I’m not sure I’ve ever made a New Year prediction, and I’m not about to start now. However, I realised this weekend that 2025 will be the 26th anniversary of UK Recruiter. If you would like to read about our humble beginnings, you can do so here in a blog post I wrote in 1999 or go further back to our 800th issue in 2017 when I talked about the first 18 years.
I don’t know if I’m kidding myself when I say that yes of course recruitment has changed since I joined the industry in 1998, but at its core things are still the same.
The heart of recruitment remains the same. At its essence, recruitment is about connecting the right person with the right role. This focus on relationships, understanding candidates’ motivations, and meeting employers’ needs has not changed. Technology is certainly an enabler for this, but the need to truly understand both (sometimes multiple) parties is key. Understanding and managing their expectations is timeless. Secondly regardless of (or more accurately “aided by”) technological advancements, the recruiter’s role still involves assessing whether a candidate’s skills, experience, and culture fit align with the employer’s needs. Understanding the employer’s needs is a big part of this, and I still don’t believe we always get right. The ability to build rapport, identify “talent”, and read between the lines of CVs and interviews remains essential. Algorithms can assist, but human judgment still plays a critical role.
Back in my day, recruitment was a lot of manual work. My first role was re-typing CVs. Job ads were posted in newspapers or trade magazines and CVs were received by mail or fax. We had a wall of filing cabinets for the CVs (as evidenced in the photo above from 1984). CRMs did of course exist and recruiters were just as reticent then as they are now to update candidate or client details!! It goes without saying that CRMs are a world away from back then and job boards, social media and LinkedIn (both a job board and social media!) have transformed how candidates are found and engaged.
Another change is the knowledge that jobseekers have access to – you can no longer put lipstick on the pig of a bad client. Employer branding has become critical for attracting top talent, and recruitment agencies are a part of that in a way they weren’t 26 years ago.
In the old days, we had a whiteboard to track assignment activity and a bell to ring when a placement was made. Recruitment today relies heavily on analytics and metrics, from tracking time-to-hire to utilising predictive analytics for identifying the best candidates (this is an area I do expect to see more progress in).
The tools we use today are vastly different from those filing cabinets and fax machines of the past, but the heart of recruitment, connecting the right people with the right opportunities, endures.
PS, If you believe I am truly wrong and things are a world apart, check out this article I wrote about the 30 Steps in the Recruitment Process and tell me what’s changed. I will grant you it’s very “job led” rather than “candidate led”, but nevertheless still pretty relevant!
The post No Predictions From Me and the more things change… 26 Years of UKRecruiter appeared first on UK Recruiter.
