Staffing Industry Veterans Discuss Marketing Strategies Pre and Post Pandemic

February 8, 2021: Michael Bartels, Chief Development Officer of Becker LLC, interviewed fellow Industry Partner David Searns, Co-CEO of Haley Marketing, discussing how David has consulted with his Staffing Clients through the Pandemic and planning forward in 2021.

Bartels: The Staffing Industry overall was positive during this difficult time while a few niches took a hit through the Pandemic. How did you advise your clients in regards to their Marketing strategies during this period?

Searns: Great question. When the pandemic first hit, I thought it was going to be devastating to the industry. I’ve been through the 2001-2003 recessions and of course the Great Recession, and I’ve seen how hard staffing gets hit in a downturn. Looking back at 2009 (and this sounds totally self-promotional, but it’s also true), we saw that staffing companies that got more aggressive about marketing during the recession fell less, recovered quicker, and recovered at a higher level than those that cut marketing. So in March, we put together a website filled with free resources (www.haleymarketing.com/covid-recovery) to give our clients (and the industry as a whole) lots of ideas for beating what we assumed would be a long, painful period for the industry. While some sectors, like hospitality, experienced the kind of horrific decline we anticipated, most were not as severely hit, and some, like healthcare, have thrived. What I did not expect was that recruiting would continue to be the #1 challenge in the industry, and over the past several months, most of our recommendations have been around recruitment marketing strategies and how to get more of those open job orders filled..

Q&A with David Searns, Co-CEO of Haley Marketing: A Discussion about Marketing for the Staffing Industry during the Pandemic and Effectively Moving Forward