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Great people are the number one factor in building a successful business in the staffing industry. Identifying, evaluating, and hiring great talent is only one part of the equation when building a great team. See Part 1. Now that you’ve found, interviewed, and hired a potential rock star, you need to assure that they have the tools needed to produce in the fast paced world of recruiting and staffing. Training and development for a new recruiter can at times be a tightrope act. In my experience, one of the best and most important personality traits that I find in a successful recruiter is a bit of an entrepreneurial streak. The good recruiters have a “get it done” mentality, and don’t require constant care and feeding. They are creative, self-motivated, and possess natural leadership abilities. Downside, they can also be resistant to taking direction, stubborn, and at times overly independent. I was alwa...
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It’s easy to get caught in the daily grind and the ever-present churn of the staffing business. As a recruiter, sales rep, branch manager or even owner, you are focusing constantly on the next requirement, candidate, and ultimately placement. Most staffing firms are so focused on these things that they lose sight of creating and emphasizing real competitive differentiators. Simply believing that your firm can find and retain good candidates as a differentiator isn’t really very different, every staffing firm on the planet has that response practiced and are ready to throw it out at a client or candidate at the drop of a hat.
As with any highly competitive market, whether its software or staffing, you have to add some “out of the box” value that your competitors aren’t. Granted, there are those customers who don’t really care about anything but your ability to submit 50 resumes per week with the correct Acronyms include...
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About this time every year the Staffing Industry starts to go into a minor hibernation mode. Clients slow down hiring while they figure out next year’s budget, decision makers are out of the office wrapping up Holiday odds and ends, and applicants are hesitant to conduct a job search during the Holiday season.
Chart from AmericanStaffing.net Staffing Index
Many staffing firms take this information to heart and allow the slow down to impact their activity and ultimately their productivity. This doesn’t have to be the case. There are a number of really simple strategies that I’ve used throughout my career as both a firm owner and as the Dallas Branch Manager at Apex Systems.
Create a sales activity contest to get your Account Reps out of the office and in front of clients. Meals = deals! Lunches are a great way to get in front of your customers during the holiday slow down. Set a goal that&rsquo...
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Unlike most software entrepreneurs who say they focus on the Staffing Industry, we have actually owned and operated our own Staffing firms. We've lived the headaches of Mondays and Tuesdays, and have done the cat herding personally. Its no fun, and I would have rather been playing golf or having lunch or happy hour with my clients. So why is it so hard and why is time so important? For most of us, much unlike the Rolling Stones song "Time Is On My Side", time is NOT on our side. Time is a relentless task master that keeps us awake at night, and away from our families, or away from the revenue producing activities that we should be doing. But it can't be ignored, because it is your source of revenue. When I owned my firm I always said, you haven't actually made a placement until your client paid your bill. And there's the rub... In a lot of cases, Staffing clients are relying on their vendor to accurately collect, pay and ...
