As the recruitment industry changes, the old rules for being successful are becoming increasingly questionable. The rise of automation tools, along with internal recruitment teams taking increasing amounts of low hanging fruit, means that for recruiters wanting to maintain their billings a different method is required. At this point, the variance between the different options results in competing strategies, meaning businesses have to choose what their method will be.
In the first instance, the rise of internal recruiters and RPOs have led to agencies being forced to reduce fees, in return for volume. Whilst this model does work, it means that for the agencies adopting this approach targets are high, earnings are low and as a result burn-out rates are higher than average. In this model, operational efficiency is everything. If, for example, a consultant has KPIs which mean they need to pick up three new instructions every day, they need tools to feed them the leads to do that. Therefore business managers operating this model should be looking to adopt solutions such as Vacancy Tracker to help with consultant performance and prevent against burn out.
The second option is to move to a US model of search and selection. In this scenario recruiters work with significantly fewer clients, but work on retainers and focus on targeting suitable candidates that are not actively looking. The challenge with this is that, firstly, a lot of recruiters are offering ‘contingency search,’ meaning that they are actively headhunting but only claiming a fee when filling the role. That means for recruiters wanting to move to a consultative model of search and selection they need to demonstrate their expertise and position themselves as consultants, and so frame their proposition in a different way in order to win the retainers and assignments. We can help with that.
The UK economy generates approximately eight thousand jobs per day (according to data from the ONS) and we at Vacancysoft capture approximately half of those. By monitoring companies directly, we are able to create market mapping without distortion. For example, tools reliant on job boards are heavily distorted by the most popular jobs, which get posted multiple times, hence location spreads, to give just one example, become distorted, as does market share by skill. New emerging technologies become harder to pick up. However, because our method avoids the job boards, we can provide a unique perspective on market activity.
This means that for recruiters wanting to impress their prospective clients we can give a unique way to prepare for meetings. For example, if you have a client that is a bank and you are looking to win the pitch, we can tell you ahead of the meeting what their overall hiring has been this year compared to competitors, along with which types of roles they have been struggling to fill the most. Armed with that kind of insight, recruiters can be position themselves as experts and increase the chances of winning exclusive retainers.
For a free consultation on how we can help with your content, please do contact us.
Over the last ten years Vacancysoft has worked with recruitment firms of all sizes to help them map out market activity in order to identify changes in demand. For more information about how we can help, please contact us.