I found myself in a position recently where I looked to the internet to find a new career. I have been employed for over 20 years, during which period I have used a recruitment service to find a handful of times, albeit less in recent years. I have also dealt with the flipside of recruitment by bringing employees into the business, so I was still familiar with the processes involved.
The first thing that I noticed was how little things had changed with some of the recruitment websites I visited. They were nicely designed and often had a modern feel to them, but I felt that I was browsing a list (Ebay style) and I could barely see who the employer was, or the associated salary.
I’m a pretty picky person (apparently that’s a millennial trait), so I started to reach out, attempting to find out who these businesses were. Before I knew it, I was being whisked into 'preliminary interviews' and having all manner of jobs thrust at me by consultants.
Now I don’t know about you, but I just hate being sold to, I can smell it a mile off, I’ve been doing it for 20+ years. This, I assumed was the norm, so I took a deep breath and continued to try and convince myself that these positions were right for me.
Then one Saturday morning, most likely whilst browsing videos of dogs, an Instagram Ad caught my eye. “We’re just as picky as you are” OTTA. I had never heard of OTTA, and I have absolutely no affiliation with them other than my recent experience, but the Ad was enough to make me stop scrolling and click through (well-done marketing team).
But my delight didn’t end there, within no more than 60 seconds, I was scrolling through job specs with detailed salaries, company profiles written by OTTAs senior team members, detailed job descriptions with separate responsibilities and what skills I’d require, photos of the employers' team and premises, blogs and articles written by staff members, links to respected employer review sites… The list of features goes on.
The UI was beautifully crafted and simple, and for me, the user experience was so good, that I started ignoring calls from recruiters -because I knew that this was how I wanted to find my next job, which by the way, was exactly what I did.
This kind of experience caters for so many of my personal needs, I’m picky, I’m busy, I don’t like being sold to, I like to do detailed research in my own time. OTTA is predominantly geared towards helping growing tech start-ups find new talent, but I can’t help but think that recruiters are missing a trick by not having this digital experience in their armoury.
- You’re going to need to build a top-notch system to drive the same level of experience that OTTA offer (eventually, this can be done in phases).
- You may have to rely more on click-through Ad campaigns than site searches.
- You may have to embrace internal change through digital transformation.
Have a think about how your business is preparing to cater for the next generation of workers, and how the existing generation feels about their current route to employment through your agency. It might be that you’ve already got it absolutely nailed for your target audience, and it's sustainable long-term. But it may also be the case, that you could make an investment now that could help grow your business substantially in the future.
Spinning fox can help you understand how to digitally transform your business, and I’d be delighted to help you with this journey. if this all feels a little daunting, or you’re just curious and want to look further into this, get in touch and we can chat. Don’t worry if you already have your own design, web or development team, we can assign resources where they are needed most to drive your project forwards.
