As winners of the 2023 RCSA Outstanding Agency – Up to 80 Staff award, MAYDAY Recruitment Group is a recruitment agency that understands the importance of people. Its dedicated focus on clients, candidates and its people shines through, and it’s something that CEO Lynne Johnston attributes the agency’s continued success to.
“Being recognised for this award was a great reflection of all areas because it really encompasses a lot of different factors that make up a recruitment agency. For us, it’s always been number one that we have a really big focus on service. A lot of our people come from quite service-driven backgrounds. And we feel like we’ve hired people who really partner with companies and lead with an account management mindset. It’s the real focus on the client and candidate interactions, that’s always number one.”
“Another key element for us is obviously the focus on our people. It’s a hard industry to work in, and it’s also an amazing industry. It can be very competitive, and you need to be very resilient. So, we really focus on making MAYDAY a great place to work.”
“I think one of the key factors is that our people have fun together. They enjoy spending time with each other. They’re very supportive of each other. We’ve also got really clear lines of progression for everyone in the business, so that they know that they can be with us long term, and they’ve got somewhere they can grow in their careers. So for me, that’s always been extremely important, helping to develop my team’s careers.”
It’s not just internally that MAYDAY is developing the skills and career paths of recruiting professionals, the agency also offers industry education and career development.
“We make a really significant contribution to the industry overall. We have our future recruiter training program where we train rookie and experienced recruiters for lots of different agencies, which I think makes us pretty unique in the market. We also run courses and executive coaching for recruitment leaders of other agencies.”
“We speak at events. We step up as thought leaders in what we do, whether that’s within our industry or in the wider market, to provide that recruitment lens for other companies and help them understand what’s happening in the market.”
Growth and success with the support of JobAdder
Lynne states that MAYDAY has grown considerably over the years, building its award-winning team and industry reputation with the support of exceptional recruitment software.
“JobAdder has enabled us to grow in different ways. As we’ve grown our team here, it’s very easy to set up new users on JobAdder and it’s very easy to get them up to speed on the core functions of the platform. It’s very intuitive that way, and we have people join us who are surprised at how easy it is to use and how quickly they can figure out how everything links together, and how the platform can almost lead you to do what you need to do next.”
“When it comes to the growth of our placements and our core business, it’s been great for that. I feel like JobAdder has developed too, there are always new functionalities being added. As our numbers grow and our business becomes more complex, JobAdder as a platform has grown as well and supported us along the way. We’ve given suggestions in the past about different things that we’d like to see and we feel like we’ve been heard, and our suggestions have been actioned. We’ve had meetings with our account managers in the past, and I know that’s led to building different types of reports that will help us as a business.”
This support and collaboration have ensured that MAYDAY is set up for success, even within today’s notoriously tight talent market.
“We’ve made over 10,000 placements through the JobAdder platform and at the highest we’ve probably been placing around 150 per month. The market over the last few months has definitely slowed and I think a lot of companies are feeling that. We’re glad we have a platform that can deal with our peaks and troughs and support us as we grow. That’s really important from a technology perspective to know that we’re supported that way.”
Mass communication in seconds, rather than hours
With JobAdder and our marketplace of more than 100 partners, MAYDAY can scale up its communications and recruitment, reaching out to hundreds of candidates in seconds.
“There are a lot of functions of JobAdder that I hear feedback from the team that they love,” states Lynne. “One of the key things would be the ability to bulk message, so bulk texts and emails to candidates on mass. At MAYDAY, we pride ourselves in doing things quickly with care, so applying a level of urgency, particularly with fast turnaround, temp roles. When a client approaches us needing someone today, we need to have a functionality where we can reach out to lots of candidates very quickly.”
“We rely heavily on how we categorise candidates, filter and use alerts. Being able to reach out to them by location, skill set or availability means that we can contact 300 candidates within a matter of seconds. If we did that by phone calls or even individual texts, it would take hours. People can come back to you straight away, whether it’s a yes or a no, and it’s a huge time saver, particularly for our temp consultants. It means that they can fill roles for our clients really quickly.”
That ability to communicate instantly with a wide talent pool of candidates is made possible by the Recruitment CRM that sits at the core of JobAdder’s functionality. Lynne says that MAYDAY’s database is an absolutely essential part of their recruitment.
