We all know that the industry is changing fast from a high demand, candidate short one to something more balanced where job flow is reduced, recruitment cycles are longer, clients are more choosy and put jobs on hold for not always obvious reasons and coupled with that candidates are less likely to move and more likely to be bought back. These market dynamics are likely to be with us for some time and so some of the approaches that worked fine before are not doing so well now.
We also all know that there is a generation, or more, of recruiters and line managers who have only ever known this high demand market and who have come to rely extensively on tech tools and platforms of many types to communicate and manage the recruitment process, in many cases without having ever seen anything else as an approach. Throw into that the rapid development of AI which will make automation much better and faster and one of the outcomes is that the value of personal connection, face to face time and the art of building long lasting and productive customer relationships with clients and candidates has arguably never been so high. It may well be the thing that is the differentiator between average and good or success and failure in the near and longer term.
Without doubt many businesses are focussing their recruitment teams onto developing and emphasising these human interaction skills and I equally have no doubt that it is an uphill struggle in many cases as it takes time to develop the skills needed and the acceptance of the value in developing those skills in the internal audience.
However in all this there is something else we do need to bear in mind. We don’t operate in a vacuum and the efficacy of driving the value of developing genuine customer relationships and the activities and skills needed to do that with recruitment teams and managers will be greatly impaired if the receiving audience don’t see the value of it. In much the same way that recruiters have grown used to, or only ever known, working in a particular type of way then so too have the clients and the candidates. I’m sure we are all familiar with calling a client or candidate and it going to voice mail but message them and they come back quickly so of course the temptation is to only message them. No doubt sometimes there is a good reason they can’t pick up a call but is there always? Or is it ingrained habit and a lack of appreciation of the value of a conversation? And what are the recruiters messaging? Are they messaging to say we need to talk because XYZ is happening or I need to understand ABC or are they messaging that which could be said in an actual conversation and missing the opportunity to open an actual dialogue? And of course the more a client or candidate doesn’t respond to have a conversation or meeting the more a recruiter you are trying to upskill will be able to say “see it doesn’t work”
So we must not forget our client and candidate audience in this drive to improve relationship building skills in recruitment teams and it is of high importance that we educate them as to the value of having actual discussions and meetings with their recruiter and that needs to be value for them, not us. As one suggestion use your marketing team to develop some collateral to demonstrate to clients and candidates the value of engaging with your recruiter, see if you can find some stats to demonstrate why adopting such an approach helps to secure the candidate, deal with issues, find the right new employer, in short why it is a better way to go, push out such material into LinkedIn and elsewhere, in short embark on a wider eduction piece.
To be clear this note is not about downgrading the value of tech or trying to slow it down in some old dinosaur way as tech can, and has been , transformative in so many areas of our lives and will continue to be so but rather its about using the right thing at the right time in the right way to get the best possible outcome. In much the same way as Teams and Zoom are great for somethings they aren’t great for everything and part of unlocking the greater productivity challenge and developing income resilience will be knowing when is the right time to do the right thing and for my money that includes when to push for genuine human interaction and not rely on tech tools.
It’s not a quick win method but then again we are in different times now, the wheel is turning and adaptation will be the name of the game.
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