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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 ATS / Analytics / Automation / AI RoI
We are Bullhorn experts set on helping ambitious recruitment businesses to increase speed and sales.
We help you weaponise your people, data, time, and tech, so you can recruit and sell!
Our Bullhorn Vision and Buddy service helps generate best-in-class processes, adoption, head space, and ROI.
BOOK A FREE BULLHORN ROI CONSULTATION
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Lisa Jones
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Vodcast: Is AI Recruitment's Superpower, Or Its Blind Spot?
Is Recruitment AI the Superpower Everyone's Raving About? Or Are You Missing Something Obvious?I recently caught up with George Whalley from Bullhorn for the latest in my recruitment leaders' vodcast series. AI, automation, cost reduction, compassionate recruitment, manual work, and dogs, were the topics.George's day job is bringing net new clients onto Bullhorn and then, unusually, staying on as their account manager afterwards. So unlike a lot of people selling you tech, he actually has to live with the consequences of what he sells you. That makes him worth listening to.We had 22 minutes to talk about the reality of AI in recruitment and what recruitment leaders need to factor into growing their businesses with this vital tech.💰 Your data is your superpower, so stop buying more of itHow is AI (and automation) actually impacting recruitment right now?George's answer was basically - not as much as it should be. Why? Because recruiters are only using it for the boring bit (generating text) and ignoring it to help them monetise the data goldmine already sat in their own Bullhorn.Anyone can scrape LinkedIn.Anyone can buy the same 100,000 candidates as their competitor.That's cold data.Anyone can use AI to find and clean data - but don't get blindsided. It's what you do with it that counts!What George calls your actual superpower is the stuff already living in your notes and conversations that never made it into a proper field, that you can use AI to "power up" your pipeline.Recruiters are "crawling over warm data on their Bullhorn to get to cold data outside of Bullhorn". Sounds mad when you say it like that, doesn't it? But that's most agencies right now.What's the fix? (Watch the video to find out!)👇🧠 What can humans actually do that AI can't?This was George's favourite question and I can see why.His answer was blunt - AI can do a LOT to save time and costs, and drive process, but AI can't put a suit on and sit in a room with a client.It can't understand the stuff that actually matters more than the business on paper. We chatted about why 40% of consultants have left the industry in the last 18 months.Not because they were bad at their jobs.Because recruitment stopped needing what they were good at, and started needing something they'd never had to be good at before. Then George said something that's been rattling round my head all week - is AI really dehumanising recruitment, or is it de-manualising it?Humans = manual. Really? Is that as good as it gets?Watch the video 👇for more insights on how to de-manualise your recruitment process and do what only humans can do!🐕 Are you using tech to do what your website says you do?(And what has that got to do with your dog's God complex?)We chatted about the open secret in recruitment: what recruiters say they do - and what they really do - often poles apart. Too much data, and too little process makes for a lack of productivity and ultimately profit.It also makes for a very expensive tech stack, which leaves the average recruitment leader wondering why they need to spend so much money on tech just to stand still.What did George suggest you need to do to manage the threat and opportunity? Watch the video to find out...👇My recruitment leaders' vodcast with George is a cute 22minutes long. Grab a coffee and get watching!Bullhorn ATS / Analytics / Automation / AI ROIWe are Bullhorn experts obsessed with how recruiters can increase sales, reduce costs, speed up sourcing, and improve productivity.We help you weaponise your people, data, time, and tech, so you can recruit and sell!Our Bullhorn Vision and Buddy service helps generate best-in-class processes, adoption, head space, and ROI.BOOK A FREE BULLHORN ROI CONSULTATION
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Wayne Barclay
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The One Bullhorn Habit That's Silently Bleeding You of Fees and Sales
