Why Recruiting Agencies Need To Care About Personal Branding
So, are you considering going down this path of personal branding for yourself as a recruiter or for your recruiting agency? Do you need a personal brand? Do your individual recruiters need a personal brand?
What is this whole personal brand thing anyway?
I’m going to share with you the importance of why you absolutely need a personal brand for your staffing, recruiting or executive search firm.
What I’m about to share with you is exactly how I helped Ben Bonnell, Renee Frey and John Randolph build personal brands that they use to attract their ideal clients and candidates to their business so they can generate inbound, warm leads.
The first thing that you want to pay attention to is the reason why branding is important is because that’s essentially your unique selling proposition. This is your story, and when you have a personal brand, you know, and I know one of the biggest challenges that recruiters have is, how do I differentiate myself?
One of the biggest things is actually having a brand, and having a presence around yourself can help. Many recruiters are still not doing that. They tell their candidates how important a personal brand is, how important it is for them to be findable, likable and trustable.
Yet, they’re not doing that themselves. So, building a personal brand first and foremost will really help you stand out from the competition, and it will help your recruiters to stand out from the competition.
Then that leads us into the second thing: one of the biggest challenges that recruiters are facing right now is engagement, and the reason why is the market is just saturated and especially in these highly competitive spaces like health care and tech. As you reach out to candidates, they’ve already been picked over, and they’ve been hammered by recruiters.
Well, how can I separate? How can I show them that I’m not just another recruiter. How can I show them different? Well, that’s through your personal brand, and this will create more opportunities for yourself to stand out from the next recruiter and that will increase your response and increase your engagement. I see it all the time.
Video is one of the quickest ways to know, like and trust. So, if you consider doing some personal branding, be willing to hop on a little bit of video, I think that will really help expand your brand and how people get to know you.
The next thing that having a personal brand does, is it actually will attract more opportunities for you. Your clients will reach out to you because there’s actually going to be awareness around who you are. They are actually going to be able to see how you’re different.
You’re going to see how you help. You know, personal branding isn’t just limited to influencers and online marketers these days.
In fact, this is no longer even an option. That’s the last point. You can either choose to build your brand yourself, or you can let the market build it for you because either way, you have a brand. Your brand is essentially what people are saying when you’re not in the room so you can grab the bull by the horns and start building a brand for yourself… a personal brand.
Or you can let the market find you because the market will build a brand. And that’s just how the world is working nowadays. So that’s why it’s so important to build a brand now is because it really becomes your unique selling proposition. It becomes your differentiator. It becomes how you stand out.
I think that’s the biggest thing: because you really need to stand out. There’s just tremendous competition in the marketplace now, and it’s just incredibly important that we’re doing everything we can as recruiters to differentiate from the next. Because whether you like it or not, if you’ve been recruiting for 30 years and you’re kicking ass and you’re doing it successfully, you’re still competing against the guy that’s been doing it for one year and you know doesn’t even have the track record. But I’ll tell you what: some of these younger guys that have been doing it for one or two years have more knowledge around building a personal brand and will make more noise in the marketplace, than some of you that have been here for a long time. I know that’s not what you would want to happen. So make sure that in 2021, in the future of your business that personal branding is at the top of your list.
What are you doing this year to improve your personal brand?
