Category: Market insight

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Market insight Moving jobs Recruitment

5 reasons why top billers move to recruitment agency competitors

Top billers are responsible for generating a large chunk of revenue for recruitment agencies and when you lose one, you will feel it!

If a consultant is a top biller, they’re doing a great job delivering the best talent for their clients. If that consultant moves on, that client is highly likely to move with that recruiter in the future, of course assuming no non-compete rules are broken in the short-term.

But why, if they’re doing so well in your agency, do top billers leave to other agencies? Here are the top 5 reasons we hear from some of the industry’s best billers in Asia.

There’s no one to learn from

The top performers are always hungry to increase their performance and learn more. If they get to a stage however where they become the top biller in the agency, they may feel that they have learnt all they can.

This could be in the form of recruiting processes, such as best practices and advanced recruiting techniques, or perhaps specific to the market the recruiter is specialising, such as niche areas like Quant Trading Technology.

The latter is quite common, especially if the recruiter is working in a large generalist agency. They may see moving to a brand that is only known for their market segment as a good move for them as they can surround themselves with more recruiters in the same market they can learn from.

In these situations, we see some recruiters who are in the SGD $600 – 700k range, who are at the top of their game in their current agency but they want to become a million dollar biller to take the next step up, so they move to an agency who have recruiters billing more than them.

As recruitment becomes more competitive by the hour, especially with the current economy, I can foresee this to become more important over time as a recruiter’s intricate market knowledge becomes more important to differentiate.

They’ve reached a ceiling for career progression

As a recruiter climbs the ranks, they might get to a certain level where there is no more progression, especially if that person is managing a team.

If there is someone above them with some coverage within the consultant’s market who has been there for 10 years and is unlikely to leave, the recruiter may be more receptive to opportunities that would offer them a larger scope.

They are only however receptive at a stage where they’ve been in that position for a while, so generally the recruiter would have served a commendable tenure in the agency.

They’re not keen on the management and get pushed into it

A classic one! Naturally if a recruiter is doing exceptionally well, the agency will want to expand that team in an attempt to generate more revenue. The issue is that, if your top biller is moved into management and as the team expands, the biller has less time to bill, and hence decreases earnings, which leads to dissatisfaction as they lose one of their major motivators.

They may also have no interest in managing at all, and forcing someone into that route could be a recipe for disaster. They will either leave, or not manage well, leading to turnover within the team.

A good strategy in this case is to either hire a peer with clearly defined market segments, or a manager who wants to manage and can bring external experience, however structural changes like this could be very sensitive should be discussed openly and transparently to reduce the chances of someone becoming unhappy.

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Your commission scheme isn’t competitive enough for their appetite

An obvious one, but this is one of the top reasons. Recruiters are money motivated and if they hear through the market that other agencies pay more on commission, you’re already at risk of losing them.

This is most prevalent when a recruiter is moving from boutique to boutique, because more often than in global players, in a boutique, a recruiter needs to build their market with fewer relationships and less infrastructure or support from a platform.

The recruiter should always of course consider the platform offered by their current agency that has enabled them to develop into a top biller, but if they get to a point where they no longer need that support, they might make the jump to another agency that pays more.

They’re not happy with the way deals are split

Less common, as the the top billers generally have a good foothold in their market to get 100% revenue recognition for their deals, however some firms have certain structures where the consultant loses a good portion of revenue due to a split structure.

This is a tricky one to get right and it really depends on the structure of your agency. Do you operate 360? 270? 180? Or all? Some agencies offer a 30% split for candidates who are referred internally to other consultants, some offer 0%. Some go up as high as 50%!

Experiencing any of these frustrations?

As an agency specialised in the Rec2Rec market, if we look back at most of our top biller placements over the past year, a majority of them are due to one of these frustrations.

If you’re a recruiter facing some of these frustrations, please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn for a confidential chat about your situation and different ways we can help to resolve it.

If you found value in this article, please consider subscribing or following us on LinkedIn to have new articles for recruiters like this delivered directly to your inbox!

Categories
Market insight Recruitment Training

How agency recruiters can survive and thrive in 2023

Benjamin Franklin, upon the signing of the US constitution, is reputed to have said ‘in this world, nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes’. I suspect we could safely add recessions to the other two certainties. As we emerge from the post-Covid bounce back, we are likely to face a broader global slowdown to what we experienced in 2022.

Recessions are cyclical and often tough to predict. A country is usually considered to be in recession when GDP falls in two successive quarters. Though economists cite a host of different causes it seems that the impact of lockdowns, Covid supply chain problems, the Ukraine & Russia crisis coupled with the resultant increase in energy prices have led to a challenging economic outlook after the initial boom.

I think it is safe to assume that some countries will experience a recession or a slowdown of some description. Recruiters sadly are not immune to the impact of such events. We recruiters tend to feel the impact immediately but the good news is we experience an upturn as soon as the economy does pick up.

In the 25 years I have been running recruitment businesses I have experienced too many recessions including SARS, the GFC and Covid-19. Regardless of the cause, I think the following is the advice I would give to recruiters to weather the storm. 

