How to keep your best recruitment consultants
By Tim Jarrett
The recruitment industry typically has a high turnover of consultants, and this has proven to be a challenge across all sectors. In such a competitive industry, particularly during today’s current health crisis, the best recruitment consultants are highly sought after and commonplace for them to be headhunted.
With the industry expecting to face further challenges as the pandemic continues to unfold across the country, recruitment agencies can ill-afford to lose their best staff. If the predicted surge in the jobs market occurs, agencies of all sizes could find themselves busier and even more likely to make moves to poach your best recruitment consultants.
Now is the time to make sure you can keep them happy and productive. A fully supported working environment is going to be central to your strategy to allow them to do what they do best. But how do you ensure you tick all the boxes? Here at Vacancy Lab, we thought we’d share a few tips from some of our most successful recruitment agency clients and the busiest HR departments.
Tip 1: Automate recruitment processes
The most successful recruitment consultants spend the most time doing what they do best – recruiting. The dull, repetitive and most time-consuming tasks can quickly sour the experience for consultants and although they are vital, CV processing, communications logging and candidate tracking processes can all be automated with software.
Today’s most flexible recruitment management software will include these automation options and more, such as providing a secure and automatically compliant database from which to run an advanced search and matching processes.
The key to efficiency within the routine recruitment processes lies in automating the routine phases and this saves significant time that can be spent elsewhere, in the role matching and interview stages, for example. Keeping the role streamlined and supporting recruitment consultants with automation can make a big difference in terms of job satisfaction and experience.
Tip 2: Encourage mentoring
The implementation of a mentoring program can prove to be valuable for both the agency and for your recruitment consultants. Recruitment consultants willing to participate could receive remuneration for their additional efforts, the recognition of being a senior, respected member of the team or both.
There is no better time to encourage mentoring within your agency. Today, instances of entire teams working remotely and away from the office environment is commonplace. This makes team building challenging and regular contact even more important. New recruiters will have a dedicated mentor to turn to when necessary and will feel more fully supported as a result.
Tip 3: Employee recognition scheme
Recognising the value of your recruitment consultants can go a long way. A strong driver of engagement and ultimately retention, recognising the value of the work either on a particular project or in general, can make a difference to motivation and self-worth within the agency.
Recognition doesn’t always have to be in monetary terms, although performance-related bonus payments can provide motivation to increase performance. It is important to ensure that valued recruitment consultants feel valued and this can be a driving factor to keep your best consultants happy in your agency.
Whether you implement an official employee recognition scheme or create a working environment where recognition is commonplace across the team, it can be an effective practice to increase engagement.
Tip 4: Offer high levels of support
It is critical, especially in a time of crisis, to ensure you offer the highest levels of support to your recruitment specialists. This could include the implementation of new standards and procedures to demonstrate your commitment to their health and wellbeing during the pandemic.
As working and interviewing practices are experiencing more restrictions, and many more consultants may move to remote working, it is important to support them in a variety of ways, for example:
Provide work hardware – ensure your consultants have everything they need for the job in a work hardware package. This can also help to secure networking if personal devices are not used for work purposes.
Standardise communications – this may include setting up secure networking and implementing clear standards, boundaries and expectations.
Create virtual teams and mentors – as we mentioned earlier, some of our clients have already implemented mentoring initiatives to strengthen the support network. Encourage regular team meetings and provide support with any technical issues.
How Vacancy Lab can help you
Vacancy Lab offers a new approach to recruitment management. As professionals, we understand the challenges the industry is currently facing and as people, those of remote working disparately and are here to help you through.
The Vacancy Lab platform is a GDPR-compliant, secure and highly configurable system that effectively automates the most routine aspects of recruiting. This includes CV management, CRM, applicant tracking, profiling, communications logging and much more.
With unique pricing that delivers the scalability you need without long contracts and a friendly, jargon-free approach to customer support, we’re here for you at a time of uncertainty. Vacancy Lab offers a seamlessly compliant and robust management system with a powerful search feature to make life easier for your best recruitment consultants. Talk to us or book your live demo today and let’s get started.