Date Added: 04.11.20

“We’ve had 100’s of applications so we’re inundated with candidates.”

Whether you are a candidate, recruitment consultant or hiring manager, you’ve inevitably heard this over the last few months. There’s a notion that this will inevitably lead to better quality hires, but this isn’t necessarily the case, as how many of these applications are actually suitable candidates?

In our experience a huge increase in applicants makes it much harder to find the correct hire. Think of the “decision fatigue” you experience in a restaurant when they have 3 pages of mains to choose from or when someone has 479 Tinder matches, does it make it easier to find a partner?

You don’t need us to tell you how the pandemic has shaken up the recruitment space, if you’re hiring or looking for a job right now – you’ll definitely have noticed it for yourself. Thanks to mass redundancies and businesses closing their doors for good, the market has never been more candidate-heavy. You would think that would be music to a hiring manager’s ears, but here’s why it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

More isn’t better

Some interesting research from the job board Indeed highlights a few trends that may go against what you would expect. Despite the increase in working from home opportunities and businesses hiring remote teams, it isn’t quite hitting the mark as jobseeker search habits are showing up some interesting behaviour.

Indeed has seen the amount of people searching for jobs without using any keywords for skills or job titles rise to over a third of all searches from March – August 2020. Instead, applicants are focusing on geographical searches. In other words, skill level, seniority, salary and cultural fit aren’t getting a look in when it comes to applying for jobs – and you can’t blame them.

What’s driving these searches is fear and confusion, and that isn’t going away any time soon. So us recruiters and direct hirers need to learn to adapt to this high volume of applicants. What this means, aside from the obvious increased time needed for sifting through applications, is that the screening process is more important than ever.

Don’t forget the candidate journey

It’s also pertinent to say that right now the candidate journey is as important as it’s ever been. The way applicants are treated in the tough times will be remembered for years to come.

So don’t neglect your candidate journey and employer branding, even though you may feel like you have pick of the bunch right now – it could come back to bite you if you leave applicants with a bad impression of you.

There is still no reason for longer than usual hiring processes or for not providing any feedback on interviews, just because there’s plenty of people out there looking for work!

If an individual isn’t right for a job now it doesn’t mean they won’t be right for a role in the future, so leave a positive impact on them so they want to apply again when they have more experience.

Screen, screen and screen some more

The result of the changing searching habits highlighted by the Indeed data seems to suggest that some applicants, given the current environment, are applying to some positions simply to secure any role, rather than the right role.

Therefore getting to the bottom of someone’s wants and needs from a new role (independent of a role they may have applied for) is crucial in order to not end up in a position where, as more confidence returns to the market, these hires don’t then find themselves looking for work again.

Which would leave you to go through the process of having to find another hire and with the average hiring process costing around the £30k mark, this is a scenario best avoided.

Of course, we need to be sympathetic to how some people are desperate for work but we also need to be honest, consultative and give advice on how people can maximise their chances of securing a new job, including not just applying to any role in a certain location.

Given the nature of the utilities sector we’ve certainly seen plenty of positivity and job activity over the last few months (in fact we’re still hiring for our own teams!) but we can’t take our eye off the ball in establishing those key questions such as what someone’s ideal role, reason for leaving, and most important factors and aspirations are, when looking for their next career move.

Whether you’re an external recruiter or work in-house it’s essential now, more than ever, to ensure those hires are the right ones!

If you’re feeling overwhelmed with the amount of applicants filling your inbox and need a hand with screening or even an outside view on your recruitment strategy through the pandemic – Consult Energy are specialists in energy and utilities recruitment and would love to help. Get in touch with me, Joseph Hewitt, to discuss your vacancy and we can take it from there.