The danger of buying cheap often results in buying twice. Can you afford to get caught in the trap?
Whether you’re starting a recruitment business from scratch or planning budget for the year ahead, false economies abound in choosing recruitment tools and technology.
Of course, careful nurturing of your bottom line is vital – at the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about.
But low price doesn’t always equal clever spending.
In fact, an exclusive focus on cost often turns out to be the most expensive way to build an agency.
Don’t be tight – you’re a professional recruiter, right?
Curbing spending if you’re trying to make a few extra bucks by running a search practice as a side hustle might make sense.
If it’s not your full-time gig, there’s no point in pumping cash into it.
But as a professional, tools make a huge difference to performance.
Equipping your recruitment or staffing agency with the right platform for success is a significant investment, but it’s also one that committed professionals should take seriously.
After all, you work hard enough.
As well as being focused and (often) money-motivated, recruiters are usually extremely hardworking, often putting in regular 12-hr days and bolting on additional weekend hours.
To pour in the kind of effort and dedication that many recruiters do, but to balk at paying for an IT infrastructure which can deliver so much more return on that effort, is a tricky paradox to solve.
Often, it’s worth taking a step back to look at things from a new angle – if you believe in yourself and your agency enough to commit 60+ hour weeks, why don’t you believe in it enough to buy the technology you need to ramp up your results?
Your differentiator could be that you’re doing it properly…
Recruiters today face some intense competition.
How intense?
A little over 40,000 UK agencies at last count.
So why not stand out from the pack not by having the loudest website or the most ruthless cold-calling team, but by doing recruitment right?
Instead of patchy, manual systems and processes prone to human error, use modern technology to give clients and candidates a first-class experience. Ensure in-built data security through the platform you use – don’t allow scope for slip-ups and breaches. Leverage best-in-class search technology to uncover winning candidates your competition simply can’t find and, keep connected to your client and candidate communities using intelligent relationship management software.
Connect social platforms and databases, and quit spending hours looking in different places for the same data.
In such a crowded playing field, being the agency that delivers where others fail and runs like a well-oiled machine will leave your competition in the dust.
Do sweat the little things – even email matters
Although this is 2020, it’s surprising how many start-up agencies still pick Gmail to run their company email.
It may seem a small detail, but it’s often representative of a wider aversion to technology investment that runs through the business.
Once again, it’s a question of commitment and belief.
If you back yourself to deliver results by working long, hard days and staring at CVs until your eyes glaze over, then back yourself to build your company on a solid Office 365 platform – complete with all the tools you need to create professional business materials.
Power to the processor
A choice of email provider’s not the only tell-tale sign that recruiters are under-investing in their agencies – plenty of businesses still start with budget PCs, only to become exasperated within weeks that their lack of processor power causes maddening delays, crashes, dropped VOIP calls and frozen screens.
In the digital communication age, a recruiter’s laptop or PC is their primary work tool – an F1 driver’s car, or a footballer’s boots.
If you’re serious about performance, there’s no scope to head out to face the competition with bargain equipment.
Nobody wins Silverstone in a Corsa, and no premier league players wear trainers.
Simple stuff.
Take legislation in your stride
With the recent advent of the GDPR and the upcoming changes to IR35, recruitment is in a state of flux.
These days, it’s not just about ‘upgrading’ to better systems to get a bit more bang for your buck – you need professional technology to operate compliantly, and many clients and candidates will want to see that an agency has the right kit in place to keep on the right side of key regulation.
Just like picking a cheap PC or running free email, starting a recruitment business on a low-cost CRM system that offers no in-built legislation compliance means sends agency owners off down the same road – buy cheap, buy twice.
When the headache of the upgrades and migrations are over, you’ll wish you’d backed yourself and invested properly from the start.
Voyager Infinity and Voyager Mid-Office are software solutions that make Recruiters’ lives easier. Voyager Infinity is a CRM used by thousands of recruiters globally to source, nurture and maintain the relationships with their clients and candidates, and Mid-Office manages the entire Pay and Bill process (IR35 ready).
