Month: January 2010

Do People Still Buy People First??

“People buy People first and everything else after…”

That was the very first piece of advice given to me on my first day in recruiting, also my first day in professional sales. The role was in a candidate driven sector, a niche market with about 100 potential major clients and a lot of potential candidates. Oh, and a lot of competitors too! Developing relationships with candidates, from the time they first make contact with you, through their first meeting with you and the process of arranging interviews, briefings and feedback, to the eventual decision, meant taking time to build up the relationship and trust. I quickly realised that in a specialist sector your candidates become clients and your clients become candidates.

Last week I interviewed 2 very strong, senior candidates, both had contacted me speculatively with their CVs, and at the end of each meeting they both thanked me for having called them and arranged to meet them. I found it strange, as I would have assumed that candidates of their calibre would be on the radar of most HR recruiters, but both told me that they had difficulty even getting their CVs acknowledged, let alone getting phone time with a recruiter. To get a face to face interview, without a specific role to discuss, was impossible… except for me. Now both these candidates have had recruitment as one of their functions, and both have hired many HR staff in the past, yet even recruiters who they have briefed before don’t seem to want to talk to them.

One of them then said….

“I’m not sure if recruiters realise that candidates want to interact with a person, not a website”

Which kind of takes me back to my starting point…people buy people first…and I’m wondering if, in this social media driven, job board oriented, brave new recruiting word of communities and networks, this is still true.

Maybe we need to personalise our processes more…our Candidate Care Team recently sent an e-mail to a candidate whom they couldn’t reach by phone to let him know why he wasn’t suitable for a role he had applied for…he replied…

“Thank you for taking time to write to me, honestly this is the first time a recruitment company has spared time to personalize an e-mail, especially when this person will have no value for them.”

So what do you think??

Do we still buy people first?

Do we still trust the judgement and advice of people that we know well? Those we have a relationship with?

And if so how do we now establish that personal relationship?

If we swap messages on Linked In, or tweets (which we can now show on Linked In too), or comments on blog postings, are we establishing a relationship that will encourage dialogue and trust?

What will it take to get recruiters to interact face to face with candidates?

I’ll be co-hosting the ‘Who Cares What the Candidates Think?’ track at TruLondon and would love to be able to share your thoughts…..

Customer Experience and the Importance of Making People Feel Special

Every morning I stop on my way to the station to get a coffee…my Soya Latte is very much a part of my commute, even in summer! I have stopped for a couple of years at one particular coffee shop (Cafe Nero, for those in the UK) initially for their loyalty scheme which basically gives you every tenth coffee free – a free coffee every other Friday seemed like a good idea!

I say initially because they started charging extra for soya milk. Other coffee shops didn’t, but I stayed loyal. That was because I had got to know the 3 or 4 baristas who worked the morning shift. They were friendly, warm, engaging, always smiling and went out of their way not only take the time to indulge in some small talk but also (very important for coffee fans) they remembered what you liked to order. I was only in the shop a minute or two, but for that minute or two they made me, and no doubt anyone else stopping for a coffee, feel valued and important.

Now they probably didn’t earn much, and I don’t know what customer service training their company did, and they may have only done it to make a repetitive service sector job more interesting…but the thing is they got my custom because they made me feel special and valued, even though their product now was not the cheapest, and to be honest, the coffee was probably no better or worse than any other shop I could have gone to.

Now I’m not a master of suspense, and I’m writing in the past tense, so I’m sure that you can guess what’s coming next!

Yes…they’ve all moved on. One left completely to do something different, and the others were promoted to different branches. Unbelievably, management just let it all happen within a week or so…one week they were there, and within what seemed a few days there were different baristas.

And guess what…I don’t go there anymore. The new baristas most certainly did not make me feel special or valued. In fact, with possibly one exception, they made me feel the opposite, as if serving me was a chore. There were a couple of specific instances of rudeness and off-handedness (I won’t bore you with details) that made me think – enough is enough, I can get better value elsewhere.

When the experience is good, factors like cost can often come second…but when the customer experience is bad…

All businesses can learn from this, but I wonder how many of us really put their heads on the block and find out how we’re doing?

It reminded me of a customer satisfaction survey that I got handed on a plane on my way home from a holiday last year. The tour company usually performs well in independent reviews. The final question was…

 ‘Did we make you feel special on your holiday??

If so tell us what we did to make you feel special, and if not please tell us how we could have improved, to make you feel special.’

 Clearly they want to get feedback, and aren’t afraid to give their customers a voice to find out how they are really performing.

Which makes me wonder….

 Are there any recruiters out there brave enough to ask those questions of their clients and candidates?? Willing to find out from their community what they could do to create a special experience?

The new 4 Rs that Recruiters should try and master in 2010

I’ve been reading some excellent forecasts for trends and developments in 2010 that certainly excite and encourage me to think that this could be a very interesting and challenging year. I’m too much of a social media and technology amateur though to try my own predictions!

I do know, however, that recruiters will need a whole different set of skills, goals and targets if they are to succeed and profit from all the predicted advancements and developments.

Building and maintaining communities will be the key as they will provide the framework for our success, and to achieve this you will need…

Relationships

This year will be all about relationships, how we grow and develop them, how we manage them, monetize them, use them to deliver the best results for the clients, candidates, contacts and collaborators who make up our community.

I don’t think that this year’s top performing recruiters will be the classic ‘salesmen’ who pound the phones in search of leads and disgruntled candidates willing to jump ship, but the ones capable of growing two way collaborative relationships.

It won’t be all about the deal, but increasingly about how you engage, support, share information and add value at all stages of the recruitment process. You will need credibility with and access to the best talent and the hiring manager offering the best employee propositions.

To do this, though, it helps if you’ve got a positive…

Reputation

There are way too many information channels out there in cyberspace to enable the ‘cowboy’ recruiter to hide. If there is one change I can see to the way that social media is used in business, it will be the peeling away of the sheen of peace and love and an increasing tendency to tell it like it is.

Candidates and clients will expect a service and level of care that meets demanding expectations.

From LinkedIn groups and recommendations to Twitter threads and lists, I can see a lot of information around performance and delivery being shared…and please recruiters, let’s all do away with these mutual back scratching love fest LinkedIn recommendations, and let’s try to have a proper, quantifiable referral based on project/outcome delivery.

And if you want to be on the lists or in the groups of recruiters that clients and candidates recommend then it will help if you’ve got…

Respect

It really is time more recruiters started to ‘put yourself in their shoes’ and try and understand a) what it’s like to be a jobseeker in the worst recession for over 70 years where new permanent openings are scarce and people are being encouraged to be proactive (yep, that means keeping on our cases recruiters) and re-invent, and b) what it’s like to be a hiring manager in a company that’s struggling to keep afloat, asking a lot of their staff (from productivity to wage/benefits restraint)on a tight budget who needs our support and market knowledge in the recruitment process and not just a bunch of CVs and some sales patter. Believe me, this is not a square peg/round hole market!

The recruiters with the strongest communities and networks will be those who respect those communities and networks, who treat them honestly and to successfully do that you need a healthy dose of…

Realism

Tell it like it is not how you would like it to be. Beware false prophets (they’ll be more about them in a future blogpost!)…talk to, and listen to, the people who are currently active in your market, not business commentators and managers desperate to promote an air of optimism.

Improve your knowledge of the markets that you operate in, take time to find out about your candidates, clients and collaborators – what challenges they face, what they are doing to overcome them, what their motivators are and what they don’t like – and share this information.

If you do, you’ll be able to develop great…

Relationships…