active applicants and successful hires. And we promote individual jobs to active job seekers through programmatic advertising on job boards and aggregators. This strategic process widens your talent pool, increasing the quantity and quality of applications, whilst saving your team time by providing a single point of contact.

And then we make it easy for candidates to apply. We do this through a custom careers page, integrated with your applicant tracking system, and intuitive, user-friendly conversational (chatbot) application flows. . By offering a frictionless application process with the ability to apply for a job in 3 clicks or less, we help you improve your conversion rate (i.e., the number of people who submit a job application after seeing a job vacancy). So interested talent converts into quality applicants, every time.

Book a call with us to learn how we can help you discover hidden talent and address staff shortages!