The Future of Recruitment
The UK recruitment market has a turnover of c$141 billion with over 30,000 recruitment agencies and it is estimated there are c50,000 job boards globally.
With the advent of technology, employers now have a plethora of recruitment solutions to choose from, however, despite this, recruitment remains frustrating, time-consuming, and expensive.
So why is this?
The main reason is that recruitment is the only sector where employers are unable to source all their talent needs directly online. The traditional business purchasing model is that sellers promote their products or services online, leaving the business to search, review and match these to their requirements, and then make an informed purchasing decision.
Recruitment, however, operates the other way round with the employer needing to advertise their vacancies, or utilize a recruitment agency, to try and attract suitable job seekers to apply to their opportunity.
The reason for this convoluted process is that the 33 million people working in permanent roles across the UK do not want to publicly promote that they are looking to move job for fear that they’ll compromise their current employment.
Employers are able to use online job board CV databases to search and directly approach job seekers, however, as the job seekers full CV and contact details are available to the employer, very few job seekers will use this service. LinkedIn also offers job seekers the ability to update their profile to being ‘open to opportunities’, however, even their private ‘recruiter only’ profile setting enables employers to see that the job seeker is looking for a job move, which again compromises their current employment.
The result being that employers are left needing to spend a lot of time and money promoting their role, or using a recruitment agency, in the hope that relevant job seekers apply.
What is the Future
Direct Hiring Solutions launched in 2024 to address this issue and has moved recruitment into a more traditional purchasing model by enabling job seekers to promote their profile confidentially & anonymously to employers.
It works by job seekers creating a profile on Jobs 2U Direct, the candidate platform and app. Employers can then match these profiles to their vacancies on the employer platform, Direct Hiring Solutions. The employer can choose to support their search with free job advertising with applications linking exclusively to the role. The employer then invites shortlisted job seekers to review their opportunity, and when they accept the invitation, the employer gains access to the job seekers contact details. Should the job seeker reject the role, they select the reason why, providing the employer with useful feedback.
The platform is monetized by employers purchasing contact credits which cost between £20 to £70 and are only spent when they receive the contact details of invited job seekers.
The result being that employers can now source all their talent online, including their permanent requirements, resulting in a much quicker, cheaper and risk-free solution.
Job seekers benefit by being able to get their profile directly in front of employers thereby opening-up new opportunities, some of which they may not have previously considered. With an estimated 60% of jobs not being advertised, the platform also opens-up the hidden recruitment market to job seekers. Job seeking is often also about timings, and the platform enables job seekers to hear about those perfect roles without needing to be actively looking.
The platforms integrate video technology thereby improving employer engagement and candidate assessment.
Following a successful soft launch across the South Coast, the platform now has thousands of registered job seekers and supporting many local employers.