Preparing recruitment for 2025 success

As 2025 approaches us at speed, to meet the ever-changing and evolving challenges in recruitment, teams must evolve to look out for emerging opportunities. Here are our top tips on looking ahead and preparing for 2025 recruitment success.

Embracing technologies

The recruitment technology landscape is always evolving, so staying current with what's available is crucial. If you're already using an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) at your organisation, now is a good time to think about how well it's working for you. And if you're not, take a look at our guide on the value that an ATS can bring to a business.

So, if you're using an ATS, consider if you can answer yes to these points:

• Does it still support how you want to recruit and streamline your recruitment process? An ATS should work with your process, not against it.
• Is support unlimited and provided by experts? Can they advise on best practice? 
• Can you easily make changes to how your ATS is set-up and without incurring additional charges, for example, if you want to improve efficiency and experience?
• Is the candidates' experience working as best it should? Gather feedback from them or have a go at applying for one of your roles to see what it's really like. Can you easily find vacancies? Can you apply using a mobile? If you didn't know anything about working at your organisation, can you easily find information about it on your careers website? 

These are just some of the areas to consider when it comes to your ATS - for more details, why not download our guide on understanding what you need from an ATS. Investing in the right ATS can result in huge cost and time savings, as well as improving the candidate experience. If you're happy with your ATS or recruitment tech, then make sure your team is well-trained so they can maximise it to its full potential.

Revamping job advertising for maximum impact

How and where you advertise jobs can be a huge influence on the quality and quantity of applicants. To stay ahead of the talent competition, it's essential to analyse the effectiveness and cost-efficiency of your current job advertising strategies. Are you using the right platforms and channels to reach your target audience? Do you have access to technology that allows you to try different strategies and job boards without committing to expensive contracts? Can you easily report what advertising channels are performing best?

Think about exploring more niche job boards, social media and industry-specific publications - research where your ideal talent hangs out and advertise in the spaces where they are. For more tips, download our free guide to job advertising.

Compelling job adverts that highlight your organisation's unique value proposition (UVP) is also key to attracting top talent. Regularly reviewing and optimising your job adverts based on how they perform will ensure you continue to attract the top candidates (or improve!) in 2025. Remember, don't just copy and paste the job description into the advert content - it has to be enticing to stand out from others! Check out one of our previous blogs with tips on making your job advert unmissable.

Optimising recruitment costs for better efficiency

Managing budgets is a critical aspect of recruitment planning. Start by carrying out a thorough audit of your recruitment process and spot any potential money pits that aren't performing. Identify areas where costs can be reduced without compromising the quality of your hiring process or candidate experience. For example:

• Take a closer look at performance metrics and KPIs to understand how well your recruitment process is working. This means checking things like how long it takes to hire someone, the cost per hire and other key metrics to see how smoothly and effectively everything is running.
• Can you negotiate better rates with your commonly used job boards?
• Consider implementing employee referral programmes. They can often bring in high-quality candidates at a lower cost not just in the immediate but in the long term too. 45% of employees, who were referred, stayed for more than four years, while only 25% of employees found through job advertising stayed for longer than two years.
• Can your use of recruitment agencies be cut by changing how you manage recruitment (see our next section)?
• Broaden your network of talent. Sometimes roles need to be filled quickly and unexpectedly, but if you're prepared with a bank of warm job seekers who've shown an interest previously it can drastically reduce your time to hire and additional costs, such as with agencies.

Reducing dependence on recruitment agencies

As we've already touched on, recruitment agencies can be valuable partners for many recruitment teams but an over-reliance on them can be costly. Think about how you use them - are there opportunities and strategies where you can build in-house capabilities and skills instead? It might involve developing and improving your EVP and employer brand or implementing a proactive talent acquisition strategy that naturally reduces the reliance on external agencies.

Invest time into training your recruitment team to improve their sourcing and candidate engagement skills. Building a robust talent pipeline through networking, social media, and employee referrals can play a part in reducing your reliance on external agencies.

Building a resilient and agile recruitment team

In what is an ever-changing recruitment landscape, the ability to adapt and respond to new challenges is essential. For 2025, build a recruitment team that's skilled, resilient and agile. Encourage continuous learning and professional development too so they're always up to date with the latest recruitment trends and best practices.

Think about the culture in your team. Is it collaborative and ripe with innovation to enable them to tackle challenges creatively and efficiently? Regularly review their performance and provide constructive feedback to ensure they are equipped and supported to meet the demands of 2025 and beyond.