A recruiter on the future of recruiting

Recruitment companies compared to dinosaurs?  Even It Up! loves this analogy!  Peter Gold from British recruitment company Hire Strategies has made the comparison in a recent article on Personnel Today.  He calls the agencies that refuse to innovate “agencysaurus” and those that do “velociraptors”.

In a nutshell, Gold’s contention  is that the recruitment company (in its current form) will die unless it innovates and changes to meet the many current challenges; it can’t afford to take a “heads in the sand” approach if it wants to survive.  Hear that all you recruiters that love to have a go at Even It Up!?

Gold says that we can expect to see:

a myriad of new breed recruitment suppliers emerge, very different from the fee-driven recruitment process outsourcing vendors who claim to be different, but in reality are not.

Low-cost fixed fee and 100% guarantees are just the start. Employers know what they don’t want so the velociraptors will focus on less phone bashing, value-based projects instead of transaction/fee-based placements; client/candidate collaboration instead of secret CVs; managed but client-owned talent pools. It is the traditional fee for volume vacancies that will become extinct, not the hunter.

The conversations I have with corporate recruiters is that they are very focused on reducing agency usage and costs by increasing employee referrals, internal mobility and direct applicants. Cost-per-hire is king, and quality is queen (albeit still wearing the trousers).

At least someone with some street cred is telling it as it is.

You can read the full article here.