Why does niche recruitment seem so attractive?

The logic for positioning an agency as a niche recruiter

One of the central questions for every recruitment agency entrepreneur centres around the direction of the business. One of the main considerations is whether to position the company as a generalist employment agency catering to as many potential clients across the breadth of industry and commerce, or whether to focus on specialised areas or niches.

We’re constantly reminded about the high number of unfilled vacancies across the global labour market.

The number of job vacancies in the UK reached a record high of almost 1.3 million in the three months to March 2022.

And of course there are extreme shortages of skills in some specialised niches.

With a general shortage across the labour market, a whole-of-market agency might be the way to go. Or, the extreme shortfalls of talent in specific areas could lead to developing recruitment services for a specialised niche. Take your pick!

Positioned as a generalist recruitment house will give an agency a great deal of appeal as practically any business that outsources the recruitment process may be able to use its services.

However, this approach pitches an agency into competition with many others and makes it difficult to stand out in the marketplace. For some, the way forward is to operate as a niche recruitment business.

Acquiring the specialist knowledge to be a niche agency

The scope for niche recruitment is incredibly diverse. Each area of commercial activity requires at least some form of specialised knowledge. From engineering in its many forms, through to finance, software development and IT security; healthcare and medical science through to sales and marketing and back again!

But don’t mistake niche recruitment as meaning only recruiting highly technical roles. That is simply not the case. Niche could mean non-technical areas too. An agency could specialise in catering, cleaning or agricultural workers, all of which are niches that require some skills and knowledge. They are not necessarily low-level. HGV driving, security and bodyguard services also qualify as specialised niches.

Taken to its extreme, niche recruiting is described as ‘inch wide, mile deep’. This is the model used by hyper-niche specialists who position themselves as absolute experts. They possess exceptional knowledge for very specific areas, and consequently, have a very narrow market to shoot at.

Of course, recruiting for any vertical requires expert knowledge of the niche in question, and this will likely have been gained either by a recruiter that was formerly a niche industry insider that has opted to change careers.

If you don’t possess the detailed level of knowledge required to succeed in a specific recruitment niche, then you are going to have to find a way to acquire it yourself, attract someone currently recruiting for such roles, or find an industry insider willing to come over to the ‘darkside’.

A world of opportunities for niche recruitment businesses

The opportunities for niche recruitment businesses are enormous. In the age of the internet, it is not too hard to develop a global audience for niche recruitment services. With a worldwide view for developing both talent and clients, it is perfectly feasible to become a world-leading business by mastering internet technology and social media.

Finally, you don’t have to limit your activities to just a single niche. You could develop a brand. Let’s call it ‘AAA Recruitment’ and as it specialises in aircrew, let’s call it, ‘AAA Recruitment Flight Crew’. You could develop other niche service areas under the AAA Recruitment brand, related to Flight Crew, such as ‘AAA Recruitment Aviation Maintenance’. And if you wanted to develop niche specialisation in diverse areas, you could develop separate brands to isolate the businesses entirely.

Streamline your agency’s back office with ETZ

However you position your recruitment agency, ETZ is the RecTech partner of choice for recruitment businesses. Whether your agency addresses the whole of the market, or operates in specialised niches, our back office solution streamlines agency operations.

Whether you operate at a local level, as an in-country recruiter, or have global ambitions, ETZ simplifies timesheets, invoicing and payments. Our complementary solutions, ETZ Comply for onboarding and Caspian for business intelligence give agencies the competitive advantage that is so vital to success today.

Make ETZ your RecTech partner of choice, and we’ll help you obtain excellent value from technology. To find out more, call us on 0800 311 2266 or book a demo.