To the vast majority of readers, the COVID-19 pandemic represented probably the most seismic event in their lifetimes. Despite somehow feeling like both a lifetime ago and yesterday, simultaneously, the pandemic started over five years ago now, with global lockdowns commencing from March 2020. While the list of changes these times have driven in our day-to-day lives, and across society, is extensive, one area that has undergone rapid evolution in this timeframe is recruitment marketing, and specifically the way candidates, clients and other stakeholders engage with content. We’ve outlined some of the changes, highlighted in more depth in our 2025 Marketing Evolution; Five Years Post Pandemic Report, and offered insights to recruitment marketing specialists looking to keep pace with this changing environment.
Changing habits
Aside from the shift to remote working, where 42% more people operated in this way in April 2020 compared to 2019 and the rise of Zoom, which experienced a 370% surge in sales in the same timeframe, possibly the biggest change seen almost overnight was in the way the pandemic pushed people to mobile platforms. Most people suddenly turned to their phones and had far more time to consume content. After all, it’s highly unlikely that Tiger King would have enjoyed such intense popularity if people had very little else to do. But once we emerged from lockdowns, many of those changing preferences remained, and consumers continued to want access to more and more content from all of the organisations they engage with.
Social media growth
One field that benefited was social media, which, across all the main platforms, saw a 61% spike in usage in 2020 compared to the previous year. In 2025, the average person now spends approximately 2 hours and 23 minutes per day on social media platforms, with a considerable portion of this on TikTok, which crossed the two billion downloads mark in April 2020.
As a result, a significant portion of recruitment marketing also shifted to these sites. In 2025, 25% of all UK roles are filled through social media recruitment, and more than half of office workers and 73% of millennials have found a job directly on social platforms. However, employers and hiring specialists recognised that they could not simply spam roles onto their platforms and expect success, instead, they now rely on far deeper relationships.
Content-driven engagement is key
One particularly effective method of building relationships with clients, candidates and other target audiences is providing them with content they want that adds value to their lives. While this trend was already underway pre-pandemic, instead of focusing external communications primarily on role-specific information, modern recruitment marketers must now produce a far broader range of videos, blogs, podcasts, webinars, and newsletters - across multiple channels - to sate the appetite of target candidates and clients. This approach maintains engagement levels and also enables companies to position themselves more effectively as trusted advisors in their respective industries.
Our analysis and report saw a marked change in consumer preferences since the start of the pandemic, and it’s clear that modern-day stakeholders want far more from the organisations they engage with than at any point in the past. This trend will likely continue for the foreseeable future. Producing relevant, optimised and regular content of all types and for all channels not only aids businesses in positioning their brand but also in improving organic search rankings and, crucially, visibility in AI tools, which are increasingly key to ensuring their discoverability.
Growing cynicism
A final key factor in changing content preferences is the nature of people themselves. It would be fair to say that the modern consumer is a far more cynical beast than they were pre-2020. COVID and the ensuing lockdowns - along with questionable social media platform leadership - have all sadly provided a hotbed for distrust and rising cynicism to flourish.
This is a far deeper trend than we could cover in one article, but even those less conspiratorially minded have seen a marked fall in trust in authority figures. This is a complex matter, but since 2020, only the US has shown greater division in politics and the gap between the left and right than the UK. In fact, 45% of people said they almost never trusted political or authority figures, regardless of their beliefs, up from 23% in 2020. This is not just the case in politics, but according to Edelman’s Trust Barometer, for businesses and indeed all authority figures, groups and – crucially - businesses.
All of these factors – and many others – have fed into a situation where modern consumers are far more aware when they are being sold to, and consequently, candidates and clients generally prefer more nuanced and value-added content types. This trend underlines all the aforementioned changes to content engagement preferences, and recruiters are subsequently having to be smarter in the way they engage clients and candidates and are having to apply a far broader and more intelligent range of tactics to build relationships. Put simply, to build strong, long-term relationships with stakeholders, candidates and clients, recruiters are expected to produce regular, insightful content, to be visible and to highlight their expertise, and those that don’t and still rely on pre-pandemic, largely ‘offline’ models will struggle in the modern market.
The pandemic changed many things, and content engagement strategies are certainly one of them. To find out more insights from our ‘Five Years on From Covid’ report, download a full free copy here.
If your agency would like to adapt to this changing market but doesn’t have the budget to outsource, take a look at our PR & Media Relations workshop for recruiters.
Or, if you would like to speak to our team and find out more about the sessions or how we can help your organisation increase awareness and engage more effectively with target audiences, call us on 01582 790900 or email us at hello@bluesky-pr.com
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With over a decade’s experience in PR, marketing and communications, Bruce develops and executes media relations, content and social media strategies for firms in the recruitment and hiring industries, as well as suppliers to those sectors and other organisations both in the UK and internationally.
