The top 3 mistakes recruitment leaders make on value
…and how you can avoid them
On yesterday’s LinkedIn Live with Ben Browning we talked about the top 3 mistakes recruitment leaders make on value.
In case you missed the session, here are those mistakes… and what you can do to avoid them.
1. Believing all recruiters are the same
I’m amazed how many recruitment leaders believe they don’t have a USP. Your clients might have a vested interest in telling us that “you’re all the same”, but there are so many ways recruiters can differentiate themselves from their competitors.
If you make this mistake, you end up getting paid the same as everyone else. And because your clients believe that anyone can do the job, they give their vacancies to everyone.
One exercise I do with recruitment leaders is to break down the 7 steps of the recruitment process. Every step has 5-10 ways you can deliver that part of the process. Your answers to those 50 or so questions will never be the same as your competitors’, which gives you the beginnings of how you can stand out from the crowd.
2. Not walking away from bad business
Easy to say, hard to do. But if you get stuck with clients who demand low rates and give you little in return, your whole business suffers.
Rather than make decisions in the heat of the moment, make sure you’ve taken some time out to define what your limits are and what ‘good’ business looks like.
Then when you’re in front of a client with a deal on the line, you have a clear idea of whether the deal is the right one for you.
3. Giving consultants autonomy to find the right answers
I love the amount of autonomy you get as a recruitment consultant. You often hear people talking about running their desks as if they’re running a business, and there are some great outcomes from this approach.
However, consultants should not be told to ‘make a call’ on the value they create, or the price they negotiate with a client.
So often consultants are required to fill out an expenses claim for every £10 they spend on client travel, and yet they have the leeway to slash thousands of pounds off the bottom line when they’re agreeing fees with that same client.
Put processes, boundaries and frameworks in place to guide your consultants to the right answers. They should still have the autonomy to adapt their approach in the moment, but within the parameters you set for them.
During the LinkedIn Live, Ben and I also talked about how I’m expanding my Added Value emails to offer more value to recruitment leaders.
I’ll share more details later this week, but it’s worth mentioning now that I’ll be sending an exclusive link to Added Value readers who want to get the ‘early adopter’ discounted rate. This is a lifetime rate and limited to the first 21 people who sign up.
If you want the exclusive link, simply reply to this email with ‘Early adopter’ in the subject line and you’ll get the link when it goes live.
Jon
P.S. I chatted to a recruitment leader after the event about how so many people offer special discounts and incentives to get in early.
With my pricing hat on, these can be effective tactics… but need to be genuine discounts. If you see an offer end one day and then another one start the next day - sometimes at an even bigger discount - then you lose both trust and value.
With that in mind, my ‘early adopter’ discount is one of a kind. I want to thank the first 21 recruitment leaders who join the Added Value community by giving them something that is unique.
There may be other discounts in the future - I’m sure I’ll want to play around with a few pricing tactics as things develop - but nothing will be as valuable as my first offer.
So if you want the exclusive link, simply reply to this email with ‘Early adopter’ in the subject line and you’ll get the link when it goes live.