The Candidate-Centric Business Model Concept

Changes in economic conditions influence business operating models as we adapt to the drivers of supply and demand. The number of candidates available correlated with the number of open jobs influences, without question, the selling approach for the Staffing Industry. When the job market is depressed, unemployment is high and candidates are plentiful; sales are intensely focused on winning new customers to come across few and far between hiring needs. Conversely, when, jobs are abundant and candidates are scarce, the sales process follows the acquisition of a candidate, and the focus narrows to identifying the hiring manager with an open job that matches the background and experience of the candidate. This is concept is based upon demand forecasting and inventory management—best practices in product-based industries for decades.

The idea that a branch can “be all” to all customers is a myth. You cannot represent every candidate effectively and work every job order successfully. What you can do is develop a core-competency of identified job categories/titles for your branch and build a database of hiring managers who have interest in the job categories that you represent. The ideal core-competency skill sets for your branch should be representative of occupations that are desirable for Temp/Contract and Direct Hire. The reason for that is most candidates are best attracted and come to you for Direct Hire opportunities. Should they be “available” presently, they can be assigned to Temp/Contract engagements until which time a “regular” job is identified. Job categories/titles that fit these criteria are generally aligned with health margins, high pay rates and superior markups. These are the people likely to be sought after by hiring managers and department-level company representatives to fill critical open positions. These may differ market-to-market and should be reflective of your market; including hot industries and jobs as well as job categories with candidate shortages. These are the candidates that you should recruit day-in and day-out instead of wasting precious time trying to fill random job orders that sales efforts are generating.

Candidate-centric selling is simple as doing what you do now and adding one degree of strategy to generate job orders that you can fill with candidates you already have. Most Staffing Industry branches have a selling strategy that is made up of a target list or a zone approach—this remains the platform upon which you build your Candidate-centric business. You enhance this process by adding to your “contact names” associated with the companies that you are pursuing. The key is to add hiring manager, department manager, office manager, executive office contact names that are likely to have a direct need for the job category/title within your established core-competency. At the same time develop a way to track for the company (or hiring-manager level) record, AND the candidate profile the following important values that will superpower your searching and marketing activities: industry, job title, software and any other key need/experience that will match a candidate and a company perfectly. You then can do candidate-based reverse searches to identify companies to which to market them and search your database of available candidates to market specific companies.

You can develop additional sources to market your candidates by reviewing job board postings for core-competency positions—who needs your candidates? You can automate this by acting as a job-seeker (it is free to do so) and set up Saved Searches/Search Agents (employer searches, keyword searches) to automatically notify you of new core-competency positions as they are posted. Additionally review thoroughly the application/profile submitted by your candidates. Their job history, job search activity, and references are abundant with hiring manager names that have, and will again; hire the kind of person sitting across the interview table from you. Save copies of these leads to have ready when you are making sales telephone calls to qualify new leads and market candidates.

You bring these practices together by making candidates marketing calls the center of sales activity. Make it a practice to have a daily meeting to ensure all selling members of the branch are well-versed regarding core-competency candidates available—their background, experience and reason for being in the job market—these are the candidates that are highlighted for marketing efforts. Come together as a team to strategize how to place every qualified candidate with a company and make marketing calls until you do so. In other words, all sales calls are candidate marketing calls. When you make enough of these calls, you will receive job orders…job orders that you can fill with available candidates.