When it comes to one’s reputation, ignorance is not bliss because your company’s reputation is directly associated with its success. Unfortunately, people might have written words against your services somewhere on the web, which could turn away potential hires and clients.
Can you do something about these unsavory opinions about your staffing agency? The answer to that is a definite yes! With ingenuity and willingness to face the music, you can even turn these nasty comments around and use them to your agency’s advantage. But it all starts when you decide to give a damn about your online reputation.
What Does Your Recruiter Brand Stand For?
The work you present to the world should consistently replicate your brand pillars. A brand is simply an identifier and when what you say and do is inconsistent. It can prompt negative reviews hence affecting your company’s reputation.
Knowing and understanding what your recruiter brand stands for can help you and your team present it better in every project and to every client.
A brand is more than just the letters that appear on logos or advertisements. It is how you’ve treated potential hires and clients and how others perceive they’ll be treated if they work with your agency. Your brand should always be at the front of your mind and implemented in everything you do for your company and clients.
Never wait until your online reputation takes a turn for the worse because your brand will take the hit for this. Always be prepared to do some damage control because a jobseeker in today’s world will use their savviness to get to know more about your recruiter brand. 75% of potential hires will research a company’s recruiter brand before applying, and 62% will use social media platforms to learn about employer brands.
Take note that your staffing agency is no different from other companies that sell products or services; recruitment is the service you are catering to, and your potential hires and clients are the customers. In a study conducted this year, only 47% of customers will spread the word about the excellent service they received, while a whopping 95% will speak about their negative experiences. If you’ve had a jobhunter who had an unpleasant experience with you, sadly, they might be part of that 95%.
The best first step is damage control. Find out what people are saying about your staffing agency. After that, go for the kill; kill them with kindness of course.
- Do a search of your staffing agency. Type your staffing agency’s name on Google, and let the search engine do its thing. Do a variation from time to time; add “reviews,” “reviews about,” and other similar keywords to make the search much more specific.
- There are a lot of sites wherein potential hires can leave comments and reviews about the companies they’ve applied to, like Glassdoor and LinkedIn. Check for any mention of your agency’s name on social media sites. Take good note of these mentions and what was said about your agency as part of continuous improvement.
- Respond to negative reviews. While ignoring the evaluation may be a reaction, consider the many benefits of responding to the disgruntled applicant’s rantings. It’s possible to rekindle a recruiter-applicant relationship, asking to reconsider your agency’s services in the future. It’s also a great chance to show others that your agency does care for unsatisfactory experiences with your brand.
Read more: How Does Candidate Experience Impact Your Employer Brand?
- This is also an opportunity for SEO (search engine optimization). In your response, include keywords that are related to your staffing agency. Why not mention that you are responding as a “staffing agency for nurses”? Or perhaps you know how hard it is to look for a “staffing agency in Atlanta, CA”? Turn those negative mentions of your agency into means to climb up Google searches.
- When posting the response, do it directly where the negative reviews are, perhaps by commenting on it. Call the reviewer by name, and express thanks for speaking out. At this point, take responsibility for what happened. Let it also be known that communication lines are open if they wish to discuss the matter, and leave contact details if they want to reach out. End by: confirming rectification of processes for future applicants, and if ever the reviewer wants to try it out with your agency again.
- While how the reviewer will take your response is something you might not know anymore, others see that your agency is doing something about your errors and is taking time to work on them. These responses to negative reviews may overturn what potential clients and hires may know about your company.
Defuse the negative and bank on the positive.
Online reputation management does not end up cleaning up bad comments about your service. It can also increase the positive words said about your company by asking for reviews from your clients and hires and putting them up in online spaces for the world to see.
- Ask permission to use positive online reviews. Perhaps Lady Luck smiled at your agency, and a happy client or candidate spoke about your services and how satisfied they were. If you see these reviews, reply to the author by saying thanking them for the kind words. Then, ask permission to use their rating for your agency’s website or social media handles.
- Monitor mentions of your agency from time to time. To save you time in manually searching for mentions, try Google Alerts. This content detection service gives you a heads-up whenever you mention your staffing agency is me on the web. Setting it up is generally easy, and you can also choose how often to receive notifications. You can find the instructions here.
- Ask your clients and applicants to write reviews. Note that this is not a willy-nilly client or candidate review. Particularly for candidates, it helps not to ask for a review. This is to protect the review’s integrity so that emotions based on whether they made the cut or not do not sway it.
- Also, are you exploring ways to automate the review collection process? Do your emails to clients and applicants have a link that will lead them to a landing page where they can leave a review? Can your agency’s applicant tracking system send a review request to candidates? Do you have a review management or collection app that can collate the critique for ease of evaluation? Look into these options for easier online reputation management.
- Put up your positive reviews on all your online platforms. Once you have positive reviews, boast about them on your social media handles, company website, and even when sending proposals or initial emails to prospective clients. These will add to the great things about your agency and contribute to your online reputation. The cliché goes: if you got it, flaunt it!
Know more: Jeff Pelliccio on Brand Cohesion
Talk to a marketing company that gives a damn about your online reputation.
We at Allied Insights are your companions in this ongoing crusade for your online reputation. Hop on a call with us so we can assist you in protecting your brand integrity and achieving consistency in brand recognition. We built our marketing prowess in the hopes that staffing agencies like yours achieve a positive brand, so let’s chat about it.
