How We Solve the Challenges of Personnel Service Providers

From the "Great Resignation" to "Quiet Quitting" and now "Mass Layoffs", the last few years have presented a whirlwind of challenges to personnel service providers. While your agency may have thrived in peak moments, the pressure of catering to a market in constant flux may also have exposed flaws and gaps in your existing recruitment strategies.

The evolving and rapidly digitised landscape requires personnel service providers to efficiently seek out high-quality hires, often with novel skills and competencies. But it's not as simple as scanning through LinkedIn profiles and sending out a generic "Are you interested in this position?" message — you probably know that already.

The two-fold challenge: Serving clients and prospective recruits

• Your prospects are far more discerning about what it's in it for them — they expect remote interviews, a personalised approach and transparency about the salary, prerequisites, and benefits.
  
  Your clients — the companies you're recruiting for — expect a speedy and efficient service; they're trusting you to identify and present high-calibre individuals who fit the profile, and they don't want to spend more money a few months later having to fill the same role.

Personnel service providers in the know have recognised that things are changing: recruitment is starting to look a lot like marketing.

Is recruitment really morphing into marketing?

Recruitment and marketing are two separate functions in any business; however, the strategies and methodologies applied in the marketing field are increasingly more relevant for personnel services. 

Your prospects expect a well-constructed customer journey on par with the personalised, automated and content-rich experience they'd get if someone was trying to sell something to them. Step one is to attract the right people. Then, you need to keep them engaged with the type of information that will get them excited and willing to apply for the jobs you're listing.

It's also prudent to consider how quickly things are changing right now. Emerging trends are placing demands on your personnel service that require an agile approach. You need a better way to collect data and report on the activities you undertake so that you can optimise your process and remain competitive. 

If you're looking ahead to 2023 and wondering how to sustain and grow your recruitment business, partnering with BEE Digital may be your best investment yet. With our extensive experience in your industry, we can help you apply and utilise the best tools and strategies to ensure you become your clients' go-to HR solutions provider.

3 strategic problems your personnel service must address

In today's competitive job market, you're likely to be inundated with individuals who don't fit the profile. On the other end of the spectrum, you may be struggling to attract high-calibre hires simply because you don't have the tools and strategies to improve your chances of finding these people. How is that affecting your business, and what's the root cause?

Here are three key issues your personnel service may be struggling with:

1. Not enough leads in your pipeline

Reaching out to suitable candidates for a specific position isn't a straightforward job. Often, your prospects may not be interested, or the role may not be applicable to them. You've got tight deadlines, however, and your client expects you to find high-quality recruits for their company. 

Typically, recruitment agents spend a lot of time on outbound outreach, leading to low productivity and friction. You may have a great job on offer, but if you're not broadcasting to the right audience, you'll continue to waste resources on the wrong leads.

By letting us help you create a strategic approach that utilises automation, your pipeline can do a lot of the filtering out for you while working hard to continuously attract leads that hit the mark. 

2. Your process isn't systematised

If finding and targeting leads is difficult, it may be because your process isn't repeatable and, therefore, not scalable. Introducing and using reliable systems and processes will help you to automatically repeat successful activities and attract the right candidates every time. This makes it much easier to plan for the future and measure the effectiveness of what you're doing to ensure your business can meet targets and make data-based adjustments that lead to meaningful optimisation.

3. You're using outdated marketing and sales tools

If you're still relying on spreadsheets, have key data scattered across different systems that don't talk to each other and are paying for a bloated tech stack that's not helping you create a smooth and frictionless customer experience, you're going to struggle to get better results. 

There's a misconception that upgrading your tools has to be expensive. And what if your team is set in their ways and doesn't want to embrace new solutions?

Well, the answer is simple. Have you stopped to consider what your existing process is really costing you? Outdated sales and marketing tools are an expensive time sap. Also, your team may not be keen on trying new technology because they may have had a poor onboarding experience in the past.

By partnering with BEE Digital, you may discover ways to slim down your tech stack and utilise a more effective and powerful system. Essentially, your software solutions should provide you with the data you need to make better decisions and help make your day-to-day tasks intuitive and quick to perform.

How BEE Digital solves your personnel service challenges

Now that we’ve looked what’s holding you back, let’s talk about the approach we like to take when helping personnel service providers evolve.

1. Use inbound and outbound campaigns

Inbound recruiting applies the same strategies as inbound marketing — a well-established technique that puts the customer (your lead) at the heart of everything you do. Working with you, we will create a strategy that engages job applicants through content marketing, social media, and search engine optimisation. This ensures that your pipeline is continuously filled with individuals who match your criteria and are genuinely interested and keen to apply for the job you're advertising.

To keep things in balance, we can also help you launch outbound campaigns that use a more traditional (but refined) approach to engaging individuals and expanding your talent pool.

Outbound recruiting is a method whereby you reach out to candidates when a particular position has opened up and jump straight to the application stage. This strategy is necessary when there's a very specific set of skills, experiences and knowledge required for a role, and you need a more proactive approach to finding suitable candidates, given the high level of competition. 

2. Build a high-converting website

While outbound recruitment will always have a role in finding the right personnel, wouldn't it be nice if exceptional candidates had an organic interest in what you have to offer? This is why a high-converting website is critical.

Your website should offer an excellent user experience (UX) and utilise targeted messaging that prompts visitors to learn more and take action.

Our team can build a website that, combined with performance campaigns and marketing automation, can work as a well-aligned ecosystem that generates and converts a steady stream of qualified leads.

Utilising the inbound methodology we spoke about earlier, we'll help you create a content-rich website that offers:

• • High-value blogs
  • Gated content such as videos, ebooks and templates
  • Forms to capture contact details and enter leads into an automated nurture sequence

These elements will work in tandem with more complex, automated funnels that drive traffic from social media and pay-per-click advertising —all of which will be built based on the research we perform to create data-based campaigns.

3. Leverage the power of automation

In a 2019 Articifical Intelligence Survey by Gartner, 30% of companies expected to use AI tools. This technology is useful in the screening process and can help you shortlist applicants faster than manual or traditional methods. Of course, this is not an exact science, so it's essential to seek advice when expanding your tech stack or exploring novel technologies.

A must-have tool in your tech stack is your CRM. As HubSpot users ourselves, we can't recommend this platform enough. Using HubSpot's advanced automation features, you can create workflows that target the right candidates at the right times. You can personalise and tailor campaigns to ensure that your messaging is consistent and on-brand, helping to keep prospects actively engaged as you nurture them towards the decision stage in your funnel.

Using HubSpot as your core platform also allows you to track, measure and report on campaigns far more effectively. Data from all digital activities is pooled into your CRM and can be organised into dashboards and shareable reports. With access to this information, C-suite stakeholders who require accurate and timely data on the growth and development of the business can make critical, timely decisions.

Conclusion

Ready to have a quick, no-obligation conversation and find out whether our service is right for you? If you're looking to transform your strategy, we are ready to help you take those critical steps that turn your personnel service into a lead-generating powerhouse that finds the best people for the job every time.