How do we thrive in a competitive recruiting world? What is the way to differentiate in 2020 and beyond?

Here is the tip.

It is what technology cannot do that our clients will continue to pay for.

Don’t get me wrong. Technology is reshaping our business and having leading-edge technology is crucial, in as much as it allows your consultants to compete on an even playing field and gives them the tools to give clients and talent what they really want.

And yes, it’s a given you will work with urgency, and your fees will be considered ‘value’.

But if all you have got is ‘fast and cheap’ you are history.

Technology will not destroy our industry. At least not all of it – and definitely not the part we want!

And here is why. Finding a job or recruiting a new staff member is not a commodity purchase.

This is important because it means that the real value provided by quality recruiters will still have a market. That is;

Evaluating, persuading, assessing, negotiating, advising, consulting, influencing and acting as an advocate for employers and candidates will still have tremendous value. In fact, increasing value.

It is on these competencies that we need to compete.

But it’s also more than interpersonal recruiting skills (which by the way were largely lost during the decade-long hiring boom since the GFC). Talent management is where the real battle for recruitment dominance will be fought. Building talent communities and managing effective communications channels with those communities is where the holy grail lies.

Candidates are no longer people who ‘apply for jobs’. Candidates are anyone who has the skills our clients want to hire. And they all ‘active’. Just at different stages in the ‘job-change cycle’.

And we will need to compete in other ways too. Customers will increasingly call the tune. And by customers, I mean candidates as well as clients. More so actually. The customer experience will build or tarnish your brand like never before. That’s where we have to compete. How we deal with customers and manage their expectations and experience with us.

Lack of personal interaction is doing our industry no favours. In fact, I consider it one of our deepest flaws. Many recruiters use technology to avoid connecting personally with talent, when in fact the real advantage of technology is to get much closer to many more quality candidates.

So social media and technology generally is a threat to you only if you fail to recognise this fact…

… there will continue to be a market for tailored, personalised, high-quality business solutions based on an advisory, consultative model, where access to talent is the differentiator.

Don’t be sucked into competing on the basis of who can commoditise what we do the best.

Don’t play the low margin, process game.

As your competitors claim, “we are bigger, have cooler technology and therefore we can do it faster and cheaper” or technology-driven platforms push to cut out recruiters altogether, your premise for doing business is…

“I can solve your problem because I understand your need and I know where the talent live”

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