The UK labour market is at an interesting juncture right now. For the past three years, it has been characterised by numbing predictability, with metrics moving very consistently in one direction – and not necessarily the right one.
Today, however, there’s more nuance about its trajectory. On the one hand, there remain indications suggesting more gloom – BDO’s employment index dipped to 93.3 last month, its lowest since 2011. And the latest REC-KPMG research found that vacancies for full-time work had declined 27 months in a row. However, in amongst such pessimism, that same KPMG/REC permanent hire index moved from 44.3 to 46.9, its highest reading in 18 months, albeit still in negative territory. The same report also describes the competition for specialised candidates as ‘intense’.
The strength or otherwise of the market needs to be considered alongside recent research from Robert Half, which suggests that UK employers are now more concerned about their organisation’s inability to hire quickly enough. This issue was the top concern for 65% of organisations surveyed, a higher percentage than their worries about budgets and global macroeconomic wobbles.
(Interestingly, the second most pressing concern was around the retention of top performers – a sure sign that organisations feel the market might be on the turn and that alternative doors, previously closed, might be opening up for their people). Organisations hiring legal, digital and finance professionals had particular concerns about lengthy internal recruitment processes being a source of competitive disadvantage.
So, do we have recruitment processes better suited to a labour market in decline rather than one showing signs of relative vigour?
There’s a fascinating piece of research from Google and its People Analytics team, analysing the efficacy of their internal hiring mechanisms. One of the key outputs from the research was that four candidate interviews provides 86% certainty that they were making the right hire – hence their Rule of Four. Any subsequent interviews will provide just 1% additional certainty. The same research also indicated that 94% of the time, hiring decisions remained the same regardless of whether a candidate was interviewed four times or 12 times. Or in Google’s case, between 15 and 25.
Google’s research backs up work done by Dr John Sullivan who proposed that high quality candidates are typically snapped up by competitor employers within ten days.
The last three years have undoubtedly created an environment encouraging caution, indecision and inaction. Anaemic economic growth, the potential of AI, inflation, global macroeconomic concerns, rising employment costs and even worries about Day One employee rights have made employers wary about making potentially expensive hiring mistakes. These worries have been mitigated by adding in more interviews, more phases, more bureaucracy into hiring processes.
No surprise, then, the results of an Indeed survey late last year which suggested that 67% of UK employers feel it is taking them too long to find quality candidates, with half of the research indicating that they had lost good candidates as a result of an overly lengthy hiring process.
And what of candidates faced with a prospective employer putting them through multiple hoops and appearing incapable of making a decision? Whilst there may be a temptation to put up with such employer behaviour when the market is tough, it’s going to play less well when more opportunities open up.
And if such candidates are engaging with one potential employer who is capping their hiring process at four interviews, and one putting them through double that number and more, I wonder what the most likely candidate reaction might be?
What does it suggest to such candidates about a hiring organisation’s culture? Agile, entrepreneurial and comfortable with risk? Or just the opposite?
And what of that organisation’s EVP? Is its essence likely to survive double digit interview rounds? Candidate eye rolling is likely to replace initial passion and enthusiasm. I’ve touched on how candidate experience exponentially influences an organisation’s employer brand. How possible is it for Talent Acquisition to maintain the integrity and sincerity of an EVP (presumably the reason a candidate chose to apply in the first place), over a period lasting, presumably, months rather than weeks. Such a time period is also likely to see the EVP undergo a telephone game distortion of its original meaning and impact – such that a candidate might well question why they have applied in the first place.
And does putting candidates through so many hiring phases suggest an employer is committed to and enthusiastic about that person? Or does it rather imply that the hiring organisation is a little lukewarm about the individual and are waiting for someone more relevant to apply?
The last three years have seen caution and process layered onto recruitment processes – part of this is contextually understandable. But all of it is being wilfully ignorant of what both hiring organisations and top candidates are looking for – a speedy process and swift decision making.
I spoke last time around about insular candidate behaviours – providing a recruitment experience more suited to 2024 is suggestive of insular employer behaviours. And don’t be surprised if increasingly confident candidates respond more positively to employers acting with 2026 energy and pace.
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