I recently shared a superb blog about the biggest headaches recruiters face. A survey conducted asked recruiters which problems hinder their success and there were common regular offenders. I have written a complimentary blog that provides solutions to these problems.

Standing out from the crowd

How do you differentiate from the competition? A problem experienced in every industry!

How do you get away from the worthy but samey promises of being; trusted, experienced, specialists etc; with a message that resonates and is believed? Then, how do you get that message out there and heard by your target market?

How cloud technology will help

Do something different from the norm! Create extranets and branded social networking sites to communicate with clients and candidates. Tailor clear messaging to clients and prospects. Use integrated workflows that automatically contact prospects who use key hashtags. You can capitalise on leads, communicate branded messaging directly to your target market and have an online platform to securely network.

Capitalise on co-authoring functionality to improve candidate’s CV’s in real-time. Build trust, unity and enhance your clientele’s résumé to increase the chances of closing job vacancies. You need to be good at improving CV’s of course!

Juggling daily tasks

How do you focus on core tasks when you are bombarded with email, inbound calls, management requests, and LinkedIn messages?

How cloud technology will help

Use cloud technology to automate administrative tasks – this reduces your workload, eradicates human error (we all forget sometimes), and keeps us focussed on our core tasks allowing for momentum in sales calls and sourcing candidates.

Guarantee you have access to your data and applications wherever you are and ensure you can share this information quickly and easily with relevant others.

Reduce commuting by using video conferencing. Increase your number of face to face interviews and speak with major clients regularly using technology rather than having to travel a lot.

IT downtime can be rife, costing businesses many hours and even more money.Ponemon Institute estimate billions of pounds! Get a cloud solution that guarantees uptime so that you are at your most productive!

Additional tips and resources

David Allen’s ‘Getting Things Done’ for stress free productivity

The candidate interview process is my biggest bugbear

How do you keep interviews relevant, succinct, productive and ultimately gain credibility with the best candidates on the market?

How cloud technology will help

Three common mistakes made by many recruiters that instantly put candidates off; (1) too much form filling (2) repetition (3) wasted trips.

Filling out forms. We live in a world where data input should be achieved quickly online and the information will automatically sync with your CRM. If you don’t have this functionality, I imagine you are doing double the admin of those who do. Even more importantly, candidates first impression of your business is form filling.

Don’t ask the candidate the same question again and again as they are passed around the office from department to department. Use technology to share information and avoid repetition.

Meeting a candidate only to find out you can’t place them is hugely time wasting and leaves that candidate with a bitter taste about your brand (I have experienced this first hand regularly). Have a video call to quickly decide “can I place this candidate?”

Stop insisting on meetings for meetings’ sake and instead use video conferences to establish credibility and focus on those candidates who will make you money. Then meet them face to face; not everyone else.

Additional tips and resources

Jeff Haden outlines 12 Simple Steps and has many wider resources around this topic

Unsuitable candidates applying

A well written job specification will alleviate this somewhat. Never just copy and paste what the client sent. Instead, deliver a clear and enticing job ad. How do you distinguish between the wheat and the chaff of prospect clients?

How cloud technology will help

By using CV scanning tools and business analytics, you can match key competencies, skills and experience to filter to the correct prospective candidates. Sourcing the right person becomes targeted and the data cleansed so that you don’t have to scroll through countless CV’s.

Additional tips and resources

Steve Kneeland gives advice on how to avoid hiring the wrong person in his book Hiring People

Engaging candidates sourced online

Perfect, you have found a great candidate. But they are at work, being headhunted by a competitor or have never heard of you so are sceptical about engaging; what are you to do?

How cloud technology will help

You need to build rapport, you need to differentiate from the competition (we’ve covered this), and you need to gain credibility. The quickest way to do this without your sourced candidate having to take annual leave to meet you is to use a video conference and get to know them.

Additional tips and resources

Many of you will use Bullhorn daily (we know them from integration with our cloud solutions) they have written a helpful blog on this very topic.

Further Information

If you want further information about how cloud technology can help recruiters to make more placements, read my blog “The recruitment industry is missing a trick”.