Blogs by tag - Wayne Barclay

Automation for Recruitment Managers: WIIFM?

Automation can be about data health, email marketing, candidate and client care, and "de-administration" of recruitment. But often, the focus is on individual processes, or people (candidates, clients, colleagues), and not on the business itself.Hence, I want to explore things from a recruitment leaders "selfish" perspective - the "WIIFM" - what's in it for me?Or rather, what's in it for managers?As part of the over 400 automation projects we've delivered, where we train, coach, and do hands-on automation building, we're often asked about ROI - return on investment. There's focus on leads, sales, reduced costs elsewhere (eg. LinkedIn / Job boards). We're also asked about how automation can "do more" and give our clients the edge over their competition and help them get ready for AI, and how it can help them run their businesses.3 Ways Automation Can Help Recruitment Leaders1. Create Focus on Revenue-Generative TasksWith so much data, countless systems and processes you'll often need to rely on the organisational capabilities, will, and skill, of your recruiters and resourcers. On a crazy-busy day, or a tough market, and with perhaps inexperienced recruiters, that may be too much to ask.Hence leaders can use automation to focus your recruiters and resourcers on the things that matter. For example:Who to call and when.Proactively managing accounts before they become "at risk".Lead conversion.Driving the job management process and not leaving it to the candidate and client mess it up.Generating referrals from newly placed candidates, and newly invoiced clients.2. Tracking / Managing / Escalating Poor Performance / ActivitySometimes, recruiters can focus on the wrong activities, drown in "admin", or waste time on external systems, and recruitment process becomes too busy to be effective. Or perhaps they just lack experience to proactively manage their pipelines.Also, with WFH and hybrid, activity can be difficult to see / measure.Hence, leaders can us automation to help you track activity, drive performance.eg. 1eg. 2eg. 33. Navigating / Mitigating LeaversRecruiters leaving can often be distracting, time consuming, and risky - and it can often be a sucker punch!Hence leaders can use automation to "shift" data, clients, candidates, relationships, and pipeline to other recruiters. Data and pipelines are managed and pipelines are secured. For example:eg. 1eg. 2eg. 3For those of you with automation - how are you using it to drive your business? For those of you without automation take a moment to consider how the 3 use cases above could help you navigate next year and help you strengthen your data, people, pipelines, and business.Automation BuddyWe are Bullhorn and Automation experts set on helping ambitious recruitment businesses who want to increase speed and sales.READ ABOUT OUR BULLHORN BVISION SERVICEREAD ABOUT OUR AUTOMATION BUDDY SERVICE

How Many Candidates (and Clients) Do Recruiters Really Need?

Recruitment leaders and their resourcers / recruiters need to read this blog for insights on how much data they really need, and how much data they can realistically manage, to run a successful desk and recruitment business.We’re all human (even recruiters) and we all have limits. In recruiting world, our limits can be how many jobs we can work, how many calls we can make, how many temps we can manage. One significant human limit is our ability to nurture relationships. Data = Relationships = SalesRecruitment is a relationship business. A recruiter’s job is to build and maintain relationships. Candidates need managing, clients need managing, colleagues need managing. Dunbar tells us that humans have relationship limits – we have “a number” we can manage. Robin Dunbar is a Professor Emeritus of Evolutionary Psychology of the Social and Evolutionary Neuroscience Research Group at Oxford Uni he knows a few things about human behaviour. Think of your relationships a bit like a layered onion with you in the middle. 5 loved ones 15 good friends 50 friends 150 meaningful relationships 500 acquaintances 1500 people you can recognise People can move in and out of these layers. What is Dunbar’s Number? And What’s It Got to Do with Recruitment? Where does a “typical” recruiter sit in their ideal candidate / contact’s layer? And where do their candidates and contacts sit? Recruitment Leaders! What should you be considering if you want to maximise the value of your database, and the relationships you want to maximise, optimise, monetise? How should you focus on and nurture the right relationships? What’s the Number of Candidates and Contacts a Recruiter Can Actively Manage? Dunbar suggests that humans are capable of building, nurturing and maintaining 150 good meaningful and trusted relationships. Of course, there are variations to this, such as extroverts vs introverts and social networks – for example women tend to have more contacts in the closest layers. Dunbar v Recruitment Dunbar’s study isn’t focused on recruitment or recruiters, but it’s definitely food for thought. 150 meaningful relations is not that many people when you consider the average recruiter has a database in the 1000s. But could you really market your recruitment business on a database of “acquaintances” or “people you recognise”? Where do your candidates and clients fall within these categories? Have you got any in the magic 150 “meaningful contacts”? Is your database segmented in such a way, or do you have a “data dump” which needs a good clean?[link to clean webinar]. Recruitment in the Good Old Days Before tech and data began paralysing recruitment (too much / never enough), recruitment was much more of a relationship business. You knew your candidates, their dog’s names, their kid’s ages. Relationships were easier to sustain, they were more valuable, and we charged more for our services. It’s likely that Dunbar would say a recruiter pre-social media had 150 meaningful relationships with candidate and clients, and perhaps even some friends? Now with infinite data and technology allowing for massively increased reach and volume, relationships, ironically, are a harder to start and sustain. Are you / your recruitment teams engaging with the right people, or just lots of candidates? (Too many applicants, not enough candidates?) Are you working the right opportunities, or just a list of one-off jobs? (Too many jobs, not enough sales?) Is Your CRM Simply a Datadump of Strangers? Recruiters who try to maintain too many relationships actually limit their own success. They dilute the relationships they’re trying to build, resulting in weaker, less meaningful, and less valuable relationships. Could Dunbar help you run your recruitment business? For example: Recruiters who run a busy temp desk and managing 100+ temps might not have the capacity to take on more or even do other activities such as Business Development or Sourcing. 360-degree recruiters will have more relationships to manage than a 180-degree recruiter, so this could mean a less focused strategy and outcome. Is it always necessary to hire another recruiter to manage more relationships, or could tech do some heavy lifting? 4 Ways to Be Smart with Recruitment Contacts Social Networks can help. Publishing content to your “connections” can help keep you in and around the Acquaintances and People You Recognise category. Your goal, though, should be to get your ideal contacts on to your CRM so you can more actively work them. Ideally you should be aiming to nurture them in the 150 “meaningful contact” space! Your Recruitment CRM/ATS (ideally powered by automation) also has ways to identify and categorise your relationships. Status fields, rating and grading fields are great places to start and will enable smart ways to manage and work the data. Automation (and recruiters) can keep these vital fields current. Automation is helping Recruiters identify, engage, nurture (and monetise) Acquaintances and People You Recognise and capitalising on these relationships. In the automation projects we deliver we are creating functional data so recruiters can focus on segments of contacts and candidates. They can then “work” their data, rather than just collect it. Your recruiters (ideally powered by automation/CRM) need to keep this data updated to ensure you can track, manage and support where necessary. This should also protect your relationships when recruiters move on. Final Thoughts Engaging and nurturing your candidates and clients is an important part of the recruitment lifecycle. Recruiters often struggle with “too much data, too many systems, not enough process”. Any help and support you can provide to your recruiters to create focus, so relationships are stronger and profitable, is crucial. How could you use Dunbar’s theory to help you create focus, function, and sustainability?(Big thanks to Louise at UK Recruiter for initially posting this blog.)Bullhorn ROI + Trained Happy Recruiters = More SalesWe pride ourselves on helping recruitment leaders achieve Bullhorn ROI. We create a Bullhorn1st vision, reduce the need for other tech, optimise Bullhorn, automate their sales-prevention processes and data, and train recruiters to trust it and use it.ARRANGE A FREE CONSULTATION NOW