BEing KIND In Recruitment – And Why It Matters!

Businesses and recruiters who are able to empathise and act with (professional) personability will always do best – now more than ever when all brands are under scrutiny about how they are reacting to the COVID – 19 situation.

 

From a recruiters’ point of view, you are likely to get a larger than normal candidate pool of interest in any roles you are currently looking to fill.  This will of course add pressure to your Resourcing / HR team – but the candidate experience is still an important ‘touch-point’ with the wider world for you as a brand, and the process must still be handled with respect and integrity.

 

We’re hearing more often about companies ‘ghosting’ candidates with no feedback or replies at all, and hearing too about how unpleasant and even degrading this feels when someone has taken the time and care to apply for your role.  Doing the courtesy of sending a short reply is an easy win in terms of retaining credibility as a brand prepared to care for its’ employees going forwards.

 

Being open about the interview process and timeframe is another easy win – if you can manage candidate expectations from the outset it is much more likely that they will stay engaged (don’t forget, strong candidates will be applying to other jobs too!).  Especially as traditional processes of face to face interviews in physical offices are being discarded, it’s vital to set out your expectations in terms of interview rounds, assessments and virtual working frameworks. It’s such a shame to lose candidates to other organisations because they were quicker in their processes than you! By keeping candidates engaged in the process – even if you are not as quick as others, you are less likely to lose them.

 

For candidates – bear in mind that businesses are dealing with higher levels of applicants and be prepared to be patient.  Be extra careful to tailor your CV to each and every application to make sure that your skills and experience align as well as possible with the job description to get through that first stage  – the ATS system.

 

Also remember – skills and experience are vital of course, but approach and attitude count too!  Try and build in some ‘WHO YOU ARE’ as well as ‘WHAT YOU DO’ into your CV –  think about why you want this role and why you are interested in this particular company.  Mention both these things clearly in your covering letter.  And, walk the walk.  Think about what really drives you and then be proactive (and professional) on social media platforms.  Put together a list of all the things you’ve done in your career to date that you are particularly proud of. In our world of Customer Experience that would include VoC programmes that have worked well, examples of where you have personally improved the Customer Experience, examples of where you have shown excellent stakeholder engagement and influencing skills. Listing all of these examples down will mean you don’t forget them in interview.

 

The recruitment process can and should be a great start to a long relationship with a new employee and a fabulous chance to show the human face of a brand – it can provide a useful and insightful window into the business for a wider market.  In fact, don’t let it be anything else!  There is a lot of pressure out there at the moment and it’s more important than ever for everyone in the process to be kind and empathetic.  It will pay dividends.

 

 

Some further advice – for recruiters think now more than ever what an independent specialist recruiter can do for you in terms of understanding your needs and acting as your front line in finding the perfect candidate, and for candidates – stay positive and proactive!  We have more help at www.cxtalent.co.uk/the-magic-hour/

No Job? Redundancy? A Personal Story Of What Not To Do.

Have You Been Made Redundant? Lost your job? This is My Story:

I’ve seen a lot of posts recently about redundancy. About how people are feeling and what they should do next. In a previous life way before I became a recruitment consultant – I was working in a Media organisation and lost my job!

I hope that my own experience and insights might give any of you in this situation some solace and some notion that it WILL BE ALRIGHT!

I was somewhat younger than I am now but I have NEVER forgotten how I felt, what I did and the mistakes that I made. To say that I lost my confidence would be an understatement. It absolutely destroyed me! I was young and, in my mind, invincible and absolutely BRILLIANT (in my own opinion) at the role!! So how could this happen? What was it about me (and 3 others I might add) that led to this?!

I mean how could they get rid of SUCH an indispensable member of staff?! Why me? Why not Janet from Accounts or Cliff from IT? Well – this is an easy one! IT WAS A BUSINESS DECISION! It had NOTHING to do with me, nothing to with my skills or ability to do the job. The ROLE had been made redundant, not me as a person. This is so important to realise – it is not you, you are just as employable as you were before. The business has made a decision that THE ROLE cannot be substantiated and so the decision has been made to make THE ROLE redundant. In all honesty – It took me years to actually realise that and come to terms with it.

