Wondering what the big business development challenges for recruiters are? We recently conducted some in-depth research into how recruiters are managing their business development.
The JobAdder team conducted a survey of 100 recruitment agencies to better understand how recruiters are approaching business development, and the results were interesting.
We found that recruiters are struggling to control and organise their business development efforts, especially in the current climate where we’re seeing an influx of jobs due to the ripple effects of the coronavirus crisis.
When asked, ‘how on top of your business development activity do you feel,’ respondents delivered an average rating of 3.3 out of five, with one being ‘it’s out of control’.
Furthermore, when asked to rank their biggest challenges, business development was third in a list of the most challenging demands.
DOWNLOAD OUR FREE EBOOK: How to boost your agency’s business development and remove inefficiencies
What are the key business development challenges recruiters face?
The current approach that many recruiters take to business development is often hindered by irregular communications and a lack of organisation and automation.
Our research found that recruiters are storing and recording business development activity in different locations and a variety of tech tools.
This means it’s hard to see a top-level view of all their prospects, where they sit in the funnel and who they are, so they often don’t know what tasks need actioning to progress leads.
Recruiters need a means of tracking every interaction with a lead across different touch points, whether it’s via email or phone or other channels.
This information needs to be easily accessible and compiled in an accurate and automated way.
Additionally, recruiters are often time-poor, juggling multiple tasks at once and relying on memory to follow up with clients.
This often leads to overlooking urgent or overdue tasks and irregular and inconsistent communications with clients. The time to convert is directly correlated to response time and follow-up time.
Our conversations with recruiters also revealed that clients can be key bottlenecks in business development efforts.
Understandably, clients are busy people and take time to make decisions, respond and come back with the information recruiters need. This was one of the biggest factors that affects the progress of a lead or opportunity.
Recruiters are also finding it difficult to prompt clients to respond, commit and confirm job requirements.
All of these challenges and obstacles can slow recruiters when progressing business development opportunities.
To discover more insights from our research into business development in the recruitment space, download our free eBook now: How to boost your agency’s business development and remove inefficiencies.
Ready to take your recruitment agency’s business development to the next level?
