Let’s face it. Recruiters have a reputation problem. And they have for a while.
In the past, the high demand for jobs has enabled recruiters to get away with a lot. But recent market trends have flipped that dynamic on its head.
Now the candidate, not the recruiter. drives the recruitment process.
No longer do candidates take whatever offer comes along. They can afford to be choosy. If they find an issue with your agency, they’ll move along.
In fact, 69% of candidates say that they won’t work with a company if they have a bad reputation.
This is why your reputation is everything. If you want candidates to flock to your agency instead of a competitor, you need to put your best foot forward.
Here are five key benefits you receive when you invest in creating great candidate experiences.
Improve candidate retention
Modern professionals care deeply about the people and companies they work with—they want more than just a paycheck. When you invest in creating great candidate experiences, you entice these high-performing recruiters to work with you.
What’s more, investing in great experiences can help you train and improve your staff. For example, if you collect real-time reviews, you’ll gain insight into where your team is failing and where they are excelling.
Once you’re armed with that information, you can both reinforce successes and fix problems in real time—before they become bigger, more visible problems.
Modern recruiters proactively seek real-time feedback, identify areas to improve, and want to build trust and transparency with candidates. Empower them to do so, and they’ll stick around.
>>> READ MORE: How to Leverage Real-Time Reviews to Fuel Your Growth
Build stellar quality assurance (QA) processes
One major benefit of developing insights into your candidate and client experience is that it provides objective insight into how your organization and individual recruiters are performing. This provides an excellent foundation for a QA process.
After all, you can’t just say you’re going to improve experiences. You need to have measurable actions & outcomes.
Many of our clients adopt a simple, four-step framework to move the needle forward. We call it CAMP.
1. Capture reviews in the most critical moments
Your agency needs to be consistent in asking for feedback at the most meaningful moments, whether that’s after the first interaction with a candidate, or right after placement. That way, you’ll get those real-time insights—before the candidate forgets the details of their experience.
2. Act on reviews as soon as you receive them
Reviews do nothing for you if they just sit in an inbox collecting proverbial dust. That’s why it’s just as important to act on reviews as it is to capture them.
If it’s a positive review, share the good news with the recruiter and the team—it’s a great morale boost. If you receive a negative review, work with the recruiter to address the issue and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
3. Measure your performance & candidate experience
Real-time reviews are a critical tool to measure recruiter performance and the candidate experience that results from it. These two things go hand in hand. By fixing the input (performance), you’ll fix the output (experience).
4. Promote your wins to elevate your online reputation
In an industry where recruiters have a reputation problem, it is more important than ever to promote your successes. Promoting your wins enables your team to take control of their reputation—both individually and as a whole
By implementing this framework into your process, you’ll have an efficient QA process for your organization to improve your team and, by extension, move your agency forward.
Enhance your organizational efficiency
Improving the candidate or client experience requires a certain set of tools at your disposal—unless you want to balloon your overhead and personnel costs.
Such technologies include:
- Experience management platform
- Applicant tracking system
- Marketing & communications automation
- Candidate screening
- Reference checking
Incorporating automation & technology has the added benefit of making your organization more efficient.
Focus on acquiring the technology and automation you need to improve your experiences, but don’t go beyond that. You don’t want to spend a bunch of money on tools that you never use!
>>> READ MORE: How to Implement New Technology in Your Recruiting Agency
Elevate your online reputation
Once you’ve built a process that enables great experiences, you’re going to want to tell the world about them. This is something that will happen both directly and indirectly:
- You can directly collect testimonials and reviews to use in your marketing materials
- You can indirectly allow people seeking out agencies like yours to see testimonials and reviews by placing them in prominent locations like your website
Take those reviews that you were collecting for QA and training purposes, and share them across the internet: through email newsletters, on Google, embedded in your website, on social media, and more.
Don’t just say how great you are—let your reputation speak for itself.
>>> READ MORE: How to Measure Brand Awareness Growth from Recruiter Reviews
Increase callbacks & referrals
Recruiter reputation is a tangible asset that will help you build your agency. Once you start to elevate and promote your reputation, prepare for an influx of growth.
Recruiters who take their reputation seriously turn things around, and fast:
- Attract new talent
- Increase callbacks
- Supercharge referrals
Once you’ve built an online reputation that speaks for itself, get ready to take those callbacks & referrals and turn them into more prospects and growth.
Final thoughts
Investing in your candidate and client experience is a process, not an event. It’s the result of incremental improvements over time.
The first step is to make sure you have a way to measure the experiences you create. Only then will you understand where you are, and how far you need to go.
Why not sign up for a free Great Recruiters starter account? Start collecting reviews immediately, and see the powerful insights they offer your agency.
