Focusing a lot of my energy on Agency Time as one of our vertical offerings at the moment, it was interesting to hear about recruitment from a different view point. Niche, plan and innovate were the buzzwords of the Recruitment Agency Expo that I attended in Birmingham recently.

Have you found your niche?

With the number of SME recruitment companies growing in the UK, the emphasis is on concentrating on where you add value. Otherwise you will fall into the ever-increasing pot of companies going after the same clients and trying to attract the same candidates. It didn’t matter what topic the sessions were on at the Expo, they all carried the same message, and that is to focus on your area or industry of expertise and show how you differentiate yourself.

So how are you going to convey that message to your target market? There is so much data available and so many ways to present insight on social media, but unless they are part of a strategic plan, then all that hard work and effort in managing the information and the content you put out there is wasted. Although I’m not keen on the phrase ‘work smarter, not harder’ I do have to agree that it is applicable in this case. Each social media platform has its place and its merits. Use them wisely and for the right reasons and you will find that they will reap the results you are looking for.

Social Media for Recruitment

In one of the sessions, it was proposed that in order to use Twitter effectively, you need to tweet at least 6-8 times a day focusing your message on adding value to the follower, not the tweeter. Who has enough varied and interesting content to put on 6-8 times a day? This is where you need to innovate; how can you inform you followers of something new that they will want to hear about and what are you leading them to do? (If you didn’t know – our Twitter handle is @TVisionTech – do follow us if you aren’t already.) For others such as LinkedIn and Facebook then 2-3 times a day was recommended using visual content such as videos to catch the eye – and the ear if you have your volume turned up and you accidently start playing it. On the subject of LinkedIn, the speaker of the session was very clear about how it should be used, i.e. it is not a social network. If you want to write about the lovely meal you’ve just had or put on a LOL cat video then go to Facebook!
As I mentioned before, it is all about how you use these platforms effectively. LinkedIn is used hugely in the recruitment industry, but is having 5,000 contacts really the optimal way of getting more business? Isn’t it better to have fewer, high quality contacts that you are actively engaged with? Did you have a plan of action each time you submitted a connection request, or did you just hit them hard with a sales pitch the minute they accepted?

And the big one: GDPR

As of May 2018 every company is going to need to really think hard and properly make and follow a plan about how data is going to be used in order to comply with GDPR rules and regulations. In recruitment, holding personal data on candidates is vital for the clients you are assisting to fill their available roles. Can you realistically prove that you have explicit consent from all the people on your database, and that they are happy for you to hold their data and to pass their data to clients? Can you show them exactly how you obtained that data? In the session on GDPR, the presenter gave examples of data sources you may have not even considered such as email contact records, spreadsheets and those paper copies of CVs hidden away, forgotten in your desk drawer.

I don’t want to scare you about GDPR, and the speaker at the Expo did dispel a lot of the more frightening myths about fines but the core message is: get a plan in place. If you have data from 10 years ago that hasn’t been updated then do you really need to keep it? For anything 2-3 years old, review and consider if it is relevant to what you are trying to achieve today.

GDPR as an Opportunity

However, everything has a silver lining, right? You could look upon GDPR as an opportunity to innovate and re-engage with your clients and candidates. If you can convey how you propose to keep their data safe and why that is important to your company then surely that is going to set you apart from the competition? Also, look at your systems. Can the technology you use be configured to follow simple workflows which support GDPR? For example, does your back office system allow you to hold an audit trail for the end-to-end process so you can confirm you have been compliant at each step from prospecting through to billing? We are currently working on some Dynamics NAV functionality to assist our clients with GDPR, and this will be shared at our NAV Summit (exclusively for Clients) next month.

Innovation …

Finally, I shall leave you with the more fun topic of chat bots and automation. We all want to make our websites work for us, and get those essential leads. Chat bots were mentioned in many of the sessions as a way of keeping someone visiting your website engaged and directing them to where they should go next. It’s also a way of filtering out which leads are the quality ones. Don’t forget about getting the most out of your client base too. It’s worth looking into the possibility of automating the process of staying in touch with contractors on current assignments as much as possible.
All in all I learnt a lot about the sector by attending the event, I’ll definitely be adding it to my diary for next year.
Karen Moore – Sales Executive