With Google for Jobs, GDPR and Brexit really “helping” Recruitment leaders focus on a sustainable recruitment business model, your website has become front and centre of your marketing. You need it to make you money and not simply build your brand and clicks.
With the launch of the new Barclay Jones website, I’ve been waxing lyrical to clients about my experience of the web development and launch process and I’ve come up with 4 mistakes that every recruitment website may be making.
Recruitment Websites Need to Make Money!
We regularly help recruiters with the project management of recruitment websites, and digital marketing strategies, so this was a busperson’s holiday for us.
During the design phase of the new Barclay Jones web, it was clear to me that focus needed to be given in areas what we take for granted. Recruiters often forget about the journey that the website needs to take the 3Cs on:
Candidates
Client
Consultants
and Cash!
Often, a recruitment marketer is too busy to see beyond the launch of the website – and hence the goal appears to be “launch and wave goodbye”. But any finance/managing director who has freed up marketing budget to buy a new recruitment website wants more money – they want candidates, clients, colleagues and cash (not just an online brochure).
How to Build a Recruitment Website
There’s lots of content out there about how to build a website, and many a recruitment marketer will know the pain of launching a new site whilst holding down their normal day job.
There are a decent number of recruitment specific website companies – many of them offering really valuable advice… but I discovered few practical tips for recruitment marketers to help them drag surfers through the critical buyer’s journey.
Recruitment Website Mistake 1 – Look Dumb!
With GDPR, the focus on the 3Csand recruitment leaders wanting to invest more in their recruiters, personality has never been so important. But often I look at a recruitment website, then meet the business leaders and recruiters and it’s night and day! In the board room I see passionate advocates of their niche – online “we are the fastest growing, boring, USPless job board” (sorry – tough love!)
Why? Because when recruiters “go online” they dumb down… they “de-niche” and they lose their personality. Confidence disappears and recruitment websites do not “sell”. And the blog just talks about “recruitment”
Have a think whilst you read this blog about how you can inject some personality into your recruitment website.
Recruitment Website Mistake 2 – Ignoring your 404 Page
So – this is the page you’d rather not have people go to – the page which people get to as they have entered an incorrect page on your site, or you have directed to them to a page which no longer exists. Why is it that some many recruitment websites go “doh!” amend don’t take the opportunity to drive the surfer to somewhere useful?
Check out this blog about great 404 pages and then check out Barclay Jones’404 page– we loved creating this one for our very own Barclay Jones 404 error page.
If people give a damn enough to come to your site, and then accidentally hit a page which has been deleted / moved, then why are you just saying “computer says no!”? Stick out your hand and guide them to where you want them to go.
Recruitment Website Mistake 3 – Having a Pants Search Results Screen
To be fair I did quite a bit of research on this and there was nothing that I could plagiarise! My instincts are that if people want to find “stuff” on your website, then making the results screen as engaging as possible is crucial. Have a think about how to get them to click on the bits YOU want them to click on to. And if you have any great ideas on this, share them with me
Recruitment Website Mistake 4 – Contact Us – Or Rather, Kill the Lead!
So you spend a fortune in time, money and emotion on getting people to come to your website. They surf about and bingo!, they want to catch up with you. Then you flick your hair and wander away…? Crazy recruiters!
I feel that the Contact Us page is THE most important page on your site. They are coming in to your shop asking for help… Hubspot agrees and has a helpful blog about the best contact us pages.
So many contact us pages are uninspiring, “templatey”, prone to getting people to NOT contact you.
What can you do with your contact page to engage and CONVERT? It’s not enough that they come to your site and your Google Analytics stats improve. You want them to “buy” from you with a subscription (GDPR alert!) or a job application, or dare we suggest that they want to speak to you… Let’s get recruiters’ phones ringing again!
Let’s Make Recruitment Websites Great Again
I couldn’t resist the “Trumpism”. Take a look at your site… figure out which pages you really want people to go to and then ask yourself if they are working hard enough for you… and can you use a little personality in them to drive conversions.
