Recruitment Grapevine - Gen Zs are ditching recruiters

An article written by Kieran Howells at Recruitment Grapevine regarding Gen Zs who are ditching recruiters in their job searches.

The current job market is a volatile place for lesser in-demand industries. 

As the current ‘candidate-driven’ market evidences, recruiters are having to adapt quickly to the shifting demands of prospective employees and work even harder to secure top candidates for clients.

It is therefore unsurprising that, given the prominence of cutting-edge tech integration into the biggest recruitment platforms of the internet, the role of the recruiter is the last visited form of job search for younger candidates, according to a new study conducted by Randstad.

The study ranked a company’s career website as the number one place they look for open positions, with 71% of respondents saying they spend time job hunting directly on employers’ websites.

At the same time, only 58% of managers feel their company’s career websites yield the highest-quality applicants.

This data underscores the importance of having a website that’s appealing and user-friendly, together with well-written job descriptions and a fast-moving screening process to attract candidates.

A significant majority (63%) of managers rate employee referrals as the most successful way to source top candidates, but only 48% of all employees invest time nurturing referrals to find jobs. 58% of Gen Z candidates also rely on referrals, which may reflect this generation’s tendency to build connections online through social networks.

Social media is also extremely important to younger workers; 58% of Gen Z workers focus on such platforms in the job-search process, whilst that number is slightly higher for Millennials at 59%.

Just one-third of managers feel that recruiters are a viable source of top talent – with Baby Boomers pushing that number up; this isn’t the case for younger candidates – who consider recruitment agencies the ‘last-stop’ in their search.

Recruitment Grapevine - Gen Zs are ditching recruiters in their job searches.