How to avoid working for free
And how to change when your industry won’t
If you want someone to analyse your placement data from the last three years, survey your consultants to understand their attitudes towards pitching and negotiation, review your marketing from a value perspective, and then present you with some recommendations on improving your pricing strategy, then I’m your man.
If you want me to do it for free, you’re out of luck.
If your client is looking for an experienced recruiter to review their job description, write an effective job ad, post the ad to various job boards, search on relevant databases, sell their job to the best candidates, organise interviews for selected candidates, have difficult conversations with good candidates who ‘aren’t quite right’, and manage the chosen candidate through to their first day on the job, then you’re probably the right person to do it.
And if your client asks you to do all that for free?
If you’re not sure of your answer, think of everything you pay good money for - tech, training, outsourced suppliers - to deliver everything the client is asking for.
Pricing in the recruitment industry is heavily weighted in favour of clients. In other words, you are expected to work for free a lot of the time.
Now if your business is heavily contingent - that is, doing most of your work for free - then I’m going to recommend you ignore what you read on LinkedIn.
Chances are, there is no magic switch.
No silver bullet.
But you didn’t need me to tell you that.
Like everything else you do to run your business, big change is hard to do. And when most of your clients expect you to work in a certain way, that change is even harder.
But not impossible.
If you want to make a big change, you need a strategy. You need direction. You need a plan, you need to work through that plan, and you need to bring your team with you.
Shifting your business away from the expectation of work-for-free is a hugely worthwhile objective. The treasure at the end of the rainbow is working fewer roles, better, for bigger reward.
If you can make the change yourself, go for it. If you want support on your journey, drop me a line and I’ll explain how I can get you there.
Jon
P.S. As I said in the opening lines, I don’t work for free. In fact, my fees are pretty expensive.
The recruitment leaders I work with are comfortable with that, because my fees reflect the value I add to their business.
Larger fees, better control over higher quality jobs, less working for free? It’s worth paying for.
Much like it’s worth paying a good recruiter to deliver a great service.
If you can make the change yourself, go for it. If you want support on your journey, drop me a line and I’ll explain how I can get you there.