Taking the fast track to quality candidates - 07/2001

How many times have you lost an exceptional candidate to another employer because you werenít able to get a rapid response from a client? Perhaps your client didnít have access to the right information at the right time, in order to be able to make an informed decision, or more likely those that do the hiring and firing couldnít be contacted quickly enough, as they were jetting around the world on business at the time?

If this has happened to your agency more than once, you need to take a closer look at your business processes and work out what can be done to open up and speed up the information flow. HR departments often comment that they would like to see communication improved between themselves and their hiring agency, coupled with an increased visibility of the recruitment process, as transparency is vital in allowing them to make better informed decisions about potential hires.

This view is supported by a Personic survey, in which eighty percent of the corporate HR departments questioned claimed their top priority, when selecting a recruitment agency, was a high level of visibility and control over the process. Strangely this was in direct contrast to the responses of the recruitment agencies; just six percent stated that better communication between themselves and their clients was important.

No matter who youíre recruiting, and for what industry, the time taken to offer a place is a fundamental factor in your agencyís success. You canít afford to be complacent about the other options a candidate might be pursuing, otherwise you could find yourself having to start all over again, wasting your clientís time and money.

The correct application and integration of technology holds the key to open information sharing in recruitment, and that means a seamless link up of your corporate information systems ñ for accounts, reporting and contact management - with your website. All your key systems need to talk to each other.
Marketing manager at Kudos, Tessa Hyams, claims that: ìIn the future companies will be able to access information regarding their own campaigns via our website. Client managers are typically very busy people, and travel frequently, but soon they will be able to get a snapshot of their recruitment projectís progress by logging on to the Internet wherever in the world they happen to be, in their hotel room for example, or at the airport.î

With a web-enabled system that is properly integrated with internal systems, there is no longer any excuse for losing quality candidates because of delays in decision-making or bureaucracy.

All consultants within an agency need to know what their colleagues are doing, so they can cross-sell and avoid duplications, and this is entirely feasible once the company has all its client and candidate information in one place. This in turn will improve performance, allowing the business to exceed client expectations, and elevate its own retention rate.

HR departments need to track the progress of candidates at every stage of the recruitment process, and have the information they require at their fingertips. They need to know how many CVs have been received, who the top candidates are, how long they are likely to be on the market for, the results of their technical tests, and what salaries they are asking for, and so on.

Clients want increased visibility for the same reasons as when they are recruiting internally: so they can make well-informed decisions about hiring, and in turn create a more stable, satisfied workforce.

Of course there are times when you wonít want to share information with clients, for example in the case of confidential candidate details. But with a well-integrated, permission-based system, you can dictate what your clients can see and what they canít.

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