The next post in our “Introduction to Rekkruut” Blog Series surrounds the benefits of using Rekkruut for UK Jobseekers when undergoing a job search.
While this post is specifically directed towards Jobseekers, feel free to read on if you’re interested in how we can benefit all those individuals looking for the next venture in their professional career.
As a jobseeker, there’s plenty of recruitment services available to find work. Perhaps you registered for a job board like CV-library or Indeed a while back. Maybe you once applied for a job through a recruitment agency. Or maybe you’ve had a Linkedin profile since it was recommended to you.
What do these all have in common? Well, other than the fact you were once interested in finding a new job, the common issue with these services is that your information isn’t secure, and is available to most recruitment consultants working at an agency.
You’ve most likely received a call from a random number asking if you’re “interested in new opportunities”, or you receive daily messages on Linkedin asking if you’re “free for a phone call”.
What if we told you this could all stop happening with a click of a button?
We’ll discuss this further into the article, but first, let’s look at the various recruitment services which are currently available to jobseekers…
What recruitment services are currently available to Jobseekers?
1. Job Boards
A job board is the most up-to-date recruitment strategy for employers across the world. You may have heard of CV-Library, Indeed, or Totaljobs.
They do a great job in leveraging technology to their advantage (allowing for employers to effortlessly source candidates), and most importantly – it’s easy to use for anyone looking for their next role.
It really is as simple as uploading your CV, and applying for a tonne of jobs. Application success or denial is (usually) communicated simply, allowing for applicants to know whether or not the company wants to interview them.
Job boards also give you the opportunity to discover the latest opportunities which match your CV content. You can get consistent email prompts with relevant job roles that may genuinely interest you.
Job searches are easy, where you can filter your searches based on your desired salary, location, and job title. We agree, this makes it easier and faster than ever.
2. Recruitment Agencies
Recruitment agencies take a more “put your feet up and relax” approach to recruitment. With job boards, you have to actively search and apply for jobs. Whereas with agencies, they’ll do your job search for you!
Consultants usually start off with a telephone call to try and understand more about your experiences and preferences before a face-to-face interview. With your agreement, you’ll then typically attend a face-to-face interview with the consultant to go one step further in finding out more about you.
The beauty of working with recruitment agencies is that they’re called “consultants” for a reason. They will provide professional advice and support on the employment market, and typically have excellent knowledge on the employers in your preferred industry.
Even after a recruiter has placed you into work, they usually carry out “aftercare” calls to ensure you’re enjoying it at your new place of work. This consistent communication helps build a strong relationship between candidate and consultant, ensuring that you’re not “left for dead”.
Many recruiters have built great relationships with employers across your preferred industry, and they can help you put your foot in the door with your dream employer.
3. Social Media
Social media platforms are the most “laissez-faire” style of recruitment, where effectively, you can do whatever the hell you want. You can communicate with anyone from any business with a profile. The more popular social media platforms used for recruitment purposes include Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin.
Arguably, Linkedin is the most ‘professional’ social media to use when job hunting, where you can change your profile visibility to “open to work”. If you’re looking for staff, you can brandish your profile with the “hiring” stamp. You have access to an abundance of recruitment consultants who are actively looking to increase their candidate pools on Linkedin.
The beauty of Linkedin is that it’s easy to update your job experience, skills, and endorsements. This can make your profile look more appealing to recruiters either working at agencies or hiring businesses.
Linkedin is slowly transforming from a professional social media to more of a hybrid between social media and job boards. They allow for their users to video call via instant messaging, and can also do a job search.
Take note that all of these services are free to use. But even though these services are free, this shouldn’t be considered a benefit of using any recruitment service. Looking for work should always be a free experience for jobseekers. Working is a necessity and not a luxury – especially in the current employment market.
Disadvantages of Recruitment Services
Job Boards:
You may not know this, but as soon as you upload a CV onto a job board’s site, your information is on there permanently. Yes, your contact information is stored in some database, and is most likely being scanned by several recruiters in your local area. And this isn’t just internal recruiters working in an organisation, this is agency consultants as well. So, when you get a random call from an agency you’ve never heard of before, 9 times out of 10 they would have sourced your info from a job board.
It is possible to hide your CV from view from these cold-calling pests, so it’s not all doom and gloom. However, if you’re like me and you once registered for more job boards than you can count on one hand, then you’re in a bit of a sticky situation. I can’t remember what I ate last night, let alone the password I set 7 years ago on Totaljobs.
Even more annoyingly, sometimes you won’t even find out where a recruiter got your number from. While recruitment consultants are usually excellent with helping you out with getting your details removed, on the odd occasion you may come across someone who just isn’t willing to disclose where they came across your information.
This essentially means you cannot request your contact information to be removed from the job board – leaving you open to receiving more unsolicited phone calls from recruiters.
Oh yeah, and if you’re currently in work but looking to change jobs, there’s a chance your manager can come across your details if they’re subscribed to the job board. Where’s the anonymity, eh?
Recruitment Agencies:
The relationship between recruitment agencies and jobseekers is that of a ‘Marmite love or hate’ one. While they’re effectively doing your job search free-of-charge, they can be painfully inconsistent at times when it comes to communication.
Ever interviewed with a recruiter, and never heard back from them again? Perhaps you took the day off work to go travel into their office, just to be told you’ve brought the incorrect right-to-work documents in. Or maybe, they call you all the time, even when you’ve asked for your details to be removed from their system for the tenth time.
To summarise the disadvantages of recruitment agencies, let’s look at several points:
- Lack of feedback. There’s nothing more demotivating than when you’ve been speaking to a recruiter for weeks on end, had all of your documents copied, promised to be put into work, and all this to just be wasted with not even getting an email back from the consultant you’ve been liaising with. Yes, there’s a feedback problem in the world of recruitment.
- Travelling into an agent’s office to interview. Maybe you’re working full-time, and cannot afford to take the time off work to travel into the agency’s offices to interview with a recruitment consultant. This is a common catch-22 associated with jobhunting through an agency. You need another job, but you cannot attend a consultant’s interview which can only be done throughout the week. You’d have to take at least half a day off for the interview, including the time taken commuting to and from the office.
- Cold-calling. If you’ve ever registered to an agency, then I’m sure you’re a regular victim of persistent cold-calling year-on-year. Yes, it comes with the job as a recruitment consultant to continuously call in to check on previously registered users. Don’t blame the recruiter, blame the system!
- Right-to-work documents. A necessary burden in recruitment is having the correct right-to-work documents (e.g. ID, Proof of National Insurance, Proof of address). In some cases, it can be frustrating when you’ve just brought in a bank statement (for proof of address), but it’s more than 3 months old, and therefore void. So now, you have to schedule another time to come into the office with an updated bank statement – wasting even more time!
- Money-grabbing stigma. You may have the shared view that recruitment consultants are just “money-grabbing scum bags”. I’d argue that – if anything – this is probably more beneficial to your situation. If the consultant is truly money-driven, then they’ll be working their hardest to get you in the door with their clients (and not to mention getting you a higher wage rate to boost their commission margins). The only reason that this point is in the “disadvantages of recruitment agencies” section, is because I believe the agencies themselves aren’t doing enough to remove this stigma around their recruiters. As an established employer, they need to work harder to promote the beneficial work that their staff are doing for society. Remember, it’s the agency who take the majority of the money which is earned – and not the individual consultant!
How does Rekkruut do it better?
Rekkruut is essentially a hybrid of job boards and recruitment agencies. We use technological advantages to provide an easy and faster service for jobseekers, while we also add a personalised touch with using specialised recruitment consultants on our platform.
All recruiters on our app will be freelance, and therefore incentivised entirely on performing as an individual to grow their business. Why is this beneficial? Well, it means that they’re working off their own back, rather than through an agency brand or corporate company.
We eliminate the need for going into an office for an interview, and digitalise the whole process. It’s as easy as creating a profile, uploading your right-to-work documents, and then you can be discovered by recruiters.
Once you’ve video interviewed with a recruiter, they can then get in touch with some of their clients through our app. If a client is interested in interviewing you upon seeing a digital copy of your CV, then you will also video interview them via our app.
Once you have been accepted, you can submit your weekly working hours on our app, where these are approved by your hiring manager. Once approved, you can then get paid!
Our Features
Here are some of the features we will be implementing on our platform to help make your jobhunting as easy and fast as possible:
- Filtered Recruiter Search & Recommendation system: Searching and finding recruitment consultants for your dream job is easier than ever, where you can conduct a filtered search to find the perfect recruiter. You’ll also be recommended recruiters on your home page, so you won’t even need to look for one!
- CV, profile building, right-to-work documents upload: We make profile-building easier than ever, where you won’t have to take your documents and CV into an agency’s office. All you need to do is upload all the required documents onto your profile, and it’s securely stored there as proof of your right-to-work.
- Hide Profile From View: With just the click of the button, you have the option to hide your profile from recruiters. This means that they will not be able to contact you – preventing unnecessary spam reaching your inbox.
- Instant Messaging: We promote a more personal relationship with recruiters, where you will communicate via instant messaging (alternative to emailing). This allows for a more fluid and interpersonal communication channel, where there are read receipts which encourage a quicker response.
- Video Interviews: No need to go into an office! We encourage all users to be interviewed via video call. This means you don’t have to allocate the time to commute to an office, and you are certainly able to interview from the comfort of your own home – either from your mobile or desktop.
- Specialist Knowledge: The recruitment consultants on our platform will be experienced professionals, who have worked as a recruitment consultant for long enough to branch out as a freelancer. Still not convinced? You can check the validity of their knowledge through the reviews left by previous clients on their profile.
- High Recruiter Incentives: We can promise that our recruitment consultants will work hard. We do this by consistently rewarding their positive activity on our platform. Not only this, but they’re working on their own – so they’re even more incentivised to work harder to build their independent brand.
- Feedback: We aim to resolve the lack-of-feedback problem. Once you have interviewed with a consultant, they will be prompted to leave feedback based on the interview. This can help jobseekers build goals to better improve any future interviews.
- Review-Based System: Our review-based system will allow you to not only leave a review on a recruiter, but you can also check their history of working on Rekkruut. This helps build trust, and further incentivises recruiters to work harder.
- More than just making money: Our goal is more than just making profit. We want to bring the power back to the people. Our mission aligns with our vision to help everyone with furthering their career. Whether you’re a recruiter who is wanting to grow their own business, or if you just want to find your next job. We aim to help with using push-notifications which provide you with reminders and tips. We’re also looking to implement “The Resource Hub” which will grant you access to an endless supply of helpful resources to develop your career.
We look forward to welcoming you to Rekkruut
Currently, our platform is under development, but we’d love to welcome you as a partner of Rekkruut as soon as our app is live! All you need to do is keep your eyes peeled, you can either follow us on LinkedIn or Facebook, or subscribe to our RekkTalk Newsletter and visit our RekkBlog.
If you’re interested to find out more before release, don’t hesitate to contact us at [email protected].
By Leon Simpson – Company Director at Rekkruut
