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We’re always on the lookout for the best advice on how to grow your staffing agency. We’ve found the best strategies often come from our industry friends and leaders who are truly exemplifying success and profitability.
We want to know — what have they done to improve their staffing agency?
Even in one of the most competitive employment markets we’ve seen in years, staffing leaders use some key strategies to expand their market access while delivering an industry-leading candidate experience.
A special thank you to Pankaj Jindal and Sense for hosting their recent informative webinar on how top staffing agencies outperform the competition and accelerate their revenue growth year after year. Pankaj is a staffing industry veteran and the co-founder of Sense, the first candidate engagement platform designed specifically for the staffing industry.
Stick to the basics. It can be easy to chase the newest, shiniest technology or trend to accelerate your staffing agency’s growth. But leading recruiting agencies all agree that the simplest, tried-and-tested strategies are getting the best results. Here are some of the things they all proposed:
Beyond highlighting remote work options and committing to recruiting underrepresented candidates to build a more diverse workforce, here are some creative strategies some recruiters are using to grow their agency:
That last point is becoming increasingly important. Previously, recruiters and employers used to see a candidate’s previous position that was only one year as a red flag. But the pace of change in several industries, especially within the tech sector, is becoming so rapid that many full-time employees are exiting their positions in a year and sometimes even less.
Another factor that is driving high turnover after one year is pay raises. Many candidates have found they can negotiate for a better wage increase at a new position rather than convincing their current employer to give them a good pay raise. Their high rate of turnover is your gain.
The “employer brand” is such a big buzzword these days for a reason. Building and strengthening your employer brand is one of the most important things a staffing agency can do to attract clients and valuable leads. Some of the best steps to take in building your employer brand is to deliver a white-glove candidate experience by:
There are so many new and evolving ways to stay in touch with your talent pool. The biggest key is automation. By automating the manual tasks like sending one-off messages, your recruiters spend much less time on tasks that are taking away their ability to be more people focused.
A good rule of thumb is for any task your recruiter must do more than five times, automate it!
Who on your team is cleaning your leads with data management? If you don’t have anyone, you should consider someone right away. There has never been more data at our fingertips about our candidates, what is important to them and where they’re at in their buyer journey.
The staffing agencies that can capture that data and use it wisely will be positioned to grow their agency like nobody else.
All these suggestions not only sound effective, but they’re proven to work. What’s more, when your staffing agency can go all-in with these tips from the most successful firms, not only can you grow their business in similar ways, but you can have a lot of fun and help job seekers improve their lives along the way.
Let us know how we can help. Whether finding the time or the expertise or developing the overall strategy to grow your staffing agency, Parqa will help you find a way to beat the competition. Contact our team today.
When Tony Sorensen began Parqa Marketing, he wanted to create a digital marketing agency that could meet the highly specialized needs of the staffing industry. Because Parqa began as an offshoot of Versique Search & Consulting, we started with niche expertise vital to serving our client’s unique needs. As a result, we have been able to help our clients grow their businesses and expand their market share in ways that nobody else could.
We recently sat down with Parqa’s CEO and Owner, Tony Sorensen, to discuss the beginning of Parqa, what we’ve been able to accomplish for our partners, and where we’re headed in a rapidly evolving industry.
At first, it was just dumb luck. I was single. I was working for a big company then, my first job right out of college.
I moved up fast with that organization. But I didn’t want to work for a big company. And I wanted to be responsible for where I was going, be in control of my job, and grow my career like I thought I could. But most of all, I wanted to help people.
I was able to take an opportunity in staffing and recruiting, which was a perfect fit even though I was nervous about the pay being 100% commission. But thankfully, I took the opportunity because, you know, it really worked out for me, and it gave me my start in the staffing and recruiting industry.
In January 2013, Chris Ohlendorf and I launched Versique with a simple vision. It was going to be two things:
We wanted to own the internet so that anytime anybody searched for “staffing and recruiting” in Minneapolis or the Twin Cities, they would find us. And if we were going to own the internet, we knew we’d have to invest heavily in digital marketing. That heavy investment in marketing would eventually pave the way for Parqa.
We’d already got a taste for what a solid investment in digital marketing could do for our staffing agency, Versique. Big things. Incredible things. So, we began Parqa because we wanted to really give back to our industry and start helping other staffing firms around the country to grow just like Versique did.
