IHR Live Bristol 2024 - Round Up

If you were not able to attend this time, don’t worry, we have prepared a round-up of the key takeaways from the sessions we visited, including valuable data and the latest industry insights.

What is it like recruiting Gen Z?

A lot was covered in 30 minutes, revealing some of the 2024 UK market trends and what it’s like recruiting Gen Z.

The session revealed that Gen Z’s priorities, when looking for a job, more often than not, revolve around the organisation’s culture and long-term growth. This could allude to the fact that people in this age group are more likely to still be living with their parents, reducing the financial burden and pressure to focus on money over workplace wellbeing. This is also backed by the fact that when looking for a job, 47% of Gen Z respondents ranked company stability and long-term prospects as one of the deciding factors, and 41% chose a company depending on a long-term path to grow within a company for many years. However, it’s important to not only attract but also retain Gen Z talent, 16% of which revealed they would be happy to leave without another opportunity lined up if the job or culture weren’t the right fit.

The session also revealed some Gen Z winning factors:

• 59% said they’d be reluctant to apply if the salary wasn’t included in the job description.
• 45% consider positive reviews on platforms like Glassdoor, as they prefer learning about the company from the experiences of current and former employees, deeming them more trustworthy than corporate content. This is a good reminder for Talent Acquisition teams to not overlook the value of employee testimonials.
• 45% shared that a quick and easy application process is attractive when choosing a company to work for.

Before we move on to 2025, here are some recruitment trends from 2024:

• 72% of Talent Acquisition Professionals say they would like to see even more AI in the recruitment process.

Extra Reading: Worth reading this insight from HR Grapevine on if AI holds the answers to recruitment challenges.

• The average Time to Fill decreased by 2 days year on year. (From 49 to 47 days).
• 2.6 hours on average saved per week by Talent Acquisition teams using AI.
• Increased focus on internal mobility - which is slowly moving from being a HR responsibility to becoming a responsibility of Talent Acquisition teams.

What the panellists said…..The expected recruitment trends for 2025:

Distribution, Claire Fennell from Utility Warehouse, and Chance Bleu-Montgomery from Bridge of Hope all came together to discuss the emerging recruitment trends of 2025 and answer some burning questions from the audience.

What emerging trends are you expecting to see in 2025?

• Candidates continue dictating the marketplace.
• More Talent Acquisition teams will need to adapt the recruitment marketing strategy depending on the role and location of the vacancy.
• Claire shared the growth journey of Utility Warehouse, with the company focusing on redeploying rather than hiring brand-new candidates. Application volumes have also increased, requiring TA teams to spend more time on screening CVs, with an emerging expectation of increased use of AI tools in 2025.
• Increased importance of social value and inclusive hiring, requiring Recruitment Teams to balance the human touch and AI automation when screening candidates. This trend has already been noticed by Gregory Distribution, with Liz revealing her team moved away from automated emails to start calling and texting candidates when scheduling interviews to create a more engaging and personal candidate experience. This also gives candidates a chance to ask questions and learn more about the role prior to their interview.
• Meanwhile, Utility Warehouse uses automation to reduce the administrative burden to free up Recruiters’ time to create more human interactions.

Have your say on recruitment trends and challenges….!

The balance between candidate sourcing challenges, managing priorities and maximising efficiencies demands a robust approach to recruitment and talent acquisition. Eploy are conducting research into Candidate Attraction and key challenges experiences/priorities and you can get involved.

Your input will form part of the Candidate Attraction 2024/25 report, which will help us to identify insights into the changing landscape of the candidate attraction trends in the UK recruitment market. Anyone who takes part in the survey gets a free copy of the extensive 80 page report. Complete the survey here.

The AI advantage: work smarter, not harder - Lauren Tait, AssessFirst and Jason Tunney, So Energy.

Eploy’s Marketplace partners AssessFirst delivered an insightful session on the importance of recognising soft skills and ways Talent Acquisition teams can use AI to work smarter - not harder.

The incorporation of AI can have initial challenges; however, it can help Talent Acquisition teams achieve DE&I and productivity goals. Jason Tunney from So Energy noticed that about 70% of candidates, who made it to the final interview, were men. On top of that, the company’s total time spent per each hire was 20h 40 min. Yet even with this time allocated to each candidate, the diversity and quality scores of candidates weren’t the best, pointing out a requirement for improvements.

After implementing AssessFirst, the energy company noticed positive changes, such as the total time spent per hire reducing to 9h 25 min. Recognising the candidate’s soft skills and potential to thrive within the organisation also helped improve quality scores and helped attract more diverse candidates.

The awesome power of human connections

In a lively, interactive session, Mark Lennox emphasised the importance of building professional relationships and encouraged participants to engage in a rock-paper-scissors game to foster connections. He shared actionable tips for strengthening professional networks, highlighting the unique impact of human connections.

Mark commented, “In this session alone, 15% of attendees had job opportunities for their peers, 80% were willing to be mentors, and 100% were ready to share genuinely valuable advice and support. Yet, so often, we hold back, hesitant to put ourselves out there and connect with someone new. It might feel a bit unnatural or uncomfortable, but, like anything truly fulfilling, the more you put in, the more you get out.”

A huge thank you to the team at In House Recruitment for organising yet another great event, as well as the speakers and panellists who shared their thoughts and experiences with the attendees.

We hope you enjoyed this round up and our take on the day.