The use of online recruitment sources appears to be unstoppable, as proven by LinkedIn passing its 200 million user mark – including 11 million people from the UK. According to a Jobsite Social Recruiting Survey from the US, 92% of employers use or plan to use social recruiting to help them source candidates, a significant increase on last year’s 77%.
However, whilst LinkedIn and associated job boards provide an invaluable source of candidate information, by design, they are unable to provide the value added service obtainable through outsourcing to an agency. If recruitment professionals solely rely upon the online sourcing of talent they will actively drive down the value attained from their own services. In short, if a recruiter depends on the sources used by everyone else, why should a customer engage with them?
A recruiter has to do something their client cannot do: find and engage the right talent for their organisation. To do this the recruiter needs specialist knowledge within the sector: they need to understand not only the job specifics but also where to source relevant candidates to match the criteria.
Turn to an online source and the recruiter is inevitably faced with a pool of talent others are considering. Clever search skills aside, a recruiter who is certain they’ve found their ideal candidate can also be certain the same candidate has been found by several other people.
Compare this to a resource that every recruitment agency should have and which every recruiter can exploit to the fullest extent: the in-house database. The in-house database offers much more than just a candidate’s CV and contact details. It can also hold comments, notes and the history of contact between the individual and the agency. If a consultant has spoken with a candidate there could be notes describing that interaction: there might be critical information here as to the candidate’s long term aspirations, availability, attitude to opportunities and past record of applications. This level of information enables the recruiter to offer the client greater value. This is more than matching CVs to job specs, more even than identifying ‘passive’ candidates: this is identifying a good match from the most valuable and reliable candidate source possible.
Give a database excellent functionality and it will repay you many times over. If a recruitment consultant understands and experiences how the technology supports their work they will continuously use it, adding to and updating candidate records as part of their everyday work.
A good database enables an agency to develop a candidate pool, to be closer to the community it serves and therefore to deliver more value to its clients. Importantly for the agency, that value is held in the database so as consultants move on and new starters join, the value is still there – a tangible, ongoing talent resource.
For recruiters who want to demonstrate a unique level of service to clients, or who aspire to delivering a global service that out-paces competition from other agencies, RPOs and in-house recruitment teams, a fully functional in-house database is critical. Not only this, but if the recruitment industry is to progress globally in the face of the onward march of online candidate sources, the continued use of and investment in recruitment dedicated databases is imperative.
Want to know more about how to enhance your internal database? Take a look at Daxtra Capture or contact us for a demo.
