Staffing Agency Marketing: 6 Industries to Focus On in 2021
The Great Resignation, The Great Migration, the pandemic-era job shift – call it what you will, the real impact for the staffing industry is a wealth of opportunities for hiring and placements in certain industries. Here are six industries your staffing agency marketing should be focused on right now.
6 Industries to Focus Staffing Agency Marketing On in 2021
- Education
Teaching has always been a stressful position; however, it’s one of the industries with the most upheaval caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic. RAND Corp. policy researchers found that nearly 1 in 4 public school teachers are considering changing jobs. Respondents were also twice as likely to report frequent job-related stress and three times more likely to report symptoms of depression (compared to working adults in the general population).
Without question, schools will be faced with hiring challenges at all levels, from K-12 to continuing education, and those challenges won’t just occur in classroom-based roles. Expect to see increases in hiring demand for teachers, paraeducators, bus drivers, office staff, custodial and maintenance staff, school health nurses, and administrators, especially as the pandemic seems to be holding on instead of letting go.
Staffing agency marketing for education roles should be separated into two divisions, either or both of which could represent new areas of growth for your staffing agency. These two segments are teaching and administrative (which often requires specific types of education) and classified staff (which includes office staff, paraeducators, school health aides or nurses, bus drivers, custodians, and maintenance workers).
Your staffing agency may already be able to fill some of these positions if you already recruit for administrative assistant or physical facilities roles. Target schools, universities, colleges, trade schools, and private schools in staffing agency marketing for roles like these.
- Manufacturing and Distribution
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, most businesses had the luxury of shutting down or at least letting employees work remotely. Not manufacturing, and not distribution.
We watched as supply chains were completely disrupted; first from the chaos and then from redirection, prioritizing the manufacture and transport of supplies from vital medical equipment to mundane paper products to where it was needed most. Even now, 18 months later we are still experiencing supply chain disruptions reflected in temporarily missing grocery items and menu items.
Don’t look for demand in manufacturing and distribution to let up any time soon. There was already a shortage of workers in these two industries before the pandemic ramped up demand for both.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the quit rate for manufacturing was 2.5 (per thousand workers) in June 2021 compared to just 1.7 in June 2020. The transportation industry quit rate climbed from 2.1 to 2.6 over the same time period.
There is vast opportunity for US manufacturers to bring production of medical-related and commodities back within its borders to ensure a healthy nation and economy. Staffing agencies can play a major role in this infrastructure reboot by helping to recruit and even to advertise the benefits of working in manufacturing and distribution companies in staffing agency marketing.
Distribution was in evolution mode for a decade before the pandemic. Not only is there a shortage of long-haul drivers, but there is incredible demand for last-mile delivery services. Demand is being driven from both the distribution industry as well as consumers, who now expect to be able to order online and receive nearly anything they need or want – from toilet paper to groceries, restaurant meals, and margaritas, and have it delivered to them, at home, in anywhere from 24 hours to 24 minutes.
- Food Service and Hospitality Industries
While we’re on the subject, here are two more industries that were at first completely disrupted and now are experiencing both high consumer demand and high staffing shortages. It’s an industry where workers are traditionally paid less than other industries, with jobs often considered entry-level. However, as we’ve all seen, the entry-level workers are the ones exposed to the greatest numbers of people continually throughout their working shifts.
It’s common to walk into your local grocery stores and see a tables set up near entry points advertising job openings for nearly every position. Anecdotally, a nearby Dairy Queen just posted a Facebook Ad trying to hire 18-year-old (or older) employees to work in the fast food industry promising a $1000 bonus if they would stay for six months.
Did you know? 90% of US retailers are struggling to fill empty positions, even though 33% are offering sign-on bonuses and 33% have paid referral programs (Inc.com).
People are traveling again. People are eating out again, and a large number of people are ordering in at the same time. Organizations like senior living communities, where COVID-19 hit hardest, still have food service operations in need of the same types of employees as restaurants.
Your staffing agency marketing can help these businesses recruit, hire, and onboard more efficiently. Create a pool of candidates and take the headache of finding food service and hospitality industry employees away from harried managers and business owners.
- Healthcare Industry
Another industry experiencing mass resignation and migration: health care. For all kinds of reasons, from individuals who are vulnerable to those caring for vulnerable individuals who don’t want to risk exposure, to the incredible amount of stress and fatigue health care workers have experienced since the onset of the pandemic.
- The turnover rate for RNs on staff increased by 2.8% in 2000, rising to 18.7%
- Nearly 10% of hospital RN openings are vacant (com)
This is another industry where staffing agencies have a breadth of opportunities to focus staffing agency marketing efforts on recruiting of professional-level as well as entry and support-level health care workers. Nurse staffing agencies and staffing agencies that recruit care attendants and health care aids for temporary or long-term placement, especially, can help to fill in the gaps while hospitals, medical clinics, schools, and long term care facilities strive to meet today’s increased demands and staffing shortages.
- IT Industry
Information technology (IT) is another industry which was already competing for fewer workers than job openings before the pandemic. Fast forward to today and the demands are even higher. Corporate demand for technology workers remains high and their needs are increasingly diverse, with so many enabling employees to work remotely. It presents all kinds of new challenges for not only capabilities but security as well.
Resignations in the technology industry increased 4.5% from March 2020 to March 2021 (bildandco.com)
Demands in the IT industry is also a direct reflection of the increased demands in other industries. For instance, subscription-based service Talkspace, which matches therapists to patients, saw a one month increase of 65% from March to April 2020.
- Ecommerce Industry
In some ways, ecommerce cuts across all these industries.
- Increase and monetization of alternate online education options and support (tutoring, exam prep, etc.)
- Increase in nearly goods and services previously sold in brick-and-mortar now online
- Increase in online food and grocery ordering for home delivery
- Monetization of online physician and nurse consults, as well as online therapy
- Emergency of new online service providers to meet corporate and consumer demands
However, no one can deny the incredible surge ecommerce experienced due to the pandemic from both the consumer and business markets. Some of these ecommerce jobs occur in technology roles, while others occur in logistics roles. These are all opportunities where staffing agency marketing can fill in the gaps and supply all of these industries with the workers who are in demand now and who will be for the foreseeable future.
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