Central’s Director Steve Hart, comments on how building relationships not only with key clients but also candidates is one of the most important cogs within any successful Recruitment business.
Having worked my way up in the recruitment industry for over 18 years one thing is clear…..building relationships is key!
The journey starts when we are approached by new clients, we are fortunate to get quite a lot of candidate referrals! As much as we will normally have our initial conversation over the phone a face to face as soon as possible is an extremely important part of the recruitment process. Not only does it give us a chance to start and cement relationships with the client but it gives us the opportunity to see the premises where are temps will be working and it makes it much easier for our consultants to describe the job and facilities in accurate detail to any potential candidates. We still get clients who refuse on site meetings and from experience this makes the process much more difficult and ultimately finding the correct candidate fit much harder! At Central we pride ourselves on our service levels, which we believe stands us out from the crowd and we work very hard to make sure we always meet and exceed our client’s expectations. This is made possible by getting to know the business inside out and this is achieved by among other things, you’ve guessed it, relationship building. The more time you can spend on site, speaking to supervisors and understanding their needs including type of staff and business trends, speaking to receptionists understanding issues they may have previously had with other agency staff and speaking to other permeant all help to get an overall feel for the business. We feel that the more we can understand what a business needs then the more we can take off the client in terms of recruitment and allow them to concentrate on other aspects of their business…..all part of our complete service!
And you know what many agencies forget……this doesn’t just apply to relationships with clients but also candidates, at the end of the day the candidates are every recruiter’s bread and butter so it’s equally important to make sure you have strong relationships with all candidates and not just clients. I have mainly dealt with temporary recruitment in my years in the industry and have seen first-hand how having a good relationship with the temps can be a benefit. You get to know your temps, know what type of lifestyle they lead, what work they will be good at and enjoy, what shifts they can do etc. we go that extra mile for our temps as well offering advances on wages in certain circumstances to help with getting to work. This makes the recruitment process much easier. I have been in situations when we have dual supplied and I have witnessed consultants from other agencies speaking to their temps like they were nothing more than dirt on their shoes! These are the people who make it possible to meet your clients’ needs and you need to treat them as such. Respect goes both ways and if you don’t respect your temps they could end up giving your agency a bad name and you will lose business!! Temps talk to each other, if your agency or more so the consultant gets a bad name then you could be missing out on good temporary workers who would be great workers, increasing your reputation and your ability to build lasting relationships with clients!!
Relationship building is not hard but it takes time and effort from both clients, candidates and consultants but the benefits to recruitment make it worthwhile!
