How are you coaching your candidates currently? Are you giving them all the tools they need to succeed in the future while boosting your agency’s reputation? Providing temporary workers to fulfill specific hours is only a part of the story. Clients also want you to give them people who offer longterm value.
Coaching your candidates, therefore, offers a host of benefits:
- It improves the appeal of temporary workers.
- It boosts the reputation of your agency.
- It makes clients happy and more likely to choose you in the future.
- It makes it more likely that candidates will select you over your rivals.
Coach Candidates To Offer More Than Just Hours
Employers will often go to temporary recruiting agencies for seasonal labor. But in many cases, that’s only the start of the candidates’ journey. A small amount of seasonal work can often transform into a full-time gig.
Therefore, agencies should coach temporary workers to fill a client’s needs by working their hours and taking the initiative. They need to show that they are an asset to the company. Recruiters should offer advice on how candidates might add value to the job to increase their prospects of recommendation or landing a full-time role.
Hire An Employee Engagement Specialist
Temporary employment agencies should also think about how they’re going to keep candidates engaged with the work that they provide. COVID, for instance, forced one of our members to reconsider how it was managing its talent. Difficulties in staff led the firm to create a new employee engagement specialist who would regularly check in with candidates, coach them on any of their concerns, and then create regular touchpoints daily, weekly, or monthly.
The result of this simple change is reduced staff turnover and greater client satisfaction. Employees had a voice and could access help when they needed it, encouraging them to stay longer.
Pick a Communication Style
How you communicate with candidates matters just as much as what you ultimately wind up saying to them. Remember, it isn’t necessarily the words that come out of your mouth that matter, but how prospective employees receive them.
Where possible, try to tailor your language to the candidate. Here are some of the styles you might want to consider:
- Personal: Personal candidates do not concern themselves with facts and figures. They are more interested in casual conversation and personal connections. Focus the discussion on how making changes will let them feel better about themselves.
- Functional: Functional candidates want you to tell them each step of the application process and timeline. You’ll need to follow-up when you say you will and show how each hoop you want them to jump through gets them closer to their goals.
- Intuitive: Intuitives are “big picture” people who like high-level trends instead of nitty-gritty data. Minimize details but be realistic about what they can expect from a role.
- Analytical: Analytic candidates love the details. Provide statistics, clear expectations, and avoid emotion.
Candidate coaching will continue to become more important as more and more value is placed on the interview. Candidates that shine and demonstrate their potential value to the company during the interview are the ones who ultimately get hired. A great coach behind a strong candidate can often be what makes or breaks the hire.
