The Riches Aren’t In Niches

Influencers are dumb

“The Riches Are In The Niches”

-Some huckster who went out of business and now sells online courses.

It’s all fun and games until your specialization gets obliterated by a downturn. Over a long enough timeline, the unthinkable *will* happen. Then you’re toast.

Tail risk, as the kids call it. Low probability in the short term. But a 100% lock in the long term.

Fun fact: Hirewell started because Matt Massucci’s old employer went out of business in the dotcom crash. Demolished by tail risk.

When the financial crisis happened, we were still small. But we had 2 primary verticals – technology and HR recruiting – and made a point to diversify into different industries. It wasn’t pretty, but it saved the day. Lots of agencies went under.

Since then it was a mad dash to build as many different teams of specialists (creating broader capabilities) as possible. (Context: we now have individual teams dedicated to exec, technology, HR, marketing, sales, finance & accounting, supply chain, manufacturing, real estate and insurance.)

2 things came from this:

1. We’re able to build cross-functional hiring solutions at scale for our clients.

2. We’re better prepared for tail risk.

This doesn’t mean we’re impervious. Far from it. This year sucks, y’all. But it’s a lot easier to spend less time in SaaS and more time in manufacturing, logistics, and real estate when you’re already working in all those industries.

This goes for individual (and internal) recruiters too. If tech hiring takes a dip but your company still needs accountants or salespeople…it’d be nice to know more than just tech.

At this point, everyone’s bed is already made. Next time the market picks up, it’ll be really seductive to put all your eggs in the whatever-is-the-hottest basket.

👉Don’t. The good times are when you want to plan ahead for the bad times.

James Hornick

Partner at Hirewell. #3 Ranked Sarcastic Commenter on LinkedIn.