While you've moved on from that lost job, your competitor hasn't and it's costing you £$€thousands.Here's the Bullhorn follow-up process most recruitment leaders are missing...I've watched it happen at desk after desk, recruitment business after recruitment business.Lost a job, hung up the phone, and thought "right, next." Never gave it another thought. I see recruiters doing exactly the same thing today.Lost that job?Placed somewhere else?Move on.Exit stage right, never to speak to that client again. It's the most natural reaction in the world. Nobody wants to dwell on a loss. But if you're leading a recruitment business, this reflex is likely costing you money you don't even know you're missing.Are your recruiters tenacious enough to be in the wings for an inevitable rekindling of that sale? 🤔The recruitment stat that stopped me in my tracks One in five candidates are unhappy in their new role within a few months of starting. Think about your own rebate numbers. What's the average in your business?Now think about how many of those unhappy candidates you're still talking to when that unhappiness kicks in. For most recruitment businesses I work with, the answer is "not enough". Somewhere in your Bullhorn database right now, there are candidates who took a job through a competitor, or through the client going direct, and they're already regretting it.The consultant who lost that job has probably moved on too. There's a door sitting wide open. Nobody's walking through it. 🤨 Leaving the sales process to the candidate and client isn't a great strategy Here's the bit people miss. When you lose a job, it doesn't just go to another candidate. Sometimes the client hires through a competitor. Sometimes they go direct. Either way, that placement can go wrong too. So the follow-up process shouldn't stop at the candidate.Building in a reason to check back with the client as well could be a simple trick to re-engaging the lead!Did the hire work out?How's it going?Are they still happy they went that route?(So satisfying when you can think "I told you so!) You're not gloating.You're just staying visible, staying warm, and staying front of mind - that's sales!Because if it hasn't worked out, you want to be the first call they make, not the fifth. Be ready to let them fall straight back into your arms. 🫡This is a leadership problem, not a recruitment consultant problem Here's the bit that matters if you're the one running the business. You can't fix this by hoping your team remembers.You fix it by building a process, and making it part of how your business operates: Close jobs properly. Status set correctly, every time. It's one field, and it's the one that gets left by the wayside. Everything downstream depends on it. Set the cadence, both sides. Know when the successful candidate started, then touch base with the candidate *and* the client at one, three, six and twelve months. Assign ownership. Is this account management or BD? Decide, and make someone accountable. If it belongs to everyone, it belongs to no one. That's a strategy decision. It's not something you leave a busy consultant to remember off the back of a good night's sleep.Hope is not a strategy (or a process!) 💪Bullhorn already has what you need Bullhorn wasn't built to be an admin system. It was built to be a relationship management system, and this is a perfect example of it doing its job properly. Automation can nudge and notify your team the moment a lost job hits a follow-up milestone. Nobody has to remember anything. Analytics can report on lost jobs across the whole business. How many, which clients, whether contact was actually made. What do you have set up currently, and:Is it fit for purpose?Is it actually being used?Do you have full visibility over what it's reporting on and whether or not your team are actually adopting this process and delivering on it? Ask yourself: how watertight is this sales process for your business. Is it delivering results?😇 The relationship didn't end - the job did That's the mindset shift for anyone leading a recruitment team.Losing a job isn't the end of a relationship. It's a trigger telling you exactly when to check back in. Get this nailed at a leadership level, build it into the process rather than hoping it happens, and Bullhorn will quietly hand you rebates and repeat business you'd otherwise never see. --- More BD Tips?This was one of five tips from our Bullhorn Power Series webinar on using your ATS, automation and analytics to drive business development.Catch the other four, and watch the full sessionWATCH THE BULLHORN FOR BD TIPS WEBINARBullhorn ATS / Analytics / Automation / AI ROIWe are Bullhorn experts obsessed with how recruiters can increase sales, reduce costs, speed up sourcing, and improve productivity.We help you weaponise your people, data, time, and tech, so you can recruit and sell!Our Bullhorn Vision and Buddy service helps generate best-in-class processes, adoption, head space, and ROI.BOOK A FREE BULLHORN ROI CONSULTATION
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Wayne Barclay
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Bullhorn Power Series ~ Stop Missing Out on Sales: 5 Tips to Use Your ATS, Automation, and Analytics to Drive BD
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Wayne Barclay
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Automation RoI Webinar Series: Unlock Bullhorn Part 6 ~ Data Wealth
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Lisa Jones
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Recruiter Productivity Series: Optimise Bullhorn Part 6 ~ Easy Candidate Management
