Today I want to talk about a bit of an elephant in the room, and that is moving our recruiting sector.
We are now six months into lockdown and during this time, we all have vacillated back and forth about:
What should we be doing; and should we even stop recruiting all together?
Should we close our business down and restart?
Should we furlough the team bring them back or make certain desks redundant?
Should we change our recruiting sector?
So a whole-scale change is something that comes up for a lot of people, and it’s a valid point, so today I want to share some questions to consider before you do ANYTHING.
Now, we’re at a point where the furlough scheme is going to be coming to a close late October, and more business owners will be thinking about bringing consultants back from furlough.
They’re coming back into a market where clients and candidates are in a very different place compared to where they were when perhaps consultants previously had contact and conversations with them.
And let’s just be honest. If you haven’t been doing your job day in and day out for the last four, five, six months, you’re going to be rusty, and some of your team are going to be quite rusty, particularly when it comes to their selling skills.
Think About The Long Game
Though we’re in a weird situation now, we’ve got social distancing, some companies are back in offices and others aren’t and you can fly to certain destinations in Europe only- I would focus my business plans on the future, I certainly wouldn’t direct my focus on only being in a sector that’s relevant now.
Yes, you may make some money, but by the time you’ve got everything up and running, everything will have changed again. So, think about the long game. Think about what are the markets that are growing that I think I could add value to?
You’ve got to enjoy what you’re doing and you’ve got to be somewhere where it’s going to be relevant for you. So be thinking about your five, 10, 15, 20-year plan. Forget the one or two years. It’s about the long game.
The Adjacent Few
The second thing if you are serious about switching and changing is what we like to call it, the “adjacent few.” Let me explain. Now it might be that, let’s say you’re an healthcare recruiter or whatever, that there is something aligned to what you do currently, where you think, “That is sustainable. I could work there. I’ve got transferable skills.”
I’ll give you an example from ourselves which might just help to focus is, we work in the recruitment sector and we also work with a small handful of learning and development organisations who we have been working with since the day we first opened shop!
Many of them have come to us recently about how they can convert their training events to online programmes; which will be a huge growth area moving forward over the coming months years and decades. So that is something we’ve thought about.
So, what would your equivalent to that be; think about it. Where are the growth markets that are close or adjacent to what you currently do? Remember it will take much less work to get a handle moving into a sector like this-which are the areas that should be very easy to move into?
Because then, if you’re doing that, it’s not such a hard task to actually do that because you’re moving into a sector where you have some understanding as you aren’t starting from a baseline.
Your Marketing Resource
Next is to think about the resource that you will need because if you are moving into a new sector or a new market, you need to understand how you are going to market to that new sector.
What are the types of clients that you want to work with?
What’s your offer or additional offers?
How do you get in front of them?
Who’s your ideal avatar?
How will you connect with them?
What content will you provide?
Will you have a brand new website?
Will you have a different section on your website?
Take this seriously because if there’s ever a time to think about changing, it’s at a time of change where we are all now and adapt to NEW NORMAL.
Thanks,
Florina