Setting up goals– long term and short term- is an important activity that fuels growth. Sometimes, the standards are set according to what the supposed rival is doing. We have to be better than them, is the call of duty one answers to.
Healthy competition is good if it helps one come up with new ideas and reach targets.
What happens when the competition doesn’t really lead to anything? What if it just becomes an activity that drains your energy? What if it just turns into an unproductive, loss-making enterprise?
Not just in recruiting, but in many other industries, getting a client is important. Or more like winning a client is important. However in Recruiting Industry, sometimes, this “win” determines how much you would get paid, or to notch it up one level, whether you would get paid at all!
Retaining a loyal client is another aspect about this “winning”. That you would no longer be able to hang on to the regular because of various reasons on your part could be a stressful and often anxiety-inflicting event.
Joshua Skult in his article talks about how he just couldn’t find someone who was good with a particular software. His regular client had been making repetitive calls. Ultimately, he collaborated with his “rival” recruiter and found a placement for this client. What Skult did was, as he put it, take 50% while he could, rather than lose the 100%.
He feared what many do: he would lose the competition.
But he chose to collaborate with a fellow recruiter. Our NPA works on the same line, and that’s how splits work for everybody.
Another example, given by Stephen O’Donnell talks about his experience with collaboration. According to him, “A few years ago, The Recruitment Agency Network (RANJobs) in Scotland was a network of firms which initially built a website to contend with S1Jobs price rates. Before long those agency owners, who would normally never speak, were pursuing a joint tender for a huge government contract in order to compete with major national agencies.”
It is important to not make the rival an enemy.
And although, it might be so that collaborations, and their frequency and requirement is increasing now owing to the employment rates and trends, they are not that new an endeavor. They aren’t that uncommon too.
Collaborations are seen in areas which seem to be not even connected remotely to the corporate space. For example, in academia: interdisciplinary studies are on the rise in humanities.
We see confluences of engineering and biology in many recent scientific advances and studies.
The most common collaboration which we seem to be completely desensitised to is seen in fields of advertising, media and films.
We all remember ads which claim so and so product is “free” with their product. This is a daily example of collaboration, where both the companies profit in one way or another.
Skult very aptly puts it, “…with the interconnectivity that the world now offers it only makes sense to take full advantage of the ability to share information, ideas and business with those around us. What once was seen as naive or risky is now actually a smart play that will increase productivity, create valuable alliances and improve client relationships. It will take a willingness to shed long held fears, but, having done it, I know it works.”
Alliances, collaborations, calculated risks, trust, are some of the keywords we need to remember to think beyond competitions, enmities and rivalries.
References:
https://blog.firefishsoftware.com/bid/102716/can-recruitment-agencies-collaborate-to-succeed