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Every recruitment leader I speak to wants stronger pipelines, speedier placements, accountable recruiters, and more sales!
But often at least one of these 4 elements is a struggle. Here are my thoughts to help recruitment leaders connect their tech, people, data, and process to drive revenue.
Running a Recruitment Business Is a Struggle?
I often see recruitment businesses suffering:
Too much data, not enough information.
Too many applicants, not enough candidates.
Too many jobs, not enough placements.
Too many systems, not enough process.
This creates unnecessary lag, enables your competitors to win, and limits sales.
Now is the time to seriously accelerate effective tech adoption and improve recruiter performance.
But with world events, economic frustrations, tech evolving at an accelerated rate, and "new normal" changing every day, how do you do this?
1. Recruitment Tech: All the Gear, No Idea?
Technology can and should free up your recruiters and drive your business, but perhaps due to:
Massively distracting market conditions and world events.
WFH, hybrid, remote working.
... you're investing in tech which delivers little ROI, and may even be seen by your team as sales-prevention technology? Adoption is poor, and if you have 20 staff, you have 20 different ways of delivery.
For example, as part of one of our Bullhorn ROI projects my team reviewed a 25-person recruitment business with a tech stack costing £150k+.) The business wanted to be more effective at attracting, sourcing, engaging, converting, and retaining. They had some great tech, lots of data, and passionate recruiters… but poor adoption and no "way".
Tech has a job to do. Be clear on what that is and work to realise your expectations. But be careful not to spite yourself by turning tech off that hasn't been adopted correctly.
2. People: The Problem in Between the Chair and the Keyboard?
Are you suffering from PIBKAC?
Are your recruiters engaging with tech, driving sales, consulting in their space, or simply administrating?
Is your culture geared up to get the best from your people? Or does it drive PIBCAK?
Ask yourself - Is your recruitment training:
Induction and "off you go" (high failure rate).
Designed for robots - "they've been told once and need to remember" (hope is not a strategy).
Continuous and part of your culture - they are only human and need constant development.
Hint - point 3 is the most successful antidote to PIBKAC. If you're struggling to adopt tech and drive sales, think about what you need to do to eradicate PIBCAK. Continuous training is way cheaper than very little training resulting in lots of missed opportunities and high attrition.
3. Data: Everything, Everywhere, All at Once
What state is your data in?
Do you make money from it, or do you need to spend money finding it?
Do you have to advertise your jobs and waste cash on LinkedIn Recruiter to find candidates that you likely already have?
Are your recruiters data / community managers or just data collectors and hoarders? Is FOMO driving poor trust / data health / ROI?
Or is your Bullhorn system "1st" for sourcing and sales? Have you automated the administration and dirty data out of your business so your recruiters can thrive?
4. Process: Develop and Drive Your "Way"
What is your process? What is your "way"?
If you have 20 staff, do you have 20 ways?
If someone new joins do they find it easy to deliver your way, or is it not clear enough?
Does your tech and training drive your way, or contradict it?
Are you using automation to enable your way?
Is your process aligned with how tech has evolved and how the recruitment market has changed? Or is your recruitment and sales process reliant on the good will and skills of a few naturally gifted high performers?
Recruitment Leaders! Within a Year You Could...
Now's the time to review your tech, people, data, and process.
Perhaps take one workflow at a time and tighten it up, or even innovate it. (My team can help you do this via a Bullhorn ROI project.)
Take each workflow and spend a couple of months driving it. How much more could you bill if you are smarter with your sourcing, BD, account management, and candidate management?
Start now, and within a year you could have it nailed!
Imagine what your business would be like now if you'd started this a year ago.
Imagine how you'll feel in a year if you don't do anything...
Bullhorn ROI + Trained Happy Recruiters = More Sales
We help recruitment leaders achieve Bullhorn ROI. We create a Bullhorn1st vision, reduce the need for other tech, optimise Bullhorn, and train recruiters to trust it and use it.
Arrange a Free Consultation Now
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Wayne Barclay
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How Many Candidates (and Clients) Do Recruiters Really Need?
