Calling all HR professionals! Looking for fresh insights to lead your recruitment strategy in 2025? Then this webinar is for you, hosted by Legal Island in partnership with MCS Group.

Julie Holmes from Legal Island is joined by recruitment experts Ryan Calvert and Rebekah Mulligan from MCS Group sharing key insights on the top trends. tools and takeaways to help you stand out in the competitive world of talent acquisition:

• Learn from 2024’s lessons: See how last year’s key developments are shaping the hiring strategies of tomorrow.
   
• Simplify and save: Discover smart ways to cut costs, streamline processes, and harness automation.
   
• Win the war for talent: Get expert tips to engage candidates and secure standout hires in a competitive market.
   
• Plan for what’s next: Stay ahead with insights into emerging job roles, salary shifts, and sector-specific demands.

This isn’t just another webinar—it’s your toolkit for 2025 success!

Transcript:

Julie: Welcome to our Lunch and Learn webinar, "Kickstart 2025 with Confidence: HR Trends and Recruitment Strategies". 
I'm Julie Holmes from the Knowledge Team at Legal-Island, and I'm delighted to host today's session.

We're joined by two recruitment experts from MCS Group, Ryan Calvert, Head of HR, Sales, Marketing, and Legal Recruitment, and Rebekah Mulligan, Senior Recruitment Consultant for HR in Ireland and Northern Ireland. Both are passionate about connecting talent with leading organisations, and they're here today to help you look ahead and explore what's changed since last year.

Here's what's on our menu today. We're going to look at how last year's big developments are reshaping the future of hiring, practical ways to streamline your processes, cut costs, and also leverage automation, provide insights on engaging candidates in today's competitive market, including a look at HR roles just in case you're considering your own options. They'll also be providing predictions on emerging roles, salary trends, and sector-specific demands for the year ahead.

Legal-Island's webinars are sponsored by MCS Group, a company dedicated to matching top tier candidates with exceptional careers, and helping businesses build high-performing teams. If you want to know more about how MCS can support your hiring goals, you can visit www.mcsgroup.jobs.

To start off, we'll begin with a couple of poll questions, so fingers at the ready everybody. And Gosia, if you could bring up the first poll for us, please.

First of all, we're just going to find out about your recruitment plans for the first quarter of this year. So does your organisation have recruitment plans for this part of the year? Great. We can see that some of you are voting. Thanks very much, everybody.

Ryan and Rebekah, you'll be encouraged to see that of the people attending so far, we've got a nice resounding 88%, 89% who are looking to recruit already.

So, Gosia, if you can bring up the next poll for us, please.

Ryan: Very good.

Julie: That is good, isn't it? Lots of advice for you today.

Second one is "Have your recruitment plans been impacted by the rise in cost for employers?" So for those of you that are joining us from Ireland, we're looking at things like the minimum wage that went up in January, we're looking at increased costs like statutory sick pay, again, which is also going up and affecting some employers as well.

For those of you in Northern Ireland, again, April will be the big date, and I think a lot of businesses are nervous about National Insurance contributions as well.

So, at the moment, "yes" is edging ahead and we can see that it's 62% that say yes, their recruitment plans have actually been impacted by costs. That's interesting. Thanks very much, everybody, for voting.

And then, Gosia, just getting ready there with the third poll, if you could bring it up just whenever you have a moment. Next one is about artificial intelligence. Does your organisation use AI in your various HR and recruitment processes? So again, we can see at the moment it is "no" that seems to be coming out at the top. About 70%, give or take a few people, say no, you're not using that at the moment.

So again, Rebekah and Ryan may want to comment on that and to tell you a little bit about what other organisations are doing just so that you can keep ahead of the trend.

And last question is, "Is your candidate's experience a priority when hiring for the right talent?" And that one is coming across very strongly so far with "yes". We do have some people saying, "No, not as much". Perhaps it's more about the actual person, making sure they get the right fit for the organisation, or maybe there's just a lot of pressure to get somebody in the door to help out with all the workload that you have happening. So, at the moment, yes, it is a priority for most of you, about 90%.

Ryan and Rebekah, I am going to hand over to you shortly so that you can talk to us a little bit more about that.

For everybody else, just remember that there is a question box up on your top right-hand side of your screen. We will have time for Q&A at the end if you'd like to drop any questions in there.

