What Is A Case Studies Page And Does My Recruitment Website Need It?
Over the past year or so I've seen the rise of recruitment agencies using case studies as a sales tool and I still can't believe we weren’t all doing this years ago. I have no idea who came up with the idea of a case studies page so I can’t give them credit but kudos to whoever you are, you unsung hero of our time!

What Are Case Studies?
Case studies are examples of when your recruitment agency partnered well with clients on particularly difficult, niche or routine roles that your clients can understand. They’re approached from the clients perspective and demonstrate objective success. I think they’re best approached with a specific example, ideally with an actual client company name. They’re very similar to testimonials but I tend to find testimonials are more short form content, maybe a sentence or three maximum. A glowing reference. A case study is more in depth, maybe a paragraph or three.

Why Use Case Studies?
They’re simply a brilliant tool for selling. Pretty similar to testimonials in many respects but a level deeper. It’s an opportunity for you to show your clients how you worked in a specific situation, hopefully a situation they’re currently facing. A situation where you made a very similar problem go away, for a small fee, although that sounds like a mafia type approach but you get the idea. A way for you to show your clients your previous achievements in specific areas, with credible evidence. This is real social proof and a great way of building trust and authority with prospective clients (and candidates).

What Format Should The Case Study Take?
You can write the case study yourself or if you don’t feel comfortable penning a couple of paragraphs then employ a copywriter to do so. Make sure you get your clients permission to use them in the case study and try to get a short quote from them to incorporate into the case study. I’d recommend adding the company name, the hiring manager’s / talent acquisition manager’s full name and also a photo of the client to add legitimacy. You can play around with the format and get a little creative but I’d recommend this rough layout…

A little background about your client, their company and the problem they were facing.

• How you met or were introduced, along with the role briefing and details on the vacancy.
• How you defined and approached the problem differently.
• How you went to market and details on the delivered shortlist.
• The timespan to solve the problem, how you managed the process and the eventual outcome.

What Are The Benefits?
Not all but a lot of recruitment agencies will typically pitch a hiring manager or talent acquisition manager for a specific role and will lead with the line, “we can fill this vacancy for you”. Now sometimes this is true but there are lots of occasions when the agency I’ve partnered with has just failed to deliver, including many situations when they haven’t even sent over a single candidate! Case studies are evidence that you can deliver, they have the ability to show your clients that you worked on a vacancy, similar to the one they’re hiring for, from one of the direct competitors, and it shows me you did a great job delivering on it.

I’d really recommend placing some serious thought and time into developing a wide ranging and comprehensive case studies page for your recruitment agency website. It will increase engagement and buy in from clients, especially those who were a little unsure about moving ahead with their purchasing decision. 

Guest blog written by Robert Garner
Rob has been working within the recruitment industry since 2006, selling recruitment advertising space, working within recruitment, running his own recruitment firm, launching job boards, working for in-house talent acquisition teams and creating enterprise level recruitment software. He now runs Abstraction Labs, which specialises in recruitment agency website design.