I’m excited to have been asked by Indeed.com to be one of the first presenters in a new series of webinars they’re going to be producing. They identified me through my online presence and called. They’ve asked me to present the advantages of having a recruiting specialty to Employers.
As I start to jot down notes for an outline of what I would say, I’ve rather surprised myself how immediately clear it is that there are a myriad of benefits, mostly for my clients and candidates. The negative for me, is that obviously if I only recruit in a specialty marketing niche, there are scores of other employment categories/opportunities that I do not address or participate in.
It takes dedicated time to stay abreast of what’s happening in any field, especially one radically changing as rapidly as marketing is today. The numbers of digital growth are astounding and will continue to surge for years to come. It’s hard keeping up with it all, even if you’re trying to do it full time . . . which I am! It would be simply impossible to maintain that depth of knowledge and understanding across multiple disciplines.
"Specialization leads to referrals". One of the biggest benefits of specializing is that candidates find me and introduce themselves. We have a strong online presence with testimonials and reputation, which results in being found in natural web searches. (BTW, please follow me @HeadhunterBob!). Here’s perhaps an even bigger, similar benefit. We also get daily referrals of candidates from friends, colleagues and even clients. Some of these are absolutely A+ talent. We’re proud to work with them.
As a result of constantly being introduced to new candidates, specialist recruiters often know the premier source companies and players in that specialty. That’s the sort of deep knowledge that leads to who to talk to for networking and referrals.
There are premier performers for virtually every “micro specialty” in every niche, including ours. The more incoming referrals there are, the more chances of A+ talent being included. That leads to the advantage for our client of possibly already knowing the candidate who’s been looking for exactly the sort of opportunity the client has to offer. Frequently, we are who the best in the business call to inquire about opportunities that might be out there. Colleagues of these premier performers will be referred or can be recruited.
I think you see how specialization leads to candidate referrals. The next benefit of specialization is when talking to candidates in a particular field (especially more senior), the recruiter’s credibility is enhanced significantly by being able to speak and understand the niche’s “lingo”.
I'll be writing about that very soon!