One of the hardest things about canvassing for new business in recruitment is that services can be pretty tough to sell. And this is because, unlike products, you can’t see a service; you can’t hold it in your hands to decide if it ‘sparks joy’ before parting with your money.
Which is why we need to work a lot harder to help clients and prospects visualise what it is they’ll be paying for if they choose to work with us - and ‘productising’ your recruitment services is a really smart way to do this.
How to productise your recruitment services
Instead of approaching prospects with the promise of great CVs, try thinking about all the different types of services you’re able to offer them and package these up in a way that can be tailored to suit their specific needs and pain points.
This way, you’re able to sell your services as a kind of recruitment product that will directly address the challenges they’re having, which is much easier to pitch.
Not only this, but it also draws attention to all the hard work you already do on the regular for your clients – and often for free!
With more and more businesses building out their internal recruitment teams, tailoring your recruitment services to plug gaps where clients still need our expertise is the perfect way to keep relationships strong and stay indispensable.
With this in mind, here are a few services you could be pitching to your clients and prospects to move the buy-in process forward and convince them that you’re the right recruitment partner to work with.
5 recruitment services to sell to your clients
1. Internal recruitment strategizing
If a common objection you’re experiencing when canvassing for new business is that everyone you’re speaking to is telling you they’re focussing on internal recruitment, don’t see this an sales objection you can’t overcome.
The reality is that setting up a system and strategy for internal recruitment is hard work – it’s a pain point that any business with a small hiring team will struggle with, so it’s the perfect opportunity to offer your expertise and support.
For example, you could be offering to help the client set up internal referral schemes or help them create a clear structure and system for promoting staff internally.
Any super-savvy recruiter will have already guessed that this also provides a great opportunity for you to offer your services to recruit to fill those lower positions that become available when internal staff move up the ranks. An excellent way to secure yourself some additional business!
2. Employer branding
Company/corporate branding and employer branding are two very different things, and whilst most businesses will spend a lot of time, money and resources on the former, many won’t have even given the latter a thought.
Whilst a marketing team will be focussing on amplifying a company’s brand, who’s taking charge of letting the world know how great an employer they are to work for?
Offering an employer branding service to your clients is an excellent way to create a strong and lasting partnership. You could package the service up to involve setting up a careers section of your client’s website, for example, and offer to create separate careers social media accounts across a variety of channels on their behalf.
And if their HR team is a one-man band, you could even propose they outsource careers social media management to you entirely and you report back to them each month on the results.
3. Job ad management
Creating awesome job ads is a serious craft, and it’s something that recruiters (both internal and agency-side) are always striving to evolve as candidate needs change.
But one issue many internal recruitment teams face is that they become so consumed by their own internal terminologies and company jargon that they publish job ads that don’t actually make sense to anyone outside of the business!
As an external party, you could be selling job ad management as a service where you commit to building job profiles based on internal documentation, pull out what’s appealing to the candidate and craft top-class job ads that you know will be interesting to the right people (based on your expert knowledge of the market and the role’s target audience).
As part of this service, you could also include a laser-targeting job ad marketing strategy to the mix and commit to ensuring the client's job ads appear on Google for Jobs.
4. Job offer management
As many as one in ten job offers will be rejected by candidates because hiring managers take too long to put forward an offer, so it’s likely a lot of your clients and prospects experience difficulties with this.
Similarly, there will be many situations where a candidate will accept a job offer only for your client never to hear from them again because the notice period hasn’t been managed properly. These are both common disaster situations in recruitment that cost businesses time and money, so outsourcing this to you could take a load off their mind and a time-consuming task off their workload.
5. Assessment profiling and interview coaching for Hiring Managers
As a recruiter, you know all the tips and tricks for really getting to know a candidate during interview – it’s your job. But for many hiring managers, interviewing candidates is something totally new to them, so your expertise and support will be really appreciated.
As part of your recruitment package, you could be offering hiring managers short coaching sessions to help get them up to speed on how to closely assess each candidate who walks through their door. For example, tips on how to approach interview questions, what sorts of questions to ask, and you could even help them come up with practical tasks and assessments as part of the interview process too.
Productising your services like this is the key to futureproofing recruitment agencies in our current market, as it helps you highlight common pain-point areas that your clients will be experiencing and remind them that they still need your expert help.
Download the eBook below to learn how to repackage your new services and start selling them to your recruitment prospects.
