The Full Desk Experience

Kortney Harmon, host:
You don't need some magic AI tool to help you find your own candidates and your own system, you need a faster way to find the talent you've already vetted, you've already screened, you've already qualified to get down further in the funnel, and get there at the speed and efficiencies that you truly want. Hi, I'm Kortney Harmon, Staffing & Recruiting Industry Principal at Crelate. Welcome to FDE Express, a miniseries of The Full Desk Experience. In this miniseries, we'll be exploring specific topics related to growth blockers across your people, processes, and technologies, in a quick and concise format. Each episode will provide you with actionable insights that you can implement right away.

Katie Jones, producer:
Going through our Full Desk Experience emails, I found that a common question that we're getting right now is what is the biggest slowdown in the staffing and recruiting industry?

Kortney Harmon, host:
That is such a great question, and I'm going to say that it's probably going outside of your system. Now, there are many times that this could probably happen, but I personally want to focus on the sourcing portion. Staffing and recruiting businesses, they're under that constant pressure to identify, attract, hire the best talent available, at a faster speed than their competitors and at the best possible quality. Now, in order to do this, these businesses rely on a variety of tools. And they use additional resources such as job boards, social media platforms, and really their own system of record, which is going to store your candidate data and your resumes. But what I see is in most cases, these businesses are not making an effective use of their ATS as their first source to look for qualified talent.

Now, in coaching hundreds of these offices across the country, I can probably count on one hand, maybe two, the offices that used ATSs as their first step in their searching efforts. Most firms go straight back to the top of the funnel to post a job, search a job board for new candidates. All in which can lead to wasted time, wasted resources, and truly missed opportunities. Now remember, spinning cycles equal spending cycles. But it stays that way for three main reasons. Number one is your lack of process and structure. A major reason why staffing and recruiting businesses may not use their ATS effectively is the lack of process and structure within your recruitment teams. Without clear guidelines and processes in place that really mapped the exact field they need during the exact conversation, your teams are going to tune out. They're going to record stuff outside of your system.

So frankly, your recruiters are just not using your systems as their default. They're going straight to external resources because they don't have the data in there to search for it anyway. So, they go to job boards, they go to social media, rather than leveraging the candidate data that's already in your system's ATS or CRM. It's often due to lack of understanding how to search effectively, use the advanced filters through candidate data, or lack of clarity around the expectations of even using the technology in the first place. Without structure, it's just easier to default to methods that feel more comfortable, but honestly, they're way less effective in the long run. So, that's number one. Number two shouldn't come to a surprise as you, but it's inadequate training. Another reason why your businesses may not be using their system of record adequately or effectively is training of your recruiters.

Recruiters may not be adequately trained on how to effectively use their ATS, even put data in. Yeah, they do all the work and filling out the fields when they're talking to someone, maybe they connect the talent to the job order for those metrics you need to see, but that's the data going into the system. That's a whole nother story. Getting the data back out takes practice. Honestly, it takes repeat use for the tools to get the best results, and in turn, it results in the preference for external resources because it only leads to frustration. Because they don't know how to get the stuff back out, so they're like, "Why use it in the first place?" So, without proper training, recruiters may not utilize it to the full potential and its searching capabilities, leading again to missed opportunities, wasted resources.

And honestly, you don't need some magic AI tool to help you find your own candidates and your own system. You need a faster way to find the talent you've already vetted, you've already screened, you've already qualified to get down further in the funnel and get there at the speed and efficiencies that you truly want. So, you have to do that. Number three may be a little contentious, but it's really the idea of lack of maintenance. So, that final reason why your staffing and recruiting businesses may not use their system of record is because the lack of maintenance and upkeep. Now let's face it, you can't dump information in and not maintain it. Do you ever clean your house just one time and you never do it again? If you do, I need a private message for the secret sauce because I know you don't. It's not possible. It takes maintenance.

