New Research Shows a Growing Demand for Recruiters

You’re not alone if you’re having trouble finding recruiters right now.

Employers all over the world are having difficulty filling positions. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate in the United States fell to a 14-month low of 5.8% in May 2021. Companies are recruiting quickly as the pandemic fades in some countries, and the clamor is increasing the demand for recruiters significantly.

Amy Schultz, global head of talent acquisition for Canva, an Australian software company, wrote in a recent blog post: “As of right now, there are 364,970 ‘Recruiter’ jobs advertised on LinkedIn worldwide. For comparison, there are 342,586 ‘Software Engineer’ roles open on LinkedIn worldwide.” 

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According to the most recent research, the demand for recruiters is occurring on a large scale, across sectors, and around the world. Since the beginning of the year, recruiter job postings on LinkedIn have risen steadily and have now exceeded pre-pandemic levels. The data show shifts in where recruiters come from and what they value most.

The graph below depicts how recruiter demand remained stagnant throughout 2019, then dropped precipitously between February and April of 2020, when the pandemic struck. Because many companies decelerated or stopped hiring, the number of recruiter jobs fell far below the levels seen in 2019.

As 2020 progressed and the world began to show signs of recovery, recruiter roles expanded, and hiring resumed. Recruiter jobs exceeded pre-pandemic levels in April 2021. While all jobs on the platform have grown significantly this year, recruiter jobs have increased faster than the overall job market. Of course, the demand for recruiters serves as a barometer for hiring across all functions.

We see a nearly threefold increase in recruiter job postings from January to June 2021 when compared to the exact same six-month period in 2020. There are nearly 7 times more recruiter jobs posted in June 2021 than in June 2020.

One possible explanation for the shortage that may appear to be so intense is that companies aren’t hiring as many recruiters from outside of recruiting as they were prior to the pandemic. To put it another way, they’re increasingly competing for the same small pool of candidates.

Researchers removed recruiting from the analysis to further isolate recruiters’ previous roles. They discovered that recruiters hired in the last 14 months came from functions other than sales, administration, and marketing, and frequently from within HR. For example, there was a 10% increase in the share of recruiters from HR and a 24% decrease in sales.

Companies are increasingly relying on safer bets that can ramp up rapidly. HR professionals, who are already involved in talent management, may be considered the closest thing to recruiters.

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New recruiters are still available in a variety of positions

Aside from talent acquisition, the rest of human resources is responsible for the majority of recruiting hires. However, new recruiters are coming from positions such as account manager, administrative assistant, and salesperson.

Right now, your next star recruiter could be an executive assistant or a store manager; looking for complementary skills in these other sectors may help tackle your recruiter shortage. Many of these people already understand how to form relationships, influence others, and tell a story. They may require recruitment training, but many of their other skills transfer well.

While work-life balance, compensation, and company culture remain the top priorities for recruiters when looking for a new job, researchers observed an interesting transition in preferences over the last year. As a priority for recruiters when job hunting, job security increased by 21%, followed by a purposeful mission, which increased by 19%. Recruiter candidates may be especially receptive to mission-based or job security-related outreach.

Other job factors that have grown in importance since COVID’s inception include having control over tasks and priorities (+11%) and challenging work (+9%).

Conclusion

While it’s great that recruiters are in high demand, businesses may be restricting their talent pools unreasonably in order to meet them.

Companies will be able to bring veteran recruiters into the loop quicker than newcomers. Companies that hire from outside talent acquisition and HR, on the other hand, may recoup that time — and then some — simply by finding recruiters faster.