The importance of storytelling in the recruitment process

The job description is well written. ✍🏽 The remuneration is attractive 🤑 But it’s not working…
When the job market becomes competitive, it becomes increasingly difficult to attract the best talent.

✨ This is particularly true in 2025, both in France and in the UK, where companies are having to redouble their efforts to attract demanding candidates in search of meaning, to the point of forcing them to review their recruitment strategies.

The employment market in France: growing challenges

France’s unemployment rate is on the rise, reaching 7.4% in the third quarter of 2024 and could climb to 7.6% by the end of the second quarter of 2025, according to forecasts by INSEE and the Banque de France. This increase is accompanied by an estimated 143,000 job losses for the year. Despite these worrying figures, several sectors such as Tech/IT and Legal + Tax continue to recruit actively, with an increase in permanent recruitment (+7% in the first half of 2025).

Tensions in the employment market are also exacerbated by recruitment difficulties: 57.4% of recruitments were deemed ‘difficult’ at the end of 2024, although this figure is slightly down on 2023. These challenges are forcing companies to review their employability to attract and retain talent.

The UK labour market: contrasting dynamics

n the UK, the unemployment rate stands at 4.4% at the start of 2025, with around 1.56 million people out of work. Although total employment reached a record high of 33.92 million between November 2024 and January 2025, the number of job vacancies fell to 819,000 over the same period, a drop of almost 11% on the previous year.

However, some sectors are showing positive signs. For example, scientific and technical activities recorded a significant increase in jobs (+120,000 over one year). However, the fall in vacancies in key sectors such as retail (-24,000) is an example of the continuing challenges for employers.

Candidates’ expectations: a growing need for meaning

Against this tense backdrop, a common trend is emerging in both countries: candidates are looking for meaning in their work.

They are looking for meaning, more meaning, even more meaning. We all experience this in our professions: we too want meaning, more meaning, even more meaning…
Nowadays, most of us aspire to work in a company with inspiring values, and projecting ourselves into a professional environment aligned with our personal aspirations is becoming increasingly important. This is where storytelling becomes essential 🤩 because this quest for meaning goes far beyond mere pay or the prestige of the job.

Storytelling becomes an essential tool for successful recruitment

For us ‘headhunters’, in France as in the UK, the mission goes far beyond the search for technical skills. We have long experienced that success depends on a promising meeting between the parties – company and candidate – and on the reality of their mutual interests.

To achieve this, our role as recruiters is to be facilitators: to speed up the process of decoding the history, challenges, culture, values and vision of companies in depth and with finesse, so as to create genuine connections between them and their future employees…. These are all key elements to understand in order to trigger the click and find the five-legged sheep and the company of our dreams 🥳

If we are curious by nature, we have become even more so through professionalism. To achieve the win-win deal between candidate and company.

In our work, we’re far from taking a mechanical approach, or simply matching CVs with job vacancies: it’s more about helping companies get to know themselves, introduce themselves, and discover themselves to others.
Our story, then, is one of knowing how to tell yours accurately, to arouse desire and enable your future talent to follow in your footsteps. 👣
To the benefit of your future, your teams, your personal and professional commitment.

Why don’t we talk about it?

#recruitment #HR #topmanagement #executivesearch

Sources MakeMyCV, Office for National Statistics, Labour Market Statistics, February 2025 | Institute for Employment Studies (IES), l’Express, Europe 1