Sourcing prospective clients for your new recruiting firm can be a challenge in the early days of your new business. As a new recruiter, it is important to define your niche and the types of clients you will work best with in order to find clients for your recruitment agency both within and outside your network. This article aims to provide a template and some effective methods which will help independent recruiters build their recruitment agency brand and grow their client base from scratch.
Which type of clients are you looking for?
Before searching for potential clients, it’s important to define what your recruitment business’ focus will be and the types of clients that will benefit from this focus. Finding clients will be more effective once you have answered these questions. For example, you might have an industry-specific focus and an approach which is more likely to appeal to startups. The recruitment industry has a lot of competition so it’s important to narrow down your recruitment services to a niche you are good at.
Why should a client choose your recruitment agency?
Hiring managers have plenty of recruitment companies to choose from so why should they choose you over other recruiters or their own internal recruitment function? By proving you have a superior advantage in your niche through your experience or connections you can convince them that you will source more qualified candidates. Equally, you might have a recruitment process which better addresses your client’s recruitment needs and strategy.
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How to find clients in your network?
Once you have established which clients you should target, and why you’re able to find the right candidates for them, you can start looking for potential clients in your own personal network. For example, start identifying connections who meet your criteria and might be interested in your recruitment services within your LinkedIn contacts. If you had a track record at a previous recruitment agency, try obtaining testimonials or referrals to reach more prospective clients. Once you complete your first projects, try obtaining referrals from those existing clients to increase your brand’s credibility.
How to find new clients outside of your network?
Whilst your current clients will generate some referrals for you, it is important to allocate time to lead generation and business development in order to secure more clients for your recruitment agency. Before starting any outreach, it is important to have a CRM in place to properly track your leads, but it’s equally important to have a recruitment agency terms of business agreement and an effective way for creating, signing and managing these agreements independently of your CRM. This will ensure you are not missing opportunities due to friction in the sales process.
Once you have these systems in place, you can identify prospects that have been job posting on job boards and you can connect with the companies’ whose job descriptions and desired candidate experience align with your skillset and staffing agency’s focus. You can double down on these leads with cold calling and email marketing. You can also monitor their activity on social media and try and engage with them via their posts in order to gain their attention. Finally, you can also connect with potential clients at industry specific networking events where you’ll be able connect in person and collect business cards.
This article has provided a template for new recruitment agencies to build a brand and source the right clients for their business. This client sourcing template is only effective if you are able to onboard clients to your recruitment agency terms of business agreement smoothly. Legislate’s contract management platform allows you to tailor the terms of a lawyer-approved recruitment agency terms of business agreement to your specific needs which will allow you to respond swiftly to client requests. You can then e-sign the contract directly within Legislate and track the contract throughout its lifecycle.
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The opinions on this page are for general information purposes only and do not constitute legal advice on which you should rely.