Stay very close to your key clients

It sounds obvious right? We should be doing this anyway but it is far more important when the market slows. Vacancies don’t dry up completely but they reduce in number significantly. Which vacancies then are the most important to your client? Typically there is a lag between the time the decision to prioritise certain positions and the communication of this to the recruiter.

Clients generally have multiple suppliers so in an economic slowdown a client would surely want to work more closely with their favoured recruiters. We have seen (thankfully) a return to face to face meetings following Covid, so take full advantage of this and get your client out for a coffee, lunch or a glass of wine and really understand the challenges they will face.

In the recent slowdown of the Singapore software engineering market my observation was that clients took a great deal of time to adjust the number of proposed or articulated vacancies. Plenty of vacancies seemed still to be open, but by some fairly simple questioning it was clear that prioritisation was already taking place automatically. You need to adjust to this rapidly.

A combination of understanding which are the key vacancies coupled with a real understanding of client challenges will allow you to identify roles that will have a higher fill rate. 

Try to predict market trends

As soon as you begin to suspect a slowdown (today, for sure) then it is wise to take a very in-depth look at your market sector and the geographies you serve. 

If you serve the energy sector today, for example, you may conclude that this particular recession does not apply to you as much as it may to other sectors. 

However if you serve the crypto sector then you have probably already made a significant adjustment to how you approach your desk. Crypto was red hot 9 months ago. Today, it is not. Most crypto recruiters will have pivoted into the more traditional firms to find roles they can fill. 

Take a close look at your sector and try to determine where your sector focus should be. In Covid, hospitality and aviation recruiters, for example, would have probably opted to leave their sectors completely. Thankfully markets usually come back and those recruiters will likely return to their usual areas of expertise. 

An interesting observation in the current market is to look at the multitude of energy firms and recruiters who, in 2016-18, pivoted into (mostly) tech, and are now doing the reverse and re-entering the energy sector as tech requirements begin to slow.

Look ahead. Try to evaluate your market based on as much information you can glean from clients and industry publications. Given the sales cycle of a typical permanent placement then it stands to reason that you would want to prepare to re-enter a market 3 months or so until the anticipated recovery. That is the tough bit, making the call.

Try to predict geographical trends

The ability to change geographical focus is a great tool to have if it is possible. As a rule of thumb a small boutique agency will have a lot more leeway to be flexible when opting to target different locations. This of course is not the case for the global players who can find themselves restrained if they have a significant brand network across a region. 

Geography has implications for the targeting of both clients and candidates. You may find that a neighbouring country is doing far better economically than your home country, it is relatively easy to leverage off home clients and ask them to introduce you to clients in other jurisdictions and this is another reason to stay very close to key clients. 

Though we welcome a gradual return to face to face meetings, it cannot be disputed that we all got more practice and experience in conducting video calls with both clients and candidates, across the Covid period. A positive Covid legacy is a willingness to communicate in this fashion. Resultantly, barriers have been lowered when attempting to build new relationships in different geographies. Use this to develop new clients. I recently spoke to a recruiter based in Hong Kong who was achieving success by opening up new clients in Singapore taking advantage of an increasing flow of candidates moving from Hong Kong to Singapore and beyond. 

There are lots of challenges when developing overseas markets such as time differences, language barriers and a lack of market knowledge. Most of the challenges however can be overcome by investing in significant research in resources readily available on the internet. As you launch your initiative you can very quickly fill any knowledge gaps by speaking to lots and lots of candidates. Hardly groundbreaking as we all know that it is our candidate base who possess all the intel  we need to run a successful desk. 

Prioritise placeable candidates

We are entering a phase of increased candidate supply. On one level this is a very good thing but on another level this can create some significant challenges. Most recruiters will have experienced a far higher response rate recently. This is due mostly to the fact that some candidates are actively looking out, but equally some are responsive simply because they want to hedge their bets, just in case their roles come under threat. 

Given an increased response rate it makes logical sense that you will find your diary filling up very quickly with candidates who have been let go. It is vital that you make sure the candidates you are going to work with are ones that your clients are looking for. Only by interrogating your client can you be 100% certain of exactly the skills and experience that is in demand. 

I recently got approached by someone I consider to be quite outstanding, someone I know pretty well. However well qualified I felt that he was my advice was for him to stay put at this point, and alert me only if he was laid off. The market in this particular sector is very unlikely to hire at the current time, so the best advice I could give would be to keep his head down and stay put at the current time.

Focus on candidates who have the skills that your clients are looking for rather than ones who have more generic skills. If you contrast the Singapore & Hong Kong software markets today versus Q1 of this year, it’s clear to see how a candidate who was recently in great demand is currently not particularly of interest today.

Pay very close attention to your 1st interview to placement ratio. If the market has shifted considerably then I would always suggest you re-start the ratio calculation. What applied to a desk historically may not always reflect the desk dynamics today. Keep yourself honest by starting afresh and ensuring your quality hit rate stays where it should  be. 

Work harder and smarter

It’s not really a case of ‘work smarter, not harder’ as I think it is a case of both. Your interview to placement ratio is likely to get worse hence you may need an increase of 20 or 30% in terms of candidates in order to achieve the same revenue outcomes. By definition then you are going to have to work harder and put in more hours. That may be unpalatable but it is correct. 

