Why are recruiters so bad at marketing?

The sales function within any B2B company is driven by individual relationships, which recruiters are traditionally great at building, but this can be very time consuming and often inefficient. The success of any agency often comes down to hiring the right sales people with the right skills, to build the right relationships as this can make or break your business.

Marketing on the other hand, can reach thousands of prospective clients and candidates in your target market far more effectively, and it will cost less longer term. This marketing led, ‘longer term’ approach to lead generation, is where we believe recruiters struggle.

So, let’s take a look at the traditional ‘sales’ approach. We have identified the two key downsides:

1. What if that top biller with those key relationships decides to leave?
2. Each sales person only has a finite amount of time to dedicate to each client/candidate.

Also, unlike other B2B industries, your key ingredient to closing a sale is not a tangible product such as a vacuum cleaner or a laptop –  you are selling a skill set that belongs to a real person, and these individuals need to be sourced uniquely every time.

So, how do you ensure you have the right candidates, at the right time, to service your client’s needs?

The answer is (dare we say)…

Marketing!

If we talk to our candidates more frequently (not just when we have jobs!) we are more likely to gain their loyalty and trust.

We are in a candidate driven market and nurturing these relationships is the key to successful placements. Sales is based on fulfilling a need, so no matter how great your relationships, if you haven’t got access to the right candidates, your client will go elsewhere to find them, no matter how much they like you!

Today’s candidates are savvy to sales techniques. No one likes being sold to by recruiters, especially passive candidates who are not necessarily on the market, but you need them! An unsolicited call could work very negatively for your agency and can easily be ignored, so it’s time for a different approach.

New, softer techniques are now required to engage our audience over a longer term strategy. Today’s skilled workforce need to be nurtured and engaged from a distance and be given insightful, well placed, relevant content that shows your agency understands, and genuinely cares about them and their career.

Channels such as social media, video, email, live streaming and events are great ways to push relevant, interesting content out there. These will help you to make a connection with your talent pool, authentically engaging with them and giving your recruitment agency ‘stand out’.

We understand it’s a constant balancing act between building relationships with clients, and having an engaged talent pool to call upon when the right job arises. It’s crucial the sales and marketing for any agency work together and they are not seen as separate functions.

The clients we work with, who use marketing to bolster their sales approach are driving down the cost and time per hire. They are also relying less on third-party job boards as their websites are organically gaining more traction and visitors.

In summary, if you utilise a well-oiled, long-term marketing function that ‘warms up’ and nurtures potentially thousands of clients and candidates ongoing, this could give your agency the competitive advantage you’ve been looking for.

If you’d like some support to create your marketing plan for 2017 (it is only a few weeks away!) we are ready and waiting, give me a bell or drop me a note: anna@plottcreative.co.uk