The beginning of Parqa was not without its challenges.
For starters, we were signing contracts with so many smaller companies that weren’t willing to invest in their brand. Also, we thought anybody could do what Versique did. But what I didn’t realize was internal marketing at Versique was investing heavily – a lot of time and energy – in building our brand through content marketing. And while that worked very well for Versique, we found many companies weren’t interested in making that investment.
The early years of Parqa were decent, but we were struggling to find our passion and ideal customer profile. When Jared began running the business, he was able to lock us into a path that we haven’t wavered from, which has allowed us to attract some very high-end talent and, in return, helped us bring on some of the largest staffing firms in the world as trusted partners.
Challenges help us to learn, and some of the biggest things I’ve learned are:
One of the most important things I’ve learned is that the place where Parqa is going, we’ve never been there before. The best way to get there is to hire the right people and give them the confidence to take you there.
Is it working? Over the past 12 months, Parqa has hired 33 people, and we’ve had the lowest turnover ever. So yes, so far, it’s working very well.
With COVID and the pandemic, we learned a thing or two about flexibility. Chris and I probably grew more in the last two years than probably the previous seven years combined.
It was hard for us to make the shift to working from home. It was hard for us to come around to the idea of people not being in the office five days a week.
But, I had to listen to what my team was saying and what my leaders were saying. I had to believe that just because my team isn’t in the office doesn’t mean that they’re not productive. So that was a big change.
But you know what? While working remote – and more recently, working a hybrid situation – we had two record years, not just in growth, but in how we’re changing to serve our clients and employees better.
We learned that if you take off the old-school hat and really build an organization around trust and accountability – which I think we have done over the last seven years – you build a culture of trust. We still love the people we work with, and we want everybody to be part of a close-knit company, and I was so afraid that we would lose all that during COVID.
We realized we really need to focus on forward-thinking staffing firms. Firms that understand how critical it is to invest in their brand, invest in and organize their technology, invest in the best tools that will really help them grow value in their organization, and ultimately, grow a legacy for what they’re trying to do.
And now we’re working with some of the biggest staffing firms in the world. That’s a big deal for us to see how far we’ve come and how far we’ve yet to go.
But we’ve seen Parqa evolve and grow to become more of a technology and performance marketing company. And the Parqa name is out there. We are owning the internet.
What’s more, our Parqa team is learning so many things from all of our industry associations and partnerships. So, the tide has kind of turned. Where other firms had wanted what Versique had, now Parqa is learning so much at conferences and collaborating with industry leaders across the globe that we really feel like it will be one of the main driving forces in Versique’s growth into the future.
We’ve heard from several sources that 60% of business in the staffing industry will be some sort of contingent labor. This means there is no better time than now to really build your marketing strategy and invest in your brand as a staffing agency.
If you’re going to win, and we want you to win, you need help. And we can help you get there.
March is Women’s History Month. In recognition and celebration of the vital role of women everywhere, we wanted to pull five relevant and top takeaways from a recent Fireside Chat in which Parqa’s Vice President of Sales, Kelli Schutrop spoke with four leaders in the staffing industry:
Kelli’s candid conversation was a refreshingly revealing assessment of leadership in staffing and recruiting with some of the most inspiring women in the industry. Here are five crucial takeaways from their conversation:
Many leaders in the staffing industry have become scrappy and resourceful. That’s the nature of the work. One key discovery in becoming more resourceful was learning how to utilize an inverse support system. They’ve discovered new ways to build community and to contribute to the community that’s around them.
Sometimes, everything goes wrong, whether it’s childcare falling through, something at your kid’s school, a nanny calling out sick. This can be especially stressful for the many women who don’t live close to family – then what’s your backup?
This became especially critical during COVID, when many women came together to build an untraditional support network, such as coworkers and neighbors. And even though, in some cases, they couldn’t be more different from one another, they learned to lean on each other for everything – from parenting tips to professional strategies.
If we’re going to be models for others in the industry, we have to be genuine and vulnerable about the reality that we don’t have it all together all the time. Many of us struggle to maintain this thin veneer of perfection.
That isn’t genuine. To admit that can actually be very humanizing. Learn to share those vulnerabilities and stop glorifying the “grind.” Life isn’t about just being busy.
