This Week, In Recruiting - Issue 157

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Open Kitchen: Lessons from the Expo: 5 Trends for Recruitment Agencies

It's been a week since The Recruitment Agency Expo in Excel London.

It was a superb event and I was delighted to be there and play a small part in the proceedings. The greatest value though was listening and learning from all the people who attended and I wanted to share a few things from the conversations, demos and presentations over the two days which I think signify significant trends in the UK staffing agency scene.

1. Recruitment Agencies Are Innovating (Out of Necessity!)

Recruitment agencies hate change because what worked once has a habit of working again once 'the market turns'. However, 3 months into the new year has disabused any happy talk of the market magically 'bouncing back' to what we had in 2021/2022. We now know we're all in this for the long haul, especially in Europe - the lowest growth region on the planet - and even more especially in the UK, the lowest growth economy in the amongst the lowest growth region on the planet. Innovation has now become a necessity as we come to grips with the new reality of high interest rates, low growth, market wide cost cutting and general trepidation over the right sizing of functions and businesses.

Some innovative recruitment agencies attacking this uncertainty with positive intent

• Livero Group - Tech-enabled Optimisation. Rather than continuing to grind, this company actually stopped recruiting operations mid 2023 in order to audit and dissemble process, implement technology into key areas of challenge and secure huge efficiency gains in lead generation, meeting scheduling and candidate acquisition. Led by Neil Ray (pictured above), Livero Group turned around the second half of the year from close to zero billings to come close to yearly target in 6 months of billings, setting itself up now for a barnstorming 2024.
• Elias Recruitment - Verified, pre-screened Talent Pool. Legal recruiter Elias Recruitment made the best of market conditions where candidates want to talk but maybe aren't ready to move by onboarding them to a private talent, verified talent pool. The high touch onboarding process doubled as an interview, where candidate motivations could be collected and an enhanced profile built which could then be available to clients who had matching role. Long term value building, as well as smart differentiation from the competition. Which client doesn't want to see pre-vetted candidates?
• Alexander Lyons Solutions - Multi-modal Marketing. This company is more than that, but I was struck by their approach to communication, particularly with the knowledge that media consumption has long migrated to short form video and mainly via mobile. Which other recruitment company would employ full time camera / media crew? This is staking a claim to digital real estate which is currently unoccupied by other agency vendors. Reminds me of the Mullins Group in the US, where Joe Mullings has long since dominated the industry discourse in medical devices - and hence reaped the business reward by being the natural go-to to search requirements in that space.

I'm sure there's more agencies out there doing cool stuff - love to hear from you if you are.

2. Automation Everywhere, Recruiters Focus on CS / CX

The 'global search for productivity' - an outstanding turn of phrase introduced Josh Bersin - has every organisation looking for opportunities to get lean, cut costs and move faster. Recruitment agencies are marching lock step with their customers, and are also now aggressively looking for optimisation. It was impressive to see the obvious appetite of recruiters for radical change. Remember this is no longer change for change sake - this is necessity driven by the persistence of challenging market conditions, and the opportunities provided by maturing technological innovation and changing work practices.

Recruiters knew what they wanted the technology to do - automate everything that wasn't 1-2-1 contact with candidate and client. In this, I felt agency recruiters had greater clarity on the role automation should play than perhaps even the in-house recruiter community - no confusion here at all on what they wanted the future to look like.

3. Inch Wide, Mile Deep Verticalisation

There will always be room for relationship driven generalists.

I was one such recruiter back in my agency days, and in fact always had my best years during recessionary periods because I was able to maintain the 3-4 clients I needed through the lean times due to rock solid relationships I had built with them. The same I am sure is happening today but I can't help but think that the smarter move in 2024 is to switch to deep verticalisation in order to become domain expert, gain access to otherwise unfindable / unreachable candidates and parlaying the market intelligence that comes from consistently being in conversation with professionals in industry into professional credibility to more successfully engage with increasingly discerning customers.

