Linear Six Month Review - Gareth Tomkins

Linear's Managing Director Gareth Tomkins gives his update on Linear's year so far.

Welcome to the Linear Recruitment Summer round up. I hope you have all enjoyed a lockdown-free, productive and successful first six months of the year. Here at Linear we have had a lot of good news and success stories to shout about; our new Architecture recruitment division has doubled in size since we started in January 2022, we have passed our annual ISO Audit and the Rail RISQS audit yet again with no non-conformances, we have had a number of new recruits join us across all our offices and financially we have hit budget at the six month mark.

For Linear the first half of 2022 has pretty much followed the trend of the last six months of 2021. The company is performing very well but we have had to overcome some major hurdles. The jobs market has been, and continues to be, extremely buoyant and demand for new staff remains high. However a major challenge has been candidate availability and this doesn’t look like easing off anytime soon. The supply of candidates in all sectors continues to decline and I cannot praise our staff enough who have gone above and beyond in order to attract top talent for our clients, in what has been a very competitive and difficult market. It appears that all industries and sectors are facing the same challenges, and that’s not just attracting candidates, but retaining the staff they have got and also dealing with increase wage inflation. Although starting salary inflation does continue to grow, in June 2022 the rate of inflation was actually the softest seen for ten months. The intense competition for scarce staff and pay negotiations have continued to push up rates of pay but this increase does appear to be reducing.

The sectors in which Linear operates are of course no different and the construction industry in particular needs to recruit 50,000 people per year above current levels to meet expected growth. In order to attract these people companies need to have a robust recruitment strategy in place. They need to be more diverse, include apprenticeship schemes, offer training and development with a comprehensive training plan, offer more flexibility and also look at increasing salaries. Our specialist consultants can of course assist you with this and help you put a plan in place. We can also provide information on how your company's pay scale compares with the current market. As a company Linear is looking at all the above as we ourselves need to attract new talent to the business. This year we have taken our three year plans that we produced in 2021, updated them and actually planned for five years ahead. This has given us and our staff a clear vision of where we want to be and enables us to put a plan in place for what we need to do to get there. This of course includes a recruitment strategy and I would recommend all businesses do the same if they have ambitions to grow, especially as we may have many more challenges to confront over the coming years due to the economic and political uncertainty that we currently face.

If you require any information or advice then do not hesitate to contact one of our offices.

Gareth