Recruitment leaders and their resourcers / recruiters need to read this blog for insights on how much data they really need, and how much data they can realistically manage, to run a successful desk and recruitment business.We’re all human (even recruiters) and we all have limits. In recruiting world, our limits can be how many jobs we can work, how many calls we can make, how many temps we can manage. One significant human limit is our ability to nurture relationships. Data = RelationshipsRecruitment is a relationship business. A recruiter’s job is to build and maintain relationships. Candidates need managing, clients need managing, colleagues need managing. Dunbar tells us that humans have relationship limits – we have “a number” we can manage. Robin Dunbar is a Professor Emeritus of Evolutionary Psychology of the Social and Evolutionary Neuroscience Research Group at Oxford Uni he knows a few things about human behaviour. Think of your relationships a bit like a layered onion with you in the middle. 5 loved ones 15 good friends 50 friends 150 meaningful relationships 500 acquaintances 1500 people you can recognise People can move in and out of these layers. What is Dunbar’s Number? And What’s It Got to Do with Recruitment? Where does a “typical” recruiter sit in their ideal candidate / contact’s layer? And where do their candidates and contacts sit? Recruitment Leaders! What should you be considering if you want to maximise the value of your database, and the relationships you want to maximise, optimise, monetise? How should you focus on and nurture the right relationships? What’s the Number of Candidates and Contacts a Recruiter Can Actively Manage? Dunbar suggests that humans are capable of building, nurturing and maintaining 150 good meaningful and trusted relationships. Of course, there are variations to this, such as extroverts vs introverts and social networks – for example women tend to have more contacts in the closest layers. Dunbar v Recruitment Dunbar’s study isn’t focused on recruitment or recruiters, but it’s definitely food for thought. 150 meaningful relations is not that many people when you consider the average recruiter has a database in the 1000s. But could you really market your recruitment business on a database of “acquaintances” or “people you recognise”? Where do your candidates and clients fall within these categories? Have you got any in the magic 150 “meaningful contacts”? Is your database segmented in such a way, or do you have a “data dump” which needs a good clean?[link to clean webinar]. Recruitment in the Good Old Days Before tech and data began paralysing recruitment (too much / never enough), recruitment was much more of a relationship business. You knew your candidates, their dog’s names, their kid’s ages. Relationships were easier to sustain, they were more valuable, and we charged more for our services. It’s likely that Dunbar would say a recruiter pre-social media had 150 meaningful relationships with candidate and clients, and perhaps even some friends? Now with infinite data and technology allowing for massively increased reach and volume, relationships, ironically, are a harder to start and sustain. Are you / your recruitment teams engaging with the right people, or just lots of candidates? (Too many applicants, not enough candidates?) Are you working the right opportunities, or just a list of one-off jobs? (Too many jobs, not enough sales?) Is Your CRM Simply a Datadump of Strangers? Recruiters who try to maintain too many relationships actually limit their own success. They dilute the relationships they’re trying to build, resulting in weaker, less meaningful, and less valuable relationships. Could Dunbar help you run your recruitment business? For example: Recruiters who run a busy temp desk and managing 100+ temps might not have the capacity to take on more or even do other activities such as Business Development or Sourcing. 360-degree recruiters will have more relationships to manage than a 180-degree recruiter, so this could mean a less focused strategy and outcome. Is it always necessary to hire another recruiter to manage more relationships, or could tech do some heavy lifting? 4 Ways to Be Smart with Recruitment Contacts Social Networks can help. Publishing content to your “connections” can help keep you in and around the Acquaintances and People You Recognise category. Your goal, though, should be to get your ideal contacts on to your CRM so you can more actively work them. Ideally you should be aiming to nurture them in the 150 “meaningful contact” space! Your Recruitment CRM/ATS (ideally powered by automation) also has ways to identify and categorise your relationships. Status fields, rating and grading fields are great places to start and will enable smart ways to manage and work the data. Automation (and recruiters) can keep these vital fields current. Automation is helping Recruiters identify, engage, nurture (and monetise) Acquaintances and People You Recognise and capitalising on these relationships. In the automation projects we deliver we are creating functional data so recruiters can focus on segments of contacts and candidates. They can then “work” their data, rather than just collect it. Your recruiters (ideally powered by automation/CRM) need to keep this data updated to ensure you can track, manage and support where necessary. This should also protect your relationships when recruiters move on. Final Thoughts Engaging and nurturing your candidates and clients is an important part of the recruitment lifecycle. Recruiters often struggle with “too much data, too many systems, not enough process”. Any help and support you can provide to your recruiters to create focus, so relationships are stronger and profitable, is crucial. How could you use Dunbar’s theory to help you create focus, function, and sustainability?(Big thanks to Louise at UK Recruiter for initially posting this blog.)Bullhorn ROI + Trained Happy Recruiters = More SalesWe pride ourselves on helping recruitment leaders achieve Bullhorn ROI. We create a Bullhorn1st vision, reduce the need for other tech, optimise Bullhorn, automate their sales-prevention processes and data, and train recruiters to trust it and use it.ARRANGE A FREE CONSULTATION NOW
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Wayne Barclay
Blog
Automation Tip - Nail Your Date Ranges in Automation Lists
We've got an automation tip to help you ensure that you can really target the data (candidates and clients) you need to source, sell to, and place.We help recruiters to source quicker, and sell more, through our Automation Buddy program. Automation can positively transform a recruitment business - when it works. But when it doesn't work it feels like it simply costs money and keeps you reliant on Linkedin, Job Boards and other expensive data sources and tech.Don't Miss Out On a Hot Date (Or Sale)!When you build automations, they can be date-related, but I often see lists that aren't quite right, date ranges are setup incorrectly, and this means that you'll be missing out on vital sales (and candidate) opportunities. This can really affect automation ROI (and RoE - return on effort!)Damn!In my recent "5 Automations to Make You Money" webinar I explored how to create good quality lists to target your time and attention and keep hungry recruiters busy with the right calls. For example, you'll want to target lapsed clients, wake them up, and get them back into paying clients. These automations really need to work!But I have a fix for you to ensure that your lists and automations really drive revenue.Watch My Quick 1-Minute Automation Video, Nail Your Date Ranges, and Make More MoneyAutomation BuddyWe are Automation Buddies set on helping ambitious recruitment businesses who want to drive revenue using automation.READ ABOUT OUR AUTOMATION BUDDY SERVICENeed more Bullhorn / Automation Tips?Try our 1-minute tips.Be sure to sign up for (or watch the recordings of) our regular free Bullhorn and Automation webinars.CHECK OUT OUR WEBINARS
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