I realise now – with several years of hindsight – that work categorically defined who I was. Without the job – who on earth was I? Maybe that very question led me to feel so panicked and lost?! Before a husband and children – as a young person intent on having a great time with their friends, there was not much else in my mind that defined who I was. But, again with hindsight there was a lot about me that defined who I was and work was just one part of that and when I got a new role that would add to who I was – it would not COMPLETE who I was. I think a number of people do this – allow work to become such a huge part of their life that it becomes all consuming – keep perspective on this if you can.

The feelings I had after ‘the meeting’ were disbelief, anger, sadness, disappointment and panic! How could this be? What was I going to do? Quick – get a new job!!! OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Unfortunately for me – I let these feelings completely overtake me!

So, what did I do?! I would call it the headless chicken approach! I contacted and met over 26 recruitment agencies – surely, the more agencies I was listed with – the easier it would be to find a role?! WRONG! I was at that point under the false illusion that recruitment agencies would contact you to let you know about roles that they might have for which I was suited. Some did – but a great many did not. I also thought that they had hundreds of roles all the time that maybe they weren’t telling me about. WRONG! I had no idea how sales driven recruitment was, how jobs needed to be filled quickly, how the recruitment consultants were looking for their next roles all of the time! I was also under the illusion that the recruitment consultants would act as my advocate, helping to sell me into the client as a strong contender for the role. WRONG! I was often sent in with several other candidates often without any supporting evidence of why I might be the right person for the role.

The agencies I dealt with at THAT time – were not interested in me at all as a candidate. Fortunately – today, there are a lot of agencies that do care.

I’m not trying to turn this post into a massive sales pitch – but at CX Talent Ltd we genuinely care about our candidates. We do proactively contact candidates to let them know about roles we are working on that might suit them. We work really hard as candidate advocates. A great deal of our approach was borne out of the time that I was looking for a role and trying to provide a service that I would have found appealing and helpful as a candidate.

I applied for hundreds of jobs – using the same CV assuming that whoever saw the CV would READ it and automatically see that I had some good transferable skills if they read between the lines. WRONG! Resourcing teams usually only look at CV’s for about 6 seconds. They dont always read between the lines – some do, but most do not! And that’s assuming that my CV even got through the then very basic ATS systems! I used the scattergun approach – what an unbelievable WASTE OF TIME!!! I could have been spending my time being so much more effective!

When I lost my job it was a beautiful spring / summer – very much like it has been to date. But I didn’t go out and enjoy the sun, I didn’t read more books or meet with friends for coffee. I sat at my computer ALL DAY EVERY DAY – thinking that if I didn’t then I was not doing enough to get a job. Shouldn’t getting a job be like having a job – shouldn’t finding a job BE the job?! Well – again, with hindsight I would say no! Because I became OBSESSED with trying to find the next job and allowed the panic to set in and grow so I became desperate. I would go to interviews and almost terrify the interviewer with my keenness and would not necessarily present the redundancy issue as well as I could have. So I would come across frequently as a bit bitter.

I needed to accept and come to terms with what had happened to me. My headless chicken approach clearly delayed the acceptance stage for me. In fact I don’t think I really reached that until I had my next role. It took me about 4 and a half months of utter madness and sadly weight gain – before I got the next role. Thanks to an incredible MD and great senior management team – I rebuilt the confidence in my abilities and stayed for nearly 9 years!

Having this experience has given me a personal insight into what it means for someone to lose their job.

I have been both Hiring Manager, Candidate and now Recruitment Consultant so I have a 360 degree view of job searching. I wish I had had someone to give me a true insight into what it means to look for a role and how recruitment works.

CX Talent Ltd offers a bespoke tailored package for candidates for a fixed fee to help – if that level of support is required. It’s called The Magic Hour – (though its longer than that!). However, here are some tips from me to you – to help harness that panic and use it for positive action.