The working smarter part is really the 5 points in this article.

As discussed, recessions are cyclical so hunker down and see the event through to the end. It is common for recruiters to throw in the towel, but that can be a pretty short sighted approach. You don’t have to look far to see many recruiters who have been in the market for a significant amount of time, hence they have survived a number of recessions over time. All types of industries suffer from recession, not just recruitment. And remember, the grass is not always greener.

If you enjoyed the article, please consider subscribing or following us on LinkedIn to have new articles for recruiters like this delivered directly to your inbox.

One of our desk specialisms is Rec2Rec in Asia, so please feel free to reach out to me or my colleague Cameron for a chat about opportunities in the market.

Categories
Market insight Recruitment

How recruitment agencies are structuring their work from home & remote schemes in 2023

The world of work has changed drastically over the past 3 years and recruitment is no exception to that. Prior to the pandemic, most agencies required their employees to work in the office but the landscape today is completely different.

Big tech companies have offered a work from anywhere policy which dominated the headlines on the topic in 2022. Due to the sales-based nature of a recruitment role and the need for face-to-face meetings from time-to-time, it has been one of the more complex industries to navigate when it comes to creating a structure that works for everyone.

The working environment of agencies today can be categorised into 3 environments – fully remote, hybrid and office – but which category do recruiters like the most? There is no simple answer to this one, every person is different and this has created what can be considered a divide in opinions.

Here is an overview of how recruitment agencies are approaching their work from home strategies in 2023.

1. Work from home or work from anywhere

Some agencies offer a fully remote or work from anywhere structure. This is more common in smaller boutiques who operate flat structures and hire experienced billers, with established networks, who are able to work independently.

At this level, the recruiter will have a network that requires less face-to-face interaction, due to their existing track record with clients.

If the recruiter is a manager, they may find it challenging to manage a sales team remotely if the team are relatively junior or new to the job. If the team is more experienced, management can be more straightforward.

Some recruitment leaders, especially in the larger agencies, aren’t for this structure as they feel they start to lose some of that high energy sales floor culture, which is why they would prefer employees to have a hybrid structure.

Other recruitment leaders use this structure as a key attraction to join an agency, especially the boutiques, as some of the larger agencies aren’t able to offer it. It’s also popular on the employee side for recruiters who want full flexibility, but not for everyone which we will explain later in the article.

2. Hybrid structure

This is the most common structure in agencies today.

What we see most often is that employees have about 2 days at home and 3 days in the office. They generally tend to keep the days the same for everyone, so there is team interaction on the days employees are in the office.

Some managers would also offer the work from home or anywhere option up and above the hybrid structure, if the consultant is hitting billing targets.

Some agencies also manage how many days a consultant has at home by seniority. For example, a Principal Consultant may have more days at home than a Consultant. Managers may also be required to be in the office more often for training and fostering a team culture.

3. On the sales floor

A handful of agencies have returned full-time to the sales floor. This is more common in mid to large agencies who have high growth plans or agencies who hire employees with no recruitment industry experience. This is typically because the agency can manage closer and deliver training more effectively.

Some recruiters may favour this environment, especially those who worked in the industry prior to the pandemic as they’re used to the buzz of a busy sales floor and that’s what they love.

We still speak to recruiters who ask specifically for an office environment for the reason above, although most recruiters prefer a hybrid option.

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Based on performance

In most agencies, recruitment managers base flexibility on performance. For example, if there is a performance issue, or if a consultant requires more training, face-to-face tends to be the preferred method for managers so they will call their employees into the office.

One size fits all or at the manager’s discretion

Some agencies have a ‘one size fits all’ structure for everyone, whilst other agencies delegate the decision of how they structure it to the leader of the team and what that particular manager wants to do.

Juniors require more training and face time

Although agencies have always hired recruiters without prior experience, this is becoming a go-to model in 2023 due to the scarcity of recruiters, compared to the availability of graduates.

Agencies who hire juniors are much more likely to require a consultant to be in the office full-time during onboarding to soak up the key fundamentals of recruitment.

Structures may change

The landscape is changing constantly and in some countries there are still lockdowns that may disrupt a model that has been put in place recently.

Not only Covid-19 affects a structure, but any shifts in the market, such as economic conditions in 2023. A shift in market conditions will require some level of training to adapt successfully.

Most working environments may change from time-to-time depending on this, but also the situation and needs of the business.

Which is the best and what agency offers one of these structures?

There is no simple answer to this one, every recruiter has their own preference and working style as to what works best for them. My advice would be to discuss how the agency structures their scheme during an interview process and assess how you feel about it.

Make sure you’re not closed off to change. A structural change in your environment will happen at some point in the future and it’s best to keep an open mind. You can talk to your manager to discuss your feedback on the change and how that affects you personally. Worst comes to worst, you can move agencies.

If you’re interested to know what agency has your preferred structure, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and we can have a chat.

If you found value in this article and would be interested to be kept in the loop on trends in the recruitment industry, please consider subscribing or following us on LinkedIn to have new articles for recruiters like this delivered directly to your inbox.