Are you working in a recruitment red zone?
We all know that recruitment and talent acquisition are tough, competitive industries, but some recruitment professionals have it tougher than others – and geography plays a major role when it comes to being able to find the right candidate for a vacancy.
We’ve crunched the numbers from Adzuna’s vast database to compare how difficult it is to fill vacancies in 56 cities across the UK – and some of the results may surprise you.
The North-South divide
The clearest message from analysis of the latest figures is that the historic north-south divide is an enduring factor in employment. In general, jobs are more plentiful across the board – and competition is more cut-throat for recruiters – in medium to large southern English towns, especially if they are anchored by a prestigious university or situated an easy commute from London.
Cambridge and Oxford jointly top the table as the most competitive markets, followed by Swindon and Reading. Warrington, between Liverpool and Manchester, bucked the trend due to a series of multi-million-pound development projects, rounding out the top five recruitment red zones.
Region by region
A regional snapshot paints a similar picture: The South-West is the easiest place to find a job – and the most difficult place to work as a recruiter – followed by the East, the South-East, the East Midlands and London. Interestingly, Adzuna’s figures showed that London was on a par with the national average, reflecting that the sheer diversity of opportunities in the capital created a broader, more complex market.
Hardest places to find work
Conversely, all five of the most challenging places in the UK to find jobs are in northern England. The port city of Hull is the most difficult, followed by a slew of former mining and post-industrial towns: Sunderland, Middlesbrough, Salford and Bradford, indicating that newer industries have had little impact on job prospects and markets today despite concerted efforts at regeneration and redevelopment.
What next?
Wherever you work in the UK, the recruitment market is in for some challenging times ahead.
The March 2019 Adzuna Job Market Report reveals that, while official reports are indicating a record number of vacancies in the UK, Adzuna’s data (based on approximately 1m job adverts at any given time) shows an overall decline in advertised roles, down 7.1% from July 2018 and 4.3% compared to the same time the year before.
The wild card of a delayed Brexit adds further uncertainty to the mix: will the UK be able to access enough staff in critical areas such as healthcare if there is a significant reduction to the flow of European nationals? How will low-skilled vacancies be affected? What about the task of recruiting highly skilled niche personnel? There are more questions than answers at this stage, but hopefully the picture will become clearer over the next few months. And, of course, wherever there is a challenge, there is an opportunity.
Written with Dawn Gibson of Dawn Creative Media www.dawncreativemedia.