Becoming a Staffing Industry Hedgehog
April 20th, 2009Many small staffing companies are proficient at staffing clerical, light industrial, IT, or any other line of business, but quickly plateau and never have a shot at being number one in their market. The key is to take your knack for staffing people, and carve out a niche in the market where you can exercise your staffing ability with a crack at being number one.
Having claimed their space in the market as number one, five private staffing companies were featured in a recent article in SI Review on “Contingent Niches.” The companies followed the hedgehog principle espoused by Jim Collins in Good to Great – find a place in the marketplace where you can be the best in the world (a niche), make sure it is economically feasible, and be passionate about it.
One of these staffing agencies specializes in placing “moms who left conventional corporate work to spend more time with their children” in “finance and accounting, human resources, sales, marketing, information technology, and some legal work and strategic consulting.” The CEO/founder is a mom who desired to be with her kids while doing flexible professional work, and wanted to help other moms do the same. Another example from the article, is a temporary staffing agency that only focuses on “connecting companies with retired engineers and scientists.” The company works with 30 Fortune 500 clients who are getting great results ordering well-seasoned experts to focus on projects for a definite time period.
Our last blog post discussed how temporary staffing accounts for only 5% of the US workforce. That means that you and other small staffing companies can chip away at the remaining 95% by offering staffing services and solutions to niches in the market that meet specific needs better than anyone else. Check out Bridget Mintz Testa’s article “Contingent Niches: How clients and staffing companies can benefit from unconventional candidates” in SI Review, March 2009. We’d love to hear your comments on how you’re creatively carving out a niche in your staffing market.