“Now it’s impossible to be unique for more than about 30 minutes in the recruitment space,” said Alison Humphries of Recruitment Leadership, speaking at REC2021 earlier this week. “But what you can do is measurably and demonstrably do something better than your competitors and showing that you do it better. You need to be able to actually provide evidence of that specifically by accreditation or independent observation.

“Make sure you’re not just a ‘me too’ recruiter, who’s doing the same thing as everyone else.”

Humphries was one of three speakers discussing how to navigate different markets with confidence at the daylong Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) annual conference. She was joined on the panel by Sarah Thewlis, REC chair, Heather Salway of Jump Advisory and Graham Smith of Talent Technology Services.

Salway noted that “one of the really important things” for recruiters to understand now is “how much the market has changed, and how much that means they need to go and revisit their plan”.

She went on to say: “So there will be people running businesses and setting up and starting businesses who have only ever worked in a job-short market, and who don’t understand that the candidate-short market means they need to work in different ways, and they need to focus and centre their business around different things.”

A key challenge for growth at the moment, Salway said, is for business owners to “look at their plans, look at their strategy and the execution of it, and say, ‘Ok, what’s changed? What do I need to do differently to grow in the current market because what I was doing two years ago isn’t going to be appropriate anymore’.”

She added: “As human beings, we’re quite resistant to change. And we can sometimes struggle with that.”

One example might be reviewing the company’s commission structure to focus on “the right behaviours”, she said. “Are we really listening to what our clients and are candidates are saying about what’s important to them so that we can respond?”

Humphries warned that in spite of paying attention only to the basics of running a solid recruitment business – such as high productivity, visibility of where revenues are coming from, a range of clients, “good cash management and no divas” – business owners ignore other areas at their peril. Neglecting compliance or starving your recruitment business of investment could either prevent a sale of your business or at least reduce the multiples possible in a trade sale, she said.

Some recruitment business owners may think about selling their companies if another pandemic strikes, for instance, with a view that all is in order. However, a possible sale could evaporate during a due diligence process if the company has “significant liabilities” through neglecting compliance or evidence of failing to put money into it, Humphries said.

Compliance, Humphries said, is “a really important practice for winning new clients in the market, as well as removing liabilities” when owners eventually sell.

REC2021 was held on Tuesday 29 June.

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