This is a guest post from Freddie Chirgwin-Bell. Working as Marketing & Communications Executive at Morgan Jones, as part of our Recruiting Weekly Series. Freddie shares his thoughts on empathy being the recruiting superpower.
When was the last time a company made a great impact on you? Could be good or bad, big or small, but how did it feel?
You see feelings and the customer experience are vital to every business. None more so than service businesses. And that’s what we are, recruitment is a service business.
What if I told you the secret to growing a recruitment agency, is not actually recruitment?
Of course, recruitment plays a massive part in your success, but it’s not the backbone of it.
Here’s the thing, people have an entrenched idea, one that’s hard to shake. And it’s all thanks to Kevin Costner – “Build it and they will come.”
Truth is, no they won’t. You could be an amazing recruiter, an amazing agency, but if no one knows you or trusts you or believes in you, then no one will use you.
Growth for your agency doesn’t start in sales or business development.
It’s the customer experience. Candidate, client, prospective candidates and potential leads all need an amazing experience.
A lot of this comes down to how you market yourself and your business.
“You’re a marketer. Of course, you’ll say that”, I hear you cry.
My own biases aside, marketing is an activity that works FOR your business, not IN it.
As a result, the time you spend devoted to marketing will work FOR you so much better than just focusing on your day to day operations.
Making customers feel special and wanted is the cornerstone of all customer service but it is also the cornerstone of marketing.
The impact you have on a customer (candidate or client) will be the primary reason for your growth or decline.
Customer Experience Is Everywhere
When I talk about marketing and customer experience I am talking about ensuring you are providing a consistent experience and feeling in the customer at every single touchpoint.
From how you answer the phone, to how your website looks, and even to how well you communicate with them, every one of these tiny aspects adds up to an exceptional customer experience.
You may roll your eyes and think all of this is rubbish, however, think of it like this – you recognise brands and have favourites because of how they consistently make you feel.
You recognise Apple products instantly because of how they look and the experience you have with them.
You recognise the Coca Cola advert every year because of how it makes you feel.
And why do you think the John Lewis ads are so successful every year? Feelings, emotions, and experiences.
When I asked at the beginning of this post for you to think of a great customer experience, you probably remembered a company based on how they made you feel. Was it fantastic service and food at a local restaurant? Was it a snippy, grumpy person who answered the phone and was thoroughly unhelpful?
Both of these scenarios, even just reading them, I would wager conjured up serious emotional reactions.
And that’s the point. You want to make sure your business is providing great feelings and emotions at every interaction with your audience.
So what creates a great customer experience? Well thought of what happens at every point of customer interaction and a little bit of time and effort. The focus here should be employer branding and relationship marketing.
Relationship Marketing
Have you thought about what recruitment is, at its very core? It’s a matchmaking service.
You make a relationship between an employer and an employee happen. And it is your relationship with these individuals that make this happen.
Relationship marketing is basically a fancy word that covers customer service, business development, and communication.
Relationship marketing is a marketing strategy that cultivates deeper, more meaningful relationships with customers to ensure long-term satisfaction and brand loyalty. Relationship marketing is not focused on short-term wins or sales transactions — rather, it is focused on delighting customers for the long haul.
That’s what we all want, isn’t it?
Having a dedicated relationship marketing strategy in place will provide you with a framework for progress.
As you can see from the image, the best marketing is a consistent cycle of repeatable actions with a focus on attracting, engaging, and delighting your customers.
But, recruitment is a two-headed beast with an equal focus on candidates and clients.
Most people would use one strategy for candidates and one for clients.
For candidate attraction and marketing to candidates, most people would adopt what is known as an inbound marketing model. While looking to approach clients, however, most would adopt something similar to account-based marketing.
Account-based marketing pairs perfectly with customer experience. There’s an emphasis on relationships, so please do look into it as a model. In fact, there are even whole ebooks on ABM strategy that works to bring both relationship and ABM together.
However, both strategies fit within the above flywheel as the core component all focus on developing exceptional relationships. The relationships you build and develop with candidates and with your clients will eventually be the defining factor to your success.
Word of mouth is the most important and powerful form of marketing. It’s also the one that is hardest to achieve.
To develop a strategy that you can use, why not follow Hubspot’s 6 steps:
- Provide personalised, customer-focused service.
- Engage with the customer where they are.
- Incorporate technology to work more effectively.
- Offer incentives and rewards for customer loyalty.
- Create valuable content that tells a compelling story.
- Collect feedback regularly.
These six simple steps can help define a highly robust relationship marketing strategy that will enable word of mouth to spread, but also has the feedback loop for you to continuously improve and refine your technique.
What’s even better is that it fits into your existing marketing strategies, it fits in with your recruitment style, it works with candidates, it works with clients, it can be placed anywhere to enhance your reputation.
Employer Branding
You act as the employer’s intermediary. You are the one’s trying to convince your candidates that your client is the next best thing since sliced bread.
That’s right, the fan favourite carb source has to be left in the dust to what your client and their brand can offer.
Employer branding is highly valuable, but it’s also not just for the employers themselves. You have to have an excellent brand.
As the third party, the candidate has to believe in you and then they will believe in your recommendation. This applies vice versa the client needs to believe in your brand and your judgement to not only use you but to also accept your recommendations of who you are putting forward.
Your own company branding plays an important part in ensuring that your agency is seen and respected.
The importance of employer branding in recruitment should never be underestimated. It helps land and retain the right talent, saves your recruitment cost per hire, any recruitment pain, and reduces staff turnover.
All organisations have, consciously or not, an employer brand. As an agency your employer value brand is also a recruitment value brand. You need to be able to convey your credentials as much as your clients.
This is how organisations differentiate themselves in the labour market, enabling them to recruit, retain and engage the right people. Culture fit is far more important than most people ever realise.
A strong employer brand helps businesses compete for the best talent and establish credibility. It should connect with an organisation’s values and must run consistently through its approach to people management.
First Step: Establish a great EVP or RVP (Recruitment Value Proposition).
An agency it’s not just the company’s reputation on the line, it’s yours. You need to make sure that you give them a reason to choose your agency above all else.
Also, remember that this applies to both your candidates and your clients.
A great EVP reflects a great employer brand and vice versa. This symbiotic relationship needs to match.
Your employer brand has to apply to all of your marketing. Your marketing is part of your brand, and with that, you need to ensure that your employer brand matches what they assume you to be.
Run a fun lively and vibrant place of work? Then you need to portray that.
Run a clean crisp professional operation? Then your content should reflect that in its tone of voice.
As I mentioned before, every touchpoint, every point of contact between you and your customer adds to your brand. Make sure it’s a great experience throughout and this will help build your brand.
Also remember, people can sniff out disingenuity and insincerity so quickly it is incredible. Make sure your brand is honest to who you are and how you want to work as well as easy to maintain.
That way when you think about how to make your customers happy they know what to expect in advance.
The True Secret Sauce
Consistency. As in all success stories, the vast majority of it comes down to showing up and putting in the work every day.
Marketing is a discipline that is easy to understand and pick up but very difficult to master. You have to keep things consistent, improving and experimenting to see what works better and then repeat.
When you put that into establishing amazing customer experiences every day, even if it’s a rejection letter or call, you will start to see business transformation and growth.
This effort is worth it to see genuine growth and, more importantly, value in that growth. As we all know it’s not just about the number of candidates or clients you have on the books. It’s about the placements you make, the experiences you create, and how you made them feel that matters.
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou
Author Bio:
Freddie is the Marketing & Communications Executive at Morgan Jones. He is dedicated to creating informative, clear, and actionable content that truly adds value and helps people. You can connect with him on LinkedIn
