The last year has taught everyone a lesson in flexibility. Although the future looks bright now, it’s impossible to predict what else could be on the way.
Being able to quickly respond to changes is an important part of future-proofing your recruitment business.
Are you prepared to rapidly scale up your advertising post-pandemic as the economy and recruitment market recovers? Would you be tied into the wrong contract if there was another pandemic-level industry change on the way in the future?
In this growth blueprint, we’ll show you how more flexible advertising can help to prepare your recruitment agency to grow, whatever the future holds.
Flexibility matters more than ever
For many years, the majority of recruitment agencies have been renewing the same job board contracts every year without much changing. They’ll buy a package of pre-allocated advertising inventory (things like job posting credits, licenses for a CV database etc...) and keep renewing a similar deal year after year.
But the reality is, that for many agencies this strategy is getting harder to justify. The recruitment industry took a big hit in 2020, leaving recruiters with fewer vacancies to promote meaning a lot of what they had pre-purchased ended being wasted.
In the future, any number of factors could change which might impact your future recruitment operations - not just big things like global pandemics, but smaller changes like seasonality, the economic climate, changes to job board performance or trends in candidate behaviours.
That’s why it’s essential to make sure you’re building in as much adaptability as possible into every part of your growth strategy. Without it, these changes could catch you out. They could lead to wasting your budget on advertising that you don’t use.
How to use a more flexible approach
There are several ways that you can take advantage of greater flexibility in your advertising approach. Here are some suggestions from our media buying specialists at Talent Nexus:
Diversify the number of advertising channels you’re advertising on
How sure are you that you’re advertising in all the right places? There are so many different job boards out there and you may only be scratching the surface. Advertising in more places means that you’re able to tap into new sources of candidates.
It also means that if one channel starts working less effectively for you than before (for example, if a job board suddenly starts struggling to deliver applications to your jobs), you have a range of alternatives ready to go. Your recruitment operations are safer - it wouldn’t suddenly hit your ability to make placements and cause big problems for you and your clients.
Incorporating pay for performance into your marketing mix
With pay for performance job board advertising, you pay only for the clicks or applications that you receive. You can scale up or down your spending right away, which means that you can switch on or off advertising as soon as anything changes.
You can access this pay for performance approach on a growing list of job boards operating in the UK and Europe. Job sites like Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Adzuna and Talent.com, as well as traditional job boards like CVLibrary and Reed.co.uk.
Imagine the difference that would make.
See what more you could get, even if you’re tied in
If you’re already committed to a contract, there are still things you can do to build in more flexibility to your deal.
We recently shared some of the options that are available to change existing contracts here: www.talentnexus.com/blog/stuck-in-the-wrong-job-board-contract-heres-what-to-do
Use flexibility to unlock recruitment growth
With the ability to adapt your advertising more easily, you’ll be better prepared to seize the post-pandemic growth opportunities which are on the way.
The recruitment industry is already experiencing a rapid post-pandemic recovery, and it’s likely that further economic recovery over the next few years will stimulate further growth too. If there’s a surge in demand for recruitment services as businesses need to rapidly expand their teams, you’ll be able to scale up your advertising and access the candidates you need right away.
That means providing a better service for your clients, being quicker to make placements, and the opportunity to race ahead of other recruitment agency competitors.
And it’s not just growth. This approach also means being leaner, and better able to respond to downturns too.
Apply this blueprint and grow your recruitment agency
Book a walkthrough of these growth blueprint techniques with our recruitment advertising specialists to see how you could apply a more flexible approach to your agency’s job board advertising.
If you manage or oversee job board advertising contracts, this growth opportunity is too good to miss.