it is important to bear in mind that the new legislation targets not just consumersA new year brings a new mindset, and there’s no better time to focus on the positives that the GDPR brings. As well as the opportunity to demonstrate that your business is truly candidate-focused, the GDPR delivers strong organisational and marketing benefits in terms of getting processes, technology and databases in order.
The new data protection laws will enable recruiters to differentiate their brand in front of clients and candidates. By embracing the GDPR in both spirit and as a business imperative, you’re demonstrating that you put people at the heart of your business.
What benefits will the GDPR bring to recruitment?
1. Pre-qualified candidates
Effective analysis of data is essential in the recruitment industry to better understand the candidate mood and predict what’s coming next. The starting point for this is to build a framework to make sure that the data is specific, useable and actionable.
Your internal data may run to tens of thousands of CVs. Ensuring all data is accurate and up to date makes it easier to pinpoint and track strong candidates rather than ‘lose’ them among thousands of old CVs. And a cleaned database means that you’re holding only pre-qualified individuals on your records.
2. A better candidate experience
Being forced to either approach or delete every candidate on your database is a great opportunity to contact them with pro-active messages on your data protection credentials.
Candidates will only receive relevant information from companies whose database they’ve newly opted in to, minimising junk mail and spam, enhancing personalisation and improving their overall experience with your brand.
3. Brand differentiation
Promoting your candidate-friendly approach will resonate well in terms of attracting and retaining candidates, especially the Millennials and Gen Zers who are known for valuing good corporate social responsibility (CSR) and responsible business practices.
This will also play a role in damage limitation in the event of a future data breach. It can’t fail to be the case that any company who has visibly and actively sought candidate consent and is seen to be talking about it in the market will be better able to demonstrate the ‘reasonable’ effort required in protecting candidate data.
4. The opportunity to upgrade your tech
The new legislation brings the ideal opportunity to upgrade your CRM and marketing technology to help manage candidate data compliantly. Opting for next generation, cloud based services will improve your processes, cost-effectiveness and bring your tech up to date.
Every recruitment website should function as a management tool within the new data protection climate to help your business manage data effectively while protecting the rights of every individual whose data is being received, handled or stored.
5. Overhaul your disaster recovery strategy
Staff need to be trained in best GDPR practice and recruitment agencies would be well advised to take the opportunity to hold a disaster recovery training session – a dummy run that takes the whole team through what to do in case of a suspected or reported data breach.
This will also demonstrate clearly to the ICO that you are taking the GDPR seriously and are taking action to support its principles.
The GDPR represents a hugely positive force for recruiters. Embracing the spirit as well as the letter of the GDPR will herald a more organised and more secure way of doing business.
Volcanic is supporting the recruitment industry towards GDPR compliance ahead of the May 2018 deadline. Download your free guide to GDPR for recruitment agencies.
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