And for everybody as well, if you miss the beginning, don't worry about that because you'll be receiving a recording of this in the next few days, probably next week.

All right. So, Ryan and Rebekah, I will hand over to yourselves and then I will join you all afterwards. Have a great session, everybody, and I'll see you in a moment.

Ryan: Thank you, Julie. Thanks so much. So I suppose in terms of today's session, it's obviously going to cover off some of the HR trends that we have seen in the recruitment market over the past year as well as some of the actual strategies, if we're looking into 2025, that we foresee and we would have that bird's-eye overview of as a recruitment business. We would be speaking with so many clients on a day-to-day basis and we get a really, really good insight into exactly what they're looking for and what things potentially lie ahead.

So I suppose first and foremost to introduce ourselves, I'll introduce myself first. My name is Ryan Calvert. I head up a few divisions for MCS Group, which keeps me busy. So they're HR, sales, marketing, and legal recruitment. I'll let Rebekah introduce herself.

Rebekah: Hi, everyone. I'm Rebekah. I'm a senior recruitment consultant, and I specialise in HR across  and .

Ryan: Brilliant. Thank you. So, in terms of today, obviously we're going to focus in on some of the trends that we have seen in the past year, as well as a bit of an insights piece into some of the key things that have actually happened, as well as looking ahead into 2025 and some of the things that we foresee happening this year.

So, there are four key areas that we're going to cover off today. There are going to be other things that will be included, but these are the sort of four key topics that Rebekah and I will cover off throughout the presentation.

The first one is a 2024 recap and looking at some of those trends. We're also going to look into the recruitment process. So I was really pleased to see one of those poll questions, which was all around candidate experience, score incredibly high towards yes.

For me, it is one of the most important things for employers to help retain and attract talent, as well as keep people engaged internally. And a big part of that is actually managing a really, really slick and really streamlined recruitment process.

Again, things like employee value proposition are so important. You cannot continue to throw money at your employees or throw money at potential new employees to keep them engaged and to get them on board.

And obviously ESG as well. Another huge thing that maybe employers are not prioritising as much as they should. It's maybe a tick box exercise that they bolt into the overall strategy, but it's not a strategy in its own right. It really should be, and it's something that I feel a lot of employers should be taking on board and actually running with now in 2025.

Want to flick onto the next slide.

Trends and highlights. This is a reasonably minimal slide, but again, it gives a flavour for some of the key things that we've seen over the past year.

So we've seen in 2021 and 2022 year-on-year increases in the amount of specifically HR roles that were coming to the market. 2021, there was a 151% year-on-year increase, and in 2022, there was a 35% year-on-year increase. And things really flattened in 2023. That remained very similar in 2024. So we didn't see a massive spike, but we didn't see the market going backwards in any way.

But that's not a negative sign, and it's actually quite comparable to pre-COVID years. It actually was up in pre-COVID years, if I'm being honest with you.

So, the market is still incredibly buoyant, but it has settled and it has flattened in comparison to those incredibly buoyant COVID years where employers were hiring for fun. It was that war-on-talent mindset where people were leaving, they weren't engaged, and their employer didn't feel part of the overall culture because of working remote, and they decided they wanted to move and probably get a bit more money.

In terms of the actual roles that we had seen coming through, there had been an increase in generalists posted. There was a 9% year-on-year increase in generalist posts year-on-year 2023 versus 2024, and a 15% increase in L&D and OD roles, which for me was a really, really interesting trend.

It showed that employers weren't prioritising bringing in dedicated recruiters just as much. They were looking to bring in HR generalists to pick up some of that recruitment burden. And they were looking at L&D specialists that potentially help with developing their own talent pools internally rather than relying on trying to acquire talent from the market. So that was a big trend, one that I hope continues.

And then OD, I think so many organisations decide that they need to make significant changes. That could be to their organisational culture, that could be the design of their organisation, that could be looking at maybe a new leadership team or looking at leadership development training, and they need OD professionals to come in, a lot of the time, as consultants.

A lot of these OD posts are actually contained within large consultancies based across Northern Ireland. But these OD professionals will come in and help map out and help really influence change within those organisations to hopefully get them back on track, because they just feel that part of what they're doing is broken.

And I did mention that recruitment had been put slightly on the back burner in terms of dedicated recruitment roles. However, there was a spike in Q4 where we'd seen a lot more recruitment roles coming through across various different industries, including manufacturing, construction, and in tech in Q4.

