The following is a snapshot of our bi-annual
Talent Acquisition Market Report for 2022.
The Jobtrain platform processes many tens of millions of applications per annum and has provided our Talent Intelligence Unit access to a huge amount of data. Combined with external research and our candidate survey data, Candidata™, this forms our JobBrain™ data engine.
JobBrain™ delivers insights across the market and in specific sectors for recruitment activity and candidate behaviour, at both macro and micro levels, to help with benchmarking and learning insights to our clients.
A snapshot of the Q1; 2022 Market Report
Where do candidates come from?
After pooling 26,000 vacancies, 18 industry sectors, and over 7,000 candidates surveyed, we found that just 4% of candidate applications came from recruitment agencies, 5% came from internal hires, and a whopping 91% came from external hires!
Despite the challenges of recruiting externally, internal candidates remain a tiny fraction of applications.
Most candidates come from Indeed
Indeed is overwhelmingly the largest source for where candidates come from. Interestingly however a lot of organisations still don’t track the source of online applications, or only do so for job board postings - not other methods, especially offline ones (though they could use QR codes to track and measure). On average 73% of applications had no tracked source.
Office-based vs remote working
As of December 2021, 97% of vacancies were being advertised as office-based. This is a huge number, but it comes with a major caveat. A lot of the sectors experiencing a vacancy "boom" are associated with frontline work.
Care homes, FMCG, education (etc) do not have a working from home option due to the nature of the work. With these sectors releasing more vacancies to fill the gaps left by "The Great Resignation" it skews the numbers.
We've explored this in-depth in our full, free report which you can download here.
Equality, Diversity & Inclusion plans look like they're working
Increasingly, our clients are seeing the value of participating (and advertising that they are) in schemes and accreditations such as the Disability Confident or Athena Swann scheme. They are supporting this with technology and processes, for example providing onscreen accessibility support or anonymous shortlisting.
47% of racial minority candidates progressed past the application stage. Is this a sign that companies are being more conscientious in their hiring strategies?
Last year, we spoke to Michelle Brown at VERCIDA about EDI initiatives and how we can improve even further. The biggest takeaway was that advertisements and representation were important, but companies needed to focus less on perception and more on their recruitment funnel.
Looking at our data - it looks like this is working! The first thing our clients ask us for help with is their ED&I strategy - and moving into 2022 we'd be surprised if this didn't remain at the top of the agenda.
Generation Z has officially entered the job market
Numerous surveys and studies advise that Generations Z candidates (recent job market entrants and those for the next decade) will eschew full time and office-based working.
A high volume recruiter involved in front line health care and customer-facing services recently found that full-time adverts yielding 0 applicants, almost immediately yielded 100 candidates when advertised as part-time / flexible hours!
We've written extensively on this matter - and you can see our 5 top tips to recruit Generation Z here.
What else is in the report?
The short answer is - too much to highlight in one blog! But you can download our full findings here for free. We're incredibly proud of the work our talent intelligence team has undertaken, and we know it will influence our own hiring practices for the rest of the year!
The report covers:
- Vacancy volumes - exploring growth through individual sectors
- Reasons for recruiting and applying
- Candidate success and behaviour
- Equality, Diversity & Inclusion statistics - exploring race, sex, and disability
- What are candidates looking for in a job?
- Application-To-Hire and Time-To-Hire - broken down by sector
- Candidate engagement and sourcing data
- Average time it takes to complete an application form - broken down by sector
- Data informing what makes an effective job advert
- "Where do candidates come from?"
- A full breakdown of information learned from a candidate questionnaire - broken down by sector
- And much more!