3 Steps to Recruitment Success

How to Supercharge Your Temp Desk

There isn’t one business - recruitment or otherwise - that thrives off being inconsistent in their approach and quality, and that doesn’t need a smooth and straightforward process to keep themselves in shape. But, of course, achieving this requisite consistency and simplicity takes effort, time, and money… or does it?

Sophie Robertson identifies three simple steps that recruiters can utilise to achieve this coveted process: firstly, to find quality temps, secondly, to find quality jobs, and lastly, to match your temps to your clients. When laid out like this, the system seems simple enough. But if this were the case, wouldn’t everyone already have a supercharged temp desk and a perfect, thriving business?

Using Sophie’s three steps to recruitment success, we’ll talk through the candidates, the clients, the jobs, and how to be the best.

How to Find Quality Temps

Finding quality temps is your first step to success, and with your client’s expectations and your reputation on the line, you don’t want to lose out here. But why is it so important? You want your client’s experience to be above and beyond, even when it comes to temp placements. This means filling vacancies quickly and efficiently, and ensuring that your client isn’t stressing over openings when you know everything will be just fine.

There’s a big difference between knowing you should be finding the perfect candidate every time, and actually fulfilling that expectation. But as always, there are strategies you can implement in your daily practices to increase your chances of being the best recruiter your client has ever had.

Engaging your feedback process is number one! This will help you find perfect fits in the long term and avoid mishaps in the short term. Your client should have an opportunity to let you know how the candidate performed, and the candidate should have an outlet to tell you how they think they did, and more importantly, whether it was the right job for them.

The natural progression leads us directly to communication. It’s essential to have a direct line of communication straight to your candidate filling the role. However, what sometimes slips through the net is keeping close contact with those who just missed out if you need anything to fall back on. Tech-enabled ways of managing temporary employees are game-changing!

Lastly, lose the stress! Candidates in the modern post-Covid world are flexible and adaptable, progressive and forward-thinking, and, like always, are capable. With quick and effective avenues of communication and a vast candidate pool, you’ll always have a backup plan and a fantastic selection of candidates at your fingertips. All you need to worry about now is maintaining your now-stellar reputation.

How to Find Quality Jobs

So, we’ve talked about client experience. How about your candidates? Finding quality jobs (for your quality people) is paramount to your success and has substantial flow-on effects great for business. Giving your candidate the best possible experience will keep them coming back again and again, as well as telling their entire network why you’re the best!

According to numerous studies on temp recruitment, candidate retention is one of the biggest problems faced by recruiters dealing with a large candidate pool. While this may reassure you that you’re not alone in retention difficulties, it also begs the question, ‘why can’t we solve this?’ The answer is three words only: simplify, simplify, simplify. Having a streamlined process will save you time and stress and make your candidates’ lives a million times easier (which they will love you for).

If you’re finding regular jobs quickly through a simple system, your candidate retention rate will increase. But this doesn’t only have positive flow-on effects for your candidates - this will help keep your clients happy too. When you’re refilling bookings before your competitors can with efficiency, you’ll alleviate your client’s insecurities too. When you’re able to find quality jobs, you’ll always have quality candidates. When your quality candidates are filling positions instantaneously, you’ll have happy clients.

Revise your process so that you’re utilising tools and software that can assist with things like smart matching of jobs to suitable candidates, automating timesheets for employers, digital timesheets, and automating payroll.

Again, pay attention to feedback. Ensure you have a fool-proof system for collecting and reviewing feedback so you know (and your software knows) when a job isn’t suitable.

Make use of speed. Especially in our ever more digital world, candidates are going to expect an instant response. Calling through your list just isn’t efficient enough anymore, so you’re going to need a way to contact every suitable candidate at once and notify the others when the job is filled.

How to Match Temps to Clients

We’ve discussed why finding the perfect job for the right candidate is paramount. However, the last point Sophie makes is that your temps have to match your clients, not just the job. So when you have a considerable volume of candidates and placements to fill left, right, and centre, how can you secure these perfect workers?

Ensure that they have every single necessary quality for the job. You’ll need to know their qualifications and credentials, location, experience, recent activity, and, most pressingly, their availability. Having this information on hand and easily accessible is key to being the most efficient out of your competitors.

Make certain that they’re enthusiastic about the job! Reward fast responses and candidate enthusiasm by making sure that the qualified candidate that accepts the assignment first is the one that actually gets it. This will help them feel appreciated and boost two crucial things - firstly, your candidates will respond as soon as possible, and secondly, your clients will get their role filled promptly.

You can’t ignore feedback. Like when you’re finding temps or finding jobs, feedback will help the right people veer away from the wrong place, allowing the perfect candidates to find their ideal placements, keeping not just your clients but everyone happy.

A recruiter’s job is, yes, to find the perfect candidate. But even more than that, it’s to ensure their client’s satisfaction with every last bit - from the most important to the seemingly insignificant - of their experience.

Scissors

Sophie reminds us that ‘everyone has the same amount of hours in a day,’ noting that it’s interesting how some people seem to get more done. While some fixes may be as abstract as ‘avoiding procrastination,’ ‘staying out of the staff kitchen,’ or ‘reducing the time you spend on the phone,’ there are some concrete solutions too.

You can learn about automating search and recommendation functions for an extensive candidate database or discover how to digitise timesheets, communication, and feedback. There are also ways to automate your lines of communication and avoid having to call, email, or text your candidates about placements.

With all-in-one temporary staffing software that can do your jobs for you while cutting your costs and time, you won’t need to worry about speed, communication, or anything else. You’ll be able to generate and confirm timesheets, automate scheduling, communicate instantly, match candidates to jobs, and improve productivity, all with the press of a button.

At Scissors, we’re not just software geeks building tools to help agencies. It all started in our own agency, building tools to help ourselves. We realised that we were on to something that can entirely transform how staffing agencies work every day. We understand the pain of managing high volumes of urgent client requests, whether you’re in construction, healthcare, labour-hire, or other. Without the best staffing solutions, recruitment can be error-prone and anxiety-inducing. So, we created Scissors - the intuitive online staffing software that helps recruitment agencies like you manage and keep track of hundreds of candidates in one place.