As ever, the risk in verticalisation is picking the right domain. Two tips were shared with me by different recruitment business owners at the Expo which I thought made good sense.

• Intractable Societal Problems (!) Hard for us natural optimists to think about but unsolvable problems in society will usually have robust staffing requirements. For example, in the OECD, longer life expectancy + less children is leading to rapidly aging societies, leading in turn to increasingly demand for health and social care - both sectors where demand for staff has correspondingly been acute. Look for intractable social problems and verticalise there.
• Look for Future Proof. There have been several great research papers projecting the future growth / decline of industry and market sectors. Whilst these are still mostly projections, you don't have to be a full time futurist to understand that the certain types of work are going to become extinct, whilst others will emerge, grow and diversify. Verticalised recruiters need to align with the latter - have a look at which tasks are most likely to be 'AI exposed' vs 'AI insulated' and move toward the insulated.

4. Rectech Maturing to Deliver Immediate At-Desk Value

The Recruitment Agency sector has long felt under served by the technology vendors unenthused by the parsimonious reputation of agencies for being poor spenders and users of technology. It was therefore a real pleasure to see the depth and diversity of technology solutions on show at The Recruitment Agency Expo. Leads generation software, automated data enrichment, programmatic advertising, generative rich media, recruiter enablement...and plenty of all-in-one solutions which promised to take away the problem for recruiters too busy to figure it out.

There was a palpable sense that the technology ecosystem servicing the recruitment agency sector was moving forward to the next phase. The old players were still there - Bullhorn, Daxtra - but are now being supplemented - and maybe challenged by the next generation of technology vendors.

The tech-enabled recruitment agency is within sight - the challenge that agency owners have to overcome is the investment needed now to pay dividend in the near future.

5. Sales More Important than Sourcing

Perhaps the most significant change that has occurred in the wider economy over the past few years has been the end of the Zero Interest Rate Period. We've had close-to-zero cost to capital since the GFC of 2008/9 as central banks attempted to avoid economic collapse by collapsing first the cost of money. This led to a decade debt fuelled long boom, which sparked the surge of tech startups, hyperscaling unicorns and massive demand for hiring. In that period, there was a premium for recruiters who were great finders-of-people - sourcing became a thing on its own in this period - and agencies stocked up on recruiters who were great at delivery.

Greg Savage has talked about whether recruitment agencies had been accumulating too many delivery skills over the past decade, leading to an imbalance in the skills now required to be successful as a business. The sooner agencies rebalance their skills for this new market, the better; or else they will need to solve the customer acquisition in another way.

Anyways, loads more to think about on the state of the agency market. But this essay is already too long so we will have to return to it next week.

Now out of the kitchen, onto the lounge 👇

What's Going On?

Big List of Recruiter Events to Attend in 2024

There are 100+ events in the Big List of Recruiting and HR Events to Attend in 2024 - make sure you bookmark this spreadsheet, share it with your event organiser and event going friends and get yourself to one of these this year. If you see any that are missing and should be there, please do add to the bottom of the spreadsheet - I will merge them in weekly.

Candidate Psychology in the Hiring Process, Wednesday 27th March, 10.00am GMT

A lot of TA / HR leaders out there in this tough job market - do we know what it looks like for senior execs who may be unfamiliar with navigating the job search? We're going to dive into the psychology of the job search for an experienced TA / HR Leader and better understand how reformed candidate experience can make the difference. We're with Vicki Saunders, Founder (The EVP Consultancy), Helen James, Senior Talent Acquisition Operations Director (ex-Pearson), Malin Freiman Moezzi, Psychologist, (Malin Moezzi). Adam Bird, CEO (Cronofy) in the co-pilot seat. Make sure to join - register here

TA Leaders Workforce Planning Masterclass, Wednesday 27th March, 12.00pm GMT

Workforce planning has got to be one of the key responsibilities which TA need to embrace, in order to fully transition away from being a delivery function responding to requirements. Do we know how to get there, can we demonstrate the value, what are the tools which are available for us to use? We're with industry brains Yasar Ahmad, Global VP of People, HelloFresh, Kesh Ladwa, Head of Talent Acquisition (ex-BBC) and Danny Hodgson, Founder, Foresight. Register here

