After a relatively quiet couple of months, the permanent recruitment market is on the up again with new vacancies coming through the door daily, so there are opportunities aplenty. The active available candidate market continues to be tight, so recruiters are increasingly trying to uncover and attract passive candidates who are perhaps sitting on the fence about making a move.
Over the last 12 months we have seen increases in starting salaries and benefits packages like never before, this has become unavoidable for companies who are serious about attracting the best talent, and whilst this has given us recruiters a fighting chance of delivering on our service commitments, it has not come without some frustration.
For some specific roles that are integral to the business, companies have had to break existing pay structures in a bid to try and attract people, this of course has been a necessary move, but when asking agency supply partners for support with recruitment we are being asked more and more not to advertise salaries, and in my experience this makes a potentially productive job advert almost redundant. Granted when we as consumers see a product marketed without a price, this generally means it is going to be a lot of money, sadly when it comes to the job market the assumption can be quite the opposite.
So, if we are serious about tapping into that all important passive candidate market, I would advocate full disclosure with salary and benefit details. ‘Name your price’ and let people know what you can offer, absolute transparency sends the right message about your business from the outset, which in itself is a very attractive quality.
Jon Raine
Branch Director & Head of Permanent Recruitment
jon@mploystaff.com