Women especially have so many spinning plates, and sometimes, it’s okay to let a plate drop. And that’s okay. You’re going to disappoint somebody, you just have to disappoint the right people. Be choosy and, if it can be avoided, disappoint someone who isn’t your family.
Understand the importance of childcare and the ramifications when you don’t have access to childcare – especially for working parents.
Many of us are fortunate enough to have a nanny on whom we can depend in times when we really need the extra help. It’s a critical component to giving us the space we need to prioritize what’s important and what we can let go of.
One thing we’re finally beginning to realize is how important it is to make yourself a priority. Don’t feel guilty about adjusting your household expectations to make yourself a priority. That is one thing we’ve truly learned, to take time for ourselves. When we allow ourselves “me time,” we can not only be better, happier moms, but better at our job as well.
Jenny brought up a great point with Pride Global’s Dojo program. The idea is modeled after a dojo in karate. If you’re new to karate, or any sort of martial arts, you begin as a white belt. You’re not expected to know moves. You’re not expected to know the basics. You’re just expected to be open-minded and to learn.
This translates to so many people’s professional careers as well. Whether you’re just starting a job as a new administrative assistant or as a senior-level market lead, everyone comes in on the same playing field. Over time, we all have the same opportunity to elevate ourselves and advance.
By being open and always willing to learn something new, we’re taking the first step toward doing great work and bettering ourselves and our professional careers.
Historically, many women still find it difficult to be frank about their accomplishments and their potential. Even in 2022, many women are still not encouraged to promote themselves. This needs to change.
Kelli asked each of our contributors to discuss something they’ve accomplished that they’re proud of and has helped others in the staffing industry and/or their organization.
Do you know where your leads are coming from? Are your marketing efforts even working? Before marketing attribution, these very simple questions had very complicated answers.
When Toby Hoskins joined Parqa, we weren’t just looking for someone with impeccable taste in hot sauces and hamburgers around the Twin Cities. We needed an industry expert in marketing technology & automation who could answer those questions for our clients.
Toby and his team soon took Parqa years ahead of our time in understanding and implementing data and analytics to create better marketing – marketing that works. In doing so, we got a peek at the future of marketing that looks much different from what many companies are doing now.
It’s fair to say, there has always been skepticism around marketing. That’s likely due to an unclear or confusing ROI on marketing efforts. Those were the days before attribution, gathering the real ROI of a $2,000 monthly spend on digital marketing could be very difficult. Even harder would be linking a precise cost-per-lead to those efforts.
With only vague and sometimes misleading information, many decisions for future marketing and strategy were based on a hunch or intuition. The infographic below demonstrates what many staffing agencies are currently working with – a lead responds to an ad on Monster or Indeed, after which their candidate profile is created or they’re placed in a role with little or no tracking.
Did the lead come from Monster, or Indeed? What campaign were they responding to? If you were able to glean any data from that placement, it would have to be gathered and input manually, which is a tall order for an already overworked staffing agent.
But with marketing automation, leads are created in Bullhorn upon application, tracked along the candidate journey and ultimately provide insights of how your marketing is working. And it’d be automated to boot.
Imagine what you could do with the time saved and all that rich data! You could:
On a higher level, you’ll create a better overall candidate experience with attribution. You’ll give your leads the opportunity to drive the conversation by replicating messaging that got a positive response. And for candidates who want to know their status in the screening/interviewing/hiring process, you can actually track them in your ATS and give them an accurate answer.
In only the short amount of time since Toby began pulling marketing attribution for our clients, we’ve uncovered a wealth of information about the campaigns we’re creating for our client, and the platforms on which they publish.
Four our quarterly business reviews, we now have the capability to not only deliver a much clearer picture of the ROI for their marketing efforts, but which campaigns are working the best, and which platforms are delivering most, high-quality leads.
It’s important to note the current market right now, in which many staffing agencies are having a hell of a time finding quality leads for their clients. If ever there was a time to create better marketing that can connect with more leads of a higher caliber, it would be now.
And we see a huge potential to discover so much more with attribution.
And that is not even mentioning the time and money saved from moving away from campaigns that aren’t yielding results, and concentrating those efforts on the campaigns or platforms that deliver.
For marketing attribution, your ATS such as Bullhorn is going to be your source of truth. Bullhorn powers automation, attribution, and makes delivering a better candidate experience possible with on-demand staffing.
