Are having 'industry standards' as important as delivering value and a service appreciated by recruitment customers?
As the recruitment industry continues to evolve and mature in response to the changing buying profiles of both customers and candidates, the significance of adhering to a stringent set of industry standards will become ever more profound, especially in the face of the ever growing competition from alternative in-house solutions.
Whilst we don't want to stifle creativity in the way that agencies and individual recruiters work, there is a proper way that we should be conducting ourselves as an industry, guidelines that needs to be clearly defined and followed to ensure that the industry's reputation remains professional and applicable.
Of course, clients and candidates alike ultimately want an outcome (the best talent and the best job respectively), but the quality of the overarching practices to create those outcomes in the first place plays a key role in the overall value a customer receives.
As an example, when a client engages with a recruiter, that recruiter is now representing that particular client's brand - the standards that recruiter then employs in how they decide to represent that brand when they start talking to their network of active and passive jobseekers, will go some way in determining what that talent market will ultimately think of that customer and in a candidate short market, this may have significant consequences.
Published by James Osborne April 29th 2015
James Osborne
.jpg?r=a0-bffffff-s99.99-q100)
Comments