“Having a good brand means you can compete in ways other than by having a lower price.” Source: Financial Times, 8 February 2005

Buying Brands

As part of our growth strategy, Vedior is an active acquirer of other recruitment companies.

The value of any recruitment company is based on two basic elements; people and brands. Whenever Vedior makes an acquisition, the retention of both of these elements is seen to be a key part of the transaction.

Recruitment companies have no inventory and fixed assets comprise a relatively small part of the balance sheet. For any recruitment company, reputation is actually its key asset and that reputation is founded on people and brands. It makes little sense, therefore, when acquiring a successful recruitment company to change either the management team or the sign over the door.

When selling their company to Vedior, vendors can be reassured that the business they have painstakingly built will not be radically altered and, at the same time, investors can be reassured that our active acquisition programme carries little in the way of integration risk.

Retaining local brand names has the important benefit of putting staff in the closest proximity to the brand which means they have much greater ability to influence it. Such empowerment is heavily diluted within large mono-branded organisations.

Our multibranding strategy enhances both our ability to complete acquisitions and also our ability to develop them successfully once they become part of the Group.

Global Presence, Local Focus

Another aspect of Vedior’s branding philosophy is our strong belief that brands have a strong national/cultural character. Any successful brand must reflect local needs, wants and tastes. Many brands which aim to be successful outside of their home market end up being neither truly global, nor appropriately local.

National stereotypes may be an advantage in attributing ‘charac­teristics’ to products. For example, a German car may be perceived as being well-engineered while an Italian one is well designed and a Korean one inexpensive/good value. When choosing a new car, your choice may well be influenced by the perceived strength of a foreign brand and thereby you may have a bias for or against a particular model. But choosing a job is very different from choosing a car. Firstly, the recruitment transaction requires a high degree of trust and confidentiality among contracting parties. Secondly, recruitment is a very personal service and one which can have a profound impact on individual lifestyle. Jobseekers are justifiably concerned that the recruitment consultancy with whom they are trusting their future prosperity and happiness speaks the same language and completely understands their cultural mores. Recruitment is a very local business. While it may be chauvinistic, when looking for a new career, are you more likely to put your faith in a domestic brand or a foreign one?

So as well as being sector specific, many of Vedior’s brands take on a local or national characteristic. For example ‘Rekenmeesters’ is our Dutch accounting and finance staffing specialist. It is an excellent name for a company operating in this sector (the English translation of the brand is ‘Mathematicians’), however, it would have little impact and be inappropriate if not unpronounceable outside of the Netherlands.

Another important consideration in this respect is that recruitment is still very much a local business. Jobseekers mostly want to find work within a reasonable traveling distance from home and employers mostly want to find employees who live conveniently nearby. Investment in global brands with multi-jurisdictional recognition actually provides no advantage in this respect.

“In an industry like recruitment services, where considerable emphasis is placed on relationships, it is imperative that recruitment consultancies ensure employees’ needs are catered for as well as clients and consumers... Ensuring staff are happy and proud to work for their companies creates a virtual circle whereby staff are motivated, reinforcing the strength of the brand, which, in turn enhances the benefits and motivates staff even more.”
Source: Nikki Stammers, Superbrands Ltd

Brand Magnetism

Given a future with impending and extreme skills shortages, being well positioned to attract suitably qualified and skilled candidates will be absolutely crucial.

Those recruitment companies with the right reputation and the right brand perception will be in the strongest position to attract candidates as well as to provide them to clients at a fair price. Or, to put it more simply, if you get the right candidate, you will get the client.

With our operating companies positioned as niche specialists, the main strength of Vedior’s brands is in their ability to attract candidates, particularly those with increasingly rare and highly valued skills. I firmly believe that a branding strategy biased towards the candidate is fully justified and provides us with a well deployed and valuable weapon to use in the future ‘War for Talent’.

Multibranding underwrites Vedior’s core values and decentralised management structure which, in turn, encourages local entrepreneur-ship and ensures quality across a very diverse candidate and client mix. I am convinced it will be an essential element in allowing Vedior to consolidate and extend its leading market position in the provision of professional/executive personnel.