In any business, specialisation enhances the potential of success. How important is recruitment specialisation in getting jobs filled? The majority of hiring managers and employers are showing a strong preference towards engaging a recruitment service provider that truly specialises in their business segment vertical. The concept is ‘if you have not experienced it, you cannot do it effectively or efficiently.’ Today, it has gone to such an extreme that hiring managers and employers have made this an almost absolute requirement.
Does this make good rationale? Absolutely!
A recruitment firm with strong related experience does have a definite advantage. What are some of those advantages? The obvious ones are that they understand the requirements of the open career opportunities. They understand the terminology and can speak the ‘language’. The recruiters become subject matter experts – giving them instant credibility while speaking with hiring managers or candidates.
They would generally have an established network of candidates and contacts. These are contacts they would have established and built trust with over many years from which they would have created a pipeline of potential candidates. Recruiters have built strong industry and functional relationships in order to solicit input, advice and to network their open jobs. They also have a good sense of which firms and skill sets to target for organisations’ openings. They understand and truly know the value of each position and the market rate of the salary. With that knowledge, they can help guide candidates through the process. All of this gives them a head start and the ability to jump-start the recruitment process. The outcome is that it leaves you with the impression that jobs will be filled in a much more timely manner with ‘better-fit’ talent.
Most recruitment agencies want to be recognised as a recruitment firm that delivers. However only those who – through partnering closely with employers and job seekers to fully understand their needs and then deliver timely and innovative solutions – will stand out and are likely to be preferred partners.
The combination of individual skills and knowledge gained about specific industries will put recruiters in a stronger position to able to provide sound advice and access to an impressive portfolio of opportunities within successful organisations. Recruiters should focus on developing long-term business relationships with candidates to ensure that their partnered clients have access to a premium network of relevant industry talent, and thus achieve great results which are just as important as the end goal when making a placement.
If recruiters are passionate about specific industries and the business professionals who operate within them, the clients will certainly appreciate that recruiters can then deliver excellent talent because of the high levels of integrity, passion and energy that underpins every aspect of their services.
It is a great, big world out there and, supposedly technology has brought the world closer together than ever before, yet recruiting the right people remains a challenge. Recruiters nowadays face the challenge to attract, cultivate and connect organisations to talent in both global and local markets.
Multinational organisations and local companies alike still need a partner who understands the complexities of managing talent, and this, despite having their own fully fledged human resources department.
Recruiters’ knowledge varies from one company to another and candidate experience will always vary depending on the skills and experience of the recruiter. Good experience depends on how well recruiters know their market – but also on how much the candidate is willing to engage with the recruiter. Experienced candidates will interact with recruiters who are passionate about working with high-calibre job seekers and helping them to find meaningful work that satisfies their career and life aspirations, because they can provide them with rewarding employment opportunities and guidance at every stage of their careers.
Those recruitment agencies who have opted to specialise core areas such as financial services, legal & compliance and gaming & information technology will become experts in what they do – providing candidates with a better quality of service, and a 100% satisfaction guarantee every time.
Sounds like good advice, but are there any risks? Of course there are, and these vary according to the niche you select and how easy it is to have a niche severely impacted by geo-political change, technological change or changes to the economic cycle. When the price of oil dropped significantly a few years ago, those recruiters working in the oil and gas industry found themselves in a very slow market that eventually recovered, but only after a few years of low activity. When the global financial crisis struck in 2009, those recruiters who focused on the banking sector were negatively impacted.