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About the webinar!

In today’s webinar, we’ll talk about the ever-changing recruitment market. We’ll provide you with 6 great tips to help you hire more effectively.

These tips include:
1. The difference between applicant’s vs candidates
2. How to look beyond, the CV to gain access to a wider talent pool
3. Make your hiring process time-efficient and effective
4. How you’re perceived in the talent pool you are recruiting
5. How to get the best out of your recruitment partner
6. How to avoid losing your candidate before they start

We’ll provide actionable takeaways that will assist you in your hiring process.

In total, this lesson is only 48 minutes long!

Download webinar presentation:

Transcript

Mike Leather:

Hi, Rob.

Rob Coombes:

Mike.

Mike Leather:

Hello. Thank you for joining us, everybody. For those of you who don’t know who BMS are, we are a leading sales specialist and marketing recruitment consultancy. We’ve been established in excess of 30 years and on the sales side, we recruit at all levels. I am the national sales manager at BMS. My name is Mike Leather. I’ve been here for just under ten years now and joining me today is Rob Coombes. He is one of our market development managers, one of the very few market development managers that we have. He’s been with us just under nine years, haven’t you, Rob?

Rob Coombes:

I certainly have, yes.

 Mike Leather:

So we wanted to come on and put together a webinar which is based on our experiences and what we’ve seen in the market to ultimately help employers recruit in what is an ever-changing candidate market at the moment. Isn’t that right, Rob?

Rob Coombes:

Yes, it’s certainly tricky for businesses to be recruiting in this sector and in this time. So hopefully, we’re going to put our best foot forward in attacking that ever-changing and evolving marketplace.

Mike Leather:

Yeah, there’s going to be plenty of actionable takeaways for people as well, so that hopefully you can come away from this with some new information that you might not have known.

Rob Coombes:

Absolutely.

Mike Leather:

Point one that we wanted to talk about today, which we both felt was a really important, is the difference between an applicant and a candidate. I wanted to talk about this firstly because the market is very much still candidate-driven.

So what do I mean by candidate-driven?

Essentially, it means that there isn’t enough good calibre candidates to fill the amount of vacancies that are out there, which results in candidates being picky, being selective and ultimately harder to recruit for employers. When we look at, I guess, the last twelve months particularly, and I reckon you’ll back me up on this, Rob, we have definitely seen a shift in the overall talent pool. So if we consider an applicant as a candidate that’s actively on the market and a candidate as someone who is in the  passive part of the candidate pool, the overall talent pool, the overall size of the market has decreased. It just means that there’s more candidates that are in the passive section. So for clients at the moment and companies that are out there recruiting, it’s important that we feel that people are aware of this, because often that’s what we will find is that when we speak to a client and we ask them how they go about recruiting for a position, they’ve got an advert on LinkedIn and that’s about it. For that reason, they’re harnessing a small portion of the overall talent pool. So how can they be sure that they’re recruiting the very best salesperson out there? So, Rob, if we keep, again, applicants and candidates separate, what are some of the things that companies need to be thinking about in order to access a higher portion of the applicant market?

Rob Coombes:

Yeah, it’s a great question. It’s got quite a lot of potential answers and takeaways from it. I mean, you mentioned advertising there. Obviously, that advert itself has got to be really well written for the target audience, of course, but also for the role, but more importantly, so it accesses the right level of people. How many adverts do we see, especially with our BD Team and looking at adverts of companies that are not very much in depth and quite small; they don’t actually tell you about the role, where it is or what the kind of packages they offer. So having that advert well written is key. We’ve also talked about popping something on LinkedIn. Well, not everybody uses LinkedIn. We like to think they do, but having it in multiple places, multiple job boards, multiple places for your target market. I think one that we’ll touch on today is the strength of your employer brand. Is your LinkedIn profile showcasing your company? Have you got an easy to navigate careers page? I mean, websites, I’ve been on where I can, I know where they are because I’ve looked up to them.

The user, hire at the bottom, is it clear as day as to where it is. So if you’re going on there, you can find it and start the online profile and reviews. Candidates these days and applicants these days no more than ever because of social media and what have you. So what’s your online footprint looking like? And are you abreast of what people think about you on places like Glassdoor or Google reviews, review centre, etc.

Mike Leather:

Because you can get candidate who see your job advert online and we’re going to talk about this a little bit later on, might visit your LinkedIn page.