1.Write a CV that really emphasises your key skills and those skills that are transferable. BE PREPARED TO TAILOR IT EVERY SINGLE TIME!
2.Make sure your LinkedIn profile is up to date and that you have SEO’d it so that people looking for someone like you can easily find you.
3.Do reach out to agencies if you see them advertising roles you might be interested in.
4.Do reach out to agencies who are specialists in your field. Independent Specialists are by far the best!
5.Dont register with 26 agencies – that is completely INSANE!
6.Make a job seeking plan and stick to it!
7.Spend no more than 2 hours a day looking for and applying for jobs – it does not matter whether you are the first or last person to apply for a role.
8.Get in touch with old bosses and your network and let them know you are on the look out for a new role
9.Dont be afraid to proactively get in touch with companies you might like to work for.
10.Keep perspective – there are a lot of people in your shoes at the moment. It will take some time – but you will PREVAIL!

Losing my role – was awful. But it made me the person I am today. I honestly believe it made me better as a person – more empathetic, more resilient. I developed an understanding that NO-ONE is indispensable – EVER! Without meaning to sound like my Mother – it was a very character building time! It’s definitely helped me in my role as Recruitment Consultant.

So PLEASE keep the faith – it will be OK! You will get through this! Be targeted in your job search, tailor your applications and TRY NOT TO PANIC! Good Luck!

If you need any help or advice please contact us at CX Talent Ltd – we will do what we can to help. 01279 550102

 

Could Now Be The Time For The Rise Of The Chief Customer Officer?

Should  you have a Chief Customer Officer on the Board?

It’s an interesting question isn’t it? Here we are midway through 2020 and much is being made of the CEO of Sainsbury’s promoting the CMO to the Board as he promises to ‘listen more to customers’.  According to Marketing Week June 1st 2020 – Sainsbury’s has promoted its Chief Marketing Officer – Mark Given to the board in a strategic move designed to help the supermarket get closer to its customers. Simon Roberts the new CEO has been quoted as saying “Mark’s appointment to the operating board will ensure that we really understand how customers are feeling, what they’re thinking and how this affects the way they shop,” Mark Given is quoted as saying “Starting today, I will be spending more time with customers and listening to their feedback. I am really looking forward to hearing directly from people about what they want from us so we can change and adapt to ensure we are always meeting their needs.” Isn’t this brilliant? But why are we celebrating this so much RIGHT NOW?

ALL businesses serve customers – they are there and survive because of the customers who buy the product or service. This is irrespective of sector, whether you are B2C or B2B. So why is it only NOW that Sainsbury’s have someone on the board who has the remit to ensure that they are always meeting their customers needs? Whose needs have they been meeting to this point? It’s so obvious isn’t it? If you don’t listen to your customer – how will you ensure that you are doing the best for them?  Making sure that their needs and requirements are at the centre of strategic business decisions.  If you aren’t doing the best for your customer – they will go elsewhere. New customers are a lot more expensive to find than the retention of existing ones! Existing customers often make recommendations to friends and family and businesses get more long term custom because of this – a cost effective way of marketing!

Businesses have become so process orientated – but those processes often aren’t to benefit the customer. They are to benefit the business – making it easier for the business to function, but not necessarily making things better for the customer. Having a Customer Champion at the top table surely will help organisations to stop and think about whether implementing or changing something operationally will ultimately make the experience their customer has with the business better. Love him or hate him – Jeff Bezos from the very earliest days of Amazon always had an empty chair at the table at meetings. That empty chair represents the customer – if the something didn’t work for the customer then it didn’t happen at Amazon. That chair was critical in decision making! You have to look at Amazon now – they are at the forefront of Customer Experience and making things as easy as possible for the customer. They are simply getting bigger and better all the time – because the customer is at the heart of their strategic business decision making – why would you want to go anywhere else?

Sainsbury’s have made the sensible step to put a Customer Champion at the top table. We are all acutely aware of how businesses need to adapt, meet and ideally exceed customer expectations at the moment in order to survive. Do you think that NOW might be the time to consider doing the same? Organisations investing in Customer Experience will be able to navigate their way through this stage time and live to tell the tale.

