Is it time for good old fashioned innovation in recruitment?

It’s not been a good couple of  weeks if you’re unemployed…

This week has been a BAD week for the unemployed of the United Kingdom and the news seems to be about to get worse. Louise Peacock in this week’s Daily Telegraph that confirmed that young people were about to bare the brunt of changes

The total number of unemployed people in the UK has risen a further 27,000 to a record high of 2.53 million, which means that 20% of all unemployment is within the ‘youth’ sector. This issue has been made significantly worse by the fact that public sector employment levels are falling with an extra 45,000 falling off the figures of those employed within the public sector.

There is clearly a void between the vacancies available, those searching for employment and the expectations of all concerned.

Today, I am going to pose a question, should those of us in the recruitment industry take on a wider level of responsibility? We have the skills required to help, lead, guide, and motivate the young people who are clearly rattling around the job market with very little guidance?

We as recruiters are paid on results, we are paid to deliver the right CV for the right job, but do we have a wider social responsibility? Should we be helping the people who don’t match? Should we try and help those who send their CVs with obvious mistakes? Should we try and find the time to offer our inside knowledge?

And should we do this for nothing? No financial reward? Just helping our fellow man in a time when all around is being more difficult? Recruitment exists because we service the requirements of staffing for our clients, but what about the people that don’t find work, the people that are caught up in a cycle that doesn’t support their ambitions and desire to work for a living?

I’d love your thoughts on this both as a principle, its feasibility and its suitability for the current market and your view on whether this is true innoivation and the future of the recruitment industry as we know it?