New ways to get new business in 2012.

 

So cold-calling Employers for new business is less effective than it used to be and the recruitment consultant’s traditional markets are changing. If agency recruiters are now to forge new partnerships with the In-House recruiters at large Employers and develop new clients amongst the SME markets, how are they best to approach the task?

 

I think there will be 3 factors at play:

 

1. The…

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In an ideal world an Employer would open an application, input their job description and candidate requirements, press “Go” and it would produce a map with the 3 best candidate matches, their CVs, current locations and contact numbers.

 

Though it sounds great, there are some problems with this model: candidates would need to give their permission to…

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Recruitment is all about a brief moment in time. 2 weeks before the job was advertised a better candidate may have been available but isn’t now. 2 weeks after the job is filled a better candidate may come onto the market but it’s too late. We cannot change the fleeting nature of the moment but we can make sure that we get the most out of it at the time.

 

So when the hunt’s on do you choose Sniffer dogs or an Eagle?

 

The traditional method is…

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1. Regulation
2. Cooperation
3. Efficiency

 

The boom times of the last decade and the absence of client choice until now have enabled the agency sector to submerge problems which have only been exposed now the tide has gone out. These include standards of professional behaviour, placement inefficiency and uncompetitive pricing.

 

The problems all stem from a lack of barriers to entry to an industry that is also completely…

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I was recently reading how BT were warning their recruitment suppliers to not discriminate against disabled candidates (why would they in the first place if their client did not??) or they’d be off the PSL and it occurred to me how beholden Recruiters have become to their Clients.

 

Now that candidates are relatively easy to track down and recruitment is being taken in-house, Recruitment Consultants need to find a USP that will change the balance of power and stop the…

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I don’t have much time for it and I’m no expert but I do get that others see personal and commercial value in it. The very fact that people may be talking about you or your business on it means you need to adopt some sort of position - don’t you?

 

As far as Recruitment Consultants are concerned I see no value in it directly. Will you attract candidates? Will you attract Clients? Will you shape your brand? Is anyone listening? Probably not!

 

However there are a…

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http://wp.me/pvNqk-7b

 

The PSL model has been the way that Employers manage their Recruitment suppliers for as long as I can remember. They remind me of medieval cities surrounded by moats!

 

Because there’s nothing to compare them with – they are or have been the only agency management model - it’s difficult to say whether they’re fulfilling a Clients needs well or…

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I remember being told this story as a boy and it’s one of those that attached itself to my consciousness for no apparent reason… that is until today! I realise that it’s a metaphor for the struggle between the forces of in-house recruitment and agency recruitment. As with the story the outcome is by no means certain.

 

The story is set in the snowy Alps. The British spy (Agency) is being chased on cross-country skis by the Russian sniper (In-House). The Russian is faster…

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A new trend emerging in the recruitment sector is the “engagement” portal. These offer Recruiters opportunities to engage with Employers.

They split into 2 models which can be broadly characterised as:

Tendering sites: e.g. http://bountyjobs.com which publish employer’s jobs and invite recruitment agencies to “bid” to work on them, and

Networks: e.g.…

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When you spend every waking minute analysing the possible outcomes for the recruitment industry over the next decade and you have a brain so limited in capacity as mine, you end up hearing the old cliché ringing in your ears:

“You can’t halt progress!”

 

I believe this to be true and short of a post apocalyptic return to the Stone Age, which actually seems frighteningly more likely than it did a week ago, I suspect that In-House, Social Media et al will continue to rise…

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My pet hates include: waste!



Give what you don’t want to someone who does – why not. Think Karma. Cooperate.



The supply of candidates to Employers by Agencies is rigidly controlled by preferred supplier agreements. So if you have say 100 Employers hiring within the Tech sector, you’ll have 100 PSLs. Now some of the bigger Recruitment firms may be on all the PSLs but it is likely that the 100 PSLs will each have a different line up of suppliers and that line up will be a… Continue

We all know that Employers that use Agencies adopt preferred supplier lists to manage the Agency situation. Idea being that you find some good agencies that you’re prepared to work closely with and you exclude the rest.



We also know that whilst this might work well some of the time, there are diametrically opposing forces at work that cause it to fail from time to time. These being: the need to keep the PSL to a manageable number, otherwise you’d be dealing with agencies all day long… Continue