CX Talent Ltd is an Independent Customer Experience Recruitment Specialist. We have candidates at all levels. We would be confident of filling any Senior Customer Experience role, in fact we are so confident that we have THE VERY BEST candidates that we don’t work on retainer for Executive Searches. Get in touch today. 01279 550102, www.cxtalent.co.uk

 

Who And What Is In The News? Stay Informed To Help You Find Your New Role!

If you, like us, watched so much news you started to stress about it at the beginning of lockdown, you might have got into the habit of staying away.  But it’s now important to be informed so start to tune in again!

We’re talking to lots of candidates who are currently furloughed or looking for work and it’s clear that a common theme is that it’s important to structure your day in a positive way.  Make sure that you include time to look at a newspaper or business website in order to stay up to date – it might well have an impact on your job search!

The chancellor has announced a “green industrial revolution” to help create jobs for people made redundant due to the pandemic.  This will include help and subsidies for areas like green energy – utilities already using offshore wind and carbon capture and those who move into these, all aspects of cleantech, recycling, tree planting / forestry, biodiversity, renewable and low-carbon transport.  Companies operating in these sectors are likely to be hiring across the board, from customer facing to business transitioning, project managers and of course customer experience professionals!

The government is also suggesting NI holidays for employers actively hiring to encourage the market to pick up speed.  So do stay in touch with the news – don’t obsess over it but look out for these trends and spend some useful time looking at companies likely to be affected.  Start to follow them on social media so you know when they are starting to make those hires.

Remember – your skills are likely to be transferable between sectors so start thinking now about how to emphasise your skills and experience and think creatively.  It’s not only going to be about energy, renewables and green transport either –  Pandora has announced plans to move over to using only recycled gold and silver for all its’ jewellery by 2025!  Recycling alone is a huge and broad sector and well worth keeping an eye on.

So, lots of change is about and a lot of it is positive – public opinion around climate change is more supportive than ever and it looks as though this is going to translate into a significant market for new recruitment.

 

If you are a company looking to hire in all Customer Experience and customer related roles – please contact us at CX Talent Ltd – we’d love to get involved!

If you are a candidate looking for a bespoke, individually tailored session to help line up your CV and LinkedIn profile to your next role – have a look at our specific package at  www.cxtalent.co.uk/the-magic-hour/

How Is The Recruitment Market Changing – The Rise Of The Specialist Independent Recruiter?

Increased redundancies, reduced numbers of vacancies, vast numbers of candidates. Could The Independent Specialist Recruiter be the answer?

 

From August 2020 employers will be expected to pay 25% of their furloughed workers wages. This will sadly increase the number of redundancies and any company looking for candidates to fill roles will be absolutely inundated with applicants – not all of them qualified.

On the one hand for those organisations recruiting – AWESOME! But on the other hand for those Resourcing teams – how on earth are they going to get through that many applications sensibly to find the right candidate and offer some semblance of a decent candidate experience?

Yes – of course there are the usual ATS systems to filter out candidates who fit with the algorithms. They have the right number of key words in their CV! However, we all know that these are not necessarily the answer.  So many candidates drop through the holes with these.

Yes – of course there are some excellent and committed in house resourcing teams who go through applications diligently and carefully – but with the very best will in the world this isn’t always possible.  I might add that this is not a criticism of these teams – it’s just a reality! I am a pretty good recruiter – but would I be comfortable trying to recruit a Java Script specialist? Probably not – as I don’t really know enough about it.  I’d learn if I had to, but if I have several very different and varied roles to recruit for – would I have the time?

I would urge In House Resourcing teams at this time to consider looking to the independent specialist recruitment agencies who can really add value. We know our candidate bases really well, we understand the nuances and intricacies of our market areas and we’ll be able very quickly and easily to find the RIGHT person for your role.  Now more than ever – you NEED the RIGHT person in any role.  AND we really care – both about the candidate and the client – both are as important as each other to us.  Really good agencies are not interested in getting any old bum on the seat – we want the RIGHT bum on the seat! Those placements last, they work! – it means you might use us again! Specialist Agencies thrive on repeat business. We LOVE creating strong working relationships with our clients. We know who will work in each role and who is culturally aligned. Organisations who don’t fill critical roles with the right candidates will struggle in the new normal.

