"My market is different"
Another trap that keeps you working for free
If you’ve listened to Sean Anderson’s recent podcasts you’ll have heard a couple of recruitment owners talking about their retained approach.
What they do could completely change the way you run your business.
One recruits truckers in Australia. The other is based in Glasgow and recruits roofers.
Let me repeat that again.
One recruits truckers, the other roofers.
In both agencies, they’ve escaped the trap of working for free in hope that a client chooses to hire their candidates.
In my 10+ years of helping recruiters to win retainers, I’ve regularly been told by consultants that “my market is different”, and “my clients just won’t pay me up front”.
I hope you take inspiration from the trucking and roofing agencies, and see that every market has the potential for you to stop working for free.
Yes, you need to know what your clients value. And yes, you need to be able to build trust with those clients, by showing your knowledge of the market and your ability to guide them through the challenges of recruiting.
But please take confidence in examples of recruiters around the world, in every type of industry, breaking away from the no-win-no-fee model and building successful agencies.
If you want to talk about how you can stop working for free in your market, simply reply to this email and I’ll talk you through the next step.
Jon
P.S. The mystique around executive search firms has a lot to answer for when it comes to recruiters working for free.
For years, many of us assumed there was some magical reason that search firms could justify their fees and when they invoiced them.
More recently we’ve started to pull back the curtain on executive pricing models, and seen that upfront payments aren’t something exclusive to high-end firms.
If you want to talk about how you can stop working for free in your market, simply reply to this email and I’ll talk you through the next step.