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep251 - Innovation in High Volume Hiring: Cheaper, Faster, Better?, Wednesday 27th March, 2pm GMT

When you have to hire for mega scale, innovation becomes a necessity rather than a luxury. What we can learn from organisations who have to make tens of thousands of hires in a short time frame? What technologies and techniques are required to make this a reality? We're with Thomas Waldman, Global Head of Talent Acquisition & Contingent Workforce (Action), Becky Foden, Global TA Lead (ex-EY Early Careers Lead) & Stanislaw Wasowicz, VP of Growth (Scotty Technologies). It's going to be fascinating chat folks - we're on Weds 2pm GMT register here

Growing As A Sourcer, Wednesday 27th April, 18.30pm Kyiv

Love this topic - Alla Pavlova, Recruiter (Riot Games) and one of the most prominent sourcers in the European scene, outlines the skills development and progression you need to build a career as a sourcer. Register here

The Future of People Analytics, Wednesday 3rd April, 11.00am EST

Always exciting to see Madeline Laurano, Founder of Aptitude Research. Here she is with John Federman, CEO of HireRoad, talking about the future of People Analytics - where does it go in the era of Generative AI? Register here.

EVP Masterclass, Thursday 4th April, 11.30am GMT

Molly Johnson-Jones, CEO of Flexa, will talk you through the 7 Pillars of Employer Value Proposition, to attract not only more candidates but also build brand awareness, reduce recruitment costs, and increase internal awareness of your EVP. Register here

If you have an event, webinar or podcast going on next week and want it featured on next week's newsletter, comment below with the link and event details. Don't forget to at mention me so that I see it

Whose Story?

It's Oliver Davies, Head of Talent, Employer Branding & D&I

Great to have community members volunteer to do the Brainfood Tribune! It's a fantastic way to better understand the people who we often see on LinkedIn but don't get the chance to really know. I asked Oliver 20 Questions - here are his answers.

If you want to take part in Brainfood Tribune, simply comment below and say you wanna.

Who's Hiring?

Talent Acquisition Partner - FTC 8 months, Informa, London, UK

People Operations Specialist, Blinkist, Berlin, Germany

Senior Recruiter, Western Union, Vienna, Austria

Aggregator is still up so check it out yourself, here.

Brainfood Jobs Job Board - recruiter jobs there with the BTCFREE code for 100% off.

If you are hiring for recruiters or HR people, you are welcome to post jobs FOR FREE on the Brainfood Jobs Job Board. Use coupon code: BTCFREE for 100% discount.

Whose Available?

That's 435 members of the community. If you are a recruiter or HR person that is looking for work, join the Brainfood Talent Collective here. If you are an employer hiring recruiters, apply for a company account here, and use the code: BTCFREE to freely post jobs and search the db.

What Are You Doing?

Jeanne Achille, CEO of The Devon Group, is doing a survey on how Talent Leaders use LinkedIn - this should be an interesting one to do. If you are a recruitment lead, take 10 minutes to complete it here

Matthew Staney, Talent Acquisition Leader, is doing something unusual and important - changing his name. For people who have been following Matt's journey you will know that there have been some tremendous changes both personally and professionally and Matt's transparency has been illuminating and inspirational. So I wanted to use this space to say hello to Matt and publicly give him my support!

If you have any personal news or initiative that you want to share, make sure you comment on the this newsletter with your news.

End Note

I'm at LinkedIn Talent Connect on Tuesday, where I will have the pleasure of co-hosting a workshop on Talent Attraction and Employer Branding with Searlait Brennan, Director of Talent Acquisition of EMEA & LATAM at LinkedIn.

Come and join the session if you are going - should be fun!

Have a great week everybody

Hung

Hung Lee is the curator of Recruiting Brainfood, and now This Week In Recruiting. Subscribe to both if you are into recruiting or HR or just interested in world of work.