You won’t regret getting a really good small independent agency in to help you recruit. It will save time and money in the long run.

At CX Talent Ltd we offer the opposite of a ‘volume game’ – we have a real understanding of our candidates’ experience and career aspirations, and we provide our clients with a carefully curated shortlist of excellent people for consideration.

For all Customer Experience and customer related roles – please contact us at CX Talent Ltd – we’d love to get involved!

 

#recruitment #specialistrecruitmentagency #cxtalent #customerexperience #newnormal #specialistrecruiter #themagichour

What Does The Future Hold For CX Recruitment?

 

So, what does the world hold in terms of recruitment for CX professionals moving forward?! That – is the million dollar question isn’t it?! I can honestly say that I wish I knew! However, without a crystal ball to peer into – I can only give you my opinion on what the future holds and you can make of that what you will.

 

In our experience – CX recruitment has been quite badly hit in recent months – think Brexit, think election and now the ultimate in s**t storms – coronavirus!! What will happen moving forward is anyone’s guess. My own personal guess is that those firms with strong customer visions will continue to recruit as they see the importance of constantly improving the customer experience to retain customers and see an increase in referrals and so will rightly invest. Keep an eye on those companies who have continued to offer exemplary service and experiences for their customers. Look also to those companies who have quickly adapted their offering to suit the changing market. Some firms will have a recruitment freeze across the board potentially for many months to safeguard their existing employees and rightly so! These are all organisations to watch! Those companies with strong employee experiences also tend to be those with excellent CX reputations and so moving forward are likely to invest in new permanent hires in time.

With the reversal of the IR35 regulations for another year – it is likely that this will revive the contract and interim market. Permanent senior CX hires are likely to be put off and interims brought in to oversee CX projects and programmes. There will of course be a need to get those senior hires in place permanently – particularly towards the end of the year and the end of the IR35 extension. This will give firms time to ensure that the right person is put in place – assuming they give enough time for the recruitment process of course! I believe that firms will place even more importance on getting THE RIGHT person into a role than ever before. Hopefully they will use specialist agencies to find the right talent! I wonder also whether people will be likely to move around from job to job less than they have before and spend longer with employers again- a concept that has up to now been deeply unfashionable. This might allow greater job security and encourage businesses to be more diligent in their talent development and put sound career paths in place to retain talent – who knows!? HR professionals are going to have their work cut out – whichever way you look at it!

Digital transformation roles are likely to be hot – companies are seeing the need to move forward digitally quickly and effectively to keep pace with changing demands and in case anything like this ever happens again. So digital CX roles are more likely to be in more abundance once any recruitment freeze ends. Digital Product, Change Management roles, Customer Insight roles and M&A roles are also likely to be more popular as businesses look to adapt to the new landscape – as are the Insight and Data Analysis roles which can bring clarity to the changing marketplace and help shape how business can and should respond.

I also think that after this lockdown period – companies and Hiring Managers will be able to see how effectively people can work remotely. This will surely open up talent to organisations who might have previously felt a candidate was located too far away. This will be a huge and tangible benefit from this peculiar situation we find ourselves in. This will also mean that the job market will become even more competitive as the candidate pool for opportunities becomes much larger. So it’s even more important that candidates are on point with their CVs and Linkedin profiles.

In the short term, when furloughing comes to an end and companies have to rationalise staffing levels to match their new reality, it is likely again that there will more candidates in the marketplace for roles. So if you are looking for a role, really do act fast now to sharpen up your CV and LinkedIn profile to really accurately reflect your best, most marketable self.

Ultimately – we don’t know what is going to happen in Customer Experience moving forward. CX Talent Ltd intend to still be here and whatever the future holds for Customer Experience recruitment CX Talent Ltd is your go to partner whether you are a candidate or client or both. We will find you the RIGHT person for your role or the RIGHT job for you! Keep in touch with us – we are all in this together!

Watch out for our exciting new service launch – coming VERY soon!

Recruiting For Customer Experience Teams – How Do We Add Value?

I have been asked many times to write a piece on the recruitment of CX teams. Up until this point I have been reluctant as – since we established ourselves in 2012 – this has been an ever changing environment, and one which I have felt we were still learning about. However, after more than 7 years of specialising in CX recruitment – I feel I can now start to speak with relative authority and say that, while we are still learning on a daily basis, a few reliable generalisations are emerging.

 

The world of Customer Experience is a broad church – it remains a very diverse and unique sector in which to work.

Every business approaches Customer Experience differently, and is at a different stage of maturity. How specific CX roles emerge within a business is interesting – in some cases it grows out of operations, sometimes marketing, others customer service or even the digital silos – and these roots often predict and influence the type of teams that businesses look for.

Every single CX role is different and unique dependent on the organisation looking to hire. This is because every single organisation is at a different point on their CX journey in terms of maturity and because the overall outlook and the way that the customer is viewed by the leadership of that organisation is held with different levels of importance. This will naturally have a strong influence on the candidate an organisation might be looking for and often makes the recruitment process a long and complicated one.

So – you may be wondering how we at CX Talent Ltd see Customer Experience roles? To our mind CX roles include the following: Customer Insight, Customer Strategy, Customer Experience end to end implementation roles, Customer Journey, Customer Experience Communications, Digital Customer Experience, Customer Engagement, Loyalty roles. It also includes some of the satellite roles which would include Employee Experience and Engagement, Customer Operations, Business Transformation and Change roles, Customer Success, Product Management, UX Design and Research roles and the more senior Customer Service and Customer Relationship management roles.

Where a business is in terms of CX maturity predicts how much influencing / business transformation / change and continuous improvement experience a CX candidate will need in addition to these skillsets.

To find the right candidates for Customer Experience roles organisations need to be clear on what they want to achieve from having a CX team and what that team’s objectives are. This has a direct impact on finding the right candidate. For example – If you are starting out on your CX journey as an organisation and need someone to set up a CX function and champion the customer, to change the culture of the organisation to become one which is looking in as the customer from the outside rather than looking at the customer from the inside, you are going to need a candidate who may have done this before – this is unlikely to be someone who is only used to working in mature CX teams (unless they were the one that set that up in the first instance!).
CX teams often have to work across the other silos of the business in a fairly unique way – being expected to engage and influence across the full range of departments from securing finance for projects through marketing, usability, operations and crucially the front line of customer facing staff. This demands particular skills – being most obviously strong influencing and engagement abilities, together with the confidence to map and prioritise complex business scenarios and journeys.

In terms of sector differentiation, CX professionals have the luxury of being very transferable. Particularly in the regulated environments of financial services, utilities and telecoms – employers tend to like bringing in people from other sectors as they can bring with them a new way to look at improving customer experience. We work with clients across all these and many other sectors including facilities management, property management, the third sector and F&B, both with agencies and client side, and we find that we can move candidates between sectors very comfortably.

We’ve learned which questions to ask our HR and hiring managers about the role of the CX team in the client organisation, which allows us to streamline our search to candidates with the right approach as well as the right experience. CX candidates in general are great to work with – they tend to be instinctive problem solvers and open thinkers who are happy to share ideas, and we really enjoy our regular conversations with the professionals who make up our database of contacts.

So in conclusion CX Talent Ltd can add value to your recruitment process by already having an understanding of the sector and a large database of active and passive CX professionals working within it. We often have candidates in mind by the end of a briefing call – and if they are not ready for their next move we will use our network to find those who are!

Whether you are a candidate needing help to find your next steps on the CX ladder or an organisation struggling to find the right talent at any level – Kate and I would love to hear from you. We can and would very much like to help you along your own CX journey.

Link to: Contact Us

The Customer Experience Recruitment Specialists

In every aspect of CX and service design

NEWS

CONTACT US

INFO

Privacy Policy

© 2024 CX Talent Ltd