Recruitment costs have gone up over the last five years, and perhaps because of, or in spite of this, over a quarter (28 percent) of recruitment professionals can't make an estimate of how much their average recruitment campaign costs, according to a new survey by Finland-headquartered recruitment firm Jobilla.

The survey doesn't look into why so many professionals aren't sure about their return on investment, but it does quantify some of the challenges that might make it harder to measure recruitment spend and effectiveness.

The findings focus on the Finnish market, but the woes reported by respondents are universal: recruitment campaigns are getting more expensive (43 percent of respondents), recruitment has gotten more difficult in recent years (55 percent), the number of quality candidates has dropped (51 percent).

Amid the talent crunch that the pandemic brought to the forefront, it's not surprising that recruitment has gotten harder and more costly. Jobilla's survey found that most respondents attributed their recent recruitment challenges purely to external factors, the pandemic being number two on the list of culprits.

The biggest challenge, though, remains the attractiveness of the sector. Recruitment professionals in the social work and healthcare sector said they have the greatest difficulties finding people (93 percent) - a rising trend worldwide, with many social workers and healthcare professionals reporting burnout in the pandemic's wake and fleeing for less stressful sectors. Immediately after that was the ICT sector (83 percent), where tech professionals have come into such short supply that wages are being pushed up and requirements are being pushed down.

Things are not going to improve either in the coming years, warns Jobilla COO and co-founder Tommi Siro, and recruitment professionals shouldn't be held solely to blame.

"We have seen that companies that are not ready to radically change their ways of working will face major challenges in their recruitment efforts," he said of the findings. "Those operators who have been willing to evolve their practices to respond to market changes have been able to turn the situation around."