2017 Global Staffing Trends

Growing the business, competition for top talent, and doing more with less, are some of the issues that preoccupy the minds of staffing and recruiting leaders around the world. This is just one of the findings from LinkedIn’s recently released 2017 Global Staffing Trends report.

Other highlights from the survey – which included over 2,000 manager-level and above, search and staffing recruitment professionals from 35 countries – include:

• The good news is that 68% of staffing firms expect their firms to grow compared to 2016, and say they plan to hire more recruiters (56%), sourcers (32%), branding specialists (28%), and coordinators (17%). Additionally, 79% expect to see an increase in the volume of candidates placed in 2017.
• Most firms place candidates in less than 2 months. 39% report it takes them less than 1 month, 44% say it takes them 1-2 months, and 14% report taking 3-4 months to place candidates.
• Some of the top challenges leaders say their teams are faced with include: competition for talent (58%); business development (38%); limited budget (30%); small recruiting team (25%); and poor communication with hiring managers (20%):

Staffing budgets:

• 53% expect their budgets to increase in 2017.
• Half of these budgets go to traditional sources (such as job boards/advertising and recruiting tools), but if given unlimited funds staffing firms would prioritize business development (49%), branding (34%), and investing in better sourcing tools (34%).

Building your brand:

• 82% of staffing leaders agree that investing in their brand generates new business, yet only 10% of their budget goes to this.
• Firms measure their brand by: traffic to our career website (45%); response to emails/InMails (43%); social media engagement (35%); number of social media followers (27%); and survey data on potential candidates’ perceptions (21%).