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Today’s podcast is all about candidates and where they have all gone, and a few logical things that you need to start considering when it comes to your approach with candidates. Now, we’re going to get into that in a second. [As usual, this is a transcription for you, so excuse any strange typos.]
If you’re new here, welcome. Great to have you. We have many podcasts that you can listen to, and you will find them all on the usual platforms.
The Current Hiring Market Has Changed-Drastically
Let’s talk about this weird thing that’s happening in the market at the moment. We’ve come out of the pandemic, and the pandemic has affected most countries in the world. It’s affected our economies, and naturally, it’s affected recruitment. Pre-February 2020, many recruiters did have a candidate short market; maybe not as desperate as it appears at the moment. A lot of you were pretty okay with clients. You had your good old service. Your clients had been working with you for years, and that wasn’t an issue.
It was quite transactional. Your clients came to you with roles, and you filled them in the majority of cases, and then, of course, the pandemic happened, and everything changed.
Let me talk about what has happened because the market has flipped again. It’s flipped in a way that probably will never return to how it was. If you think about it, it is Newton’s third law where once something has changed beyond recognition, it rarely goes back to its original state.
And The Changes are Here to Stay
Nearly 50% of the workforce in the western world was suddenly working remotely; people were on furlough in the UK supported by the government, people had time to reassess their careers. There’s been a lot of instability in the market, so a lot has happened. If you think that this is just a natural flip-flop that occurs in the recruitment market, think again, my friend, because it really is going to change.
We did a virtual event with our Superfast Circle members because, at the moment, we obviously can’t do a physical event; we are hoping that we can run one later on in the year. We did a deeper dive into this, but I wanted to highlight five things to give our subscribers and podcast listeners a steer on things you need to consider.
Your Mindset is Ruining Your Results
The first one is your mindset. Have you ever had that experience where you’re in the same market as somebody, or you’re a parent, and you’re having a conversation with somebody, and they have an opposite experience to you? When you think about it, you both had the same inputs, the same pressures; yet you seem to be doing well, and somebody else doesn’t.
If you’d like to know more about the way our minds work in this way, then have a look at Carol Dweck’s work, where she talks about the growth mindset. So often, when we’ve gone through a bit of a tough time, we can tend to get into a negative downward spiral. We just think, “Well, it’s always like that,” rather than thinking, “Okay, if this is happening, what could it be about, and what could I do about this? Am I looking at this in the right way?”.
The reality is that the market is buoyant. I think with, what was it? APSCo were saying in their latest newsletter that the market is more buoyant than it’s been in the last couple of years. Microsoft did a report which had approximately 30,000 responses – you can find it on their website – where they looked at people considering moving. They talked about the fact that over 40% of the global workforce would consider moving in the next 12 months.
So if you look at it in terms of a full pond to fish in, maybe it’s the rods or the lines that you’re using that aren’t working. Go and have a look at the Office of National Statistics. It is UK data, but it will be very similar.
I think it’s even more dramatic in the US and Australia. They talk about the fact that the majority of the population they’ve surveyed say that people tend to move every four to five years, and that, obviously, last year people didn’t move as much, so you’ve got a swell of people.
So there are candidates out there. I would be asking myself, “Why am I not connecting with these people? What am I doing wrong?”. So that’s number one – give your mindset a good clear out if you’ve got all this negative rubbish going on there.
Desperation in 2020 Made You Work With The Wrong Clients
Are you working with the wrong clients? Let’s step back and have a look at this. What jobs are you taking? What clients are you working with? Twelve months ago, when clients were disappearing, and you were looking for clients, you were probably thinking, “Yes, that’s fine. That’s money in the bank. I’ll take that. We’ll clear that client out in the future. We’ll take them on-board now.”
Do you now have clients that might not be your ideal avatar? The wrong client is almost certainly going to give you the wrong job. You’ve taken on a job that isn’t ideal, isn’t worth working with. My good friend, Nicky Coffin, talks about this a lot. She talks about working with specific types of roles or specific jobs and how, quite often, you really shouldn’t take a job. You can check out Centred Excellence if you want to find out more about that.
So now you’re working with a different group of clients, and you’re thinking, “Well, this is a challenging role to find, but I’m going to have a go with it,” but trust me, it’s probably not going to work. So it’s no surprise that you’re struggling to find the right candidates if you’re working with the wrong clients.
Your Candidate Psyche Has Changed
Number three is your candidate’s psyche. I don’t want to get too deep here but think about the candidates you’re working with. I don’t know about you, but the pandemic affected me in different ways. I had lots of thoughts about the business and what I wanted to do.
