Why even bad news can be good news!!

I received a letter earlier this week; from a travel company with whom I had entered a competition.

I’d been invited to take part in a survey earlier this year, on the subject of cycling holidays. Cycling and Holidays! Two things I love to do, and with the added incentive of being entered into a prize draw to win a holiday I was hooked.

Usual type of questionnaire, didn’t take too long. I hit ‘finished’ and thought if I win I’ll hear from them, if I don’t then I will resign myself to being marketed to unashamedly.

So imagine my surprise when the letter opened with: “I am writing to thank you for taking the time to fill out our recent cycling survey. I am sorry to say that you did not win the prize draw, however I would like to share some good news which may help get your holiday planning off to a good start for 2011”

The letter then proceeded to share the results of the feedback they had received, and what they were offering next year in response to this. Closing the loop.

Yes, it was a standard letter, but it was addressed to me! I suddenly felt strangely touched by the fact that they had bothered to tell me the news rather than leave me guessing. I suddenly felt that this company cared enough about their customer experience to continue to have a dialogue with me and demonstrate that my input had been of value.

I might not be ready to book a holiday with them now, but you never know I might be ready at some point in the future. And they clearly understand that.

Usually with competitions ‘if you don’t hear, you haven’t been successful’!

Now, where have I heard that phrase before? I couldn’t help thinking about the parallels with online recruitment.

All too often candidates who apply for a job are given the same message. Online recruitment technology makes it SO easy today to give candidates feedback on whether their application has been successful or not, so why wouldn’t you do it?

• It shows you care about the individual’s experience with your company and your brand
  
• It respects their time and effort
  
• It demonstrates a human touch, especially if you care enough to think about the content
  
• It keeps the door open for further interaction both as a candidate and a potential customer

And you never know a candidate might not be ready for a job with you now, but they might be at some point in the future.

Come and take a look at our website and see for yourselves the kind of organisations that we work with who care enough about their candidates to give them a positive and engaging experience. http://www.changeworknow.co.uk/

Lesley Nash, Managing Director

Zizzi's selects Changeworknow to put Passion into Online Recruitment

Zizzi, the restaurant chain known for hiring people that ‘love what they do’ has selected online recruitment specialists Changeworknow to launch an online recruitment process that will help it to bring people in to the business that have a love for food, service and customers.

Selected for their passion and commitment to providing a great candidate experience and a highly efficient and user friendly applicant tracking system Changeworknow’s solution will enable Zizzi to provide a high touch approach to all candidates throughout the process and hire talented people who are passionate about their jobs. The first phase of the implementation is for management recruitment with team member planned to launch in the new year.

Changeworknow’s new on line resourcing and talent platform incorporates some of the most innovative functionality of any solution on the market today and is already providing substantial benefits for both recruiters and candidates. Zizzi’s are the latest organisation to benefit from this offering and in doing so join Changeworknow’s growing portfolio of blue chip clients.

To see the new system in action please click here

Changeworknow team continues to grow

We are delighted to announce that we have a new addition to our team here at Changeworknow. Nolwenn Balavoine has joined our Client Services team as Implementation Consultant.

No stranger to the online recruitment industry Nolwenn comes to us with six years experience of working with leading companies to implement technology solutions. Formerly at Stepstone Solutions working in a similar role Nolwenn has a wealth of expertise in recruitment, project management, client relationship and consulting having worked with clients such as Boots and Gala Coral Group. She joins us at a very exciting time as we continue to launch the new technology platform with existing and new clients.

Nolwenn is a great addition to our team and we are all very excited that she has joined us!

PizzaExpress yourself!

Everyone at Changeworknow is delighted to be working with PizzaExpress as they launch their new restaurant in Richmond. We began a partnership with them in July to develop an online recruitment system and so far the key highlights include:

• Delivering the system from start to finish in just 4 weeks
• 500 applications in the first week alone
• Just over 1000 applications received for this one restaurant including applications from fire eaters, jugglers and ballerinas (this must be down to the creative and quirky attraction strategy in place!)
• Restaurant fully staffed and opened last week
  

We like to support our clients here at Changeworknow so last week we ordered pizza take away for our company meeting - PizzaExpress of course (although we will have a dilemma next week when Zizzi go live with their online recruitment system!)

The next step will be management recruitment online. However before that some of us here in the office are really hoping for a visit to the new restaurant to be "flirted with" and to see what all the hype is about. Watch this space!

A New Addition to our Team!

We are delighted to announce that we have a new member of our team. Kavin Nijhawan joined us a few weeks ago and is already establishing himself as a force to be reckoned with in our IT team. If anyone can keep those servers up and running then Kavin can. With a strong background and experience in systems administration working for a US software provider Kavin is quickly getting involved and immersed in the robust Changeworknow infrastructure that we provide for our team and our clients. He has even been spotted with a Ruby on Rails manual on his desk!

Welcome Kavin!

Changeworknow’s new recruitment system set to create a seismic shift in the online recruitment market

Changeworknow has launched a new ‘smarter’ version of its highly successful e recruitment and talent acquisition solution.

Built on a brand new platform, and using the most advanced technologies available, the system’s intelligent prioritisation capabilities enable recruiters and managers to easily and readily see which activities they need to focus on – drastically reducing administration and, consequently, the time to hire.

The system incorporates new generation features such as graphical interactive dashboards, tag cloud capability and extensive use of tooltip for the user interface, as well as all the features expected from a best-of-breed e recruitment solution: vacancy management, sophisticated candidate screening, full candidate management, response handling and tracking, on boarding and talent and succession management.

Already in use by two leading high street organisations, the solution maintains Changeworknow’s candidate-centric philosophy, significantly enhancing the overall applicant experience with an interactive candidate career portal for candidate relationship optimisation.

The system has already received great acclaim from HR users: “The system is easy to use and incorporates what can only be described as technical genius in much of its functionality – far superior among many of its competitors in the marketplace and, believe me, I have seen a few.”

The system includes functionality for the mobile environment, including the iPhone and handheld PDAs. It also offers a high degree of flexibility for users, allowing them to configure the system to suit the way they work.

Lisa Proctor, Changeworknow’s Sales and Marketing Director, explains: “The new system will create a seismic shift in the recruitment technology market. It is already revolutionising online recruitment for the organisations using it, who say that in just a matter of weeks it has reduced administration workload by 60%, on top of the average 40% reduction already achieved with the first version.”

Changeworknow has developed a solution that meets the needs of today’s multi-generational workforce by combining its ten years of experience in the online recruitment market with listening to customers’ current market needs, observing market trends and using some of the latest and most exciting technologies available.

Only 15 weeks to go til Christmas but the rush has started

Well from a recruitment perpsective it has anyway. September normally sees the start of the seasonal recruitment for most retailers. Our clients always seem to be ahead of the game here with some peak recruitment kicking off in August.

This week we have seen with a few clients a huge amount of activity with one high street retailer receiving almost 2,500 applications yesterday. How do we know? Well our new platform has some very sophisticated and dynamically produced reports which within a matter of seconds and at the touch of a button (literally!) gives information such as the image below.



This is management information that most organisations can only dream about. Maybe a few HR professionals should consider putting a meeting with Changeworknow on their list for thie Christmas?