They don’t get all the information that they would expect to be attracted to the position for them to then follow through with their application on the candidate side. So this can be a bit more tricky because if we remember a candidate being someone that’s passive is not going out there applying for job adverts. This is a large portion of the talent pool of candidates that essentially sat there and getting approaches from recruiters, from direct employees on LinkedIn. This is one of the biggest shifts that we’ve seen in candidate behaviour because of the lack of people applying for job adverts. We’ve found that candidates who are passively in the market have been bombarded with messages. So what does this mean for an employer? Well, you’ve got to think carefully. Firstly, what does your talent pool look like? You know, how many people are in that talent pool? But furthermore, how are you crafting that message? Are you thinking about making that message really engaging? How is it going to stand out for the noise, what you’re going to put in there about your culture? How are you going to get that candidate that you sent a message to, maybe on LinkedIn or have you found them on a job, but how are you going to get them engaging with you in the first place?

So it’s really important that you’re thinking about that strategy. I guess the actionable takeaway from this point is to recruit effectively in this market and to recruit the very best sales professional. It’s important that you’ve got a well-rounded strategy to access both the active side of the market, so you get as many applicants as you can come through, but you’re also thinking about the passive market too, because arguably that’s the largest action of the talent pool at the moment. Then to talk about this, because, again, we felt it was important about how looking beyond the CV can give you access to a wider selection of talent. I think you wanted to lead on this one, didn’t you?

Rob Coombes:

Absolutely. I mean, we’ve been working throughout the Pandemic, and obviously it was tough recruiting in that year, two years, arguably now, again, for obvious reasons. But what it’s done is shifted companies mindsets, especially in my sector within the technical markets. That’s construction, mechanical, electronic, engineering type businesses, they became a lot more risk averse; I still see that today. What I mean by that, it’s in their candidate selection process and the types of people, or perceived types of people they want in their businesses. If they were going to replace a leaver or grow, which obviously didn’t happen a lot, but they were really going back into that square peg, square hole mentality. Which I can completely understand as it became a case of the ‘black book of contacts’, the risk averse hiring strategy, that we need someone to come in and basically save our skins, bring a load of business out of nowhere that they’ve taken from somewhere else and it became a bit safe and a bit obvious. That was very candidate-driven. I’m afraid what’s that done is really tightened up talent pools. It’s forced companies that have those people to throw cash at them, potentially, when it comes to if it’s packages and counter offers.

I had a really big one in January of 2022. I think you might remember it, Mike.

Mike Leather:

Because they remember it.

Rob Coombes:

Yeah, it was major one. I was working with one of my national clients, major global organisation within the electrical and cable world, and they were recruiting for a BDM. We identified the candidate who actually ended up being a passive applicant, like we touched on before. Mike got through the interview process. They offered him the job, at the top end of their salary bracket, verbal acceptance. He even signed the paperwork and sent it back with the start date. When it came to that resignation piece, his company got it a bit stuck here and gave him a £17,000 pay rise like that, in order to keep hold to that talent because of his commercial experience and more importantly, his technical know-how and skill set. It was a real trend in 2022 of salary expectations rising and those types of individuals that were so wanted and needed in that passive talent pool, not actually needing to look.

Mike Leather:

Yeah. Okay, so if we look at this section as well, I think it’s also important that employees are thinking about the front end of the process. So looking at the actual brief that they’re taking to market, because one of the biggest challenges that we’re seeing and we’re hearing all the time is I’m not getting enough access to enough candidates. There can be sometimes a multitude of reasons why, one being the job advert is pushing towards the ideal rather than what they will actually recruit. So it’s really important, I guess, as an employer recruiting in the market, that they’re thinking about how we attract the individual that we want, what sort of attributes are we looking for? Looking at their top performers and thinking not just what have they sold and who too before joining us, but thinking about what do they do really well at the moment? What sort of transferable skills should we be looking for in order to maybe access a wider selection of talent? Because, again, some of the reasons that companies struggle to recruit is because they’re simply not looking outside of the marketplace. They’re recruiting for experience rather than recruiting for skills, attitude and overall potential.

Rob Coombes:

Well, absolutely, I mean, the example I gave before was obviously a small example within a bigger world, but it really did take the human element out of the recruitment process and we’re still seeing that now. Ultimately, the pandemic has changed the way we live our lives day to day and has also changed massively the way we do business. So absolutely everything saying they’re looking inside your organisations already and who are your top performers, what did they do before but forget that? What is it that actually, from an attribute point of view, makes them brilliant at what they do? I did have this again, better, more positive example of what happened here around this kind of town was actually six months prior to that, in the summer of 2021, slap bang in the middle of Pandemic, working with a major manufacturing company in the construction sector of exterior building products. They were looking for an area sales manager because they had a leaver, but for years they had this square peg, square hole mentality. It’s always worked for them in pre-Pandemic recruitment, they weren’t able to pay the additional money needed, where an extra five, six, seven thousand on the basic salary because of the rising inflation of the salaries, etc. that would have had a big impact on their wider organisation and other people.

So I had a real sit down with them and said, well, what have you been doing? Two or three recruiters on it like we talked about before, LinkedIn adverts, looking for the ideal profile and guess what? Couldn’t fulfil the position. So we had a real frank consultation conversation about, well, what are you looking for? And they told me, and it was, of course we want exterior building products selling to merchants. But why? Because that’s what we’ve always done.

Mike Leather:

Yeah.

Rob Coombes:

Talk me through your top performances and guys, the next thing you know, within half an hour, we were talking about personalities, we were talking about hunger, desire, team spirit, all of these good things that are not particularly viewable on a CV, but of course, the wider human being thing. Next thing you know, they employ a guy from completely outside of the construction sector 18 months down the line.  A couple of months ago, they’ve been promoted within their organisation that would not of been heard of 5-10 years ago. Now they’re looking for that similar profile because they can identify it, because they took the step out of their comfort zone and now they know that the recruitment process is going to be a lot shorter than three, four, five months it took last time. So, yes, it’s really about identifying those softer skills and not necessarily relying on what the CV says, I suppose to open that talent pool up to you.

Mike Leather:

Yeah, soft skills. How many times we hear it where companies who describe the top performers, they very rarely describe what sales background they’ve come from, always describe characteristics, drive, enthusiasm, energy. These are all things that you can’t see on the CV. So when we’re talking about looking beyond the CV, this is essentially where we’re going with this point. Rob, what are some actionable takeaways here, then?

Rob Coombes:

Well, for me, I suppose there’s three key ones here to talk around this opening up of a talent pool and maybe opening the door to different people joining your organisation. I mean, we’ve just basically talked about one whereby looking outside of the norm and looking outside of your industry, which again, have a conversation internally about what those skill sets are that you guys identify with, that you can then look at in people outside of that. Secondly, I’d probably say make that job profile friendlier to the wider market. Again. Touch on some of the points you said before. Have a focus in your advertising campaign and you go to market strategy about the softer skills, about how open minded you are, about the cultural aspects of your organisation. Rather than you must have done x for x amount of years and have a degree in X, Y and Z because that is going to alienate so many people. If for whatever reason, though, you don’t have that talent pool, you know, you don’t have that talent pool and it isn’t just going to come out of thin air. What about changing that strategy to maybe entry level?

Change the brief of the role rather than change the brief of the candidate profile? Change the role, make it friendlier to someone who’s maybe their first role in sales, maybe look down the graduate recruitment option and then bring them on a journey over two, three, four years to get them where you need to be, especially in those sectors. Ideal in in mechanical, electrical and technical sectors, there’s a depth of candidates that just aren’t there because of, you know, different social and political factors.

Mike Leather:

Point three and one that I’m excited to dig into. It’s always an interesting topic of conversation, but the importance of having a time efficient and effective recruitment process. So I’ll let you kick this one off, Rob.

Rob Coombes:

Well, taken for granted a lot of the time, I think it’s fair to say the last thing any hiring manager I’ve ever spoken to wants to be doing is recruiting. Unless you’re an internal acquisition specialist, of course. But from a sales director, sales manager, HR manager’s perspective, they’re mostly already stressed and stretched in terms of their workload. So this is really important for them to actually reduce that time to hire and not have it spin on and on, which we see so often. Also, it’s not just pressure on those individuals in that recruitment process, it’s also about attracting the talent to come into that recruitment process. And it’s got to be fluid, it’s got to be straightforward and efficient because the more of those things that it is, the more committed and engaged candidates you’re going to get into that process. Obviously you get people that want to be in it rather than like we talked about those passive applicants before, might you want to engage them to get them in it and want to be in it rather than be in it because someone told them it was a great idea. I think a really great way of getting to the bottom of having that time efficient, effective recruitment process is really sitting back before the process even starts and understanding in your organisation who is responsible for every step of that process.

I think you’ll probably agree with Mike, a lot of businesses or people we speak to is not something that gets taught in the management manual, is it? It’s not something that there is a craft of doing for every single type of role. It’s about living and breathing that market day in, day out. And people forget parts of the process, as I say, take some of them for granted. So we need to know who’s signing off, who’s going to write the actual specification, that message we talked about before, who’s posting the adverts and where are you guys going to deal with recruiters or not? And if so, who manages that relationship and what you want from a recruitment partner? Who’s then going to collect all the applicants and who’s going to manage that process? Sometimes it’s quite disjointed. What’s your screening process?, who’s going to then be in the interview panel? How many stages are you going to do and where? We’ll talk about the ever changing role of that shortly, but more importantly, when are those interviews going to be and how sharp can you get through that process?

Mike Leather:

Yeah, I definitely think there’s a trend if we look at the clients that we recruit for. Some of our clients recruit easier than others and that’s down to a multitude of factors, but there are some constants across that. You tend to find that clients that have got an organised and well planned out recruitment process before they even go to market and to recruit easier. It’s also critically, especially in the market we’re in the moment when we’ve discussed before about being a candidate-driven, that is a flexible and it’s an agile process. What I mean by that, is the process isn’t rigid insofar as first interviews are going to be 200 miles away from where the candidates live and there’s no flexibility on interview date or location versus, we can do first interviews over teams and in seconds if needed. I think that companies that have got a slick, time efficient and effective recruitment process are those that are putting the candidates in the centre of it and thinking, right, what’s the best way for us to make that candidate journey both enjoyable but friendly as well? Because at the end of the day, you want to fill your vacancy.

So gone are the days where, unfortunately, candidates will travel up and down the country for first interviews because of the way the market is at the moment. Being that it’s candidate-driven, it’s super competitive on the employer side, it’s really important that we’re thinking about how we can get in front of us in a quick way, in a way that is going to be enjoyable for them.

Rob Coombes:

Yeah, absolutely. Of course it has to be a learning experience for everybody as well. One of those other big things that we haven’t talked about just as yet, but it’s that feedback process as well. How many companies have you spoke to over the years, Mike, that have quite a faceless recruitment process with little to no feedback at the end. That again goes back into that employer branding that we talked about before and quite quickly a company can get a reputation for not being a very friendly recruitment process? Again, alienating that already quite small talent pool. I mean, a really good piece around this not so long ago actually with a client of mine who have traditionally found it tough to recruit. And again, you talked about multitude of factors that the reason they found it tough to recruit is because they are in the construction sector. They have a team of specification sales managers based externally. But the way that they do their sales process is not, I’m going to call traditional. As a result, 95% of the specification sales professional talent pool would sell or specify in a certain way.

These guys have got a much more collaborative, team-based approach with a lot of inside salespeople. They’ve found over the years it’s been difficult to get people engaged because they don’t get it, they don’t understand it, or they don’t resonate with their business values. But also, a bit like what you said before, expect face to face all the time in their office based in the Southeast. So ultimately I picked up this role with them in the south. Again, a tough role to recruit for at the best of times from a package perspective. It wasn’t paying the massive money that a lot of companies have had to do as we’ve talked upon, but ultimately they wanted the help and support and adapted their process. So rather than have a two stage rigid to view process, we actually elongated it. I wouldn’t usually say that, but the way we elongated it was first stage online interview out of hours with the sales director because she was really flexible and wanted candidates to see how flexible their business was. That was a great win at the front end. Everyone that got involved in that process was really happy with that.

Secondly, meet her boss, the MD, but again on teams he’s based in the Midlands, couldn’t come to the south of the UK, didn’t expect candidates to go to him, didn’t want to wait a week. Made that happen. Then the third stage, because that applicant that actually got the job was so engaged with them, really, he found how good this was and how flexible and agile it was. Was prepared to go to their head office for three or 4 hours and get to meet all of the inside team that they’d be dealing with day in, day out. We offered him the job on the day and he accepted there and then because of how friendly the recruitment process was, the fact that they were looking at other things rather than just skill set on a CV, but also how welcoming and engaging it was and a learning experience for him. He’s been there three months now and already settled in so much better than people have in the past because they didn’t have that two way recruitment process.

Mike Leather:

Yeah, really good points. I guess some actionable takeaways from my end on this. I’m sure you’ll have some Rob. If you’re a client, reflect on the recruitment process and think, how accessible and friendly it is if I was going through it? Secondly, before you start the process, make sure you’ve got interview times and dates that are nailed down. If you’re working with a recruitment partner, (we’re going to monitor this later), it’s important so they know when they need to focus on the actual role and resourcing candidates for it. But thirdly, and it’s a point that we’ve not actually mentioned, we discussed the candidate market being super candidate-driven. It’s even more important that employers are doing a really good job of selling your opportunity; culture, benefits to the candidate when they’re in front of you. It goes back to this whole piece of making the journey enjoyable, a learning experience and friendly. It really is about getting the candidate bought into the role because good candidates are in short supply, as we discussed and discussed and discussed. So it’s important to ensure that interview process is all of the things that we’ve said anything you’d add there, Rob?

Rob Coombes:

Absolutely. I think just on that piece about looking inwardly at your own recruitment process, I think that the key question to ask yourself is if you were in that passive applicant market at the moment, would you be engaged by your own company’s recruitment process? You’re probably going to say yes to that. And if you do, speak to your peers, whether it’s in the leadership team or even the wider organisation, ask them, would you be engaged and enjoy this process? Because I guarantee there’ll be some great learnings from within your organisation that can make that even better for you.

Mike Leather:

Okay, so point 4, we wanted to talk about the importance of being aware of your talent pool. Also how your employer brand is perceived in the market and how evaluating the candidate journey can give you access to a wider selection of sales talent. So the reason we both felt that this topic overall was important is; if we look at the companies that, again are recruiting well, it’s typically because they’ve got these points nailed. They understand the talent pool, how big it is, what they can recruit from it, they understand how to advertise the jobs in order to attract talent from the talent pool and they’ve got a real good grip on the brief in terms of what they’re looking for. They’ve also got a strong employer brand, so they’re focusing on all the right stuff and they’re constantly evaluating the candidate journey to ensure that once they got the candidates in the process, they keep them in the process and they don’t lose them. As appose to companies that may be struggling to recruit. It generally is because of not thinking around these topics. They’ll find it hard to get people through the door, they’re losing people mid process, or even they can’t get applicants through, because when people go on to the LinkedIn page or the website, there’s not enough information there to draw the candidate in.

This is definitely worth talking about, because the companies with the strong employer brands are those that do draw the candidates in. The companies that aren’t really thinking about this , find that they actually push candidates away. So you can have the best written job advert on all the major job boards and candidates can apply to it and they can look at the advert, then you can think, I’m going to learn a little bit more about this company, now and it’s worth also remembering on this point that candidates can find out more about your company in 20 minutes than they could do previously through an interview with you. There’s so much information out there. So if candidates then land on your LinkedIn page, they look at other social media platforms, maybe your Facebook or your Instagram, they go on the website and they’re not then getting a feel for your culture. They’re not getting a feel for good news stories. It might not even be up-to-date then the chances are they’re going to pull away from potentially applying for a position with yourselves. Whereas if your company has got a strong employer brand, then when the candidate visits your LinkedIn page, visits your website, they’re going to be really enthused and be like, wow, this looks great.

Rob, if we look at the talent pool, why is it important that employers are aware of the talent pool before going to market with a vacancy?

Rob Coombes:

Yeah, it’s a great question and again, I’ve used the word complacency before within this webinar and absolutely you can get that way. Just expect, maybe have an air of arrogance that we are who we are, so people will want to work for us, but if we don’t know how big that talent pool is, then that message will get lost because no one will hear it. Ultimately, we talked about working closely with your recruitment partners essentially before. It’s extremely important to understand that talent pool. I mean, what I’ve done here is used our partnership with LinkedIn Insights. I talked before about utilising your recruitment partners. If you are using them, hopefully they’ve got access to such a great piece of kit, which can ultimately show us, via LinkedIn profiles in the UK, how many people there are in sales and business development piece which is over three and a half million. I think where it really stands out here Mike, obviously knowing that the talent pool is what you’re up against. You can see there’s over 56,000 vacancies online at the moment and over 400,000 people have changed jobs in the last twelve months as a result, creates a very high demand in the hiring piece across the UK.

If you don’t know that going into posting that advert, then your results will be significantly less because as we talk about and continue to develop the idea of employer brand and advert writing, etc. you are going to be lost in that unless it’s very good and then if we do something a bit more local. So looking at it from a regional perspective, we’re based in Manchester, but of course we’re a national organisation. Me and Mike just happened to be here, so I’ve used Manchester as an example. If you’re looking to hire a sales professional in the Manchester or Greater Manchester region, it’s tough, 1700 vacancies out there. Lots of people have already changed opportunities in the last twelve months and of course there’s only 62,000 professionals. Sounds like a lot, but when you’re really needing that quite specific skill set, it becomes very small very quickly.

Mike Leather:

That too, as well planning or going to market. If you have got a brief that is a bit more specific, because maybe it’s a business critical role, maybe you don’t have the time to be able to train someone up in the product, in the service and you think? Well, I need someone who’s from my industry that sold to the same end users, same decision makers. Then it’s really important that you’re aware of how big that talent pool is. The impact of not knowing that can extensively increase your time to hire, which is really important for companies generally because everyone wants to fill a role really quickly. If you’re going to market without knowing how big that talent pool is in the first place, then that’s an issue. Especially if the brief is somewhat specific. I guess when we talk about employer branding, companies have emphasis on it, but not always. Most companies have heard of the word or are thinking about it, but how many companies are always evaluating it and thinking before they go to market with the vacancy? Actually, how is our employee brand at the moment?

I think the final piece on this section, we wanted to give some actionable takeaways on employer branding. Some of the tips of the things that companies can do internally is send a survey out to your current employees across the business, get them to rate the employer brand. What do they think of it? What drew them to work for you as a company? What would they say to their friends about the business and the employer brand? What would they improve? The survey can be anonymous, but you’d be amazed how much information you can get back from your own employees. Then if we think about externally, most candidates start to perceive your employer brand, usually through LinkedIn, on other social media platforms. This sounds really basic, but sometimes the basics are the most simplest thing and are the most effective. Make sure your LinkedIn profiles are up-to-date. Make sure that we’ve got good news stories, have we got video on there? Video is such a great way of improving your footprint online. It’s such a great way of getting people to look at your business and getting a real feel for your brand.

How are you talking about culture and progression? Are you celebrating success? Are you active across all social media platforms? When did you last test the candidate experience yourself? So you’re going and you’re looking at the job advert and then you’re going on your LinkedIn page and you’re taking a step back and thinking about, right, how does this look? If I’m a candidate, am I really drawn to this? Am I viewing my company as an employer of choice, which is a destination that every company wants to get to?

Point 5, one on that I was really keen to talk about, because it definitely doesn’t get enough airtime, is, from an employer perspective, how to maximise your relationships with your recruitment partner. So in this webinar, we’ve spoken about the difference between applicants and candidates, we’ve spoken about employer brand, we’ve spoken about you in the recruitment process, making sure it’s time efficient and effective. We’ve also talked about showing that you’re looking beyond the CV to access a wider portion of talent. What we’ve not talked about is recruitment partner relationships. Now, this section of the webinar is based on the assumption that the majority of the employers here that are watching this are in partnerships with recruiters at the moment, or are indeed thinking about it.

I’m going to kick this off with an example; last week I was on Teams meeting with a potential new client, a company in the corrugated packaging industry sector. They had a BDM vacancy, they’ve been recruiting for it for about three months. Using two recruiters, really struggling with the role, typical problems, not getting enough CV’s, not really getting much communication from the recruitment partners that they were using, which resulted in a really long time-to-hire and costed the business money. In this instance, the client was becoming frustrated and then thinking, well, these recruiters just aren’t doing a very good job. Now, that may well be the case. Alternatively, it could be that those recruitment partners at the front end of the process haven’t engaged with the client to explain to them how they can get the most out of this relationship. This is something that we definitely pride ourselves on because it is a partnership. It’s important that the client knows how to get the most out of us, but also it’s important that we know how to get the most out of the client and how they like to work.

Rob, from your end, if you can kick this off, what can clients be doing to get the most out of their relationships with their recruitment partners? Obviously in order to get access to some more CV’s, more candidates, to have an overall better service.

Rob Coombes:

Well, absolutely. I mean, taking the example you’ve used there, the most obvious one that comes to the top of my mind is asking the question from the employer to the recruiter, like, it’s been two months here, guys, what can we be doing differently to get more? As easy and as daft as it sounds in any walk of life, that kind of open conversation is going to be the bedrock to that partnership becoming a lot more effective. What do you think?

Mike Leather:

It’s rare, though, isn’t it? We were talking about this offline, weren’t we, and saying that we’ve had a handful of companies that will actually ask the question and say, look, what do we need to be doing to get more candidates? What can we do? But it doesn’t get asked enough, I don’t think. So that’s definitely the first tip. Secondly, and this can come from both sides, recruitment reviews. So, ideally, after your recruitment partners worked on a vacancy, whether they filled it or not, sit down with them, review it. What went well, what didn’t. What sort of feedback did they get from the market when they were approaching candidates? With your vacancy, you can then use that information to improve on all the other things we’ve said in this webinar so far. Employee brand. Thinking about how you attract candidates. Getting that feedback, having a recruitment review is going to do two things. It’s going to give you more information on what they’ve done to fill the vacancy and also the challenges that they found. But secondly, it’s going to make your recruitment partner feel that the relationship is closer, it’s going to form a closer relationship, which can only be better in the long term.

