Recruitment is a hyper-competitive industry. With a record number of businesses actively trading and entering the market each year, business owners have to continually evolve their growth strategies.

Rapid digitalisation is transforming the industry, making it vitally important that recruitment businesses remain on trend to provide the best service to candidates and clients.

In this ever changing business landscape, combining tried and tested approaches with new techniques makes the difference between growing or stagnating.

We spoke to recruitment business owners about the strategies they’re pursuing to grow their business. Here’s what they had to say…

 

Accelerating our growth curve.
Mark Hodges, Founder and Director, Masentó Group

  • Established: 2017
  • Sector: Data & Analytics and SAP
  • 12 month target: reach 100 contractors
  • Target: increase headcount, penetrate SAP and D&A markets in mainland Europe and open a new division under Masentó Group

Since we launched in 2017, our growth has been stratospheric. We’ve added a new hire to the business nearly every ten weeks and grown our total invoice value by 678%.

With the global data and analytics market expected to reach $260 billion in 2022* we’re forecasting continued growth in each of our regions (UK, DACH, BENELUX & Scandinavia), targeting 100 contractors working across our client base by March 2020.

To maximise this opportunity and accelerate our growth curve, we’ve set out plans to nearly double our headcount in London by March 2020.

Key elements that have enabled us to grow:

  • Market specialisation. Our DNA is Data & Analytics. We strive to be the leading expert in this market and plan to continue expanding into data specialisms.
  • Hiring the right people. We recognise the importance of cultural fit. Incubating our European operations from London means we need to have the right people running our recruitment processes.
  • Use our experience. With a combined 50 years experience across the directors, we understand what works and what doesn’t. This means we can ‘cookie cutter’ certain processes quickly, giving us time to think about the bigger picture.
  • Don’t micro-manage. The world has changed and the recruitment industry has moved on from when we started! We encourage the team to attend events, work to objectives and meet as many customers as possible. Each director is on hand to support and advise.
  • Invest in our infrastructure. We use the best in class tech to develop and attract the best talent. Strong cash flow position enables us to reinvest in team to grow quicker.

*International Data Corp (IDC)

Masento Group

To discuss hiring, job enquiries or to find out more about career opportunities, visit Masentó Group

 

Relationships are your most valuable asset. As is respect.
Jo Blayney, Founder and Managing Director, Blayney Financial

  • Established: 2003
  • Sector: Financial Services
  • 12 month target: continue to build a sustainable business that delivers the best possible service and value for our clients, whilst also delivering the best work life balance

Since 2003, we’ve placed hundreds of contractors into financial services business throughout the UK and abroad. As 90% of our business is currently contractors, we need to be incredibly good at tracking market movements and predicting spikes in demand.

To ensure we’re ready, we monitor regulation in our industry, and plan our talent acquisition and client strategies accordingly. In our field we have seen regulator decisions lead to the hiring of 1000 contractors in one particular area for just one bank. These changes cause ripples of hires throughout the market. We have to ensure our network is ready to help our clients respond to this. When an experienced hire is made, they have to come from somewhere!

Key elements that have enabled us to grow:

  • Prepare for peaks and troughs. Any business owner will recognise the need to juggle your time. Blend it evenly or your results will be equally lumpy. Plan and prepare for the next sudden influx of demand and have plans for troughs so they’re not too depressing!
  • Outsource smartly. The secret to running a small business is remembering that “cash is king”. For all of micro and macro threats facing your business, the one thing that will put you under is cash flow. We outsource smartly to a select group of specialists (accountancy, finance, back-office, candidate acquisition). This keeps our cash flow stable and gives us option to ramp up smartly to supply and meet demand and keep our clients happy.
  • Maintain a captive audience. Building newsletters and thought-leadership is a great strategy to build up a dedicated following from group of people with a skillset that you forecast to be in demand.
  • Track regulatory change. Keep an eye on what’s happening. Traditionally, a lot of firms don’t want to carry a lot of perm staff that work on these types of projects. It wouldn’t make sense to. So they augment their team with externally sourced subject matter experts. From us.
  • Get tighter. Clients are much more demanding than they used to be in just about every respect! As the world has become more digital, so too has the hiring process. However, the basics of recruitment haven’t changed. Clear communication is key. Understand your clients needs, wants, hopes and manage their expectations with a realistic solution that you know you can deliver well. That will earn more respect.

Blayney Financial

To discuss hiring or job enquiries, please contact the team at Blayney Financial