And I'd seen in the poll that a lot of employers or a lot of individuals who are on this call today are planning to hire in 2025, which is great to see. So hopefully we're going to see more of these dedicated TA professional roles coming through, which, again, is just a really, really good sign for the market.

Some other specialist roles that I think are worthwhile being aware of would be HRIS roles, roles that are specifically focussed on really overall business improvements internally and looking at the business data and using that business data to help the business commercially make key decisions around their HR team and their overall commercial direction.

And that feeds into the organisation's use of AI, which is going be so important over the next few years. So I think from an AI perspective, if you are sitting and feeling like, "I'll put this on the back burner. I'll wait until it's a bit more prevalent and more and more people are using it and it's more of the norm", I would absolutely advise you to really get as many insights as possible and get on board with this.

And especially from an HRIS perspective, use as much HR and recruitment data as humanly possible, which will ultimately help your business make the right decisions.

If we look at salaries, again, massive increase during COVID. We had seen HR salaries specifically increase by 20%. So an example is pre-COVID, an HR business partner might expect to get a salary in the range of €40,000 to €45,000. That's now sitting at €50,000 to €55,000. So it's gone up significantly, which is great to see, and it shows the importance placed on HR professionals within the market.

But again, we have seen that remain reasonably steady. Maybe a few inflationary increases within organisations, but there hasn't been a significant pushing forward of salaries within the HR community.

And another thing that, again, we'll talk about in more detail, but the EVP and ESG are still vital. Organisations just can't rely on increasing the salaries, because they're all quite consistent across the market now. They have to have other unique selling points to help attract and retain talent. And the EVP that they offer, as well as having a strong ESG strategy, is just so important.

One thing that's also worthwhile to mention, and it's something that MCS group actually create and run ourselves, is an employment monitor that we would run on a quarterly basis that actually provides market insights into a number of specialist areas that we would recruit in.

That's something that's literally just gone live yesterday on our LinkedIn page, so I thought I would mention it on this video just if you're interested in that and you want to gain some insights into the market here on top of this session.

This is a really, really good insights piece that talks around salary increases or what's happening with salaries. It talks around some of the roles that are coming through in the particular market that you may be looking to recruit in.

That can help shape your recruitment plans in 2025, so don't hesitate to jump on and have a look at that. It's on our LinkedIn page.

So, I'm going to pass across to Rebekah now.

Rebekah: Thanks very much, Ryan. So I'm going to chat to you guys a wee bit about looking forward into 2025 and expectations there of what we'll see in the market about how to really attract and retain that top talent.

So, for us, feedback we've been getting from clients really is around that employee experience. And I know we touched on that in a poll earlier on as well, but it's really important during that recruitment process.

Starting off initially, recommend doing a Teams interview to begin with just to get that engagement to see if a fit is really there, and setting out a really clearly defined process following that as in how many stages, who they'll be with, and when to expect them. So those really clear time frames are incredibly important to keep your candidates engaged in the process.

Probably a big one for us, and something we really noticed last year as well, is the speed of process is really important not just for candidates, but for organisations as well. So having that really consistent time frame set out from the beginning, something that's well communicated, both internal and external.

If you do use the likes of your internal TAs, make sure they're aware of a hiring manager's availability is really important. This is important when it's attracting your candidates and keeping them engaged in that process.

And again, we have seen over the last year candidates that have actually been lost due to slower processes, or candidates being given incorrect information on how quick turnaround times will be. So transparency from the get-go is really important. That's what people are asking for.

Talent drivers as well in the market. Recent polls we've done and studies we've done have shown that people are not driven as much by salary anymore. People want to be upskilled in the organisation. They want to know about what the organisation is doing to give back to add value in their local communities inside and outside of the organisation. And we'll touch on that in a bit more detail later on as well.

HR decisions, we found, are going to be grounded in data. They're going to be reshaping the way that we do work. So that'll be from protecting turnover to workforce planning. Data-driven insights will empower HR leaders to make smarter and more strategic decisions.

Upskilling and reskilling as well are something that's going to be really, what we would call, mission critical. Companies who invest in preparing the workforce for change will thrive. They'll retain talent and they'll also future-proof the organisation as well when it comes to that talent attraction strategy.

