I’ll start this article with an immediate apology to Reid Hoffman and Greg Beato who I think may have cornered the term “superagency” around the same time as I did! My version might be slightly different to theirs though (which is a fascinating read, by the way), and this is just an article, not a full-blown book (that will come later!), but there will be some parallel themes, I am sure…
I have been in the recruitment and staffing industry now for well over… well, let’s say I have done my time!
I have seen just about everything that can be thrown at us, from global economic meltdowns, to pandemics, to technology revolutions and more.
I have celebrated the incredible highs, felt every single pain and have been challenged / challenged back just about every day since I stepped foot onto my first recruitment sales floor with Drake International back in Sydney all those years ago.
I mean would you recruit this guy?!
The rollercoaster that is recruitment is very much a real thing (if you haven’t experienced it for yourself you absolutely should!), but there are very few other industries that can offer so much reward on so many levels as recruitment. About that another time…
For now, back to that rollercoaster, because the ride is getting faster and the market has once again been testing just about everybody across the recruitment sector.
So much change. So much evolution / revolution. So much opportunity.
And that’s just it.
Whenever there is change, significant change in a market, the same thing always happens and the market splits into 2 or 3 different camps.
The first camp are those businesses who sadly just can’t make it work. There is something about their model, their culture, their niche, their client base just won’t allow them to get any real momentum and when two or three of those things compound at the same time, it generally signals the start of the end for their business. We have seen this over the last few years – friends, colleagues, peers closing down their businesses and starting something new elsewhere. To note, whilst often painful, it doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
The second batch of agencies are those that are figuring it out. They have made changes to their business models, to the workforce, to their operating models, to just about everything (in some cases) to align with what the market is demanding.
They have had to. There wasn’t really a choice.
For some, the road ahead is a lot calmer than it was, albeit there is a long way to still go before they can feel safe and back in the driving seat.
But for many of them now the momentum is building once again. You can feel it.
Net contribution is up, profitability is back on the rise, new and better client relationships are being formed and existing ones evolved (and yes, that can also mean cancelled!). High performance is now a mantra, not an aspiration and they are starting to enjoy all that comes with a record month or a record quarter or two.
However, there is a third group of agencies emerging out of the fire and they are different. Special.
There is something about them that just works. It’s as if they have been given the blueprint to success (and no, this is not something you can “download online - was £199, now just £49!”) and all the pieces are coming together.
I’ve been watching these agencies for a while now. I get to work with some of them.
I’ve had the chance to look under the bonnets of their businesses to get a sense of what is going on here and why can they take the leap on the rest of the market.
They are the superagencies™, a new (or new version of an old) breed of recruitment business that are taking significant market share.
Size is irrelevant, but market impact is important.
For that matter, some are even solo entrepreneurs, behaving like ten person businesses, using tech / AI and offshoring support to create a very unique org chart and offering a wide suite of products and services across a small niche of clients.
But there are some common threads I am seeing across all of them, irrespective of headcount. I am going to roll out a whole new training and development programme on this shortly covering the whole lot in one go, but to give you a taste, here are some of those threads I am seeing (to note, this is not a list of things to do, but rather some suggestions of things to explore properly to see what might best fit your business).
Let’s start with the most important one – they are just doing the basics brilliantly and consistently well. Those “basics” may have changed but the principle certainly hasn’t and probably never will!
They are plugging in AI and it is actually moving the needle and making a tangible impact to productivity. It is not a distraction to their business but an electric supercharge that powers everything they do to new levels of performance.
They have the right clients in the right markets. Maybe. That can come down to luck some times, but it can also come down to being very deliberate about the market and who within that market you want to have a relationship with.
Their expectations of what a good recruiter looks like has increased. Significantly. Average performance is now underperformance and underperformance is no longer tolerated. Their cultures, their processes, their operating models, their rewards structures all support and drive this.
They have removed all the wastage and all the unproductivity in their businesses. The leaks in the bucket have been plugged and they have restructured everything for greater productivity and greater performance.
In some cases, their service offering has evolved, even though they have gone deeper into their niche. In some cases it’s wider, more embedded, more elevated and their positioning in the market has changed accordingly.
They have eased their way up the ladder to be more of a strategic partner than a transactional supplier. Their margins reflect that.
Then there’s an obsession with recurring revenues, candidate and client experience, consultancy led selling and consultancy led servicing of a customer’s needs. I haven’t even touched on data, yet – a recruitment company’s gold – and so the list goes on!
It’s a lot, but as I said, not a checklist of things to do. That would be just too much to handle right now. But it is a guide to what is possible and what just about anyone in the recruitment sector can do, if they chose to, because others are doing it right now.
One of them, some of them, all of them.
… and it seems to be working!
- Article by James Osborne
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