Plan for Growth is a series of three articles which looks at the importance of having a strategical growth plan, how you can fulfil your objectives and the best practices to implement successful change management and talent attraction.
Talent, training and business change specialist and founder of GMA, Greg McManus has over 25 years of experience, here he shares his experiences of leading business development and growth.
The recruitment industry is highly competitive, with increasing numbers of businesses actively trading and entering the market year on year. To maintain a competitive edge and support their growth plans recruitment business owners need to continually evolve their growth strategies.
If you are wanting to grow your recruitment business, it’s important that you have a strategic growth plan in place that enables you to plan and track the business activities you need to undertake to support your growth and help you achieve your objectives. Let’s breakdown some of the key steps you should take when developing your plan for growth.
What do you want to achieve in priority order, by when and how will you measure success?
The first step in any planning exercise is knowing what you want to achieve, setting timelines against achieving each objective and detailing how you will measure success.
Think about your objectives, what do you need in order to support your growth? This could include developing your current team’s skills, expanding your team, increasing your marketing activity, widening your talent pool, market specialisation or investing in recruitment technology. Once you have your list, place them in order of priority and assign a budget for each.
Once you have a clear set of objectives and the priority in which they should be achieved, assign timescales to each one. For example, if you want to expand your team with five more recruiters you may say this will be achieved within 3 months or in 12 months you would like x number of candidates on your books or at the end of the 3-year plan revenue will have increased by x percent.
With objectives and timescales decided, you now need to think about how you will measure success, where markers for success may include:
● Increased NFI and EBITDA
● The number of markets covered
● The amount of key client PSL’s in place
● The percent mix of permanent vs contract / temp NFI
These markers will serve to measure the ROI once you have attributed a revenue value on achieving specific targets. NFI and EBITDA are straight forward, but less so are the other options which are key milestones in adding to the value of the business in both EBITDA and increased multiplier for business valuation.
Armed with this information you will have your brief and will be able to begin working towards the growth of your recruitment business.
What approach will you take?
Consider what approach you will take to achieve your objectives and ultimately grow your recruitment business. Will you take the same approach you have used before or will you try a new approach or include a mix of both?
Knowing how you will approach working towards your objectives is key to success, as without a plan how can you be sure you are on the right path? Think about the methods you have used in the past for growing the business, consider what was successful and what you could have done differently to help inform your approach this time and accelerate your success.
Who will be responsible for what?
Think about your internal staff and how they could be involved in delivering the project and the roles you will delegate to them. Consider their strengths and experience and where those could be used to their full potential to help your business reach its goals.
If your team are fully included in your plans they will be onboard and strive to help you achieve your objectives. You may also want to consider external resources that may be useful to help fill the gaps you have in your internal team.
Now that you’re fully prepared to reach out for external input in your growth plans, look out for the next article in the trilogy on Monday 24th August, where we’ll detail how to ensure you achieve your targeted growth objectives.
Photo by Carlos Muza on Unsplash
