How regional recruitment firms are competing on a national scale

In their first year of business Heat Recruitment added 250 potential candidates to their books. They now hit that number every two days.

“If you really invest in LinkedIn, it’s a very powerful tool that gives you access to a higher calibre of candidates”
Steve Preston, Founder, Managing Director, Heat Recruitment

Profile

From starting out ten years ago in a Lithuanian log cabin based in his back garden, Steve has built Heat Recruitment into a company now competing on a national scale, specialising in recruiting talent in Accountancy, Finance, Insurance, IT and Legal. Despite the economic downturn, Heat Recruitment managed to thrive with a combination of keeping costs down and adapting to a quickly changing environment where other, larger companies couldn’t.

Their Goal

Their Goal: To move away from resource draining job boards and continue to grow efficiently

After a decline in ROI it was seen that job boards just weren’t the answer for Heat Recruitment. Using multiple job boards was a drain on both time and money, and when only 40% of the market is represented here, it wasn’t an effective solution.

One platform was needed, where all candidates could be located and the team could work together, making for a more efficient and collaborative process.

“LinkedIn has overachieved in our expectations, particularly the account management. There seems to be a real desire on their part for us to get the best out of the tool, aid our recruitment services and ultimately help us achieve our business goals.”

 

Their solution

  • Efficiently targeting content

    Time was set aside for consultants to understand the value of followers. With this greater understanding of their audience, Heat Recruitment used LinkedIn’s career pages to ensure they were appealing to the right candidates over a wide range of industries through providing tailored content to them.
  • Leveraging their team

    Heat Recruitment utilised their knowledgeable and skilled team to create more varied and personable content as well as spreading the workload. The team share their own insights and stories via LinkedIn to build their brand’s image online and become thought leaders in their industry.
  • Nurturing candidates through the build, engage, recruit process

    Using LinkedIn’s philosophy of build, engage and recruit, Heat Recruitment are now dedicated to nurturing candidates in their follower base. These potential candidates are no longer just numbers, but people to engage with, and the more engaged they feel, the more likely it is that you will see higher quality candidates stepping into the right roles.

Their results

Investing in the basics with LinkedIn has led to greater success and continued growth:

  • Heat Recruitment’s renewed two year deal with LinkedIn has paid for itself within the first quarter.
  • Using dedicated content campaigns, Heat Recruitment have grown their follower base from 400 to 6,660.
  • Heat Recruitment has doubled in size over the past 12 months, from 25 consultants to 50.
  • 1.2 million driving traffic hits using relevant and targeted content within their ad campaign.
  • Since the beginning of their relationship, LinkedIn has now paid for itself eightfold at Heat Recruitment.
  • The ability to measure success and identify areas of improvement using LinkedIn analytics has led to quicker and more accurate improvements.
  • Processes have been automated as much as possible using ‘saved searches’ freeing up time to take a more personable approach.

 

What's next?

Empowering team members

As the team at Heat Recruitment has doubled in size over the past year, a new emphasis needs to be placed on leveraging the team members and pulling together to understand what drives success for an individual and how to transfer this into success for the company.

  • Each team member will be empowered to follow this recruitment process with LinkedIn by completing a five stage coaching course run through Heat Recruitment’s own training academy.
  • Thirty new licences mean the very best team members can expand their reach in the future using LinkedIn and bring in more high quality candidates.
  • A new focus on analytics has meant Heat Recruitment is continuously finding areas to improve and grow through looking at what’s working. This was particularly useful for the tone used in InMails.
  • By highlighting best practices within the team, other members can be both inspired and motivated as well as sharing innovative ideas across the company.

“It has become such a good revenue stream for us and we know the reach and scope of it is huge. This is just the tip of the iceberg.”