Don’t follow the scale – go after niche, Blair advises recruitment start-ups
Fledgling recruitment firms should specialise in roles that are not “economically viable” to be sourced in-house, according to Kevin Blair, global talent acquisition leader at international IT firm Cisco.
Speaking at human capital management specialist ADP’s fourth annual HR Question Time debate at Century House in London’s West End yesterday, Blair urged recruitment start-ups to position themselves differently due to the technological changes sweeping through the sector making recruitment easier, with the likes of Google joining LinkedIn and Facebook in the recruitment tech space.
“Google announced last week that Google Jobs is coming. When Google goes into anything, they change the market. There is no doubt. It’s creating this real globalisation and breaking down the barriers in which you identify and attract.”
Consequently, Blair called on recruiters seeking to set out on their own to position themselves differently, as even smaller firms these days have their own internal recruitment function and target the 20% of hires his organisation has real difficulty sourcing, rather than the 80% his department focuses on.
“Where we do go out is where it is no longer economically viable, where we will never reutilise that pipeline in the next 10 years. It is a very, very niche role, very specific to a location.
“Don’t go after the scale because that’s what I’m doing. You don’t need to compete with me for a certain job because we have such a strong fulfillment engine around that piece.”
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