The Scale Up Workbook - Lesson 4: Talent Attraction and Management

You don’t need me to tell you that recruitment revolves around people. Every recruitment company is made of its people. So ensuring you have the right team around you is never more important than when looking to scale-up your recruitment business. Depending on your needs, this could mean enhancing your ‘back office’ team to secure essential administrative support, or growing your sales team in a bid to bring in extra business. Ensuring you have the right ratio of support staff to recruiters can be key to maximising your company’s growth potential.

Another matter to decide is whether you want to take on experienced staff or novice staff. Both bring with them different opportunities and challenges. Experienced staff can help you to scale your business more quickly, and bringing in top billers can even help to raise the bar by encouraging your existing staff to meet higher targets. However, experienced staff can pose a commercial risk if they are slow to take on your company’s values or if they decide to move on to a competitor. Novice staff, by contrast, have the advantage that you can train them up in your company’s own style and ethos. This can create a unique sense of loyalty to your company and some necessary stability as your business grows. However, you should be aware that training novices is a lengthy, expensive and sometimes risky process, which may even slow down the scale-up ambitions of smaller recruitment firms.

Whether opting for ‘back room’ staff or ‘front-of-house’ sales people, experienced recruiters or novices, it is essential that you hire people with the right mindset for the industry and the right attitude for your business. Hiring people on the basis of your company’s values can help to ensure they will be a good fit with your existing team and will be more inclined to ‘buy in’ to your expansion plans.

Attracting good people is, however, just one part of the problem. Retaining your staff can also be a challenge in an industry as competitive as recruitment. Investing in your staff by providing them with sufficient training and learning opportunities is a good way to keep them engaged and loyal at a time when you need them the most. The REC offers a wide range of training courses and qualifications for this purpose. Creating clear career pathways within your company also gives people something to aspire to, and moving experienced staff into management positions can equally work to inspire others in your organisation. Finally, celebrating your successes and communicating effectively as a team can help to bolster your team spirit through the scale-up process.

To attract and retain the best talent for your company we recommend you:
1. Get the right ratio of admin staff to consultants to enhance your business.
2. Recruit new staff on the basis of your company’s values.
3. Put sufficient training mechanisms in place for your staff.
4. Create clear career pathways within your company.
5. Develop a strong team spirit through activities and internal communication.