The recruitment industry, and technology, as a whole is constantly evolving. The new year provides a natural opportunity to take stock of the year we’ve left behind and to speculate about the year ahead. In November 2017 we conducted an online survey targeting recruitment professionals across the UK and Ireland to seek their thoughts, predictions and insights regarding the landscape of the recruitment industry and technology for 2018.
Below are 4 trends taken from our 2018 UK & Ireland Recruitment & Technology Landscape eBook.
1. 2018 A Year For Growth
Despite the ongoing brexit progression and the upcoming GDPR legislation, there is still a remarkably positive attitude across the employment and recruitment sector. In fact, the Office of National Statistics recently reported that unemployment in the UK has dropped to 1.44 million, a four decade low.
This is reflected in our survey, where 94.9% of recruitment agencies are predicting growth in 2018. This is primarily due to current sector demand according to 57.1% of surveyed participants. ONS statistician David Freeman confirms the prediction of recruitment professional in the UK & Ireland commenting, “Demand for workers clearly remain[s] strong.”
2. Finding Top Talent Remains Top Challenge
Although this is very positive for the recruitment industry in the UK, with a low unemployment rate and a strong demand for workers, it seems inevitable that this will perpetuate the skills shortage conundrum, making finding top talent the pressing challenge for recruiters. Almost three quarters (74.6%) of recruitment agencies predicted that this will remain true for 2018.
Recruitment agencies will need to rely on their skills of nurturing lasting relationships with passive candidates to build a pipeline of talent to place candidates in their clients’ hard-to-fill roles.
3. AI & Machine Learning Yet To See Investment
The development of new technology making a huge impact on the recruitment sector is not a new thing. If you cast your mind back only 10 years, LinkedIn Recruiter didn’t exist, recruitment software was in its infancy and social media wasn’t the widespread business tool that we know it is today. Last year saw a lot of hype surrounding the birth and implementation of AI and machine learning and you may have heard stats similar to:
“By 2020, 85% of customer interactions will be managed without a human.”
Having witnessed all of this, it doesn’t seem that UK & Ireland recruitment agencies are completely convinced about how this emerging technology can help their agency improve on a daily basis in 2018. Only 5.6% of recruitment professionals are considering AI & machine learning as a potential investment this year. There seems to be a much greater appetite for investment in tried and tested technologies with recruitment software (77.8%) and the website (55.6%) proving the most popular.
4. Social Media Remains Key To Candidate & Client Engagement
Social media has grown in importance over the last decade and it seems that this is unlikely to change in 2018. In fact, surveyed agencies predict that it may even have a larger part to play this year. Over half of recruitment agencies (50.8%) identified it as the technology predicted to have the biggest impact in the recruitment industry in 2018 and 89.8% recognised it as an key channel for their agency.
What is fascinating is the wide variety of tasks that recruiters now rely on social media for:
For a complete picture of 2018 Recruitment Industry and Technology Trends in the UK & Ireland, download our free eBook today.
