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Matching jobs with people - Sue Winfield, Acorn
Recruitment agencies in Wales play a pivotal role in providing the link between employers that need workers and workers that need jobs.
The industry enhances both the skills and employability of job-seekers, swelling the pool of job-ready candidates in what remains a relatively tight labour market across a number of sectors.
The employment agency market continues to grow not simply in terms of the number of people working in the sector, but fundamentally due to the number of temporary and permanent workers that find jobs with the help of agencies and the increasing number of employers relying on the expertise and position of agencies to support the peaks and troughs in their productivity.
Recruitment businesses play an essential role in getting a staggering 1.2 million UK residents into temporary jobs every week, along of course with several hundred thousand permanent placements.
While the figures for Wales are not as clear, the need for a strong recruitment sector is illustrated by our own experiences at Acorn, where over the last fifteen years we have been the market leader and place up to 4,000 people in work every working day across some 490 clients each week.
As for experiences of recruitment professionals throughout Wales, one of the most significant issues of the day is the worrying candidate shortages that are experienced on a daily basis.
The Welsh Assembly has made significant progress in tackling skills shortages, but it has to continue to work hard on its strategy to ensure that those in education today become the skilled workers that businesses will need tomorrow.
The Future Skills Wales reported in 1998 that one in five firms felt that the skills of their employees were not high enough to meet their business objectives. 30% also had ‘hard to fill’ vacancies due to skills shortages in their areas.
Our evidence is that the situation has shown a marked improvement but skills shortages remain – and we see that as more and more companies choosing to locate their new offices here in Wales, the role of the agency in finding suitable workers for them from across Wales and further afield has become more and more fundamental in ensuring their investment in Wales is worthwhile.
This has also led to significant growth in executive level recruitment and the salary level over which ‘executive search’ is perceived to be cost effective is falling rapidly; presenting even greater opportunities in the market. It is now common place for Acorn to be placing salaries above the £40,000 mark.
Reasons for this in Wales are positive, and include the increasing demand for middle management positions and the lower costs of executive search advertising due to increased competition by media companies.
At all levels of the employment market, ongoing co-operation between the public and private sector is crucial, not just from the aforementioned skills-development perspective and in terms of attracting inward investment, but also in policy – for example, it is vital that the new points-based system for immigration, due to come into force next year, will meet the needs of employers.
All in all, the recruitment sector is as busy as it has ever been; whilst there is a perpetual squeeze on margins and the on-going issues with candidate and skills shortages, recruitment businesses that offer a solid service for both employers and candidates offer an important and sustainable support service, providing an essential backbone to many parts of the Welsh economy.
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