What an eventful week it’s been – Prince Harry and Meghan have announced they will be stepping down from royal duty, tensions with Iran and the US continue to escalate and a Japanese billionaire has put an ad out to find a travel companion to the moon... Is it just me or is the world becoming an extremely confusing place? It’s easy for us to feel a bit helpless in these times of weird and wonderful uncertainty.
Well, what a Christmas break that was. I’m sure you are all loving life after getting back into the routine of work. Tackling that overflowing inbox and answering the same rhetorical question over and over… “so how was your break?” But sarcasm aside, I genuinely hope you had a restful time. The fresh start feeling that comes with the new year is certainly liberating, and although many don’t stick to their resolutions, it’s still a great sentiment to set one up – even if it only ends up lasting two weeks. However, recruitment methodologies, processes and behaviours (unlike resolutions) need to be long-lasting. Pipelines do not populate themselves and candidates are becoming more and more demanding.
At this time of year, I always think back to my childhood and try to remember the excitement of Christmas as a kid. I recall being one of the three shepherds in my junior school nativity play. Our costumes were definitely one of my highlights: chequered tea towels with elastic bands around our heads – pure 90s chic!
It’s the 3rd December and this week we’re as excited as Regina George’s mum at the Winter Talent Show. Why? Well, A) Because it’s FINALLY December ❄️ And B) New features! 📲
Skillset-specific messaging is the approach of tailoring your employer brand to appeal directly to the skillsets you’re hiring. Instead of boring candidates with generic, theoretical value propositions, skillset-specific messaging enables a highly personalised approach that can convert even the most passive of candidates into applications – which is key when you’re hiring from candidate-centric markets with skills shortages or high demand for talent.
In what is now the most difficult UK hiring environment in two decades, it's no wonder employers are racing to deploy increasingly creative methods of recruitment. From film-grade employer brand videos and semi-sentient recruitment chatbots to social media and programmatic advertising, more and more employers are levelling-up the intensity and intelligence of their hiring strategy.
Storytime. I was annoyed by something pretty petty the other day – a classic case of our era’s I want it now attitude. My children and I went and selected a Christmas tree. We got all the decorations. Went to Sainsbury’s for a turkey crown for myself and my two little ones. I even got the pigs in blankets.
Imagine if Kathleen Kelly and Joe Fox’s emails were lost in *You’ve Got Mail* – there’d be no love story there for desperately hopeless romantics at all. The film would have to be called *You’ve Got No Mail*. Or even *You’ve Got Mail… I Know It’s Around Here Somewhere*. The truth is, for us recruiters, that’s an everyday reality.
The days of simplified work schedules are over. Rising workloads, conflicting time-zones, flexible hours and the remote working revolution have created an environment in which two days are rarely ever the same.
When working at Accenture, I lead an initiative to create a 'candidate experience' training with a focus of standardising the steps that recruiters would take to provide amazing candidate experiences. The end goal: “to create promoters out of every candidate that we interact with”.
