Marketing automation can provide huge benefits for your staffing firm—or it can blow up in your face. During our experience guiding clients on their automation journeys, we’ve seen three basic errors that staffing firms make which can lead to a poor experience and negative ROI.
Make sure you’re not committing one of these fundamental automation mistakes.
Wrong message, wrong person, wrong time
Candidates want to feel valued and appreciated, and nothing ruins that vibe faster than an automated message that makes a candidate feel like your staffing firm doesn’t care about them—or worse, doesn’t know who they are or where they are in the employment process. What are some ways this can happen?
- Pulling the wrong personalized name field
- Robotic messaging
- Bad triggers
- Incorrect statuses
- Missed touchpoints
Even if you are trying to save time by automating, don’t rush into the process. Take the time to map out your ideal candidate experience and identify places where automation can improve engagement. Then build workflows tailored to candidates at that specific point in the process. If mistakes happen, it’s not the end of the world. Analyze the results of your workflows, course correct, and use that knowledge to build the next journey.
Failing to get recruiter buy-in
Often the leadership making technology buying decisions is not immersed in the day-to day processes that will be most impacted by the changes. Recruiters are the ones in the trenches with the candidates. They are also the ones with the most insight into daily admin tasks that take up their time. Failing to get recruiter buy-in on automation can slow—or even stop—progress. As such, it pays to ask recruiters:
- what tasks would save them the most time if they were automated
- which revenue-generating tasks they wish they had more time to do
- how candidates feel about the texts and emails they receive
Changing processes is challenging. It pays to “pick your battles.” Before launching headlong into automation, consider explaining the goals to recruiters and asking for their feedback. They may provide valuable insight into the candidate experience that will be crucial to the success of your automation strategy.
Failing to show value.
Every staffing firm is unique. Therein lies the rub of automation. Although generalizations can be made about the talent lifecycle and where engagement opportunities exist, each firm has a different:
- ATS
- candidate status nomenclature
- brand
- ideal candidate experience
- way of doing business
Automation offers an overwhelming number of ways to improve processes, but it can be difficult to know where to start automating, especially in the beginning. Sometimes it feels like the wheels are spinning but you aren’t getting anywhere, and that can be frustrating when you’re paying monthly fees on an expensive platform.
Try this:
- Find your gaps. Map out your ideal candidate experience and then decide where you want to improve it. Start small and scale up.
- Set realistic expectations. It’s going to take some time to ramp up. If you know this going into the process, you will keep frustration at bay long enough to see results.
- Create metrics. Create a way to measure your results, so that you will see value and know the needle is moving.
- Improve results. Automation platforms offer powerful analytics. Consult your dashboard to see how your workflows are performing, and then strive to improve those results. It’s likely the road will open in front of you as you travel. Keep your mind on the journey and learn as you go!
Looking to improve your ongoing automations?
Haley Marketing has automation optimization experts who can get you started, audit your journeys-in-progress, or help you avoid mistakes while building new ones. Contact us today!
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