Recruiting is an interesting business to be in right now. When it comes to technology, many businesses are playing catch-up to bring their processes fully into the digital age.
Now, before you run out and buy a fully-formed, artificially intelligent robot assistant, think about examining your business model first. Any technology you use needs to fit with your business and the problems that it solves for your customers. Here are three things to keep in mind when evolving your recruitment business model:
Rethink Your Services
Whether your recruitment company focuses on contingency recruiting, retained search, or a combination of both, there is a benefit to rethinking what you offer from the customer’s perspective.
With contingency recruiting, you’re in a race to find the best candidates and there is no guarantee you’ll win the employer’s business. With a retained search it’s a harder sell, since up-front fees may make some employers hesitant to commit.
With new businesses and websites popping up regularly (all claiming to be completely new and innovative) and bigger platforms like Indeed moving into recruiting services territory, it’s important to recognize the opportunity in casting a wider net.
Lower the barrier to entry for employers to become your customers by offering RPO (recruitment process outsourcing) services, like writing/posting/optimizing job advertisements, screening, interviewing, and shortlisting of candidates.
Anticipate Candidate Lifecycles
Forget passive vs active candidates. It’s time to throw that debate out the window and into a lake. Better yet, a volcano. It’s over. Take a deep breath, and say goodbye. I feel pretty strongly about this, and here’s why:
Every passive candidate is or will be an active candidate, and every active candidate is or will be a passive candidate. The only difference is timing.
The key is to keep candidates engaged with you and your company. That is, you need a continued relationship with them, where they know your brand by sight and by name, and hopefully that of your recruiters as well. They need to be able to keep you apprised of career advancements (keeping their resume/profile updated) and you need to make it easy for them to stay on top of new opportunities.
Make it Easy
You need to make it easy for candidates to stay engaged, and for employers to access your services. Using your website as an interactive recruiting platform or job board can combine a number of functions together to help you generate leads, make sales, advertise jobs, build and update your candidate database, manage job descriptions and applications, and market to employers and candidates.
Don’t make candidates wait for an advertised opening to make themselves known to you – let them proactively create and update a resume profile that showcases their work and experience. For employers, you should make it possible for them to register with you, and yes, even purchase services through self-serve ecommerce.
Don’t forget to make your company accessible through the usual communication channels (contact forms, email, phone, etc.), but if you give customers and candidates the option to start your work for you or signal their level of interest, you can accelerate your processes. A customer who has purchased an RPO services package has leapfrogged over the number of steps it usually takes to get from emailing a question about pricing and services to becoming a paying customer! And a candidate who is an active participant in marketing themselves to employers can save recruiters time and effort by providing the information needed to evaluate them up front.
Recruiting businesses still centre around helping employers find great people, but evolving business models and digital strategies can help recruiting companies discover new customers and test out new revenue streams.