Whether you’re opening a new venture or have an established business, it’s crucial to identify and understand the recruitment competition in your market. If you haven’t gone through this exercise, here are a few ideas to get started:
List Your Recruitment Competition
- Make a list of all the recruitment providers in your local market.
- If you are working in a niche or micro-niche, you’ll want to expand the previous item to include the major players within that niche.
- Identify which of your potential clients already have in-house talent acquisition teams, as these will also serve as recruitment competition for you.
- Include quasi-competitors like BountyJobs and other similar services.
- Include job boards that your clients (and potential clients) may be using.
Your goal here is to determine how much market share is available for your business. Once you’ve identified who all the competitors are, you may want to divide them into direct or indirect competitors. Indirect competitors provide different services to your target market, but they may still pull market share away from you. These might include RPO, PEO, or contracting companies.
Target Market Research
Once you’ve identified all of your potential competitors, you’ll want to spend some time on target market research. Specifically, if you’ve already identified your own target market, you now need to know which competitors are also pursuing the same targets. This will help you determine whether there is sufficient potential business for you and also if there are expansion opportunities to consider.
Evaluate the 4Ps
The four Ps of marketing—product, price, place, and promotion—are still valid and worth exploring. For recruitment competition, you’ll be looking at:
- Product—what service are they providing and how is it similar to yours? This includes direct-hire vs. contract vs. staffing.
- Price—what are they charging, and if you can figure it out, what are their margins? This is especially helpful in staffing.
- Place—where are they selling? In-person? Phone? Online? Are they effectively using video?
- Promotion—where and how are they advertising? This needs to include checking out traditional media, digital media, social media, even keyword research and SEO.
Understanding your recruitment competition is essential to your long-term success and viability. You need to know what your competitors are offering, how they position themselves and how they are succeeding in order to accurately determine your own financial projections and other business targets. This needs to be part of your market research well before you launch your business as well as an ongoing activity.
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