Recruiting in a Recession
Analysts are suggesting a recession will hit in Q4 2022. how can your talent acquistion strategy survive?
Although it may not be quite the recession of 2008-2009, the cost of living crisis is continuing to add pressure to the public and businesses alike. The knock on effect will “either feel like a recession or be a recession”. As broad a statement as that is, whatever happens, Q4 is looking likely to be tough for businesses and as most HR personnel know, the first department to have their door knocked on for a cost savings discussion after Finance… is HR.
So how can you ensure that your talent acquisition strategy can still function through the tough times? Here we discuss 5 key fundamentals for “recruiting in a recession” so that you can approach these tough conversations with the board to not just save costs, but continue to bring in the best talent for your business.
Prioritise your vacancy list:
Applying a consistent set of metrics, such as “Client/Customer Impact”, “Revenue Generation” or “Operational Dependency”, will enable you to structure your current live vacancy list into an order of priority. This, in turn, will allow you to justify why recruiting your top priority roles is still essential for your business to succeed into 2023 and help you to avoid a complete recruitment freeze.
This also affords you the opportunity to support hiring managers / team leaders with an honest and frank discussion about how necessary a role is within the team. So moving forward, they will experience a more efficient team at the correct headcount level.
Look internally:
Your internal mobility programme is (or at least should be) a great source of talent. You are utilising talent that is already bought into your business, that may be looking for more of a challenge as part of their professional development.
Whilst particularly popular at the more junior end of the org chart, this is an immense source of talent during a recruitment freeze / slow down. Be cautious though.
There is always a losing team in the fight for internal talent.
take stock of your employer branding resources:
Whilst there maybe a slight shift of power away from candidate to company in Q4, you still need to be attractive as an employer. Use any extra time afforded to you as a talent team.
Refresh job descriptions and job adverts. Re-energise your careers site. Record new videos and write new authentic content, especially with how your company responded to the pandemic. The power will soon be back with the candidate / job seeker so when it does, you will be ready with a refreshed Armory of employer branding content.
Looking for the broad skillset only applies up the org chart:
We have seen over time that dips in the economy can cause business to focus on talent who can fill multiple needs, rather than splitting them across multiple roles. In other words, they look for 1 candidate with broader range of skills rather than 3 with specific skill sets. All to help them ride out the dip with lower headcount. Although we understand that, we believe this tends to apply more at the senior leadership level. There will still be genuine requirements to bring in talent with niche skillsets, especially in the tech side of things. So don’t get trapped into thinking broader is better.
speed is still key:
Just because you believe you have access to a higher quantity of candidates, you still need to move through the hiring process at an efficient rate of time. Especially in the decision making / offer stage. You are still very vulnerable to losing top talent to your competition who move faster than you when it comes to this stage.
So there you have it. Our top 5 fundamentals when it comes to recruiting in a recession. Or what may feel like a recession anyway.
If you are ever interested in hearing about how we help our clients in acquiring the best talent, no matter what the economy is doing, simply drop us an email to hello@ventiro.co.uk and one of our team will be on hand to offer some more insights.
