May 8, 2023

Interview with Catherine vanVonno

Catherine vanVonno

President & CEO, 20four7VA

We are going through very uncertain times. What are the 3 things that will differentiate top-performing staffing companies from others?

  1. The ability to identify high-quality talent quickly and efficiently. A top staffing company must have a strong focus on talent acquisition. This means investing heavily in recruiting top candidates and having a rigorous screening and vetting process that ensures only the most qualified applicants are selected.
  2. The ability to provide a great candidate experience. A top staffing company must be able to move candidates through the vetting process as quickly as possible by providing on-demand recruiter-candidate interactions. Companies with a streamlined process that makes it easy for candidates to apply and track their progress will stand out from the competition.
  3. The ability to provide clients with a seamless experience.  Of course, it’s not just about the candidates. A top staffing company must also place a high priority on enhancing the client experience. This means providing an efficient end-to-end client job requisition and candidate selection process using new technologies while providing exceptional customer service.

It is not a secret, we have a recruiter shortage. What are the most helpful tools to make your recruiters more efficient?

For us, an applicant tracking system (ATS) and customer relationship management (CRM) software are indispensable. An ATS helps recruiters keep track of applicants and their progress through the hiring process. Meanwhile, our CRM helps us manage our relationships with candidates and keep them engaged.

AI and automation tools also play a major role in improving recruiter productivity. For us, there are three types of AI or automation tools we consider good investments:

  1. AI recruiting assistants that help with the sourcing and screening of candidates. These include conversational chatbots that answer common questions from candidates so that candidates can move through the process even when the recruiter is unavailable or busy. These AI chatbots can also screen candidates by giving them knock-off questions, so our recruiters can already work with a pre-screened pool of candidates.
  2. An AI candidate-matching software that helps match candidates to job openings. It pulls data from a variety of sources, including resumes, social media profiles, and job descriptions, to find the best candidate matches for a job. Some ATS incorporate a basic version of this, but others are more advanced. The advanced ones use machine learning to incorporate personas of what a successful candidate looks like for a particular job and factors this into the candidate matching process.
  3. Candidate scorecard generators that auto-generate candidate scorecards to help recruiters assess candidates based on their skills and experience. They can help recruiters score and rank candidates faster, making it easier for recruiters to identify the best candidates for a job.

Everyone talks about candidate experience, but what about client experience? What tools or best practices do you implement to ensure an outstanding experience for your clients when working with your firm?

For fully distributed companies like us, clear and timely communication is critical. That’s why we make sure that our clients can reach us through various online communication platforms, including our website, social media channels, email, and messaging apps like Skype and WhatsApp.

We take pride in providing turnkey solutions and a custom experience, so we make sure to do the heavy lifting as much as possible. We also customize our process to match each client’s needs.

To ensure an outstanding experience for our clients, another best practice we adhere to is providing them with a dedicated account manager. This account manager is their main point of contact and is responsible for ensuring that their needs are met in a timely and professional manner.

In addition to these best practices, we also have several processes and procedures in place to help us deliver consistent results to our clients. These include quality control measures, regular training for our team members, and an effective feedback loop that helps us improve our services continuously.

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