How to get new business in recruitment

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Recruitment, in its nature, is a competitive industry and marketplace, but you’ve made the huge first step of starting your own recruitment business. You’ve taken control of your future and are becoming your own boss, and now you’re looking to start out as successfully as you can.

As a new business, no doubt the first thought in your mind is how to attract new clients and candidates to your recruitment agency. In which case, you need recruitment lead generation tips from professionals who provide recruitment business training and mentor recruitment agencies in their start-up and scale-up plans, and you’ve come to the right place.

 

How do you generate new leads and new business in recruitment?

Recruitment is a people’s business. You need communication skills, people skills, and a sound business mind to master the candidate and client acquisition process. There are to maintain approaches to how to generate leads in recruitment:

 

  • The soft approach uses more branded, organic, holistic marketing of your business. This involves creating a brand persona that is visible online, and at other crucial touchpoints, that will stay in people’s minds. Through natural osmosis, they may remember your brand. Popular mediums for this include organic social media marketing and a well-optimised website.

 

  • The direct approach is the more traditional approach you may be familiar with. It involves a lot of direct marketing and communication, such as cold calling and networking, actively reaching out to businesses and candidates to build a base in both camps. Events are great for networking, as are online portals and social media platforms like LinkedIn.

 

  • Combine both to take a proactive approach to finding new business in recruitment. If you’re not sure how to go about setting up or getting started with either avenue, then reach out and join our recruitment mentor package with secure business investment.

 

How to get new business in recruitment using content marketing

Marketing your new recruitment business is incredibly important. Your potential clients and candidates will encounter your website or social media whether they stumble upon them organically or check them out after being directly approached by you or a member of your team. Content marketing and utilising free online channels available to you has revolutionised the way we learn about businesses, and its how many modern agencies of all sizes have learnt how to get new business in recruitment.

 

Why content marketing for start-up recruitment agencies is so important

  • Organically build your brand representation to help your business appear as legitimate and formidable as it is. A lot can be gleaned from a client or candidate’s first interaction with your business and first impressions count double in recruitment.

 

  • Communicate why your brand is different through infographics, videos, posts, polls, and opinion pieces. Potential client and candidates, and even recruitment business investors, want to know that your business, boiled down into your brand, is going to treat them well.

 

  • Building your digital footprint through content marketing for recruitment agencies helps to build on your organic search engine marketing and social media presence. The more (useful) content you generate regularly, the more of a reputation you can build.

 

  • Play with your tone of voice for a personal touch. Think how the content you put on your Facebook Business page, which may be both client- and candidate-facing, will differ from using your own personal LinkedIn page and even your business’ LinkedIn page. This will allow to make your brand three-dimensional.

 

It’s estimated that around only 20% of people are looking for a job at any given time, so it’s important to continue to market your services online as new client opportunities become available.

 

Build a brand, and then build a website

Your branding will be used across all digital and print platforms and become synonymous with your business, so it needs to communicate to your clients and candidates that you are reliable.

 

Building a brand and logo

For your logo, consider professional design, colours, fonts, and what it says about your business. For your tag line, you need something concise that still resonates. Consider your brand’s tone of voice – are you going to address candidates with a colloquial tone, or communicate more formally?

 

Building a website

Once you’ve finalised your brand-specifics, it’s time to put them into a website. Your website is an incredibly useful tool for lead generation and brand representation, so as a new recruitment business you need to make sure you’re represented positively online. Build multiple pages with different content on each – information that your clients and candidates will find useful whilst also selling yourself and your services – to best communicate your value. By partnering with us as investors, we will assist you in building your website as part of our recruitment business training.

Regardless of whether you directly approach clients at an event or conference, or they find you organically online, they will look at your website to follow-up any interactions. Make sure you’re proud of what they’ll be seeing, and that it matches up with their experience of you.

 

Social media and recruitment lead generation tips

Social media platforms are effective tools to utilise holistic brand marketing and support your brand representation. You may not receive many leads through your Facebook Business page, but it’s there to support your brand in its other avenues as a touch point. What will form, and no doubt has formed, the backbone of your recruitment strategy, is LinkedIn.

According to a recent survey, 80% of recruiters find social media ‘essential’ or ‘fairly important’ to their recruitment strategy, so its hugely important to utilise it effectively.

