Staffing agencies provide an invaluable service to companies and job seekers everywhere. They help qualified individuals find positions in businesses that need hardworking and trustworthy employees. Instead of going through the expensive, lengthy, and exhausting process of interviewing hundreds of applicants, companies can simply hire a staffing agency to find the most appropriate and qualified candidate in the shortest possible time.

However, staffing agencies have to deal with universal and industry-specific challenges that often make it difficult to achieve business growth.

Currently, the job market is saturated with demanding positions and not enough skilled candidates to fill them. This makes it difficult for staffing agencies to meet the demands of clients who are hiring. Moreover, online communication has made it easier than ever for job seekers to find work by themselves.

Staffing agencies must therefore adapt to the ever-changing landscape of employment to keep themselves relevant, essential, and attractive to prospective clients.

This comprehensive guide provides helpful suggestions for developing a staffing agency business plan that drives your company towards success.

Like every business nowadays, advertising and promotion are absolutely essential when it comes to growing your recruitment agency.

It doesn’t matter how efficient, comprehensive, or successful your business model is. Without investing a significant number of resources into getting your brand out there, you can’t expect to attract new clients. Long gone are the days when TV, radio, and print media were enough to create brand awareness. Today, companies need to tap into various online resources to get the word out.

Consider outsourcing your advertising to a small firm that specializes in online marketing. They will get your online presence up and running in no time. Due to the complex and rapidly evolving nature of the digital marketing scene, it’s difficult to stay up to date on the latest trends and run a business at the same time.

Bringing in external expertise to help you navigate the confusing world of social media marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), including prospecting, and other forms of digital media advertising will be worthwhile in the long run.

If there is one word that summarises the theme of the workplace in 2021, it’s inclusivity.

Leading business giants all over the world are wising up to the fact that the future of the workplace is multicultural, multilingual, and multi-ethnic. We live in an increasingly globalized society where the boundaries between people are undergoing a robust re-evaluation. Our global need to collaborate and cooperate across physical and conceptual borders is forcing us to realize that there is strength in diversity and our survival hinges on our ability to accept that.

Not only will a greater focus on diversity improve your public image, but it will also give you access to a wider pool of candidates with dynamic strengths and backgrounds. Furthermore, it will attract the business of companies who respect an emphasis on diversity.

Law, custom, and culture are all bending to accommodate the increasingly intermingled society we are building. Embracing the change will only do good things for your business growth.

Economies worldwide are pivoting rapidly toward short-term, independent contract-based, freelance business. More and more people are choosing to go into business for themselves or finding temporary gigs that afford them greater flexibility in terms of hours, travel, and pay. This model is showing success from a business owner’s point of view as well.

Hiring temps and freelancers helps business owners save a fortune in employee benefits, access more highly qualified candidates, and outsource costly administrative processes.

By adjusting your staffing agency business plan to offer greater opportunities to freelance and contract workers, you will attract a whole new generation of independent workers who have loads to offer. Companies will also be tempted to hire from you, as much of the legal, financial, and administrative burden will be taken off of their shoulders.

As the owner or director of a staffing agency, you know that you have a lot to offer your clients. The trick is making sure that they know this too.

In a world where communication is becoming increasingly automated, the value of personal relationships is incalculable. While the world at large is relying more heavily on technology to solve its problems, there are certain things that cannot be simulated. One of these things is trust – a priceless ingredient to any relationship, be it professional or personal.

If your clients trust you, you can count on their return business, and this spurs on business growth.

Fostering trust in clients is no easy feat. It requires consistency, honesty, and follow-through. It also requires a personal touch, which can be challenging when dealing with several large clients. However, you can rest assured that the effort you put into building solid working relationships with your clients will be invaluable.

In business, reputation is everything. This is a fact that hasn’t changed since the dawn of commerce. Trust, loyalty, and mutual respect should always be a part of a staffing agency business plan, even when times are tough.

Years of experience in staffing are bound to have taught you a few things. Why not offer your insights into the hiring process to companies and job seekers alike?

Companies want to know what makes them attractive to talented workers while prospective employees want to know how to land the highest-paying jobs. Sharing your knowledge can serve several purposes – such as publicly establishing your expertise, boosting your brand awareness, and building trust with potential clients.

Additionally, it helps in expanding your network, and perhaps even making some extra money for the business if you choose to offer this experience in the form of a workshop or paid webinar.

Predictive analytics used to reside comfortably within the domain of mathematicians. However, thanks to modern advances in programming and technology, predictive analytics have become widely accessible. Predictive analytics is an essential tool to ensure business growth in any sector. Why?

Predictive analytics essentially uses historical data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to predict what will happen in the future. In recruitment, it can provide insight into the effectiveness of your recruitment and hiring efforts and inform future recruiting strategies and hiring decisions.

As a staffing agency, you are collecting massive amounts of data on people every day. With predictive analytics, you can use this data for predictive hiring, talent sourcing, and even to forecast and prevent employee turnover.

It can also help with fraud detection (which is highly useful in vetting candidates and companies), optimizing your marketing, streamlining in-house processes, and reducing wasteful/risky spending in general.

Recruitment analytics is a combination of data and predictive analysis that provides real-time information to help you grow your staffing agency. Powerful recruiting analytics help you explore every aspect of your business, turn data into actionable insights, and make better business decisions faster.

Today, there are plenty of easy-to-use reporting and analytics tools that enable staffing agencies to save time and forecast the future. By easily consolidating massive amounts of data, staffing agencies can use analytics tools to visualize information in customizable graphs and compare their company’s performance to the recruitment industry. For instance, you can make use of the Syft Benchmarking feature to compare your performance to that of other staffing agencies in the same region.

It’s always wonderful to work with a promising candidate – they are eager to please, they know their worth, and they bring in business.

By tapping into the networks of candidates like these, you are bound to find more of the same.

This is where referral programs are your best friend. Whether they are friends from university, family members, or ex co-workers, your highest-ranked candidates are likely to have connections to other candidates of similar caliber. Incentivize them to refer your service to others by offering discounts, greater exposure, or other rewards, and you will soon be up to your neck in skilled job seekers you can flaunt to your clients.

A single satisfied and well-placed jobseeker is a potential gold mine. Capitalize on the relationships you’ve built to gain access to networks that will drastically improve your marketability. Don’t scrape the bottom of the barrel to flesh out your pool of candidates. Use your connections to get the cream of the crop.

Growing your staffing agency takes time, dedication, and effort. These business growth tips can help you to build a scalable agency that adapts to new changes and challenges as they arise.

Bash Sarmiento is a writer and an educator from Manila. He writes laconic pieces in the education, lifestyle, and health realms, and is a frequent contributor to the Syft blog. His academic background and extensive experience in teaching, textbook evaluation, business management, and traveling are translated into his works.