UK Recruitment
If you know your industry- you know the name Greg Savage. The Rugby World Cup has brought many Aussie legends to our shores (yup, still reeling from that QF) but the recruitment man from the land down under has been sharing his pearls of wisdom and insight from his years in the industry. The fact this masterclass tour coincides with the RWC- pure coincidence, surely? Over time, the Firefish team have developed a great friendship with Greg- he recently sat down for a chat with Alan on our predictive recruitment podcast. To see him “do his thing” in real life and in the UK was brilliant, although we wouldn’t have minded the trip to Oz, let’s be honest.
What a great day!
Greg had the day split into two masterclasses; kicking things off in the morning for recruiters while the afternoon was all about recruitment business owners and directors. The morning session was titled “Will the Golden Age of Recruitment Pass You By?”. Greg’s theory is that while the rise of technology has an increasing number of companies bringing their recruitment in-house, the global skills shortage creates an opportunity whereby the niche recruiter (who gets it right) can become invaluable and prove their worth over the next 3-5 years. Speaking at length about the types of behaviours required to be successful in this ‘golden age’, Greg narrowed them down to two: ‘skills hunter’ and ‘talent magnet’.
The ‘skills hunter’ will use innovative techniques and sourcing methods –while still employing traditional tactics- to find the candidates their client can’t. Skills hunters know where to look so they don’t have to cast a wide net, they can catch the superstars others may overlook or throw back to the sea- if we’re going with this fishy analogy…
A ‘talent magnet’ engages with top talent on the market using their own personal brand and reputation. The stars want to work with them because they’ve heard the myths and folklore, they want to see the legend in action. Okay… maybe not legend but you catch our drift, right? If you craft ‘brand you’ in the right way, it can become the most valuable tool in your arsenal when you’re suddenly the one people want to work with. It’s clear that recruiters need to be great digital marketers and think outside the conventional box to survive and thrive during this skills shortage.
Building Your Business for Profit & Exit
The afternoon session for owners and directors focused on “Building Your Business for Profit & Exit”. Greg’s warning was that recruitment business owners should disrupt their business before someone else does, that they need to be thinking of their end game even if it’s a long time off. Greg then spoke at a more strategic level discussing how recruiters must become marketers and introduced his version of predictive recruitment! We KNEW we were on to something! Drumroll… and enter ‘Digital Predictive Recruitment: The Savage Truth Way’. Greg discussed how critical it is to have active and engaged candidate data in your CRM; he suggests this should be a talent funnel of exclusive, unique candidates. When Greg described most recruitment databases as candidate graveyards we couldn’t have agreed more. We see this every day when we’re speaking to the majority of our new clients who typically have 60-90% dead data in their existing traditional recruitment databases. When Greg then brought up social communities and how social media is no longer optional in recruitment- well let’s just say heads were nodding left, right and centre. We love that so much of what Greg preaches and advocates is what we have in our own messaging and the industry is definitely taking notice and moving in the ‘predictive’ direction… we should have saw that coming-gettit?
From all the buzz on social (check out the #recsavage tag) people definitely took away a lot from his talks this week and we hope to be in the audience for another.
In case you can't find your passport for a trip to Oz, a wee birdie fish told us he miiiight be heading to Scotland in the new year: we'll keep you posted on that one.
