What Netflix Can Teach the Recruitment Industry About Survival

Do you remember the days when your local video rental store had, at most, 2-3 copies of the most sought-after movies?

The difference between excitedly renting Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade or settling for one of those weird, disappointing Star Wars spin-off Ewok movies was whether you chanced to visit the store just after someone had returned the videotape you really wanted.

Some sophisticated video stores would let you make a reservation for the newest movies which meant you could at least go home, safe in the knowledge that it was only 8 more sleeps until you got your hands on Tim Burton’s Batman.

That entire system now seems laughably quaint.

These days we just fire up Netflix or Amazon and pick the movie we want, right now. No waiting.

Blockbuster never stood a chance.

Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be another tired article, banging on about how Blockbuster failed because it didn’t anticipate changes in the market. Kodak, Blackberry, etc, etc. These subjects have been done to death.

Instead we’re going to look at this from another angle: What if Netflix succeeded where Blockbuster failed?…

Because the answer to that question reveals an awful lot about where the recruitment industry is heading, and what it’s going to take to survive over the next decade.

Recruitment Prophets

You don’t need to hire the ghost of Philip K. Dick to figure out where the recruitment industry is heading (although that would be pretty cool, right?). There are scores of technology companies experimenting with concepts like Blockchain, Big Data Analytics and Machine Learning, all aiming to make recruitment faster, cheaper and more accurate.

It’s easy to think of these things as science fiction that will take decades to impact on our recruitment work, but those are dangerous assumptions.

Technology has a way of creeping into our lives slowly at first, and then taking over in a series of rapid bursts.

This is how well-established companies, and even entire industries, disappear. It’s not because they fail to see the change coming.

It’s because they underestimate how quickly things are going to change.

Blockbuster had its own online streaming service for a time, but it still failed because it was too little, too late.

But there’s another reason why mammoth firms go under that is lateral to their failure to embrace change. A critical mistake that guarantees they’ll never recover.

The SAME mistake that I see many recruitment firms making today.

Embedded businesses come unstuck because they don’t know what their clients care about.

I can almost see the Blockbuster exec, chuckling at the idea that people are going to choose to watch a ten-year old romantic comedy on Netflix rather than visit their local DVD rental store and hire the new Die Hard.

On the surface that makes sense.

Netflix currently has a little over 3,500 movies for its customers to choose from. Compare that to the old Blockbuster store you used to visit that would easily have 2-3 times that number, as well as a bunch of exclusive new movies.

That sounds like a killer USP – more choice and the newest movies. But, as it turned out, people would rather stay at home and stream a film that sounds okay, rather than have to trek to a store, spend £10 on rentals and snacks, simply to get a brand-new movie they figure they’ll eventually be available to stream anyway.

Recruitment execs are making the same error

Their firm has deep networks. It has hard-working recruiters who can slam together a candidate shortlist in record time. It has fees that are well below average, representing exceptional cost-savings for the client.

Those are killer USPs, right?

Wrong.

First of all, they’re not USPs – most recruiters are offering the same thing.

Secondly, technology is already beginning to replicate those features, and in the future may well be able to provide a similar service faster and for much lower costs.

Thirdly, and more importantly, that isn’t what clients care about.

Saving money and getting solid candidates in quickly are nice features, but what clients really want is a hire that is going to be a good fit and will stay in position long-term so they don’t have to repeat the recruitment exercise within a few months.

This is what’s going to kill recruitment firms in the near future.

It’s not just the failure to recognise how technology will impact the recruitment industry.

It’s a failure to recognise that what clients want, more than anything else, is accurate placements, predictable outcomes and risk elimination.

The recruitment firms that survive will be the ones that appreciate this and are working towards delivering this ideal.

Long-Term Survival

What will replace Netflix as the king of streaming entertainment?

Probably Netflix.

Netflix has already thought about how the industry is changing and what it’s going to have to become to stay on top.

In 2018, 85% of its spending went into producing original content. One of its recent movies, Roma has just been nominated for ten Oscars. It’s buying up the rights to comic books, and even snapping up authors so it can lock-in the rights to produce movies or series based on their work.

Netflix is also investing huge sums for exclusive access to content. It paid CBS so much for Star Trek Discovery that it virtually bankrolled the entire production. It even paid $100M for the rights to stream Friends for a single year.

When Blockbuster was dying, people were content to stream so-so movies on Netflix because it was easy and cheap. But now that we take streaming entertainment for granted, demand for quality is increasing and platforms will live and die by the status of their exclusive productions.

And that means making it, or buying it.

We don’t need to wait to see if Netflix are on the right track. Amazon are spending astronomical sums on their Lord of the Rings spin-off series. Disney are investing $10M per episode in a Star Wars spin-off series to help launch their own streaming platform.

It’s crystal clear that quality, original programming is widely seen as the key to survival.

If you’re paying attention, it’s not so hard to see that the recruitment industry is going the same way.

Video interviewing, psychometrics, job surveys, and retained contracts are rapidly becoming the norms.

If you’re not already wrapping these features into your recruitment service, you’re being left behind.

Remember, technology creeps in slowly and then dominates in a rush.

Your window of opportunity (or, if you prefer, survival) is closing rapidly.

And this is only the current evolutionary shift in recruitment.

Beyond these developments are a whole raft of sea changes that can only be predicted by recognising what matters to clients.

In the same way that Netflix shifted its focus from technology to quality, recruiters will need to move beyond the tech and figure out how to use the tools to deliver a better, richer and measurably more effective service.

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If you’re already offering your clients a consultative value-add recruitment solutions supported by scientific, objective assessment tools via online delivery platforms, (and if you're not, you need to talk to us ASAP) you’re exactly where you need to be.

But don’t become complacent.

Netflix has flourished and will continue to do so because it knows what its audience wants (mainly sci-fi dystopia, apparently) and it's planning ahead to deliver.

Recruitment is an exciting industry to be in. But survival means keeping a close eye on the future and investing in long-term plans. Now, more than ever.

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For a personalised plan of action for growing your recruitment business, book a FREE CONSULTATION. There’s no obligation and I’ll show you the exact method that only the smartest recruiters are using to future-proof their recruitment business.