Recruitment Matters International October Newsletter

Only a couple of months left now in 2021. Of course, there is still time to achieve a lot in the coming weeks before we pause to enjoy our festive break. Based on this week's Budget bullish announcements - including Public Sector pay rises, the National Living Wage increase of 6.6% and £1.6 billion of skills investment - there should be a sufficiently buoyany economy to keep us all busy for the foreseeable future, too.

In this month's newsletter:-

Are you a small business owner? Ideal Marketing Company MD Jess Shailes discusses the importance of marketing for small businesses and reviews some of the activities you may consider.

In Warren's article, he highlights the benefits of understanding and evaluating the (potential) lifetime and, therefore, value of your clients.

I've reprised a previous article on the characteristics of great recruiters. Do you think they have changed in recent times?

JMW's Simon Bloch and Nathan Pavitt look at the Government's plans to introduce a new statutory entitlement to a carer's leave as a Day One right for employees. The Government launched the consultation due to a recognition that unpaid carers faced particular challenges in balancing work and caring responsibilities.

Lastly for news of our full range of recruitment services, including upcoming training courses, as ever, check out our  "What's new?" feature towards the end of this newsletter. A quick note that we still have places available for Tuesday's Two Introduction To Recruitment induction course for new recruiters.


Why small businesses need marketing
 
                                              

Contributor: Ideal Marketing Company MD Jess Shailes discusses the importance of marketing for small businesses.

Whether your business is flying high, or you are struggling to find your feet in a crowded market, running a small business takes time, energy and commitment. When tackling the never-ending to-do list, marketing is often an area that never seems to get addressed, due to the more pressing demands that crop up day to day. And as a small business owner, you may be asking yourself whether marketing is even worth doing for a business like yours and, if it is, what should you be concentrating your efforts on?
  
The truth is the vast majority of small businesses can benefit from a well-researched and planned marketing strategy. Here’s why…  
 
What is marketing? 
Marketing is all about getting your product seen, engaged with and ultimately purchased by your potential customers.  For start-ups, it’s about getting your name out there and gaining customers, and for longer-established companies, it’s about building on what you’ve already achieved to sustain your success and grow your business.  
 
Rather than a quick fix to boost sales, marketing should always be seen as a long-term strategy to support and grow your business; an activity that will constantly feed and nourish your business as opposed to being a one-off intervention that you hope will fix a problem. Whether that investment involves your time or paying an agency or freelancer, marketing should be an integral component of your activities as a business.  
 
One common question is what type of marketing is it best to concentrate on? The answer to this question is unique to you and will be dictated by the type of business you are as well as your size, but your marketing strategy may include the following:  

• SEO 
• Digital advertising 
• PR  
• Website  
• Copywriting  
• Social media  
• Email marketing  
• Blogging  
• Vlogging  
• Podcasts  
• Direct mail  
• Public speaking opportunities  
• Entering (and winning!) awards  

• Research and implement the best marketing methods for you – this is where the expertise of an agency will come into its own.  

• Track your marketing with methods like Google Analytics, social media insights, dedicated phone numbers and email segmentation to see what’s working and what needs to be improved.  

Targeting
One advantage small businesses have over their larger competitors is that they really know their customers. For example, who is likely to know their clients better – the owner of a small boutique who chats to the loyal customers she serves every day, or the marketing director of a household name high street chain?
  
The specific, almost personal knowledge small businesses can obtain about their customers is gold dust when it comes to marketing to them. These days, most potential customers make their decisions based on more than just price, and the information they give you can be harnessed in your marketing activities to create customer personas to inform a targeted marketing strategy, based on the niche insights only you have the opportunity to uncover.  
 
Fun 
Like any aspect of running your business, a successful marketing strategy involves hard work and consistent effort. However, that doesn’t mean it can’t be interesting as well as rewarding. In addition to  the increase in profits marketing can bring, winning an award, seeing a news story about an event you’re running in the local paper or interacting with happy customers on social media is a great way to remind yourself what you stand for and how much you have achieved as a business. Very often, successful marketing is a public celebration of success.
  
Who should do your marketing? 
Whether you do your marketing in a hands-on way or outsource it to a freelancer or agency, as the person who knows your business best, you should always be the driving force behind it.
 
However, even if you have some of the skills to do marketing tasks yourself, you also need to have the time to do the work consistently – and as we know, spare time is an unfamiliar concept to most small business owners!
 
