Recruitment Recovery:
Agency Report
Results from our 2020 pulse survey
How is the recruitment industry recovering from the challenges of COVID-19?
How is the recruitment industry recovering from the challenges of COVID-19?
You don’t need us to tell you that the past six months have been unlike anything recruitment has ever experienced.
The pace of change is fast. Recruitment agencies need to be able to respond just as quickly. As the industry begins to look ahead to the future, we’ve compiled data from our Pulse Survey (August 2020) to create this agency recovery report.
Use it to gauge the current state of the industry, benchmark against your peers, shape your strategy and get prepared for what’s coming next.
Looking for the in-house results? View the report here
Clients are starting to re-engage. In April, 65% of agencies said their clients were unreachable. Now 57% say their clients have started to get back in touch.
“Clients that went quiet earlier in the year are gradually starting to re-engage. They're starting to think further ahead".
Candidate start dates are starting to return to normal. In April, 53% said their clients were changing the start dates of their candidates . Now 30% of say their clients have resumed their normal schedule.
During these tough times, prices are still getting squeezed. Many clients are still renegotiating fees with their recruitment agencies (24%), and most agencies that have already modified their fee structure haven’t resumed their normal fees (14%).
The top priorities for recruitment agencies have changed significantly during the pandemic. In August 2020, these were the most common priorities that agency owners and teams identified:
In April, this was only a priority for 40% of agencies - with many agencies talking about “survival” and “streamlining” rather than growth. Now, winning clients is firmly back at the top of the agenda as agencies recognise the early signs of recovery and opportunity.
Agencies are prioritising new business to sustain their growth as the industry recovers.
As it becomes clearer what the 'new normal' might actually look like for many of us, we're seeing far more agencies prioritising their new medium-long term strategies.
This has dropped in priority slightly since April, but remains a key focus for agencies.
10% more agencies are considering this as part of their future planning.
Many businesses are having to re-evaluate how they make money and the services they offer to continue to stay relevant in the market.
As agencies adapt to new ways of working and a changing candidate environment, some are turning to tech solutions to help address new challenges.
It’s not surprising that 95% of agencies have fewer roles to recruit for now, compared to before the pandemic.
With massive uncertainty and a sense of desperation for many candidates, we’re seeing very different behaviours.
66% said they were finding it easier to attract candidates than before the pandemic.
Recruiters are starting to face the opposite challenge which is that they’re receiving ‘too many’ or ‘irrelevant’ applications.
However, for 21%, the pandemic hasn’t impacted their candidate attraction.
These changes don’t seem to have affected budgets, with only half having made any changes to their budget throughout the pandemic.
In an open question asking respondents about the changing candidate behaviours they’ve experienced compared to before coronavirus, a few major trends emerged:
The outlook for the future for recruitment agencies is mixed but generally more positive than in April. Recruiters feel more confident about their job security than they did back in April.
39% of recruitment agency staff have already returned to the office.
29% expected to be back in the office within 6 months - which means close to half of all agency staff are expecting to be working from home right through into spring of next year.
The trend towards remote work continues, with 27% not planning to work from the office in the future.
Recruitment agency staff are feeling more positive about their wellbeing, compared to the results we collected back in April.
Only 42% said they felt positive about their wellbeing in April. Now, this is up to 59%.
Recruitment agencies have introduced some great initiatives to support their staff throughout the pandemic. Here are some examples respondents shared of how they have been supporting each other:
79% of agencies have changed the way they work with traditional job boards in the last 6 months.
The most common changes have been to budgets. Uncertainty and fluctuating demand has forced agencies to look for more flexible ways to manage their job board advertising.
Many job boards have allowed advertisers to be more flexible, through a range of initiatives designed to support budget reductions or re-allocations.
Very few have cancelled completely (less than 10%).
21% haven’t changed the way they work with traditional job boards (e.g. Total Jobs, Reed.co.uk, CV Library).
Of the agencies currently utilising pay per performance boards (e.g. Indeed, Adzuna, Talent.com) only 10% said they’d had to cancel budgets - due to the more flexible nature of the contracts.
29% haven’t changed the way they work with tech providers.
From those who have, 29% have reduced their budgets and only 2% have cancelled any contracts.
16% have increased their budgets or started new contracts, highlighting how many are beginning to adopt new solutions in response to challenges emerging around new ways of working.
The focus has shifted. As recruitment agencies start planning for recovery and future growth, here are some of the biggest concerns which were identified:
Ability to win new business (69%)
Having enough work for recruiters (44%)
Generating results with less resource (39%)
Ability to retain existing clients (35%)
Adapting to ‘new normal’ ways of working (29%)