Recruitment Takeaways…
Personality
Capitalise on errors
Turn searches into conversions
Make contact easy!
Create a recruitment website that attracts and retains clients, candidates and consultants…
I train and mentor recruitment marketers to generate the 4Cs: candidates, clients, colleagues and cash.
HIIT Us, Recruiters!
Our high intensity interval training - Recruitment HIIT - helps recruiters source, convert quicker, and develop healthy pipelines, and recruitment marketers attract, engage, and retain candidates, generate leads, and colleagues (3Cs).
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How to Make Your Recruiter the Coolest Tool
Recruitment leaders want a sustainable recruitment business: high-performing trained recruiters, delivering profitable and speedy placements.Recruiters need more time to bill, cleaner data, and engaged clients and candidates.Recruitment leaders often ask me:What are the coolest tools in recruitment?My answer?The coolest recruitment tool is the one that makes the placement - the recruiter.The issue we have is that as an industry we seem to love investing in perceived cool tools - recruitment tech - but poor adoption means the tech fails to deliver. Not cool!Your Recruiters Are Your Coolest ToolAs trainers in the recruitment sector, our experience gives us an invaluable view of the industry with its issues, goals, and ideal strategies. We offer recruiter training and tactics to help improve recruiter performance and recruitment tech ROI.The one thing my clients have in common is they want to do more with less.Less cost, more profit.Less data, more placements.Less systems, more process.The stats below tell a powerful story about the need for your recruiters to be smart (and cool)!How Can You Make Your Recruiters Your Coolest Tool?As a recruitment leader, you want to place the candidates you already have. You want to reduce reliance on external systems, as well as reduce costs. You want your recruiters to be more productive. You want to scale your recruitment business without necessarily hiring more recruiters.How?Make it ok to be cool. Make it an accountability and / or a value to work smart and be "less is more"! You could even aim for a 1% improvement...Don't buy recruitment tech and "hope". Hope is a strategy that rarely works. Only continuous training drives continuous improvement.Continuous training needs to be quick (minutes not hours), accessible, and cost-effective. Not lengthy, difficult to access, difficult to track ROI.Our Recruitment Training Playbook is Cool!Your recruiters need to be super effective and not just crazy busy. You need to lead them to be cool tools!Try our tips in our recruitment training playbook and make your recruiters cool! The playbook is packed full of ideas that we use in our recruitment training, our Bullhorn training, and our automation training. And keep an eye out for the 2nd coolest tool - Recruitment HIIT. Speedy 10min turbo-charged training to help with recruitment best practice, Bullhorn training, Adapt Training, and more.DOWNLOAD YOUR RECRUITMENT TRAINING PLAYBOOKSpeaking of Recruitment Training...Recruitment HIIT trains recruiters and resourcers so you can speedily onboard new starters, and improve performance of experienced recruiters.Job qualification, screening, sourcing, job advertising, and counteroffer immunity, are just some of the 10-minute topics our clients love.We’d love you to try Recruitment HIIT free.TRY RECRUITMENT HIIT FREE
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How to Use Recruitment Awards to Drive Your Sales Pipeline
We’re passionate about recruitment awards! Whether you’re entering, winning, attending or spying, there’s ROI to be had for recruiters, beyond simply having a recruitment award trophy.There are 3 things I want to talk about today:A top sales tip on how to run your recruitment sales strategy with awards, without even submitting an awards entry!Industry Awards you can use within your niche sector to increase your pipeline.2023 Recruitment Awards you may want to focus on to improve your recruitment business.We are proud to be triple award winners, including the APSCo award for Affiliate Member of the Year, so know how awards can help you improve your sales pipeline and grow.1. Sales Tip - Use Recruitment Awards for BD and Account ManagementLet's face it, now more than ever, your sales strategies(business development and account management) are absolutely crucial in a post-pandemic world where the war for talent is raging, counter offers are rife, and clients need recruiters that they can trust, who understand their niche.By definition clients that are entering