As a Sales and Marketing agency, we recruit a broad range of specialisms and like many out there, we have found the market even more challenging of late. It has never been an aspect I've enjoyed and am grateful to have internal support and someone who does. I suppose this comes from a range of experiences over the last nine years in business and recruiting.
The market is moving at a pace with many candidates having been offered and accepted roles in between applying and attending formal interviews. With two live positions for a Customer Relationship Manager and Marketing Manager to fill, we had a c3 week process from role closing to offer and lost a huge proportion of candidates in that time, having already accepted offers elsewhere.
However we also noticed a significant level of drop offs and no shows at interview stage too. I know from speaking to a number of other organisations recruiting for a variety of roles, they are also are wading in these challenging new waters.
We have almost always recruited ourselves and having recently been quoted a 26% recruitment fee, that’s likely to remain the same
I wonder about the impact of time and cost to any business, whether managed internally or outsourced – and believe it must be significant regardless or sector or service. Attrition rates are up, as are sickness rates and failed probabtionary periods – how has the world changed so much in such a short space of time? Growing a business is hard at the best of times but without the right team, it’s nearly impossible.
Thankfully, we have an established base and team and are recruiting for our projected growth, so thankfully we have the resource and capacity to be patient and find the right person who more important than anything else, is a cultural fit to the business.
With a lack of resource internally and a challenging recruitment market and process, it’s understadable why other businesses look to outsource. But how long term are these decisions? Are outsourced companies becoming more or less popular?
We have embraced our Associates model more than ever this year and found working with a broad range of freelancers a viable option for any growing business. However now with growth on the horizon we too are looking for internal resource; but every business is different and an outsourced model can work long term. Outsourcing has significant benefits from a cost, resource, training and overall infrastructure persepctive, providing ready-made teams without an overreliance on a single person. Our clients all have three team members assigned ensuring coverage, knowledge and expertise throughout the length of our partnership.
As a certified B-Corporation, it’s in our DNA to integrate ESG into our Sales and Marketing strategies, training and well, every aspect of all that we do. People is one of the five pillars of BCorp and one we constantly evolve to ensure that as a small business, we support our people as much as possible. It’s also one of the reasons businesses ultimately choose to outsource to us rather than go through the challenging and often painful process of recruiting.
I believe a blend has to exist between hiring and outsourcing and I’d say that’s fair given I run an outsourcing business – perhaps as the landscape continues to evolve more will lean towards outsourcing and naturally I’m inclined to hope this is the case. But the issue remains – where have all the good people gone? And it begs the question – what will the world of recruiting look like for small businesses moving forward? Can we compete against the larger providers able to pay at times double the market rate? Time will tell.
Just Williams is an impact led sales and marketing organisations working with owner managed businesses to raise brand profile, lead generate and embed ESG.
Just Williams – Sales and Marketing
www.justwilliamsltd.co.uk