As we enter our third year of business, we see a very interesting landscape starting to arise in the face of digital disruption in the recruitment space. The cold hard fact remains that machines are not eliminating recruiters from the process of hiring skilled and technical roles. Hired.com with $80mil and TheSearchParty.com with $8 mil behind them, no longer exist in the Australian market which is proof for any doubters that there is still massive value that comes from working directly with the best recruiters.
We are constantly amazed and incredibly thankful for how you’re able to make seemingly impossible placements for clients and our employer NPS rating of 67% would not be possible without what our partner agencies do.
We are proud to be one of the HR tech platforms that are not trying to eliminate recruiters, we are just making it easier to identify and work with the best recruiters in the market whilst providing efficiencies around how employers can access the talent that you already have available.
What’s Been Working Well
2017 provided us with a number of lessons and I’m now comfortable that we have a model that works so we now push ahead in 2018 to provide as much deal flow for you as possible. Our users will see that we have been growing by over 50% every quarter.
We have also been reducing the number of agencies that we work with. At first we thought that the number of agencies on the platform would be an important metric however we find that this model works much better with closer and trusting relationships otherwise there is the ever present risk of disintermediation. Thankfully with attractive incentives for employers to report when this happens, we are finding this is an effective way for us to remove unethical operators from the platform and spend more time focusing on the great consultants that we are proud to partner with.
Below are some factors that should help make the TalentVine experience as worthwhile for you as possible. For the ten agencies/consultants that have earned over $50,000 in the last 12 months, this is how they have achieved this:
New Platform
Firstly, you’ll see that we have overhauled the whole platform including an admin and agency panel for you to manage, track and control which consultants bid on the roles. When you log into your dashboard, you will see there are tours available to take you through these features in more detail.
Good things come to those with a bit of tenacity
Recruiters are incredibly tenacious and we genuinely admire this. We wouldn’t exist if this wasn’t the case and we thank you for this skillset. The reality is that TalentVine is a marketplace; we are agnostic and have very little influence over who gets selected so sometimes this takes more than a few bids before you start winning some roles.
Placing a bid on TalentVine should always be much easier and quicker than researching a role, calling a new client, getting past the gatekeeper and wooing the Hiring Manager. When it comes to placing bids, this is what we have seen across 2017:
- One in three recruiters are selected on their first bid.
- The average bids before a consultant get selected for a role is five.
- 83% of consultants make a placement within their first ten bids.
- And proving the value of tenacity, the most bids any consultant has ever put through before being selected is a staggering 24. They have since generated $81,000 of business through TalentVine.
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Fees earned by consultants have ranged from 9% (exclusive) to 20% (non-exclusive).
- Average fee selected by employers are those that are 3% points above the lowest fee on offer. Whilst there is no doubt that fees do play an important part, TalentVine is not a race to the bottom.
Existing Ratings
Over 90% of consultants that get selected by clients have existing ratings on their profile. For those without ratings, it just says ’new’ and all that the employers have to use as a point of comparison are your fees, replacement guarantee and previous roles.
This is why we have now made it simple for you to get external ratings onto your TalentVine profile so you can be rewarded for the great work that you have done elsewhere.
If you haven’t placed a role through TalentVine yet then your profile rating will be shown as ‘new’ so once you have ratings against your profile then the likelihood of being select will increase nine-fold. Even if you do have existing ratings through TalentVine then you can still use this link to beef up your ratings.
Make sure the most suitable recruiter in your agency is bidding and working on the role
The agencies that win the most roles are doing so because they ensure the right consultant is bidding on the right role. Feedback from employers is that they often see a consultant has bid on a role yet when viewing the LinkedIn profile or website of the agent, they actually lack the domain expertise to do the role justice. And if your profile is going to be compared side by side with a consultant that is a domain expert, then they are more likely to be selected for that role.
