Is Your Staffing Firm Running as One?
It’s an incredible time to be in the staffing industry. Expectations for revenue, spending, and placements are all on the rise. Four out of five recruitment professionals around the world expect revenue to increase in 2019 and three out of five are increasing their tech investments.
It’s also a challenging time to be in recruitment. The talent shortage has gotten worse, competition is tougher, and it’s increasingly difficult to win (and retain) candidates and clients.
How can you make the most of the incredible opportunities available to staffing firms while navigating the treacherous obstacles of running a business? Run as one, by unifying the teams, systems, and data that drive your business. What does it mean to run as one? It comes down to three core principles:
One Team
Do you have perfect collaboration with everyone on your team or in your department? If your business is comprised of more than one person, there’s probably room for improvement. Only 20 percent of staffing professionals give themselves perfect marks for interdepartmental communication; an even larger number (23 percent) give themselves a failing grade.
Staffing is inherently competitive, but teams that work together are more efficient and can deliver better experiences to both candidates and clients. Imagine what your teams could accomplish if they worked in the same systems, had visibility into each other’s actions, and were aligned with shared group and corporate goals.
With the right staffing technology, you can align the work of every department and individual to ensure that your firm is more productive, effective, and efficient.
Look for a staffing solution that allows your team to work together, not independently of each other. Can you easily share and access candidate and client records? Can a new hire easily pick up where her former colleague left off? Can the sales team see what the recruiting team is doing, and vice versa? A cohesive team is a profitable team.
One Truth
Do you know which of your clients provide the most value to your business? If you do, you’re ahead of the curve: a survey of more than 1,200 global recruitment professionals found that fully half of respondents don’t have a clear understanding of which clients are most profitable. And client profitability is just one of many vital pieces of data where recruitment pros lack insight and visibility.
The reality of running a staffing firm, especially a growing one, is that you are bombarded by information: information about your clients, your candidates, and your performance. Without the proper systems in place, it’s impossible to ensure that everyone in your firm has access to the information they need when they need it.
That’s why it’s crucial to leverage staffing technology that centralizes the management of the critical information that fuels your business. A single source of always-current and always-accessible truth ensures that your team stays in sync, your customers stay on-goal, and your business stays on-track for profitable growth.
One Platform
We’ve interviewed recruitment professionals from companies of all sizes and all industries, and one constant remains true for every business: things change fast. For instance, a startup might grow 400 percent in its first six months, a large agency could expand into a new territory, or a firm specializing in one segment may branch out into a new specialty.
Even if you have an immaculate business plan, your agency will probably evolve in ways you can’t and won’t anticipate—and that’s a good thing.
While you may not be able to anticipate future business needs, you can future-proof your business by investing in a fully customizable and adaptable solution. With a solution that grows with you, you can meet the complexities of your business and of your clients’ businesses as they arise.
Look for a staffing technology provider with an open ecosystem and open APIs; this provides you with the flexibility to build your own unique solution to meet your present needs, and the freedom to adapt to changing requirements at scale.
When it comes to running a successful firm, one is the magic number. If you can harness the power of one—one team, one truth, one platform—you’ll be in an incredible position to succeed now and in the future.