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Ok, let’s dive in for today. What’s Cooking?

Position Yourself As The Right Recruiter

Another way of saying this is “What do you need to be the top of mind recruiter for your niche?”

Recruiters are quite common. Statistically, there are 3.5 million recruiters globally. I think there are more but that is a good reference for today’s discussion.

In case you are curious, in Singapore, there are currently a total of 13,744 registered recruitment personnel. The figure is definitely higher as you can be a recruiter in Singapore without a formal registration (No, it’s not illegal if you are working on a SELECT License and you can find more details about this in my solo recruiter’s playbook.)

How do you stand out among this 13,744 if you are a recruiter in Singapore?

Thankfully, it is not that complex.

You are not technically competing against all of them. Only the ones who are recruiting in the same niche as you, will be your direct competitors.

That said, it’s still probably a sizeable crowd and so differentiating yourself is crucial.

To cut to the core, these are the 7 ways to set yourself up for success as the GO-TO-RECRUITER.

1. Invest in learning about your niche and then produce content about it. No one knows who you are, until you put out content to educate your target market who you are, what you know and how you do it. If you are not learning constantly, you can’t establish your authority in your niche.

2. 80/20 Thinking and Action. Do not conform to the pattern of the world, try differently and by that, I mean do the absolute necessary things that contribute to your bottom line. Everyone else is competing on speed and quantity of CV, why don’t you be a speedy sniper recruiter and do a 1 shot 1 placement feat. Repeat this often, you became the go-to recruiter for clients that value efficiency. Now, who doesn’t?

3. Never compete on pricing. Whatever you appreciate, appreciates. If you truly appreciate the quality of your work for your client, it will also naturally appreciate in quality because you will naturally invest in upskilling to provide better services. The problem with price war is that someone out there is crazier and will undercut you regardless how low you can dive to.

4. Learn communication skills. Hone them with your life on the line. Read books, watch YouTube on how people communicate effectively. This is truly the 20% that brings you most of your result. Whether it is convincing your client to hire the right candidate, negotiating with candidate for reasonable yet attractive package, buying time for both sides to enter into interview mode, managing in-between expectations and emotions, all of these require high touch skills because you are handling people. If you can handle people, you can handle anything.

5. Deliver as promise. Do not under promise and definitely don’t over guarantee. Just do the normal and boring thing - deliver as per promise. If your value proposition is to provide a benchmark candidate in 5 working days, then make sure you step on the throttle to make it happen. Nothing beats a delivered promise. Make that your hallmark of quality and commitment.

6. Have a Blue Ocean Strategy. No matter how great a recruiter you are, you can never thrive in a red ocean. Good news: the blue ocean is adjacently near to the red ocean. Read my earlier post on this if you don’t get it. It is pure commonsense but few people give themselves the luxury of deep reflection and they either just give up or keep on hustling in that red sea.

7. Build a community of supporters who will refer you clients. In my own practice, I partner with executive coaches who consistently refer their clients to me. Through that, I was able to establish a pipeline of both candidates and clients without relying on cold DMs. You can do this easily when you partner with other professionals that align with your business. The above example (recruitment and executive coach) has proven to be a blissful marriage.

Utilize all 7 tips or a combo of them to stand out clearly as the top of mind recruiter in your niche and that’s when you can focus your time on providing value (closing deals) than developing business the cold hard way.

p.s. Follow me on LinkedIn and DM “The Solo Recruiter” if you want to be the top of mind recruiter among the 13,744!

Joo Kwang
​Author of Solopreneur’s Guide to Recruitment Business

​About this newsletter: You are receiving this email because you subscribed to my weekly TSR (The Solo Recruiter) newsletter. Every week, you learn the strategies that successful recruiters use to grow their businesses. So you can also do the same and launch your business.