Agencies are losing their appeal as they fail to develop innovative ways of sourcing talented candidates. That was one of the conclusions from round table discussions with UK retailers hosted by StepStone recently.

During the session attendees discussed the effect that the downturn has had on their organisations and found that:

• The majority have experienced organisational restructuring and have made redundancies since the start of the credit-crunch
• All continue to recruit and experience difficulties hiring talent into key roles
• Active candidates lack the skills and attitudes that retailers are seeking
• Agencies are losing their value because they are failing to innovate
• No organisation has enhanced or damaged it employer brand because of the multilateral approach to reorganisation
• Organisations are developing their own direct sourcing strategies with a focus on social recruiting

Given the epoch-breaking change in the global economy and the impact on the retail industry, it was unsurprising that the majority of attendees had some experience of re-organising their operations and managing the resulting people issues.  Each attendee described their organisations need to make redundancies in some areas - typically store staff at a senior level  - whilst at the same time recruiting for specialised positions, echoing the findings from the Economist Intelligence Unit's report The Cold War for Talent published earlier in the year.

There was round table agreement that despite the labour market being awash with candidates at present, many of those candidates do not have the skills, experience or ‘brand affinity' that retailers are looking for and that the recession hasn't affected their career prospects or earning potential of hard-to-find talent, indeed some retailers are fighting to retain key people and making counter offers with pay hikes of more than 10%.

With the competition for talent continuing unabated, retailers have turned to search and selection firms for help only to find that their agencies lack the ability to innovate beyond what in-house teams are capable of doing themselves - evidenced by sourcing candidates already known to the organisation or putting forward candidates that do not meet requirements.  This poor performance, combined with the increasingly aggressive behaviour of agency consultants, has lead attendees to question the value of their PSL (Preferred Supplier List).

As a result retailers have been revisiting their talent acquisition strategies and looking to new ways of engaging directly and more deeply with prospective hires and are keen to step-up their own use of social recruiting techniques, such as employee referral programmes, to reach out to talent.  Attendees acknowledged that, with the renewed focus on direct sourcing, their employer brand equity is important but agree that, although they may have been affected by the recession, in reality it's been a zero sum game - no organisation has damaged or enhanced its reputation more than another.

The breadth of discussion on the day was fantastic, I thoroughly enjoyed meeting with members of the StepStone Community and taking part in the conversation but looking back I wonder how many of the conclusions reached are specific to the retail industry and how many relate to any organisation.  What do you think?