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Welcome to issue 400 of the ukrecruiter newsletter. As this is our 400th issue I wonder if you'd help us celebrate by suggesting to 4 colleagues, or recruitment peers that they sign up to the newsletter! You can forward this on and they can click the subscription link here |
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CONTENTS
Visit http://www.ukrecruiterjobs.co.uk for the latest recruitment industry jobs. |
Weekly Tips - If I've Learnt Three Things .... whilst doing this newsletter 1) There is always something new to say and learn about recruitment 2) Whatever the current trends the core skills of recruitment remain invaluable 3) I always leave writing the newsletter to the last minute!
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Article One: Marketing – A Waste of Money in the Current Climate? By Dan Doherty Batten down the hatches, don’t spend any money and keep your head down - if you don’t want to survive of course… Recruitment agencies are sales and marketing led businesses. They can be customer centric in nature, they can be experts in their markets but the economics of the industry make sure that sales and marketing are what makes them tick. It’s often said that recruitment budgets are one of the first things to go in a recession, along with marketing, training and so on; all soft targets. So when recruitment companies get hit by recession and they too follow the ‘rule’ that marketing gets cut, where does that get us? If you subscribe to the view that there’s no more business to be had out there and there is no way that you would be persuaded to spend a single hour or pound on marketing then don’t read on. But if like most successful businesspeople you are an optimist then just bear with me a few more paragraphs. Let’s start by agreeing what marketing is. Or perhaps an easier starting point is to agree what it is not. Think of all the things that are called marketing such as mailings, newsletters, e-shots, PR, events, hospitality; the list is endless. These are all part of marketing but they are not in themselves marketing. Marketing is a strategy for getting the people who you want to buy your products to do so. It starts at the concept not the promotional stage. For recruitment businesses marketing is, like in any other sector, a vital strategic function. It cannot be stopped even in a recession because if it is then an organisation simply comes to a standstill. There is some energy in place that will keep things going after marketing stops but it won’t go on for long. A plant can be dying at its roots but carry on flowering up above as it clings on - then one day it’s gone. Marketing is as vital as turning on the lights every day. So what can you do, given the market? The starting point is to make sure you understand your starting position. That’s important to help you see how much potential there really is. Even if you feel right now you are doing everything you can and your clients simply have no extra vacancies or need for contractors it’s still worth thinking about the percentage of the market you actually have. No matter how big a firm you are you won’t have 100% of your market. Even if other recruiters in your sector are shutting up shop you still have a future. The fact is that those businesses that sadly have to call it a day most often do so because of something like the lack of money to pay the VAT more than a lack of potential in the market. That doesn’t mean that every client they had stops recruiting or using temps. So back to marketing. Even if the market is half what it was in the good times, or maybe even worse, you can double your .0001 per cent (or whatever) of the market without anyone noticing you. But how? Assuming we are not speaking about growing the overall market but more about increasing market share in a downturn, how can you make headway without spending money you haven’t got? The starting point is good research. And I don’t mean fake research that’s dressed up as research, such as asking pointless questions to then simply go back and sell something. I mean real research where you find out what would make companies more likely to use you or what would get the market moving, what are the barriers to them doing business. You can conduct research very inexpensively using free and very inexpensive tools like survey monkey. How do you get to people to complete the survey? Well you have your own database. You could also issue a news release to the publications your clients read, letting them know that you are running a survey. That alone will give you some publicity and generate some responses. I repeat though, don’t just see the data as a cynical opportunity to sell to the people who were good enough to reply. Use the research to design a truly innovative service or product, pricing structure or service standard. Publicise the results to show that you are working hard to find solutions for the sector and that you are thought leaders and innovators. But don’t stop there. Call everyone who contributed to the survey and see if they would like to see the results (get permission when they complete the survey and check out market research rules of course, it’s worth the effort). That’s real marketing and it will revitalise your own interest and crucially that of your prospects too, all for virtually no cost. After this you need to go on and design the new offering and promote it. Remember, it all starts with innovation and that’s what this market needs more than anything at this time. More of the same won’t do. Find out what’s needed and be the first to deliver it.
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Article Two: 400 issues in a nutshell We started back in 2001 with issue one of the "recruit net newsletter" http://www.ukrecruiter.co.uk/recnet/rn1to10.htm#Issue%201. Our key tip in this first issue was "This may sound quite straightforward, but if you're not doing it you could be wasting quite a lot of on-line time. When looking at results from a search engine or directory query open each web page you want to view in a different window (right mouse click and choose "open in new window" option). This allows you to continue looking through your search results as other web pages are loading. You'll have to regulate how many windows you have open, depending on how slow the Internet is, but I quite often have between 5 and 10 browser windows open at once." Of course these days you do the same thing using different tabs in the same browser window. The 100th issue (http://www.ukrecruiter.co.uk/recnet/rn51to60.htm#Issue%20100) was sent in December 2002. The highlight of this issue was the gift giveaway we had. This included a Powerboat ride, champagne and a mountain of Jaffa Cakes! Our 200th issue (http://www.ukrecruiter.co.uk/recnet/ukrecruiter%20newsletter%20200.html) came out in early 2005. The favourites that issue were three sites for when you need a map but don't know the town name or post code. Favourites have remained a popular feature of the website over the years - if you want to contribute yours just send an email to contact2@ukrecruiter.co.uk (you can read the guidlelines here if you need them) Issue 300 (http://www.ukrecruiter.co.uk/recnet/ukrecruiter%20newsletter%20300.html) was sent in February 2007 and contained a legal review article from Louise Fernandes. Louise is probably our longest, consistent, contributor having written for the newsletter nearly every month since mid 2003! This has got to be a reflection of the benefits of promoting your organisation via articles in the newsletter. You can view all the back issues of the newsletter on our website at http://www.ukrecruiter.co.uk/recnet/index.htm. We started the newsletter with around a dozen subscribers and have now over 16,000 subscribers. We recently did a survey into readership of the newsletter and the respondents to the survey told us: Of those who work as recruiters or researchers: Of those who work for a recruitment consultancy/agency the make up is: The type of recruitment firm they work for is: |
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Please forward this newsletter on to any colleagues or recruitment friends who you think might like to receive the newsletter.
Regards
Louise Triance
UK Recruiter http://www.ukrecruiter.co.uk
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If you want to see back issues of the newsletter visit http://www.ukrecruiter.co.uk/recnet NOTE: This newsletter may be copied and distributed free of charge in its entirety. Individual sections may NOT be copied or distributed without prior written agreement. Copyright (c) 2009, UK Recruiter Ltd |