Bullhorn is the global leader in customer relationship management software for the staffing and recruiting industriesBy Peter Linas, international MD of recruitment CRM leader, Bullhorn
Time is a finite resource in any business, but this is particularly true in the recruitment industry where the average recruitment consultant faces up to 50 interruptions per day – that could result in £127,000 lost revenue every year, according to research. It’s impossible to get rid of interruptions altogether but there are things recruiters can do to limit the distraction they cause. Follow these four simple tips to help improve recruiter workflow, drive productivity, and become more profitable as a result:
Automate data entry
Manually entering candidate details into a system is time consuming. In fact, entering details from just one CV can take up to five minutes. Whilst this doesn’t sound like much, lost time can be costly. A recruitment firm with 45 employees that makes £6.2m in annual revenue will enter roughly 24,000 CVs into its database on a yearly basis, for example. By automating this transfer of data from CVs, websites, and job boards so it takes just 90 seconds, a business could free up 1,400 hours per year – a potential £120,000 in increased revenue. And that’s certainly a figure worth thinking about!
Reduce the number of systems
Having multiple systems means multiple data-entry processes which again, is a huge drain on resources. This will cause even more problems if a staff member leaves or is away from the office. Trying to recover data from more than one location is a huge administrative burden and very time consuming. By using just one automated system, not only is each candidate’s data easily accessible from a single location, but a recruitment firm that previously entered data into five or six systems, at five minutes per system, could save 20-25 minutes per entry. Not to mention the fact that the chances of human error are massively reduced when there is just one system in play.
Speed up onboarding
Onboarding can be a struggle; trying to get new starters up and running on multiple systems is a challenge, and it takes time. In fact, on average it takes a recruitment consultant two days to learn four systems. This means that for an agency with 20 recruiters making £2.5m in revenue per year, a recruiter’s time is worth £76 an hour. Using just one integrated system could cut the time it takes to onboard new staff to just half a day. This means not only will new staff be generating revenue from day one, businesses could potentially gain an additional £800 per hire.
Go mobile
Two thirds of UK recruiters spend ten percent of their time out of the office attending meetings or interviewing candidates. As a result, being able to access client and candidate information, emails, and calendars anywhere, and at any time, is essential. Having a system that is accessible from mobile devices means that time away from the office is no longer less productive than time in the office.
The UK recruitment industry is growing at such a pace it can be hard to keep up. And those agencies with the ability to get to the best candidates first will win out in the end. This means it’s more important than ever for recruiters to squeeze every bit of efficiency possible from their days, to enable them to spend as much of their time on billable activity as possible.
