Is the HR Manager always the best person to market your recruitment business to?

In recruitment, a lot of the B2B side of marketing (rather than marketing to potential job candidates) is done over the phone. While social media networks like LinkedIn and Twitter can sometimes give you an ‘in’ to talk to somebody who may be interested in working with you to fill a vacancy they have, most often these can only provide a name or a basic introduction, and you'll need to get on the phone to try and actually start building a relationship that can lead to a company choosing you for recruitment.

As well as making phone calls, recruitment businesses often use email and even send out physical promotional items to those they'd like to have as their clients, but in every case, making sure that call, email invite or gift reaches the most relevant person in the organisation is vital. When you don't know the internal structure of a target business too well, the most obvious person to focus your marketing efforts on tends to be the HR manager, however is this really the case?

When you don't know the internal structure of a target business too well, the most obvious person to focus your marketing efforts on tends to be the HR manager, however is this really the case?

Line Managers

Unless you are specifically recruiting for HR roles within an HR department, the HR manager is unlikely to be the person who decides on the need for a new hire, or shortlists or interviews people. While they have responsibility for the admin side of recruiting people and tracking the process on systems like XCDHR, they rarely have any real authority when it comes to who is interviewed or hired outside of their own department. This means that while, should you begin working with the company, the HR person will certainly be someone you'll need to get to know, they may not be the one to pitch to or spend your marketing efforts on. The need for new staff and the choice of who to shortlist is most often made by the people who will be the line managers of the new role.

Multiple Targets in One Business

What this can mean you end up with is multiple people worth targeting in one organisation, unless your recruiting is very niche. If you recruit in the software industry, for example, you may want to approach the head of development, the head of testing, and project program managers – all of whom are likely to have fairly frequent hiring needs that they will be responsible for selecting candidates (and therefore recruitment agents) for.

Incumbent Recruiters

One time when you may have to work on marketing to the HR manager is when a company has a policy to only use certain incumbent recruiters. This isn't always the case, but usually these will be chosen and managed by HR, so if you want to get on the list, then they'll be the ones to talk to. However, even in this case pressure from a line manager who needs to hire to be allowed to see your candidates can make this happen a lot more easily, so always target those who actually make hiring decisions.
Marketing your recruitment business is very much about pinpointing the people who make the actual recruitment decisions, and more often than not these don't sit in HR!