HR specialists, members of AFSRU, anticipate an increase in recruitment volumes for the last quarter of this year

Although the end of the year is an equation with many unknown factors, the Human Resources Services providers, members of AFSRU, anticipate an acceleration of the recruitment on the last Q of this year. The members of the Association analyzed the evolution of the recruitments from the beginning of the year and the trends that are outlined for the last quarter.

What were the coordinates that marked the recruitment at the beginning of this year?

More opportunities available by expanding organizational charts and resuming internship projects

”If in the first quarter of this year the companies were quite cautious about opening new positions, starting from the second quarter the demand for staff has entered an upward trend. The areas with most open positions were production operations, logistics, but also customer support and IT services. At the same time, the acceleration of recruitment led to an increase in the requests for people in the support departments, these being mainly due to the replacements, but also to the extension of the organizational charts with newly established positions. In addition, this year some of the companies have resumed the recruitment processes for internship projects, projects that in 2020 were put on hold,” said. Gabriel Gătejoiu, HR Operations & Business Development Director, Professional Services Agency

Cristian Huzău, Country Manager GI Group, appreciates that the operational roles on the labor market were mostly team completions and replacements, and in the fields that prospered last year (FMCG, retail, logistics) the teams increased by 10-25%.

More flexibility to attract candidates and openness towards new methods of collaboration

In the same direction, Sorina Donisa, CEO of APT Resources & Services, part of Prohuman Group, added that, mainly, companies in various industries such as IT, retail, services, automotive and production have tried to recover lost ground in 2020, “respectively to implement the projects on hold because of the pandemic. These sectors of activity have faced increasing demands of workforce, which has put pressure on an already competitive labor market. This growth has led companies to relax their policies to attract candidates, now giving employees the opportunity to work 100% remotely for certain types of jobs, to address other markets that were not traditionally among their options, such as the foreign markets or markets in other cities, or to accept alternative methods of collaboration, for example collaborating on projects with freelancers.”

More jobs with flexible location

“This year we had many job opportunities with flexible location – either work from home, or with the activity in different locations other than the standard ones, specific for the department we were recruiting, as long as the organization had a branch in the area.” Bogdan Gabor, Country Manager Lugera & Makler and President of AFSRU

Remote recruitment in the top trends in recruitment

“The SARS-COV2 pandemic had a significant impact on the labor market: most recruitment processes moved to the online environment, and the number of positions available for candidates willing to work remotely” said Raluca Săftoiu, Human Resources Specialist, Best Personal Services.

Raluca Penes, HR Manager Smartree, also pointed out that “Remote recruitment has been at the top of recruitment trends this year as well. With online interviews and a special emphasis on the candidates’ experience, the recruitment process has been successful even without physical interaction, thus proving that remote recruitment is indeed a convenient solution for recruiters, and especially for candidates who no longer had to step out of their comfort zone, and this encouraged them to accept interviews more easily, as a first step in the career change process.”

Artificial Intelligence tools increasingly integrated in recruitment processes

“Digitization has played an important role in recruitment and will certainly continue to do so. More and more companies are focusing on technology to save time in the recruitment process, also using Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, such as recruitment chatbots, which manage to significantly reduce the time spent on talent acquisition and automate interaction with candidates. Specifically, with the help of recruitment chatbots, processes such as scheduling interviews or resumes screening can be automated so that the recruitment time is considerably shortened.” Raluca Peneș, HR Manager Smartree

In the foreground – employee retention

“In addition to all the challenges and changes the HR department has faced this year, we must not forget that the main objectives have remained the retention of existing employees and the recruitment of new talent” – Raluca Peneș Smartree

Cristian Huzău, Country Manager GI Group also considers that “the most important focus this year was employee retention.”

What will the last quarter of this year look like from the recruitment perspective?

The pandemic context and the paradigm shift that we all follow with interest continue to call for small steps and plan adjustments from one month to the next, leaving companies too little room to accurately plan their medium- or long-term strategy. HR specialists anticipate an increase in the recruitment requests overall and the seasonal adjustment in the well-known industries, highlighting that these are directly conditioned by the pandemic context and the intensity of the 4th wave.

Accelerating Recruitment Processes

“We can say that this year the labor market has recovered, after the stagnation last year. The supply of jobs was diversified, and on the other hand, employees also became much more active on the labor market after last year when they feared that they would lose their jobs. Slowly but surely, the lack of labor force and staff turnover are starting to be felt again on the Romanian labor market. Considering these things, we can only believe that we will conclude 2021 with an acceleration of all recruitment processes and a wide offer in the market.” – Raluca Peneș, Smartree

Seasonal increase in volumes in certain sectors

Sorina Donisa, CEO of APT Resources & Services, part of Prohuman Group, considers that “the end of the year will represent the peak of the demand for candidates so far. On the one hand, business will continue its upward trend started at the beginning of this year, and, on the other hand for certain sectors of the economy, the end of the year will coincide with a series of events such as Black Friday or Winter Holidays, which generate seasonal business volume growth in sectors such as: retail, online trade, logistics, retail, production.”

More opportunities for freelancers

“The COVID-19 pandemic has radically transformed the labor market and accelerated the development of freelance job recruitment. Thus, we expect the number of opportunities for freelancers to continue to grow.” Raluca Săftoiu Best Personal Services

Talent shortage will only get worse

“The talent crisis is affecting most industries, and in order to be competitive, the HR needs to increase its budget for employee development, salaries and to be able to support the flexibility that employees currently demand. It is a pressure that comes against the background of many unknown facts and a still unclear long-term perspective. The winners will continue to be those who manage to adapt quickly and assign sufficient resources to attract and retain valuable employees.” Oana Popescu, Managing Director of Humangest Romania and IHM Total Consult

The evolution of recruitment in the last Q is dependent on the pandemic context

“The evolution of recruitment in the last Q of this year will of course be dependent on the pandemic context. If the situation remains stable, we expect companies to continue to recruit staff. The main challenge in recruitment will remain attracting staff for the operational area, we refer to employees for production and logistics, where the demand for staff is the highest and the pool of candidates interested in these positions is increasingly limited. Also, in the field of IT, there are still many requests for personnel specialized in different technologies and programming languages.” Gabriel Gatejoiu, HR Operations & Business Development Director, Professional Services Agency

Cristian Huzău, Country Manager GI Group also underlined that “recruitments on the last Q will be directly influenced by the national and European context of the 4th wave” anticipating “the stagnation at the current level and, if the situation calls for new restrictions or lockdowns, a slowdown.”

About AFSRU

Founded by the largest players on the human resources services market in Romania, the Association of Human Resource Service Providers, AFSRU, aims to make the conditions for access to the labor market more flexible and to create new jobs.

The 16 companies that are currently part of AFSRU, respectively the main temporary work agencies and human resources services in Romania are, in alphabetical order: Adecco Romania, APT Prohuman, Best Personal Services, Gi Group, Health Media International, HRP Leasing, Human Resources Specialists, Human Solutions, Humangest, Lugera, ManpowerGroup Romania, Professional, Smartree Romania, Takt Manpower, Work Support Agency and 3 minutes job.

The turnover of HR service providers at the end of 2020 is approximately 3.7 billion lei, decreasing by approximately 7% compared to the previous year.