Members of NPA’s global recruiting network are reporting that jobs are plentiful and clients are hiring. Some of our members are seeing activity levels on par with 1997-98, and many more are reporting activity at least back to pre-GFC.
How about your recruiting business? Are your numbers growing? Are you prepared to handle increased demand from your clients? Have you thought about: Read the rest of this entry »
Recently I read a blog post by Simon Sinek (author of the book, Start With Why) called Two, Not Three: Boost Sales by Offering Less. The post describes why a chain of shoe stores that appeared to have no competitive advantage consistently outperformed its competitors. The owner of the shoe store chain had learned that customers bought shoes if they had no more than two options. When a customer had to select between three or more options, the customer most likely would not make a purchase. Read the rest of this entry »
Recruiting is back! OK, we have all attended conferences and meetings over the past few years and the attendees put on brave faces. The comments were about how it took more time and effort to do a similar level of placements. There were even those quoting a percentage reduction in volume down from peak years of recruiting results. “I’m off 30 percent,” or “We did 60 percent of our prior best year in 2010.” Well, things have changed! Read the rest of this entry »
Today’s installment was submitted by Andy Gregory of CGP Network in Indianapolis, Indiana. Andy has been an NPA member since 2006. CGP network is a boutique recruiting firm focusing primarily in the areas of accounting and finance and also with the recruitment of manufacturing professionals.
(Reflections on the 2012 NPA Global Conference in Savannah, Georgia)
In one of America’s most historical and intriguing cities, a new spirit of NPA collaboration emerged – and it wasn’t the spirits encountered on the Haunted Pub Crawl. Like many of you – I lost traction in 2009 but suddenly in Savannah, SplitZone was very real to me – again. Read the rest of this entry »
Today’s installment was submitted by Julie Parsons of Premium Consulting in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Julie is a member of the NPA board of directors and an occasional guest-blogger. Premium Consulting is a boutique independent recruiting firm that provides professional and practical recruitment consulting advice specializing in retained recruitment, partial services, psychometric assessment and appraisals, outplacement and career counseling.
At some point, most recruiters or recruitment firms realize that in order to stay competitive and present a broad range of solutions to their clients, they need to go global. Some common excuses to avoid the work of creating a global firm include: “it’s too hard,” “that’s what franchises are for,” “franchises are so common, set up in every major city with multinational contracts.” Although each of these excuses have some merit, none of them should stop you in your global expansion tracks.
Try to set yourself above your competitors by keeping up on international market conditions and legislation. Your knowledge in these areas will be valuable in targeting where you want to expand and in what industries. One way to jump the international hurdle is to connect with like-minded firms throughout the world. A great place to start is through LinkedIn. Recruiters are pretty transparent on social media so they might be easier to find than you think.
Also, think about joining a network. There are obvious questions to ask as it relates to policies, operations and integrity before jumping into something like this, but if you’ve done your homework, your investment will almost certainly result in a positive ROI as well as global connections. NPA’s President, Dave Nerz, says “half of something is always better than all of nothing.” Yes, this statement may be a little cheesy, but he’s right. Could it be that the way to growing your reach is not through giant steps alone, but through half-steps with others recruiters like yourself?
What are some of the challenges you face with making your global footprint?
I had a wonderful opportunity to visit the UK last week for the Recruitment Agency Expo in London. I am going to generalize and we know generalization is dangerous, but what I found is that recruiting and the challenges seem to be similar in the UK to those that I see in the US. Here are some of the similarities I recognized during my brief introduction: Read the rest of this entry »
I heard on the news last night that certain types of flowers are already blooming and spring is expected to arrive a couple weeks early this year. In lieu of that very comforting thought, it’s the perfect time to do some “spring cleaning”. I recently read a blog post by Greg Savage titled “Keeping it real. Six tactics for hard-core recruiters in 2012” and I think he’s on to something. It’s time to identify the things that keep us moving in the right direction and the things that we do because we are “supposed to” but are not yielding any positive results. I’ve included a few ideas below for you to get started on weeding out the “time-wasters” and “money-makers.” Read the rest of this entry »
Thank you to everyone who participated in NPA’s 2012 business prediction poll on LinkedIn. As a global recruiters network, we are always interested in what recruiting businesses experience around the world.
67% of the 45 respondents were male and 33% were female. Positions held by the majority of respondents included owner, manager, CXO, and VP. The poll did not include in which areas the recruiting business growth would occur. However, several comments point towards the areas of engineering and information technology. Read the rest of this entry »