​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:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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:

1. Is it fit for purpose?

2. Is it actually being used?

3. 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.

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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.

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