Yelp did it for small businesses. Trip Advisor did it for hotels. too.
And now Recfluence is doing it – allowing users (or candidates) a platform to leave feedbacks on the recruitment agencies they worked with.
This surely sounds like a death knell to fly-by-night recruitment agencies.
If you google for worst recruitment agencies in Singapore, you could see 48,100 results!
A thread on this (Singapore Worst Job Agencies) was started on popular forum Hardwarezone in 2006. Since then it had grown to over 50 pages and more than 900 posts.
Having been in the industry for more than 10 years, I know how it was like and what it had become.
Many recruitment agencies operates like any typical sales office.
With more than 3,000 registered recruitment agencies in Singapore, it became a matter of speed over quality of service.
It doesn’t help that the market practice to pay recruitment agencies is base on the contingent model.
So if a typical client would give the one order to, say, five recruitment agencies.
Only the one that manage to get their candidate placed and start work gets paid.
The rest? Better luck next time.
A Recruitment Agency Is As Good As Their Worst Recruiter
So the pressure is high and attrition could be madness.
An industry guru once told me the average attrition rate for agency recruiters stand at 60%.
For every 10 new recruiters you bring in, you are prepared that up to 6 would leave.
And those who wishes to stay would overload themselves with as many orders as possible, thinking it works the same way as you would buy many lottery tickets so as to give you better odds.
That would lead to situation where candidate experience is often the last thing (if ever) on their mind.
Job recruitment agency blows off interview with candidate not once, but twice. All these give the industry a very bad image.
Improving Recruitment Industry Reputation
Founded by Danny Wu and Rebecca Zhang (both seasoned as agency recruiters), the whole premise is to help raise the standards of the industry and consequentially leading to better services from recruitment agencies.
If you are a recruitment agency or consultant and continue to believe you could wing it with poor service, think again.
The newly launched platform is backed by an investment from Start-up Investor and Apprentice Star, Raj Dhonota.
Rebecca pointed out: “Our research and own experience has found that 6 out of 10 candidates don’t hear anything back after interviews. This clearly needs changing given the amount of time and money candidates invest in changing jobs.”
Danny further adds: “We recognise that job hunters are crying out for a way to differentiate the good recruiter from the bad. Our platform gives them exactly that.”
Launching as both a web and mobile application, Recfluence makes leaving and accessing feedback very quick and easy.
This allow them to inject much needed transparency and accountability into the agency recruitment industry.
By distributing the power back to the job seekers, the system allows good recruiters to be praised and poor performers to be highlighted, but also given the chance to improve.
When asked why Raj Dhonota chose to invest in such a platform, he replied “Changing careers can be a stressful time especially when the experience is made worse by poor service and a lack of feedback. Recfluence is a disruptive platform that will help redress the balance in favour of both job hunters and employers and that’s where the focus of the recruitment industry should be.”
How Would It Help Job Seekers
Before responding to job adverts posted by recruitment agencies, job seekers can view reviews left by their peers.
The reviews would reveal critical recruiter analytics, such as interview-to-offer ratio and response speed.
Afterwards, they are able to leave their own ratings to help the next person looking to use the same agency.
Recfluence is currently allowing job hunters to leave their ratings and feedback on agencies across the UK.
They are looking to expand outside of UK and has informed that Singapore would be one of their key APAC countries to come into.
In fact you would see a Singapore recruitment agency review pending for publication.
It will only make the reviews public once they officially launch.
Table is turned and this time it is the recruiters who are going to be nervous.
If you are a job hunter, you can contribute with your experiences at www.recfluence.com or download the app from the App Store and Google Play for free.
