Standing out in a crowded recruitment sector
Lots of us took part in the #10yearchallenge over Christmas, showing our social media connections how we looked when we entered the last decade compared with how we look now, as we enter another.
If you applied the #10yearchallenge to the recruitment sector, all you would see is huge growth.
The statistics we’re going to refer to should actually be subject to a #20yearchallenge, as the data goes back to 1999. Figures show that since that year, the number of recruitment companies has rocketed by a staggering 500%.
The Association of Professional Staffing Companies (ASPCo), the body who published these findings, are celebrating their twenty-year anniversary, which explains the timeframe of the data. However, they state that it is actually the last decade that has been responsible for much of the growth in the recruitment industry: 84% of recruiters who launched their businesses during the last two decades did so between 2008 and 2018.
Said Ann Swain, global CEO of ASPCo, “It’s fantastic to see the continued growth of the staffing sector, which has been flourishing despite the rise of job boards and social media – which many felt would negatively impact recruitment firms.”
The rise of technology has certainly played its part and has allowed many recruitment firms to exist largely online, without the need for physical premises. It has also allowed a number of firms to settle in a specific niche, knowing that search engine tools, social media, algorithms and analytics would steer clients and candidates towards them.
The 9-5 has also changed significantly during the last twenty years. The gig economy, flexible working hours, and the final fizzling out of ‘jobs for life’ means a more frequent need for recruiters, as employees jump from one role to another. Rather than seeing saturation in the sector, this increased demand for recruitment agencies helped to feed the surge in their supply.
Over the last two decades, a shift in how candidates search and apply for jobs - from newspapers to computers to mobile phones - has moved recruiters’ focus from outbound marketing to inbound marketing.
Early adopters of inbound marketing methods have reportedly surged ahead of their recruiting rivals. However, with inbound marketing, candidates and clients need to be brought somewhere. Whether they’ve seen a link, an advert, or acted on any other kind of lead generation tool, they’re then redirected to the recruiters’ website and/or a landing page, in the hope of finding more information, and perhaps even to take the next step in the application for the role.
This ‘base’, where every link leads to, must be easy to navigate and be clear in its message. It must provide all necessary functions with no error pages or broken links and be memorable and attractive enough in its design to keep visitors’ attention and support the recruiter’s brand. Given how many recruiters there are now (almost 40,000 in the UK alone, according to ASPCo), it’s not a given that any one recruiter will stand out from the crowd. It takes some work, foresight and a good deal of strategy. Fortunately, that’s where Fast Recruitment Website Design can help you.
Following GDPR, the security of other people’s data is now a huge issue. Studies have shown that the recruitment industry has been one of the sectors most affected by changes to data privacy laws and fines will typically be awarded if a breach or lack of care is proven. We can help you become compliant in this area, too.
Our last point is to consider word-of-mouth. Referrals played a huge part in recruitment twenty years ago, and despite the fact the industry has been practically digitalised since then, word of mouth is still a crucial aspect of the process. Few people have time to sift through 40,000 recruiters when looking for a new role, and the experiences of, and recommendations from, people in their network offer valuable shortcuts. Your website and brand can significantly underpin positive word-of-mouth, which is another reason to chat to us.
Contact us on 01302 288 591 for more information, and find out how we can help you become the recruiter of choice within your market.
