Hiring recruiters has become a real challenge for many companies, not only because many companies didn’t implement those new work arrangements that people want, but also because many experienced recruiters left the recruitment field during the COVID pandemic and there are not enough recruiters in the market at this moment.
As companies stopped hiring, recruiters were among the first to be let go. Hiring came to a screeching halt. Without employment, many recruiters had to find a job outside of recruitment to cover their bills. Once they got a taste of working in another field, some were not excited about getting back into recruiting. Do you blame them? Constantly working overtime, being stressed because hiring managers are pushing on you daily, etc. is not a job that most people would really enjoy.
So now we have a shortage of recruiters on the market.
Based on the latest LinkedIn data there were 6.8x more recruiter jobs posted in June 2021 than in June 2020. It would be even better to see the difference between 2019 and 2021.
How many open jobs for recruiters are on LinkedIn?
There are currently 375,602 open jobs on LinkedIn for recruiters (If you search only for a job title Recruiter). And there are even more similar job openings on local job boards and other career websites.
But how many recruiters are really out there?
Are there enough recruiters in the market for all those job openings? I tried to find out!
The majority of recruiters that are in the market should be on LinkedIn, as LinkedIn is one of the primary sources of candidates for them.
I ran a search for all people currently working in one of these roles: Talent Specialist, Staffing Recruiter, Talent Acquisition Recruiter, Recruiter, Technical Recruiter, Information Technology Recruiter, Sales Recruiter, Talent Acquisition Specialist, Talent Acquisition Consultant, Staffing Specialist, Staffing Consultant, and Talent Acquisition Executive.
Of course, there are way more recruiters with different job titles than these above, like “HR Specialist”, “Talent Attraction Specialist”, etc. Or they are using these job titles in their native languages. As it is impossible to cover every role, my search covered only those job titles I selected.
This search showed me that there are 960,000+ recruiters (people matching these job titles) on LinkedIn at this moment. And around 100,000+ are looking for a job and 44,000+ of them are looking for a remote job opportunity.
How many recruiters are there on different continents?
We can even divide those numbers by continent to see which continent has the highest amount of people working in these roles.
Asia – 290,000+ recruiters
Africa – 12,000+ recruiters
Europe – 150,000+ recruiters
North America – 440,000+ recruiters
South America – 27,000+ recruiters
Australia – 6,900+ (New Zealand – 948+) recruiters
Note: Bear in mind that as LinkedIn does not show the exact numbers, all those numbers that I am using are rounded down.
As you can see from these numbers, we have 960,000+ recruiters and 375,602 open jobs looking for recruiters. And the number of open jobs for recruiters is growing every day as many companies are trying to attract new talent and grow.
These numbers are showing that your company will not only have problems hiring new people, but you will have a very hard time keeping your recruiters as they have the option to go somewhere else if they do not feel valued at your company.
Last thoughts
Your success or failure is determined by your ability to attract the right talent to your company. To attract the right talent you need the right recruiters, and once you get them, do everything you can to keep them happy. Recruiting represents your company to the outside world and yet many companies do not value their recruiters as they should.
Once you find them, enrich them. Provide training for them; don’t just give them Full Stack Recruiter.
Offer them training options like SourceCon Academy and give them stretch assignments where they can learn how to work with data, or manage projects.
And, when bad times hit, take care of them. While initially a cost, it may be less expensive in the long run to retain your recruiters during hiring freezes.
The cost of turnover is expensive. With the shortage of recruiters at hand, it’s now probably cheaper to keep a great recruiter than recruit a great recruiter.
