New season, new challenges?

Ann Swain

What does the future hold for recruitment companies? Ann Swain, chief executive of the Association of Professional Staffing Companies predicts that globalisation and continued professionalisation will be hot topics.

Since the start of 2013, the jobs picture has been gradually more encouraging. The year started with news of a fall in unemployment and we’ve seen a rise in the number of permanent jobs. After the doom and gloom of 2012, it was nice to get some positive news on employment.

However, we have not yet seen that trend reflected in the hiring of professional level staff – in fact employers’ preferences for offering temporary contracts intensified right through to the end of 2012.

As approach a new financial year, is my firm belief that there will always be a need for professional recruiters, but in order for them to remain competitive there are several areas that I feel will be important.

The future of recruitment is with niche players, recruiting in professional sectors. While in house recruitment teams have long been viewed as a threat to third party recruiters, they will never replace those who source talent with scarce skill sets in global markets. Talent is now internationally mobile, the experienced talent pool is getting smaller not larger and the graduate talent pool is becoming less skilled.

However, many of those organisations that rely on an internal recruitment process have, in an understandable drive towards greater efficiency and cost savings, automated a great deal of their talent acquisition process.  Technology is not only disengaging for the candidate but it cannot assess crucial elements such as soft skills, it can’t sell a role and it can’t handle objections. 

The Government is going to have to understand the difference between the recruitment industry and the recruitment profession. A recruitment consultancy placing interim finance professionals is not the same as an agency providing casual labour in a food processing factory. 

Obviously I am not suggesting that the latter recruiters do not act professionally – but it is not the same job.  While some end user clients are beginning to realise that they should focus on value rather than margin when engaging a professional recruiter, one of the major hurdles we still have to clear is to try and get the Government to understand that distinction. 

Recruitment firms must not end up as collateral damage of ill thought-out legislation. As a trade association which only represents recruitment firms identifying professional talent, we know just how easy it is for this to happen. This was clearly evidenced by our victory over the consultation on the Taxation of Controlling Persons which was dropped as part of the Autumn Statement.

There are further challenges ahead – we are working with the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills on the review of the Agency Conduct Regulations and have recently met with Margaret Hodge, Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, to discuss the issues around personal service companies and IR35 legislation.

We need to equip our people with skills and training if we want to be viewed as professionals. I believe that professional development will, quite rightly, increase in importance during the coming year, and I would urge all recruitment business owners to think carefully about how they are spending their training budgets – is it just on sales, and if so where are the future leaders going to come from? 

If we are to attract and retain the very best talent ourselves then we need to be offering the sort of professional training and qualifications that our consultants deserve – this is just one of the reasons why we launched our MBA in international recruitment management and, more recently, our professional development division which offers a leadership qualification from the Chartered Management Institute.

Globalisation will continue to be a crucial growth factor. It is no coincidence that many of the recruitment businesses which posted the strongest results during the recession were also those which had expanded internationally, as this has been the best strategy for increasing turnover while maintaining margins.  And we are not just talking about Europe – the shift in economic power is opening up new opportunities for recruiters in areas such as Africa, Latin America, Russia and Asia Pacific.  APSCo has helped – and continues to help – recruitment organisations explore and expand to new international territories though our regular trade delegations in conjunction with UK Trade & Investment. We will be in Hong Kong in January and this follows on from last year’s highly successful delegations to Singapore and China.

So what can you do as recruiters to put yourself in the best possible position to reap these rewards? Think outside your traditional domestic borders, invest in their future leaders and support the view that there is a difference between the industry and the profession.  

 Ann Swain is Chief Executive of The Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo)