Recruitment fatigue

Most of the pandemic is over, and while we’re still feeling the aftermath of it businesses are back on steam. Meaning we’re starting to fight again for the pool of talent our civilisation has to offer.   

This brings us to a new era where we’re facing new challenges. Just in the UK alone, it takes on average 28 days from applying for a job to ‘landing’ it. Hiring managers and recruiters spent between 6 to 8 seconds looking at a CV. And as unemployment has risen to its lowest level since 1974 a job seeking can now pick on average between 1.7 jobs. It’s even worse in tech let alone you’ll be a software developer!  

And exactly this brings me to a new topic where we might be facing Recruitment fatigue. Not by the Recruiters themselves of course, but by us. People working in start-ups, scale-ups, SaaS, unicorns, tech and whatever fancy names you’ll see displayed on one’s LinkedIn profile.  

Since the start-up businesses are being fulled by puffed-up funding rounds they drive up the talent competition. The hunt is so fierce that employers are offering proportion salaries and benefits. They’ll do anything to convince you to come working for their ‘brand’ and their HR managers and marketers are spending more time than ever on getting the right employer branding out.  

But does this all make sense to us? If you get approached multiple times a week or for some multiple times a day by Recruiters who try to snag you away from your current job because the ‘green must be greener on the other side. If every week the new offer is getting you faster to your Tesla? Then where does the purpose of work still come in? Wouldn’t it feel the same as being on Tinder on a late Friday evening to kill the time while your friends are sitting cosy at home with their spouses?  

Here’s where the Recruitment fatigue might have already kicked in for you. And spoiler alert, you are not alone here! (We feel you) 

In the last couple of years, the amount of Recruitment companies has doubled in the UK. They started to compete more and more with the ‘in-house’ Recruiters too. All fighting for the same talent and all in their way contributing to Recruitment fatigue.  

Now, this might sound negative, but the truth is that I know a lot of AE’s and software developers who are trying to hide from the start-up searches. Some even told me they are tired of the number of approaches. 

Now we do understand all start-ups want and need to grow. We also know that the only way to grow fast is by hiring the right talent. So, what if there’s a solution that allows us to start in a new and different way? A new way to approach, screen and identify talent? Not only for future hires but also for your current employees working for you.  

This is where exactly where some companies make the difference. They understand that talent is precious, and the way to approach them can make or break the experience. 

Here are the 5 tips to Overcome Recruitment Fatigue: 

• Look for ways to understand who fits best, beyond experience or hard skills.
• Reimagine the strategic approach to finding talent: make it more personal 
• Try new ways of approaching like sending a personal (digital) card 
• Keep a fast and easy screening process. 
• Keep in the back of your mind that some people get approached multiple times a day by various companies and recruiters 
• Millennials these days do a lot on their mobile phones, so maybe you want to leverage this and use different ways of ‘qualifying’ your lead 

For companies and recruiters, things are feeling harder than ever before. Hang in there, the finish line is near!