Hiring trends to keep an eye on!

Hiring trends to keep an eye on!

By Vanessa Rogers, Textbox ConceptualT

A competitive market may present the perfect motivation any firm needs to get clued up on what’s going on in the recruitment industry, especially when it comes to contingent hiring.

A skilled and reputable contingent agency’s role is to stockpile as many CVs as possible for those mid-level positions, knowing that money will only change hands when a preferred candidate you’ve put forward is chosen for the role.

Internal hiring

To stay ahead, you’ll need to know that trend number one, this year, sees internal hiring getting first dibs. With this in mind, it’s worth getting to know a company’s HR manager and making an assessment of the inhouse talent within a firm – before you invest time and energy in providing a barrage of CVs for a particular role that they need filled.

If the HR manager is new, fairly inexperienced and/or inadequately networked, and you’re sure no in-house person properly fits the bill, it’s worth going ahead and conquering that particular role from your contingent agency. “Just bare in mind at all times that internal mobility means lower costs to the company and a faster hiring process. So if you’re skilled at the contingent hiring game, you’ll know exactly when to pounce and when to stand well back,” advises Jeremy Bossenger, founder at RecuitIn.

Pandemic skills

Then, how about alerting the firms who call on you as to the skills your contingent team sought to master over the pandemic, a decided trend number two in 2022 hiring.

Virtual interviewing webinars (and in-person experience); remote talent-advisory training, together with knowledge gained in the field; and how about virtual onboarding skills.

No valued recruitment firm would have steered clear of opportunities to gain talent metrics and to accurately assess mental/emotional/spiritual health in candidates. Plus: the fact that a contingent agency has gone the distance in this way, means they’re all the more worth taking on to find that all-important midlevel candidate, than any other less clued up firm in the niche.

For the organisations out there for whom contingent agencies are their go-to hiring option, remember that:

B-BBEE Expertise

And how about trend number three, a contingent agency’s investment in Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) know-how? These days, it’s a nobrainer – candidates want to join a firm that is as diverse, equal and inclusive (not to mention ecofriendly) as humanly possible, and your ability as a contingent agency to make this happen, i.e. the placing of a B-BBEE candidate at a company where their skill and status is considered essential, will put you ahead when you’re making the hiring thing happen.

“You can’t deny the value provided by this hard-working and multitalented portion of the recruitment market,” enthuses Bossenger.

“Our skill is most times way above internal HR. But firms need to know about the inherent value that we add – extensive experience, a wide network, and more suitable/ talented mid-level candidates to offer if firms are prepared to make the investment, over and above what their own HR departments are likely to be able to source.”