High Employment Rates Create Woes For Recruiters

17th May 2022 Last updated on 24th August 2022

According to the latest Labour Force Survey (LFS) published by the Office for National Statistics, the unemployment rate is at its lowest for 50 years, with 75.7% employment. Fewer active job seekers and a well-reported skills shortage in the UK, continues to make hiring employees a challenge for recruiters, currently trying to fill 1.295 million job vacancies.

“For the first time in history, there are more job vacancies than unemployed people to fill them.” – Daniel Aldridge – Recruitment Specialist, Space Recruitment

Although there are fewer people out of work and seeking employment opportunities, 994,000 employees made a job-to-job move during January to March 2022. These job moves were driven by resignations, rather than dismissals, indicating a larger pool of talent is available, if your hiring strategy hits the right notes. A high number of job-to-job moves may in part be a result of wage growth falling below inflation (7% in April).

“Continued strong bonuses in some sectors such as construction and especially finance mean that total pay is continuing to grow faster than prices on average, but underlying regular earnings are now falling sharply in real terms.” – Darren Morgan – Director of Economic Statistics, ONS

How Do You Recruit With Such High Employment Rates?

As we reported in our article Recruitment News – Outlook For The Remainder Of 2022, candidates have increased work-life balance expectations, which for many includes finding employment that aligns with their values and is remote, hybrid, or flexible. Regardless of whether employers intend to deploy a hiring strategy focusing on active or passive candidates, optimising job adverts and ensuring they contain the key ingredients is crucial.

For job advertising to be effective, it should include:

Job Title – Job seekers use keywords when making job searches, so consider what they might use when choosing a job title.
Location – This may be a physical office, remote, hybrid, or work from home.
Job Description – This should lay out the role’s duties and company’s expectations.
Person Specification – This is a profile of what it takes to complete the role successfully. It should include soft and hard skills, qualifications, personal traits, and work experience.
Employment Brand & Values – Give candidates a reason to apply for a job with your business by expressing your values, company culture, mission, vision, and career development opportunities.
Salary Range – Stating a salary range means you won’t waste time interviewing under qualified or overqualified applicants that will never accept your job offer.

If you are seeking to advertise a job, we recommend viewing our job description templates and job advert templates, as well as viewing a selection of job description examples: