We've been nominated for an award for the service we deliver to candidates, so it’s easy for me to sit here and say how great we are (that was yesterday’s post). However, I am a little concerned with the candidate experience delivered by the rest of the flat fee recruitment industry. As you would expect, I am a huge fan of the flat fee recruitment model, I think it delivers real value for the customer and is far more efficient than the prehistoric traditional agency model.
I was interested in seeing the level of candidate care that was delivered by one of the more well known flat fee recruitment agencies, they were early adopters of this flat fee model, so should have had enough time to get this right by now. I decided to "mystery shop" them to see what the candidate experience was like. It was, as I suspected, dismal. The conversation went something along these lines:
Me: Hi, I am enquiring about the Payroll Manager role in Woking (I've changed the details of the role to protect the guilty).
Flat Fee Receptionist: Yes, have you seen the advert online.
Me: Yes, I have
Flat Fee Receptionist: Ok, well if you are interested then you need to apply online for the position.
Me: Ok, but I just had a couple of quick questions that I was hoping someone could answer?
Flat Fee Receptionist: All the information we have is on the advert.
Me: Ok, but I just need to know if the role is in walking distance of Woking train station as I don't drive?
Flat Fee Receptionist: All the information we have is on the advert.
Me: But I don't want to apply for a role then get an interview only to realise I have wasted everyone's time if I cannot commute to their office.
Flat Fee Receptionist: All the information we have is on the advert.
This went on for a bit longer, but I finished the call understanding one of the reasons why this provider is able to offer their service at a cheaper rate than EasyWebRecruitment. Because there is far less service provided than we presently offer. We encourage all our clients to "mystery shop" us, and many do. If you phone our office about a vacancy you will in almost all occasions get your call transferred to the person managing that vacancy, who will be able to intelligently answer all of your questions about the vacancy and the client.
There are two competing models emerging within our industry. The scenario above is a good example one inefficiency in the "automated flat fee recruitment model". There are many more. This model attempts to replace each process that might have involved a well trained recruiter with a robot or a not so clever piece of software. Our organisation and a few others understand that if you take the human beings out of the process what you end up with is a one-size-fits-all service that does not flex to the needs of the client, does not deliver real candidate care and, ultimately, does not reduce costs for your clients (as more roles go unfilled).
You get what you pay for, but flat fee does not have to mean a service delivered by robots.
In tomorrow's post I will highlight the real differences between these two competing models.
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