Inside the Crisis Plan of a UK Recruitment Owner

The COVID Crisis is obviously effecting recruiters (and everyone!) globally.

I get 30 messages a day from recruiters all over the world, mostly asking for help.

But this one offered some ideas

Very kindly sent in by Daryl Williams, of Vadar Moss in the UK, this was her COVID plan. Useful for all I think (published here with her permission)

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Thanks for your positivity during this torrid time, it really is a big help. I would like to play my part also in spreading some positive news and thought it might be useful to allow you some insight into how we are handling this situation.

On day 1 of lockdown, we put a COVID battle plan in place.

We acted quickly. Having made it through the 2008 recession, we knew we had to take decisive action. We have 5 staff and currently, no-one is furloughed. We have appraised everyone of the plan, and all have clear guidelines for the job in hand. We continue all our team meets by VC with a team lunch on a Friday and team drinks and pub quiz at 5 pm on a Friday evening.

We specialise in permanent senior Sales & Management and all of our clients are technology companies who supply banks! Not the easiest market,  given the state of the economy and banks.

The plan included :

• Reaching out to all clients and Tier 1  candidates immediately for education and reassurance. We sent out a mailer to clients with advice and guidance on how to continue hiring and we also called every client we are working with personally. We are active on messaging on LinkedIn with positivity and advice.
• We advised all clients to continue hiring processes remotely as not to do so would put them back a year in terms of :– 3 months to find another shortlist and get through interviews, then 3-month notice period so starting to hire again in July would take them to Jan 2021 before they onboarded. Then another 6 months to realise any return on their hire as it takes a salesperson 6 months to build a pipeline and close sales. Do they want it to be June 2021 before they see ROI? We are trying to use the “sheep effect”, saying “this is how most of our clients are hiring”. It’s ok to do this
• Use VC for all client interviews including panel presentations from candidates for the final stage
• Have candidates do team drinks virtually to assess cultural fit which is key to sales teams
• Issue contracts and offer with start dates TBC, similar to exchanging contracts on a house, subject to completion. During this time the candidate does not give notice but is reassured they have a job waiting and the client has shown commitment. Advising clients to do fortnightly calls with the candidates who have offers to maintain interest and momentum
• Do virtual onboarding
• Reassure candidates that there are still companies hiring and these are the very organisations you want to join, forward-thinking and using tech to replace a process, staying ahead of the game
• We are texting a quick note to all candidates, nothing to do with finding roles, just saying we hope you and your family are well and let’s grab a drink when this is all over. The response we got back in return was lovely

So, how is it working?

• We have had 2 offers in 2 weeks and one in the 1st week of lockdown!  Both processes were 50% of the way through. One candidate rejected the offer as he sells into Public Sector and heard that they were not making tech investments for 6  months, so he decided to stay where he is as he already has a deal in process. We are relatively confident if the client reached out again in 6  months, it will be a deal, as long as they stay in touch
• One accepted and starts on 27th April! We reassured him throughout and also discussed counter offers
• We have 2 further in the process where the client is holding off on offer until a f2f meeting is arranged, despite our advice to the contrary. However, we have advised them to keep in touch with the candidate
• Another 2 clients we are down to 50/50 with our candidate against one other with decisions this week
• We have another due to start mid-April that has been pushed out to 25th May with the client and candidate in regular contact

We are saying to candidates that it’s fine to change roles. Be reassured people are carrying on and now is a good time to get your onboarding done and time to learn and brush up on the products that you will be selling in your new role. Obviously we are meeting/interviewing all our candidates via VC

We  also picked up 2 new roles last week from existing clients where they have deployed the “ don’t stop hiring” theory
We have 1st interviews still going out every week, not as many as before but still around 30% of what we would normally do
So all in all, we are trying to take the attitude that it’s business as usual. As a contingent recruitment firm we have to be very very careful as to where we deploy our efforts, but we are qualifying hard and moving ahead.

We are also discussing a very softly-softly BD strategy to try and win some new business but keeping with showing empathy and recognising they may not be hiring due to the market but want to say hi, for the future.

I hope this helps spread some positivity.

Kind regards
Daryl

Access the library of my Crisis advice here  (Blogs, podcasts, webinars)

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Now is a good time to read ‘The Savage Truth’. Full of lessons about surviving recessions but also on how to take advantage of the recovery. Get it here

(All proceeds of my book sales in 2020 go to the Australian Bushfire Fund)

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Image by Wokandapix from Pixabay