The Importance of Staying Connected for Candidates and Clients
I Just Wanna Talk
I was speaking to my client, a Country Manager for a Fin Tech firm, a couple of weeks ago. It was a routine call to stay in contact on the usual topics: how is business, how’s the workforce doing, any urgent hiring needs, headcount plans for the rest of the year etc.
The call followed a familiar format until I asked him if he had any questions. After a short pause, he launched into a series of enquiries about how I have been managing and motivating my sales teams. I should have expected that interesting questions would arise during these interesting times we’re living in, but it gave me pause for thought about the nature of communicating with our clients and candidates.
Learn from Everyone
It’s common for recruiters to receive the inevitable question ‘how’s the market?’, given the nature of our job, but to be asked about how I am managing teams internally shows that - irrespective of industry and profession - learning about what everyone is doing in a period of immense change is a useful and valuable tool to all of our respective businesses. And who better to speak to about this than someone whose job is to stay connected with a (hopefully) vast network of industry professionals, function leads and country heads: a recruiter?
Early in my recruitment career, I was returning from a client meeting with a senior manager from my agency. We were debriefing on how I feel I had done in the meeting and I felt confident that I had asked some strong questions to the client to learn a lot about their organization: the team structure and size, plans for the year, systems they used, speculative needs for hiring, what types of profiles they like to see and so on.
I was somewhat surprised therefore when my colleague asked me ‘and what did the client learn from you?’ It was then that I realized I had imparted very little in the way of information to the client in return; I had swanned in, bombarded them with questions and then left with a cursory commitment to supporting them going forward with hiring needs.
Mutually Beneficial Interactions
This moment, aside from leaving me suitably humbled, taught me the importance of client interactions being mutually beneficial, regardless of whether they are hiring right now or not. As so-called industry experts in our field, it is important for recruiters to impart this knowledge to our clients and candidates to help them understand the wider reaching trends.
No more so is this vitally important than at a time like this, when success or failure depends on knowing what everyone else is doing, or not doing. Previously, this would largely depend on who is doing what in terms of their sales results, new products, marketing strategies and so forth. But a topic that is becoming much more prevalent in my client and candidate interactions is how companies are handling the global pandemic internally.
What’s their remote work policy?
How are their sales teams interacting with customers?
What systems do they use to enable remote working?
How do they monitor staff performance?
Who’s taking this opportunity to hire and for which areas of their business?
Who’s consolidating functions to have regional coverage positions?
These points are much more universal and less industry-specific: a Fin Tech client can, in practice, adopt similar remote working standards as a CRM platform provider, mission critical roles notwithstanding. Cherry picking and trying out innovative ideas on internal working standards has become a hot topic for everyone in an effort to be competitive and attractive in the new norm.
It’s no surprise then that my client asked me how we are handling the pandemic and what remote working policies we have implemented. Business is business, regardless of industry, product or service: we’re all looking to adapt and evolve to ensure the highest possible productivity in a challenging period. The difference in asking this to a recruiter versus another industry professional in your area is that a recruiter will not only be able to tell you about how their company is handling things, but also how their myriad clients and candidates are handling things as well.
So the next time you get that call from a recruiter - impromptu or otherwise - use it as an opportunity to learn as much as possible from us about the larger market trends: you never know, it may give you some insights you can apply to your team or your business that you hadn’t previously considered.
Just make sure to prioritize calls with Wahl+Case consultants ;)
Benedict Mallinson
Manager | Consumer & Financial Technology