Three quarters of recruitment agencies believe attracting the right candidates is the biggest challenge they face over the next 12 months but more than half are not spending enough on advertising, according to new research by specialist recruitment finance provider, Bibby Financial Services.

However, despite acknowledging the importance of finding skilled employees for their clients, 51% spent less than 10% of their annual expenditure on candidate advertising, perhaps due to nearly two-thirds (63%) believing there is a lack of quality employees available in the marketplace to respond to their efforts in the first place.

IT was thought to be the hardest sector to recruit quality candidates for, followed closely by professional and financial services.
And when it comes to the candidates that are available, 60% of agencies said the biggest factor putting them off was people arriving late for interview, while over half (55%) were fed up with people lying about their experience and over a third (39%) were not impressed by poor personal appearance.

Edward Rimmer, UK chief executive for Bibby Financial Services, said: "The outlook for the recruitment industry over the next 12 months remains tough as it struggles to meet clients' needs due to the limited number of quality candidates available in the workforce. However, with this in mind, recruitment agencies need to scale up their marketing activities to widen the candidate pool available to them, not hold back on vital expenditure. If finance is the issue, there are specialist funding solutions available to the recruitment sector."

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