Is recruitment broken?

By Claire Angus, Head of Recruitment Gateway at Cambridge NetworkInsights from the Network’s February recruitment peer learning group session.

broken heart robot

In recent talks with two of our network members and recruitment experts, Kelly Drewey - Business Psychologist at Talent Glue, and Katherine Wiid of Recrion. We have all been hearing, from various sources, how hard it is to recruit right now. How companies are struggling to source "the right people", and when they do, how difficult it is to onboard candidates successfully in a competitive market.  Throw hybrid working and WFH also brings its own challenges as well as benefits into the mix.

We needed to hear all about this current recruitment situation from the horse’s mouth so to speak!

Hence a short survey was devised and sent to a large selection of recruiters in the area, to help us to identify the main factors:

  1. What changes have you experienced around workforce resourcing in the last six months

  2. In terms of quality of candidates, what are the top five technical and people skill areas that you are finding difficult to recruit for in the current market?

  3. What are the biggest challenges for your new recruits currently?

  4. Who do you think should be paying for the training needed to close any current skill gaps?

  5. What are the key things that are 'keeping you awake at night' around recruitment and resourcing right now? 

With the survey data analysed, it became the focus of discussions at our recent February Cambridge Network recruitment peer group session.

I feel so grateful that we can offer our peer groups meetings as a Network membership benefit. It's always a pleasure to meet up with the recruitment peer group in a "safe place" to share challenges, and to offer experience-based solutions.

It was clear that ‘broken recruitment’ proved to be a rather hot topic. In an hour and a half, we had covered, salaries and benefits, counter offers, onboarding, notice periods, retention, screening, culture and inclusion & diversity, with members of the groups sharing their recent recruitment case studies. 

What next? 

Let's find out what the jobs market feels like from a job seekers perspective. What are job seekers looking for from an employer right now? Our candidate survey will be going out shortly and we are looking forward to sharing the results at our next recruitment peer group meeting in May. 

Can companies come together to recruit in collaboration? That is the question.

Can you spare 5 minutes to help with our current ongoing research by completing this short survey? Is-recruitment-broken

As a thank you for completing it, we are giving away two offers in a prize draw:

  • A free exhibition slot at any virtual job’s fair in 2022 (excluding February 2022)

  • A free featured job for a month (for members of Cambridge Network with access to RG)