It takes consistent effort and updating, so your leaders can get the holistic view of their business. They know where you're going. They know how to help you achieve your goals. One of my favorite things to do with an office whenever we talk about incomplete data is to run a search on all records in their system that don't have an email address or don't have a phone number. Now, we only do this probably one time a year, but they would use their interns, their internet researchers or admins to help increase the quality of those records. You're going to hear me talk a lot about quality versus quantity. You probably have already heard it. But it's at the end of the year every year in record to try to sprint to the finish line. At the end of the year, you get better data.

So, I guess when's the last time you did a search for your records that were missing an email address? Because let's face it, how often are you sending them an email that they're not getting and you're assuming that they are because you're mass emailing everybody. So, if candidate and client data is not regularly updated in a logical manner, it becomes difficult and time-consuming for recruiters to find the right candidates for your open positions. It's just another reason to opt out to external resources as a shortcut. Businesses make sure that the data is in their at ATS and it's up-to-date and complete, so it's effective for your recruiting purposes. Overall, addressing these three reasons requires a commitment to building a strong recruitment process that emphasizes the importance of your system of record.

This involves setting clear guidelines and expectations, providing ongoing training and education for your recruiters, investing in the maintenance and the upkeep of your ATS. But by doing so, your staffing and recruiting businesses can increase their effectiveness of their recruitment efforts, save time and resources, and ultimately find the best talent for your clients. One of the major benefits of using your ATS as the primary source for your talent acquisition is that it allows your business to build a pipeline of qualified candidates over time. It allows you to flip the script to be proactive versus reactive in the rat race that most of our talent and teams are stuck in.

Rather than starting from scratch each and every time and going back to the top of the funnel, your recruiters can pass go, they can collect $200. And they can draw from a pool of candidates that have already expressed interest and been qualified and increase your speed to hire with the companies that you're providing talent for. It's going to save significant time, significant resources, lead to more efficient and effective recruitment, all while improving your candidate experience and relationships, which not only leads to more referrals, more repeat talent, and to level up your redeployment strategies. It's so much to think about from one little portion of your process.

Katie Jones, producer:
I love that Kort, especially thinking back in my past experience and all of my friends' past experiences with recruiters. They set you up with a job, you get the interview, you go talk to the recruiter, and then maybe the job doesn't work out for whatever reason, but then you never hear from them again, right? But your job search isn't over. How many times have candidates been abandoned by recruiters who just thought of them transactionally for this one job? I can only think of one instance in my 15-year career where a recruiter reached out to me about a job wasn't a great fit for, and then got a call back a week later and said, "Hey, I've got something else for you." How often does that happen really? So, I think that's an excellent point that you brought up. Thank you so much.

Kortney Harmon, host:
And honestly, one last thing and I'll be done, I promise. The number one complaint about recruiters is they call too frequently. When they want something they call endlessly. It's like your phone's blowing up, your email's blowing up, your social media's blowing up because they think you're a fit. But once you have that conversation, and they maybe personally have walked themselves out to say, "You're not a fit," or maybe I'm going along and moving in my process, the number two complaint is they don't call enough. They never call you back. They ghost you. Everyone always complains about candidates ghosting recruiters, but honestly, our processes sometimes are so cumbersome, so detailed, so long, that the recruiters are ghosting the talent too. So, just something to think about.

Katie Jones, producer:
I love that perspective 100%.

Kortney Harmon, host:
I'm Kortney Harmon, Staffing and Recruiting Industry Principal at Crelate. Thanks for joining FDE Express. That's all for today's episode of FDE Express. I'm Kortney Harmon with Crelate. If you have any questions or topics you'd like us to cover in future episodes, please feel free to submit them to fulldesk@crelate.com, or ask us live next session. And don't forget to subscribe to our podcast wherever you listen, and sign up for our monthly events to keep learning and growing your business. Thanks for tuning in to FDE Express, a miniseries of the Full Desk Experience.