The reality of the recruitment industry seems to jump up and bite us every now and then. Whether you are an independent recruiter, agency or internal recruiter the problems are very linear. We have seen a hectic period of developing job websites, job indexing websites to an explosion of app based solutions in recent times. Does this sound familiar? We can increase your applications, we can post your job advert over multiple sources, and we guarantee you at least so many applications.

Frankly, I became exhausted with most companies advertising and if you think about it, this is probably the only industry were you pay for something and not guaranteed any quality return of investment. If I were to pay for a broadband service and they promised me 30mb and I was only receiving 10mb, I would be pretty frustrated and I would make progress to change that. For example, I can remember my time as recruiter in London and was slightly humoured when I conducted a candidate search for a director and I was offered a Sous Chef because he was accustomed to working with high profile clients. I had to have a little chuckle at this stage or I would have gone insane.

However, it didn’t sound like it was just my own issue, but a growing concern scaling across all the industry. We rely on a ‘post and pray’ ethos and hope the companies who promise us so much, come through, but again and again we are left deflated. CV searches are yesterday’s news and having to rely on parser software to increase your chances of success leaves a bitter taste in our mouth when we find nothing. I have worked with some outstanding professionals and not all their CV’s match their reputation. I wouldn’t class it as arrogance but more about how oblivious job seekers are to how the recruitment industry works and we know the algorithms these software’s rely on have no intelligence to predict the candidate behind the CV.

Over half the people we worked with never used the advanced search option and in a world of competition and uncertainty, this is growing. People are more open to relocation than ever before, they are always looking to move into new sectors and trying to jump up as many salary brackets as possible.

Let’s say I’m looking for an IT Analyst in Manchester for £31,000 pounds, with a few years’ experience. I would post a job advert through many platforms and wait for the job applications to start flowing. So maybe someone logs onto to a job search website I’m using and they see my job vacancy and they know they have the skills to do this but would want more than £31,000. He wouldn’t apply for this role and he would be a potentially valuable candidate that has just slipped by. He would be unaware that there could be potential negotiations to follow if he was the exact candidate I was looking for right now or maybe for other roles in the future.

Just take a second and think how huge the browsing candidate market is and how valuable that market would be to us as professionals. The only reason i can think why this has never been brought to the market is because of the lack of development into the engagement from job seekers. We are fortunate to live in an era where the candidates we are looking for spend a vast majority of their day on mobile/tablets. Why have we not utilised this?

Just take a second and think how huge the browsing candidate market is and how valuable that market would be to us as professionals. The only reason i can think why this has never been brought to the market is because of the lack of development into the engagement from job seekers. We are fortunate to live in an era where the candidates we are looking for spend a vast majority of their day on mobile/tablets. Why have we not utilised this?

Having a fancy app with amazing UI, does not mask up the problems that the right candidates can’t find the right companies. The trend I have witnessed over the past 3-4 years, is that companies are spending huge amounts trying to increase exposure of our job adverts and trying to increase databases. Not to mention the price war they all seem to be locked in. I personally think it’s time for a mobile system that is valuable not just to us as recruiters but to the candidates using it. For this to succeed, the companies advertising our jobs need to change their advertising approach. Instead of gimmicky adverts that genuinely are just used to drive traffic, we need to educate both sides of the industry. Think about the efficiency of recruitment if candidates knew how to make more companies aware of their skills and more companies aware of more skilled candidates? Lets hope one day we can be Free of outdated databases and have a company utilising a new approach to give us the information we need.

I don’t know if Bill Pullman’s quote can be used any longer after Boris’s Lacklustre version, but it could be the industries ‘Independence Day.’

Let’s keep our fingers crossed for now.

This article comes courtesy of Jropp Jobs Ltd, hear from Alexander Gray-Johnson, MD, in his workshop at 11:00 on Thursday 22nd September (Register here) or visit us on Stand 157 at Elite Business Live.