Professionals Say If a Job Vacancy is Open for 85 Days There Must Be Something Wrong With It

LONDON, ENGLAND, October 05, 2012 (Press-News.org) Finance and legal professionals more understanding than the rest of the UK - who think a position can only be vacant 72 days before it looks like a job no-one wants.

* - Finance and legal professionals more understanding than the rest of the UK - who think a position can only be vacant 72 days before it looks like a job no-one wants.
* - Ideal recruitment process for finance and legal roles is almost 50% less - at 37 days
* - Average recruitment process for accountants and lawyers takes 59 days - up from 40 days last year

Employers need to fill job vacancies within 85 working days (17 weeks) before finance and legal professionals assume it's a job no one wants, according to research carried out by Randstad Financial & Professional, the accountancy, legal and financial services recruiter.

Randstad asked 2,001 members of the public, "How many working days does a vacancy for a permanent job have to be open before it starts to look like a bad job that no one wants?"

The UK's adult population said they thought a post has to be vacant 72 days before it looks like a bad job that no one wants, 13 days less (nearly 3 weeks) than finance and legal professionals.

In a similar survey, Randstad found that, on average, finance professionals feel they currently have to perform 30% more work than one person should be; the equivalent of fitting an additional one and a half days worth of work into the ordinary working week. Legal professionals said they were covering 60% more work than one person should be.

Tara Ricks, managing director of Randstad Financial and Professional, said: "Although finance and legal professionals are more understanding about the length of time a vacancy's been advertised than the UK as a whole, they won't wait forever. Recruiting for a professional post is like trying to sell your house. Leave it on the market too long and people start to think there is something wrong with it. That leads to fewer applications and increased pressures on the staff left trying to cover the empty position. We know finance and legal professionals already feel overstretched. If they're cramming extra work into their week, they are going to find it extremely difficult to cover for vacant job posts, too."

TIME TO FILL

As part of the research, recruitment consultants at Randstad Financial & Professional were asked what the ideal length of time was to fill a vacancy, balancing the time needed to secure the best candidate for the job and the need for organisations to fill a skills gap. The poll found, given those criteria, 37 working days (just over 7 weeks) was seen as ideal.

However, Randstad Financial and Professional data reveals the time employers are actually taking has risen over the last twelve months and is currently over a third longer than the ideal. While it took 40 days to fill a post in Q2 2011, this rose to 59 days in Q2 2012.

Tara Ricks said, "The length of time taken to fill vacancies is increasing - and at 59 days it is edging closer to the shelf life our survey has revealed. This is just an average though and our data shows some organisations are taking well over 100 working days to hire candidates. Employees such as risk specialists or tax professionals know they have options - but employers who are recruiting haven't necessarily taken that on board yet. When employers meet the right candidate they need to act immediately if they don't want to see them walking into a competitor's office, and then suffer even more delays because of a certain perception in the market."

NOTES TO EDITORS

About the Research:

The results of this research are gained from a survey on ideal time to hire of 70 Randstad Financial & Professional consultants conducted on Weds 19th September, data from 2,001 people surveyed by Canadean between 23rd and 30th July 2012 (Including 127 from the Financial & Professional Market sector) and data from over 2,400 recruitment processes handled by Randstad Financial & Professional during Q2 2011 to Q2 2012.

Time to Hire and the Average Recruitment Process figures refer to the time between a vacancy opening and the moment it is no longer recruited for / advertised - but does not include notice period before the candidate starts in the position in question.

About Randstad:

The Randstad group is one of the leading recruitment & HR services providers in the world with a top five position in the UK and a top three position in fifteen countries including the US, France and Germany.

In the UK, Randstad's business lines serve the public and private sectors across Accounting and Financial services; Business Support; Construction, Property and Engineering; Education; Health and Social Care; Interim Management and Search; Human Resources; IT; Legal; Retail; Sales, Marketing and Creative; Student and Worker Support and In-House and Managed Services.

At the end of 2011, Randstad had 1,930 corporate employees in the UK, working in 255 locations. UK revenue in 2011 was EUR789 million. Randstad was founded in 1960 and is headquartered in Diemen, the Netherlands. Randstad Holding nv is listed on the NYSE Euronext Amsterdam. For more information see www.randstad.co.uk and www.randstad.com.