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Many 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.

You’ve probably seen a few hundred if not thousands of cars over the past few days and hardly took note of them unless one cut you off, flipped you off, or was driven head-first into the ground.  That’s what’s so attention-grabbing about the Cadillac Ranch (http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2220) in Amarillo, TX, which has become a national attraction for its rows of junkyard Caddies planted into the ground front-first with their rear two-thirds protruding into the air.

Let’s do the same with some “everyday” staffing industry numbers - flip ‘em around, upside down and on their side and see what eye-catching results we come up with.

• Exhibit A: In the beginning of March, Staffing Industry Analysts reported that the temporary staffing market was down 22.7% over the last twelve months – ouch, depressing.  But wait, let’s flip it and look at the 77.3% of the remaining staffing market that’s still whispering “take me, please capture me!”

• Exhibit B: Recently, I spoke with a staffing company based in Cleveland who estimated they had 1% of the Ohio staffing market. Let’s say your staffing business is in a similar situation with a 1% share of its staffing market – wow, that’s just a drop in the bucket. You know what to do; that’s right, let’s flip it and think how you’re going to take a significant bite out of the 99% you don’t have of the remaining 77.3% of the staffing market.

• Exhibit C: Take 5%, for example; that’s the percent of the US workforce that temporary labor accounts for ( http://www.articlesworld.com/how-temp-agencies-has-evolved/ ). Push the 5% aside and focus on the remaining 95% of US jobs as fertile land waiting on innovators of staffing solutions to come along and start sowing seeds. Much of this land has been lying dormant for temporary staffing agencies to return to and surpass their peak share of the workforce, which reached 10.8% early 1980s ( http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123680920862100627.html).

Think about some other numbers, figures, or staffing metrics you’ve been looking at and try flipping them upside down – stand on your head if you have to!  Please comment about some new discoveries you’re making as you look at your staffing business and potential market differently.  Also, contact The Staffing Cooperative to take advantage of the tools, approaches, and resources we offer to help you see real opportunity, set goals and benchmarks, and gain market share and step into new markets.