If you have a specific job in mind, such as SEO research and optimisation or social media posting, then working with a freelancer can be a great solution. The flexibility of using a freelancer can be particularly beneficial when budget concerns are important. However, that flexibility works both ways as in-demand freelancers may not always have the availability you need. 
 
For many small businesses, working with a marketing agency on a retainer basis works well. Again, this can be a specialist agency who will work with you on one area you have decided to focus on, or a full-service agency, whose wide range of expertise you can tap into as a remote marketing department.
  
Whichever size or style of agency you opt for, the key things to look for are a targeted strategy based on audience research and a commitment to regular reporting to prove what is working and to make changes where improvements are required or new needs for your business arise.

Contributor: Warren Kemp, CEO and Trainer, Recruitment Matters International. Warren is also a qualified Mental Health First Aid Instructor
 
How much attention should you give to your clients? How much effort should you put in to win and maintain a client? How much value do you need to add to optimise your return on investment?
 
The answer may well lie in the lifetime value of a client (LVC).
 
Let’s take a small firm with 5 staff in the department that you recruit for on an exclusive basis. Attrition rates of 20%. Your average client lasts three years. Average fee £5k. The LVC is 5 x 20% x 3 x £5k = £15k.
 
Another organisation has 100 staff with you being on a PSL of 5 and attrition rates of 20%. With a calculation of a 20% fill rate (1 in 5 chance) the LVC, on the surface, is 12 fees of £5k. That’s £60k over a three year period. I say "On the surface.” What if you won their hearts and minds and got exclusivity on their 20 jobs a year? What if you worked roles top to bottom, perm, contract & temp? Woooofty!! That makes a difference, eh?
 
So, how badly do you want your client? Add value and be all over them like a professional rash. And max out on the number of contacts in that client company or future client company. If you had 6 contacts, you could call everyone every 6 weeks but, as a result, be calling the 'client company' every week.
 
Food for thought? Get your pencil, pad and calculator out and stop calling clients with real potential every 2 -3 months for "a catch up call.” Add value and maximise your LVC.

What are the characteristics of great recruiters?

1. They ‘get’ people and have great emotional intelligence
2. They have a clear “WHY” (as in Simon Sinek’s ‘Start With Why’) – a clear reason for being a great recruiter
3. A constant hunger for learning and development
4. The ability to focus on the goal

• As a recruitment trainer, this is the kind of client I love to work with.  They have passion, they   are prepared to work hard, so simply redirecting their focus can yield really quick results

• These clients are great to work with too.  It can take a little longer to help people discover (or re-discover) their WHY, but once you make the breakthrough, great things tend to happen

• As a recruitment trainer, quite often these are the recruiters that never become clients.  Either they aren’t interested in training, or they aren’t prepared to change, so there is no point me working with them.  As a trainer, I need to know I can make a difference.  For me, it’s not all about the money.  My “WHY” is helping recruiters improve and grow. 

1. Recruitment is all about people – successful businesses are made up of successful and motivated people and, despite the increasing use of assistive technology and AI, people make business decisions for emotional reasons.  Tech doesn’t understand caution, fear, suspicion, passion, ambition, excitement, trust or loyalty.  Great recruiters do.

2. Recruitment is hard work.  It’s a vocation that usually requires you to work at least some evenings and weekends, and to deal with rejection on a regular basis. You may make some people’s dream jobs a reality, but you will also have to tell people that their dream job is not going to happen for them this time.  If you don’t have a strong motivator behind why you are doing what you are doing, it can be hard to stay positive.  That’s why so many people can’t cut it in recruitment and leave the industry – they didn’t have a strong enough reason to stay.

3. Our world is constantly changing. Without a passion for learning and keeping your skills and knowledge up to date, you will get left behind.  This is true for most careers, but in the world of recruitment you have to stay on top of developments that affect recruitment (legislation and compliance, equality and inclusion, sales and marketing, social media, employer branding, candidate experience, technology and communications, operational efficiency, labour market trends) but on top of that you need to stay abreast of all the key developments affecting your specialist market.  If you want to stay a trusted advisor to clients and candidates in your sector, you need to invest in becoming a true expert.

4. There is so much ‘white noise’ in our daily lives – digital and otherwise -  so successful recruiters need to be able to keep focus on their goals and avoid distraction.  A clear understanding of what they need to do to fulfil their “WHY” and consistently doing those things before doing anything else each and every day differentiates the best recruiters from those who ‘bump along the bottom’ year after year.