article #24 - Building the Buzz For Your Recruitment Company
Building the Buzz For Your Recruitment Company
In today’s looming labour shortage, a strong employer brand is increasingly being recognized as the key strategic advantage in the war for talent. For recruitment and staffing companies who must also compete for talent in these conditions, a strong employer brand is not only a key strategic advantage but it may be the only sustainable competitive advantage in an increasingly commoditized industry.
So how do employers and candidates form their perception of your employer brand? A good place to start is to think about all the touch points in your recruitment process. Every point in the recruitment process represents an opportunity to create an impression to the candidate. When you think about all the successful placements you have made you may come to the conclusion that you have established a positive employer brand. But what if you stop to think about all the job orders you didn’t fill, all the placements you didn’t make? Would you consider your staffing brand as strong if you included all the candidates you didn’t place and all the resumes submitted that were not short-listed?
Last fall, I attended the American Staffing Association (ASA) convention where I attended an executive round table on this very topic. Aaron Green, president of the PSG Staffing Group, an award winning Boston based staffing company shared his company’s candidate and client loyalty metrics. PSG uses the iLoyalty system to find their net promoter score. For those of you who are not familiar with the net promoter score, here is a brief description. To determine the net promoter score, first ask your customers to rate you on a ten-point scale on how likely they would recommend you to a friend. Respondents who rate you a 9 or 10 is considered one. For all the 7 and 8’s received, that is considered 0. Lastly, any customers rating you 6 or below are considered –1. Thus the “net promoter” is determined by the number of customers who rated you at a 9 or 10 and subtracting the number of customers who rate you at a 6 or below. As you can see this rating system is very tough, since many businesses would consider customers who rate 7 and 8’s to be good, but in this system you toss them out. Now let’s get back to the question:
How would the candidates you didn’t place rate your recruitment and staffing service? .
Using the net promoter score as explained above, PSG found that whey they asked the candidates they placed, 70% rated their staffing service 9 and 10’s. But when they asked the candidates that they didn’t place, this metric dropped down to 12%! As you can see, there is a great difference in opinions about your staffing company from the candidates you place vs the ones you didn’t place.
The reality is that many candidates touch your process, and each touch point represents an opportunity to build a positive employer brand. To illustrate, consider a scenario presented by Lee Salz, President of Sales Dodo LLC:
“Suppose your recruitment and staffing company places 100 people per year and it takes 11 candidates to fill one seat. Therefore, 1,000 people were not placed by your company. In other words, your process touches a lot of people. So how did they walk away feeling about your staffing company?”
If they walked away with less than a stellar experience of your staffing company it can cost you. Dissatisfied customers often do not to tell the offending company about their poor service experience but will tell everyone else. When unhappy customers do talk they tend to talk more than happy customers. Numerous customer service studies reaffirm this consumer behavior and cost of negative word of mouth. In a customer service study conducted by TARP for Coca cola, less than half of the unhappy customers filed a customer complaint yet told twice as many people about their bad experience than happy customers did about their positive experience. A recent study completed by the Verde Group revealed that a dissatisfied client told 4 other people on average about their bad experience and the negative impact was further magnified through embellishment and re-telling process.
It is important to note that both of these studies did not consider the impact of the internet. With the advent of the internet, the potential impact from negative word of mouth increases exponentially. Dissatisfied customers can now post their comments on blogs, forums, and websites. As an example, look at this blog from a prominent marketing executive who decided to write about his bad customer service experience. (note the over 124,000 visits, google page rank of 5, and other reader comments.)
The Power of a Positive Brand
So what’s in it for you? After all as a staffing company, aren’t the candidates really more concerned about your client’s employer brand? While this may be true, the first brand that candidates see and make a decision on is your staffing brand and not your clients. While there are many benefits from having a strong employer brand, we will limit our focus on just few as it relates to attracting talent.
In this talent shortage, one of the key benefits is referrals. Getting candidate referrals saves you time and money from not having to incur the cost of advertising and screening unqualified resumes. Also, referrals can yield high quality candidates, especially if they have been recommended by another high quality candidate.
Related to the above benefit is the increase in non-solicited applications. Again, a steady stream of non-solicited applications is a testament of the strength of your employer brand. More importantly, it is a pipeline of talent that support long-term success.
Higher quality candidates. A positive staffing brand attracts the elite candidates that would have otherwise not considered your recruitment company. Simply put, today’s top candidates have a choice as to who they decide will represent them and there are many staffing companies to choose from.
Being More Candidate Friendly
Look at every touch point along your recruitment process and ensure a positive candidate experience. From the job posting, to the usability of your online applications systems, right down to the job offer. Pay attention not only to the points in the process where the clients move forward in the placement process but also when the candidate exits your process.
Ensure your recruitment and staffing company is candidate friendly. In the 2007 HRinmotion attended the ASA staffing conference where top recruiters from all over the world gathered to learn and share their ideas on best practices. Here are some things staffing companies are doing to be more candidate friendly:
- Ensuring the right perspective. Seeing your candidate as a relationship and not a transaction.
- Be a career advocate and put your candidate’s needs before your own. When your candidates sense that you are more concerned about their career needs than about your commission, it will pay off.
- Understand your candidate’s career goals. Get a clear understanding of your candidate’s requirements for their next employer. With one candidate it maybe job growth, for another it may be job stability. Determine what they are looking for by asking and listening. A good question is to ask: What is your dream job? What would like to see happen in your career? What do you value in an employer/job?
- Interview times convenient for candidates. Are your interview times convenient for you or your candidate? Very often, talented candidates are already employed, so try to be flexible about meeting before and after the work day.
- Meeting locations convenient for candidates. This point is particularly important for those who live far away from your office. In these situations, meet your candidate at a coffee shop closer to their location. Many have found this approach positive, since your candidate is more relaxed, and the local coffee shop can be less threatening than at your location.
- Candidate preparation. Part of the responsibilities of being a career advocate for candidates, is providing expertise and support in their career search. This means providing honest and respectful feedback, practical suggestions, and the right career resource tools to help them reach their career goals whether or not you represent them or place them. Giving your candidates a tangible benefit before you receive yours will build trust and long-term relationships.
- Stay in touch. Whether you place your candidate or not, keep in touch on birthdays, service anniversaries, holidays, and so on. Remembering the simple things goes a long way.
- Support after the placement. The greatest risk of an employee quitting occurs in the time soon after they are hired. Employee turnover data by time in job is a steep slope to the right. The longer an employee stays with a company the less likely they will leave. Therefore, it is important to provide on-going support to your candidates after you place them, especially during the first few months following their appointment. Meeting for lunch or coffee on their first day of work, coordinating with the employer to ensure a smooth on-boarding and following up regularly will reduce the stress that comes with being a new employee or contractor.
Conclusion
There is an opportunity to make a positive impression to candidates at every part of the recruitment process. While it's understandable that we focus on the people we select, place, hire, and promote. But it becomes dangerously myopic when we neglect all the resumes and candidates that were bypassed. By ensuring that everyone who touches your recruitment process has a positive experience, you will sow the seeds of a strong employer brand. Lastly, in an increasingly commoditized recruitment and staffing industry and talent-short labor market, a strong employer brand is not only a competitive advantage; it is a competitive advantage that is sustainable.
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Article authored by HRinmotion.com, Candidate Preparation Software
HRinmotion works with over high profile fast-growing recruitment and staffing companies to prepare their candidates and build their brand.
Our candidate preparation software is an innovative learning software for the staffing and recruitment industry’s candidates. Our online recruitment and staffing software provides training on demand to help you prepare your candidates, build your brand, and save your time.
