Perhaps the biggest objection we hear to recruiter reviews is: isn’t it risky to open ourselves up to bad reviews? Should we just just not capture reviews at all?
The answer, of course, is no. And not just because Great Recruiters is saying it. But because the top staffing firms in North America aren’t scared of bad reviews. In fact, they love them.
And, more importantly, the cost of not capturing reviews is just too high to shy away from it. Read on to see why bad reviews can be a good thing, actually.
Top recruiting & staffing firms don’t fear bad reviews
If you want to model yourself after the top recruiting and staffing firms in the nation, you can’t fear bad reviews. Because they don’t.
Now, this may seem counterintuitive. If you look at some of these agencies, like Aplin, Travel Nurse Across America, Amare Medical Network, Atlas MedStaff, etc., they’ve got 4.8 and 4.9 stars. That must mean they don’t get bad reviews, right?
Actually, wrong. Because no one bats a thousand. No matter how good your processes and systems and people, you’re going to make mistakes.
So what sets the top agencies apart isn’t that they don’t get any bad reviews. It’s what they do with the bad reviews that matters:
- Capture them in real-time, not at the end of the year through deeply flawed survey programs
- Automate instant action to resolve the issue, both with the reviewer (front-end) and the recruiter (back-end)
- Figure out what went wrong to keep it from happening again
- Use them as teaching moments to build up their recruiters and, by extension, their culture
For Aplin, capturing negative reviews quickly has directly impacted their bottom line. “[It’s] saved some placements,” said Sarah Tokar, President of Aplin. “You learn early on if someone isn’t satisfied with something and you can proactively reach out to them and deal with it right away. Managers learn about any issues first-hand and can reach out to the recruiter to help improve their performance.”
The same goes for Travel Nurse Across America (TNAA). According to Rose Fulton, VP of Recruiting, “I’ve got a 4.9 star rating, so I can’t rest on my laurels. When we get a bad review, we call them immediately and find out what went wrong. [This] enables us to give an immediate customer service response.”
Aaron Grossman, CEO of TalentLaunch Network, concurs: “You have to be prepared that all experiences shared are NOT positive. Some might perceive this as a negative when it comes to marketing their agency to potential customers. For us, we want transparent feedback. We understand the game we play in. We are in the people business. By design, we are never going to be perfect. We prefer to have REAL experiences, both good and bad, shared with us. This helps us understand where we need to improve.”
Bad reviews are a good thing, actually
So the top recruiting agencies aren’t scared of bad reviews. And they know how to manage them well. In fact, they’d probably go so far as to say that bad reviews are a good thing, actually. Here are five reasons why.
1. See what people are saying—even if it’s bad
If someone has a bad experience with your agency, they’re almost certainly not going to keep it to themselves. Maybe they’ll post a review online. But more often, they’ll keep it to themselves and tell all their friends, family, and colleagues to stay away.
Answer this: would you rather see the bad review and know to address it? Or spend your days worrying about bad experiences that you can’t even know about?
Although it stinks to get a bad review, at least it gives you something to act on. Then you can make improvements to ensure the same situation doesn’t happen again.
Plus, if you have the systems in place to capture bad reviews, those same systems are going to capture good reviews as they come in. According to one of our users, “The structure of the technology either captures positive reviews, which you can then push out onto the internet, or negative reviews, which you can utilize to improve your internal operations, sales, and recruiting functions.”
2. Identify areas for recruiter improvement
Your number one investment is your people. Without systems in place to help them continually improve their performance, you won’t maximize your return on that investment.
This isn’t just good for the bottom line. Helping your recruiters grow can be an excellent cultural and retention tool to keep them engaged. It also helps ensure consistent service quality, so candidates always have a great experience when they engage with your firm.
3. Fix issues before they become problems
One of the reasons so many companies struggle with bad reviews is because they receive them too late to act on them—like if you’re participating in an NPS survey program. By the time that report comes in, all the bad review does is demoralize your team.
But if you have systems in place to capture those reviews in real time, you can take steps to act on and fix those small issues before they spiral into major problems.
That’s exactly what this Great Recruiters user does. “The hidden gem in this product is that it is a place for your unhappy candidates to vent before they go out on the public interwebs and blast the recruiter or our firm. Ben Franklin was right and ‘An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’ has never held more true.”
4. Earn back candidates & clients
As Sarah Tokar mentioned earlier, capturing reviews has actually saved some of Aplin’s placements that otherwise would’ve been lost.
That’s because most of the time, people vent their frustrations just because they want to be heard. If you show them that a) you hear them, and b) take their concerns seriously, you can almost always solve these problems in a timely and amicable manner.
But if you aren’t giving candidates the opportunity to express themselves, you’re going to miss significant opportunities to reduce churn and earn back business.
This is exactly what one of our users is seeing: “Great Recruiters has been a valuable way to show prospective candidates what working with our recruiters, and our company, in general, would look like. This validation has made candidates feel more comfortable to return our outreach and distinguishes us from ‘every other staffing firm.’”
5. Improve your organizational culture
Believe it or not, bad reviews can improve your organizational culture. Wait…what?! Yes, you heard that right.
No recruiter likes flying blind. Of course, we all would love it if we got good reviews all the time. But bad reviews, negative feedback, is also helpful. Because if you don’t know what you need to improve upon, you’re going to stall.
Instead, give your recruiters the tools they need to get 1% better every day. As one recruiter using our platform recently shared: “My goal as a recruiter is to provide the best experience possible and this allows me to keep up to date in real-time to ensure I am doing just that.”
Bad reviews vs. no reviews: the verdict
So let’s start by accepting an uncomfortable truth: your agency isn’t perfect, and there will be some (hopefully few) people dissatisfied with the experiences you create. The question, then, is whether you’d rather know about it, or be in the dark?
What’s more, capturing and displaying bad reviews can be a testament to your agency’s commitment to transparency. When you show that you’re open to negative feedback, and respond to it quickly and respectfully, it can put people at ease when considering working with your agency.
Bad reviews, far from something to fear, can be an asset—if handled correctly. The question is: do you have the systems in place to capture and act on reviews quickly? If not, we’ll get you set up with Great Recruiters in a matter of hours.
