Are you struggling to recruit people into your organisation?

You are not the only one and it’s not only on the Isle of Man. A UK report, carried out at Oxford University, found that, while Brexit exacerbated the labour market problems, other factors including ‘the pandemic, international sector-specific labour shortages, and an increase in early retirement’ had been more important factors.

So what are people looking for? What will tempt them back to work, if they are not working, or to move from one employer to another? Working Week asked two recruitment industry specialists what employers need to do to attract people in a tight labour market.

‘A lot of people are coming in saying: “I want to do less” or “I want to work from home more”.

‘I’ve had some very senior people come in and say that they’d consider a drop in salary because they’d like to be in the office less. I’ve got people who would sacrifice salary for work/life balance, even at the moment,’ says Rebekah McManus, people and culture manager at Recruitment Works.

‘I think people’s perceptions have really changed,’ she adds.

Recruitment Works sees clients and candidates in all sectors of the economy from financial services and tech to retail, hospitality and construction.

Rebekah says: ‘Other than healthcare the biggest areas where companies are struggling to recruit are hospitality and retail.’

Isle of Man Government figures reflect this. In September the sectors with the highest number of vacancies were catering and entertainment (174) and retail (165).

Non-essential retail and hospitality are both areas where people would have been likely to be furloughed during the pandemic because they are jobs in which working from home is not a possibility. But, having tasted the freedom of being at home, Rebekah suspects that some have now found jobs in other sectors were there is the opportunity for flexible working.

Hospitality and retail also tend to be small businesses where profit margins are tight, especially with current rising energy and food costs, so offering higher wages may not be an option.

However, this winter we are looking at tougher economic times and it may be that people, no matter what their working preferences are, will once more find higher salary levels a big inducement.

Stacey Robinson is people and culture partner at Crimson Panda, who offer human resources consultancy and talent acquisition, specialising in egaming and tech. It sources and supplies talent in these sectors globally.

Stacey says: ‘The areas where our talent team struggle are those key skills like developers and engineers where there is obviously a skill shortage in the island.

‘The Isle of Man Government has brought in an exemption on work permits for people with these skills. That’s obviously a good starting point when they try and attract people to the island for those roles.

‘But we are finding that, because it’s a super tough market and very fast paced, some companies are willing to pay over the market rate, salary wise. The inflation of salaries is really high and people are responding to that, especially with current increased costs.

‘So, from an acquisition point of view, companies have got to move fast in a tight market. It’s our job to show our clients the current market and what their competitors are paying for developers in similar industries.’

For the Crimson Panda team it’s about selling the island as well as the company and the role, to persuade people to come here and live. They work with Locate.im and other businesses who can help support them in a move to the island.

Stacey says: ‘What we’re finding at the moment, because we’re sourcing candidates globally, is that it is the visa application process that is taking the longest. At the moment, a skilled worker migrant visa to come here is taking up to 12 weeks, which is quite a long time for a company to potentially wait.’

Stacey is also seeing more of a willingness for employers to consider candidates who are just kick-starting their career in tech.

She says: ‘At the moment due to fierce competition in the tech world, companies could be looking at developers who have strong work ethic and those who are interested in learning new tech stack, rather than limiting themselves to an experienced developer who is in demand.

‘That’s because there’s a skills shortage.’

Three recruitment tips for employers from Rebekah McManus:

•Identify your needs and stick to the brief

Understand exactly what you need from your new hires and actually follow through on your listed needs with your advert, job description and salary. Make sure that your job advert is clear, and only covers essential bases .

•Make sure it’s easy to apply

Candidates will drop out of the application process if it takes longer than 10 minutes to apply. If your company is urgently hiring, adding extra hurdles for your future employees to jump through could unnecessarily decrease your number of options.

•Expand your job listing’s reach

A good job advert can entice potential employees— and significantly shorten your recruitment process—but if the listing hasn’t been placed in appropriate places there can be a shortage of relevant candidates at the application stage.

Knowing how to build a fast recruitment process is key, but having the tools you need to make the concept into reality can be equally important.