Thanks to everyone who attended the final #RicePowWow of 2015. It was awesome to see so many of our clients, candidates and general supporters celebrate the festive season in true kiwi style (drinks, ham, singalong, more drinks etc…) We have an awesome recruitment community in New Zealand and I love the way last night highlighted the fact that agencies and internals can rub shoulders, and work together towards a common goal.
I also love the fact that Uber makes it so much easier for me to get home after nights like that. They’ve obviously disrupted the taxi industry in a major way but what really interests me is their rating system, whereby both the driver and rider get to score each other on a five-star scale after each ride. My score, I found out last night, is 4.9 stars. I guess I have to be happy about that but also wonder when it was that I scored less than a 5 (probably when I made the driver play Disturbed at an unreasonable volume on the way home once, I’d imagine).
It’s a trend that started with sites like Trip Advisor where the real life views and opinions of actual end users of goods and services could tell it like it really is. Before then all we had to rely on to make our purchasing decisions was either word of mouth or submission to clever marketing tactics. Now there really is nowhere to hide if your business offering isn’t up to scratch.
And it’s trend that is coming to recruitment too.
At SEEK’s new product launch roadshow last week, they revealed something they’re working on whereby job seekers will be able to rate recruiters. Which is quite an interesting notion, one that will scare the crap out of many recruiters, but a development I would relish and really look forward to.
This week has also witnessed some increasing buzz in the industry about Recfluence, a place where recruitment agencies can get rated. Due to officially launch this month, their mission claims that:
“Soon everyone will be able to read reviews & select the perfect recruitment agencies to represent their next job and career move!”
Time will tell how successful this proves to be, but again it’s something I welcome and will watch with interest. It’s all part of a trend that has drastically shifted the way consumers are informed about making buying decisions. If it works properly it can only be a good thing, to highlight recruiters and agencies who actually back up the identical claims made across every agency website and recruiter LinkedIn profile out there.
Some will be very rightly worried by this. Accountability is on its way. Let the games begin.
I think this is great in theory Jon, and done right could provide some welcome and much needed accountability/checks and balances to our industry. However our job inevitably involves creating a certain number of “unhappy customers” out of our candidates. Even if well supported and properly communicated with, there will always be unsuccessful candidates happy to blame their recruiter(s) – and they also seem to be more vocal than those happier or more complimentary candidates. We also frequently get the blame for indecisive/slow to move clients, especially if we elect to take a certain amount of the heat to help manage their reputation (something we all do from time to time). It’ll certainly be interesting to see what Seek come out with though – no doubt in a year or so we’ll start seeing agencies with better scores quoting them in RFPs and client pitches!
I’m giving the ham last night a rating of 5 stars. Cheers for that.
Great news – just an extension of asknicely if you are doing your job properly you won’t be worried if you aren’t it is a great way to get instant feedback and work on improving.
One thing to remember we deal in people so you won’t please everyone and one thing we can be sure about people is that you can never be sure.
Thanks Rice for creating a positive community for us reccies just wish it wasn’t a thursday night 🙂