Rob Coombes:

Absolutely. It moves it away from a transactional piece of using three, four, five agencies we saw back in 2014, 2015, 2016, and it’s like, oh, good, unlucky.

Well, that’s not helping, that longer term strategy. Now when you get to an ever-changing market, as we’re in now, it is biting some companies on the pisteria, so to speak, because they haven’t had that open conversation following on from that as well. Mike, I think there’s a big element to come off what you’ve just said around trust and building that partnership, and that could be, again, through different levels of commitment.  I think the more committed your relationship is to one another as an employer and a recruitment partner, the greater the chance of success. It sounds obvious but obviously we see a lot of pushback from that, from a lot of companies that say this is how we’re going to do it and a lot of the time they’re the ones that are struggling to win that race for talent in this market. So in your experience Mike, what kind of commitment can an employer give or request from a recruiter in order to enhance their chances do you think?

Mike Leather:

Can be a whole host of ideas of subjects. I guess the most common ones, the most basic ones if you like, can be simple things such as interview times and dates at the start of the process, ensuring that calls are set up to sell in candidates and discuss candidate profiles. Communication being one of the key signals strong commitments. It’s really important that the communication is two way and the feedback is honest as well. I’d be really thinking on this point as well if I’m an employer, I want to really understand what my recruitment partner is doing to find candidates.

Rob Coombes:

Absolutely.

Mike Leather:

If you’re working with a recruitment partner on a contingent basis and you’re using them alongside several other recruiters, then it’s likely to be an advertised search. The closer you partner with a recruiter, the more resource they can genuinely put into a search because that therefore mitigates their risk and if their risk is mitigated, the chances of agency increase, which means therefore they can put more resource into it. What that means to you is you get access to a wider pool of talent. So the thought, which I understand to a point, is that if I’m an employer and I use five recruiters I’ve got more chance to fill  my vacancy. However, often what happens is the reverse  because if you’re giving five recruiters an opportunity to fill your vacancy then they’ve all got a 20% chance. So therefore how can they then afford to put the resources, spend the time to really source the active and passive markets when the chances of them filling the vacancy is so small? We can talk here about exploring exclusivity, exploring retained solutions as and when the brief requires it, but in order to get more out of your recruitment plan, it really is thinking about how you are working with them.

Sometimes less is more. That can mean a better service.

Rob Coombes:

Absolutely and further to that and reinforcing what we talked about before about that employer brand, let’s say you are using five recruiters for one particular role. That’s five different interpretations of your company values, profile, role, brief and of course if that talent pool as is at the moment quite small, you will get the five different messages potentially to the same candidates which is going to have a knock on effect to your employer brand and how you’re perceived in the market. Another thing to really think about is how engaged you are with your most trusted partners and the ones that you believe, having gone through those actionable points we’ve just talked around, understanding what they can do for you, who’s best suited to you, and, of course, then putting your effort and your trust and resource into those guys.

Mike Leather:

Yeah, couldn’t agree more.

Rob Coombes:

Six points. We wanted to really finish off this piece around the back end of the process. We’ve talked a lot about the front end, but we want to really talk about mitigating the non-starter and of course, setting them up for success medium to long term. I often say to clients when I get an offer through for an applicant at one, it’s joyous, but they think the job’s done, and I say, no, the hard work actually starts now. It’s always really perplexed. What do you mean? Well, there’s a lot of controllables and we’ve got to mitigate those and control the controllables, I think, colloquially, I’ve heard a lot of companies that I’ve spoken to and you mentioned that you’ve spoken to some clients recently, Mike, that were using other agencies or not at all. More often than not, they have instances of non-starters, a lot more now than they would in what we would describe as a normal year, eg. Pre-Pandemic and things like counter offers. I gave a mad example earlier, but they’re coming into play, other opportunities moving faster in terms of agile and sharp recruitment processes, or an applicant that’s accepted an offer, assign the paperwork ready to go, but they get a bit jittery in between because of a lack of communication or direction in the field.

They get a bad feeling, which obviously we don’t want often. We talk a lot about ghosting on social media, but companies tend to have a bit of a Casper the friendly ghost piece because these candidates do go off the market and they’re like, Why? and they don’t understand. So, yes, it’s frustrating. Yes, it loses you time, loses you money, and it also another reason as well why people that do start can sometimes not pass their probation and ultimately then they either blame the person, the recruiter or whatever, but in reality, these things can be mitigated and avoided, but not always, obviously severe mitigation at best. I mean, I had a company approach me not so well. It was actually pre Christmas. They had a candidate that they’d got through Offer Stage, due to join in January. That’s because they had a three month notice period, and that’s something else that’s a lot more prevalent and common now, that wasn’t six, seven years ago. You had a phone call or no, an email from this individual a week before they were due to start, eleven weeks into their probation period, whereby they joined somewhere else.

