After rapid expansion over the past few years the staffing and recruitment industry is slightly anxious about the future and possible economic uncertainty. The majority is however still cautiously optimistic about 2020. The number of placements is expected to increase and 71% of staffing recruitment professionals also expect an increase in revenue for the year ahead according to the global recruitment insights and data study. At the same they are struggling with skill shortages, pricing pressure, fierce competition and accelerating pay increases. To overcome these challenges staffing and recruitment businesses around the globe see digital transformation as an essential and inevitable step.
On average, the operational budget of staffing agencies is expected to grow by 50% (GRID). A large part of this budget will be allocated to candidate engagement, client experience and digital transformation. In order to come up on top in the competition for talent, agencies are highly focused on the human factor, investing in their relationships with both customers and candidates. When it comes to increasing their overall competitive power, agencies are planning to invest in tools that help scale up business without growing the team and automate time-consuming and repetitive tasks. According to the PWC HR Technology Survey, industry leaders believe that tools focussed on talent acquisition, employee experience, skills mapping and intelligent recruitment are the most promising areas for HR tech investments right now.
Video recruitment offers an out-of-the-box solution for success in the coming years. Without having to replace its recruitment system, an agency can add this innovative functionality to their service offering through a simple integration. Agencies use video recruitment to speed up their process and to select better-matching candidates for their clients. A video of a candidate can easily remove the doubts a client may have, as video offers a personal and comprehensive first impression of a candidate. This increases competitive power and offers a clear service to candidates and customers alike.
Here are a number of success factors that shall continue to be important beyond 2020, where video recruitment plays a clear role:
The agencies that survived the previous crisis were mostly the agencies that specialised. With economic uncertainty being cited by staffing and recruitment professionals as the biggest macroeconomic challenge in 2020, clear focus is important. This enables you to develop your market knowledge and create a stronger network with each placement. Databases become outdated rather quickly. Specialisation ensures an updated network where you can find new candidates through your existing ones, because knowledge, people, and networks in a specialised setting are linked to each other. This way, you always have access to talent. Video lowers the threshold for getting- and staying in touch with people. With video, the time investment required to get to know each other is minimal. The scarce candidates don’t have the time to visit every recruiter. But they can do that online!
Many employers would like to find talent themselves. To this end, they invest in building internal capacity and skills. This wish is not new. On top of that 31 % of staffing professionals are listing competition form freelance platforms as one of their main concerns for the year ahead. Agencies are thus activated at a later stage and, therefore, must be able to deliver candidates increasingly faster in a market where they do not get exclusive assignments. Because of this, it’s handy if your candidates have already taken a video or if you are able to facilitate an online video introduction to your client. This can often happen in a short timeframe. And that speed delivers more results!
The market has developed with, for example, a demand for leased employees, interim recruitment and increased flexibility. As a result, many agencies are revising their proposition, pricing models and technology, including revamping their recruitment systems. Added value and the ability to remain successful in the coming years through the use of the newly acquired technology are now decisive factors, as 8 out of ten struggle with adoption challenges according to PwC. In their services, agencies look to the wishes and behaviour of their candidates, who have already adopted video en masse.
Here are some concrete examples of how agencies use video in their recruitment process: » The specialised Recruitment & Selection Agency Rennecke Consulting in Düsseldorf recruits candidates throughout Europe for sales positions in Germany by using video.
“We used to work with a competitors solution but switched to Cammio in 2014. Video interviews have always been an important key to success for us. Thank you for the many years of support and inspirational partnership.” – Patricia Rennecke, Rennecke Consulting
» The Belgian agency AT Recruitment specialises in IT Recruitment and uses live interviews to reach their candidates. They find that by using live interviews they have a higher response rate of candidates, as there’s no more travel involved.
» The Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) provider EN-HR Solutions successfully selects candidates for T-Mobile by using video interviews.
Agencies will have plenty to do in the coming 10 years. A prerequisite, though, is that the proposed processes and technology will fit the needs of the candidates of 2020 … and those of 2030. Video is here to stay!
Happy Hiring!
