2021 was a uniquely challenging year in recruitment, with available roles far outstripping the number of eligible quality candidates looking to make a move in the post-pandemic landscape. Many businesses were caught on the back foot as a result, finding it more difficult than before to fill their headcount.
To help you avoid that happening in 2022, we’ve put together our predictions for the top recruitment trends to help you plan ahead.
WHAT TO EXPECT FROM RECRUITMENT IN 2022
1. Virtual hiring and onboarding
The Covid-19 pandemic completely changed the game when it comes to hiring new candidates. In a 2020 survey on remote hiring trends, 80% of responding companies said their recruitment process had switched to being entirely online. Despite the return to near-enough normality in most parts of society, the corporate world has now embraced remote working in all its forms – including the hiring process. Our experience suggests the mid-pandemic trend towards remote hiring continued through 2021 – and we fully expect it to be one of the top trends in recruitment for 2022, too.
2. Brand building through social media
Many major brands have a name recognition value and mystique that makes people want to work for them. Whether their dream company is Apple, Disney, Google or Hiscox, leveraging brand value to entice would-be employees into applying for roles is an obvious win for hiring managers.
Ironically though, for big corporate brands that can be something of a catch-22. The recruitment team typically get very little say on how a company presents itself at the brand level, which means they might need to turn to other means to make a good impression on potential employees.
Social media is fantastic for that. It allows staff to pull back the curtain on life at the company, offering real employee experiences and insights into the many benefits of being under the brand umbrella. If you do have more control at the brand level, it can also be an effective way to run recruitment campaigns. Either way, using social channels to build your brand and make your workplace look appealing to candidates is one of our recommended recruiting strategies to implement in 2022.
3. Upskilling and internal promotions leading to more junior appointments
As mentioned above, and in past posts (as well as over on our LinkedIn), the candidate market is currently one of the most constrained anyone in recruitment has experienced. That was the case in 2021, and we don’t expect it to change in 2022 – certainly not in the early part of the year! Instead, we foresee it creating a need to upskill junior staff members.
For anyone already in the first few years of their career at a company, that’s great news. It’s likely to accelerate their career progression and launch them into mid-level roles faster than they might have progressed previously.
The knock-on effect will likely be more junior roles opening up in their wake. Those fast-progression candidates will then be called on to train the newcomers. This dynamic will give greater opportunities to both new university graduates, and people working entry-level corporate jobs like call centre staff. The increase in those roles is therefore likely to be a significant 2022 staffing and recruitment trend.
4. Proactive recruitment practices
The impacts of the pandemic mean that gone are the days when a recruitment consultant or hiring manager could simply post a new vacancy on a few jobs boards and expect to see the CVs fly in. One of the biggest trends in recruitment for 2022 will be recruiters actively reaching out to candidates and tapping their networks to find the right people to fill promising, but less in-demand, roles.
At Dynamite, we already work that way. As a boutique agency, our business is built on the kinds of recruiter-candidate relationships you need to find those absolute gems, and a very small number of our active roles are filled through candidates applying to advertised roles. Instead, we employ a varied mix of techniques to tap into talent often connecting with passive or referred candidates.
5. An explosion in niche recruitment
We’re also predicting the slow death of the generalist recruiter as one of our 2022 staffing and recruitment trends. After all-in, in a candidate’s market where employees are on the fence about moving jobs, the last thing you want is a hiring conversation where the prospective employee feels you don’t understand the ins and outs of the role you’re hiring for.
We’ve arranged our boutique recruitment business to tap into that need for niche, specialist recruitment knowledge. Each sector we specialise in is headed up by someone dedicated solely to that business area, and they’re experts at hiring in that space. They know the right questions to ask, the specific points to pick up on, and – using that proactive approach we mentioned above – act as the ideal recruitment filter for your business’s hiring needs.
SERVING YOUR NICHE RECRUITMENT NEEDS
If you’re looking to hire in the commercial, financial, prestige retail, accountancy or IT and technical sectors, we can help.
Visit our client services page for a feel of how we work, then get in touch to talk through the open roles you have available and how we can help you fill them.