One thing we do recommend, too, if the organisation has the capabilities is focussing on emerging talent. So that's having a strong talent plan in place for people joining. That's like your graduate and your higher-level apprenticeship schemes. If you can, offering things as career changes not just in an upper trajectory, but maybe sidewards if maybe somebody is not wanting to go up that line management route. What else can the opportunities do they have in the organisation?

I know that Ryan has briefly chatted about this earlier on, the EV and the SG side of things. We cannot reinforce how important that is in the market at the minute.

So in the likes of the EVP, in a recent poll, work-life balance and employer culture came out on top as the biggest driver. You can invest in people with the best pay rates and benefits, but without a strong culture, you won't keep to people long term. And then, again, you're going to face that talent dilemma sooner rather than later.

It's important also to make sure you continually measure the effect of EVP and what aspects employees rate the highest, as well as understanding what they actually want. This will be different for all industries and markets and employees, but again, it's incredibly important to make sure you stay ahead of that curve.

In relation to the ESG, we do really feel that it is an underutilised talent attraction method. A strong ESG strategy can help you attract investors. It can also improve your market reputation and help with employee retention and attraction.

MCS recently conducted a survey across NI, ROI, and the US to understand the impact of ESG. Our survey showed that around 77% of people are now comfortable and have asked prospective employers about their ESG. And around 54% of organisations admitted their approach to ESG has had an impact in their ability to retain and attract top talent. So that's something we will go into in a bit more detail later on, but it's definitely something to make a note of today.

Touching briefly on sort of broader macro trends, the skill shortage is something that a lot of organisations still report on that they are struggling with. Around half of employers currently have hard-to-fill roles with another third anticipating problems filling roles over the first six months of 2025. These include specialist areas within the likes of construction, manufacturing, engineering, and tech, as well as various STEM subjects.

I know we're all probably sick of talking about it, but Brexit is something that we always still have to keep an eye on. Very much focussing on that talent mobility as it continues to present a problem to employers in NI with many EU workers now put off by Brexit and due to the new visa requirements. Therefore, employers must be finding new solutions to recruit the best talent.

And then finally, again, Ryan touched on this earlier on, the cost of living and legislative changes. So there are some economic pressures that employers are going to face this year across the island of Ireland from the national living wage increasing as well as the auto-enrolment for pension due to happen in Republic of Ireland later on this year.

So for employers who rely on a large workforce that are close to minimum wage, there is a major challenge around what that cost will be, that cost increase. So not just on the lower-level paid employees, but again, the knock-on effect on the higher-level employees when they see the increase. There will be a knock-on effect at all levels. So that's something to have a think about, future-proofing the organisation and seeing what that actual commercial impact will be on you.

There are ways of closing the gap between the salaries internally, so that's something to make sure that you are future-proofing your organisation and looking into that at this early stage before any of those legislation changes.

Yeah, that's me. I'm going to hand back to Ryan here to chat about our next topic.

Ryan: Perfect. Yeah, I think we're actually on the slide at the minute anyway, so I think we can maybe skip that slide a bit quickly. But this slide, it's all around . . . So if we want to just go back to that "Streamline the Recruitment Process" slide. Yeah, that's the one.

So obviously, one of the poll questions focussed in on that customer service aspect and delivering an exceptional service to both your internal and potential external candidates. That, for me, remains one of the most important things and basic things that employers can do.

And it's all about being very, very organised and consistent with how you approach recruitment processes in general. It's important and people internally will see how external candidates are brought into the business, and that's important to them as well.

So in terms of the overall process, we want to ultimately reduce . . .The term "ghosting" is used quite a lot and it's used across a lot of different organisations. But you don't want to have candidates not engaged in a process, maybe be involved in one or two other processes and decide that they just want to drop out of the process that you have. That's something that will happen. And I think one of the key ways to try and help reduce that is to actually have an informal call upfront.

I always encourage employers to invite candidates to an informal call to really discuss the role in a bit more detail, to highlight the key unique selling points, ensure that there is a strong cultural fit there, and importantly, map out the process and what it looks like.

If you do that properly and you do that effectively, even if that candidate is in two or three other processes, they'll probably hold off to hear the outcome on this particular process because they've had that initial informal call.

