UK job vacancies are rising: Is your recruitment team doing enough to stand out from the crowd?

March saw UK vacancies post a year-on-year rise for the first time since 2022, with a 3.7% upturn in activity, indicating that job markets may be about to become more competitive. 

Alongside an increase in postings, we saw a boost to advertised pay, with averages climbing 8% over the same period last year to £41,962. 

Among the sectors with the biggest increase in postings, social workers and legal jobs led the way, with an 18% and 17.5% rise in vacancies, respectively. Sales also saw listings grow by 10%, while travel and hospitality positions experienced 8.6% and 5.9% increases, respectively, ahead of the summer months. 

Although the recent uptick in UK job vacancies represents only a recent trend reversal, it’s worth HR teams taking measures to ensure that they remain an attractive option for prospective new hires. Fortunately, there are many approaches to take, with technological tools helping to pave the way for a more seamless recruitment process: 

One of the most important ways to boost your attraction to candidates as job listings rise is to revamp your recruitment processes. 

From writing the job advert to supporting candidates throughout the hiring process, every step of these HR considerations is essential and can span many months into employee onboarding. 

Working to optimise your listings is vital when standing out from the crowd can really help to maximise your chances of attracting and onboarding the most skilled candidates available. 

Adding a functional Applicant Tracking System can be a great way to lay the foundations for you to boost employee lifecycle measures and really add value to the recruitment process as a whole. 

These systems can help you to manage every step of your recruitment in a single place and support candidate engagement throughout their journey with your business. Crucially, Applicant Tracking Systems can also help to broaden your access to talent by removing unconscious bias from your recruitment model. 

Is your HR team doing enough to broaden the scope of your job listings? The online landscape has opened the door to unprecedented avenues for candidate engagement, and adopting a multimedia strategy for recruitment can really improve your appeal to talent. 

For instance, creating video advertising has become far easier to implement, paving the way for in-depth coverage of workplace culture, business goals, and branding reach. This can not only improve your online presence but can also be taken to recruitment drives and job fairs to improve candidate engagement. 

The great thing about multimedia content is that it can be adapted for a cross-channel approach to recruitment and is entirely reusable for social media campaigns and other forms of advertising. 

According to a recent survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), 87% of workers in the United Kingdom would rather have access to a hybrid or remote working model. An impressive 45% of employees would even be willing to take a lower salary if it meant maintaining a flexible working model. 

If your business is seeking to remain competitive in the job market without ramping up advertised salaries, offering more flexible working options could be crucial in attracting talented prospects. 

This measure can not only keep you competitive without a significant cost outlay, but it can also broaden your reach, opening the door to a far larger remote work market both domestically and internationally. 

While this strategy may seem like a significant shift for businesses with in-house policies, it merely requires additional investment in collaboration tools, stronger communication channels, and support for remote employees. 

It may not seem like a budget-friendly strategy, but pay-per-click (PPC) advertising can be a highly effective way of attracting talented applicants while increasing your lead generation among qualified candidates. 

This strategy could be a strong option if your website’s SEO isn’t naturally drawing organic traffic among prospective new hires. In circumstances where applicants aren’t able to discover your pages, it can be considerably more challenging to receive applications outside of job site listings, where competition for attention is higher. 

Running PPC ads empowers HR teams to advertise for jobs where they will only pay when an interested candidate clicks through to the website’s recruitment page. This means that you won’t have to add a significant outlay and can tailor your ads to target prospects that are most likely to fit your criteria. 

When job listings rise, there’s a danger that businesses can fall into the trap of making hasty hiring decisions due to weaker application volumes or a lack of qualified candidates. 

Taking measures to maximise your chances of attracting the right candidates now can help to ensure that your talent acquisition strategies are sustainable enough to retain productive employees for longer, preventing costly turnover in the process. 

By looking to boost your appeal to candidates today, you can future-proof your recruitment strategy in case of further competition emerging tomorrow. Accuracy in recruitment is a major component of a strong business model and a great way to consistently onboard high-value hires.