And I mean really know your market. And is it really that important?
Let’s say you are a construction recruiter and you know that Quantity Surveyors are in high demand and short supply. In theory, if you get yourself a couple of candidates you will make a couple of placements. So you don’t need to know much more than that surely (and you will sell these guys to potential clients at a premium). Happy days.
In theory.
The difficult bit comes from getting exclusive candidates or you are putting the same person as four competitors and you now have a one in five chance of making a placement so you now need ten candidates to make the two placements you want. And as these guys are in short supply, finding ten willing to move is difficult and……. well you get the drift.
So you need to REALLY know your market to know which firms to approach the QS’s from – ones, not on the market, but ones about to hear an announcement that their firm has just lost two contracts and hasn’t won the last two pitches. And you knew that last week. Bingo!
So once you have invested blood, sweat and tears in being the best recruiter you can be – you now need to invest time, energy and effort in becoming the most market intelligent (recruiter) you can be.
Where are the hot spots, the soon to be cold spots? Which senior employee is about to go on a 6-month sabbatical leaving a ship rudderless (with staff open to an approach)? Which companies are applying for funding – and why – is it a glory or die situation? And so on……
Recruiting firms investing in research for existing recruiters to utilise will outfight the recruitment firm investing in more recruiters without the market intelligence to support them.
Today’s recruiter has all the tools to do the recruitment part at their fingertips. Having first mover advantage is the key to making money in ever changing and challenging times.
What if when it rained solidly for three weeks you had already bought up all the umbrellas in the area because you had been studying weather climates and their cyclical nature for the previous three years? You would be literally singing in the rain…. every cloud eh?