So again, for me, it's a really, really important part of the process when you're looking to attract the absolute best talent in the market. You want to be able to relay your unique selling points, relay your EVP, your ESG strategy, which again we'll talk about in a bit more detail.

Again, some of the things that you want to talk around in that initial call would be explaining the process, talk through the time frames, sell the company.

On one of the slides here, it sort of alludes to that internal stakeholder buy-in. So one of the key issues that I would see is a recruitment process getting up and running, you shortlist candidates, you are keen on bringing five people forward, but you have to coordinate availability internally of a number of different stakeholders. Sometimes the process can push on two or three weeks when it really doesn't need to.

And that's because those internal stakeholders haven't been informed of that particular process and they're not aware that they will be involved. They will be on the interview panel, and they haven't blocked their diary out for that. So that can delay the process considerably.

It's important that they know that a process is ongoing and they can be as flexible throughout that process as possible. You're ultimately hiring for their specific team and they need to be flexible to ensure that they can see candidates on quite short notice to make sure that you get the absolute best person.

We've referenced here in the slides SLAs. It's really important to have consistent SLAs, service level agreements, that you abide by as an employer and that your recruitment team and your hiring managers can stick to.

For ourselves, as a recruitment agency, we specifically have internal SLAs where when we meet with an employer, we'll have an SLA of maybe 72 hours to do a full search and service on that role. And then we'll put a touch point in our client's diary to go back and provide an update and an overview of maybe some of the profiles. That keeps the process quite smooth. It means our client can switch off to it and they can relax knowing that it's being taken care of.

If you have your own SLAs internally, and if you're doing your own direct recruitment, that will ensure that it's always consistent and it's always delivering a really, really great customer service experience for potential job seekers.

And then the final thing is that customer service piece. So communication at all points in the process is just so important to the candidate, and that's right through to offer or rejection.

It's really vital that you go back and you provide feedback to candidates that not only haven't been shortlisted, but candidates that have interviewed and maybe haven't been successful to really indicate where they've fallen down. The good and great employers are differentiated by the specific feedback that they will deliver.

An employer who obviously doesn't provide any feedback at all and doesn't even get back and communicate that somebody is unsuccessful, that's obviously the worst you can look for.

But I think employers that go above and beyond may not just provide the insight that you unfortunately didn't get the role, but they go into the specifics of where the person fell down.

That is so sought after from the market. That is so unique. Not all employers do that, and that creates a great customer service experience for that candidate who could then via word of mouth tell people in future that they were maybe in a process with your employer and talk incredibly positive about you as an employer. And that's somebody who wasn't successful in the process.

So that's why it's so important that, as an employer, you're doing that and you're consistent and you're giving really detailed feedback to candidates. It'll just improve your own brand. It'll improve your outlook as an employer and the opinion that people have of you as an employer.

I had recently managed . . . it was a bit of exec recruitment for quite a senior HR post. And I gave specific feedback to some of the candidates on the reasons that they maybe weren't progressed through interview to maybe second stage. Yes, they maybe didn't get the role, they weren't progressed, but they were so delighted by the fact that I was giving them very, very specific and individualised feedback on where they fell down.

It's something that they can take forward in their other processes. So, for me, that meant they were walking away and they had a really good opinion of obviously me, but importantly the company that I was representing. And they've now gone away with that good impression. So again, for me, really important that the recruitment process is streamlined and it's very, very consistent.

That's me. Over to Rebekah.

Rebekah: Thanks, Ryan. So next up we wanted to chat in a bit more detail with you about the EVP and ESG. They are real buzzwords, but they're really important that organisations do take time to reflect actually on what they are offering in the market.

I'm going to touch on the EV side of things. A strong EVP really can include so many things, such as a great culture, your benefits, your work-life balance, and a structured career framework. We actually recently did a poll in the market and 200 senior HR professionals overwhelmingly stated that salary was coming in the bottom of their driver to join an organisation. I'll go into that in a bit more detail about what elements scored the highest.

I think this reaffirmed Ryan's point earlier on about setting up an initial informal call at the beginning of any recruitment process with the prospective candidates to go through the role, to chat about your EVP, to chat about the organisation, the culture, and the values to make sure it does align with both yourself and the candidate. It's incredibly important to get that buy-in from the get-go even before this.