awards tend to be high growth, ambitious, and likely have money and time to spend on recruitment too! Surely?My top tips to add turbo to your business development and account management: 1. Speedily research which awards are prevalent in your niche sectors.2. Plot the dates into your diaries (the submission dates, shortlist dates, date of the event, day after the event).3. Make a noise, connect with the VIPs, shout out about these events - they are important to your niche sectors.4. Use this data by at least sending LinkedIn messages to the VIPs of these businesses when they are shortlisted, and then begin networking using your CRM and automation.5. Have targets and goals to convert these high-growth businesses into retained clients.Clients entering awards are "sure things" - be sure to have them in your BD and account management pipeline.We have plenty of other sales tips, as well as sourcing tips, candidate management, job qualification tips in Recruitment HIIT, too.TRY RECRUITMENT HIIT FOR FREE2. Recruitment Industry AwardsYou can utilise the upcoming awards within your niche sector to ensure you find, engage, nurture, and retain your clients. That's right, you can use the awards within your industry to generate sales without even submitting an awards entry. Your ideal clients are likely to enter awards within their sector to drive growth. Use the UK Industry awards list to spot potential clients you can engage with to improve your BD, account management tactics, and your pipeline.This is a great opportunity for you to show you understand your target client's niche. The UK Industry awards list alongside our sales tips in step 1 is a surefire way to improve your awards sales strategy. 3. 2023 Recruitment AwardsIf you want to use Recruitment Awards to attract attention and drive sales, you can of course enter some awards.Check out our 2023 list recruitment awards list below! (Have we missed any recruitment awards for the remainder of 2023? Contact Usto get them added.)This year recruiters need to do more with less. The goal could be to win an award, but it's actually more likely to be bigger than winning. The goal is to generate more speed and pipeline (whether you enter, win, or simply attend!).Investing in Talent AwardsJanuary 2023 - The annual Investing in Talent Awards asks: Do your recruiters love working in your business? Is your company the consultancy of choice for contractors and temporary workers? If so, it’s time that your business receives well-deserved recognition for Investing in Talent. Onrec AwardsMarch 2023 - The prestigious Onrec AwardsCeremony has cemented itself in the calendar as a must-attend event. Not only is it an opportunity to celebrate the very best in Online Recruitment but it is also a chance to network with the very best suppliers in recruitment.Recruiter AwardsSeptember 2023 - The iconic Recruiter Awardsis the UK’s largest event for the entire recruitment community, recognising outstanding achievements by agencies and in-house recruiters. Achievements in recruitment marketing and technology also are spotlighted.APSCo AwardsSeptember 2023 - The APSCo Awards for Excellenceare a prestigious accolade in professional recruitment. The awards celebrate outstanding achievements in the professional recruitment sector and are a unique indicator of professional standards. They are widely recognised by clients as well as the recruitment sector. The awards are free to enter and open to all APSCo members.TIARAOctober 2023 - The TIARA Recruitment Awards recognises excellence in the UK’s best-performing recruitment companies with revenues above £5m.The Global Recruiter AwardsNovember 2023 - The Global Recruiter Industry Awardscelebrates the best of the best in recruitment. The Awards are totally free to enter, which means that the smallest and newest players in the industry have the chance to be recognised alongside established organisations.NORAsNovember 2023 - Established in 2001, the National Online Recruitment Awardsacknowledge and reward excellence in online recruitment practice. They are dedicated to the continual improvement and evolution of the candidate experience. ... and for Other Sales Tips for Recruiters...Our high intensity interval training - Recruitment HIIT - helps recruiters and resourcers source, convert quicker and develop healthy pipelines. We aim to save every recruiter and resourcer at least 1 hour per day (6 working weeks a year). Hence, more billing time and more fees!We’d love you to try Recruitment HIIT for free. Or book a call to discuss your recruitment training.TRY RECRUITMENT HIIT FOR FREE
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