Over the past two years, many HR directors have had a torrid time managing a swift migration to online working and furlough – all alongside an unforeseen drop – or explosion – in customer demand, depending on what sector they operate in. Since the early days of the pandemic, we have moved from a scenario where concerns over mass unemployment have transformed into worries about talent shortages. The reality is that many corporates may now feel they ‘over pruned’ during severe cutbacks in 2020, and as the economy has recovered along with sentiment, some sectors are seeing a ‘hiring frenzy’. This is starting to flow on to all the expected challenges – with skills gaps and rising salaries being foremost amongst those.

One of the major surprises of this year has been the ‘labour market paradox’, a global phenomenon where the expected availability of labour, due to widespread unemployment in 2020, is simply not there in 2021. The reports of candidate shortages are being demonstrated in every region – Australia, New Zealand, the UK, the US, and Canada – even countries which have conventionally held large untapped labour pools like India are reporting acute shortages of people no longer willing to do the work they once embraced. There are many theories as to why people aren’t applying for jobs, and all of them have merit.

It seems that job applicants are there, but not for the certain types of jobs in sectors worst hit by the pandemic and lockdowns – retail, agriculture, hospitality and leisure – these sectors have a much longer road back than the rest of the economy. There are persistent and valid concerns over health risks in jobs which deal with the public. In the white-collar world, there is a strong resistance to the return to the office, with applicants frequently refusing to consider work that does not offer them a remote working option. Additionally, borders are still severely restricted or closed, cutting off access to additional labour upon which so many of our industries depend. The UK is also still suffering from a loss of talent to the EU post-Brexit.

As the official data demonstrates, British businesses are now finding themselves scrambling for talent in a candidate-scarce market: ONS figures show that job vacancies across the UK economy have now reached a record high of almost 1.2 million. However, companies can only flourish if they are able to attract, secure and retain top talent. The success of individual firms – and the wider UK economy – rests firmly on the ability to recruit the best people.

In the current climate, a reactive recruitment strategy has been the default option for employers trying to find their feet and keep pace with demand after restrictions were eased in the summer. However, HRDs must stop firefighting if they intend to win the war for talent in 2022 and move back to proactive hiring to improve the quality of talent they attract – and the time it takes to secure the skills they need.

Focusing your candidate sourcing efforts on job posting, without any nurturing of a diverse talent pool, is a common mistake for talent acquisition professionals. Primarily relying on reactive recruitment through job posting on job boards means that you’re always searching for quality candidates and hoping that the right ones answer your ads.

When time and resources are tight, stepping back and becoming more strategic in your approach may seem time consuming. However, when you diversify your recruitment efforts and utilise proactive recruitment through talent pooling, you’re helping yourself in the long run. By building and nurturing a talent pool full of quality, diverse candidates, you will create a reliable source of candidates for a wide range of roles. This means that you can move quickly when filling a new job, simply searching through your talent pool to find a variety of relevant candidates – significantly cutting your time to hire in the process. It’s all about examining how you spend your time and figuring out the efficiencies that could save you hours each day. When comparing job posting versus nurturing talent pools, you need to invest your energy and resources into the most sustainable and strategic solution.

To support this theory, we recently analysed our JobAdder data to determine the difference in time to hire when job posting or using your talent pool. In our recent global industry report, we found that users of our technology were seeing big differences in time to hire when placing candidates through the JobAdder database (which is where their talent pool sits), compared to using external sources like job posting. Across the globe, the benefits of taking a proactive approach are clear to see.

For Australian users filling temp and contract roles, the average days to place using the JobAdder database was 6.4 days, while using external sources saw an average of 26.7 days. For Australian users filling permanent positions, those using external sources took on average 42.0 days, while those using the JobAdder database took 26.3 days. In New Zealand, users filling temp and contract placements took 32.3 days using external sources and 8.8 days using the JobAdder database. For permanent placements, those using external sources took 47.8 days and those using the database or talent pool took 33.0 days. Here in the UK, temp and contract placements took 25.7 days using external sources, compared to 11.6 days via the database. Those filling permanent placements took 42.2 days using external sources and 33.3 days using the database. In the UK, in-house users also saw decreasing applications per job, falling from 36.1 in Q3 2020 to just 14.2 in Q3 2021.

If ever hirers needed evidence that ‘reactive recruiting’ was becoming increasingly ineffective, this data provides it. Building up a strong network of screened candidates and implementing proactive sourcing and engagement tactics is vital – and this is even more crucial in skills-short environments.

Speedy resourcing strategies will be key to ensuring businesses recover from the pandemic. This means it’s crucial that jobseeker engagement and rich talent pools are at the forefront of hiring managers’ minds. Needless to say, technology is key to ensuring that you are not only able to penetrate passive pools, but also engage meaningfully with the talent you find there.

Against this backdrop, for internal talent acquisition teams, gauging levels of candidate interest and engagement is absolutely crucial. These conditions are also creating a climate where speed is essential in recruitment, with in-house HR professionals developing proactive, technology-driven strategies to find the best candidates for their business to secure vital skills before the competition.

As the number of applicants per job ad has been dipping, we’ve seen our clients rapidly adopt a hybrid approach to talent sourcing. This includes greater emphasis on talent pooling and proactive searching, in addition to more traditional methods such as advertising on job boards.

The reasons behind today’s ‘talent crunch’ may be many and varied but the response from employers has to be the same; we need to fundamentally review job design and change the way in which we communicate occupational value. A shift in values post-pandemic is manifesting in how people evaluate jobs and employers; we must become more transparent, more authentic, and more diverse in our thinking and our composition. Most importantly, though, we must jump off the perpetual wheel of reactive hiring and plan proactive recruitment strategies to ensure we have the skills needed to thrive in 2022. As our data demonstrates, the value of talent pools must not be underestimated and in a candidate-driven market, time-to-hire may just be the differentiator between securing top talent, or losing them to the competition.