Really, to do this effectively, employers really need to promote their EVP as well when they're advertising. At the minute, you do need to stand out in the market. You don't want to blend in. You don't want to be like every other employer. People are looking to be employed by organisations who do make a difference and who do stand out in the market in their respective industries or fields.

From our recent poll, we found that the EVP that HR professionals most wanted were good work-life balance and also an inspiring culture. It came out on top with, as I referenced earlier on, salary coming in at fifth. So I think it's really important to have a look at. Those are the sort of key areas that everybody was interested in.

Percentage-wise, actually, it was 62.5% of HR professionals did come back saying good work-life balance was their biggest driver still in the marketplace. So I know there's a lot of talk in the market as well about hybrid being reduced in that work-life balance. So if you do have capabilities in your organisation, it is going to be a real driver to continue to attract and retain that top talent.

And I do think it's quite interesting that salary is coming out as the fifth biggest driver as to why a candidate would be attracted to your organisation as a whole. Obviously, we do want a strong compensation and benefits, especially the healthcare and things that people are really interested in at the minute, but again, it's that added value.

It's that the effective management, the good work-life balance, flexible work arrangements that candidates are really interested in now as part of your EVP and when looking at an employer they would like to work for.

I think Ryan is going to chat about ESG now.

Ryan: Absolutely. Thank you. So obviously moving on to the final area that we're looking to cover, it's such an important area and an area that a lot of employers potentially don't prioritise as much as they should. It's part of an overall strategy, but it's not something that is a strategy in its own right.

And I suppose just for anybody that's maybe not as focussed on it, ESG ultimately involves the environmental impact, a company's operations on the environment, its corporate social responsibility initiatives, as well as its good governance practices when ultimately making decisions as an employer.

A lot of people feel that putting in a good ESG strategy . . . It is for some more of a tick box exercise, something they need to do to be sustainable by, say, 2050. And that's something that they're looking to do.

But in terms of the actual benefits of having a strong ESG strategy, it's significant for so many different employers. I mean, for me, in terms of attracting and retaining top talent, it improves your brand reputation.

We see so many candidates come through in recruitment processes that are finding it difficult to differentiate between certain employers, and they want to understand how the employer actually impacts the environment, what they do to give back. Is it a percentage of their profits they give back? Are they planting trees for a certain initiative? What's their charity? How are they actually influencing that charity and ensuring that they're giving back to that charity? How are they governed as an employer?

So these are specific things that do improve the brand's reputation, and it's something that candidates are asking for in recruitment processes. And I know that first-hand because we get those questions quite a lot.

As an employer, if you're looking to invest and you want a bit of investment from an external venture capitalist, and it's something that's really important to you to help you actually grow as an employer, meet your different sales targets, and meet your customer's needs, this is something that anybody who's looking to invest in an employer is looking for. It is an employer with a strong ESG strategy.

So again, a massive piece there around employer growth. If you've got a good ESG strategy, this is something that you really need to invest time and energy in to make sure that you have a strong strategy.

Also mention around improving your brand to attract and retain talent, but also to attract and retain customers. So as an employer, if you're looking to attract and retain more business, this is going to resonate with more clients that you're maybe going to partner with as an employer. It also helps with the retention of employees internally and it also helps with productivity.

People are looking for much more, as Rebekah had sort of alluded to in the EVP slide, much more than just base salary. They want so much more from their employer, and things like how your employer impacts the environment and the societies that it operates in are really important to so many people.

So if you don't have a strong strategy around that, that will disengage those potential high-performing employees who will look elsewhere. They may go to a competitor who have a really strong ESG strategy that's fit for purpose. So again, it's, something that's absolutely worthwhile highlighting.

Another thing, just as part of some tender bids, we see that there is a section of that that's allocated specifically to ESG initiatives. So in terms of employers actually winning new business that's potentially going through a tender process, it's so important that they do have that strong ESG strategy in place because they won't win the bids. They just won't win that piece of business if they don't have something that's in place that's fit for purpose.

Rebekah had sort of alluded to . . . it was a report that we did ourselves and it was a survey across the three jurisdictions that we operate across, which are UK, Ireland, and the US. And it was an insights piece into the impact of how ESG impacts the overall organisation's ability to attract and retain talent.

There were a number of key figures and percentages that had come out of that particular report. But the key ones that are worth mentioning is 54% of organisations surveyed actually admitted that their approach to ESG had directly impacted their ability to attract and retain talent.