Therefore, please use the recently released admin functionality on the platform to invite, add or bid on behalf of someone else in the agency who is most likely to provide the client with the best specialist experience. If there is no-one in the agency that’s relevant, then please don’t throw your hat in the ring.
State of Origin
Like the Origin shield, TalentVine has been dominated by Queensland roles of late but we are seeing steady growth into NSW, Victoria and South Australia.
Having a consultant who is based in the same state that the role is based does increase the likelihood of that agency being selected. We do still see consultants get selected and succeed in placing interstate roles but it’s disappointing when we see a consultant placing a bid on an interstate role when we know that their agency has someone very capable with local networks in the same state where the role is based.
Our preference is to have fewer, yet stronger relationships with as few agencies as possible across all states. If you’re not encouraging the other agency offices to start using TalentVine, then we need to invite other agencies on board to service those specific sectors and demographics, which in turn means they will invite other consultants into your space creating more competition for yourself.
*Note this is not the case in certain state and industries where the number of participating consultants have been capped (unless a client has specifically requested for you to be on their PSA)
In short, when there is an interstate role that would be better to have another consultant bidding and working on this, please share the love and use the platform to invite them to bid on this.
Hit It and Quit It
There have been a few cases where consultants have been selected for a role, take a briefing with a client and then the client never hears from them again. Not only does this affect your ratings and the ratings of every person in your agency but it really screws the client over as they are expecting to get candidates from you. The client is left in limbo, they miss out on the opportunity to hire someone and it makes TalentVine look like we are partnering with consultants that are not reflective of our brand. And selfishly, as a business, we dont make any money.
Fortunately, this is only the very rare occasion and we would typically break ties with a consultant that operates in this way but to prevent this happening, please ensure you keep clients updated constantly.
TIP: If for any reason you’ve been struggling to get hold of a client, please let us know and we can often give them a push from our end which tends to work well as we encourage them to be as prompt and open with feedback on the role and candidates as possible. This does work well when we get involved so please feel free to use us in a supportive capacity.
Contract Roles
We stubbornly wanted to focus on full-time roles but as you would have seen, we have now been receiving a number of contract roles too. If you had made a bid previously for a contract role you would have had to do so by entering a % which wasn’t ideal. This has now been updated and you will be able to bid with a $ amount. Ie if the employer indicates they are looking to hire someone at the $600/day rate, you can indicate that you can place this role between the $450 and $600 rate.
$100 Gift Cards
When you’ve been selected by an employer to work on a role, sharing this new opportunity across LinkedIn and other social media platforms are often one of the next steps. That’s often a great time to let your connections know that you’ve been selected on this role through TalentVine via our LinkedIn Page due to your impressive metrics and ratings so feel free to tag us in your social media posts so we can share these updated for you too which can help build your brand. And we will not only pay you in gratitude and additional LinkedIn views, but we will also send you a $100 gift card when you’re successful in making this hire.
Roles That Are Still Under ‘Selectable’
If you’ve bid on a role previously then you’ll see that this may still be under ‘selectable’ months later. Whilst we do all we can to get employers to select their recruiters asap, we have found that some employers use us to get an idea of fees and then only make these selections months later. Once we know that a role is definitely dead or been placed, we will remove this for you.
Elastic PSA
Last year 11% of the roles on TalentVine were from repeat customers and in the last three months, this has increased to 46%. Our communication to the larger corporates is that TalentVine can be used as a replacement to existing PSAs so expect to see more of this as we are currently working on a number of RFPs. Please note that whilst only those on the premium membership receive 100% of relevant roles, if an employer has requested a consultant to be on their ‘PSA’, you will still receive 100% of roles from that client regardless of membership level.
What’s Coming Next?
You’ll have the option to make your profile visible to anyone so you can be rewarded outside of TalentVine for the awesome work you’ve done. ie when you contact a client in the real world, you can share your profile to show that you’re the right person to help them make that hire based on your previous ratings and performance metrics.
More updates coming next week but if you would like to discuss any of the above in more detail then please select a convenient time here
