What do our candidates want in 2023?
IT and Engineering Recruitment Specialists, Matt Love-Smith and Marc Denholm discuss the changes they're seeing in recruitment. With forty years experience between them, they take a look back at the industry and discuss what candidates are looking for in 2023.
IT Recruitment Director, Marc (left) and Engineering Recruitment Director (right)
From then to now…
With the recruitment process constantly evolving, Matt and Marc reflect on the changes that the recruitment industry has undergone. Matt (Engineering Recruitment) explains that back then, recruiters spent their time advertising for roles—to then wait for responses before reviewing the candidates. The 2023 recruiting process for highly-skilled professions looks much different. The recruiter searches for the ideal candidate, using LinkedIn, and job sites such as Seek. The idea of "headhunting" executives now applied to more people and more professions, Love-Smith said. "We tend to take a sniper approach more than a shotgun approach."
What do candidates want in 2023?
Clear business goals to create a pathway for change
Discussing changes within the IT industry, Marc says that IT recruitment clients are now focussing a lot more time on telling the business story—"Employers are getting much better at presenting their mission, communicating their plans, and explaining how employees can contribute to achieving the company goals." This correlates with common questions that we're getting asked from IT candidates too. The most common question that candidates ask about the clients is : What is the product or service the company has, and how is it benefitting people/communities? Matt agrees that this is also an increasingly asked question for engineering candidates too—with them wanting to know how this job will assist them in making an impact on the community, or planet.
Innovation and challenging work
Marc explains that for IT candidates, they want to ensure that they're being equipped with challenging work that gives them the opportunity to be innovative. Questions such as: What technology stack does your client work with and why? are common, he explains.
Career progression
These candidates within IT recruitment understand the value they can offer, so career progression is naturally important to them too, with the majority of candidates focussing on what experience they can gain with one employer in the short-medium term. "Many IT candidates are looking at the next 2-3 year cycle and not much further than that, in the majority of cases (but not all)." explains Marc.
A positive work environment
"We're finding that remote working is less and less important" says Marc. He explains that questions about office culture, management style and success measurement are increasingly asked.
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