Stephen Anderson advises businesses reframe marketing to overcome recruitment challenges

According to a recent report, 32% of local businesses struggle with recruitment due to a lack of candidates - something that recruitment marketing firm, crooton, finds surprising. 

Stephen Anderson, CEO of Cambridgeshire-based businesses crooton, says that many traditional recruitment tools ignore ‘passive candidates’ and therefore ignore 73% of the potential candidate pool - which could explain why so many local businesses are struggling with recruitment.  

The Cambridgeshire Chamber of Commerce Skills Survey 2026 cited that 52% of local businesses are finding recruitment challenging. 39% of these shared that applicants lack the required skills and 32% said that challenges were due to a simple ‘lack of candidates’. 

Stephen Anderson suggests that reframing the way businesses recruit will go a long way to overcoming these challenges. “If you’re getting lots of applications from people with the wrong skills, then you’re advertising in the wrong places. By focusing solely on active candidates (people who are searching for roles on job boards), then you’re ignoring a huge proportion of ‘passive candidates’ - people who aren’t actively searching for a new job but who fit the right criteria, have the right skills and who could be open to a change of role. 73% of your recruitment audience is passive, so finding this audience can’t be underestimated.” 

The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Local Skills Improvement Plan (LSIP) 2026–2029 indicated plans to fix leaky talent pipelines in engineering, electrical, construction trades and advanced manufacturing - to directly address shortages in the hard-to-fill skilled technical and trades occupations.

Stephen recommends that local businesses focus on marketing to their passive audience in order to fill these talent pipelines. He said: “Reaching the passive majority means moving beyond job listings and into omnichannel environments; news cycles, podcasts, and daily commutes - you need to identify who your passive audience is and reach them in their daily lives. Digital geofencing is a great way of doing this. Building digital fences around industry hubs, such as specific industrial parks or competitor sites, to identify talent based on their professional ‘zones’. Finally, be mobile-native. 68% of applications are now mobile-first, so non-mobile strategies are effectively invisible to the modern candidate.”

"There’s a lot of noise out there, but the idea is to integrate your brand into a candidate's daily habits to encourage them to remember you and choose to explore your options. By attracting the right people, not just more people, you’ll achieve a far stronger ROI and better quality applications." Concluded Stephen.

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