I was just digging into employer branding and defining our value statements in another blog post, and it had me thinking about something that is very common—It’s hard to be at 100% all the time.
One of the challenges of defining and nurturing your employer brand lies in your ability to live up to the characteristics and values that you choose to define that brand. Although we all have the best of intentions, it’s not always easy to go above and beyond.
This is especially true when you factor in just how maxed out recruiters are today, how trends seem to change by the minute, and how adding new employees (and dealing with attrition) can impact the day-to-day.
In this post, I want to specifically dig in to candidate engagement. As you’ve probably realized, we talk about this topic A LOT here on the Sense blog. That’s because its impact on your staffing firm is seemingly immeasurable.
Well, that’s not entirely true... investing in candidate engagement can have a definitive, measurable impact. And at times, this impact can be quite dramatic.
It can be hard to grasp the realities of this when reading a blog post, and that’s completely understandable! Blogs tend to focus on themes and ideas, but until you see them put into action it can be hard to truly visualize their potential.
To help with that, here are two concrete examples of staffing firms that took action to ensure they practiced what they preached and put their best foot forward with candidates.
Sometimes it starts out easy when it comes to practicing what you preach and prioritizing engagement. Then, changes to your staffing firm—especially growth—make it difficult to maintain the level of communication and engagement that came naturally in the past.
This is what faced Integrated Resources Inc (IRI). With more than 20 years in business, centered on “building relationships that last for life,” they experienced significant growth over time. Putting relationships first has always been and always will be a strong path to success!
But along with success can come some growing pains. A few years back, IRI noticed that they weren’t able to maintain strong relationships in the same ways that helped define their earlier years. Meeting candidate needs for engagement was slipping.
Just noticing this change is a big first step. We’ve talked about that here on the Sense blog quite a bit, the notion that you can’t manage what you don’t measure. When candidate engagement (or any other initiative) is a priority, even when it’s slipping, you should know it. You are tuned into your performance in the key areas that define your brand.
IRI identified the problem, and took action to resolve it. Specifically, they invested in our all-in-one candidate engagement platform to improve engagement for placed candidates while maximizing the time and productivity of their recruiters. They started gathering–and acting upon–daily feedback from candidates using our NPS tool.
And they started seeing some pretty amazing (and measurable!) results.
Their candidate NPS score quickly rose from 31 into unprecedented levels in the low 70s. Using automation and workflows to send personalized messages to talent at the right times, their candidate response rate increased 86%. And ultimately, they increased their hires 188% year over year.
When you get into a groove and hit your sweet spot, it can be smooth sailing. That’s where Motion Recruitment found themselves a few years ago. They focused primarily on direct hire, permanent IT staffing, and saw incredible growth and success in that sweet spot for over 30 years.
But times and needs change, and as the marketplace evolved, Motion knew that it was time for them to evolve as well. That meant focusing on contract work to meet the needs of today’s employers and talent.
Sounds great, but simply adding a new page to your website doesn’t exactly prepare you to pivot your offering pretty significantly. Motion knew that they didn’t have the processes in place to engage, retain and redeploy their new contractors.
The needs of direct hire placements are completely different than those of contractors, who need constant, relevant touch points to help them feel connected and cared for -- and to keep them coming back for their next placement.
Motion had keen awareness to recognize the challenges of this shift and identify the best solution to help them maintain the quality of their talent relationships as they continued to expand their network of contractors.
They reached out to us here at Sense (👏) to help them take action.
Motion had always prioritized relationships, but with Sense, they were able to easily create and deploy workflows that properly engaged contractors rather than direct hires. They use strategic, scalable text and email campaigns to keep contractors connected—for instance, they’ll get a congrats email when they receive an offer, as well as touch points requesting feedback after their first day or first month on the job.
And when a contractor’s placement is over, Motion uses Sense to re-engage and redeploy them to new opportunities, something most firms don’t even consider, let alone act on. They’ve even carefully revisited and refined their engagement strategy for direct hires.
Their foresight, openness and willingness to refine what had worked for so long, and embrace a new strategic partner in Sense, has paid off for Motion. Their offer-to-start drop-off rate dropped 36%, while their pre-assignment satisfaction bumped up from 8.6 to a near-perfect 9.6 (out of 10) and on-assignment satisfaction jumped from 7.6 to 9.0 (also out of 10). Oh, and their NPS tripled, leaping from 24 to 73.
I think one of the most powerful lessons from these examples is that just a small change in mindset and the right strategic partner can dramatically impact candidate engagement and overall success for your staffing firm. We have many stories and examples like the ones I just mentioned. And, well, we’d love for you to be the next one!
To see Sense in action and learn more about how we can help you align your actions with your brand, reach out to our team. We’re here to help!
