The shapeshifting nature of our day-to-day continues to influence business. The impacts of the last four years have continued to resonate within the ongoing debates between remote and in-person work, value, compensation and employee appreciation. Conversations around the way that people view their lives, along with constantly changing macro and micro pressures they face, are still ongoing. In particular, focus has arisen on the ways people want to work, and how they seek work.
Employees within the Millennial and Gen Z contingents are empowered more than ever to reshape their workplaces from the ground up according to their new values. A deviation from the earlier generation’s ideals around work and expectations, these employees want much more from prospective companies: greater fulfillment, acknowledgement of their lives outside of work, through flexibility and paid leave, along with better people management, are among the appeals that are all now on the table.
For prospective employees, these changes coupled with an increasingly tightening labour market has helped shift the landscape in their favour. Agencies who are seeking to fill vacant roles, on the other hand, will have to seek out the most cost-efficient solutions now more than ever before – but they will need to do it without sacrificing that vital human connection that leads to truly great placements.
The New Costs of Hiring Talent
A push for payment transparency is on the rise. Just 45% of recruiting professionals have stated that their companies increased salaries enough to pace with inflation. It’s no surprise that workers have felt cheated. Demands for fair and equal salaries, along with added benefits, insurance coverage and workplace flexibility – are here. Thanks to widespread changes to legislation and a shift in company policies, employees will now have more insight, and say over, the terms of their employment contracts that they’ve agreed upon.
What does this mean for consultants and staffing agencies? Typical compensation for talent acquisition professionals can be anywhere from 20-30% of a new hire’s salary. Negotiating a higher salary for a prospective hire may be a great driving incentive to locate those candidates, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of building great relationships that can truly last. More than a quarter of Canadian companies are predicting turnover rates will jump in 2024 – and the impacts can be costly.
The True Cost of Employee Turnover
That includes costs to source, rehire and train new employees, as well as lost productivity. Around 15% of Canadian companies shared that turnover can cost up to $100,00 per year. Moreover, there’s a spiralling effect: 64% of Canadian companies state that losing employees places enormous pressure on the remaining workforce, creating the risk of even more departures. It’s one the main reasons that building better relationships is very crucial to retention, and slowing down turnover.
It’s also why hiring consultants, freelancers or fractional roles can be beneficial for your business. Connecting authentically with the right candidate takes time. As employees seek to get more out of their work, it’s never been more important to ensure that they feel valued and respected throughout the hiring process. Both staffing agencies and consultancies need to be able to pivot their strategies given to maintain their competitive edge.
Sourcing Through Social: Pros & Cons
We’ve written before about the value of building a human connection with job seekers and how it can lead to some truly groundbreaking placements. These days, recruiters are using a wider range of platforms and tools at their disposal. Social media – favoured for the human connection that almost comes built-in – is becoming one of the most popular.
LinkedIn is still the main star of this show. Since launching in 2003 it has grown to a billion users worldwide, cementing its position as the absolute top professional platform. More than 80% of recruiters agree: LinkedIn is still the most effective method of vetting job candidates. Every week, over 40 million people are actively searching for their next position, and roughly 77 job applications are submitted on LinkedIn every second. This also makes it a very crowded marketplace, with some roles receiving hundreds of applicants within hours of being posted. Numbers like these can easily discourage job seekers, even if they’re a great fit for the role.
Additionally, even though LinkedIn still remains a primary source of candidates, sourcing them from the platform can be difficult. Costs, time and communication issues can all plague consultancies and recruitment agencies leading to lost productivity and less success. Since professional culture has been built around the availability and community, it can sometimes be difficult to see where LinkedIn’s shortcomings may lie.
Research from recruitment marketing firm Jobvite has shown that Facebook and Instagram are also on recruiters’ radar. Facebook still boasts more than one billion daily active users, so it’s no surprise that a growing number of acquisition managers view the platform as a fresh and easy way to contact potential new team members. Agencies gain visibility into a broad talent pool while having the opportunity to engage with passive job seekers, and can use word of mouth connections to help source them.
Working In Isolation Takes Time
Despite the benefits there are drawbacks to including personal social media pages in your hiring strategy. Profiles on these networks often contain personal information that isn’t visible on a job application, and can increase the risk of bias in the hiring process. Need more great tips on how to shape your hiring strategy? Check out our free ebook for the best techniques and information on how you can get the jump on your strategy 2024.
It takes considerable time and effort to build reach organically on each channel before you can begin engaging the right people – especially when using social media platforms in isolation. There’s considerable training involved, too: teaching your team on how to effectively use social media to reach candidates can be costly and time-consuming, and pull resources away from other initiatives that have proven effectiveness.
The benefits of using social media platforms shouldn’t be underestimated, though. What agencies need is a more efficient way to use them. With Oomple, you can take full advantage of social media potential to reach candidates on every social channel, and through search, simply by using our platform. Oomple gives you the power to create job postings across as many social media channels as you need, acting as a powerful network amplifier for your business. It lets you take advantage of the best part of using social media for your recruitment strategy in one place, without the hassle and lost time.
With access to over 75,000 vetted professionals across a wide range of verticals, Oomple’s AI-powered matching and connection features ensure you source the best candidate for the position effectively and with confidence. Share job postings across LinkedIn, Google Jobs and more than 20 separate job boards in just one click. Oomple also lets you mass message your selected pool of candidates allowing your acquisitions team to quickly and easily create a talent pipeline – all in one tool, for one monthly subscription price.
Better Tech For Sourcing Candidates
By harnessing the power of specialized software and AI-based tools, agencies can pivot quickly and easily to stay ahead in a competitive hiring environment. There’s no question that tech has revolutionized the talent sourcing industry: by managing the vast amount of user data agencies receive, to helping reach better candidates for their clients, sourcing and acquiring new talent has never been easier, or faster.
What about building relationships? We know that personalized communication not only enhances retention, but can help make your company stand out in a competitive market when there are other offers available. It’s all about hiring proactively: showing a potential candidate that your agency can truly deliver for them. When done effectively, centers on meeting that candidate's needs throughout the hiring process, and at every stage of their career.
We also know that relationship building, while extremely valuable to the success of your business, is time-intensive. That’s why Oomple is designed to save your agency as much time as possible. Through the use of AI, Oomple helps cut down on sourcing time so that your team can focus on building the relationships with candidates that matter most. We help give agencies the space to build lasting, flourishing connections with potential candidates who will bring plenty of added value to your business.
A Fully Integrated, Built-In Network – In One Place
Finding the right talent without overspending or extending time-to-fill metrics can be a daunting task. We know that the pressure to locate and hire top talent can sometimes get tough as the market becomes more competitive. As an agency, it’s important to stay ahead of your competitors. You want to make sure you’re bringing only the best of the best – for the roles you fill, for your client’s business needs, and for the candidates themselves.
That's why Oomple works to provide agencies with access to a wide, comprehensive range of top professional candidates capable of being integrated within any pre-existing curated database. Oomple enriches the client experience by allowing you to manage your candidate relationships easily and effectively, and working towards building community-driven hiring initiatives.
From that first point of contact to the final hiring decision, our network of specialized talent gives you the opportunity to scale your freelance and contractor talent base fast, and cost-effectively. We’ll let your talent acquisition team focus on what they do best: building strong, lasting relationships throughout the hiring process – which can go a long way to both retaining talent, and in attracting the best talent in the future.
So when you’re building your client’s next recruitment strategy, or if you’re simply looking to help curate the best pool of talent possible, Oomple Copilot can help.
Contact us today for a free demo, or take a quick product tour and see how Oomple Copilot will work for you.