Recruitment in 2023

Since the beginning of the Covid 19 Pandemic in 2021, when many businesses used the furlough scheme to reduce staffing costs there has been an underlying concern that recruitment is uncharacteristically difficult, especially with small businesses. 

 

2021 saw businesses pay significantly above the wages they had previously seen to bring on staff, a Bristol based pub was advertising jobs at £17 an hour to fill a bar staff role, a role that would usually be a minimum wage job therefore with small businesses unable to afford these sorts of wages small businesses stopped employing. 

 

By the end of 2022 the UK had one of the lowest rates of unemployment since the 1970s with many small businesses owners now saying that they can afford to pay staff once again with work coming back after covid and expected salaries returning to a reasonable amount however now there weren't any candidates to find. 

 

With many of these companies turning to recruitment agencies with high commission structures and no guarantee of results one of the first conversations we have been having with many clients is - 

 

I can not recruit until I grow and I cannot grow until I recruit. 

 

And if the recruitment companies which several of our clients have been using for the last six months cannot provide qualified candidates is this an accurate reflection of the economy at the moment? 

 

Bailey Dean has engagements with three clients all trying to recruit candidates at the moment, all three clients have been frozen in terms of growth as they are unable to find the candidates and two have engaged with recruitment agencies with no success therefore this was one of our main challenges for January 2023. 

 

All three companies are in different industries and recruit for different levels without success. 

 

Bailey Dean has a proven recruitment model that we have used several times in several industries. After the testing and implementation process which takes from a few weeks to a month, we have continuously been able to implement the system and get the clients back on track. 

 

Business 1 - Technological Development 

 

Business number one that Bailey Dean worked with was a technological development agency, looking to employ sales professionals, with a little budget on a part-time basis. 

 

This was a home-based role that could be done from anywhere in the country however the business owner needed help finding a candidate with the relevant qualifications. 

 

We were able to reassess the package that the business was offering, making it into a higher-based commission package that would then be able to break even within the first two months of work and meaning that the sales employee would have the equivalent of full-time on target earnings of £52000. 

 

By adjusting the job description and the compensation package over two weeks of advertising we were able to get 523 applications, whittle down to 35 applicants that met all the criteria and had final interviews with three individuals. All three were equally qualified. 

 

Business 2 - Industrial Sector 

 

Unlike business number one, business number two had a full team however needed more technical workers as they were constantly running with a full diary. 

 

Business number two was recruiting for a skilled role that was central to the Bristol area. This role had always been hard to recruit for as many skilled roles are and therefore had looked towards a specific recruitment agency that worked within the industry however after six months they had one applicant who didn't turn up to the first interview. 

 

We started with two job adverts, one to determine if there were candidates open to work and the second was a newly written role to identify if a different job spec would gain more applicants. We also looked at the competitors' adverts and compared how these were written, the perks and the job, in general, to make sure we were competitive. 

 

Once we were comfortable we were competitive and had the right job offer we started to advertise across industry-specific job sites. Within a week we had seven applications and within a month we had twenty-seven. We created a script to make sure we didn't follow through with anyone that didn't have the right qualifications and once happy that they had the relevant skills we then took them through a two-phase interview to test knowledge and skills. 

 

Out of the twenty-seven applications, eight made it through to the next round and we are awaiting final decisions on how many hires will be made. 

 

Business 3 - Entertainment Industry 

 

Business number three that Bailey Dean worked with in January 2023 was within the Professional entertainment industry, this business owner didn't believe there were applicants to recruit therefore had stopped the development of his business and hadn't put out a job advert for several weeks as he believed he didn't have the time to recruit. 

 

Unlike the previous two businesses, the challenge with business number three was not about the correct applicants, it was about creating a system to reduce the time needed to find the correct applicant. Once again we rewrote a job advert, and within twelve hours of the advert being life, we had thirty-one applications. To whittle out the applicants that didn't have the correct experience we asked the applicants to enter into a three-step process before the business owner made contact with the individuals therefore by the time the candidates had stepped through the three steps they had proven their ability to do the role to a high level while reducing the time for the business owner to screen all applicants. 

 

With all three businesses within four weeks, Bailey Dean had developed the systems and created a written system that was then handed over to the business owner to implement within their business.