Staffing companies have been handed bushels of lemons throughout 2020. One of the biggest lemons in those bushels is a significant drop in the number of job orders coming in. Lack of orders is cause for stress, but even though it seems bleak, some lemonade can be made right now.
If you are experiencing a drop in orders, now is a great time to build your pipeline of talent.
Historic unemployment is tragic, but there is exceptional talent in the job market right now. Many people out of work now had been happily employed and off the market for years. While job orders are slow, take time to get these high-performers into your pipeline so you can become a valuable resource to your clients.
What Is the Best Way to Find This Talent?
The talent market is crowded right now, so you want to take the most efficient route to the best and brightest. The most effective way to achieve this is to invest in recruitment marketing.
First, it’s important to know the difference between recruitment marketing and recruiting. “Recruiting” is the effort you put into keeping an applicant engaged and to accept an offer. The majority of recruiting takes place after you receive an application.
Recruitment marketing is all of the activities it takes to get someone complete an application. And that’s where staffing companies should be putting their extra energy and resources right now.
By focusing on recruitment marketing, you’ll have a healthy pipeline of talent for the job orders that do come in and when your niche is ready to re-open the hiring flood gates, you’ll be better prepared to fill those jobs quickly and accurately.
Why Recruitment Marketing Now?
You may be thinking to yourself, “candidates don’t pay my bills.” But if you’re too focused on trying to get new orders that just aren’t there, you won’t be ready when the turnaround happens. You’ll be left with a shallow pool of talent while your competitors fill your clients’ orders.
There are a lot of reasons to focus on recruitment marketing right now, including:
- Employer branding: You have an employer brand already – it’s everything former and current employees are saying about your staffing company. Use your website and social media to get control of your brand and if necessary, invest in reputation management.
- Strengthen your talent pool: The more marketing you do to get people interested in your staffing company and your jobs, the broader your database will become. You’ll have a much more diverse set of people to work with when clients need an order filled quickly.
- Help your clients fill difficult roles: The more effort you put into recruitment marketing, the faster you can help a client fill a challenging role. Whether that person comes from your growing database or a new connection, the more you get in front of talent the more value you bring to the table for hard-to-fill orders.
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Recruitment Marketing Helps You Add Value
New orders might not be coming in, but you have a full book of clients who could be dealing with in-house talent struggles. With so many exceptional candidates looking for jobs, now is a great time for your clients to top-grade talent.
Clients can use this time to evaluate performance and replace poor performers with A-level contributors. Once you find a great candidate and build a connection with them, think about your client base. Is there a company that could be a perfect fit for this candidate? Even if that client doesn’t have any active openings with you, you can position yourself as being able to deliver this ideal candidate immediately, helping them boost performance, productivity and long-term retention.
Turn Your Lemons into Lemonade
A lack of job orders is never ideal, but you can actually leverage a deep talent pool to your advantage when you invest in recruitment marketing. When you have exceptional people in your pipeline, you can think outside the box for ways to add value to your clients and you will be ready to move quickly when your clients are back in full swing.
