Recruitment has always been a competitive sphere. However, the internet has made it far easier for people to change careers at the click of a button, while remote work and freelance opportunities have increased the total number of jobs available. In 2020, recruitment has developed into a new battleground, saturated with applicants spanning a range of industries.
Recruitment is now so competitive that top talent, on average, stays available for a mere 10 days before getting hired. That means employers and recruitment teams face smaller windows to find, interview, and secure candidates. Not to mention, every unfilled vacancy costs a company $500 per day the posting is online; so businesses can’t risk not finding the right talent, fast.
The rise of niche industries has meant candidates are no longer browsing generic roles in large spheres – instead, they’re targeting specific verticals. Job-seekers who possess the required skills for complex industry work have naturally become more aware of where they are searching for employment, as well as what kind of employment they want. Subsequently, complex industries have proven to be most successful in hiring when they have dedicated platforms.
Here’s why complex industry verticals warrant their own separate recruitment platforms:
Benefits for job candidates
Applicants can devote up to five months looking for the right job – a long time to potentially not have an income or feel unsatisfied in an existing role. Recruitment platforms for particular industries can significantly reduce candidates’ search by having a platform catered to their professional interests. More importantly, these platforms mean job-seekers have a higher chance of applying to work that accurately matches their background and preferred role. As opposed to traditional recruitment platforms, niche marketplaces cut and refine the browsing process.
It’s also worth noting that industry-specific platforms also expand work options for candidates into remote and freelance positions. General recruitment platforms cannot afford this flexibility as they risk becoming too complex by catering to so many different functions. As a result, they choose to stick with only full or part-time hiring.
Another advantage of specialized recruitment platforms is that applicants can become more familiarized with important brands and names in their industry. People may even be inspired to consider companies they hadn’t heard of before or contact individuals who are considered industry leaders. Essentially, the platforms build communities where workforces can access information and get insider knowledge around company policies, environments, and salaries. This kind of transparency leads to a better pairing of employee expectations and employment realities.
The community-shaping can also be backed by user-generated content like forums and reviews on the recruitment sites. This social proof optimizes the hiring journey for candidates who are new to the industry and may need help navigating it in a smart manner. Aspiring professionals can be given a blueprint to work towards; for example, college graduates can see the industry opportunities and standards before they fully enter the space.
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Likewise, people applying for jobs via separate recruitment platforms have the added perk of not being diluted by applicants from different industries. Keywords on generalist recruitment platforms can get mixed up – for instance, architects may get lost in job postings that are for software architects, while civil engineers may get overwhelmed with engineering postings in other sectors. These keyword inaccuracies are eliminated on platforms that are dedicated to the construction or the tech industry only.
Benefits for recruitment personnel
Beyond improving job seekers’ chances of finding appropriate work, niche marketplaces also support HR departments and recruitment teams. Currently, 84 percent of HR professionals say they’ve seen skills shortages in the job applications they receive. Complex industry recruitment platforms can therefore close the gap between skills and applicants by generating spaces that target exact businesses.
On the whole, employers save large amounts of time using industry specific recruitment platforms because the entire hiring process is streamlined. For one, these platforms can vet and verify candidates before employers view their profiles. So, rather than spend hours filtering through unsuitable people, employers are guaranteed that there is at very least, a base quality for the candidates they view. Employers can also compare candidates side-by-side to check their experience – something that is more difficult on cross-industry recruitment sites.
Additionally, industry-specific platforms help HR personnel reach a much wider net of talent from around the world, not only from the local area. Because complex industries have seen a spike in flexible working (in programming, 53.3 percent of developers said working remotely was a priority when looking for a new job), they attract a more international talent pool.
By having a greater selection of tailored candidates, employers can access a specialized ecosystem within their industry, providing a sense of the overall market offerings at one time. This overview could include wage expectations, availability, sought-after roles, and perceptions of big-name employers. Such information is extremely valuable to HR teams as it gives them a deeper understanding of their market.
Niche recruitment marketplaces as the norm
In modern-day recruitment, organizations have to take a fresh look at how they approach talent acquisition. Traditional methods of hiring are set to quickly become outdated and inefficient as industry-specific platforms shorten processes, match with better accuracy, and build informed communities. Moreover, as technology continues to change the business landscape, more and more industries are poised to become complex – leading to an even greater demand for custom recruitment.
Having a core platform to attract, organize, and find new hires is a simple solution to filter a highly-skilled, readily-available workforce in a given industry. Already, there is a noticeable need for separate recruiting platforms, and as industries and recruitment personnel discover the benefits, these platforms may even become the norm.