4 key considerations for recruitment business leaders going into 2018

As we start 2018, now is the perfect time for some self-analysis on the year gone by. What has worked well, what hasn’t, and what are the next steps needed to enable an agency to go to the next level and beyond.

But if you’re sat reading this and thinking to yourself ‘where do I start?’, here’s some of the key business areas our clients tell us form the focus of their attentions as they gear up for the new year ahead.

Opportunities for growth:

We have said it umpteen times, there has never been a better time to be in recruitment than now. First came the news from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) that the industry is now worth £32.2bn with predictions that 56% of all jobs will be filled by recruiters between now and the end of 2018. The business is there to be had, so the question is - are you best-placed to be taking advantage of these opportunities?

Cash-flow management:

The one thing that is guaranteed to determine if your agency will grow at the pace you want is cash flow. Revenues from Temporary placements alone have increased 12% (£4bn) over the last 12 months and this figure is expected to rise even further next year. But this poses a significant challenge for many recruiters.

If you don’t have the cash readily available to pay your workers every week, you risk not only losing the contract, but your workers will soon jump ship and join an agency that does have the funds in place. So, you need to make sure you have the right recruitment finance support in place.

It’s the same with Permanent recruiters. Successfully filling assignments may make your monthly sales figures look great, but if your clients are taking 60 days or more to pay their invoices then any growth plans you have will need to be put on hold. Unless, that is, you have an alternative source of finance.

Simplicity offer a unique  100% Finance and 12-month rebate scheme. Rather than wait for clients to pay their invoices, it pays 100% of the net fee for each invoice upfront as standard, while the 12-month rebate scheme covers the cost of the fee lost if a successfully placed candidate should leave the employer within a year.

Housekeeping:

If you were to look at the tasks you have performed in any given week over the last 12 months, what proportion of your time has been spent working on the business versus that spent in the business? It may be more prudent to think about delegating certain tasks and refocus more of your time and energies on the things that can drive your agency forward in 2018.

So, if you still find yourself raising invoices, organising payroll, chasing debtors while ensuring that you are compliant at the same time, you need to ask yourself where the business could be if someone was responsible for these things. Outsourcing such tasks enables you to scale and increase your profitability while boosting agency performance at the same time.

Smarter systems:

The pace of change within the rec-tech space over the last five-to-10 years is nothing short of spectacular. This also means that some applications can quickly become redundant when something faster, smarter and more efficient comes along. Nowhere do recruiters see this most than with the humble CRM.

It is estimated that the average recruiter spends around four hours each week updating their agency’s multiple systems. This results in lost billing time not to mention the impact it has on client and candidate relations.

In 2017, Simplicity sought to overcome this with the launch of GEMS – a truly unique Recruitment CRM and workflow solution. At a time when competition between recruitment agencies is at its highest, time lost to non-billable tasks is costly to the business. With its end-to-end recruitment technology solution that combines front and back office systems into one seamless process, GEMS is already delivering time savings to recruiters; thereby, enabling them to focus on agency growth. And best of all, it’s FREE to all Simplicity partners.

If you are looking to reduce your costs, save time and become even more efficient get in touch with us. the opportunities for agency growth have never been better, so partner with the recruitment industry provider of choice.