While the majority, or 72%, of UK organisations plan to increase their recruitment efforts this year, 84% of hiring professionals cite lack of relevant talent as a major issue right now, according to data from job board CV-Library.

CV-Library’s survey data from 300 hiring professionals in the UK sought to understand the recruitment challenges that organisations are currently facing, their priorities for the year ahead and the new technologies that they believe are going to shape the future of the recruitment industry.

Other key challenges include targeting passive candidates (41%), a lack of time to search for CVs (24%), lack of resource (18%) and lack of time to spend screening candidates (12%). In addition, over half (54%) say that their hiring budgets will stay the same in 2019 and 50% say their recruitment teams will grow too, despite many planning to increase their hiring efforts.

Lee Biggins, founder and CEO of CV-Library commented, “We know that recruitment teams across the UK are under a lot of pressure right now and our latest research only confirms this further. Not only do companies have to try to fill their vacancies despite there being a distinct lack of candidates, the additional stress of time and budget constraints is only adding to the pressure.”

“It’s difficult to know what will happen to the recruitment landscape in 2019, especially following the rejection of the Prime Minister’s EU deal on Tuesday night. With so much uncertainty in the UK right now, organisations have no choice but to sit tight and carry on with their current hiring efforts as usual.”

CV-Library’s findings also showed that 55% of employers said their key focus for the year ahead would be building talent pools for the future, while 54% will focus on developing their employer brand.

Meanwhile, 87% of employers will continue with the same hiring methods in 2019, with 71% stating that they’ll use online job boards. The data also showed that recruiters believe that social media will play a major part in recruitment this year (83%), while 45% said Applicant Tracking Systems will play a major part.