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As a recruitment marketer and recruitment leader you’ll be focused on ROI: adding real value to your recruiters and helping them attract the 3Cs – candidates, clients, and colleagues. (And ideally help them convert these into cash!)
But often, marketing is seen as merely admin - and in many recruitment business, it is. But it should be sales!
Marketing is SALES if Done Right - It's ADMIN if Done Wrong!
As an award-winning Affiliate of APSCo, my team of recruitment trainers and I have a passion for ROI. We work with recruiters and their marketers to deliver what we call the 4Cs – candidates, clients, colleagues, and cash.
Recruitment Marketing ROI should never be just theory - if you plan for candidate attraction, client leads and colleague job applications, they will happen!
But often, when I start mentoring Recruitment Marketers, they are beyond busy. Busy doing lots for things which can often lead to very little ROI.
Sales is not connected to marketing in reality or even in theory. Lots of marketing tasks lead to a lack of the 4Cs - and ultimately a disconnected approach which forces recruiters to have tenuous (and stressful) pipelines.
This also means that the data on your Bullhorn, Adapt (and etc...) recruitment system is so worthless that extra systems are needed just to find candidates. What a massive waste of time and money.
Recruiters need to spend an average 13 hours per week sourcing outside of their key recruitment system
80% of leads are never followed up
Recruiters get very little time to get on the phone and improve candidate and client experience, so that their own experience is not great
43% is the average attrition rate of a recruiter (25% higher than the "norm")
72% of the placements made last year were with candidates already on your Recruitment system, before you wasted crucial time sourcing them from elsewhere
76% of recruitment marketers can't use the recruitment system you have, or the data contained within it
But still sales is sales and marketing is marketing...? No - sales is marketing, if done right! Both marketers and sales need to get SMART.
This Has to Be a Smart Year - Connecting Sales and Marketing
As the new co-chair of APSCo's Recruitment Marketing Forum I recently spoke at their quarterly event. My slide deck below talks about:
How to get sales and marketing connected – and avoid the colouring-in-department badge!
What ROI is crucial in 2020 and how to measure it
What tech hacks I use in my mentoring and coaching of Recruitment Marketers and Sales Leaders
Flick Through My Recruitment Marketing 2020 Slidedeck
Need Recruitment Marketing to Deliver ROI in 2020?
HIIT Us, Recruiters!
Our high intensity interval training - Recruitment HIIT - helps recruiters source, convert quicker, and develop healthy pipelines, and recruitment marketers attract, engage, and retain candidates, generate leads, and colleagues (3Cs).
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Wayne Barclay
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Stop Automating Chaos: Why You Need a Strategy for Recruitment BD Success
As a recruitment leader, you know the drill: the market shifts, sales feel tough, and the immediate instinct is to buy a new piece of tech or blindly activate every automation feature available in your Bullhorn or CRM.A potential outcome? A flurry of activity, confused recruiters, and ultimately, zero measurable ROI.😱(I saw this with CRM, then Automation, and now AI... history repeating itself.)Automation is a sales engine, but like any powerful machine, it requires a careful, deliberate strategy to run efficiently. Simply turning it on often leads to automating poor processes, resulting in spam, bad data, and wasted money.If you’re ready to turn that engine into a competitive advantage, you need to step back and apply this 9-point strategy to your Business Development (BD) automation.💡My 9-Point Strategy for Automation Success1️⃣ Agree on Your Strategy and PlanBefore you click ‘Activate,’ define your objectives.Are you focused on converting candidates to contacts? Re-engaging lapsed clients? Generating referrals?Your plan must clearly outline the who, what, and when of every automated action to ensure alignment with your overall BD goals.2️⃣ Define OwnershipChaos reigns when responsibility is murky. You must clearly define who owns the data and relationships you are selling.Is it the marketing team, the BD manager, or the individual recruiter?Establishing clear ownership prevents duplicate outreach, inconsistent messaging, and ensures accountability for follow-up.3️⃣ Get Buy-In: Educate Your TeamA great strategy is useless if your recruiters don't trust it. You must actively educate your team on the why behind the change.Show them how automation will take the admin burden away, allowing them to focus on high-value relationship building—the part of BD they actually enjoy. Without genuine buy-in, they will always revert to manual, time-consuming habits.4️⃣ Test and Setup TrialsNever roll out a massive change across the entire firm at once. Setup trials with a small, engaged group first. Test the message cadence, measure the response rate, and iterate quickly. This limits risk and generates early success stories you can use to persuade the rest of the company.5️⃣ PR: Celebrate SuccessesRecruiters are motivated by success.Use your test group’s wins—a faster BD conversion, a higher email open rate, or a cleaner call list—as internal PR. Celebrate these successes openly to generate FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and drive wider adoption.6️⃣ Data Wealth: The Opportunity to CleanseAutomation and data quality are two sides of the same coin.Automating outreach to a dirty database only accelerates your move toward the spam folder. Use the setup phase as an opportunity to cleanse data, confirming emails, purging old