Absolute devastation. I had a real frank conversation with that company, said, oh yeah, out of curiosity, what did that process look like? How often were you in touch with them? You weren’t really in touch with them at all and this completely blindsided them. So now, after four months of a full recruitment process and then obviously a three month notice piece, they’re back to square one. Six months down the line. Killer. I bet you’ve had that a few times, haven’t you, Mike?

Mike Leather:

Yeah, not as frequent, thankfully, but it happens and non-starters happen. Look, we won’t be able to mitigate every single one of them because we’re dealing with people.

Rob Coombes:

Absolutely.

Mike Leather:

It’s both a blessing and a curse of recruitment, as I’m sure you would agree. But there’s definitely something in talking about what happens once they’ve signed that contract, just because they’ve signed that contract and accepted, there’s still a lot of work to do. If we look at what can turn a candidate off in that period of time, it can be slowness. Getting the offer contract letter out, it could take a week, two weeks to get a contract letter out that is going to give the candidate some nervousness and some jitters because they want something in writing and say they’ve got a job first and foremost. But it’s a representation of the business and the communication levels in the business. Look at so many other reasons that can cause a candidate to drop out. It can be a lack of communication. What we always advise clients is to set contact points. So if your candidates, starting in four or five weeks time, set points to call them for week one, after week two, send them some information that they could start looking about in reference to the company, get them talking to people in the team.

Because we’re just in January, we had a few clients that invited new starters onto their Christmas parties. It’s not for everyone, but it’s a way of keeping people engaged and then it’s about the onboarding process. It sounds like basics, but making sure that the candidate knows where they’re going on the first day. Have we got the laptop, have we got the tech? All sorted for that introduction into a business, so it cab be smooth. Have we got an induction plan in place? What does that look like? How aware is the candidate of what that entails? So it gets them excited, but it’s super important that fundamentally the candidates are engaged in the business after they’ve signed the contract and that everything is in place for when they start. So that we don’t get to a point where we’ve done all this good stuff. We’ve got our adverts right, we’ve got our recruitment process right, our employer branding spot on. We’re working with our recruiters in the right way and then we drop the ball at the last minute and this can happen from time-to-time, but there’s definitely things that we can be thinking about doing in order to mitigate it.

If we’re setting up contact points for a candidate to get back to us. That’s also a test of commitment on their end. See if there is going to be an issue. It’s not a surprise the person isn’t emailing you the day before your due to start, saying, sorry, I’m not starting then. So it’s beneficial from that standpoint as well.

Rob Coombes:

Absolutely. I mean, a really good actionable tip there, Mike and others as well, again, can seem quite obvious, but we have it quite a lot of times, especially the offer processes when you’re getting an applicant or applicants, if you’re lucky enough to have more than one at second or final stage, have the contract drafted up, ready to go. Because ultimately all you’ll need to do is as soon as you’ve made that decision, preferably on the day, as to who you’re offering the role to and you know that they’re going to take it based on that initial fact finder and or conversation with the recruitment partner, have it ready to go. So it’s emailed, not posted. I mean, quite a few companies are still trying to post things, aren’t they, Mike? With again, an uncontrollable Royal Mail strikes and things of that. Like, as daft as it sounds, can stop you from getting that person over the line. You get it emailed out, have it ready to go on the day, don’t waste or lose time, should I say. Then also be prepared for the counter offers. A big part of the recruiter service levels is taken for granted, in my opinion, at this point, whoever the recruiter is, because ultimately they should be, in our case, very close to the candidates and should have an understanding of how counter offer able they are.

If you aren’t using a recruiter for whatever reason, make sure you’re asking those kind of subtle questions in an interview to try and work that out because you don’t want to get blindsided and be prepared for them. And then finally, just to reinforce that point that you said there Mike, about the actual onboarding process, the most engaged and excited people are those that know where they need to be, what they’re doing for the first week, two, three, four weeks in that role. What prereading or pre prep work can they do to ensure that they, for one of the better phrases, hit the ground running in that induction process, that will set them up as best as possible for success in the short, medium and long term.

Mike Leather:

Yeah, great, Rob. So thank you everyone for watching that. Hopefully everyone got something from it. We’d love feedback as well. So if there are any of these points that you’d like us to talk more, then please let us know.

Rob Coombes:

Thanks so much, Mike.

Mike Leather:

Thanks, Rob.