As I cycle forward, we’ve moved house. We’ve sold a house in the Lake District, which we’d thought about but not seriously considered. We’ve moved to a different part of the UK, a beautiful part of the UK, farther up the road in Cumbria. So we’re realigning what we’re doing with the business.
That’s happened to me, and I’m a very logical business owner. I have friends who’ve suddenly changed careers. They’re retraining. They’re doing different things. Think about where your candidates are. Some of them may have been put in very vulnerable positions. Not all employees, as we’re now discovering, were as positive as others. People were not supported in remote working. They weren’t given any equipment.
Again, go back to the Microsoft report I mentioned. Something like 46% of people felt unsupported by their current employer. They weren’t given any compensation for working from home. With all these things going on, people start to reevaluate themselves, reevaluate their skills and their abilities and think, “Hang on a minute here, I’m worth more.”
Naturally, they’re thinking a lot more about who they are, where they’re going to work, and who they want to work with. Approaching candidates with a much more open conversation about what they want is where I’d strongly suggest you need to be going now.
Your Approach: Transactional Versus Consultative and Nurturing
Number four is your transactional approach. Recruitment has been on a massive growth curve over the past few years. In lots of ways, it’s become quite transactional. You speak to a client. They have two or three roles that need filling, and you fill them. You go out and find these individuals, and then you send your clients a bunch of CVs.
One of the things we have a conversation with our clients around is that, because the market is shifting, you need to shift too. We’re moving from the transactional sell to the consultative sell because you’re not an order taker anymore. You really might have to work for the sale. You need to work for the candidate just as much as the client because the candidate is a rich resource for you.
Yes, you may have a client that can give you four or five different roles in their organization to fill. But you also need to start thinking about using the consultative approach that you’ve been using with clients over the last few months with candidates, so you get a much better way forward to work with them, and they start to appreciate you and what you’re doing.
Because if there’s some connection and engagement, you will not get people ghosting you because they’ll have a relationship with you that they value.
Candidate Marketing Campaigns
The final thing I want to talk about is your lack of candidate marketing campaigns. When we talk to people that want our help about what’s going on in the business, they will say, “We don’t need any client campaigns, or we don’t need any candidate campaigns because we’re fine with that.”
We had one particular client last year who said, “Oh, I wish I’d listened to you ages ago.” The market flipped completely. They thought they got all the clients that they needed, and it just changed. It’s the same now.
If you are the sort of organization that wants to scale and grow, you have to market to both sides of the coin. You have to have marketing campaigns for clients. You also need to have marketing campaigns for your candidates. We were chatting with a really good friend of ours who’s a recruiter.
We’ve become friends over the years. She says that sometimes it can take her two years to nurture someone before they decide to move. Think about how that can happen for you.
In a podcast that will air in a few weeks, I will be talking about trends. We talk about automating some marketing campaigns. What can you do to network and build connections with individuals so that when they are ready to move (and Microsoft data says they will be ready to move)?
Who do you think they’re going to come to first? They’re going to go to the person that’s been engaging with them, keeping in touch and helping them.
If you have not got campaigns aligned for your candidates just as you have for your clients, you need to do that now. We do this as part of the campaigns we create for our clients. If you want to know more about that, then obviously talk to us. For you as an individual, go back to your marketing plan, and look at what you’ve got in there.
If you’ve not got candidates, and you think, “Well, I’m going to be okay”, trust me, you’re not going to be okay because this will only change more and more as people are looking for that right role.
They’re looking for their next career move, but they’re going to want a recruiting partner. It’s not just a recruiting partner with a client now; it’s a recruiting partner with a candidate who will help them.
Finally
Five things important to remember – always keep your mindset clean. I remember my first mentor used to say, “80% mindset, Denise. It’s 20% tactics and strategy.” Number two, if you are working with some clients that are a little bit iffy that you took because you needed to, you need to be building campaigns to bring the better type of clients and that you can work with. Remember, your candidate’s psyche has changed a lot in the last year, and you need to be aware of that. Recruitment is no longer a transactional approach and sell. It’s a consultative sell, and it’s a consultative sell on both sides of the equation.
Finally, make sure that you have candidate and client campaigns. If you would like our help, of course, you know where we are. Just Google “Superfast Recruitment”, and we’ll be there. Book a call with one of us, and let’s have a conversation about how we might help you.
How We Can Help
If you would like more marketing ideas or want to know how to get your strategy together, then come along to SuperFastRecruitment.co.uk/call. Book a call with either Sharon or I, and let’s have a conversation about how we might help you too.
We have many clients on track for their best year ever because they implement what we teach and utilise the content and campaigns we give them. If you want a quick chat to see if what we do can work for you, book your call and demonstration here.
Thanks,
Denise
