Candidates and recruiters: the end of the chase?

Number of employment on the rise, algorithms giving more chances to atypical profiles, emergence of "benevolent recruitment",... are candidates and recruiters on the right track to meeting each other? Several studies published this autumn show that nothing is quite so simple...

Companies looking for security

France ranks Top 2 for recruitment length. That's according to the latest study from Glassdoor. At present, it takes an average of 39 days per recruitment. France is not an isolated case but symptomatic of countries where employment is not very flexible and where, not wanting to take any risks, companies lengthen the processes.

According to the RegionsJob, recruiters' requirements are around soft skills: thus 80% of companies decide in fine, on a candidate's personality. The study by France Stratégie goes into more detail, revealing that in addition to savoir-être, companies value candidates' experience, versatility and adaptability. According to the authors, these elements are indicative of weak skills management. In other words, the difficulty of being able to identify, anticipate and implement real skills management, leads companies to choose profiles on which they can rely.

Another difficulty, a technical one this time, doesn't encourage closer ties either: for example, 60% of companies don't have a mobile version of their website, whereas 2/3 of French people look for a job from their mobile (RegionsJob study)...

Candidates looking for flexibility

The latest ifop survey for the Fédération des entreprises de portage salarial (FEPS), reveals that "50% of working people would be ready to become self-employed if favorable political measures were put in place". Joining the company, very often perceived as the place of all pressures, is already not the dream of half of the candidates...

As far as they're concerned, they want to be in tune with the company's culture. Witness the emploi StepStone, which launched a study and found that before applying for a job, candidates "browsed an average of ten sites and platforms" to gather information about the company.

Candidates express a desire to be themselves and realize their potential. To achieve this, they need transparency and greater flexibility. Transparency about recruitment processes and expectations, but also about what drives the company, flexibility in the way they communicate and meet with recruiters.

Recruitment firms, for example, are careful to gather a good deal of information about the job environment, management, corporate values and culture. The aim is to ensure that the future recruit, in order to deliver a good level of performance, feels at home in his or her position.

And it's not Generation Z, i.e. young people born after 1995, who will go back on these ways of operating. For them, recruitment will have to be both "agile, mobile, digital and human", according to an interview with Elodie Gentina for Focus RH. This professor at the IÉSEG School of Management, states in a book* to be published in January 2018: "Zs will be more loyal to their team than to their job or company"...

*" La génération Z en entreprise : des Z consommateurs aux Z collaborateurs " by Elodie Gentina and Marie-Eve Delecluse, to be published in January 2018 by Dunod.