 

Using LinkedIn as a professional recruiter

As far as recruitment lead generation tips go, utilising LinkedIn should be second nature. Your LinkedIn Recruiter account is probably your best friend right now. It gives you access to the entire internal network of actively seeking and passive candidates, advanced search filters, and up to 1,000 candidate profiles in search results. Not to mention, it also allows you to post job ads. There are different tiers to the LinkedIn Recruiter accounts, so depending on the size of your business you can decide which is best for you.

Our team of recruitment business investors will happily aid you with the set-up and utilisation of your LinkedIn Recruiter account, including helping you secure your LinkedIn Recruiter License, as part of our investment support package.

 

Create content that means something…

The content mill that is social media is always churning, but don’t feel the pressure to pump out content for the sake of content. You’ll dilute your brand message and any pertinent content you do put out will be lost in a sea of your previous posts. Dedicate time to content that will mean something to your clients and candidates so they’re more likely to interact with it, share it, and potentially contact you off the back of it. As part of our investment services, we mentor recruitment agencies in their marketing strategy and channels to aid you.

 

… But interact with others’ content too

This is particularly useful for LinkedIn, where networking is part of the experience. A great way of conducting recruitment lead generation is to interact with others’ content as well as posting your own. Leaving comments on insightful pieces, or respectfully offering a different perspective or your own experience, on another’s post or article enters you into a conversation with likeminded recruitment professionals.

This can also help with professional candidates too. If you’re recruiting at Board and Leadership level, for example, then these kinds of interactions will help bolster their perception of you as well as your recruiter business network.

 

Building relationships in recruitment

Recruitment is all about building relationships and maintaining them. Of course, you need to deliver on your services and make sure the solutions you find your clients and candidates are exceptional, but when you’re taking on new candidates you need to build the relationship first.

One of the most useful recruitment lead generation tips we could give you is this: don’t treat your candidates as commodities, and don’t treat your clients as a source of income. You need to understand the people behind the business let alone the business itself, what drives them, what their ambitions are, what makes them tick. The minute you understand a client or candidate’s perspective, you’ve gained valuable insight into them as people which will improve your relationship with them tenfold.

Know what your clients and candidates expect from you and deliver it efficiently and effectively.

As part of our Start-Up investment package, we successfully mentor recruitment agencies in talent acquisition and relationship building as part of our professional services.

 

Becoming a preferred supplier in recruitment

This kind of relationship building will help you on your way to becoming a lucrative preferred supplier. This is a very influential position to be in, as you’re essentially on retainer for one or even multiple clients, providing you with a steady source of work and income. This wouldn’t be possible without the ever-important relationship building and maintenance.

 

How to become invaluable to your clients and candidates

Follow these simple recruitment lead generation tips to become essential to your clients:

  • Follow-up after each interaction by email to summarise what you discussed, set their expectations, and let them know when they can expect to hear from you again. This kind of double-tap keeps clients and candidates involved in the process and reiterates your intentions of working with them.

 

  • Make them feel listened to. Treat each client and candidate as the individual they are, with individual business set-ups and ambitions and goals. Keep detailed notes on your conversations with them so you can refer to them during your next touchpoint. Asking after their child’s birthday or how their holiday was can pay dividends in the future.

 

  • Present your clients with quality candidates and leads, your clients with job opportunities hyper-relevant to them, and deliver on your services. They have chosen you for a reason, and it is up to you to ensure they aren’t let down.

 

Enrol in recruitment business training

Recruitment Entrepreneur are industry-leading recruitment mentors and investors for fledgling businesses and agencies across the UK, helping businesses to not only find their feet, but flourish. Start-up recruitment agencies are entering into a competitive arena, regardless of the sector or the demographic you’re targeting, so there is no shame in seeking recruitment business training to ensure you launch successfully and maintain momentum.

As part of our investment partnerships, our recruitment mentors will work alongside you and your partner(s) to build your marketing strategy, implement business support systems like accountancy, and help you with business registration and licensing amongst many other things. By partnering with us, we support you to be independent, but not alone.

 

How to get new business in recruitment is simple: build relationships, invest in getting to know your clients and candidates, and spend time streamlining your brand and marketing to reap client loyalty and all the rewards that accompanies this. We have partnered with many businesses, and our extensive portfolio speaks for itself. We’ll help you launch your business successfully. Contact us today to find out about our investment opportunities and building your recruitment business.