In a competitive and niche market like recruitment, scaling a successful recruitment business is a tough call.
With changing industry trends and evolving recruitment technology, there are a lot of things to consider when scaling your recruitment business.
Once you have established a business that brings a steady revenue stream, it’s time to take it to the next level.
So how do you know if it’s the right time to scale your recruitment business? More importantly, how can you scale your business in line with your revenue?
To help you with your scaling efforts, we’ve created this guide with some best practices.
In this guide, we’ll cover the following:
- Expanding your team
- Recruitment marketing
- Use of technology
- Diversifying into new markets
Scaling a Recruitment Business: When’s the Right Time?
Recruitment entrepreneurs often make the common mistake of trying to scale and grow too quickly or too soon.
Before scaling your efforts, ensure that your business has demonstrated stable success for at least a good 2-3 years and passed mvp launch successfully.
Some good indicators of stable success for a recruitment business are strong talent retention and predictable revenue that is not dependent on a few clients.
Remember that scaling a recruitment business is as much about your ambition and mindset as it is about a successful product launch and financial backup.
It’s important to reflect on whether you have the leadership skills required to attract and develop the right talent for your business.
Are your goals and values clearly defined? Most importantly, are you prepared for the responsibilities of a larger workforce?
As long as you have the financial numbers to back up your ambition, it’s the best time to consider scaling your recruitment business into something you can be proud of!
To help you get started, here is a checklist of the best practices to follow.
1. Scale Your Team
Scaling your team is one of the fastest ways to grow your business and increase revenue.
More recruiters at desks mean more closed deals by clients. The most important thing to consider here is hiring the right people.
As you scale your recruitment business, you want the right people who share a common vision for your business. Conversely, the wrong workers can be a costly mistake that can stump your recruitment business growth.
Ensure you only hire people who will add genuine value to your business and help it scale rather than focusing on attaining a certain headcount number.
Otherwise, you’ll have low productivity per head, wastage of resources, and diluted company culture.
Ultimately, scaling skills will help your business raise revenue at a lower cost than just adding loads of agency recruiters.
As long as this is well maintained and you keep track of important metrics to ensure what works, you can quickly scale your hiring efforts.
Always remember that who you hire is how clients and candidates will perceive your recruitment business!
2. A Solid Recruitment Marketing Strategy
When it comes to the recruitment and staffing industry, marketing is the last thing that might come to your mind.
Your scaling efforts will rely on a well-planned marketing strategy for any successful recruitment business. Without a solid recruitment marketing strategy, all other efforts and investments will go in vain.
As businesses are going digital and internet searches become a valuable source, a stellar marketing plan should be a top priority for scaling your business.
86% of HR professionals say recruitment is becoming more like marketing. No doubt about it!
Of course, an effective marketing strategy requires an active online presence so your business can be discoverable to potential clients and candidates. But with so much content floating all over the internet, it can be confusing trying to figure out where you want to dip your toes.
If you’re still unsure about where to start, here is where you can start expanding your recruitment marketing efforts:
- Social Media: Using platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter are the best ways to engage with potential clients and represent your business. An active social media presence also builds trust and credibility with clients and candidates. Pay attention to the tone of your posts and what your business stands for. Think about how you want to be perceived and be consistent with it.
- Email marketing campaigns: Email marketing is excellent for lead generation, but recruiters should use it with strategic planning as you don’t want to spam your audience. Try creating multiple mailing lists to separate candidates and clients, or divide your audience by industry verticals.
- Paid media: Running ad campaigns on LinkedIn can boost your business visibility among targetted audiences, helping you generate leads, drive traffic and build awareness for your business. Also, advertising on Google helps make your business reach a wider pool of clients and candidates when searching for specific keywords to drive relevant website traffic. By utilizing ROAS (return on ad spend), you will know the result of your ad campaigns.
Most importantly, don’t forget to measure and manage your marketing. Or else, you’ll end up wasting resources.
Intelligent marketing is a job that requires proper planning and data analysis to see desired results.
3. Invest in the Right #RecTech
Investing in the right recruitment technology is the key to driving your scaling efforts.
Technology has become the backbone of almost the entire recruitment process. Not investing in or upgrading your technology will only lead to more inefficiencies and loss of time and valuable resources.
Bear in mind that the technology you decide to invest in should be of actual use for your team.
Don’t just splurge on the latest tools just because it exists.
Identify what your business needs to scale and which processes require a boost, then consider investing in the right #rectech.
There is a wide range of tools you can invest in, spanning from automated Applicant Tracking Systems, CRM tools, and AI-powered candidate sourcing extensions to automated job-posting tools.
Many recruitment businesses waste a massive amount of time on outdated methods like spreadsheets and internally developed processes that are far less effective than cutting-edge recruitment technology solutions.
If you’re looking to build a reliable recruitment tech stack, check out this blog, where we cover all the major tech needs for a successful recruitment business.
The sooner you invest in the right technology, the quicker you can scale your business and strengthen your profitability margins.
4. Diversify Your Client Pool & Services
When establishing your recruitment business, it’s best to identify a niche that you have expertise in. On the other hand, as you scale your business, it’s important to consider expanding your horizons.
The positive thing about diversifying into new markets is that if one aspect of your service suffers from market fluctuations, you can rely on other services for a stable revenue stream.
This makes your recruitment business much more valuable in the eyes of clients, and it will give you security from inevitable economic fluctuations.
However, diversifying doesn’t have to mean branching out into new markets. For example, if you’ve built your business on providing a niche service, you don’t have to broaden in that area to scale.
There are various avenues of diversification, including:
- Geographical Area: If you’re currently only serving a limited geographical area, consider other areas that you could tap into that offer business potential. Fortunately, expanding to other geographical areas is not a challenge with remote work on the rise.
- Permanent & Contract Solutions: Offering both contract and permanent recruitment solutions is ideal for achieving recruitment agency growth. It enables you to gain more business revenue from existing clients, easing the pressure on new business development. Contract revenue creates the ability to have predictable future revenues and income, which makes the business goals easier to achieve for future growth.
- Client Services: Get more from your client pool by expanding your services. You can consider Recruitment-as-a-Service (RaaS), Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO), talent acquisition optimization, training services, employer branding, or interview coaching.
By focusing on these criteria, you can effectively plan to scale your recruitment business for high business growth.
Need to Scale Your Recruiting Firm & Make 7-8 Figures?
Recruiters and recruiting firm owners are overwhelmed, and frustrated with their clients and candidates. Adding on to it is– unpredictable revenue!
Most training programs simply make agency recruiters overwhelmed with marginal results. It’s possible to go from an annoying vendor to a trusted adviser, from rollercoaster revenue to predictable income, and from being totally overwhelmed to having clarity.
It’s possible to build a recruiting business that runs without you being physically present all the time.
Mike Gionta, an ex-recruiting firm owner with 32 years of experience in running recruiting firms, and his team of coaches will show you how to:
- Sell exclusive deposit-based searches
- Win ideal clients
- Hire raw talent that produces immediately and scales your team
- Produce steady income in less than ten minutes a week
- Build a saleable asset when you’re ready to sell your firm
- Grow an executive recruiting business
Ready to Transform Your Recruiting Business into a Revenue-generating Machine?
The RecruiterU is your go-to source for the tools and training you need to generate predictable profits, reliable growth, and true business freedom.
Click here to schedule your complimentary scale strategy session with one of RecruiterU’s recruiting firm scale specialists.