“When we start a recruitment plan and recruitment search for a client, whether that’s for permanent hires or for temporary hires, one of our core recruitment strategies or search strategies is utilising our database. We rely heavily on our database, and we can straight away find the skill sets, availability and location of candidates. As a first port of call, any recruiter should always go to their database. Being able to send candidates who meet certain key criteria a bulk email with some information on a particular role, its benefits, that’s the first step.”
“Then consultants can move on to their job applications that have come in overnight, then they can go to LinkedIn and SEEK for backend searches and headhunting. And while they’re doing these additional searches, candidates start to come back to them from the database outreach. For us, we train everyone to do it that way so that they’re really smart about how they use their time, and they can work really efficiently.”
“Our consultants are often up against competitors. There might be quick turnaround times for clients. So, it’s really important that they conduct a search in the best, most efficient way, and they rely on JobAdder to help them to do that.”
JobAdder is MAYDAY’s single source of truth
Using JobAdder as its core hub for all recruitment activity, MAYDAY can easily track recruiter performance, have complete visibility over all activity and interactions and ensure the best candidate and client experience.
“We’ve got an activity competition that’s running over a six-month period within the organisation (with a big prize at the end of it) and the data for that comes from JobAdder,” explains Lynne. “It feeds directly into our scoring system and our reports, so we can check on that leaderboard and see people’s productivity. We rely on JobAdder as that one source of truth. Everyone’s trained to know that all your activity needs to be in JobAdder. It’s all your interactions, notes and your conversations with clients and candidates.”
“We want to be a business where, if I’m not here today, someone can pick up where I left off and it doesn’t affect the candidate or client experience. We’re very much a team environment; you might need someone to help you, you might be in client meetings all day, so it means your teammate or buddy can jump in, read your JobAdder notes, and they can keep the ball rolling for you.”
For client service, Lynne states that this seamless experience and attention to detail means MAYDAY can move quickly without compromising quality, not only for the initial recruitment process but also for post-placement service.
“Similarly, if a client calls in to say, “I want to interview all 3 candidates,” our team can identify really quickly who’s in the job flow in JobAdder? Who are the candidates they’re talking about? I can reach out. I can set up those interviews, brief the candidates, and I can keep the process moving without stalling anything. Great candidates get snapped up quickly, we know that.”
“The team also use Tasks and this is really built into our post-placement care process. So when you place someone, you can set up your tasks to call them on their first day, the first week, the first month and the first 3 months, and similarly on the client side as well. Rather than just being reminders in your calendar, tasks stay there until you complete them. So it’s a really good way to be able to remember your follow-up, to track it and for the notes to automatically go in the system. And then, from a compliance perspective, your manager can see your check-ins have been done and you’ve met our Post Placement Care service levels.”
“The function to be able to place again is great. We quite often have people who have been requested back by a client and from an admin perspective, it saves that recruiter a few minutes of re-entering all that information into the system and setting up a new placement. It’s very automated.”
In-depth onboarding and training
As mentioned, MAYDAY take a very proactive approach to training and career development, which aligns well with the in-depth training that JobAdder offers.
“I’ve had really great feedback on the in-platform training that our new recruiters go through. There are obviously lots of videos. There are different ways to learn which I think is really important. It’s quite interactive, they can see what it looks like. We also do our ‘MAYDAY way’ training when it comes to JobAdder, because we’ve got our own methods of doing things, how we categorise companies, client contacts and candidates. We build that into the training of our new recruiters.”
“We also give them time to learn and time away from other distractions to make sure that they really familiarise themselves with their CRM. Because it’s their go-to every day, they’re going to be on it most of the day, all day, so it’s really important that they get up to speed with JobAdder quickly.”
“Everyone comments on how intuitive JobAdder is, so it’s quite an easy platform to learn and to get across. Once you get your head around how candidates link to clients and link to placements, familiarising themselves with their daily dashboard, they’re all very simple things to do. I think that makes the learning very easy for our recruiters.”
This comprehensive onboarding and training mean that recruiters can really immerse themselves in the JobAdder platform. Lynne highlights that feedback from recruiters across MAYDAY is overwhelmingly positive with product adoption and feature usage remaining incredibly high.
“They use anything they can in JobAdder. Even the AI that JobAdder has now to identify candidates that match the job description or ad. Everything that JobAdder does really just helps consultants save time doing the administrative tasks that aren’t always their favourite things to do. Ultimately, it allows them to have more conversations with clients and candidates. And that’s why we invest in a great CRM, so that it makes our people’s lives easier and they can talk to more clients and candidates and build those relationships.”
