IWORK founder Julia Kermode was invited to speak at Recruitment Agency Expo at the NEC in Birmingham, the leading national conference attended by over 2,500 recruitment professionals. In her session “It’s Not Rocket Science 🚀” Julia spoke about candidate experience, how it goes wrong, and how implementing some simple strategies can ensure more profits for recruiters.
The data presented came directly from your feedback, 780 candidates who filled in our short online survey about your experience of getting work through recruitment businesses. The consensus was very positive with 90% of you saying that recruitment firms do a good job. However, there is plenty of room for improvement with the two most common gripes being a lack of feedback regarding your application (46%), and perhaps more worryingly a lack of response to your initial enquiry (37%).
Other concerns included issues such as:
- Problems with the agreed rate, payment terms, contract terms, misleading information;
- Discrimination and prejudice, which came up surprisingly often in the survey responses;
- Lack of attention to detail, misunderstanding both the client and candidate;
- Many, many comments in relation to ghosting.
In order to out-perform their competitors it seems one simple thing that recruitment firms can do is communicate more with their candidates – it’s not rocket science!
Of course it’s never actually that simple as recruitment businesses are always going to prioritise following the money, which comes from their clients – the businesses that pay the agency for your work. However, if recruiters invest a little more time in nurturing their relationship with candidates then you will be more likely to stick with that particular agency next time you need to find work.
This is borne out in this quote from someone completing our survey “When you’re treated as an individual then they can be worth their weight in gold…” and “these agencies I tend to have a long-term relationship with a repeat business.” This quote came from a career contractor, someone who has chosen to work on a series of short-term projects for many years, so there is considerable repeat business potential for the right agency.
Our favourite quote from the research sums up the general theme perfectly: “When I find a good recruiter they really shine”
