Recruitment activity will continue to increase over the next six months, according to respondents of the Recruitment Confidence Index (RCI) from the Cranfield School of Management.
But this increase is beginning to slow with just 41% of the 1,249 responding organisations expecting overall recruit-ment activity to increase (compared to 48% last quarter), and 17% expecting it to decrease (compared to 12% last quarter). Just less than a third of these organisations expect recruitment activity for managerial and professional staff to increase, compared to only 7% who expect it to decrease.
The proportion of organisations expecting employment levels to increase has also dropped slightly, with 42% expecting an increase in the number of employees compared to 48% last quarter. The proportion of respondents expecting a drop in employment levels has risen slightly from 11% to 16%. Overall, UK recruitment appears to be buoyant, but there are signs that it is beginning to stabilise, with a high proportion of respondents expecting both recruitment activity and employment levels to remain the same over the next six months.
The need to recruit in particular organisational functions has also dropped across the board, with the exception of sales, where the need to recruit remains at 19%. However, difficulties in recruitment remain high, particularly in engineering (60%), production (51%), sales (46%) and computing/IT (42%).
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The labour market still appears tight with recruitment difficulties common in a number of areas. It would seem likely that, until recruitment activity slows considerably, skills shortages will be increasingly apparent in the UK.
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