Take the 2022 Staffing and Recruitment Trends Survey

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Do you work in the staffing and recruitment industry? We want to hear from you!

Each year, we ask industry pros like you to share what’s most important to firms like yours in the year ahead. We then take the results of thousands of global staffing professionals of all functions, roles, and company sizes and share the findings with you.

These findings highlight how your peers view the industry, what they say their top priorities and challenges are for 2022, and how they’re thinking about the future of staffing and recruitment.

Take the 2022 Recruitment Trends Survey

Take 5 minutes to share your insights, and when the findings are released in early 2022, you’ll be among the first to see them and discover how your insights compare with others in your industry. Plus, you’ll have a chance to win one of 50 $25 Amazon gift cards!

Some of the questions we’ll look to answer for the year ahead:

  • What are the top priorities and challenges for 2022?
  • What are the lasting impacts of COVID-19 on the staffing and recruitment industry?
  • How are firms attracting and retains clients in the current landscape?
  • What technologies and approaches are firms using to grow their businesses?

As you consider taking this year’s survey (please do!), here’s a look back at this year’s trends and how they might resurface in 2022. You can access all of our original research—including new reports that we add throughout the year at our Global Recruitment Insights & Data (GRID) site. Here are some trends to consider heading into 2022, from our COVID-19 Impact Survey of 900+ staffing and recruitment professionals.

Top priorities for staffing firms in 2021 loom large in 2022

While the industry underwent a lot of change in 2020, the top three priorities for staffing and recruitment businesses remained the same for 2021: it’s all about candidates and clients. Candidates and clients account for four of the top five priorities of 2021. The biggest debut of the year was optimizing remote work, a top ten priority that wasn’t on the radar heading into the year. As we look towards 2022, we anticipate candidates will move even farther ahead as a top priority due to the talent shortage and the great resignation.

 

 

We’ll use your responses to surface some of the most significant insights and trends for the coming year so you can see what firms like yours are focusing on in 2022. Discover global and local trends to be aware of, opportunities your firm can leverage to grow your business, and more.

Candidate Acquisition (54%): Candidate acquisition was again the top priority for staffing and recruitment firms in 2021. This is perhaps related to the continued existence of the talent shortage (55% say there’s still a talent shortage) despite high unemployment rates.

Winning new clients (45%): Respondents who reported a down year in 2020 were 1.5 times more likely to cite winning new business as a priority than their counterparts who reported an increase in revenue. The UK is the only region with respondents that placed winning new business as their top priority overall, ahead of candidate acquisition. UK respondents were also the most likely to report a decrease in revenue in 2020.

Candidate Engagement (30%): Notably, firms are markedly more interested in placing candidates than they are in engaging with them. Given the value of redeploying workers and the importance of a firm’s reputation to attract candidates, agencies that put all their efforts into placing candidates at the expense of providing a good experience risk damaging their candidate acquisition efforts in the long run.

Employer Branding (22%): While investing in marketing leadership can be expensive, a cohesive marketing vision is incredibly beneficial to the long-term success of a firm. Small firms were more than twice as likely to cite branding as a top priority for 2021 than their larger counterparts.

Client Relationships (19%): In a people-centric industry like staffing, it should come as no surprise that improving client relationships is a top priority for most staffing firms. Respondents cited a lack of communication as the third-biggest challenge with existing customers, behind only a reduction in job reqs and an increase in challenging job reqs

Read all of last year’s findings here. To discover similar insights and help your firm prepare for the year ahead, take the 2022 survey today!


Update: this year’s findings have been released! View the priorities, challenges, and outlook of more than 4,000 global recruitment industry professionals representing a broad range of regions, perspectives, and industries served through the 2022 Global Recruitment Insights & Data (GRID) Trends Report.

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