And also, 77% of people now feel comfortable asking prospective employers about their corporate values, their ethics, and their approach to ESG, and that this would play a huge role in somebody accepting an offer, which just shows how important that strategy is when you're looking to build a business.

In my opinion, the most important part of the business, which is the people that work there, when you're looking to attract and retain that top talent, you need to have this strong strategy in place or you won't be able to sustain that.

And I think as well off the back of, obviously, the EVP and ESG strategies, it's important that employers communicate this effectively. There's no point having this strategy that's pulled out once a year to map out what the strategy is and in a year's time to recap what you've done against it.

You need to create champions. You need to have regular town halls, regular updates to update your entire workforce on what the employer is doing and how they are competitive from an employee value proposition perspective, what they're doing for the environments they operate in, what they're giving back to the societies that they operate in, and ultimately how they're governed as an employer.

So again, a massive thing for so many employers is, yes, do all these things, put these things in place, but you have to communicate it, and you have to ensure that it's communicated both internally and externally so people are aware that you're doing these key things.

You'll be glad to know that that is the end of our presentation. Thank you.

Julie: Big thanks to you, Ryan, and to Rebekah, as well. That was really insightful and packed with a lot of takeaways. So thank you very much. We do have quite a few questions for you.

So, Ryan, first of all, you mentioned quite a few figures at the beginning going through some of the key stats for us. Are those specific to Northern Ireland or Ireland as well?

Ryan: So as a business, we operate across a couple of jurisdictions, but specifically, they were in the HR recruitment team and they were all Ireland. So they were both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. They were obviously looking into some of the percentage increases on some of the maybe more specialist areas that we would recruit in, like L&D and OD.

Julie: Great. The next one is you talked a little bit about scheduling and the recruitment process, and that if you are recruiting for a senior role, people are blocking out time in their diary. They need to be aware that things need to happen quite quickly.

So we've had a question from someone who works in a small organisation, says it's smaller than 10 people, but they want to recruit for a senior role, and just asking to really compete with others, what should they be looking at as an acceptable timescale?

Ryan: Well, I think you have to do about, I would imagine, two weeks of mapping exactly what that role is. So sitting down and doing an insights piece on why this role needs to be created and what it looks like so that when you go to market, you're promoting all the unique selling points of that role, and how that role fits within the business, and how that role, if it's a senior role, is going to influence the overall direction.

This is maybe a sweeping statement, but I'm assuming it's maybe a private sector employer if it's that small. So potentially commercially how this role is going to impact that business longer term.

And then what we specifically do with our clients is we'll go through that phase of planning and understanding where the role fits, and then you go through potentially a two-week period of advertising the role on various different platforms, as well as doing that outreach to candidates that you feel might be a good fit with a closing date in place.

We would always recommend that clients are maybe asking candidates to complete a CV and a cover letter rather than an application form. We don't really recommend application forms. It just serves as a barrier to a lot of good people applying, whereas a cover letter is short and sweet, two pages max.

Be as specific as you can on the font size, just to make sure that it's fair and it's equal. Maybe Arial, font size 10. Get that back, two pages max, in a cover letter.

And then maybe two interviews, with the final stage being a presentation. It could be on the 90-day plan once you've started. Or you've just been appointed as the successful director in this business. What are you going to do in the first year? What does success look like? Plot out exactly what you would do.

They're some of the things that I would probably suggest, but if that individual wants to reach out to me specifically to get a few more insights into how those processes are typically handled and ultimately successful, they can feel free to do that.

Julie: That's great. Thanks very much, Ryan. You heard that, for the person that asked that question specifically.

Another question then. When you were talking about EVP, it was specifically around the experience of people that aren't successful at getting jobs, and you talked about feedback. I know that HR, we've always kind of talked about going back to people even letting them know that they were unsuccessful, but maybe not being quite as specific as that feedback.

So somebody's just asked, "Would you find that people that do that or organisations that do that are doing that in written form, or are they actually calling those candidates and saying to them, or offering them maybe in the letter if you would like more specific feedback?" I'm just aware of the time factor.

Ryan: I mean, it's a good question. Typically, I prefer to be as personal as possible and I prefer to do things myself.