From your ATS, are two more crucial tools:
Even though marketing attribution is just one component of a bigger marketing strategy, it becomes essential when you see, as illustrated below, without a clear ROI, your agency will have a difficult time understanding what campaigns and platforms are delivering results.
At Parqa, we believe in the power of marketing. And we’re prepared to put our money where our mouth is and deliver not just the results your staffing agency is looking for, but a clear picture of what’s working, and how we can make it better.
For better results in attracting and engaging with your clients and candidates, contact Parqa today, and get a more clear return on your investment with better marketing.
There are a growing number of marketing technology tools out there for your staffing agency. But are they really helping you? Chances are, over time, you and your team have added several tools that either duplicate tasks, create a bad candidate experience, or are racking up a costly tab while you’re trying to run your business.
This new year, we suggest doing some nerdy housekeeping. Mapping your technology stack will help you start your year free and clear of unnecessary, inefficient, and costly tools. They aren’t doing your staffing firm any favors. And, when you’ve mapped out and optimized your tech stack, you’ll be poised to:
To help us understand the ROI of mapping your tech stack, we tapped Toby Hoskins, our marketing technology expert. He gave us five easy tips for mapping out your tech stack and how it can make your staffing process leaner and meaner for the new year.
If you need to travel two miles, you’re not going to take an airplane. You’ll want to take a car.
In the same way, mapping out your MarTech stack can make your recruiting efforts leaner, cheaper, and more effective. In short, you’ll be able to do more with less. You’ll use your platforms as they were meant to be used. It all begins with a simple question: what are your business needs?
It’s a simple question, but often, staffing agencies lose sight of their ultimate business needs – especially over time. They’ll adopt new technologies without getting the results they’re looking for. They’ve heard about the incredible capabilities of recruiting technology and they’re always chasing the newest, shiniest platform, and they’re not getting results. But why?
Adopting a new platform means dealing with change, and change is hard for many businesses. Many other businesses may be acquiring the right technology to solve the wrong problem. Eventually, businesses are finding their marketing efforts are being driven by their technology, rather than the business driving their tech stack.
To avoid going into a tech spiral, and to get the most out of these incredibly powerful tools, Toby has created five easy steps to help staffing agencies optimize their tech stack.
Many recruiters are finding their staffing efforts are being driven by their tech platforms when it should be the other way around.
When you determine your business goals you’ll be able to identify the gaps in your Tech stack. For example, maybe you have a great ATS system, but you don’t have texting. Or, maybe you have several tools that do the same task.
We’re finding many staffing agencies have, over time, gathered several tools that have outlived their usefulness. This is especially true for legacy tech that was acquired long ago. Maybe the employee who pushed for a new tool has moved on. Or, you might just forget how to use it anymore.
You’d be surprised how common time or continual misuse can sabotage your recruiting efforts. And you’d be even more surprised at the amount of overlap between the tech you have that are duplicating tasks and complicating things. By determining your goals, you’ll be on your way to discovering where those overlaps are, and where you can begin paring down your stack to cut down on time-wasting tasks.
Better yet, you’ll be in the driver’s seat again, instead of your tech platforms.
Whether you’ve been at your current company for many years, or you’re in a new role, making a current list of your tech platforms is an essential step for any staffing agency.
By helping recruiters make detailed lists of their tech platforms, often we’ll find they have an ATS or CRM platform, but they’ll also have Sense which offers so much more.
But making a list of your platforms doesn’t just identify redundancies in your stack. It could help you better understand what the platform is and what it can do. Even if you aren’t very excited to go down the rabbit hole learning everything there is to know about one tool or another, you’ll still benefit from finding out where that technology overlaps with others.
Ask yourself these essential questions for gauging the capabilities of all your platforms: What can it do? And what are we using it for? You might find some platforms overlap so much you could drop one that’s being outperformed by other programs.
Even a moderate collection of tech platforms can be confusing, even in a list.
After making a list of your platforms, use the list to create a visual graphic to map out what you’re working with. Toby suggests creating a bubble chart because it’s such a visually simple way to understand your stack of platforms.
With a bubble chart, you can illustrate how each platform connects to and works with each other. Any graphic will help you visualize things like two-way integration, where your data is flowing from and what platforms it’s going to.
