Justin Hillier’s Post

Employers have heard it all before from agencies, ”We partner without clients to blah blah blah”… It has little meaning, it’s said by every agency and it’s a throw away line that’s said because you think it’s what they want to hear or it sounds good. It doesn’t! The aim should be to build relationships, not just professional, but personal as well. You can’t help you’re clients if you don’t understand their business but you can’t help them if you don’t understand them as people as well. Instead of trying to be a “partner” the aim should be to be “a part” of their business. Something they can’t live without, something that adds tangible and intangible value, something that they will notice if it’s gone.

If the agencies providing the best candidate experience outperform the industry average on fill rate by 40%, how can any agency afford not to measure the service they and their clients are providing. The results are clear, the data doesn't lie. Data and results are from agencies in the UK using Recruiter Insider.

Understanding how to maximise and understand the value of your data can be broken down into 4 key areas. With the right data, extracting value and understanding it's importance to your business is a lot easier. 1. What do you know now that you didn’t know before? 2. What can you do now that you couldn’t do before? 3. Tangible - direct dollar correlation - increased sales, increased share of market, increased share of customer spend 4. Intangible - Improve brand awareness and reputation, process/service/skill improvements, removing gut feel. Value comes in many forms, but I feel this looking at is from these key 4 points will help in understanding what value you are really getting.

I met with an agency COO yesterday and ran him through Recruiter Insider and where we are going in the near future. We have some pretty bold plans for what's coming next and sharing this with this COO confirmed to me we are on the right path. "That is the holy grail of recruitment" was the statement for what we have planned to help agencies improve and grow their business. Believe it or not none of it is hard either, it just requires the right data and lots of it, something we certainly don't lack on R.I. The agencies that don't have data will simply fall behind. Our clients I'm predicting will be miles ahead!

Twice this week I have heard from our clients that they were a little scared to begin with about the feedback they may receive from their candidates/clients when they came onboard with Recruiter Insider. Without knowing what feedback you are going to get I can imagine it's a little daunting. What is very pleasing though is that both of these clients are now seeing real value in the depth and specific nature of the feedback we collect. One client was using an NPS platform previously that claimed to be recruitment specific but of course was anything but...Not Particularly Specific will never beat Real Insights focused on the dynamic nature of recruitment. This client now realises huge value of presenting to the data to their clients and helping them not just secure talent but also ensuring they are ahead of their competitors with the unique insights we provide. The other has just gotten underway and the results are very pleasing so far. Whilst it's early days it's easy to see where processes can be improved and outcomes impacted. The more specific the feedback the more powerful the insights. Measuring relationships isn't about asking just one question, measuring recruitment isn't about asking just the people you place and manipulating the results to make you feel good. If you really want to improve, grow and develop stronger relationships with your candidates, clients and employees then you need to take feedback seriously. Feedback is a weapon for mass improvement, in the right hands it can change your performance almost overnight.

Feedback is not a marketing gimmick, it's there to help you improve, incrementally, decisively and collectively. Feedback is a differentiator and an enabler for improved performance. It's often said feedback is a gift, I rather think of it as a weapon for mass improvement.

Our clients are underway using our Performance product on Recruiter Insider for their review process and the feedback is very positive. Abigail Stevens FREC from Think Global Recruitment - International Accountancy & Finance Recruitment says it best. Check out all that our Performance product is here - https://lnkd.in/g3q4GDAW

In all my years in recruitment I don't think I've seen two more compelling data points on how to fill more jobs. It's not fill rates, time to fill, or any other metric from your ATS, it's not automation, AI or any other sales pitch that other platforms are telling you is what your agency needs. It's the single most important element of all, the feedback from candidates on their experience at interview with the client. What is more important or insightful as feedback? UK Candidates who accepted job offers over the last quarter reviewed their interview experience with hiring managers 90-100 (against 5 unique questions) 79% of the time. Yet those accepting job offers when the experience was 80-90 only accepted the role 10% of the time. Now what makes this incredibly compelling is that 45% of the jobs filled were when candidates scored that experience between 90 - 100. Yet when that experience was 80 - 90 jobs were only filled 30% of the time. The data is very very clear, the better candidate experience the hiring manager provides, the more likely you are to fill the job, the more likely the client is to secure the talent they desire and the candidate has a better experience all round. Now who on earth wouldn't want to be measuring, educating clients on their impact whilst strengthening the relationship and making more placements?

23 years in recruitment and I don't think I've seen two more compelling data points on how to fill more jobs. It's not fill rates, time to fill, or any other metric from your ATS, it's the feedback from candidates on their experience at interview with the client. AUS/NZ Candidates who accepted job offers over the last 12 months reviewed their interview experience with hiring managers 90-100 (against 5 unique questions) 74.6% of the time. Yet those accepting job offers when the experience was 80-90 only accepted the role 12.5% of the time. Now what makes this incredibly compelling is that 48% of the jobs filled were when candidates scored that experience between 90 - 100. Yet when that experience was 80 - 90 jobs were only filled 33% of the time. Call me crazy, but if you are not focused on your clients improving the candidate experience I'm pretty sure I am not the one who is crazy.