contacts, and identifying incomplete records. Clean data is not just healthy; it's profitable.7️⃣ Cadence: Establish Weekly BD SessionsAutomation is a tool, not a replacement for human effort.To embed the strategy, implement weekly BD sessions. Use this dedicated time to review the automated pipeline, address bottlenecks, practice outreach, and ensure the technology is being used correctly to drive human conversation.8️⃣ Score! Set KPIs and GamificationWhat gets measured gets done.Set clear KPIs for your automation success—not just activity, but results (e.g., number of re-engaged clients, contacts moved to the "warm" status). Use Analytics to gamify the process, creating healthy competition that encourages consistent use of the new platform and strategy.9️⃣ Turn No into $£€! Monetise Bounces and UnsubsDon't view hard bounces and unsubscribes as dead ends; view them as sales intelligence and opportunities.Monetise the bounces and unsubs by investigating them. A hard bounce might mean a contact has moved companies—a prime BD opportunity! An unsubscribe could be a flag for a poor sales approach. Use this feedback loop to keep your data fresh and your strategy sharp.Strategise the CashflowBy following these 9️⃣ strategic steps, you ensure:Investment in BD automation delivers maximum return,Saving your recruiters a whopping 64% of their non-selling time...Allowing them to focus on what they do best......Building the relationships that drive placements and profit.Nice! ☎️I'd love to pay it forward to chat with you about your automation / BD strategy.BOOK YOUR FREE CONSULTATION👇Scroll down for a cute graphic of my 9-point strategy.🏃➡️PS. Want to go even further?Check out our "Unlock Bullhorn with Automation" and Optimise Bullhorn for Recruiters webinars here.Automation Buddy / Bullhorn RoIWe are Automation Buddies set on helping ambitious recruitment businesses who want to increase speed and sales.We coach to inspire, and build your automations so you can recruit and sell!Plus, through our Bullhorn Vision service we help generate serious ROI from your Bullhorn, data, and people.READ MORE ABOUT OUR BULLHORN VISION SERVICEREAD ABOUT OUR AUTOMATION BUDDY SERVICEBOOK YOUR FREE CONSULTATIONGrab My 9-Point Strategy for Automation Success Below - Which can you tick off or need to do?
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Lisa Jones
Blog
Recruiter Productivity Series: Optimise Bullhorn Part 6 ~ Easy Candidate Management
Recruiters – do you often think "life would be so much easier without candidates"? 🤔 Do you spend hours sourcing and qualifying talent, but too often lose candidates along the way?Drop outs, counter offers, tricky candidates, and a tough economy, can test even the most patient and organised of recruiters.Part 6 of our free Optimise Bullhorn webinar series will share crucial time-saving and data mining tips on how to manage your candidate data with ease, speed, and joy! REGISTER NOW8️⃣Reasons to Come to our Bullhorn for Candidate Management Webinar Yes, candidates can be tricky, but perhaps your candidate engagement isn’t consistent and you need to work on it.The data around candidate psychology and recruitment shows it clearly:⌚28% of candidates drop out because the process took too long. Delays hurt engagement and result in candidate drop-off. ⌛25% of candidates say they drop out for that same reason — the process is too long. 🚫30% of candidates drop out because the role did not match expectations. Misaligned expectations (role, salary, responsibilities) lead to disengagement. 🤔23% cite poor communication as a reason they disengaged. 💩49% of candidates have turned down a job offer because of a poor hiring experience. Even at the final stage, candidate engagement matters — a bad experience during hiring can sink an offer. 👻45% of candidates are ghosted by recruiters after an initial conversation. 😱27% of UK employers have been ghosted by new recruits on their first day.🙊72% of candidates say the smoothness of the interview process would affect their final decision on whether or not to take the job. (Sources: TotalJobs / HR Hire / CIPD)So, before lose even more candidates and have to work harder at sourcing more, let's get smart at candidate management. 🧠What You’ll Learn in our Bullhorn for Candidate Management Webinar Part 6 of our free "Optimise Bullhorn" webinar series is packed with tips you can use immediately to proactively manage your precious candidates and make your desk, targets, and home-life balance easier! ✅Manage expectations ~ stay in control and protect your pipeline.✅Prevent drop outs / counter offers / ghosting.✅Strengthen your relationships - place quicker, get referrals.✅Move them through the recruitment cycle speedily and with ease.✅An automation to help you manage your candidates whilst you sleep.🤚 Stop wasting time and money sourcing, screening and interviewing, just to lose the candidate down the line (and likely annoy your clients in the process!) 👉 Join our free Bullhorn for Candidate Management webinar and learn how to turn your CRM into a true revenue machine. 🗓️Wednesday 05 November: 13:30 BST REGISTER NOWPS. Want to go even further? Check out our full "Optimise Bullhorn" webinar series.🔍 Engage, nurture, place, and re-place. Watch the recording💬 Source faster and easier. Watch the recording📈 Sell faster and easier. Watch the recording💡 Place faster and easier. Watch the recording🎯 Easy BD ~ 08 October 2025: Register now💪 Easy Candidate Management ~ 05 November. Register NowRecruitment and Bullhorn TrainingWe deliver the best live Bullhorn ROI webinar training, and you'll find other tips and tricks in Recruitment HIIT, our online recruitment training platform.Plus, through our Bullhorn Vision service we help generate serious ROI from your Bullhorn, data, and people.TRY HIIT FREE HEREBOOK YOUR FREE CONSULTATION
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