Suky goes into detail about how the best clients always value and respect your time and service, and how if your client doesn’t it might be time to let them go.
Transcription
Hi I’m Suky from Professional Selection. Today I’d like to talk about when you know it’s time to walk away from your client. Of course we all have our checklists of what equates to a bad client and of course money is one of them, but to me personally the biggest one is value. Do they value and respect me as a professional? Now what does value mean? Well again, to me value is a client that values me, somebody that sees me as a business partner, somebody who respects my time and respects my candidates time. Somebody who appreciates the the process we go through, the process our candidates
go through, and partners with us and works with us.
Now human nature is we all like to receive good positive feedback from the market, but in reality within the recruitment world sometimes we have to tell our clients not so positive feedback. That may well come from a candidate that they’ve interviewed, it may come from previous employees market intel, etcetera. Again, value and respect to me is understanding that I’m playing in that market, so that feedback is important. It’s how they handle that. The client should be taking that feedback and looking internally and where it is relevant and applicable, working with you to change the process.
So again everybody has a different idea of what value is, but that just gives you an idea of what value is to me. Now at the end of the day, in the recruitment industry we’re paid when the client has found the right employee and the individual starts. Of course, unless you’re within the retained search business but in contingency that’s how it works. So at the end of the day is that invoice really worth it?
Again you’ve got to look at that client. How difficult or easy was that client to work with we’ve all had those clients that want to interview 10 different candidates per job, they take the process over two, three, four weeks if not longer, they take forever coming back to you with feedback on an interview. Now if you’ve seen any of our previous videos especially the one on feedback,
I’m a firm believer that feedback should come back within 24 hours even if it’s just a big-picture initial feedback. But again, that’s all going to play into the candidate experience with you as well as with the client.
So the other side of this equation is how are they treating your candidate. If they are making your candidate wait a week, two, three, four days before they give any type of feedback, that shows a lack of respect for the process. If your candidate has turned up for an interview and they’ve kept your candidate waiting twenty five or thirty minutes before they interview again, that’s a of lack of respect for you, your candidate, the whole process so therefore I would argue that’s not a client that sees you as a partner.
You may well make a placement with that client, it’ll probably take you three, four, five, six months to make that placement but if you go back and look at the time and energy that you’ve invested and you break it down as an hourly rate you’ll probably find that’s probably below minimum wage. As I said, the other side to this is a candidate experience so if your other candidates have gone through a not so positive experience you’ve jeopardized your relationship with that candidate. So I would argue that this potentially is not a client that is right for you. They may be right for another supplier, that’s just the way business works.
So at the end of the day, what am I saying? I’m saying if the client is not valuing your service, valuing you as a business partner, not showing you the respect you and your candidates deserve, then I would suggest you consider walking away from that client.
As always, I’m sure there’s different opinions, would love to hear, them feel free to leave a comment below.
Thanks for listening.