One of the key benefits of visualization is how it not only makes your MarTech stack very simple to see. But it can also help you notice gaps such as two platforms that can be integrated but aren’t yet. Do you have data aggregation tool? If so, is it integrated to other platforms to ensure you’re making the most use out of the your most critical information?
Creating a visualization of your tech stack can also help you actualize your business goals. You can find new ways to create better, more efficient ways for your recruiters to source and communicate with candidates. Or, if you’re considering adopting a new platform, you can drop that into your visualization to determine if it’s the right fit for you.
If your new software creates redundancies with other platforms, visualization will help you gauge whether you could drop one that doesn’t ladder up to your goals as efficiently as the other.
To continue the metaphor of comparing your tech stack to a car, if you had a Ferrari, you wouldn’t only drive it at 25mph. You’d want to take it out on the freeway where it can perform like no other car could.
Optimizing could mean a lot of different tasks. Whether that’s comparing and contrasting platforms, eliminating duplicate tasks, filling the gaps in your stack, or dropping one platform that doesn’t perform as well as another. But whatever steps you’re taking to optimize, they should all help you to getting the most out of your platforms.
Optimizing will put you in a better place to drop the tech that’s not working for you. You can also save money getting rid of the tech and the subscriptions that aren’t being used to their full potential.
The platforms available to recruiters are a highly effective way to achieve your business goals and deliver the results you want. But the tech will only perform as well as you treat it.
After you’ve defined your business goals, made a list and a visualization of your tech stack, and optimized your platforms, you’ll be in a great position to maintain your stack for the long term.
Mapping and optimizing your tech stack isn’t just nerdy housekeeping for your company, it can deliver a real ROI with the time you spend and the clarity and efficiencies it can bring.
A healthy tech stack is going to perform the best, and revolutionize the way you recruit. Imagine optimizing your tech stack to the point that, instead of hiring more recruiters to expand your capabilities, reach more candidates, or execute your strategy, your marketing technology could do all that and more at a fraction of the cost.
Never before has recruiting technology provided more tools to help you work smarter, not harder. If you want to leverage your MarTech to reach more candidates, fill more jobs and grow your agency, contact us today.
2021 has taught us a thing or two about finding talent in a job-seeker’s market and a rapidly changing workforce during COVID. And with employers reeling from The Great Resignation, staffing firms are positioned for immense growth.
One of the hard truths of the industry going into the new year is your business is going to struggle if it can’t be found online.
Search engine optimization is one of the most cost-effective ways to increase brand awareness, web traffic, and conversion rates for your agency. With 2022 right around the corner, it’s time to solidify your SEO strategy and set your agency up for success. Here are just a few SEO tips you’ll want to try in the coming year.
Another way to leverage local SEO is by using Google Business Profile. This free platform, formerly known as Google My Business, is an indispensable tool for local business owners of all kinds. Staffing agencies are no exception.
GBP allows you to enter a wealth of information about your organization, including your physical address, contact information, services or products, images, and pertinent updates, as well as customer reviews.
Best of all, it can help you appear more frequently in relevant search results. Although these optimizations are done off-site, they can drive traffic to your own website and increase your overall brand awareness without much effort or financial investment.
User experience, known as UX, is crucial. Having a website isn’t enough; your site also needs to provide a positive experience for all visitors.
What does that have to do with SEO? There’s a distinct connection between web design and search rankings. Both Google and web users value sites that are fast, secure, and easy to navigate on any device. Websites that don’t meet this criteria will have a tougher time ranking in search results because, simply put, they aren’t perceived as valuable.
In other words, your website needs to be designed with UX in mind. If it’s been years since you updated your site, you’re dealing with sluggish speeds, or it’s tough for visitors to find what they’re looking for, you should consider working with a web design professional to ensure you’re meeting expectations.
Google recently launched its Core Web Vitals, which are newer metrics used to measure page experience and site performance. Make sure that your web designer is well-versed in these metrics and that your site is mobile-friendly, secure, free of intrusive interstitials (e.g., full-screen pop-ups), and generally easy to navigate.
If you take care of web design issues first, your other optimizations will be much more effective. After all, no one wants to deal with a frustrating website – no matter how frequently that site appears in SERPs.
Some may think that SEO is dead, but nothing could be further from the truth. Search engine optimization plays a crucial role in any digital marketing strategy. By using these tips to promote your staffing agency online, you’ll more effectively reach your audience and amplify your online presence.
