“Ashby is great, though less great recently”

It’s the feedback you always hope to hear, that your ability to support people at a huge point of change in their lives isn’t as good as it once was. Well, it absolutely isn’t want you want to hear but more importantly, it is what you need to.

We recently launched a survey to our database, asking candidates for their feedback on their experience with us. Are we spamming them? Are we being supportive? Adding value to their job search? The last time we did this was when we were only 11 months old as a business, there were three of us then and the job market was about to change dramatically. Since then, our team and our database have both grown significantly and the survey was put in place to make sure that we were still offering the sector what we set up to do – a relationship-led, personalised service. And as you can tell from the quote that features as the title of this post things aren’t working completely perfectly

We launched the survey because I want to ensure that we keep learning and improving, never assuming that what has once worked will continue to do so. The responses we received, from the people we are here to support, were illuminating and have provided us with the perfect platform to review exactly how we shape the business and our database moving forward. It led to us identifying a few key areas of change that we have started actioning, these include:

-????Creating and recruiting for an additional two positions in the team, someone to support with compliance and database management and an additional consultant so that we have more capacity to focus on relationships with better data

-????A reorganisation of our database (as many of you will know, this is a fun project), including better regional segmentation and an introduction of job-share filters (part-time already existed) so that we can match potential job-sharers more easily

-????Our commitment is to delete anyone from our database who hasn’t interacted with us for three years, often these records are just kept on recruitment databases unless someone specifically asks to be removed, we would rather keep our data lean and clean

-????More flexible, bespoke interview training will be offered to support people at this vital stage of their search

We were given some really lovely feedback through the survey, consistently being praised for our professionalism, personable and knowledgeable approach. I’m incredibly proud of the way we work but things can always be better and I'd rather act when given the chance to improve.

The person who said, “Ashby is great, though less great recently” is anonymised through the survey so I can’t apologise and thank them personally, but I want them (and other people) to know that feedback like this is always welcome. It reminds me of my responsibility to the people I work with and the impact that we, as recruiters can have. I set up Ashby Jenkins Recruitment to offer an alternative, we care about your job search, we care about finding the right person for your team. That hasn’t changed and it never will.