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•11 May, 2016

Recruiter Clinic – How the Top Recruiters Use Technology (#blabUKRClinic)

UK Recruiter > Blab > Recruiter Clinic – How the Top Recruiters Use Technology (#blabUKRClinic)

This week on our Recruiter Clinic on Blab (it’s a live video chat channel) the topic was all about how the top recruiters use technology.  I was joined by Stephen O’Donnell (who is my regular team-mate on the shows) and Alan Hiddleston (Firefish Software) and Matt Gallivan (Innovantage) were our guests.  You can watch a recording of the show here:

Here are some of the links to things that were mentioned on the show or in the chat window during it:

This is the technology showcase event http://recnet16june.eventbrite.co.uk

7 considerations when choosing recruitment software

46 Chrome extensions for recruiters http://recruitingtools.com/chrome-extensions/

Biggerplate for Mindmaps

Ed Allnutt from xref was hoping to join us but we had trouble with the technology (ironic I know).  Here are some of the thoughts he wanted to share:

Objective of recruitment technology – Fundamentally recruitment is about finding the right person for a job as quickly as possible. Therefore the objective of “recruitment technology” should be aimed first and foremost at these two areas. In larger businesses there is more of an aversion to risk so you could add a third objective of reducing risk, be it discrimination, data protection, loss of IP, loss of staff, reputation damage etc. So technology should either help to find the right person, make it quicker to do so or reduce risk. Xref just so happens to do all three!
Personal opinion on software is that the biggest issue facing most recruiters is time management. Recruitment requires many simultaneous tasks with lots of follow up and lots of task planning. The recruiter who best plans their time focusing on the right tasks are always the most successful.
Mobile – this is expected. Those that haven’t embraced mobile are already a minimum of 5 years behind the competition.
Referencing – Referencing within the UK has lost it’s way. There is still no better way of finding out whether that candidate can do what they claim than to speak to a previous manager or colleague. Unfortunately referencing within the UK is now thought of as only one part of the compliance process rather than a proactive tool. Yes there are regulatory requirements for background checks but these are now usually limited to verification – dates of employment only. This is not referencing, it’s verification and there is a big difference.
The truth is that candidates lie. More than 50% of candidates admit to some form of exaggeration either on their CV or in interview. Some lies are easy to route out. The recruiter that claims to be earning big bucks tends to go quiet when their payslips are requested. Other lies or exaggerations are not so simple. Referencing enables companies to better understand the capability of new hires. Think about yourself outside of work don’t you always look for recommendations before deciding on that plumber, builder or even that personal trainer? 
Of course referencing does need to be conducted properly and does need to be timely. No recruiter wants to spend hours chasing references. There are solutions such as Xref that offer an automated framework to ensure references are conducted properly. Many people are scared off of referencing due to stories of libel cases yet the instances of these are very very low and again can be mitigated via an appropriate solution.
Within recruitment I fail to see why a recruitment consultant wouldn’t want to obtain references. You are after all only as good as your last placement and who’s to say that your next placed candidate won’t be who they claim to be? How many rebates could have been avoided if the alarm bells were raised earlier?
Dig data – very few data scientists or statisticians in recruitment. I have seen many senior staff in recruitment be mislead by data because “statistics don’t lie”. It’s true, they don’t, but often what they actually tell you is that your dataset is invalid and you don’t understand the problem you are trying to find a solution for. In recruitment the simple answer is usually the right one. 

We should be back in a fortnight with another Recruiter Clinic and if you want to take part in one just let me know.

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