We recently produced our Thames Valley Snapshot for Q4 2014 which gave some very interesting results (see link). This got me thinking, rather than looking back I wondered; what are the things that are going to be important this year?

So I’ve come up with 5 Trends to watch in 2015. These are things that I think will impact on hiring managers, contingency recruiters and in house recruiters. Most of these are trends that we are experiencing with our clients and candidates and are observing internally with our own recruitment process. So, let the countdown begin:

Candidate led market – well no surprises here as gradually since 2011 the market has moved away from being job centric to candidate focused. We are seeing candidates getting multiple offers and are experiencing shortages in pretty much every niche we work in. We, like most recruiters are looking to expand in 2015 and are finding it difficult to attract the right quality candidates. To combat this we’ve decided to “grow our own” so have hired a training manager to provide our rookies with the necessary skills. During 2015 this candidate short market will continue so all companies will need to think about how they attract and retain staff. I wrote last year about the War for Talent and the focus on behavioural interviewing as a possible solution.

IT – according to research by our marketing manager more and more candidates are accessing job sites using their tablet or mobile. At Parkside we are currently focusing on ensuring our website can be viewed on several platforms and this is a trend that all recruiters and companies looking to hire staff will need to be aware of. According to our stats the majority of candidates drop off after one or two website page views so we must ensure we are engaging and have relevant “calls to action”. More and more of the recruitment process is happening online so hiring managers need to be clear how to engage with tech savvy candidates.

Data – increasingly data is impacting on our lives and this will affect how we recruit in 2015. Gut feeling is no longer good enough when hiring staff, we must use other tools including personality profiles, behavioral questions, evidence based interviewing and on the job assessments. All of this produces data which we can use to make decisions on who to hire, especially if we are looking to recruit staff who have no track record in our chosen industry. Many of our clients tend to use assessment days, psychometric testing and or will bring candidates in for the day to observe them doing the job. Again this is an approach Parkside adopted last year using biographical interviewing, assessment centres, behavioural techniques and on the job observations to select the best candidates.

Pipelining – using our own network is an approach that has been used for years by most recruiters. However now with good candidates in such short supply it’s important that every hiring manager tracks potential employees with a view to hiring them at some point in the future. It’s not about who and what you need to hire now, it’s about who you’ll need in 18 months.

Videos – two colleagues and I presented a Sales Planning workshop at the Antal Global Conference last year. Part of the presentation included videos of several of our team talking about the successes they had using certain sales techniques. This is just one illustration of the increasing use of video to share information in a more engaging format. We are increasingly seeing video on client websites promoting their brand, job descriptions and work for us sections. Parkside are going to be trailing the use of promotional video clips for our Management Outsourcing brand later in 2015.

Time will tell if I’m right or not however I think I’m on safe ground with this lot. 2015 promises to be another interesting year for recruiters. The global economy is due to grow by 3.5% this year and all the staffing market indices show further growth plans and therefore additional recruitment. It will also be interesting to see how the oil prices impact on companies desire to recruit and of course we have an election coming and who know how that will turn out.

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