Did you go to ASA’s Staffing World this year? What an event! So. Many. People! And vendors! This year’s ASA Staffing World was in the top three most-attended events in ASA’s 40 years of hosting conferences.
We are still buzzing from our visit. That’s one of the reasons we love participating in ASA’s Staffing World. We get the chance to experience the newest insights and cutting-edge strategies for the staffing industry.
This year, we discovered several common themes of the conference either reinforced or emphasized an essential solution we’ve been working on with our clients for a while now: building candidate communities. It’s an exciting validation that we’re on the right track in leading the industry by turning underserved pools of talent into thriving and engaged candidate communities.
For Parqa, building a candidate community could mean combining the power of performance marketing with connected recruiting, or something as specific and actionable as de-siloing your marketing strategy. However it comes to life, everyone agrees that the key to attracting, engaging and redeploying talent—and the future success of your staffing firm—is partnering with the experts and adopting the tools that push your digital transformation further.
Here are four themes we heard during sessions and in conversations with our industry partners.
1. Staffing agencies are ready for better marketing.
It’s so exciting to see our industry grasping the power of great marketing and taking it seriously—especially mid to large staffing firms. We talked to several leaders who hired or were in the process of hiring their first senior-level marketing leader. The industry as a whole is embracing marketing, and individual firms are trying to figure out the impact they want to have and what good marketing means to them.
Learn About Performance Marketing
Performance marketing is the bridge between marketing and technology. It helps staffing firms strategize, execute and optimize to drive real business results.
2. Firms want to move beyond barriers.
Staffing firms that have been at the automation game and undergoing digital transformation for the last couple of years are feeling a bit stuck. They’re ready for results and looking for partners who will push them to the next level. This could be anything from an in-depth inventory and consolidation of your tech stack or using attribution to better understand your marketing ROI.
3. The importance of de-siloing your enterprise.
Sara Ford, Parqa’s Director of Client Services, presented an excellent speed pitch, “From Silos to Strategic: Unifying Your Communication Strategy, Technology, and Data to Drive Measurable Impact.” This topic sparked several conversations, especially with large companies. They’re challenged by pulling their operations, technology and marketing efforts out of silos and into a more harmonious arrangement that better represents their team culture and amplifies (rather than dilutes) the impact of each area.
4. Automation execution is a hot topic.
We heard many questions and different viewpoints on where automation should sit inside the organization, and who owns and executes the automation strategy. The real answer is that the lines aren’t always that clear. In theory, you can have a single “owner” of your marketing automation, but it takes a large combination of skill sets to actually do it well.
Get the Tools You Need to Lead the Staffing Industry
If you’re ready to continue the conversation about marketing, technology, operations, automation and everything else you’ll need for a bright future, let’s chat. Together, we can create the right solution for you.
For help creating your own candidate community and breaking past the barriers so many staffing firms are facing these days, contact Parqa today.
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