Recruiters’ Response to Covid-19 is Not Aligned to Their In-House Counterparts Reveals Industry Survey
STOCKPORT, UK - 17 April 2020- Volcanic, the global leader in recruitment websites, reveals key findings of an industry benchmarking survey conducted in partnership with Talent Nexus, specialist recruitment marketing agency, highlighting the discrepancies between how recruitment agencies are responding to the current challenges compared to employers.
Both agency and in-house recruiters indicate their top priorities as reducing costs and filling existing vacancies, suggesting the industry is still in a reactive mode to survive the immediate impact of the pandemic.
Recruitment agencies have been very quick to introduce cost-savings through headcount reductions:
-55% have either implemented or are considering redundancies
-66% have already implemented or are considering furloughing staff
-52% have already implemented or are considering pay cuts
-56% have already implemented or are considering reduced working hours.
This is a very different picture to the findings shared by in-house recruiters, with employers largely resisting the pressure to impact their staff numbers:
-only 9% have already implemented redundancies with 47% not considering
-34% are not considering furloughing
-46% are not considering pay cuts
-43% are not considering reduced working hours.
However, despite their alacrity in cutting costs through staff reductions, surprisingly 33% of recruitment agencies are not considering applying for government-backed financial support, with only 14% having already implemented these measures.
Meanwhile 40% of recruitment agencies are prioritising winning new clients over building their candidate database, which was one of the lowest priorities (25%) for most respondents. In contrast, in-house recruiters’ highest priority is preparing for the future (57%).
Rachael Moss, Marketing Director, Volcanic, comments:
“the findings indicate that recruiters have taken more of a knee-jerk reaction to cope with the impact of Covid-19. In some ways this fast response reflects the agility of recruitment businesses to respond to market conditions. What will be equally important is that they are as swift to react when we come out of lockdown.”
She continues:
“by using this interim period to take stock and analyse their strengths and areas for long-term growth, as well as evaluating technologies to help them achieve business efficiencies, recruitment companies will be best placed for recovery.”
Respondents offered similar advice such as: “this could be a good opportunity to re-evaluate your business, clean up the database, consider different markets, offer online training to your furloughed staff, and, of course, focus on the roles you think will generate revenue." Another simply rallied the call to: “keep faith”.
For more insights about how your peers are responding, watch our on demand webinar where Volcanic and Talent Nexus discuss what the findings reveal about the impact on jobs, business operations, people and relationships with industry suppliers. Or download the full survey results at: www.talentnexus.com/pulse
The industry recruitment pulse survey was conducted on 2nd and 3rd April, collecting responses from over 300 organisations.
About Volcanic
Volcanic is the global leader in recruitment websites accelerating candidate attraction and engagement. We create beautiful websites powered by our fully secure SaaS platform that is integrated with market-leading CRMs and multi-posters for better efficiencies. Our platform has been designed exclusively for recruiters to amplify their online presence through a world-class content management system, GoogleForJobs optimised job posting, SEO monitoring tools, compliant candidate portals and an advanced reporting suite. This year over 7 million candidates will be delivered to recruitment websites via Volcanic’s SaaS platform, at a rate of 20,000 a day. Serving 6 of the UK’s top 10 recruitment companies, and 25% of the top 100, Volcanic is an Access Group company.
For more information, contact marketing@volcanic.co.uk
Media contact: Rachael Moss r.moss@volcanic.co.uk
About Talent Nexus
Talent Nexus is a performance marketing agency, helping recruitment agencies to achieve better results from their advertising.
They help recruiters access a full range of channels – including traditional job boards, aggregators, paid search and social media.
With market-leading technology and an expert account management team, they work in partnership with organisations to ensure their media budgets are being spent effectively, whilst maximising results.
