How to Make Your Recruitment Agency Successful? : Successful Recruitment Strategies
You spent months on the idea of starting your recruitment agency, researched a ton to learn everything about starting a business, invested time and money, and finally rolled it out with a flourish - only to see it not working.
You tried everything to get business - hired the best salespeople to get you clients, participated in networking events to get your next big client, and cold-emailed to potential clients.
However, without successful recruitment strategies in place, you may find it challenging to achieve the desired results for your agency.
As of 2022, there are 11527 recruitment agencies in the US. Out of these, only a few are successful. The others are always struggling to find clients and close positions for them.
What made them successful is focusing on the fundamentals and implementing them with actionable strategies as below
- Expanding client base
- Setting up an efficient recruitment process
- Building a smart team
Expanding Client Base
You might be very good at recruiting but you need a client to serve with recruitment needs. When we say expanding client base, it is not about signing with any company that shows interest.
It is about picking the right clients for you. Do it right the first with these 3 steps.
1. Identify your niche:
- Start by looking at which industries or roles you are good to recruit. List down all the industries and roles you can source candidates for.
- Think about your connections and see which industry most of them belong to.
- Once you have a long list of industries and roles, it is now time to shortlist by matching it with demand. You can use LinkedIn to search for these roles to get a vague estimate.
- We do not recommend you narrow it down to a single industry or role but have a cluster. For example, instead of fixating on Salesforce Developer, you can be flexible with an IT cluster (Developers, Testers, Technical Writers, Technical Product Managers, etc). If you need more help, refer to this video on Best Niches for Recruiters.
2. Attract with recruitment marketing
- To make your LinkedIn company page more eye-catching, use a company banner, logo and other branding elements to create an attractive look.
- One grave mistake most recruitment agencies make is creating content about the industry. For example, “Top IT trends” is not interesting to a recruiter who is hiring IT employees. Instead, you can talk about “Top IT recruitment trends” which is more appealing to the IT recruiter.
- Don't miss out on interviews and case studies with your clients, which will help you build trust and authority in the industry.
- Implementing a well-planned recruitment marketing campaign can also enhance your agency's visibility and positioning in the market, attracting potential clients and top talent to your services.
3. Outreach to potential clients
- One of the best ways to find clients is through Job Boards like Indeed, LinkedIn, CareerBuilder, etc. Make of list of companies that are hiring in decent volumes relevant to your niches.
- Start building relationships with the talent and business leaders (HR Heads, IT Heads, and Senior Managers) through mutual connections.
- If you do not have any, feel free to write a cold message or cold email to the person. You can find their email addresses from tools like Snov.io, Hunter, etc.
- Take a look at the person's social profiles before reaching out to get a better sense of their personality. This will help you write a better email.
- Choose the number of people you can reach out to each week (maybe 5/per week). Measure your results and double down on those efforts.
Setting up an efficient recruitment process
Hiring can be frustrating without a structured recruitment process. These processes can help you scale up your recruitment business swiftly.
Sourcing to find quality candidates
- Whenever you are sourcing for a new role, it is important to check your database first. This will ensure that you are not wasting time sourcing for talent that you already have.
- Diversify your sourcing channels. Here are a few job boards to explore - Aevy, AngelList (for tech talent), Entelo, Hired, and Sourcing.io.
- Join groups and communities where the ideal candidates hang out.
- Run a quick LinkedIn search for the specific job role. Review the profiles and reach out to these candidates.
- If you are tired of manually messaging candidates, you can also run Inmail campaigns on LinkedIn
Using Recruitment Technology
With the rise of artificial intelligence in recruitment, you can get a lot of repetitive tasks off your shoulders. An ATS (Applicant Tracking System) will not only help automate tasks but also improve them with data.
● An ATS can screen resumes quickly by following the guidelines you provide.
● You can have candidate communication reminders set up in an ATS to trigger
automatically—for example, a candidate will receive a reminder by phone or email 1
hour before the interview.
● Sourcing from the existing talent pool can be automated by matching candidates'
screening questions and skills against those of job requirements.
Collecting feedback from clients & candidates
Whatever you do there is always scope for improvement. Once a candidate is hired by the client, ask for feedback.
Understand their experience and look for improvements. Analyze the feedback and share the insights with your team in your weekly group calls. Take their input to improve the process.
Building a smart team
- As a small business, prioritize efficient hiring of recruiters who have relevant experience in the niche you are dealing with.
- Take time to conduct weekly training sessions about the best practices, tips, trends, and updates regarding the industry.
- Track their progress and conduct 1-1 sessions to help them improve and grow in recruitment.
- Hire interns in different verticals to help you with everyday tasks (Marketing Intern, Sales Intern, HR Intern, etc).
Wrapping Up
Thriving in a competitive industry like recruitment can be challenging, but the above actionable steps should help you achieve your business goals this year. These steps might be time-consuming, but they will get you results.
Alternatively, you can also sign up as a sourcing agency on CBREX to source for high demand roles. Click here to get started for free.
