I was fortunate to attend a Recruitment Association lunch yesterday – not because the food was good and the orange juice and coffee flowed, but because the speaker was Nan Carroll, who has been part of the Recruitment Industry for many years, and who gave us food for thought.
It was not one of those “Oh my goodness, I never knew that” revelation type presentations, but it reminded those attending of some fundamentals of growing and retaining good recruitment business.
The title of her talk was “Is Technology Bypassing Your Candidate Talent Bank? Putting the Heart Back into Consulting” and she was giving us all the benefit of her experience, from her lowly recruitment beginnings to being joint CEO for a $300 million turnover recruitment business.
She reminded us that candidates/job applicants had “beating hearts”, they have emotions, families, mouths to feed, mortgages to pay and that we have all been candidates at some stage in our lives.
Nan also waved a copy of a recent Newspaper whose headline read “Australia could face a shortfall of 1.4 million workers by 2025, according to a new report”
My view is that so many recruiters talk about “candidate care programmes”, “talent management” “candidate management” but so few are actually delivering in practice.
Nan spoke about how candidates become friends – how if you treat them well they come back again and again, and often as clients, or recommending you to clients, or other candidates. Why wouldn’t you look to grow your business by looking after your assets? We may be in recession still now, but all the demographic trends are pointing to skill shortages, so treating people well must enable you to reap rewards later, even if not immediately.
Some of the basics (and what candidates complain about a lot) aren’t that hard – returning (or answering) phone calls, replying to e-mails, giving feedback after interviews, communicating to job seekers as to what to expect from you and where their CV is going .
All those things you might expect yourself as a recruiter, from someone who supplies a service to you.
I guess also the whole area of candidate (and Client) care is the one major area where agencies can really make a difference compared to the various online offerings through job boards and employers. It takes more time, yes, it takes more thought,yes, but does it build your business? – heck YES
So whatever technological tools are offered to you as an Employer or Recruiter, never lose the fact, as Nan so well illustrated, that job applicants have emotions and they have choices. That choice will increase as skills shortages kick in once again – will they choose you or will they choose www.iamanimpersonalroboticjobboard.com? - I guess that is up to you and your candidate care programme…..
I would love to hear from job seekers of recent examples of those agencies who are getting it right, and also some examples of who is getting it wrong. No names please… to protect the innocent. Comments from recruiters are also welcome.
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2 Comments for Job Seekers have Beating Hearts
Richard | November 27, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Tracey Dunn | December 5, 2009 at 2:33 am
Great post james – and yes candidates do indeed have beating hearts. Technology is just a tool. A great example of this can be found on Greg Savage’s excellent blog, The Savage Truth. Greg describes how at his recruitment firm Aquent “we are entering a brave new world of talent management I think, and now we must focus on connectivity at a human level with our candidates.Aquent.com now encourages job seekers to search directly for an Agent (our name for Consultant) who specialises in the area that the candidate is interested in. The candidate can now connect with a personalised Agent URL (PURL), and from there can connect with the Agent directly via phone, email or social network.”
Now that’s using technology as a tool!!
Very interesting comments by Nan and ones that I personally endorse.
Almost 10 years ago I came to New Zealand as an HR professional and it was fascinating to be in the market as a candidate. I had several interesting experiences but the one that stands out was the recruiter who self selected me out of a role that suited my skills set perfectly on the basis that I was a white South African male and the client had a highly unionised Islander and Maori staff. The implication being that because of my ethnicity I was somehow a racist. I made my views clearly known as to what I considered their general lack of judgement, highlighted by the fact that they actually told me why they did not put me forward!
Less than two years later I was a Human Resources Director running a process to select a small number of preferred recruitment agencies. This agency did not submit a proposal and when I asked why, they said that they remembered how I had been treated by them and thought that it was not worth it as they would not get anywhere. I told them to submit as I thought that they were a good agency with depth and capability and I wanted them in the process. Besides I don’t hold grudges as I would not have been in my current role if I had taken the job that they had been recruiting for at the time.
However, that is me and there are others who would have held it against them. Moral of the story is that you never know where your candidates will end up so treat them well and with respect.
Now as an experienced CEO, I work with agencies who I know have excellent candidate relationship systems as I keenly remember what it is like to be looking out for roles. The recruiters who look after their candidates get used by me.
I wonder how many agencies have failed to treat candidates even moderately well in the last 18 months when there has been a glut of people looking for roles. The wheel will turn and people do remember.