This is the third in a new series of guest blogs from TempBuddy which will cover themes around the temp market. The first was the ever present question; How can my Temp Agency Stand Out from the Crowd?, the second looked at the risks of ignoring “mobile” and this one is pretty hard hitting on recruitment agency owners – illustrating the power of the unplaced and angry candidate.
For too long has the phrase “candidate experience” been almost exclusively residing in the realm of permanent and contract recruitment? For temps there is distinct lack of a candidate experience across the board that is evident when you hear the horror stories about countless avoidable blunders.
Scandals like the RBS group payroll blackout in 2012, or even just simple things like a recruiter not sending a courtesy email to a prospective candidate.
Whether big or small, a candidates experience is at least partially shaped by interaction (or the lack of interaction) with the agency they are dealing with. In the context of temp getting the candidate experience absolutely perfect is the key to repeat business and a best kept secret for talent acquisition. But for most agencies, temp candidates are faceless until the cheque comes in at the end of the month, with little care for the collective power of unplaced temps or service users who have a negative experience.
This month we are investigating small changes that could impact your ability to grow as an agency and ultimately supercharge PR/marketing efforts for a temp business by looking after your temps regardless of the outcome. But first, What is the Temp Experience?
What is the Temp experience?
There is no clear-cut definition of what the CE is, there’s nothing in the dictionaries and nothing in academic journals. Despite the lack of clear-cut definition the CE is very real and of major concern to agency owners in the connected era.
Like the old sales mantra of it takes six months to close a customer and 6 seconds to lose one, the same holds true for recruitment agencies. If you don’t believe me take a look at this thread on and Irish product forum boards.ie. It is now known as Recruiters Name, shame (and praise) but when working in a top recruitment firm in the UK I discovered a similar thread eloquently titled “Recruiters are w@5^ers”. One glance at a single page in this thread is a PR nightmare for small agencies and knife against the throat of your talent acquisition strategy.
We believe it is looking at your service from the entire process through the eyes of a candidate. For a recruiter this can be a difficult and sobering experience but ultimately worthwhile to perfect. Many recruitment companies believe they agencies do enough to get by. There is a beautifully crafted but ultimately useless candidate charter and complaints email address if you feel aggrieved by the actions of a recruiter. It’s simply not enough.
Why have temps not got a candidate experience?
The simple reason is, nobody cared! The lifespan of most temp jobs is not considered as profitable to invest in by the HR decision makers. Temps for too long have been thought of emergency workforce for when you need them and contractually subordinate to their permanent counterparts. They will be in an out in no time so they don’t matter as much as the perms.
This may be the sad reality in many HR departments reinforced by the fact that in many industries temps simply don’t get the same perks as their permanent counterparts, though there is a wave of change in legislation in the UK and Ireland to counteract this.
For an agency however, yesterday’s rejection could mean tomorrows placement so keeping the experience a positive one, even in negative circumstances, is a critical success factor. You need to ensure that no matter what the outcome the temp worker is well informed and doesn’t have to chase you for information that they legitimately expect and deserve.
How to Create it?
1. Make life easy for your contingent workforce
Quite simply doing things better than the agency across the street will do 2 things, it will get you recommendations online channels and via word of mouth and ensure that your recruiters are not considered stone cold w@2k3rs or other colorful words that will get them on a similar thread like boards.ie. Basically they will come to you because their peers trust in your services.
If you are still using paper timesheets and expecting people to go to the print shops (because lets face it who actually owns a fax machine at home anymore) either as an employer or as an agency you should be ashamed of yourself.
This is inconvenient for everyone in the process and fiercely expensive to maintain. It causes more problems than it solves because of unavoidable human error and the fact that almost EVERYBODY carries a smart phone. If you enjoy the buzz of admin at the end of the month and love chasing clients down to get them to say “yes that timesheet is correct” then by all means keep the downloadable PDF timesheet.
However if you are among the agencies that want to make life easier for clients, employers and temps alike, do this. Take your timesheets and your temp availability management online, we did, and it’s working out rather well for our clients who are winning more business because of this simple idea. How TempBuddy Works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq9G2mty6zs
2. Communicate with your temps, all of your temps
Encourage them to sign up to newsletters, follow you on social media and even putting in calls or SMS that go beyond, “there’s a job near you, do you want it?” Tell them what’s’ going on in your agencies world, good news stories, valuable content from other temps and testimonials from satisfied customers on both sides of the agency spectrum.
Also make sure that you are keeping your mailing and SMS lists clean. People have progress their careers or change them entirely so you could be spending hundred or thousands on wasted SMS costs or other means of communication for advertising jobs no longer relevant to their target recipient.
(Eurogamer.net, accessed 2015, )
3. Social Listening and Actively Engaging
There is nothing you can do to stop good, bad & ugly stories circulating via word of mouth but there is something you can do about it on the Internet.
Have someone manning the social media account that isn’t a neglected bullhorn account! Set up alerts with Google Alerts and watch out for what people are saying about you. If you get a particularly irate customer and you are in the wrong apologize for it and seek a resolution. If you have a happy customer tap in to their positivity and make an effort to contact them to tell them more about yourself, go the extra mile and learn what made them write about your in the first place, then use this in your marketing.
The Redefinition of Temp Experience
Before we redefine temp experience consider this, temps realistically work more jobs than their permanent counterparts and many of them are the veterans of the recruitment process. They are much better at criticizing recruitment process.
With this in mind we seek to truly define what is the temp experience.
For us the temp experience is ensuring that you have effective communication channels open with your temp workforce ensuring that through each of their many iterations of the recruitment lifecycle you make the process easy and memorable by going the extra mile. If you align your company to these intangible but important values you will grow your business successfully
Creating a temp experience while difficult to measure clearly has value in that you will have a network of peers as opposed to candidates who are willing to refer you, It will also make sure that you don’t end up in a name and shame list like the one from above and that in itself is worth it’s weight in gold.n the recruitment industry.