Now, the way I'll do that is I'll manage the individual's expectations. Again, I don't have all the time in the world. So what I would recommend to that employer is that if they have people . . . Maybe in writing is fine for people that are unsuccessful at pre-screening, so they don't make it through to interview. That's fine. Again, a personal phone call would be nice, but if you've got a high volume, logistically it would be very, very difficult.

But if somebody has taken the time to prepare for interview, to research your organisation, to travel down to the premises, to sit in an hour-long interview, and to travel home, think of the amount of time they've invested. So you could just invest, I would imagine, 15 minutes of your time to say, "I'll give you a personal phone call".

And it doesn't have to go into too much detail. Just to give some pointers on . . . Maybe, "You've fallen down in question number three. We asked the question on an employee engagement strategy, but you gave us a change management example that was all around keeping the employee workforce engaged while you were managing change management". So you didn't answer the question.

Then the person can go away and think, "Well, actually that's very specific feedback, and maybe I need to listen really, really clearly to the question going forward". So they go away with a good impression and they've actually had something tangible.

I think some employers panic and they just think, "I just want to go down the Dear John route to say, 'You just didn't get it'," because they're worried about somebody maybe going down a legal route. That's, I think, what a lot of employers fear. A lot of employers fear that, which in a lot of cases, it's valid unfortunately.

But I think if you deliver a really good customer service experience and you give very specific feedback, you would get the minority that might be frustrated by that, but the majority would be really, really grateful.

Julie: All right. Thanks again. Another great tip to stand out a little bit in the market.

And talking about standing out in the marketplace, Rebekah, you were talking a little bit about HR professionals and what they were looking for. And somebody has asked whether, in that survey of HR professionals, there was a difference between senior HR roles. Were they the people that wanted work-life balance? Or did you find a difference with things like . . . I think that you said that pay came in at number five, but somebody is just asking, "Is that across the board or was there a difference?"

Rebekah: I would say it is generally across the board. Of course, you're going to get some people, especially industry-specific, who the idea of hybrid and flexible working isn't maybe going to drive them as much. But generally across the board, yes, that's what people are looking for. People want that work-life balance. People want that add value. We do spend most of our life in work. We don't want to spend any additional time on top of it that we have to, of course.

Everybody who works in HR in every industry and every organisation, we all understand that some weeks will fluctuate with what you'll have to work, the needs of your actual business or the specific project that week. But the biggest driver across predominantly all levels is going to be that work-life balance. It's that add value. It's that flexibility that people are really driven by at the minute.

Julie: Well, thank you. And I'm sorry, everybody, we're running out of time. So thank you for your other questions. Maybe we'll see if Ryan and Rebekah can perhaps answer some of those when we send the recording, that we can send some of those additional answers out as well to the questions that you've sent in.

I just want to thank Rebekah and Ryan for all that expertise and insight, and we'll all be sure to take a look at that employee insight monitoring report that you launched yesterday. You said it was published yesterday on LinkedIn, and we'll know to keep an eye out for that for more insights as well. So thanks very much for that.

I just want to thank my colleague, Gosia, for keeping everything running smoothly in the background as well.

Gosia, if you could just bring up the last slides for us, please. I'm just going to talk to you a little bit about our spring events as well.

So again, we love working with MCS, but we also have some of our other events that are coming up, which may be of interest. In Ireland, we have our bestselling Conducting Workplace Investigations and Alternative Conflict Resolution Methods. It's a two-day, but it's a half-day course. It's online and, again, it's full of practical tips on how to handle investigations and talking about some of those common scenarios.

And then in Northern Ireland, we have Legal Answers to HR Dilemmas, and that's in partnership with Eversheds Sutherland. It's taking place on 20 March.

So we're in progress of upgrading our website. It's really exciting and you'll already be able to tell that it looks much more modern, much more clean, easier to search. But we'll ask you in the meantime to directly email vanessa@legal-island.com if you do want to book any of those events.

Again, we'll say goodbye to Ryan and Rebekah at the moment. But if you need to learn more about MCS Group or you want to find out more about how they can support you with your recruitment needs, again, remember to visit www.mcsgroup.jobs.

We look forward to seeing everybody at our next webinar. Until then, take care and have a great afternoon. Thanks very much, and thanks very much, Ryan and Rebekah.

Rebekah: Thank you.

Ryan: Thanks, Gosia. Thanks, Julie.

Rebekah: Bye.

Ryan: Bye, everybody.

Julie: See you.

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