Recruiters are Blowing £100k a Year by Not Training

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The word “value” is something which is unfortunately not often associated with recruitment. “Need”, yes, “Cost” definitely, but not “Value”. My team and I want to address how the recruitment industry is valued, and indeed how recruiters value themselves and their time. I guess if you’re reading this, you’re wanting to grow or sustain your recruitment business too!

I’ve been researching recruitment training (a massive passion of mine) and have some ideas and questions for recruitment leaders.

What Is the Value of Your Recruitment Business?

Being that the UK Recruitment industry is worth over £30Billion (a pretty valuable number!) – value to the economy is demonstrable! But my question is, how do you as a recruitment leader demonstrate the value of your staff and your business? And what recruitment training are you investing in to improve the value of your business? Are you assuming that your staff value working for you, that your clients value your offering? That your candidates value being on your database?

I’m delighted to be part of the Alex Moyle’s Recruitment Gym A-Z of Recruitment campaign. He’s a passionate recruitment advocate and he asked me which letter I’d like to record a 60 second video for. I grabbed “V” for Value! You can see the video at the bottom of this blog… but think about:

My clients, Recruitment leaders, are fixated on the value of their businesses, and so they should be.
Their marketeers are often fixated on the value that they add to the sales process.
Recruitment consultants and resources are fixated on the value of their desks, and what kind of fees are they bringing in.

But maybe we should be focusing on the value of the more tangible items in our business, our most important assets, our staff.

But damn, what a cliche! “The most important asset is your people” – fluffy HR rubbish? Or is there a nasty trend brewing? One which will have a massive negative impact on the recruitment industry – is it that…?

Why Did 2/3 of Job Leavers Quit Last Year? (Not Enough Training!

Numerous sources quote this stat, including the Independent article titled: Workers are quitting their jobs due to lack of training.

The article makes me want to ask recruitment leaders:

What training do you actually give your teams? Be it sales / recruitment / systems / marketing etc…?
Are you aware of how this recruitment training (or the lack of) impacts on your teams? What value does it deliver? Is your data and process devalued by a lack of training?
The training that you buy for you teams – how do you make your staff accountable for learning and delivering, or just attending?

Every recruitment leader I work with either wants more from their teams, or needs to recruit more staff. What is your plan this year for using training to fix staff retention and staff output? Every meeting I have with recruitment leaders has this as a “stress” topic.

Why Does Recruitment Training Not Work?

Have you fallen into the trap of buying training at the beginning of a change process, not making someone accountable for monitoring the effectiveness of the recruitment training your bought, and then saying “well, that didn’t work” 6 months later when things haven’t really changed and:

systems are not being used
recruiters are not placing
fees are getting lower
data is still dirty
job board budgets are still crazy
staff are not energised
hours of time on LinkedIn is not offering the phone calls you want to hear and see
and recruiters still not really engaged with your “way” and not delivering your processes?

How Many of your Recruiters Want More Training?

People Management talk about 9/10 people wanting more training, in their article about a lack of training prompts two-thirds of workers to quit.

But what training does a recruiter actually need? And how should it impact upon their desk / day / pipeline, and your business? And is what they are being trained to do, offering value to your next most important asset, your data?

Are Your Staff Really Your Most Important Asset?

It’s a touchy subject to talk about – the fact that data and trained people may be equal… But let’s admit that they at least rely on each other, and when you add process and systems, boom! You have a sustainable pipeline! When you mess about with that trio – people / process / data – everyone suffers.

So:

Are your recruiters being trained to nurture your critical data asset?
Do their job adverts and time on LinkedIn generate great inbound sales, clean data on your Bullhorn and Adapt systems?
Is the training that you spend your profit on driving your 3Cs – candidate, client and colleagues – onto your recruitment CRMs? Or do you have have a datadump, not a database?

Ask yourself: Is my recruitment CRM “first” in the pecking order for everything that you want to do, be it sourcing and placing, not just invoicing?

Are You One of the Recruiters “Blowing” £100,000 Per Year by Not Training?

Recruitment Leaders – have a think about all of these questions. We estimate that the average 50 person recruiter is wasting at least £100,000 per year NOT training their staff – by losing them, rehiring, paying them, retraining them, and waiting for the “time to bill”. and that’s not accounting for lost fees due to the disruption… Only you know that figure.

Watch this short 1-minute video I created for Alex. Some food for thought about the value of recruitment.

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