April Fools’ Day 2009 was the day we set up RattrayParkin. You might not remember the specific day, but you’ll remember the economic climate – the global credit bubble had burst; depths of recession, politicians talking weakly about green shoots of recovery, mass redundancies, widescale recruitment bans – many more coming out than going in!
Yet conversely, this presented us with an opportunity – the opportunity was candidate availability and candidate volumes, i.e. lots of finance professionals finding themselves in the job market through no fault of their own. Accountants, who had managed their careers carefully and followed the advice of their careers officer (good degree from good universities, good pass records with their qualifications, working for good businesses), were now immediately available. Place an advert on the job boards and sit back and wait for your Inbox to fill up!
From a job opportunity perspective, yes there weren’t many opportunities out there especially within the larger corporates but there was demand from our very good SME’s – good businesses need good people not matter the economic climate!! ……
….. Scroll forward 10 years and the landscape has changed, not from a demand perspective as our SME’s still require good people for their good businesses, despite the efforts of our MP’s in Westminster, but from candidate availability and attraction methodology.
Simply put, no one needs to consciously make a decision to look for a job anymore; as my colleague Nick metronomically says ‘the world has become one big Boolean search’. Get the keywords built into your LinkedIn profile and you’ll be found. No need to post your CV to various jobs boards, just sit back and wait to be contacted. We don’t know the exact stats but we feel pre-recession only 10-15% of our whole candidate pool would be actively seeking a new role, 25% would be passively looking and the rest would be off the market. Now it’s probably more 10% active, 80% passive and 10% happy where they are and would not consider a move.
An interesting dynamic into our new recruitment world, as the control sits with the potential candidate, as to whether or not they accept your InMail and ask for more information on the role you’d like to speak to them about. If it’s a `decline` that’s the end of it but that’s unlikely, as there is not an itch that needs scratching and a level of interest that’s been peeked?
It seems that more and more candidates are happy to discuss opportunities, but they want us to come to them and not the other way around…..