An organization's most important asset is its people, and your clients put their trust in you as a recruiter to find quality candidates they can hire. This means more integrity and transparency is expected during your hiring process. Clients want to know that they can contact you at any time, that you will do your best to address their needs, and that you will value their input. This is where a dedicated client portal comes in.
As technology advances, clients are expecting higher standards of service than ever before. A client portal often comes as a feature of organization-wide recruitment software. If you are just getting started with digitization for your staffing agency, or if you're working with a client portal for the first time, we're here to help. Here are five ways to strengthen partnerships and offer better solutions with a client portal.
Choose the right ATS
Gather continuous feedback
Give your clients more control
Create a discussion space for your client's team
Keep clients informed with dashboards
1. Choose the right ATS
Your clients don't want to jump through a million hoops during the hiring process—that's why they hired you. Any ATS you choose should be designed specifically to make their lives easier, and having an one with a client portal feature is a great start. With this portal, clients should be able to view, rate, and review any candidates you submit. They should also be able to use it to evaluate interviews, add new job requisitions, and communicate with you directly.
If possible, offer industry-specific customization as well. For example, if you have coding assessments for software developers, your clients should be able to view candidate scores without switching from the app. This is why choosing the right platform for your client portal is essential. Does it integrate well with the other hiring tools you use? If so, you can customize the portal to suit each client's needs.
Having access to your recruitment services and candidate information all in one place saves both of you time and stress—it's a win-win. Create login credentials for your clients so they can sign in and get started.
2. Gather continual feedback
Client feedback serves as a guiding resource for your company's growth. It's perhaps one of the most trustworthy sources to know what you're doing right, what's not working, and areas that you could potentially improve. Ideally, your client portal should allow free-flowing dialogue between you and your clients, and they'll make their concerns known to you. That said, you may have to reach out directly for feedback. Don't fear this process! The fact that you are asking will help boost your reputation.
Before you reach out, talk to your team and discuss which part of the client experience you'd like to improve. Job requisition, interview scheduling, shortlisting? Anticipate some suggestions you may receive ahead of time, and make estimates on how long these changes would take to implement. When you're ready, go ahead and reach out to clients through the portal to get the conversations started. Alternatively, you can also use traditional email surveys or phone calls for the initial feedback request, and follow-up details can be discussed through the portal.
3. Give your clients more control
Having a healthy relationship with your clients is vital for your reputation as a recruiter and for the financial success of your organization. Using a client portal to empower the people you partner with shows that you value their part in the hiring process. Two key features to look out for are interview evaluations and job requisitions.
Your portal should allow your clients to add jobs to the portal themselves. These jobs will automatically reflect in your recruitment software, making the process easier for both of you. As candidates progress through their applications, it's essential to involve your clients during the interview stage. A good portal will allow your clients to rate a candidate's interview performance and add comments. This will give you much needed insight when you are making the final hiring decision.
4. Create a discussion space for your client's team
You may work with multiple contacts who are part of one client company. Each contact may have a specific role to perform. Say Sally is involved only during candidate interviews while Koki is overseeing the entire hiring process. Sally and Koki should be able to communicate between themselves and within their teams through the client portal. Giving this additional flexibility to your clients will encourage them to keep using your services, and it also consolidates hiring discussions to a single space. Even if some conversations are happening internally, it's easier to reach all the right people during each stage of the hiring process when everything is all in one place.
5. Keep clients informed with dashboards
Reports and dashboards make communicating with your clients more efficient. Sometimes high-level executives who may not be directly involved with the recruitment pipeline want updates on how their talent acquisition efforts are going. With a portal, it's easy to give your clients a summary of high-level information such as jobs in the pipeline, applications that haven't been looked at yet, and positions that have been filled. A portal allows them to customize what they wish to see on their dashboards so they can be informed right when they log in to the portal.
Final thoughts
Having worked with thousands of staffing businesses over the last decade, we're sure that a well-designed portal will help you and your clients grow. By improving communication and making the hiring process more straightforward, you can focus on providing even better candidate experiences and developing closer ties with your clients. After all, you are who your clients rely on for their next best hire. Make it count!
Do you have any tips on using client portals more effectively? If so, leave them in the comments below! For any questions or feedback, you can also feel free to reach out to team@fullonrecruiter.com. Cheers!