“A crisis is a terrible thing to waste,” Hochman proclaimed. “You need to build customers for life - one-to-one relationships built up over weeks or months or even years. Only then will you have a unique value.

“What sets you apart from your competition and do you talk about it with your teams? What does your company do that simply can’t be googled?”

Hochman, a former European business speaker of the year, provided the audience of recruitment and resourcing professionals with an inspiring and thought-provoking talk on ’The Relationship Revolution’, which is also the title of his recently published book. His appearance was sponsored by RBS.

“You should be looking at building customers for life,” he urged. “What you do for people now might be remembered for the rest of their lives.”

Speaking to Recruiter after his talk, Hochman said “it was impossible not to understand the pressure people were under in the [recruitment] sector” and the change that has been forced upon them. “But recruitment will never be like it was pre-Lehman Brothers - it just won’t,” he emphasised. “Recruiters must come to terms with a different model. It’s essential that they, in consultation with their clients, consider how value can be added.”

Having worked in large corporates himself, including senior positions at British Airways and Airmiles, Hochman believes companies will now focus more on what makes employees stay with an organisation.

“Keeping the right people in the right jobs, for the right length of time and for the right reasons is crucial,” he explained. “Most HR departments don’t understand as much as recruitment consultants. These are opportunities recruiters should concentrate on.”

Aligning core values with those of the candidate was “the single most important component” in the post-recession business world, he said. “If the values don’t match, you can’t fake it.”

He reiterated his belief that any relationship, be it with a candidate or client, should be lifelong. “Now is the time to break out of the ’sales-driven’ idea of business. These relationships are more than a one-night stand,” he said.

Use language to reflect value of service
Never ask a client, ’Got any jobs today?’ And never say you’re going to ’check references’. Instead, said Jim Albert, president and managing director of IT/engineering recruitment firm Modis International, “say ’we validate past performance and ensure full compliance’.”

Albert contended that the language used by recruiters must change to truly reflect professionalism and the value of their services. “We do not ’send over CVs’ - we ’present candidates’.”

Because recruiters provide valuable services, they must consider the professional-to-client relationship as one of peer to peer instead of subordination, he explained. “It’s time to abandon such expressions as ’thank you for your time’,” he said. “Our time is valuable, too.”

Embrace change
The advent of technology has not been good for recruitment, Tim Cook, managing director of Hays UK & Ireland, told the audience.

Over the past 20 years, he said, recruitment had seen an 80% diminution in its productivity. “In 1987, recruiters were filling on average 5.4 permanent placements per month,” he explained. “In 2010 that average figure is 1.2 placements each month.”

Echoing the theme from many speakers, Cook reiterated that recruitment is no longer about filling jobs, it’s more about placing a candidate. “Recruitment has to get back its value proposition. The customer - client or candidate - wants expertise, skills, engagement and relationships,” he said.

“Change is the hardest thing you ever have to do as a manager, but change is necessary. An agile business is a successful business,” he continued, stating that even though Hays has also embraced change, it was often easier for smaller businesses to change than larger organisations.

“Hays can be described as an ’entrepreneurial corporate’,” Cook told the audience.

RPOs: not the arch enemy
Collaboration and openness between agencies and recruitment process outsourcing organisations (RPOs) is crucial if the RPO model is to succeed on clients’ behalf.

Sue Brooks, managing director of talent management RPO firm Ochre House, told delegates in London that the relationship between RPOs and agencies should be driven by the needs of end users, who were no longer prepared to pay a 15-20% fee for what amounted to a ’black art’ they didn’t understand.

“Money is no longer made in ways that nobody else knows about. We have to be prepared to open up the business model,” said Brooks.

Brooks urged recruiters and RPOs to enter into an ’open kimono relationship’. “Clients would attach more value to resourcing firms who are prepared to open up their business models,” she said.

For example, she said clients wanted to know they were working with specialist recruiters who had a deep understanding of their market and who could enhance their employer brand. “Clients want to know exactly where their people are coming from. We are not arch enemies and we need each other’s expertise and strengths [for the benefit of the client].” However, she warned: “If recruiters and RPOs continue to see themselves as ’arch enemies’, we will become a very small industry in a short time.”

At the same time, Brooks said there were limits to this openness, especially if the relationship was one-sided. Where RPOs asked an agency too many questions about compliance, for example, and it became too invasive, it might be better for the recruiter to choose another business partner.

Miles Stribbling, managing director of international RPO Resource Solutions, said that to have good relationships in the supply chain it was essential to reduce the number of suppliers to single figures. “It’s very hard for 50 to 100 suppliers to have a good relationship. With fewer suppliers you will get better motivation, better turnaround and better feedback,” he added.

Andrew Thorne, chairman of ASWEB (Association of Social Work Employment Businesses), said he would welcome the opportunity for better relationships within the supply chain. However, the social care sector was “still in the stone age” in this respect, he said.

His members’ greatest frustration in working with MSPs/RPOs was not being allowed to talk to hiring managers, he explained, something that he argued was essential when recruiting social workers to drive up standards. Thorne said that far from having an ’open kimono relationship’, it was more a case of agencies being bullied by the RPOs.

Service and solving
Recruiters should turn down business even it is profitable if they want to separate themselves from their competitors and build a business that will turn clients’ heads.

Roger Philby, founder and chief executive at The Chemistry Group, said that in the case of his own company, a decision to turn down a £45k fee was justified because the company was not in a position to provide a great service to that particular client.

“One thing to build your reputation is pick your clients,” said Philby. He outlined a number of other ways that recruiters could stand out from their competitors:

- Find out what are your clients’ business problems
“People will pay you for solving their business problems,” said Philby. “Solve a problem and you deliver great service.” Businesses reportedly spend £24bn a year to manage poor performance, a situation Chemistry was built around to combat.

- Share don’t sell
Time spent sharing your insights and your knowledge with others was time well spent. “Sharing will come back to you in a good way,” said Philby, citing a free half-day workshop he gave in the US 18 moths ago, which has since led to significant new business.

Neil Wilson, managing director of Badenoch & Clark said the key to delivering great service was to ask what the client thinks. “If you never ask this question, you will never deliver a professional value-added service.”

Wilson said that developing and sustaining a reputation for service excellence depended on getting a number of things right:
- committed staff
- a service culture
- easy to do business with

Staffing companies would benefit, said Wilson, because research showed there was “a very strong correlation” between service level and financial performance.